Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

206 ST. HUGH AND
cepted every word of this tacit reproval, and his
chief forester submitted to the corporal chastisement
of the discipline, after which the ecclesiastical censure
was removed, and Geoffrey became Hugh's
firm friend.1
If perfect concord reigned in the cathedral chapter
of Lincoln, it was because Hugh had acquired con-
trol over a naturally hasty temper.
" Indeed, I am sharper than pepper," he once
humbly owned to his canons. 2
The great devotion of his piety was burying the
dead. He would allow even kings to wait whilst he
accomplished this work of mercy. His parish priests
had orders not to bury the dead when he was at
hand. If the dead had led holy lives, they deserved
to be honoured ; if unholy, then succour was the
more needed. Hugh's almsgiving was often spent in
procuring for the poor wrhat they would not other-
wise have had at their funerals-lights, for instance,
and other accessories of external worship. To the
rich, too, he gave of his heart's marrow when they
were lying in their last helplessness. His biographer
mentions his charity towards the body of a certain
bishop, which punished both sight and smell. " The
sweet odour of Christ made him perfectly insensible
to the odour of death." 3
At that time the Diocese of Lincoln was one of
the most important in the English hierarchy, ex-
lVita, pp. 129, 130.
IMd., p. 233