Daily Reading for November 17 • Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, 1200
It is impossible adequately to record amongst the other marks of his devotion, his great compassion and tenderness towards the sick, and even to those afflicted with leprosy. He used to wash and dry their feet and kiss them affectionately, and having refreshed them with food and drink gave them alms on a lavish scale. He often did this privately in his chamber with few people present to thirteen patients, when that number could be found in the place where he was. There were hospitals on certain of the episcopal manors, where many men and women afflicted by this disease were maintained. He made a practice of giving gifts of many different kinds to these in addition to the revenue already assigned to them by his predecessors, and frequently visited them himself with a few of his more God-fearing and devout retainers. He would sit in their midst in a small inner room and would comfort their souls by his kindly words, relieving their sorrow by his motherly tenderness, and encouraging those who were so desolate and afflicted in this life to hope for an eternal reward, combining with amazing gentleness words of consolation and exhortations to good conduct. Also if he noticed any tendency to wrong-doing, he would exhort them not to give way to it, and if they had done so to repent, and from henceforth neither to dare nor desire to do wrong. Before his address the women withdrew at his command and he went to kiss the men one by one, bending over each of them and giving a longer and more tender embrace to those whom he saw worse marked by the disease. . . . He declared such to be blessed, and called them the flowers of Paradise and the lucent pearls in the crown of the eternal king. These, he said, could confidently await the coming of Our Saviour Jesus Christ who would transform their vile bodies into the glory of His risen body.
From Magna vita Sancti Hugonis by Adam of Eynsham, edited by Decima L. Douie and David Hugh Farmer, Volume 2, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford University Press, 1961).