Chapter 4 - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

proceed as he thought fit, and in mid-October 1243, in the presence of Raymond of Peñafort, the sacrist
was clothed a Dominican by Pedro de Albalat and, with the assembled chapter, quasi flentes, chanting
'talem volumus vos habere, talem volumus vos habere', was confirmed as bishop of Barcelona. (91)
Pedro de Centelles was the first Dominican bishop south of the Pyrenees and is, therefore, something of
a landmark. The date to [71] note, however, is not October 1243. It is October 1241. For Archbishop
Pedro had not allowed the papal vacancy to delay the reform of his province, and through him
Dominican influence had been making itself felt at Barcelona during those two years. As at Pamplona
in 1239, he seized the opportunity of holding a sede vacante synod at Barcelona during his visit to
investigate the election process in the autumn of 1241. The synod -- of 18 October 1241 -- witnessed
the publication of two didactic tracts which together comprise Pedro de Albalat's contribution to the
history of the thirteenth-century Spanish Church, and, individually, reflect the influence upon him of
Raymond of Peñafort.
The first is well enough known. It described the procedure for dealing with heretics and is regarded as
'le premier document digne du nom de manuel de procédure inquisitoriale'. (92) It was a business-like
guide, the sort of A.B.C. that Guillermo de Mongrí had asked for when faced with the problem of
apparent repentance on a large scale six years earlier; and scholars have not hesitated in ascribing
authorship to St Raymond rather than to Pedro, the archbishop who promulgated it. (93) Its form and
content suggest that they are correct. No such attention, however, has been given to the second tract
published on the same occasion as part of the synodal constitutions, and which loomed at least as large
as le manuel de l'inquisiteur in the Tarragona province during the 1240s and 1250s: Pedro de Albalat's
Summa Septem Sacramentorum.
The Summa (94) was promulgated by Pedro both at Barcelona and in his own archdiocese at a synod of
uncertain date. (95) In the form in which it was reissued, almost verbatim, by Pedro's brother Bishop
Andrés of Valencia in October 1258, it was published by Aguirre in [72] the eighteenth century. (96) The
text used by Andrés was that of the Barcelona synod of October 1241, to which he adhered fairly
closely. (97) Yet it cannot be asserted that the Barcelona version was the editio princeps of the Summa,
for Andrés refers also to the 'tract's' having been issued by his brother at a Lérida synod, and it is not
clear from the context whether Pedro was bishop of Lérida or archbishop of Tarragona at the time of
the said synod. Moreover, the confusion has been further confounded by Aguirre who miscopied his
Valencia MS. (98) So this Lérida synod must have occurred either during Pedro's episcopate, October
1236 to February 1238, or sede vacante after the death of Pedro's successor there, Raimundo de Ciscar,
in 1247 or 1248. Now it is true that Pedro was accustomed to intervening in the affairs of the sees of his
province during episcopal vacancies, as at Pamplona and Barcelona, and that he had a direct hand in
the appointment of Raimundo de Ciscar's successor at Lérida. (99) Nevertheless, on balance, the later
date would seem to be less likely than the other as the occasion of the synod mentioned by Andrés de
Albalat -- who in September 1248 was himself at Lérida, as a member of the Dominican community.
(100) For by 1247-8 the diocese of Lérida had already received, from the late Bishop Raimundo, a
sacramental treatise which compares favourably with Pedro's Summa. (101)
It compares favourably, and there many points of comparison since both Raimundo's statutes and the
Summa owe the greater part of their material to that common source of so much synodal [73]
legislation of Western Europe at this period: the statutes attributed to Eudes de Sully, bishop of Paris
(1196-1208). (102) Of the two, Raimundo's statutes appear to have followed the Paris statutes rather
more closely than does the Summa, and to have introduced considerably less that was original. (103) But
what is of greater interest here is that there are some grounds for arguing that Raimundo also had
access to a version of the Summa which had been issued at the Lérida synod to which Andrés de