Remigius of Lincoln.
Completion of the minster. Lincoln, was drawing near the end of his famous episcopate. He had reformed the constitution of his chapter and diocese; and we hear that he was no less zealous in reforming the manners of his flock.[1] The darling sin of Bristol—most likely the darling sin of every great trading-town—was rife at Lincoln also; and Remigius, like Wulfstan, preached against the wicked custom by which men sold their country-folk, sometimes their kinsfolk, to a life of shame or of bondage in foreign lands.[2] But beyond all this, he had finished his great work on the hill of Lincoln; the elder church of Saint Mary had grown into the great minster of which later rebuildings and enlargements have still left us some small remnants.[3] The eastern limb had as yet no need to overleap the Roman wall of Lindum; but Remigius had reared, and sought to consecrate, no fragment, but a perfect church. His doorways are there in the western front to show that the building has received no enlargement on that side from Remigius' day to our own. The work was done, and its founder felt his last end coming. He was eager to see the house which he had builded dedicated to its holy use before he himself passed away. But an unlooked-for hindrance came. The only archbishop in the land, Thomas of York, claimed the district in which
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iv. p. 419, and Giraldus, Vita Rem. c. 3, 4, 5 (vol. vii. p. 17 et seqq. Dimock). Giraldus is, I believe, the only writer who makes a saint of Remigius. He enlarges on the effects of Remigius' preaching, and consequently on the wickedness of those to whom he had to preach.
- ↑ Giraldus, Vit. Rem. ch. v. "Prolem propriam quam genuerat, nepotes etiam et neptes, alienigenis in servitutem detestanda avaritia venalem ex consuetudine prostituebant." Cf. N. C. vol. iv. p. 381, and the stories in Will. Malms. ii. 200, about Godwine's supposed first wife. See N. C. vol. i. p. 737.
- ↑ I mentioned in N. C. vol iv. p. 212, that Lincoln minster grew out of an earlier church of Saint Mary. The history of John of Schalby printed by Mr. Dimock shows that this elder parish church went on within the minster. This is a very important case of a double church. See Giraldus, vii. xxx. 194, 209.
