[1] Valencia the Great⁽¹⁾ had fallen. Its Moslem defenders, under letter of truce, had fled into the south. Two miles away at the port of Valencia only the fleets of Aragon broke the blue monotony of the Mediterranean. The city itself lay empty, its mosques and shops deserted, its minarets desolate against the autumn sky. High above its battlements, upon the massive tower of the main city gate, the banner of Aragon flew, crimson bars against a sheet of gold. This was a day to be remembered in history -- Saturday, the feast of St. Denis, October 9, 1238.

On the green plains outside, multitudes of jubilant Christians surrounded the conquered city. From their camps a colorful procession was being marshaled. Details in the royal memoirs and elsewhere help reconstruct the scene: mitered bishops and archbishops, and clerics in cloth-of-gold; ladies and courtiers and great barons with their panoplied households; troops of men-at-arms, militia from the towns, sailors, crowds of merchants and hangers-on; ranks of caparisoned chivalry, an unnumbered host of crusading volunteers from many lands; and the king and queen of Aragon themselves. All the pageantry of the age of chivalry glittered here. Above the bright trappings, the gaudy shields and glinting steel, sounded the murmur of the mob and the trumpets of victory. The magnificence would have held a solemn air too, a kind of awe. For this was a religious occasion. As the great assemblage in ordered array moved toward the city walls, the chant of the Te Deum rose into the morning air. The procession advanced to the gate of Bab-el-Schachard, passed under its grim tower entrance, and wound its way into the maze of narrow streets. James of Aragon (1213-1276) could at last write that he was king "from the Rhone to Valencia."⁽²⁾

The exploit rang through Christendom. While Islam "wept over this immense evil,"⁽³⁾ imaginations in the West were stirred. Gregory IX dispatched a long, ecstatic message of triumph to the provinces of Aix, Auch, Arles, Narbonne, Genoa, and Tarragona.⁽⁴⁾ From Milan, Piacenza, Bologna, and Faenza came an invitation to lead northern Italy against the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, offering to pay James's way and to become his vassals.⁽⁵⁾ The troubadours of Languedoc heard the news about Valencia, and lamented in verse that such power had been diverted from their own land into the south.⁽⁶⁾ In remote England, Matthew Paris enthusiastically [2] recorded how "with his allies, the splendid and indefatigable warrior the lord king of Aragon had so ravaged the great city of Valencia by bloody war, and so closely invested it, as to force its surrender."⁽⁷⁾ Louis IX of France would send a thorn from Christ's crown of thorns "as a sign of special affection" for Valencia.⁽⁸⁾

In 1245, shortly after the fall of Játiva, keystone in the southern defenses of the Valencian kingdom, Pope Innocent IV already saw in King James a champion for the recovery of Palestine.⁽⁹⁾ Later, when the conquest had extended as far south as Murcia (1266), the emperor of Byzantium and the khan of the Mongols were to send ambassadors with an offer of alliance and crusade in the Holy Land.⁽¹⁰⁾ It was at this time that King James sent presents of Moslems as slaves to the pope, the cardinals, Emperor Frederick II, and King Louis IX, as well as female slaves to the queen of France and other ladies.⁽¹¹⁾ And, in a document relative to the troubles between the Hohenstaufen Manfred and the papacy, in 1262, King James could rightly refer to his "fame" in Christendom as a crusader.⁽¹²⁾ Locked in an unending and not always successful struggle with the world of Islam, the West had "exulted with a deep joy" -- so Pope Innocent IV reported to King James in 1245 -- "when the kingdom of Valencia was torn from the grasp of the Saracens."⁽¹³⁾

The Crusade

The conquest of Valencia had been a project King James had dreamed upon since childhood. If only he could subjugate the Moslem kingdom of Valencia, he could well say that he was "the best king in the world and the one who has done the most."⁽¹⁴⁾ Nor was this only a young cavalier's dream. It was an inherited policy, a factor constant in the plans of the crown of Aragon. Many an expedition had been launched in that direction by James's predecessors, "who had fought hard to win it but were not able."⁽¹⁵⁾ The brilliant exploits of the Cid, who had seized the southern part of the region and held it for a decade, were now a century old but vividly remembered.

Valencia was a kingdom worth having. In size it compared fairly well with either Aragon or Catalonia, the two major states of King James's realm. Its civilization was as ancient, its agricultural and commercial potential greater. Its most important city, Valencia, was a wonder in itself. A Moslem contemporary describing Moorish Spain devotes ten pages to Valencia city, and twice praises it as one of the greatest capitals of the country.⁽¹⁶⁾ Essentially the kingdom of Valencia consisted of a ribbon of fertile coastline, hemmed in along its length by forbidding highlands and mountains. All down this pleasant coast lay a succession of lovely plains -- some large and some small -- irrigated, prosperous, and strongly defended. Somewhat below the city of Valencia, the shoreline thrust out to form a huge triangle of land. Here the kingdom spread at its widest, and here it erupted into a chaotic tumble of [3] imposing sierras. Beyond this terrible bastion, the former pattern of plain and highland resumed, but now one was entering the region called Murcia.

Towns and hamlets covered the Valencian littoral and were scattered into the interior, even in the uninviting mountainous regions. The desolate escarpment at his back directed the Valencian toward the sea, to commerce and to continual contact with other Mediterranean peoples. It was a land of bustling little ports, luxuriant farmlands, well-traveled roads, and proud walled cities like Burriana or Peñíscola in the north, Játiva or Alcira in the south, and Cullera or Murviedro in the center. As a Christian land, the kingdom of Valencia was to be dominated, in law and in practical life, by the city of Valencia. It is not inappropriate, therefore, to refer to this city as the capital of the kingdom of Valencia.

