[26] “Modern Painters,” iv. 253.
CHAPTER X
HOMEWARD BOUND
After a brief visit to the Priory of St. Domninus Hugh made for Villarbenoit, his old school and college in one; but first he went to Avalon Castle, where his stout backers and brothers, William and Peter, ruled over their broad lands, who always had heartened and encouraged him in his battles for the liberties of the Church. Here “nobles, middle-class men, and the lowest people” received him with delight, and he spent two days at this his birthplace, and so on to Villarbenoit, and a fine dance his coming made for them all. He gave the Church a noble Bible worth ten silver marks, and passed to the cell of St. Maximin. Here aged hobblers and white-haired seniors, bowed mothers and women advanced in years, walled round him in happy throng. The bright-eyed lady of his unrest, possibly, was among these last, and they all bore witness to his early holiness, and prophesied his future niche in the calendar. After one more night at Avalon he set out for England.
At Bellay the incautious canons allowed him to undo a sacred little bundle which held three fingers of St. John Baptist, which they trusted him to kiss, although for many years no one had even looked upon such awful articulations. After confession, absolution, and prayer the bones were bared, and he touched “the joints which had touched God’s holy head,” kissed them, and signed the prostrate worshippers with them with the holy sign. Then he cut off a good piece of the ancient red cloth which had covered them and handed it to Adam. Thence he visited three more Charterhouses. In one of these, Arvières, he met a man of his own age, Arthault by name, who had resigned his bishopric and was ending his days as a holy monk. In full chapter the bishop and the ex-bishop met. Arthault, knowing Hugh had been at the peace-making between France and England, asked him to tell them the terms of the peace; but the latter smiled and said, “My lord father, to hear and carry tales is allowable to bishops, but not to monks. Tales must not come to cells or cloister. We must not leave towns and carry tales to solitude.” So he turned the talk to spiritual themes. Perhaps he saw that it is easier to resign a bishopric than to forsake the world altogether.
The next important place was Clugny, where they read him a chapter from St. Gregory’s “Pastoral Care,” and extorted the compliment from him that their well-ordained house would have made him a Clugniac if he had not been a Carthusian. Thence he went to Citeaux and said Mass for the Assumption (August 15th), and passed on to Clairvaux. Here he met John, the ex-Archbishop of Lyons, who was meditating away the last days of his life. Hugh asked him what scriptures most helped his thoughts, and the reply must have struck an answering chord in the questioner, “To meditate entirely upon the Psalms has now usurped my whole inward being. Inexhaustible refreshment always comes new from these. Such is fresh daily, and always delicious to the taste of the inner man.” Hugh’s devotion to the Psalms is evidenced by many passages in his life, and not least by the fact that he divided the whole Psalter among the members of the Chapter so that it should be recited throughout every day. His own share included three Psalms, i., ii., and iii., and if the reader tries to look at these through the saint’s eyes he will see much in them that he has not hitherto suspected to be there.
He stopped a couple of days at Rheims, and was astonished at the good store of books the library owned. He “blamed the slothful carelessness of modern times, which not only failed to imitate the literary activity of the Fathers in making and writing books, but neither read nor reverently treated the sacred manuscripts the care of the Fathers had provided.” His own conduct in this respect, both at Witham and Lincoln, was far otherwise. He took pains about the library at each place. His gifts to Lincoln were—(1) Two great volumes of sermons by the Catholic doctors for the whole year. (2) A little book of the Father’s Life with a red covering. (3) A Psalter with a large gloss.[27] (4) A Homeliary in stag’s leather, beginning “Erunt signa.” And (5) A Martyrology with the text of the four Gospels. At Rheims, too, he also saw and worshipped the vessel of holy oil, which was used for anointing the kings of France. Then he made his way to the northern coast to St. Omer’s Camp. He would not put to sea at once lest he should fail of his Mass on Our Lady’s birthday. He had been unwell for some days with quartan fever, and tried bleeding, but it did him no good. He could not eat, but was obliged to go and lie down upon his small bed. He broke into violent sweats, and for three days hardly tasted food. On the 7th of September he would travel ten miles to Clercmaretz Abbey to keep the feast. He slept in the infirmary, where two monks waited on him, but could get him to eat nothing. He said there his last Mass but one, and still fasting went back to St. Omers. He felt a good deal better after this, and went on to Wissant, where he made the usual invocations to Our Lady and St. Ann, and had a safe, swift passage, and immediately upon landing said his last Mass, probably at St. Margaret’s Church, in Dover. He never missed a chance of saying Mass if he could, though it was not said daily in his time. But he would not allow his chaplain to celebrate if he had been lately bled, reproved him for the practice, and when he did it again very sharply rebuked him.
