E-text prepared by Louise Pryor and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustration.
See 26065-h.htm or 26065-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/0/6/26065/26065-h/26065-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/0/6/26065/26065-h.zip)
Transcriber's note:
Some of the spellings and hyphenations in the original
are unusual; they have not been changed. A few obvious
typographical errors have been corrected, and they and
other possible errors are listed at the end of this e-text.
HUGH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN
London : Edward Arnold : 1901
HUGH
BISHOP OF LINCOLN
A SHORT STORY OF ONE OF THE MAKERS OF MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND
by
CHARLES L. MARSON
Curate of Hambridge
Author of "The Psalms at Work," Etc.
Tua me, genitor, tua tristis imago
Sæpius occurens, hæc limina tendere adegit.
Stant sale Tyrrheno classes. Da jungere dextram
Da, genitor; teque amplexu ne subtrahe nostro.
ÆN. VI. 695.
London
Edward Arnold
37, Bedford Street, Strand
1901
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. THE BOY HUGH 1
II. BROTHER HUGH 12
III. PRIOR HUGH 26
IV. THE BISHOP ELECT AND CONSECRATE 42
V. THE BISHOP AT WORK 60
VI. IN TROUBLES 78
VII. AND DISPUTES 94
VIII. THE BUILDER 111
IX. UNDER KING JOHN 128
X. HOMEWARD BOUND 143
INTRODUCTION
In a short biography the reader must expect short statements, rather
than detailed arguments, and in a popular tale he will not look for
embattled lists of authorities. But if he can be stirred up to search
further into the matter for himself, he will find a list of authorities
ancient and modern come not unacceptable to begin upon.
The author has incurred so many debts of kindness in this work from many
friends, and from many who were before not even acquaintances, that he
must flatly declare himself bankrupt to his creditors, and rejoice if
they will but grant him even a second-class certificate. Among the major
creditors he must acknowledge his great obligations to the hospitable
Chancellor of Lincoln and Mrs. Crowfoot, to the Rev. A. Curtois, Mr.
Haig, and some others, all of whom were willing and even anxious that
the story of their saint should be told abroad, even by the halting
tongues of far-away messengers. The same kind readiness appeared at
Witham: and indeed everybody, who knew already about St. Hugh, has
seemed anxious that the knowledge of him should be spread abroad. It
has snowed books, pamphlets, articles, views, maps, and guesses; and if
much has remained unsaid or been said with incautious brusqueness,
rather than with balanced oppressiveness, the reader who carps will
always be welcome to such material as the author has by him, for
elucidating the truth. If he has been misled by a blind guide, that
guide must plead that he has consulted good oculists and worthy
spectacle-makers, and has had every good intention of steering clear of
the ditch.
Though what a man is counts for more than what he does, yet the services
of St. Hugh to England may be briefly summed up. They were (1)
Spiritual. He made for personal holiness, uncorruptness of public and
private life. He raised the sense of the dignity of spiritual work,
which was being rapidly subordinated to civic work and rule. He made
people understand that moral obligations were very binding upon all men.
(2) Political. He made for peace at home and abroad: at home by
restraining the excesses of forestars and tyrants; abroad by opposing
the constant war policy against France. (3) Constitutional. He first
encountered and checked the overgrown power of the Crown, and laid down
limits and principles which resulted in the Church policy of John's
reign and the triumph of Magna Carta. (4) Architectural. He fully
developed--even if he did not, as some assert, invent--the Early English
style. (5) Ecclesiastical. He counterbalanced St. Thomas of Canterbury,
and diverted much of that martyr's influence from an irreconcileable
Church policy to a more reasonable, if less exalted, notion of liberty.
(6) He was a patron of letters, and encouraged learning by supporting
schools, libraries, historians, poets, and commentators.