The Moslems, whose graceful minarets adorned the land, represented an ancient civilization and a traditional enemy. It was their misfortune at this moment of history to be torn by violent civil wars. The catastrophic defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in the center of the Spanish peninsula had splintered the unity of Moslem Spain into semi-independent entities. Decades of intrigue and bloody strife had subsequently racked these places, and North Africa as well. Even that section which the Christians called the "kingdom" of Valencia was plunged into civil war. The hour had struck for a new Cid to ride.⁽¹⁷⁾

It was upon this isolated and faction-ridden kingdom that James the Conqueror, ruler of the confederated Aragonese and Catalonian peoples, descended in 1233. His warrior father, the hero of Las Navas, had fallen at Muret in southern France fighting the Albigensian crusaders. With his death and with the advance of the Franks into Languedoc the ambition of the Catalans to dominate their linguistic brothers, the peoples of Languedoc and Provence, had grown dim. Instead, King James was to turn the military energies of his people toward the south and east, inaugurating that Mediterranean expansion which was to carry the standard of Aragon into Italy and Greece. His early conquest of the Balearic Islands struck a heavy blow at Moslem power in the western Mediterranean and won him fame. Majorca fell in 1229, Minorca in 1231, Ibiza in 1235. But his greatest renown was to come from his conquest of Valencia and from his energetic reorganization of that area as a Christian kingdom.

The crusade against Valencia was no easy undertaking. Even in its disordered state and even with one faction of its civil war aiding the Christians, Valencia bristled with castles and was far too strong to be taken by assault. King James had only an erratic force to employ -- feudal levies who would disappear when their brief term of service ended, a small corps of faithful enthusiasts, an always unpredictable quantity of crusade volunteers, and the town militias. The crown was chronically embarrassed for supplies, and [4] often preoccupied with domestic or baronial turmoil and with problems in Navarre or southern France. For almost fifteen years James would intermittently chip away at Valencian defenses, leading campaign after campaign, raid after raid. In the end, victory would be due as much to his combination of skillful maneuvering and negotiation as it was to brute force. Two major sieges, at Burriana and Valencia, ended with the mass expulsion of Moslems at those cities. Almost everywhere else the Moors managed to surrender on excellent terms, keeping intact their society, political structure, and way of life.

The story of the crusade may briefly be unfolded in a series of critical dates. In 1225 James made an abortive attack on Peñíscola. In 1229 he signed a pact with the Moslem king or governor of Valencia, Sa^cîd, for a cooperative reconquest of his rebellious land. From 1232 to 1235 most of the modern province of Castellón was overrun. In 1232 Morella fell; in 1233 Burriana, Peñíscola, Chivert, and Cervera; in 1235 Pulpis, Castellón, Borriol, Alcalatén, Villafamés, and Almazora. The crusaders now dug in at Puig, a hill just north of Valencia (1236). From 1236 to 1238 a second great advance carried the Christians down to the Júcar River. In 1237 a major battle was won at Puig. The capital itself, held in a strangling siege, surrendered in 1238. From 1239 to 1245 the southern part of the kingdom was conquered. Cullera fell in 1240, Alcira in 1242, Játiva in 1244, Biar in 1245. Basically the line of the Almizra treaty with Castile contained further conquest or repopulation by the crown of Aragon. Below that line the Christian reconquest displayed a different political and social structure, a different pattern of repopulation, even a different mixture of peoples. From 1296, James II of Aragon would begin his bid to absorb the area, but this lies over our present horizon.⁽¹⁸⁾

Far off to the west, meanwhile, a similar surge forward had been in progress. The whole front of the Reconquest was advancing in hard-fought triumph. Here the Castilians, who were pursuing their own conquest of the demoralized Moslem states of Andalusia, kept a jealous eye on James of Aragon, lest he overstep the areas of crusade agreed upon by the two nations in the treaties of Tudilén (1151), Cazorla (1179), and Almizra (1244). St. Ferdinand entered Cordova in 1236, Jaén in 1246, and Seville in 1248.

Along the Valencian coastline, especially in the mountainous hinterland, several Moslem revolts erupted. These amounted to serious attempts at a war of reconquest. Al-Yazraÿî's outbreak came in 1248 and 1258, on the heels of the Christian victory. Another came in 1263 against the Castilians in Murcia; James in neighborly fashion put it down (1265-1266). A final and fearful revolution broke at the end of King James's life (1275-1277). This last revolt was subdued by the king's son and successor, King Peter, who was soon to be a major figure in Europe in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (from 1282).

A policy of conquest by surrender had facilitated the winning of Valencia; [5] but its potential dangers for the Christian state were obvious. An added tension in the new land was the mutual antagonism of Aragonese and Catalans. Aragon proper, the heavily feudal upland region which had given its name and royal title to the confederation, differed from Catalonia in language, temperament, interests, and tradition.⁽¹⁹⁾ Each enjoyed its separate parliament, laws, and social structure. The Catalans, a commercial people related to those of Languedoc and Provence, had gained much from their Balearic crusade. The Aragonese had looked to the Valencian conquest as a compensating field of opportunity and expansion for themselves. Yet it was the Catalan peoples who would supply the bulk of the settlers, especially along the coast, and who were to be the active element in the reorganization.

King James cleverly established this new province as a kingdom apart, a balance between the two older entities, with its own coin of the realm, Romanized law code, liberal privileges, administration, and strong communes. This not only limited the Aragonese, but at the same time favored the ruling royal power over the baronial. As the distribution of estates, houses, and lands went forward, especially in the cleared areas at Burriana and Valencia, these and other tensions traveled south in the baggage of the settlers.

