Hugh de Benin

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Hugh de Benin
Senior posting
Denomination	Roman Catholic Church
See	Diocese of Aberdeen
Title	Bishop of Aberdeen
Period in office	1272–1282
Consecration	March 27 and July 23, 1272, at Orvieto
Predecessor	Richard de Potton
Successor	Henry le Chen
Religious career
Previous post	Chancellor of Aberdeen
Personal
Date of birth	Mid or early 1200s
Place of birth	Benholm, the Mearns, Scotland.
Date of death	1282
Place of death	Aberdeenshire, 1282

Hugh de Benin [Benham] (d. 1282) was a 13th century bishop. If his name represents Benholm, then he may have come from an English or Anglo-Norman family recently settled in the Mearns (i.e. Kincardineshire),^[1] as the name is linguistically English, unusual in settlement names for the area in this period; the other possibility is that the name "Benholm" is an anglicized corruption of a Gaelic name in Beinn, a possibility strengthened by the spellings Benne and Benin found in the cartulary of Arbroath Abbey.^[2] He may have been related to the Christiana Benin who married into the Lundie family of Fife.^[2]

Hugh chose an ecclesiastical career and by 1266, if not before, he was Chancellor of the diocese of Aberdeen.^[3] His career moved forward further in the early 1270s when, after the death of the previous bishop, the chapter and dean of Aberdeen elected him as the new Bishop of Aberdeen. The decree of election was relayed to the pope by Hugh's proctors Thomas de Benin, a likely brother or relative of Hugh and his successor as Chancellor, and Roger de Castello.^[4] Hugh was consecrated at Orvieto by Pope Gregory X between March 27 and July 23, 1272.^[5]

After returning to Scotland, Hugh was back in Continental Europe in 1274 as one of the bishops of Scotland attending the Council of Lyons.^[6] Hugh was a trusted figure with both Pope Gregory and Pope Nicholas III, and was appointed several times to judge for the Pope the fitness of different Scottish bishops-elect.^[7] He was one of the most active of contemporary Scottish bishops, heading a provincial council at Perth, enjoying a good relationship with the Earl of Buchan, Alexander Comyn, and commencing new work on Aberdeen Cathedral.^[1] He died early in 1282 on an island in lacus de Gowlis [lacu de Goyle; lacu Goule], an unidentified loch; according to one account he choked (suffocatus fuit), to another he died of the cold (catarrho exundate subito interiit) and another by an ambush or to some other kind of treachery (insidiis occubuit).^[8]

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b Summerson, "Bennum, Hugh of (d. 1281/2)".
^ ^a ^b Keith, Historical Catalogue, p. 108.
^ Watt, Fasti Ecclesiae, p. 12.
^ Dowden, Bishops of Scotland, pp. 106-7; Keith, Historical Catalogue, p. 108; Watt, Fasti Ecclesiae, p. 12.
^ Summerson, "Bennum, Hugh of (d. 1281/2)"; Watt, Fasti Ecclesiae, p. 12.
^ Dowden, Bishops of Scotland, p. 107; Summerson, "Bennum, Hugh of (d. 1281/2)".
^ Dowden, Bishops of Scotland, p. 107.
^ Dowden, Bishops of Scotland, pp. 107-8; Summerson, "Bennum, Hugh of (d. 1281/2)"; it may be the loch now called Bishop's Loch, see Dowden and also Keith, Historical Catalogue, p. 108.

[edit] References

Dowden, John, The Bishops of Scotland, ed. J. Maitland Thomson, (Glasgow, 1912)
Keith, Robert, An Historical Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops: Down to the Year 1688, (London, 1924)
Summerson, Henry, "Bennum, Hugh of (d. 1281/2)", in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 21 Feb 2007
Watt, D.E.R., Fasti Ecclesiae Scotinanae Medii Aevi ad annum 1638, 2nd Draft, (St Andrews, 1969)