Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln: A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval EnglandMarson, Charles L. (Charles Latimer)
History
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln: A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England
Marson, Charles L. (Charles Latimer)
Hugh, of Lincoln, Saint, 1140-1200
William of Newburgh, a writer much given to ghost stories, tells a
Buckingham tale of a certain dead man who would walk. He fell violently
upon his wife first, and then upon his brothers, and the neighbours had
to watch to fend him off. At last he took to walking even in the day,
"terrible to all, but visible only to a few." The clergy were called;
the archdeacon took the chair. It was a clear case of Vampire. The man
must be dug up, cut to bits, and burnt. But the bishop was very
particular about the dead, and when they asked his leave he was
indignant at the proposal. He wrote instead a letter with his own hand,
which absolved the unquiet spirit. This was laid upon the dead man's
breast, and thenceforward he rested in peace, as did his alarmed
neighbours. Whatever we think of the tale, the tender reverent spirit of
the bishop is still a wonder. Although greatly given to an enthusiasm
for the saints, a puzzling enthusiasm for their teeth, nails, plaisters,
and bandages, Hugh was looked upon as an enemy to superstition, and was
an eager suppressor of the worship of wells and springs, which still
show how hard the Pagan religion dies. He found and demolished this
"culture" at Wycombe and Bercamstead.{17}
The great theological question of Hugh's time was certainly the
Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine grew, as the power of the Church
grew; as the one took a bolder tone so did the other. The word
Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the disputants who do not
define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet
enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of
the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's
tentative terms had given way to less reserved speech. Thomas Aquinas,
not yet born, was to unite the rival factions which forked now into
Berengarius, who objected to the very terms Body of Christ, &c., always
used for the Sacrament; and now into some crude cannibal theories, which
found support in ugly miracles of clotted chalices and bleeding fingers
in patens. Abelard had tried to hush the controversy by a little
judicious scepticism, but the air was full of debate. If learned men
ignored the disputes the unlearned would not. Fanatical monks on the one
side and fanatical Albigenses on the other, decried or over-cried the
greatest mysteries of the faith, and brawled over the hidden manna.
Hugh's old Witham monk Ainard had once preached a crusade against the
blasphemers of the Sacraments, and is mentioned with honour for this
very thing by Hugh's intimate and biographer. The saint's conspicuous
devotion at the Mass, the care with which he celebrated and received, of
themselves would point to a peculiarly strong belief in the Invisible
Presence. Christians are, and have always been, lineally bound to
believe in the supreme necessity of the Lord's Marriage Supper to the
soul's health and obedience. They are bound to use the old language,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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