Ancient authorities for his Life are:--(1) The Magna Vita, by Chaplain
Adam (Rolls); (2) Metrical Life, Ed. Dimock, Lincoln, 1860; (3) Giraldus
Cambrensis, VII. (Rolls); (4) Hoveden's Chronicle (Rolls); (5)
Benedicti, Gesta R. Henry II. (Rolls); (6) for trifles, Matthew Paris,
I. and II. (Rolls), John de Oxenden (ditto), Ralph de Diceto (ditto),
Flores Histor. (ditto), Annales Monastici (ditto); (7) also for
collateral information, Capgrave Illustrious Henries (Rolls), William of
Newburgh, Richard of Devizes, Gervase's Archbishops of Canterbury, and
Robert de Monte, Walter de Mapes' De Nugis (Camden Soc). Of modern
authorities, (1) Canon Perry's Life (Murray, 1879) and his article in
the Dictionary of National Biography come first; (2) Vie de St. Hughues
(Montreuil, 1890); (3) Fr. Thurston's translation and adaptation of this
last (Burns and Oates, 1898); (4) St. Hugh's Day at Lincoln, A.D. 1900,
Ed. Precentor Bramley (pub. by Clifford Thomas, Lincoln, N.D.); (5)
Guides to the Cathedral, by Precentor Venables, and also by Mr.
Kendrick; (6) Archæological matter, Archæological Institute (1848),
Somerset Archæolog. XXXIV., Somerset Notes and Queries, vol. IV., 1895,
Lincoln Topographical Soc., 1841-2; (7) Collateral information--_cf._
Miss Norgate's "England under Angevin Kings" (Macmillan), Robert
Grosseteste, F. E. Stevenson (ditto), Stubbs' "Opera Omnia" of course,
Diocesan History of Lincoln, Grande Chartreuse (Burns and Oates), "Court
Life under Plantagenets" (Hall), "Highways in Normandy" (Dearmer);(8)
of short studies, Mr. Froude's and an article in the _Church Quarterly_,
XXXIII., and Mrs. Charles' "Martyrs and Saints" (S.P.C.K.) are the
chief.
Of this last book it is perhaps worth saying that if any man will take
the trouble to compare it with John Brady's _Clavis Calendaria_, of
which the third edition came out in 1815, he will see how much the tone
of the public has improved, both in courtesy towards and in knowledge of
the great and good men of the Christian faith.
St. Hugh's Post-Reformation history is worth noting for the humour of
it. He is allowed in the Primer Calendar by unauthorised Marshall, 1535;
out in Crumwell and Hilsey's, 1539; out by the authorised Primer of King
and Clergy, 1545; still out in the Prayer-books of 1549 and 1552; in
again in the authorised Primer of 1553; out of the Prayer-book of 1559;
in the Latin one of 1560; still in both the Orarium and the New Calendar
of the next year, though out of the Primer 1559; in the Preces Privatas
1564, with a scornful _admonitio_ to say that "the names of saints, as
they call them, are left, not because we count them divine, or even
reckon some of them good, or, even if they were greatly good, pay them
divine honour and worship; but because they are the mark and index of
certain matters dependent upon fixed times, to be ignorant of which is
most inconvenient to our people"--to wit, fairs and so on. Since which
time St. Hugh has not been cast out of the Calendar, but is in for ever.
In the text is no mention of the poor swineherd, God rest him! His stone
original lives in Lincoln cloisters, and a reproduction stands on the
north pinnacle of the west front (whereas Hugh is on the south
pinnacle), put there because he hoarded a peck of silver pennies to help
build the House of God. He lives on in stone and in the memories of the
people, a little flouted in literature, but, if moral evidence counts,
unscathedly genuine: honourable in himself, to the saint who inspired
him, and to the men who hailed him as the bishop's mate--no mean builder
in the house not made with hands.
CHAPTER I
THE BOY HUGH
St. Hugh is exactly the kind of saint for English folk to study with
advantage. Some of us listen with difficulty to tales of heroic virgins,
who pluck out their eyes and dish them up, or to the report of antique
bishops whose claim to honour rests less upon the nobility of their
characters than upon the medicinal effect of their post-mortem humours;
but no one can fail to be struck with this brave, clean, smiling face,
which looks out upon us from a not impossible past, radiant with sense
and wit, with holiness and sanity combined, whom we can all reverence as
at once a saint of God and also one of the fine masculine Makers of
England. We cherish a good deal of romance about the age in which St.