The success or failure of the new kingdom would owe much to the personality of the king of Aragon. When the city of Valencia surrendered, James the Conqueror was a bearded giant of a man, some thirty years of age, with a taste for letters and for war. The high ideals of chivalry entertained by "this holy king"⁽²⁰⁾ were marred in practice by an impulsive streak of tyranny and by an inveterate inclination to adultery and fornication. His talents as a ruler were considerable -- as an administrator, as a legislator, as a planner, as a strategist, as a warrior, as a leader of men. On this man's shoulders now fell the task of converting the Moslem province into a Christian kingdom. He would associate his sons in the government; Peter especially was his alter ego in Valencia from about 1260, and was to succeed him as king of the several realms in 1276.⁽²¹⁾

The kingdom of Valencia contained almost 24,000 square kilometers. Of these, about 11,000 fall today within the modern province of Valencia; 6,600 into its northern neighbor, Castellón; and 6,000 into the southern province of Alicante -- the province of Valencia roughly equaling the other two. King James I could write of almost fifty Moslem "castles" in this kingdom -- and he is referring only to strongholds or forts which commanded respect from the professional warrior. Three hundred years later (1635), the Dutch geographer William Blaeu would describe this realm as: "about sixty leagues long, and seventeen wide at its widest point. It contains within its circuit four cities, sixty towns surrounded by walls, and a thousand villages. It is watered by thirty-five rivers, large and small, among which five are principal...It holds about 100,000 families." The section of Valencia [7] falling within the diocese of Valencia he calls "the heart and main section of the realm."⁽²²⁾

It is not easy to reconstruct the pattern of Christian settlement, nor to measure its pace. Yet it is relevant, as in episodes like tithe-support or the placing of parishes. Though the immigration came down in a steady trickle, there were several notable surges. These altered the map of settlement strikingly; they also dictated the direction of diocesan growth and affected relations with the subject Moslems. The earliest experiments in mass repopulation came in the north, at the beginning of the crusade: the Morella town and countryside in the mountains and the evacuated city of Burriana near the sea (1232-1233). Smaller settlements here were sporadically attempted; but the northern half of King James's conquest now and later stayed relatively inactive. One school of historians argues that the area remained almost solidly Moslem; another school marshals evidence to suggest that it was almost vacated by Moslems and relatively empty as well of Christians.

The second surge of immigration followed the collapse of the city of Valencia. This was the main area of repopulation in the kingdom. Christians took over the great city and much of the immediate countryside. From 1238 to 1244 a Christian enclave of multiple small holdings grew. A lesser scattering of settlers moved out to leaven the Moslem masses who dominated from the Guadalaviar to the Júcar. Above the capital city, Murviedro enjoyed a small repopulation of its own; but this region north to the Mijares tended to remain Moslem. Below the Júcar immigration perforce waited upon the success of the crusade and was at first feeble. Settlement elsewhere had apparently run its course.

The Moslem insurrection in 1248 proved a turning point. As a result of this there was some expulsion of the native population, with another surge of immigrants. They came in irregular waves during the next twenty years; a general adjustment of titles in 1270 marks the end of this movement. The new lands below the Júcar particularly benefitted. Towns like Alcira and Játiva received their colonies of Christians. Soon the mountains had little clutches of newcomers. A final stage of repopulation may be traced in the next decade, marked by the crisis of the second Moslem insurrection in 1275 and by the interest in settlement shown by the new king, Peter the Great. This last movement was brought to an untimely end by the reorientation of energies during the long War of the Sicilian Vespers. During all this time, what would be the total number of incoming Christians compared with the number of resident Moslems? Again it is difficult to attempt an answer. An assessment of Moslem population must await a solution of the controversy over the nature and scope of the several expulsions. An assessment of Christian numbers will be attempted in a later chapter on the parishes.

The social, legal, and economic frameworks of the new kingdom all are relevant to the study of her developing church. But they involve so much [8] research and discussion that space forbids elaboration; much of this background will be made apparent as the story unfolds. During the period of the first generation after the conquest, Valencia was still a Moslem land, peopled by Moslems, with a colonial overgrid of Christians. Christian strength principally centered in the coastal cities. These cities were, or were rapidly evolving into, quasi-republican entities typical of the western Mediterranean. They were forward-looking, trade-centered, bourgeois, with an emerging social stratification within their merchant society. The rural society, on the other hand, tended to reflect an older feudalism. Here were the small castles and the village settlements, with the network of personal services and interlacing personal homages. Here too was the dead weight of Moslem dominance on the landscape, sometimes with hardly a token Christian presence.

A highly progressive, lawyer's law had been contrived by the king for his conquest -- the Furs. This was contemned by the feudal powers, above all by the lords from Aragon proper. They schemed and resisted until they won exception for many of their holdings -- largely in the upper half or third of the new kingdom. Their ambition was to see their own law predominant in the Valencian kingdom. The Catalans, though the new law was in many ways more sympathetic to their traditions, also wanted to retain their own local laws, at least as codes of private law.

King James himself was the most important single landlord in the new kingdom. He held a vast number of estates and many important castles; from these he arranged a steady series of infeudations and grants, each usually of small extent. The towns and church were bound to him by gratitude and self-interest. His personal presence in the towns of Valencia was frequent throughout his life, and forceful. His lieutenants, including his son and heir, and his officials and bailiffs represented him in local administrative details.

All these elements were juxtaposed on a strip of territory narrow enough to insure close contact and some friction. And they rested lightly in the interstices of a solid Moslem society. To James and his people Valencia was to represent a borderland or frontier. It was a land of opportunity, of a chance to rise rapidly in status or in wealth, of liberal privileges granted to induce settlement, of fewer taxes or feudal impositions, of a stronger crown and therefore more hope of order, of a heterogeneous population broken in their several molds and ready to form a new society.

Vacant land was here for all, and Moslem-operated estates for the well-to-do, beyond the capacity of this generation to expand into and exploit. Irrigation works and clearings would keep the supply of land increasing. The frontier was ready to act as a safety valve against overcrowding; it served the ambitious, the restricted, the inventive, the acute, the restless, the younger son, the rural rebel, the entrepreneur. Ports and cities offered an unlimited [9] horizon of commercial possibilities. Rapidly expanding markets, employment and prosperity, fertile huertas, new townships, a fluid and urban-centered society which promised to overbalance the feudal elements and which sharpened the social struggle then under way, an increase of the use of parliamentary forms, a buoyancy, a sense of new beginnings, an impatience with older forms and abuses -- all these factors may be discerned in the composition of this frontier. A new environment would hold new habits and fresh viewpoints. A distinct "section," a regional entity with a certain unity, psychology, and traditions proper to itself, would evolve in the Aragonese realms.⁽²³⁾

The Church on the Frontier

The kingdom of Valencia was conquered. The presence of an army several thousands strong, and the standard of Aragon on the main tower of the capital, proclaimed as much. But minarets were ubiquitous in the land. League upon league of potentially rebel country stretched north from here to the settled Christian border. The overwhelming mass of the population remained Moslem, a people outmaneuvered rather than defeated, in possession of their arms, of many castles, of a military organization, and in contact with Africa.

