Chapter 4 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

The high incidence of heresy and unorthodoxy in mountainous [56] regions has frequently been noted,
(11) and in the kingdom of Aragon throughout the thirteenth century the Albigensian heresy was rampant
in the Pyrenean see of Urgel. There had been a serious outbreak shortly before the legate's visit in the
autumn of 1229, and at his Council in the following May Archbishop Sparago expressed grave concern.
(12) The see of Urgel was at that moment vacant, Pedro de Puigvert (about whose ability to deal with
the crisis Honorius III had had his doubts) having resigned in the previous month, possibly in
consequence of an unfavourable report submitted by the legate; (13) and Sparago and the bishop of
Lérida, Berenguer de Eril, were given joint charge of it until there should be an election. (14) John of
Abbeville was extremely interested in the outcome of this election, as is shown by a letter sent by him
to Bishop Berenguer in April or May 1230, which has survived in the archive of Urgel Cathedral. The
suitability of possible candidates exercised him greatly, (15) and the weight of evidence suggests that the
cardinal was being kept informed of developments by Pedro de Albalat. Perhaps it was Pedro who
brought this letter from the Curia. Certainly he was an observer -- and a highly regarded observer,
furthermore -- at the riotous process of election at Urgel in May 1230 which resulted in the promotion
to the see of Bishop Berenguer's nephew, Ponce de Vilamur, who had been sacrist of Lérida
immediately before Pedro himself. Another Urgel document, containing the version of these events
submitted to an inquest into the election held soon after by various canons of the church, provides a
vivid account of ecclesiastical party politics in thirteenth-century Catalonia. It is a tale of ambushes,
bribery, torrid debate and strong-arm tactics. It has a flavour all its own, (16) but the point of interest in
the present context is the quite casual reference which it contains to Pedro who, while the beaten side
were frogmarching their candidate to the altar, intoned the Te Deum which brought the pantomime to an
end. Pedro did not escape unscathed. It was assumed that he was an advocate of Ponce, and Ponce's
enemies, most [57] unsportingly, wreaked their vengeance by doing to death one of Pedro's mules and
wounding another. (17) And the desperadoes seem to have judged aright, for when Ponce's promotion
suffered a further delay Pedro travelled to Rome, presumably for fresh consultation with John of
Abbeville. While he was there he secured papal permission to retain the churches of Zaidin, Albalat and
Soros together with the income from his office as sacrist. (18)
His visit seems to have disposed of all outstanding objections to Ponce. On 6 February 1231, shortly
before he returned to Aragon, John of Abbeville furnished him with a letter addressed to Ponce as
bishop, in which the sacrist of Lérida was described as his 'fidelis et sollicitus procurator' and Ponce
was urged to prove himself 'acceptus minister Deo' and to nourish the flock which had been entrusted
to him 'sacra doctrina pariter et exemplo'. (19) It was not the only commission that he brought with him.
Six days later he was appointed, together with the bishop of Lérida and the abbot of Poblet, to protect
the chapter of Vich against the archbishop of Tarragona; (20) and the pope's rescript confirming the exlegate's
constitutions for Barcelona, which was issued two days before that, may also have been
entrusted to him. (21) The issue of substance, however, is that John's letter referred to Ponce as bishop
fully two months before the archbishop of Tarragona received formal notice even of the election. (22)
The affair had been stage-managed by John and Pedro, and the latter was an ecclesiastical power in the
land eight years before his appointment as leader of the Aragonese Church.
It is curious, and even dramatically appropriate, that Pedro de Albalat's earliest recorded achievement
should have been his successful campaign on behalf of Ponce de Vilarnur. For the bishop of [58] Urgel
was to fall far short of John of Abbeville's high standards, and the reformers' white hope of 1230-1 was
to be converted into their bête noire in the course of the next twenty years, and would dog Archbishop
Pedro until his dying day. In the early 1230s, though, this all lay in the future, and Ponce's future career
was as inscrutable to Pedro as Pedro's past career is still to us. Where magister Petrus had studied, and
the truth of the unsubstantiated claim that he was a Cistercian monk, (23) are only two of the questions