Saint Hugh of Lincoln

The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia places his birth about 1135 at the castle of Avalon, near Pontcharra in Burgundy; the Liturgy Office of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales says near Grenoble, about 1140. ¹² His father, William, Lord of Avalon, retired after his wife's death to the Augustinian house of Villard-Benoît near Grenoble and took his son with him. ¹ He became a canon there and was ordained deacon at nineteen. ¹

Sent as prior to a small dependent house at St-Maximin, he visited the Grande Chartreuse and asked to join the Carthusians. ¹ His own superior, the encyclopedia says, "alarmed at the idea of losing the flower of his community," took him home and made him promise to give up the idea. ¹ He later judged the vow, made "under strongest emotion," not binding and went back as a novice. ¹ The encyclopedia dates that return to 1153, which cannot stand beside its own date of "about the year 1159" for St-Maximin; the Liturgy Office says simply that he entered at twenty-five. ¹² At the Grande Chartreuse he cared for an old and infirm monk who prepared him for the priesthood, and after ten years was given the "important and difficult office of procurator." ¹³

Henry II had founded a charterhouse at Witham in Somerset, on the edge of Selwood Forest, in place of the crusade imposed on him as a penance for Becket's murder. ¹⁴ It was not going well. The encyclopedia says the first two priors "had succumbed to the terrible hardships" of a site where the monks "had not even a roof to cover them," and that the king asked for Hugh by name. ¹ The Carthusian Order calls him Witham's third prior; the monks of Parkminster, who date the building to 1178, call him its first. ³⁷ The Liturgy Office puts the king's request in 1175, the encyclopedia his departure in 1180. ¹²

He began by refusing to build until the king had paid full compensation to the tenants who would be evicted to make room, and the Nottingham account says he would not take further orders from Henry until they had been given compensation and somewhere to live. ¹⁴ The king's "parsimony" held things up for a long time, but the charterhouse was finished as a copy of the Grande Chartreuse. ¹ Henry, who hunted in Selwood, visited often and trusted him, and Hugh reproached him for keeping bishoprics vacant to collect their revenues. ¹

Lincoln, the largest diocese in England, had been without a bishop for about sixteen years when the canons were ordered to elect one, and they chose the king's candidate, the prior of Witham. ¹⁴ Hugh refused, because the election had been held in the king's chapel and was not free. ¹ A second election was held at Lincoln, and he still would not accept until the prior of the Grande Chartreuse had consented. ¹² The Florida Catholic counts three votes in all. ⁵ He was consecrated at Westminster on September 21, 1186, and enthroned at Lincoln on September 29. ¹

Almost at once he excommunicated the king's chief forester, enforcer of the forest laws, and refused a prebend at Lincoln to one of Henry's courtiers. ¹⁴ Summoned to Woodstock, he talked the king round, by his "ready wit" in the encyclopedia and with a joke in the Nottingham account. ¹⁴ He came to know his priests personally, made his canons live in the diocese, and once a year went back to Witham to pray. ¹ The encyclopedia says it "was long remembered how he used to tend with his own hands people afflicted with leprosy." ¹ The Benedictine martyrology of Christ in the Desert describes him as "learned, cheerful, and fond of animals and children." ⁶ He admitted, the Nottingham text says, to a "peppery" temper. ⁴

When an earthquake in 1185 had left the cathedral in ruins, Hugh rebuilt it; the encyclopedia credits him with the four bays of the choir, and the Liturgy Office says he worked on the extension with his own hands. ¹²

Many Jews lived in Lincoln, and they suffered persecution at the beginning of Richard I's reign; and the encyclopedia says Hugh tried to protect them and "put down popular violence against them in several places." ¹ The Nottingham account names Lincoln and Northampton as places where he stood up to the rioters. ⁴ The Liturgy Office says he risked his life for the Jewish community, and the Christ in the Desert martyrology says he "staunchly opposed anti-Semitism." ²⁶