The problems to be solved were formidable. A Christian people must be planted. Their culture must assert itself against this alien milieu, stamping it with a new personality; yet the number of Christians would be pitifully few for more than a generation. Much of the Moslem framework would have to be retained -- their divisions of the land; their custom-law for water distribution; their labor force; and their mosques, whether kept for native use or pressed into service as churches. Above all, there was the presence of "all the barbarian nations"⁽²⁴⁾ -- the entire Moslem communities, with their schools and worship and law courts and governing councils, with the muezzin chanting over the plains and valleys the praises of Allah.

Had this been modern times, the two cultures might have been able to mix, each enriching the other. But medieval cultures were intrinsically religious, with a stubborn exclusiveness. The civil and the social were inextricably confused into the ecclesiastical. One culture must dominate, one must be subordinate.⁽²⁵⁾ In a military sense this would not be too hard. The land could be garrisoned, the loyalty of key natives purchased, and rebellions met swiftly with the sword. In a social sense it would not have been difficult either, had there been masses of Christian population to send into the south. It was one of James's bitterest complaints that the people refused to come. Even in the last years of his life, the king was to complain to the folk of Barcelona that only thirty thousand households had been settled in the kingdom of Valencia, though he estimated that a hundred thousand [10] were necessary to guarantee its security.⁽²⁶⁾ More than in any other part of Spain, this was to remain the overriding problem of the conquerors. In an age of expansion and cheap land, King James had expanded too fast and too far.

Yet the land did change. Within half a century it was, though a frontier, a Christian frontier, consolidated, confident. The dissident majority lay dormant and contained, their culture no longer dominant but regressive. This change comprises many stories, from land distribution to the privileges lavished to attract commerce. In some of these elements of change the church was of direct, immediate importance. One recalls the crusade money which financed the expedition; the bishops and Orders of chivalry who marshaled their troops to win and then to hold the new realm; the castles managed by bishops and clerics and religious houses; the Cistercian wool-growing protected by the crown; the tracts of land brought under cultivation or managed with experienced skill by Templars or Hospitallers; and the clergy who furnished so many officials, from the land distributors or the royal judges to the ambassadors and the chancellor of the realm. In a society which had not yet developed independently many important institutions -- schools, hospitals, poor relief, proper taxation -- the church had either to substitute for or to foster these. And, in an age which felt its religion deeply, she had an indirect role in almost every department of life. It is not without significance that the king both restricted the energetic church in Valencia and showered it with land and privileges. For it was at once a potential rival and a chief bulwark of the crown.⁽²⁷⁾

Thus, clerics in Valencia could not hold public office, plead in court as lawyers,⁽²⁸⁾ or draw wills or any public paper.⁽²⁹⁾ The drift of land into clerical hands was opposed; no cleric could inherit, or buy, or receive as legacy or gift any Valencian immovable property from anyone, whether knight or citizen or another cleric. James was "aware that quite obviously a loss to our patrimony is the ultimate outcome, when our subjects transfer estates...to religious groups."⁽³⁰⁾ Clerics in the new kingdom had to bear their share of expense and labor in the maintenance and building of roads, bridges, walls, and irrigation canals.⁽³¹⁾ Their vassals had to pay full taxes and appear before the civil courts.⁽³²⁾ Yet James's archives are filled with generous grants to the Valencian church, legacies approved, vast purchases authorized, and exemptions and privileges of great variety conferred; it was this, as much as crusading, which won him fairly heady praise from popes like Gregory IX and Alexander IV. One hears it commonly stated today -- and the computation dates from medieval times -- that the king founded two thousand churches,⁽³³⁾ the bulk of them, of course, on the newly opened frontier.

The king of Aragon was, as his contemporaries called him, a "fortunate" man: James the Well Served.⁽³⁴⁾ Lying within reach of his energetic arms was a set of institutions --a set of tested patterns of action, often under the supervision [11] of corporate bodies of men -- which perfectly fitted many of his requirements. This complex of ecclesiastical institutions and customs, together with the church and clerics and laymen who directed its activities, comprised an important element among the forces at work in his frontier kingdom. The church functioned directly in a frontier capacity as secular lord, as entrepreneur, as garrison, as purveyor of almost all the public assistance or social security available in those times. In many other ways, some of them very indirect, the church reveals itself in Valencia as a frontier institution, reshaping its environment while at the same time painfully assembling and expanding itself.⁽³⁵⁾

In theory, a king might have provided for his frontier just by establishing a body of clergy. The conquered area could have been treated as a mission, and a more formal organization provided later. In thirteenth-century Valencia, however, a diocese was erected immediately. There was a complex of reasons for such action. The prestige of a prince increased with the multiplication of dioceses. His control of the region was more secure in that he forestalled any organizational activity by alien ecclesiastics like the primate of Toledo. A fully organized church provided a border area with an institutional framework more stable and resilient than any the crown could hope to erect for some time. Such an organization, once engaged with its environment and marshaling the energies of its people, could do more than anything else to impose the patterns of Christendom on the new region.

In 1247, at about the time of the Valencian ecclesiastical establishment, Pope Innocent IV set down the principal reason why a bishopric had been conceded, in 1172, to a beleaguered and unimportant salient of mountain territory just west of Valencia: "in this way not only were the consolations of religion provided for the faithful, but the assaults of the pagans could more easily be met."⁽³⁶⁾ In short, a diocese provided cohesion, direction, and moral force to a motley minority, in a way no other institution of that time could quite equal. To give depth and dimension to a new diocese, it was set wherever possible in a traditional center, where long ago Visigothic and Roman bishoprics had proudly stood for centuries. As each ancient see was liberated, it was formally restored, except when some practical or political consideration interfered to alter the pattern.