Hugh lived. It is the age of fair Rosamond, of Crusades, of lion-hearted
King Richard, and of Robin Hood. It is more soberly an age of builders,
of reformers, of scholars, and of poets. If troubadours did not exactly
"touch guitars," at least songsters tackled verse-making and helped to
refine the table manners of barons and retainers by singing at dinner
time. The voice of law too was not silent amid arms. Our constitutional
government, already begotten, was being born and swaddled. The races
were being blended. Though England was still but a northern province of
a kingdom, whose metropolis was Rouen, yet that kingdom was becoming
rather top-heavy, and inclined to shift its centre of gravity
northwards. So from any point of view the time is interesting. It is
essentially an age of monks and of monasteries; perhaps one should say
the end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great
Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great
enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a
hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and
a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the
monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. It was to the
monasteries that men still looked for learning and peace, and the
monasteries were the natural harbours of refuge for valiant men of
action, who grew sick of the life of everlasting turmoil in a brutal and
anarchic world. Indeed, the very tumults and disorders of the state gave
the monasteries their hold over the best of the men of action. As the
civil life grew more quiet and ordered, the enthusiasm for the cloister
waned, and with it the standard of zeal perceptibly fell to a lower
level, not without grand protest and immense effort of holy men to keep
the divine fire from sinking.
Hugh of Avalon was born in Avalon Castle in 1140, a year in which the
great tempest of Stephen's misrule was raging. In France, Louis VII. has
already succeeded his father, Louis VI.; the Moors are in Spain, and
Arnold of Brescia is the centre of controversy. Avalon Castle lies near
Pontcharra, which is a small town on the Bredo, which flows into the
Isere and thence into the Rhone. It is not to be confused with Avallon
of Yonne. The Alpine valleys about Pontcharra are lovely with flowers
and waters, and have in them the "foot-prints of lost Paradise."
Burgundy here owed some loyalty to the empire rather than to France, and
its dukes tried to keep up a semi-independent kingdom by a balanced
submission to their more powerful neighbours. The very name Hugh was an
old ducal name, and there is little doubt that William de Avalon, Hugh's
father, claimed kin with the princes of his land. He was a "flower of
knighthood" in battles not now known. He was also by heredity of a pious
mind. Hugh's mother, Anna, a lovely and wealthy lady, of what stock does
not appear, was herself of saintly make. She "worshipped Christ in His
limbs," by constantly washing the feet of lepers, filling these wretched
outcasts with hope, reading to them and supplying their wants. She seems
to have been a woman of intellectual parts, for though she died before
Hugh was ten, he had already learned under her, if not from her, to use
language as the sacrament of understanding and understanding as the
symbol of truth. He had some grip of grammar and logic, and though he
did not brood over "Ovid's leasings or Juvenal's rascalities," rather
choosing to ponder upon the two Testaments, yet we may gather that his
Latin classics were not neglected. The spiritual life of Grenoble had
been nourished by a noble bishop, also Hugh, who had seen the vision of
seven stars resting upon a certain plot of ground, which induced him to
grant the same to St. Bruno, the founder of the Grande Chartreuse. Here
he served himself as a simple monk, laying aside his bishop's robes, not
a score of miles from Avalon. This Hugh was a religious and free
thinking man, who, though he found evil a great metaphysical stumbling
block to faith, yet walked painfully by the latter. He died in 1132 or
thereabouts, and his life was most probably the occasion of our Hugh's
name, and of much else about him.
The De Avalons had two other boys both older than Hugh: William, who
inherited the lands, and Peter, who was settled by his brother Hugh at
Histon, in Cambridge, but he does not seem to have made England his
home. Hugh had also at least one cousin, William, on his mother's side,
who attended upon him at Lincoln, and who (unless there were two of the
same name) developed from a knight into an holy Canon after his great
relative's decease. These relatives were always ready to lend a hand and
a sword if required in the good bishop's quarrels. The last particularly
distinguished himself in a brawl in Lincolnshire Holland, when an armed
and censured ruffian threatened the bishop with death. The good
Burgundian blood rose, and William twisted the sword from the villain's
hand, and with difficulty was prevented from driving it into his body.
When the Lady Anna died, her husband, tired of war, power, and
governance, distributed his property among his children. Under his
armour he had long worn the monk's heart, and now he was able to take
the monk's dress, and to "labour for peace after life, as he had
already won it in life." So he took Hugh and Hugh's money with him, and
went off to the little priory of Villarbenoit (of seven canon power),
which bordered upon his own lands, and which he and his forbears had
cherished. This little priory was a daughter of Grenoble (St. Hugh of
Grenoble being, as we infer, a spiritual splendour to the De Avalons),
and, not least in attraction, there was a canon therein, far-famed for
heavenly wisdom and for scholarship besides, who kept a school and
taught sound theology and classics, under whom sharp young Hugh might
climb to heights both of ecclesiastical and also of heavenly preferment.
