Hugh of Wells

Hugh of Wells coat of arms

Hugh of Wells (* 12th century in Wells , † February 7, 1235 in Stow , Lincolnshire ) was an English clergyman. After serving several years as a royal official, he became Bishop of Lincoln .

Origin and advancement as a clergyman

Hugh of Wells was the eldest son of Edward of Wells , he got his nickname after the city he was born in. His younger brother Jocelin of Wells became Bishop of Bath in 1207. Hugh had also become a clergyman and served in the retinue of Bishop Reginald fitz Jocelin of Bath, under whom he is first mentioned in the late 1180s. Unlike his brother, however, he never seemed to have attended university. After the death of Bishop Reginald in 1191, he continued to belong to the household of his successor, Bishop Savaric . Hugh was a canon at Wells Cathedral in the late 12th century . Throughout his life he kept good contacts to Wells, including several clergymen from the region around Wells later living in his episcopal household.

Service as a civil servant and political activity as a bishop

Official and Vice Chancellor under Johann Ohneland

When Hubert Walter , Archbishop of Canterbury, became the new royal chancellor under King John Ohneland in May 1199 , Archdeacon Simon Fitzrobert von Wells and Hugh of Wells followed him into the royal chancellery. Simon Fitzrobert became the Chancellor's deputy, and Hugh took office when he became Bishop of Chichester in 1204 . Hugh remained in the service of the king until 1209, whom he accompanied to France several times. The king thanked him by transferring benefits . In addition to several parishes, he received positions as canons at Lincoln Cathedral and at London's St Paul's Cathedral and the office of Archdeacon of Wells. Hugh did not take up these well-paid offices, but was represented by paid clergymen. In addition, he received the goods of Cheddar and Axbridge in Somerset as a fief . Between 1200 and 1203 he administered the vacant Diocese of Lincoln on behalf of the King and from 1205 to 1206 the Diocese of Bath .

Elected Bishop of Lincoln and exile in France

At the beginning of 1209 Pope Innocent III ordered. the cathedral chapter of Lincoln to finally elect a successor to William de Blois, who died in 1206 . Before April 12, 1209, Hugh was elected as the new bishop. At this point the Pope was deeply divided with King John over the election of Stephen Langton as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope therefore suspected the King of having coerced the Lincoln Cathedral Chapter into electing his high-ranking official Hugh. He therefore commissioned Langton, who was living in exile in France, to review the election. Langton suspected that Hugh had illegitimate daughters, but could not find any evidence of this. However, when the king was excommunicated because of the dispute with the Pope in November 1209 , Hugh left the royal chancellery and went into exile in France. In Melun he was ordained on December 20, 1209 by Archbishop Langton as the new Bishop of Lincoln. Because of the interdict imposed by the Pope on England , Hugh remained in exile. During this time he made his will in November 1212 in Saint-Martin-la-Garenne near Paris, but nothing else is known about this time. It was not until King John submitted to the Pope in May 1213 that Hugh returned to England in June or July.

Role during the War of the Barons and under Henry III.

On July 20, 1213, the temporalities of his diocese were given to him . In England there was now a conflict between the king and a noble opposition, which forced the king to recognize the Magna Carta in June 1215 . Hugh was present at the Runnymede award ceremony. When the rebellious barons did not disband their army as agreed, Hugh protested like the other English bishops against this breach of peace, which led to the First War of the Barons . Before the outbreak of open fighting, however, Hugh left England to travel to Rome and attend the Fourth Lateran Council . He did not return to England until March 1217.

Upon his return, Hugh played while King Henry III was a minor . politically active role. He regularly belonged to the retinue of the king or regent. From 1218 to 1219 he was the chief royal judge for Lincolnshire , Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire . In 1226 he served again as a traveling judge. He was in Westminster in February 1225 when the young king reaffirmed the Magna Carta, and later that year he was one of the English envoys negotiating an end to the Franco-English War in France .

Serving as the Bishop of Lincoln

After the long years of the interdict and his absence in Rome, after his return to Lincoln from 1217 onwards, Hugh tried to normalize the administration of his diocese, showing remarkable organizational skills. He also improved the administration by introducing new methods, such as were already common in the royal chancellery. Probably following the example of the royal chancellery, he introduced the systematic recording of documents. In addition to a main role, he had registers created for the individual archdeaconates, for documents, for memos and for the possessions of the parishes. Occasionally, Bishop Hugh is cited as a generous parish patron who created numerous new parish offices and endowed them with foundations. This view is certainly a misinterpretation. Hugh probably confirmed existing parish offices and their possessions, but since hardly any older documents have been preserved, he therefore seemed to be a generous patron of the parishes. From 1219 he actively pursued the canonization of Hugo von Lincoln , one of his predecessors as bishop, until he was recognized as a saint in 1220.

The Abbey of St Albans was compelled by Hugh to coordinate with him the appointment of the Priors of St Albans Priory in the Diocese of Lincoln as Bishop. Mostly because of this forced agreement, the chronicler Matthew Paris , who was a monk of the Abbey of St Albans, accused Hugh of constantly harassing the religious orders in his diocese as bishop. Otherwise there is no evidence that Hugh was particularly hostile to the monasteries as long as they fulfilled their obligations to the diocese. He routinely confirmed new abbots and other monastic officials, and there are few records of episcopal visitations to the monasteries. It was probably only in old age that Hugh commissioned his official representative to carry out visitations on his behalf. Probably Robert Grosseteste , his successor as bishop, began with regular visits to the parishes of the diocese.

In the 1220s, Hugh had a new episcopal palace built in Lincoln, for which the king gave him stones and timber. As an old man, he apparently did not leave his episcopal residence in Stow Park near Lincoln after March 1233 . Three days after his death, he was buried in Lincoln Cathedral on February 10, 1235. In an extensive will drawn up in June 1233, he paid tribute to his brother Jocelin, a niece named Agatha and the members and servants of his household. To this end, he donated funds for the further construction of Lincoln Cathedral, for numerous monasteries in his diocese and for the poor. His lands were to be divided between the poorer monasteries and leper houses , faculty and students at Oxford University , converted Jews, and those in need on the episcopal estates.

literature

• David Michael Smith: The administration of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln, 1209–1235 Dissertation, University of Nottingham 1970 ( online )
• David Michael Smith: The rolls of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln, 1209-35 . In: Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (BIHR) 45 (1972), pp. 155-195
• David Michael Smith: The acta of Hugh of Wells. Bishop of Lincoln 1209-1235. Boydell, Woodbridge 2000. ISBN 0-901503-65-7

Web links

• David M. Smith: Wells, Hugh of (d. 1235). 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

predecessor	Office	successor
William de Blois	Bishop of Lincoln 1209–1235	Robert Grosseteste