The ecclesiastical division of the kingdom of Valencia is somewhat awkward. The northerly and poorer part -- most of the present province of Castellón -- had been early detached in order to render more robust the well-established but financially ailing diocese of Tortosa. There were solid reasons for this. A diocese conterminous with the great kingdom of Valencia would have been unnaturally large and, in its organizational period, clumsy to handle. Tortosa, on the other hand, needed room for expansion and had already been promised such space in Valencia. Finally, King James badly needed for his arduous undertaking the financial and military help of this [12] neighbor of Valencia. The augmentation to the older diocese was considerable, the major part of the Tortosa see being now within the new realm so that it seemed only fair to give its bishop an equal vote with the bishop of Valencia in the parliament of the kingdom of Valencia. The dispositions and processes of the Tortosa diocese will be analogous to those of Valencia, but always as possessing the substantial advantage of a point d'appui in the homeland. The small diocese of Segorbe was something of a curiosity and can barely be said to have existed at this time except as an episode peripheral to the story of Valencia.

Emphasis will fall more heavily upon the diocese of Valencia, which held not only the bulk of the kingdom but also the heartland and the more purely frontier area. Its series of bishops, finances, and emerging diocesan mechanisms will serve as models for our investigation in detail. The relative poverty of documentation for the Valencian segment of the Tortosan diocese encourages this emphasis. Wherever it seems useful diocesan borders will be crossed, or ignored.⁽³⁷⁾

The Crusader Spirit

The Valencian crusaders walked with God. They held the remarkable conviction that their work, even in its details, was divinely approved. St. George appeared "with a great army of celestial levies" to lead the crusaders at the critical battle of Puig.⁽³⁸⁾ A painting of the Virgin miraculously came to light there. Mass linens, hurriedly put aside before a battle in the south, spontaneously tinted with the Blood of Christ.⁽³⁹⁾ Such incidents effected a religious exaltation; conversely, a religious exaltation had produced these incidents, for their extraordinary characteristics do not survive close examination. Shrines would keep their influence bright, however, and legend spread their fame.

When James coined a new money for Valencia, his avowed motive was precisely to change the pagan atmosphere to a Christian one "to reform" the new realm "for the better," "according to the Christian manner of life," so as to suppress "the contemptible ways of the infidel."⁽⁴⁰⁾ This concept recurs in other documents. At times an almost lyrical note breaks from a staid official message. The announcement by Gregory IX of the capture of Valencia called for universal joy now that the lost sheep was found, the drachma recovered, oppression lifted, and the people of God returned from Pharaoh's slavery; even the hard of heart must rise and rejoice.⁽⁴¹⁾ A number of James's documents during the period of reconstruction speak of the blood he shed, when wounded while wresting this land from paganism to Christianity.

The clearest examples of this spirit may be found in the years of actual crusade, first against Majorca and then against Valencia. The archdeacon [13] of Barcelona tells the king: "Sir! The noble matter which thou hast begun hath come to thee from God, and all that which is of God must be good and must come to some good end." No less directly the metropolitan of his realms assures James, on the eve of crusading: "your merit and your expansion are works of God"; the war "honors God and the whole heavenly court." His colleague the warrior bishop of Barcelona compares James to Christ transfigured on the Mount: "you are a son of Our Lord when you intend to hunt down the enemies of the faith and the cross."

The bishop later preaches to the army that he who dies in battle "will have paradise and glory eternal forever." James himself persuades the baron Entenza to remain at the perilous outpost of Puig near Valencia by offering him rewards on earth, if he survived, or paradise in the likely event of his death; he could not choose badly.⁽⁴²⁾

The barons, too, see the crusade as God's will, which "none can deflect or stop." James will bluntly warn God in a moment of danger: "not only I will lose by this, for You will lose more....And so, true God and powerful, You can guard me from this danger and see that my will is fulfilled, which is to serve You." When a knight asks to represent the crusading army before the walls of Valencia in single combat with the Moor champion, "I said to him that I marveled much how a man who was such a sinner as he, and of so bad a life, could request the joust." The king warns that: "I would be disgraced by him." Sure enough, out of favor with God, the knight is knocked off his horse!⁽⁴³⁾

When Valencia falls and the king sees his standard being run up on the battlements: "I dismounted from my horse and turned towards the east [Jerusalem], and wept with my eyes, and kissed the ground, on account of the favor which God had done for me." He does the same at the taking of Villena: "I dismounted from my horse and thanked our lord God for the favor He had done me; and I knelt down weeping and kissing the ground." After the victory of Puig, just before the investment of Valencia: "I took myself to the cathedral, before Jesus of Nazareth, and caused a Te Deum to be sung by the bishop and the canons." He is not surprised when he hears that a knight in white armor had led the van into the breach at Majorca. We should believe "that it was St. George." Who else, indeed?⁽⁴⁴⁾

Other scenes sustain the same theme: the viscount of Béarn, leader of the left flank at the final charge into Majorca city, who first, "kneeling and weeping, received his Creator, the tears falling down his face." Or the saintly Dominican theologian Michael of Fabra who, between hearing confessions, urged on the tunneling of the mines. Or the ranks of the army swearing on the Gospels not to turn back, not to stop unless fatally wounded, not to help the fallen. Then the usual Mass at dawn, the religious harangue by the king, and Moncada's men moving to the attack with "great joy and on fire with the love of God, resolved to die for Him if haply need should be."⁽⁴⁵⁾

[14] This spirit would not stop James and his knights (nor could they have thought of any reason why it should) from so directing their catapults at the siege of Cullera in the kingdom of Valencia, that when a stone missed the castle it would fall short near a place "which was completely filled with women, children, and cattle." The appeal of religion could miscarry on occasion too, when self-interest was not a concomitant, as when James at a parliament in Zaragoza introduced a Franciscan who had learned from an angel that God chose James to defend Spain. "Visions," the nobles judiciously replied, "were good," but they would have to think it over.⁽⁴⁶⁾

James can confuse scripture with Ovid (and misquote the poet) and himself with Providence. "It will be as God will wish," some refractory nobles once told James stiffly; to which he snapped, "God wants just what I am telling you."⁽⁴⁷⁾ He very much needed the chaplain whom he kept on hand during campaigns, "lest I was forgetting any"⁽⁴⁸⁾ He cut out the tongue of the good bishop of Gerona, and habitually lapsed into long-term adulteries even as an old man. King James was piqued that the pope should bombard the welkin with dispraise of these genial failings.⁽⁴⁹⁾ All this is characteristic of his time, when men were stirred by a tangle of violent passions and splendid aspirations so that their actions tragic or triumphant often carried with them, like a court jester, a measure of absurdity.

