Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Saturday 28 May 1927, page 20


BRITISH REMIGIUS.

Founder of Lincoln Cathedral.

The Dean and Chapter of Lincoin re-cently discovered the bones of their first bishop. Hitherto all men and books have said that Remingius, founder of the

cathedral, lay buried beneath the nave. But in the angel choir a flab of black marble has long borne his name, and there they found his remains, his chalice, his paten, and half his pastoral staff. It is fitting (observes the London "Daily Telegraph") that he should not he num-bered among those that have no monu-ment, and in the year in which the achievement of his master, William the Conquerer, is honored we may well spare some thoughts for Remigius. The history of the Church will record him as one of the greatest of English prelates. He was almoner of the Benedictine abbey of Fecamp when William issued the prospec-tus of his company for the conquest cf England. Remigius (in the vernacular Remi) took up shares, providing one ship with twenty fighting-men upon condition of receiving the first English bishopric vacant. In the year sfter the conquest Wulfwy of Dorchester opportunely died. Remigius had some trouble with Rome about succeeding him, whether, as one story goes, because in his hurry he ac-cepted consecration from an uncanonical archbishop, or, according to another, because there was some smack of simony about his understanding with William. But he got his appointmect confirmed and set to work, like a true Norman, build-ing. His was an unwieldy See, sprawling across England from Oxford to the Hum-ber, with its cathedral at one extremity, the village of Dorchestcr-on-Thames. The Norman Spirit. After Remigius had been building there a few years it was ordered that bishops should transfer their Sees from "'villulae" to walled cities.' Remigius went off to the other end of the diocese, the old Roman town of Lincoln, where his friend the King was building a castle. He destroyed an early church, and on the site built a massive cathedral. It was far advanced in 1092, five years after William's death, twenty-five years after Remigius had been made bishop. But there was trouble about the consecration. The Archbishop of York would not act unless his jurisdiction in Lincoln was ad-mitted. Remigius was not the man to yield to claims of that sort. Money passed from him to the King, and Wil-liam Rufus bade the bishops assemble and consecrate. But three days before the time appointed Remigius died. He was buried before the altar of the Holy Cross in his own cathderal, which it was left to his successor Rufus's Chancellor, to finish. Of what Bemigius built but little now remains. His church was damaged by fire and split by an earth-quake, and St. Hugh had to buiid anew, But in the great piece of Norman masonry in the west front, with, its strange scalp-tures of the torments of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous, we may see the work and the temper of Remigius. He was a little man in body, the chronicler says, so small as to be almost a mock of a man, but though swarthy (another is more complimentary) a comely prelate enough. The tradition that he had any remarkable sanctity seems not to have been heard of till long after his death. But he was emi-nently a man who gat things done, and that practical capacity of the little almoner of Fecamp is an admirable example of the spirit which the Normans brought into England.