Richard was harder to manage than his father. At a council at Oxford in 1198, Archbishop Hubert asked the bishops and barons for money and knights for the king's wars abroad, and Hugh refused, holding that he was not bound to pay for wars fought outside England. ¹ Richard ordered his property confiscated, but no one dared touch it. ¹ Hugh went to Normandy, found the king at Château-Gaillard, won his forgiveness, and then reproached him for his infidelity to his wife and his encroachments on the Church. ¹ The encyclopedia records Richard's verdict: "Truly, if all the prelates of the Church were like him, there is not a king in Christendom who would dare to raise his head in the presence of a bishop." ¹

He was at Richard's funeral at Fontevrault and at John's coronation in 1199. ¹ The Carthusian Order says his courage before the civil power earned him the title "Hammer of the Kings." ³

The encyclopedia gives the swan a single sentence: his emblem is a white swan, "in reference to the beautiful story of the swan of Stowe which contracted a deep and lasting friendship for the saint, even guarding him while he slept." ¹ The Florida Catholic tells it at more length. The bird arrived at Stow, the bishop's manor, as Hugh was taking office, and was said to be larger and stronger than other swans; it took food from his hand, rested its head on his chest, and shrieked and spread its wings at anyone else who came near until he called it off. ⁵ In the same telling it hung its head on his last visit home and never took to anyone else after his death. ⁵ The Nottingham account mentions the swan earlier, among the "pets" he went back to at Witham after meeting the king. ⁴

In the summer of 1200 he visited the Grande Chartreuse one last time. ¹³ On the way back he fell ill with a fever, and he died in London on November 16, 1200, at the Old Temple according to the encyclopedia and at Lincoln's Inn according to the Nottingham account. ¹²⁴ King John helped carry his coffin in Lincoln Cathedral. ¹ He was canonized by Honorius III in 1220, and in 1280 his relics were moved to a golden shrine that made Lincoln a great place of pilgrimage. ¹ Henry VIII took its gold and jewels, and what became of the relics is not known. ¹ His white linen stole survives at the charterhouse of Parkminster in Sussex, which is dedicated to him. ¹⁴

He is patron of the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham. ⁴ The Florida Catholic, writing about the parish of Saint Hugh in Coconut Grove, calls him patron of the sick, shoemakers and swans. ⁵ The Nottingham account adds that a picture of him at the Paris charterhouse became a place of pilgrimage for mothers and sick children. ⁴

His feast is November 17. ¹²⁵⁶ The 1910 encyclopedia says it "is kept on 17 November," and the calendar of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales lists him on that day for England. ¹² He died on November 16, the day before. ¹² No source consulted here gives November 16 as his feast, and this page does not claim it.

Hugh would not become a bishop on the king's say-so. He refused once on a point of law and again until his own prior said yes, and every year afterward he went back to Witham to pray as a monk. ¹ The Carthusian Order notes that its monks becoming bishops is "extremely rare." ³ His life shows a contemplative who took on a very public office and kept a door open back to the cell.

Much of what is remembered about him is refusal. He refused to build on land until the tenants were paid, refused a courtier a stall at Lincoln, refused Richard money for foreign wars, and stood between crowds and the Jews they meant to hurt. ¹⁴ Two kings were furious with him over it and forgave him afterward. ¹

The same sources set beside that the lepers he washed, the children the martyrology says he was fond of, and the temper he admitted to. ¹⁴⁵⁶ None of them makes him gentle. The encyclopedia has him "fearless in reproving" Henry and rebuking Richard "fearlessly"; the Nottingham text quotes admirers who called him "fearless as a lion." ¹⁴

And there is the swan. The sources place it in different years and tell it at different lengths, and the Florida Catholic's version, with a bird that grieved before he died, is offered as a story. ¹⁴⁵ The encyclopedia, which is sparing elsewhere, still calls it "beautiful," and it is the one detail every account of him keeps. ¹⁴⁵