VI - Grossetete's last sickness and death. His miracles and reputation for sanctity. His canonisation petitioned for; why put off.

Summary

Not long after writing of the foresaid letter to his Holiness, the Bishop of Lincoln, wore down with labours, age and infirmities, fell dangerously sick during the dogdays of the same year 1253. He was then at Bugden [Buckden], a manor belonging to his see in Huntingtonshire [Huntingdonshire]. The horror he had of risking the salvation of his flock by setting unworthy pastors over them never appeared stronger than in his dying moments and when within sight of the dread tribunal of his Judge. He publically begged forgiveness of Christ for the faults he might have committed in collating to churches purchased by his blood, yet he called his Judge to witness that tho as fallible man he might have conferred them upon the unworthy thro mistake, yet his intentions nevertheless had been always upright and pure.

This indeed appeared throughout his whole life by his nice examination of those he promoted and by the frequent oppositions he undauntedly made against the highest powers when intruding upon him subjects that were unfit. And these admirable instances of his zeal during life he crowned by another at his death which sent his holy soul to God, purified in the burning furnance of his own love and zeal both for Christ and his flock.

The Bishop finding himself grown worse, called for the Dominican Doctor John of St Giles, equally skilled in Physick and Theology, in order to receive from him both corporal and spiritual comfort. ‘For now,’ saith Matthew Paris. ‘He began to feel in his mind the great tribulation which threatened the Church, and which we did not foresee.’ With this view, he renewed his command to all the priests of his diocese to repeat continually in all their congregations the sentence of excommunication fulminated against all infringers of the liberties of the Church. The Bishop had ever expressed a singular esteem and affection for the two orders of St Dominick and St Francis, nevertheless in this last conference with John of St Giles, he accused both him and his brother Dominicans, as also the Franciscans, of manifest abetting of heresy in not reproving the sins of the prelates, and namely of the Pope. So much the more as by their profession of voluntary poverty they were enabled to do it with less fear or danger. ‘For what is heresy?’ saith he.