Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln / A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England. Charles Latimer Marson
music, and astronomy), found the solitude intolerable to his objective wits. He was not convinced of the higher spirituality of co-operative hermitages. He found it too heavy to believe that there was no Christendom outside the Charterhouse plot, and no way of salvation except for a handful of mannikins. Alexander, with stinging and satiric terms, left in a huff, followed by acrimonious epithets from his late brethren. He became a monk at Reading, and filled a larger part upon a more spacious stage, and yet would have most gladly returned; but the strait cell was shut to him relentlessly and for ever. Andrew, erst sacristan of Muchelney, was another who left the Order for his first love, but his dislike of the life was less cogently put. It was not exactly that the prior could not brook opposition: but he hated a man who did not know his own mind, and nothing would induce him to allow an inmate who eddied about.
The Charterhouse now had ecclesiastical independence. The bishop’s power ended outside its pale. Bruton Convent could tithe the land no more, nor feed their swine or cattle there, nor cut fuel, instead of which the rectory of South Petherton, and its four daughter chapelries, was handed over to this bereaved convent. This was in April, 1181. This transaction was some gain to the game-loving king, for the Withamites ate neither pork nor beef, and so the stags had freer space and more fodder.
But nevertheless the monks’ poverty was almost ludicrous. Hugh wanted even a complete and accurate copy of the scriptures, which he used to say were the solitary’s delight and riches in peace, his darts and arms in war, his food in famine and his medicine in sickness. Henry asked why his scribes did not make copies. The answer was that there was no parchment. “How much money do you want?” asked the king. “One silver mark,” was the ungrasping request. Henry laughed and ordered ten marks to be counted out and promised a complete “divine library” besides. The Winchester monks had just completed a lovely copy (still in existence). King Henry heard from a student of this fine work and promptly sent for the prior. With fair words and fine promises he asked for the Bible. The embarrassed monk could not well say no, and the book was soon in Hugh’s hands. This Prior Robert shortly after visited Witham and politely hoped the copy was satisfactory. If not, a better one could be made, for great pains had been taken by St. Swithun’s brethren to make this one agreeably to their own use and custom. Hugh was astonished. “And so the king has beguiled your Church thus of your needful labour? Believe me, my very dear brother, the Library shall be restored to you instantly. And I beg most earnestly through you that your whole fraternity will deign to grant pardon to our humility because we have ignorantly been the occasion of this loss of their codex.” The prior was in a fright, as well he might be, at the shadow of the king’s wrath. He assured Hugh that his monks were all delighted at the incident. “To make their delight continue, we must all keep quiet about the honest restoration of your precious work. If you do not agree to take it back secretly, I shall restore it to him who sent it hither; but if you only carry it off with you, we shall give him no inkling of the matter.” So the Winchester monks got back their Bible, and Witham got the said Prior Robert as one of its pupils instead, fairly captured by the electric personality of the Carthusian.
Though Hugh’s influence was very great, we must not quite suppose that the king became an ideal character even under his direction. There is an interregnum not only in Lincoln but in Exeter Diocese between Bishop Bartholomew and John the Chaunter, 1184-1186; one in Worcester between the translation of Baldwin and William de Northale, 1184-1186; and a bad one in York after the death of Roger, 1181, before King Richard appointed his half-brother Geoffrey aforementioned, who was not consecrated until August, 1191. But Hugh’s chief work at Witham was in his building, his spiritual and intellectual influence upon the men he came to know, in the direction of personal and social holiness: and, above all, he was mastering the ways and works of England so sympathetically that he was able to take a place afterwards as no longer a Burgundian but a thorough son of the nation and the church. One instance may be given of his teaching and its wholesome outlook. He lived in an age of miracles, when these things were demanded with an insatiable appetite and supplied in a competitive plenty which seems equally inexhaustible, almost as bewildering to our age as our deep thirst for bad sermons and quack medicines will be to generations which have outgrown our superstitions. St. Hugh had drunk so deeply and utterly and with all his mind of the gravity and the humility which was traditional from the holy authors of the Carthusian Order, that “there was nothing he seemed to wonder at or to wish to copy less than the marvels of miracles. Still, when these were read or known in connection with holy men, he would speak of them gently and very highly respect them. He would speak of them, I say, as commending of those who showed them forth, and giving proof to those who marvelled at such things, for to him the great miracle of the saints was their sanctity, and this by itself was enough for guidance. The heartfelt sense of his Creator, which never failed him, and the overwhelming and fathomless number of His mighty works, were for him the one and all-pervading miracle.” If we remember that Adam, his biographer, wrote these words not for us, but for his miracle-mongering contemporaries, they will seem very strong indeed. He goes on to say that all the same, whether Hugh knew it or not, God worked many miracles through him, as none of his intimates could doubt, and we could rather have wished that he had left the saint’s opinion intact, for it breathes a lofty atmosphere of bright piety, and is above the controversies of our lower plane.
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