Chapter 4 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

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himself, were truly spectacular. Since, however, Ponce's final decline occurred at the very end of Pedro's life, and because his destruction formed the crowning achievement of a hard core of episcopal reformers who shared the archbishop's views and owed their advancement to him, some account [66] of the formation of this party must come before the description of the later career of the hapless bishop of Urgel. The three sees of Huesca, Calahorra and Pamplona may be considered apart. Though, like the bishops of Tarazona, Tortosa and Urgel, both Vidal de Canellas of Huesca and Aznar Díaz of Calahorra were in charge of their sees in 1238, they fall into a different category. The former owed his promotion partly to Pedro (as bishop of Lérida), and, while he was not flawless, having infringed John of Abbeville's pluralism legislation, (67) the Bologna-trained lawyer who was one of King Jaime's closest advisers nevertheless found time to attend all but two of the archbishop's councils. (68) He remained on good terms with Pedro, who awarded him various churches by way of financial relief; (69) and he held synods, though no first-hand version of his synodal constitutions has survived. (70) More, however, is known about the synod which Bishop Áznar Díaz, a nephew of Rodrigo of Toledo, held at Logroño in April 1240, two years after his election. (71) Virtually every detail of the reform programme of John of Abbeville was included, though Áznar Díaz had missed Pedro's initial council of the previous year; (72) and special attention was accorded to clerical education: their income was guaranteed for three years to clerics who wished to study at the escuelas generales, Bologna, Paris, Toulouse or, more modestly, Calahorra itself. (73) On one item, though -- concubinage -- the bishop soft-pedalled. For though, in general terms, he insisted that his clergy 'vivan castamente e honestamente, segunt que mandan las constituciones de Letrán e las del Legado', he declined to invoke sentences of excommunication or suspension against them. Instead, he anticipated [67] by eleven years Cardinal Gil's reassessment, substituting a fine of sixty sueldos and concentrating upon securing from priests' sons the undertaking that they would not conspire against his church, just as the archbishop of Compostela had done in 1229. (74) Not that Áznar Díaz was uniquely permissive: Pedro himself had departed from the legate's hard line in the previous year when he had visited Huesca and Vich. Pedro's first opportunity to intervene in the appointment of a suffragan was provided by the death, in October 1238, of Bishop Pedro Remírez of Pamplona. The archbishop seized the chance and held a diocesan synod sede vacante at which the legate's sentences against pluralism were reiterated, and also, presumably, the rest of the reform programme. (75) On the emergence of two candidates for the see (which may have had some connexion with the claim of Rodrigo of Toledo that Pamplona was part of his province) Pedro opposed Guillermo de Onz who, as a creature of Teobaldo I of Navarre, 'representaba la política de condescendencia, docilidad y servidumbre hacia la corona', and in December 1239 when the pope commissioned him and Rodrigo jointly to nominate a bishop, they chose Pedro Ximénez de Gazolaz, 'el Gregorio VII del episcopado pamplones', as he has been described, with some justice, on account of his sturdy defence of libertas ecclesiastica. (76) Both Pedro Ximénez of Pamplona and Áznar Díaz of Calahorra were enthusiastic patrons of the Cistercians, (77) and their enthusiasm was shared by the archbishop whose affiliations with Poblet have led to [68] the belief that he was a member of the Order himself. An important role -- though a minor one -- was played in Pedro's reforming campaign by the White Monks, for whose vitality all over the Peninsula there is evidence throughout the thirteenth century. For this was 'l'âge d'or du Cîteaux portugais', (78) and though, in the Primera Partida, Alfonso X dwelt upon their having been corrupted by wealth, he was none the less anxious that they should found a house at Seville. (79) In neither of these kingdoms can Pérez de Urbel's remark about the insignificance of the monastic contribution during this period (80) be applied to them. But it was in Aragon that their Indian summer proved most fruitful. In
