Chapter 4 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

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[61] On the day appointed by John of Abbeville, Jubilate Sunday, he held his first provincial council at Tarragona. It was attended by seven of his suffragans (39) and lasted until the following Tuesday, three days, in accordance with the procedural instructions of the Forma de Sacro Concilio Tarracone Celebrando. (40) The legate's ghost was also there. His legislation was reissued complete, and the point was rammed home by the reiteration of those themes that had been most dear to him: clerici concubinarii (predictably); pluralism; marriage within the forbidden degrees; clerical involvement in secular affairs; vagabond monks and canons; and the relaxation of monastic discipline. (41) Yet Pedro had a mind of his own, and two of the items contained in the conciliar constitutions were his own contribution: the declaration of war against heresy, and the encouragement given to his staunchest allies in that war, the friars, whose founders were accorded solemn honours throughout the province. (42) Such was the archbishop's programme. All of the elements of the next twelve reforming years were defmed in 1239, and the bishops were left in no doubt about the energy with which he meant to pursue his end. Before he dismissed them, he reminded them once more of the Order of the Day -- the constitutions of the Fourth Lateran Council and of John of Abbeville -- and warned them that ignorance of those provisions would constitute no defence when he descended upon their churches, as he intended to do, absque alia praemonitione. (43) One of his hearers was able to certify that this was not a meaningless threat, for already, in January 1239, the church of Huesca had [62] received an archiepiscopal visitation. (44) There was room for improvement at Huesca. The canons had become lax about their vows as regulars, and were rarely to be found in the refectory or dormitory. Cultus divinus was not celebrated properly, 'sine barbarismo et soloecismo'. They were reminded of John of Abbeville's statutes (whether those of the Lérida Council or a special set designed for them is not clear) about pawning their goods, wearing flashy clothes and spending the night in town. 'Omnia verbo ad verbum sunt domini Sabinensis', in short. (45) And the same may be said of the archbishop's constitutions for the church of Vich, which he visited in the following August. (46) Yet to this body of doctrine and code of discipline Pedro brought a new spirit of moderation. It is noticeable that on neither occasion did he reiterate the legate's thoroughgoing sanctions against concubinage. Instead, Vidal of Huesca was enjoined to proceed cum diligentia, and it was left to Bernardo of Vich to use his discretion in implementing the sentences authorised by John and Sparago. (47) Pedro felt able to trust their judgement, having had a hand in the appointment of the one and having personal experience of the saintliness of the other. What did concern him, wherever he travelled in his province, was the state of parochial organisation and the removal of obstacles to popular devotion. In some places he was confounded by geography. His own cathedral church when he had been bishop of Lérida, for example, presented its parishioners with a steep climb, 'cum in monte consistat excelso iuxta quem dicta civitas est constructa', as they complained to Urban IV some twenty years later, requesting the provision of facilities for baptism and marriage at a lower altitude. (48) Likewise, [63] the parochial organisation of the diocese of Zaragoza, which he visited in March 1242, was hopelessly muddled, largely on account of its size -- cum sit latissima et diffusa -- and the inefficiency of its archpriests upon whom so much depended. (49) But Pedro was less accommodating than Urban IV, and the citizens of Zaragoza on that same occasion received little sympathy from him in their quarrel over tithes and the sacraments with the cathedral clergy. (50) He was a stickler for the rules. At Huesca he insisted on a strict definition of parish boundaries, which he found confusas et minime limitatas, and also on the sovereignty of each resident rector over parochial revenues. (51) In the diocese of Tortosa he emphasised that the parish clergy had to be ordained and resident. (52) And though his main consideration when he visited Valencia Cathedral in June 1242 was that the divine office should be decently administered 'diurnis horis pariter et nocturnis'
in the novella plantatio, (53) there too he was hardly less concerned about the economic foundations of the recently established frontier parishes. (54) For all this, though, Pedro was a realist and was prepared, as John of Abbeville had not been, to make concessions to human frailty as a means of coaxing the clergy towards a better life. Thus, while both in his own cathedral church and at Valencia he penalised canons for absence from choir, he did allow them one morning each week when they might lie in and miss matins without loss of income. (55) Tireless though the archbishop seems to have been in visiting the sees of his province, it was upon the bishops that he had to rely if his reforms were to have any permanent significance. The task of admonishing, removing local anomalies and bringing the liturgical practice of each church into line with that of the cathedral of Tarragona, 'que ipsius est metropolis et magistra', (56) weighed upon them. So, [64] too, did the duty of attending the annual provincial councils and of passing on the message to their clergy at diocesan synods. By 1242 they seem to have been beginning to wilt under the strain, or perhaps the lack of a council in the previous year had broken the spell. For only three of them appeared at the council that May: a performance which elicited a characteristically firm warning for the future from Pedro. Bishops absent thereafter, 'excusationes frivolas pretendentes', would incur durance vile at Tarragona. (57) This had its effect, and, with the exception of the incorrigible Ponce of Urgel, they all either came or sent representatives to the 1243 Council. (58) Gradually, as the incumbents died, Pedro was able to safeguard the future by filling the sees with -- or, rather, by influencing the electors to appoint -- churchmen who shared his outlook. Before investigating this group of prelates, however, it may be as well to consider the situation in the three sees which did not present the archbishop with such an opportunity: those of Tarazona, Tortosa and Urgel, the bishops of which survived from before 1238 until after his death. Admittedly, none of them remained entirely apart from the mainstream of activity. Even García Frontón of Tarazona (1219-54 (59) ), was represented at two of the councils, although he attended none of them in person, (60) and it may have been a similar anxiety to that of Pedro for parochial organisation which prompted him in July 1251 to seek papal permission to deal with the disorder of the Calatayud area, and three years later to implement Innocent IVs commission in pleno capitulo. (61) But, equally, this may have been an instance of mere acquisitiveness rather than of disinterested pastoral zeal. In the [65] absence of the Tarazona documentation, destroyed long ago, there are no means of knowing. More, however, may safely be claimed for the second of the trio, Ponce of Tortosa, who by 1239 had already been bishop for a quarter of a century, having survived both his chapter's attempt to oust him for simony and perjury in 1218-19, and his own request to be relieved of office in 1237. (62) In spite of his years, he was the most assiduous of Pedro's suffragans, attending all but one of the councils, (63) and possessing a good business brain, as he himself claimed in December 1252 when he instituted an annual vestiarium payment of 150 solidi jaccenses for each of the canons of Tortosa. (64) In February 1250 the archbishop gained entrée to his church when the chapter invited him and the bishop jointly to prepare an ordinatio congrua of their rents and rations; and although their deliberations centred largely on the question of cakes and ale, joints of meat and jugs of wine, it was at least possible to oblige the dignitaries of the chapter to publish their accounts twice yearly in imitation of John of Abbeville's Tarragona statute. (65) That, though, seems to have been the extent of Pedro's influence at Tortosa. The wider dissemination of reforming practices and the holding of synods there had to await Ponce's death, and even then progress was not made without an extremely bitter struggle. (66) If the shortcomings of Ponce of Tortosa consisted in the very soundness of a pedestrian character long set in his ways, those of his namesake the bishop of Urgel, the third of the prelates who preceded and outlived the archbishop and whose election in 1230 had so concerned both John of Abbeville and Pedro
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