But, when James writes, in a letter to Peter Nolasco, that "I will not raise the siege of Majorca until the Virgin's praise be sung in it, to that have I sworn," and when he makes a formal vow "to God and this altar which is in honor of His mother," never to return north of Tortosa until he has conquered the city of Valencia, and when he keeps a precampaign "vigil at the church of the Holy Cross of Barcelona in the company of all the knights and of many others with many candles and tapers and a great burning of lights" all through the night, the spirit is recognizably the same as that found in a more formal and diffused shape throughout the documents.⁽⁵⁰⁾

That spirit is revealed in a number of incidents during the reconstruction of Valencia. It is in this spirit that James writes to the Dominicans of Valencia (1239), representing the military action as the first phase of a process, of which the assiduous promotion of religious institutions is to be the continuation.⁽⁵¹⁾ It is in the same spirit that he lauds the immigrants coming to settle the Burriana area, as people "who daily strive to exalt the Christian name."⁽⁵²⁾ It is in this "fervent" spirit that he promotes education in Valencia.⁽⁵³⁾ In this spirit Pope Gregory IX had offered indulgences in 1230 to volunteers who might come and settle in any of the lands which King James should conquer -- including therefore Valencia, on which the king had already made one attempt.⁽⁵⁴⁾ In this spirit in 1233 Gregory spoke of the land of Majorca as having been "converted to the Catholic faith" by the conquest; he offered special indulgences to those who would populate it for its defense and its [15] cleansing.⁽⁵⁵⁾ It was not enough for a Christian king and his people to have reconquered Moslem territory; the area must subsequently "be restored and assimilated to Christian worship" by them.⁽⁵⁶⁾

The custodian of this naïve but powerful spirit was the church of Valencia. Perhaps this subtle, pervading office was her most important contribution to the reorganization of the realm.

1. "Magna Valentia" was a contemporary term. One finds it in sources as different as Matthew Paris and the statutes of the Cistercian Order. See Matthew Paris, Historia anglorum sive ut vulgo dicitur historia minor, ed. F. Madden, Rerum brittanicarum medii aevi scriptores, 3 vols. (London, 1866-1869), II, 428, an. 1239, and II, 280, 317. See also his Chronica maiora, ed. H. R. Luard, same series, 7 vols. (London, 1872-1883), III, 517, 639, and V, 277. Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. J. M. Canivez, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933-1941), III, 65, an. 1268, no. 44.

2. Arch. Nat. Paris, J: 589, Aragon II, no. 4 (April 23, 1241): "tota terra Regis Aragonum et suorum a Rodano usque Valenciam, et totum regnum Valencie et totum regnum Maioricarum." So writes the king in signing an alliance with the count of Toulouse, giving prominence to the conquest then going forward. The same set contains another copy (no. 3) on display in the archival museum. See, too, the Layettes du trésor des chartes, séries inventaires et documents, ed. A. Teulet, 5 vols. (Paris, 1863-1909), II, 445-446. King James himself describes a similar triumphal entry which he made into the fallen city of Murcia, from his camp to the main mosque, in his memoirs or Llibre dels feyts, ch. 450 (see below, bibliographical essay, for editions and validity; the Casacuberta edition is used here). King James's words on the Valencian entry are in ch. 284. The Catalan historian Desclot who wrote at the end of the thirteenth century says simply that the king entered Valencia with all his host. That the Valencian streets were narrow and tortuous is known from municipal legislation of the fourteenth century ("aquesta ciutat fo edificada per mòros a lur costum, estreta e meçquina"). The dates of conquest and of formal entry were recorded in the Repartimiento de Valencia, ed. P. de Bofarull y Mascaró, in Colección de documentos inéditos del archivo general de la corona de Aragón, 41 vols. (Barcelona, 1847-1910), XI, 221-222. A precious addition to help reconstruct these times is the recently published account by a Moslem eyewitness of the formal surrender ceremony; see "Un traité inédit d'Ibn al-Abbâr à tendance chiite," ed. A. Ghedira, Al-Andalus, XXII (1957), 33n. The capitulation of Valencia may conveniently be found in the Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, ed. Martín Fernández Navarrete, M. Salvá, et alii,112 vols. (Madrid, 1842-1896), XVIII, 84-86, doc. 26. It is just possible that the city was already partly filled with Christians by the time of the formal entry. There is a dubious but colorful account of the entry in the early historian of Valencia, Gaspar Escolano, Décadas de la historia de la insigne y coronada ciudad y reino de Valencia, ed. J. B. Perales, 3 vols. (Valencia: [1610-1611] 1878-1880), II, lib. VII, ch. 261; and another in Pedro Antonio Beuter, Primera parte de la coronica general de toda España y especialmente del reyno de Valencia (Valencia, 1604), pp. 215-216.

3. "Lamentons-nous sur ce malheur immense," the words of an eyewitness to the subjugation of Valencia, Abu al-Mutarrif Ibn 'Amîra; see in al-Himyarî, La péninsule ibérique au moyen-âge d'après le Kitâb ar-Rawd al-mi'târ..., ed.-tr. E. Lévi-Provençal (Leiden, 1938), p. 64. "Divulgata est per universum orbem tante acquisicio civitatis," says the Latin adaptation of King James's autobiography rendered by Peter (Pere) Marsili in 1313 (MSS Bibl. Univ. Barcelona, lib. III, c. 42).

4. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 19 (Gregory IX), fol. 68r, ep. 363 (Jan. 8, 1239). An original is also in Arch. Crown, Bulas, legajo VI (Gregory IX), no. 19 (same date). Only a notice of this document is given in Les registres de Gregoire IX, recueil des bulles de ce pape, publiées ou analysées d'après les manuscrits originaux du Vatican, ed. Lucien Auvray, 3 vols. (Paris, 1896-1955), II, no. 4,703.

5. Jerónimo Zurita, Anales de la corona de Aragón, 7 vols. (Zaragoza, 1610-1621), I, lib. III, C. 32. Envoys from Italy arrived in June of 1238, during the siege of Valencia, and signed a treaty with King James; see Charles de Tourtoulon, Don Jaime I el Conquistador, rey de Aragón, conde de Barcelona, señor de Montpeller, según las crónicas y documentos inéditos, 2nd ed., revised in translation, tr. Teodoro Llorente, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1874), I, 310.

6. Lluís Nicolau y d'Olwer, "Jaume I y los trovadors provensals," Congrés d'història de la corona d'Aragó, dedicat al rey En Jaume I y a la seua época, 2 vols. but consecutive pagination to form one vol. (Barcelona, 1909-1913), pp. 389-390, 392, 395. Bertran de Born the younger wrote his "Guerr' e pantais vei et afan" as Valencia was about to fall, urging James to abandon Valencia and march to southern France. Bernat de Rovenhach rebuked James in 1241. The troubadours painted James as a traitor and a laggard knight who left his father unavenged and allowed his rich heritage in Languedoc to slip from him. Their outcry was renewed at the time of the treaty of Corbeil.

7. Chronica maiora, III, 517: "rex Christianissimus, magnificus et in armis strenuissimus, dominus rex Arragonum, cum suis amicis adeo urbem magnam Valentiam guerra cruentissima aggravavit ut undique arctata...est compulsa."

8. José Sanchís y Sivera, La catedral de Valencia, guía histórica y artística (Valencia, 1909), p. 372, with document given in note; "ecclesiam vestram sacro volentes exenio decorare vobis unam de spinis sacrosancte corone domini nostri Christi per datores presentium in signum dilectionis transmittimus specialis." The date is March 1256, an understandable procrastination of congratulations, given the previous tensions between Aragon and France; the thorn is still at the cathedral. The putative crown came into Louis' hands, from Constantinople via the Venetians, only in 1239; he built for it that gem of Gothic architecture, the Sainte Chapelle.

9. Francisco Carreras y Candi, "La creuada a terra santa," Congrés I, p. 106.

10. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 457. King James's envoys to the khan returned to Valencia with two influential Tartars and an offer of alliance against the Moors (ibid., chs. 457, 475, 481). Cf. Zurita, Anales, I, lib. III, c. 71.

11. According to the junior contemporary Raymond Muntaner (Crònica catalana, ed. Antonio de Bofarull y Brocá [Barcelona, 1860], ch. 13).

12. Arch. Nat. Paris, J: 587, Aragon I, no. II (July 6, 1262); Layettes, IV, 42-43.

13. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 21 (Innocent IV), fol. 213V (July l0, 1245): "grandi gaudio exultavit ecclesia cum Regnum Valentie de sarracenorum manibus fuit ereptum." Also published in Les registres d'Innocent IV publiées ou analysées d'aprés les manuscrits originaux du Vatican, ed. Elie Berger, 4 vols. (Paris, 1884-1921), I, no. 1,375.

14. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 129; Sancho of Orta (Duerta) is speaking to James.

15. Ibid., ch. 127; Blasco (Blaise) of Alagón is speaking to the king. The early ambitions and campaigns by the Aragonese kings in Valencia have been carefully studied by Miguel Gual Camarena, "Precedentes de la reconquista valenciana," Estudios medievales, I (1952), 167-246; a register of the pertinent documents has been drafted and appended (pp. 213-246).

16. Kitâb ar-Rawd, pp. 59-69.

17. The Moslem background is delineated by Isidro de las Cagigas in his Los mudéjares, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1948-1949), II, 331-370. A brief historical background is furnished by E. Lévi-Provençal in his "Valencia," in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 4 vols. and supplement (Leiden, 1913-1938), IV, 1,070-1,071. See too the biography of the Moslem ruler of Valencia, Sîd Abû Sa^cîd, by Roque Chabás y Lloréns, "Çeid Abu Çeid," El archivo, V (1891), 143-166, 288-304, 362-376.

18. Brief accounts of the crusade may be found in Ferran Soldevila, História de Catalunya, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1934-1935), I, 225 ff.; in the revised edition (3 vols., 1962), I, 279 ff., 290 ff.; F. Valls-Taberner and F. Soldevila, Historia de Cataluña, tr. Nuria Sales, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1955-1957), in Obras selectas de Fernando Valls-Taberner, ed. R. d'Abadal and J. E. Martínez Ferrando, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1952-1957), III (double volume), I, 159-160. R. B. Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New, 4 vols. (New York, 1918-1936), I, 293 ff.; H. J. Chaytor, A History of Aragon and Catalonia (London, 1933), ch. 6; Ferdinand Lot, L'art militaire et les armées au moyen âge en Europe et dans le proche orient, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), II, 302-307; Teodoro Llorente, Valencia, España, sus monumentos y artes, naturaleza y historia, nos. 24 and 25, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1887-1889), I, chs. 3 and 4; Vicente Boix, Historia de la ciudad y reino de Valencia, 3 vols. (Valencia, 1845-1847), I, 118 ff. and 505 ff. passim; F. Moscardó Cervera, Breu compendi de la història del regne de València (Valencia, 1953), ch. 3. See too the biographies of the king (below, note 21). Useful for this place and time is the essay by José M. Font y Rius, "La reconquista y repoblación de Levante y Murcia," in J. M. Font y Rius et alii, La reconquista española y la repoblación del país (Zaragoza, 1951), pp. 85-126; and Santiago Sobrequés Vidal, "Patriciado urbano," part I of Vol. II in Historia social y económica de España y América (4 vols. to date, Barcelona, 1957-    ), ch. 1, with a full account of the repopulating.