From Dover he went to Canterbury, and prayed long and earnestly, first at the Saviour altar and then at the tombs of the holy dead,[28] and especially at the mausoleum of St. Thomas. The monastic flock (still sub judice) led him forth with deep respect. The news spread that he was ill, and the royal justiciaries and barons visited him and expressed their sympathy and affection in crowds, which must have considerably heightened his temperature. He explained to them with placid face that the scourge of the Lord was sweet to His servants, and what he said he enacted. “But He, the head Father of the Family, who had put forth His hand to cut him down, withdrew not the sickle from reaping the stalk, which he had now seen white to the harvest.” One of the signs of this was the growing dimness of his eyes, much tried by the dust and heat of travel. But he would not have them doctored. “These eyes will be good enough for us as long as we are obliged to use them,” he said. He crawled painfully on to London, part of the way on horseback and part by water, and in a high fever took to his bed in his own house, praying to be allowed to reach his anxious family at Lincoln. “I shall never be able to keep away from spiritual presence with our dearest Sons in Christ, whether I be present or absent in the body. But concerning health or my bodily presence, yea, and concerning my whole self, may the will be done of the holy Father which is in Heaven.” He had ceased to wish to live, he told his chaplain, for he saw the lamentable things about to come upon the Church of England. “So it is better for us to die than to live and see the evil things for this people and the saints which are ahead. For doubtless upon the family of King Henry the scripture must needs be fulfilled which says there shall not be ‘deep rooting from bastard slips’ and the ‘seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out.’ So the modern King of the French will avenge his holy father Lewis upon the offspring of wickedness, to wit, of her who rejected a stainless bed with him and impudently was joined with his rival, the king of the English. For this, that French Philip will destroy the stock royal of the English, like as an ox is wont to lick up the grass to its roots. Already three of her sons have been cut off by the French, two kings that is, and one prince. The fourth, the survivor, will have short peace at their hands.” The next day, St. Matthew’s, was his episcopal birthday, and he kept it up by having, for the first time in his life, the anointing of the sick. He first made a most searching confession to his chaplain, and then to the Dean of Lincoln, the Precentor, and the Archdeacon of Northampton.[29] He hesitated not to confess sins often before confessed to many, and made so straight, keen, and full a story of what he had left undone and what he had done that they never heard the like; and he often repeated, “The evildoing is mine, truly, solely, and wholely. The good, if there is any, is not so. It is mixed with evil; it is everywhere gross with it. So it is neither truly nor purely good.” The Sacrament was brought him at nine o’clock the next day, and he flung himself from his bed, clad in his hair shirt and cowl, with naked feet, knelt, worshipped, and prayed long before it, recalling the infinite benefits of the Saviour to the children of men, commending his sinfulness to Christ’s mercy, asking for help to the end and imploring with tears never to be left. Then he was houselled and anointed. He said, “Now let our doctors and our diseases meet, as far as may be. In our heart there will be less trouble about them both. I have committed myself to Him, received Him, shall hold Him, stick to Him, to whom it is good to stick, Whom to hold is blessed. If a man receives Him and commits himself to Him he is strong and safe.” He was then told to make his will, and said it was a tiresome new custom, for all he had was not his, but belonged to the church he ruled; but lest the civil officer should take all, he made his will. “If any temporal goods should remain after my death in the bishopric, now here all which I seem to possess I hand over to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be bestowed upon the poor.” The executors were the dean and the two archdeacons. After this simple but not surprising will he called for his stole and anathematized all who should knavishly keep back, or violently carry off, any of his goods, or otherwise frustrate his executors.
He grew worse. He confessed daily the lightest thought or word of impatience against his nurses. He was much in prayer, and he had the offices said at the right times however ill he was. He sang with the psalm-singers while he could. If they read or sang carelessly or hurriedly, he chastened them with a terrible voice and insisted upon clear pronunciation and perfect time. He made every one stand and sit by turns, so that while one set were resting the other were reverencing the divine and angelic presences. He had always been punctilious about the times of prayer and used always to withdraw from the bench to say his offices when they were due.
King John came in one day, but the bishop, who could sit up for his food, neither rose nor sat to greet him. The king said that he and his friends would do all they could for him. Then he sent out the courtiers and sat long and talked much and blandly; but Hugh answered very little, but shortly asked him to see to his and other bishops’ wills and commended Lincoln to his protection; but he despaired of John and would not waste his beautiful words upon him. After the king, the archbishop came several times, and promised also to do what he could for him. The last time he came he hinted that Hugh must not forget to ask pardon from any he had unjustly hurt or provoked by word or deed. No answer from the bed! Then he became a little more explicit and said that he, Hugh’s spiritual father and primate, had often been most bitterly provoked, and that really his forgiveness was most indispensible. The reply he got was more bracing than grateful. Archbishops rarely hear such naked verities. “It is quite true, and I see it well when I ponder all the hidden things of our conscience, that I have often provoked you to angers. But I do not find a single reason for repenting of it; but I know this, that I must grieve that I did not do it oftener and harder. But if my life should have to be passed longer with you I most firmly determine, under the eyes of all-seeing God, to do it much oftener than before. I can remember how, to comply with you, I have often and often been coward enough to keep back things which I ought to have spoken out to you, and which you would not well have brooked to hear, and so by my own fault I have avoided offence to you rather than to the Father which is in Heaven. On this count, therefore, it is that I have not only transgressed against God heavily and unbishoply, but against your fatherhood or primacy. And I humbly ask pardon for this.” Exit the archbishop!