1208 King Pedro II praised their 'astonishing virtues' and their attachment to 'true apostolic religion', (81) and twenty years later they struck John of Abbeville as the one hopeful feature of Aragonese monasticism. There was, he informed Gregory IX, no hope of salvation for the Cluniacs there nisi ad Cisterciensem ordinem convertantur. (82) Two new foundations were established in the Tarragona province in 1223-4, at Santa Fe and La Baix. (83) Pedro's most reputable episcopal colleague, Bernardo Calvó, was a member of the Order and had been abbot of Santas Creus before his promotion to the see of Vich. (84) And Pedro himself was the Order's special darling. In 1244 the General Chapter directed every monk to commemorate the archbishop of Tarragona during the Mass of the Holy Spirit. For his part, Pedro favoured the Cistercian style -- implicitly, as in his instructions that the canons of Huesca and Vich should wear plain, simple garments, and explicitly in his Summa Septem Sacramentorum where he insisted that altar linen be kept 'munda et nitida. . . ad morem Cistercii'. (85) Two of his bishops were [69] Cistercians, and both were zealous pastors. His own successor at Lérida in April 1238, Raimundo de Ciscar, issued synodal legislation which, like the Summa, from a version of which it may have been derived, dealt fully with the administration of the sacraments and provided the diocesan clergy with ample information on the subject. (86) Vicente of Zaragoza -- whose election was hastily confirmed at the Valencia Council of May 1240 -- was equally enthusiastic. By March 1242, when the archbishop visited his diocese, he had held a synod, and before his death in 1244 he summoned at least one more. (87) Yet although the Cistercians were Pedro's partners in the reforming enterprise, they were unquestionably only the junior partners. Their seniors were the Dominicans. Between 1225 and 1250 the Order of Preachers was the dominant force throughout the Western Church. In Aragon, though -- where during the early 1230s heresy was rife (88) -- they were warmly welcomed and actively encouraged by the archbishop. So were the Franciscans, and this was rare. Pedro de Alba!at's co-option of the friars stemmed directly from his close association with Raymond of Peñafort. There was a sort of spiritual relationship between them which may have owed something to their common patron, John of Abbeville. (89) During the year 1237, on Raymond's return from Rome to the Barcelona convent, broken in health after his work on the Liber Extra, the friar and the bishop of Lérida had been commissioned jointly to settle the succession in the sees of Mallorca, Huesca and Tortosa. But in the following [70] year Raymond was elected Master General of his Order and, albeit reluctantly, he accepted the office some three months after Pedro's promotion to Tarragona. In 1240, though, he resigned at the Bologna General Chapter, and returned once more to Aragon. His association with the archbishop -- who had already made plain his devotion to the friars -- was revived, and almost immediately it bore fruit -- appropriately enough, in Raymond's native city of Barcelona. (90) Bishop Berenguer de Palou died at the end of August 1241, and in the ensuing election the thirty-two canons of Barcelona failed to agree on a successor, nine favouring the prior of the local Dominican convent of Santa Catalina, Berenguer de Castelbisbal, while the majority, twenty-two, opted for their sacrist, Pedro de Centelles. But the choice was not between a friar and a non-friar, for Pedro de Centelles had also fallen under the Dominican spell and had only recently promised to join the Order as soon as he could wind up his secular affairs. The election, therefore, came as something of an embarrassment to him, as he explained to the archbishop who visited Barcelona in mid-October. Pedro de Albalat thought very highly of the sacrist, and on the 15th wrote to the pope praising him to the skies and urging that in spite of his promise he be promoted to the see. But Gregory IX, unbeknown to the archbishop, had died almost eight weeks before, so that the three canons who were despatched to the Curia with letters from Pedro, King Jaime and others, were made to wait until June 1243 for the election of a pontiff to whom they might appeal. Then the Barcelona affair was one of the first items of accumulated business with which Innocent IV dealt. On 4 July the archbishop was instructed to
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