Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln: A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval EnglandMarson, Charles L. (Charles Latimer)
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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
but used to make them "eat well and drink well to serve God well." He
condemned an asceticism run mad, and called it vanity and superstition
for people to eschew flesh when they had no such commandment, and
substitute for it foreign vegetables, condiments for fat, and expensive
fishes. He liked dry bread himself, and the drier the tastier, but he
did all he could to spare others. Consequently, we may credit him with
the fish ponds.
His work at Lincoln was on a much larger scale and happily much of it is
still there, a goodly material for wonder, praise and squabbling. It was
imposed upon him, for he found the Norman building more or less in
ruins. This building consisted of a long nave, with a west front, now
standing; and a choir, which ended something east of the present
faldstool in a bow. At the east end of the nave was a tower, and to the
north and south of this tower were two short transepts, or porches. The
tower was either not very high or else was shortened, and perhaps
recapped to make it safe after the earthquake, for the comparatively
small damage which it did when it fell upon the choir proves that it
could not have been very massive. It fell in Grossetestes' time and its
details with it.
The first requisite for building is money: and money, as we have seen,
was very hard to obtain in England just at this juncture. Three means by
which Hugh raised it are known to us. The austere ideals of the
Carthusian bishop, his plain vestments, his cheap ring, his simple
clothes set free a good deal of the money of the see for this purpose.
Then he issued a pastoral summons to the multitude of her sons to appear
at least once a year at the mother church of Lincoln with proper
offerings according to their power; especially rural deans, parsons, and
priests through the diocese were to gather together at Pentecost and
give alms for the remission of their sins and in token of obedience and
recollection of their Lincoln mother. This, combined with a notice of
detention of prebend for all non-resident and non-represented canons,
must have brought the faithful up in goodly numbers to their
ecclesiastical centre. If they were once there, the cracked and
shored-up building and the bishop's zeal and personal influence might be
entrusted to loose their purse strings, especially as he led the way,
both by donation and personal work, for he carried the hod and did not
disdain to bring mortar and stones up the ladder like any mason's
'prentice. Then, thirdly, he established or used a Guild of St. Mary, a
confraternity which paid for, and probably worked at, the glorious task.
Its local habitation was possibly that now called John of Gaunt's
stables,{20} but anyhow it stood good for a thousand marks a year. A
mark is thirteen and fourpence; and six hundred and sixty six pounds
odd, in days when an ox cost three shillings and a sheep fourpence was a
handsome sum. It could not have been far short of L10,000 of our money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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