St. Hugh of Lincoln

St Hugh of Lincoln
St Hugh of Lincoln with his swan Altarpiece showing the saint in the Carthusian habit from the Charterhouse of Saint-Honoré, Thuison, near Abbeville, France (c. 1490-1500)
Born	1135-140 Avalon, Dauphiné, Holy Roman Empire
Died	16 November 1200 London, England
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church (United Kingdom and the Carthusian Order) Anglican Communion
Canonized	17 February 1220 by Pope Honorius III
Major shrine	St. Mary's Cathedral Lincoln, England
Feast	16 November (Catholic Church) 17 November (Church of England)
Attributes	a white swan
Patronage	sick children, sick people, shoemakers and swans

Hugh of Lincoln (1135/40 – 16 November 1200), also known as Hugh of Avalon, was a French noble, Benedictine and Carthusian monk, bishop of Lincoln in the Kingdom of England, and Catholic saint. At the time of the Reformation, he was the best-known English saint after Thomas Becket. His feast is observed by Catholics on 16 November and by Anglicans on 17 November.

Hugh was born at the château of Avalon, at the border of the Dauphiné with Savoy, the son of Guillaume, seigneur of Avalon. His mother Anne de Theys died when he was eight, and because his father was a soldier, he went to a boarding school for his education. Guillaume retired from the world to the Augustinian monastery of Villard-Benoît, near Grenoble, and took his son Hugh, with him.

At the age of fifteen, Hugh became a religious novice and was ordained a deacon at the age of nineteen. About 1159, he was sent to be prior of the nearby monastery at Saint-Maximin, presumably already a priest. From that community, he left the Benedictine Order and entered the Grande Chartreuse, then at the height of its reputation for the rigid austerity of its rules and the earnest piety of its members. There he rose to become procurator of his new Order, in which office he served until he was sent in 1179 to become prior of the Witham Charterhouse in Somerset, the first Carthusian house in England.