Great was the delight of the canons at their powerful postulant and his
son, and great the pains taken over the latter's education. The
schoolmaster laid stress upon authors such as Prudentius, Sedulius, and
Fulgentius. By these means the boy not only learnt Latin, but he also
tackled questions of Predestination and Grace, glosses upon St. Paul,
hymns and methods of frustrating the Arian. Above all, he was exercised
in the Divine Library, as they called the Bible, taught by St. Jerome.
Hugh was of course the favourite of the master, who whipt him with
difficulty, and kept him from the rough sports of his fellow scholars,
the future soldiers, and "reared him for Christ." The boy had a masterly
memory and a good grip of his work, whether it were as scholar, server,
or comrade. The Prior assigned to him the special task of waiting upon
his old father. That modest, kind-hearted gentleman was getting infirm,
and the young fellow was delighted to be told off to lead him, carry
him, dress and undress him, tie his shoes, towel him, make his bed, cook
for him and feed him, until the time of the old knight's departure
arrived.
The dates of St. Hugh's life and ministrations must be taken with a
grain of salt. The authorities differ considerably, and it is impossible
to clap a date to some of the saint's way-marks without first slapping
in the face some venerable chronicler, or some thought-worn modern
historian. If we say with the Great Life that Hugh was ordained Levite
in his nineteenth year, we upset Giraldus Cambrensis and the metrical
biographer, who put it in his fifteenth; and Matthew Paris and the
Legend, who write him down as over sixteen. Mr. Dimock would have us
count from his entry into the canonry, and so counts him as twenty-four;
Canon Perry and Father Thurston say "nineteenth year," or "nineteen."
The Canons Regular of Villarbenoit seem to have been rather liberal in
their interpretation of church regulations, but it is hardly likely that
the bishop of Grenoble would so far stretch a point as to ordain a lad
much below the canonical age, even if he were of a great house and great
piety. Anyhow it is hardly worth while for the general reader to waste
time over these ticklish points. It is enough to say that Hugh was
ordained young, that he looked pink and white over his white stole and
broidered tunic, and that he soon preached vigorously, warmly, and
movingly to the crowd and to his old acquaintances. Sinners heard a very
straightforward message, and holy persons were edified by the clever way
in which he handled difficult topics, and in him they "blessed the true
Joseph, who had placed his own cup in the mouth of his younger brother's
sack." Indeed, he must have been a captivating and interesting young
man, and since he was so strikingly like Henry II. of England that
folks' tongues wagged freely about it, we may picture him as a young man
of moderate height, rather large in the brow, with red brown hair,
bright grey eyes, large chest, and generally of an athletic build and
carriage. He had a face which easily flushed and told both of anger and
a lively sense of humour.
He was the delight of his house, and of the people about, who welcomed
him with enthusiasm when he came back after nearly forty years' absence.
But most of all he was the apple of the eye to his old scholarly father
prior, who loved him as his own soul. It is not wonderful that when one
of the scanty brotherhood was called upon to take charge of a small
country living, the "cell of St. Maximin," the zealous deacon was chosen
to administer the same. The tiny benefice could hardly support one, with
small household, but Hugh insisted upon having an old priest to share
the benefice. A little parcel of glebe and a few vines, tended by honest
rustics, were his. They were able by pious frugality to nourish the poor
and grace the rich. The parishioners grew in holiness. The congregation
swelled from many sources, and the sermons (of life and word) were
translated into sound faith and good conversation. This experience of
parish work must have been of the greatest value to the future bishop,
for the tragedy and comedy of life is just as visible in the smallest
village as it is in the largest empire. The cloister-bred lad must have
learnt on this small organ to play that good part which he afterwards
was called upon to play upon a larger instrument. One instance is
recorded of his discipline. A case of open adultery came under his
notice. He sent for the man and gave him what he considered to be a
suitable admonition. The offender replied with threats and abuse. Hugh,
gospel in hand, pursued him first with two and then with three
witnesses, offering pardon upon reform and penance. No amendment was
promised. Both guilt and scandal continued. Then Hugh waited for a
festival, and before a full congregation rebuked him publicly, declared
the greatness of his sin, handed him over to Satan for the death of his
flesh with fearful denunciations, except he speedily came to his senses.
The man was thunderstruck, and brought to his knees at a blow. With
groans and tears he confessed, did penance (probably at the point of the
deacon's stick), was absolved and received back to the fold; so
irresistible was this young administrator who knew St. Augustine's
advice that "in reproof, if one loves one's neighbour enough, one can
even say anything to him."
