Chapter 4 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

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