Hugh of Northwold

Tomb of Hugh of Northwold in Ely Cathedral

Hugh of Northwold OSB († August 6, 1254 in Downham Market ) was an English religious. In 1212 he was elected abbot of St Edmund Abbey . From 1229 he was Bishop of Ely .

Origin and election as Abbot of St Edmunds

Hugh named himself after the village of Northwold in Norfolk . His parents were called Peter and Emma, ​​nothing else is known about them. In 1202 he took his religious vows as a monk in the Abbey of St Edmunds . After the death of Abbot Samson at the end of 1211, King John Ohneland ordered on July 25, 1212 that a delegation of monks should elect a new abbot in his presence. However, the monks did not comply with this request. They ignored the traditional right of the king to propose the abbot and elected assistant cellar master Hugh of Northwold as the new abbot.

Abbot of St Edmunds

The king was extremely angry about this, and part of the convention was so dissatisfied with the course of the election that the monks were divided into two violently contending camps. The dispute, in which not only the king, but also Archbishop Stephen Langton and the papal legate Guala Bicchieri became involved, dragged on for three years. Both sides turned to Pope Innocent III. , and Hugo himself left England for a time and retired to Poitou in France . From there he began to negotiate with the king about his return in 1214. Hugo's supporters had changing canon law on their side, which attached ever greater importance to free choice, and Pope Innocent III. now clearly supported the freely elected Hugo. It seems that numerous royal advisors also followed this view. Given the difficult situation of King John, who was dependent on the support of the Pope, this accepted the election of Hugh of Northwold on June 10, 1215. A few days later, the king had to accept the Magna Carta under pressure from a noble opposition .

Before he was officially promoted to abbot, Northwold ordered a record of the monastery's possessions. Politically, on the other hand, he was only occasionally active. In November 1218 he served as a witness to a royal charter. In Thetford and Bury itself he served as an assize judge , and in 1227 he was chairman of the royal judges active in Norfolk.

Bishop of Ely

Election to bishop

Bishop Geoffrey de Burgh of Ely died on September 17, 1228 . Since the prior of the cathedral priory had died around the same time, the election of a new bishop was delayed. Around February 3, 1229, Hugh of Northwold was elected as the new bishop by the monks of the cathedral priory. As a bishop, Northwold resigned as abbot. On May 26, 1229, Northwold was given the temporalities of the Diocese of Ely , and on June 10, he was ordained a bishop in Canterbury .

Political activity

In order to get the support of Bishop Northwold for his policy, King Henry III. 1232 Northwold venison from the royal forests, and in 1233 he ended a long-standing dispute between the bishops of Ely and the sheriffs of Cambridgeshire by confirming numerous privileges of the bishops for a payment of 500 marks . In 1235 Northwold traveled to Provence to accompany the count's daughter Eleanor , the king's bride, to England. In 1237 he was to travel as the king's envoy to the Roman-German Emperor Friedrich II , but the embassy never broke up. In the same year Northwold tried to obtain from the king the right to occupy Thorney Abbey , which King John had promised the bishops of Ely. In the next few years, Northwold seemed to have been at the royal court less often. In October 1241 he was in Westminster again , after which he is only mentioned at court during Parliament in February 1248. In October 1248 Northwold complained to the king that the new fairground is harmful in Westminster for the carnival of Ely. However, the king did not take his complaint seriously. The angry Northwold therefore refused in 1249 to give Aymer de Lusignan , one of the king's half-brothers, the rights to the church of Dereham , Norfolk , and turned it over to Robert Passelewe . Together with other bishops, he rejected the plan of Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury in 1251 to carry out a visit to the dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Canterbury . In January 1252 he was on the occasion of the feast day of Edward the Confessor at the royal court in Westminster, but in October 1252 he rejected a taxation of the clergy by the king. According to Matthew Paris , the king is said to have tried in a personal conversation to get Northwold's support for his tax plans. The financially weak king promised him future rewards, but Northwold stuck to his refusal, whereupon the angry king bitterly reproached him and ended the conversation. After all, Northwold served in 1252 as one of the collectors of the tithe granted to the king to fund a planned crusade. This apparently appeased the king so that Northwold was allowed to participate in the re-recognition of the Magna Carta by the king on May 3, 1253, and at a feast of Queen Eleanor on January 5, 1254.

Act as a bishop

As Bishop of Ely, Northwold improved the administration of the diocese's estates, modeled on the monastery of St Edmund. In 1251 he had a survey of the episcopal property carried out. In doing so, he made it possible for farmers to buy themselves out, and through the rents he was now collecting from them, he was able to partially double his income. This went along with land reclamation in the Fens , which he carried out with Thorney Abbey. As a result, he was able to win extensive lands between Thorney , Wisbech and Leverington . The Ely Cathedral Priory, which received the rectorates of Witcham , Hauxton and St Mary in Ely, also benefited from its effective administration . In Ely he merged the two existing hospitals . He made new rules for the new hospital, and the administration of St John's Hospital in Cambridge was improved. In addition, Northwold is paying particular attention to the growing University of Cambridge . In May 1231 he ordered measures to increase student discipline. Apparently he also granted students housing in St Peter's Rectorate at Trumpington Gate , which was later called Little St Mary's .

Northwold had the Episcopal Palace of Ely, Wisbech Castle and his residences in Downham Market and Hatfield expanded on a larger scale. At Ely Cathedral , the presbytery , the eastern part of the choir was rebuilt to house the new shrine of St. Etheldreda . Work on it began no later than 1235 and lasted at least until 1252. In total, Northwold spent over £ 5350 on the construction. These high costs were primarily due to the vault, which was first made of stone in the cathedral, and the magnificent decorations of the building. On September 17, 1252, the presbytery was solemnly consecrated in the presence of the king and numerous prelates and magnates.

Death and aftermath

As a Benedictine, who opposed the king as a prelate, Northwold was admired by the chronicler Matthew Paris, who was also a Benedictine. After Northwold's death in 1254, he was buried behind the high altar in the cathedral's new presbytery. His magnificent marble tomb is decorated with a depiction of the martyrdom of Edmund the Martyr , which probably refers to Northwold's time as Abbot of St Edmund. Masses were to be read for his salvation from the income from the estates he acquired from Totteridge in Hertfordshire and Bramford in Suffolk before 1248 . He had other masses read for the monks of the cathedral priory, for which he left a number of splendid chasubles.

literature

• Peter Draper: Bishop Northwold and the cult of St Etheldreda . In: Medieval art and architecture at Ely Cathedral . British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 2, 1979, pp. 8-27

Web links

• Dorothy M. Owen: Northwold, Hugh of (d. 1254). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nicholas Vincent: Peter des Roches. An Alien in English Politics 1205-1238 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-52215-3 , p. 267
2. ^ Edward Miller: The Abbey & Bishopric of Ely: the social history of an Ecclesiastical estate from the tenth century to the early fourteenth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-08650-9 , p. 279
3. ^ Edward Miller: The Abbey & Bishopric of Ely: the social history of an Ecclesiastical estate from the tenth century to the early fourteenth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-08650-9 , p. 78
4. ^ Peter Draper: Bishop Northwold and the cult of St Etheldreda . In: Medieval art and architecture at Ely Cathedral . British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 2, 1979, p. 24
5. ^ Edward Miller: The Abbey & Bishopric of Ely: the social history of an Ecclesiastical estate from the tenth century to the early fourteenth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-08650-9 , p. 77

predecessor	Office	successor
Geoffrey de Burgh	Bishop of Ely 1229–1254	William of Kilkenny