But Hugh was ill at ease in his charge, and his heart burned towards the
mountains, where the Grande Chartreuse had revived the austerities of
ancient monasticism. It seemed so grand to be out of and above the
world, in solitary congregation, with hair shirt, hard diet, empty flesh
pot, and full library, in the deep silence and keen air of the
mountains. Here hands that had gripped the sword and the sceptre were
turned to the spade and lifted only in prayer. There were not only the
allurements of hardship, but also his parents' faith and his own early
lessons tugging at his heart strings. He found means to go with his
prior into the awful enclosure, and the austere passion seized him. He
told his heart's desire to an old ex-baron, who probably felt some alarm
that a young gentleman who had campaigned so slightly in the plains of
active life should aspire to dwell upon these stern hills of
contemplation. "My dear boy, how dare you think of such a thing?" he
answered, and then, looking at the refined young face before him, warned
the deacon against the life. The men were harder than stones, pitiless
to themselves and to others. The place dreary, the rule most burdensome.
The rough robe would rake the skin and flesh from young bones. The harsh
discipline would crush the very frame of tender youth.
The other monks were less forbidding. They warmly encouraged the
aspiration, and the pair returned to their home, Hugh struggling to hide
the new fire from his aged friend. But the old man saw through the
artless cloakings and was in despair. He used every entreaty to save
Hugh for the good work he was doing, and to keep his darling at his
side. Hugh's affectionate heart and ready obedience gave way, and he
took a solemn oath not to desert his canonry, and so went back to his
parishing.
But then came, as it naturally would come to so charming and vigorous a
lad, the strong return of that Dame Nature who had been so long forked
forth by his cloistral life. A lady took a liking to this heavenly
curate. Other biographers hint at this pathetic little romance, and
cover up the story with tales of a wilderness of women; but the
metrical biographer is less discreetly vague, and breaks into a tirade
against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, net weavers, and
spiders--the fair sex. Still, he cannot refrain from giving us a graphic
picture of the presumptuous she-rascal who fell in love with Hugh, and
although most of his copyists excise his thirty-nine graphic lines of
Zuleika's portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not
of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly
veiled and partly strayed around her ivory neck. Her little ear, a
curved shell, bore up the golden mesh. Under the smooth clear white
brow she had curved black eyebrows without a criss-cross hair in them,
and these disclosed and heightened the clear white of the skin. And her
nose, too--not flat nor arched, not long nor snub, but beyond the
fineness of geometry, with light, soft breath, and the sweet scent of
incense. Such shining eyes too: like emeralds starring her face with
light! And the face, blended lilies and roses in a third lovely hue that
one could not withdraw one's eyes from beholding. The gentle pout of her
red lips seemed to challenge kisses. Shining as glass, white as a bell
flower, she had a breast and head joined by a noble poised throat, which
baited the very hook of love. Upon her lily finger she wore a red and
golden ring. Even her frock was a miracle of millinery. This lovely
creature, complete to a nail, much disturbed the mind of Hugh, and
played her pretty tricks upon her unexercised pastor: now demure, now
smiling, now darting soft glances, now reining in her eyes. But he, good
man, was rock or diamond. At last the fair creature actually stroked
his arm, and then Hugh was startled into a panic. His experience and
training had not been such as to fit him to deal with situations of this
sort. He fled. He cut out the skin of the arm where her rosy fingers had
rested. He found it impossible to escape from the sight of many fair
maids of Burgundy. Zuleika was fascinating enough, but his original Adam
within (whom he called Dalilah) was worse. He forsook his post, broke
his vow, and bolted to the Grande Chartreuse.
One modern biographer, who is shocked at his perjury to the prior, would
no doubt have absolved him if he had married the lass against his
canonic vows. Another thinks him most edifyingly liberal in his
interpretation of duty. Is there any need to forestall Doomsday in these
matters? The poor fellow was in both a fix and a fright. Alas! that
duties should ever clash! His own view is given with his own
decisiveness. "No! I never had a scruple at all about it. I have always
felt great delight of mind when I recall the deed which started me upon
so great an undertaking." The brothers of the Charterhouse gladly took
him in, the year being about 1160, and his age about twenty, let us say;
hardly an age anyhow which would fit him for dealing with pert minxes
and escaping the witcheries of the beauty which still makes beautiful
old hexameters.