19. Percy Schramm draws a parallel between modern Belgium and the two peoples combining in conquered Valencia: "so stösst man auf das moderne Belgien, dieses halb französisch-wallonische, halb flämisch-niederländische Land, dessen Bevölkerung heute unzweifelhaft zu einer Nation zusammengewachsen ist" ("Der König von Aragon, seine Stellung im Staatsrecht (1276-1410)," Historisches Jahrbuch, LXXIV [1955], 106). See too J. Lee Shneidman, "Government in the Thirteenth Century Christian Kingdom of Valencia," Hispania, XVIII (1958), 181-189. The "Cazorla" treaty was signed not at Cazorla but at an insignificant frontier post Gazala, Cacala, or Cazolo (González, Alfonso VIII, I, 814n.).

20. Crónica de San Juan de la Peña; in the edition by Tomás Ximénez de Embún, Historia de la corona de Aragón (la más antigüa de que se tiene noticia) conocida generalmente con el nombre de crónica de San Juan de la Peña (Zaragoza, 1876), p. 159. See too the edition of the Latin document only, by Antonio Ubieto Arteta (Valencia, 1961).

21. Standard biographies include Tourtoulon's Jaime el Conquistador; E. D. Swift, The Life and Times of James the First, the Conqueror, King of Aragon, Valencia and Majorca, Count of Barcelona and Urgel, Lord of Montpellier (Oxford, 1894); C. R. Beazley, James the First of Aragon (Oxford, 1890); Ferran Soldevila, Els grans reis del segle xiii, Jaume I, Pere el Gran (Barcelona, 1955); and the latter's Vida de Jaume I el Conqueridor (Barcelona, 1958). Soldevila has an ampler life of Peter in progress, Pere el Gran, Institut d'estudis catalans, memòries de la secció històrico-arqueològica, nos. 11, 13, 16, 22, two parts in 4 vols. to date (Barcelona, 1950-[1962]).

22. This is quoted from the French text attached to his map; the map in my possession has been detached from the book, and bibliographical detail is lacking except for date. Willem Janszoon Blaeu lived from 1571 to 1638. The kingdom of Valencia was not yet at its full extent in King James's day; these figures take it at its fullest. Sobrequés Vidal has reckoned the Valencian and Balearic conquests as increasing James's realms from 85,000 to 196,000 square kilometers, Majorca accounting for 3,600 of these; the Alicantine lands acquired by James II in 1304 added some 6,500 square kilometers more ("Patriciado urbano," pp. 8-12).

23. The frontier kingdom represented an opportunity for the king and a counter-weight to reactionary feudal forces. As Schranim cogently remarks, "Jaime I hatte gewusst was er tat; denn im Neuland war seine Stellung wesentlich starker als in dem traditionsgesättigten Aragon" ("Der König von Aragon," p. 106).

24. Gesta comitum barcinonensium (written ca. 1290); in the Marca hispanica sive limes hispanicus, hoc est, geographica et historica descriptio Cataloniae, Ruscinonis et circumiacentium populorum, ed. Pierre de Marca and E. Baluze (Paris, 1688), col. 555; and in a modern edition, eds. L. Barrau Dihigo and J. Massó y Torrents, Cróniques catalanes, no. 2 (Barcelona, 1925), p. 58: "omnes nationes barbaras dicti regni."

25. This indivisible union of church and society, and its exclusiveness, is the theme of Clement IV in his letter of 1266 to King James urging that he drive the Moors from his realms like poison from one's body. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 29a (Clement IV), vols. 10r-11v, ep. 18 (n.d., an. 1266); only a notice is supplied in Les registres de Clement IV (1265-1268), recueil des bulles de ce pape, ed. E. Jordan (Paris, 1893-1945), no. 848. A version is given by Jerónimo Zurita, Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum ab initiis regni ad annum MCDX (Zaragoza, 1578), lib. II, pp. 145-146.

26. Colección diplomática de Jaime I, el Conquistador, ed. A. Huici, 3 vols. (Valencia, 1916-1922), doc. 1,341 (Nov. 26, 1270): "e no trobarem que en tot lo regne de Valencia age poblat de Christians oltra XXX milia homens e per zo quar nos havem vist qu'el regne no ha son compliment d'omens ni de gent, volemlo y fer; car segons semblanza nostra ben deuria aver cen millia Christians en el regne de Valencia." These are probably family heads or males -- the total population would be higher (see Chapter V, notes 54, 55, 165-168, with text). Numbers of documents in the royal archives complain about non-possession of grants, and of nonresidence. The Repartimiento has any number of revocations of grant "quia ad diem non fuit assignatam" -- even for monasteries (pp. 270, 274). Not including obvious repetitions, and counting as single units whole groups, there still were fifty revocations due to failure to claim for the year 1240 alone; this is a third of all the grants recorded for that year. Similar difficulties in populating recovered lands may be seen in the case of a frontier bishop in Portugal at this time, who feared a return of Moorish power because no one could be induced to settle the newly taken land or to man its castles (Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 18, Gregory IX, fol. 305r, ep. 154, July 5, 1237; only a notice of this document is given in Auvray, Registres, II, no. 3,730).

27. James gave this counsel to the king of Castile, that if he could not keep the favor of all parties he should choose to have on his side "the church and the people of the cities" as being both more loyal and more powerful than the knights; "for with these two he would destroy the others" (Llibre dels feyts, ch. 498).

28. Fori regni Valentiae (Monzón, 1548), lib. II, rub. VI, c. 23; this is the Romanized law code given by James I to Valencia and hereafter cited under its Catalan title Furs. Here the resistance was from towns and nobles who disliked the influence of Roman law, as we see in the Llibre dels feyts. Even Latin was forbidden in courts, as well as canon and civil lawyers; see the code of municipal privileges Aureum opus regalium priuilegiorum ciuitatis et regni Valentie cum historia cristianissimi regis Jacobi ipsius primi conquistatoris, ed. Luis de Alanya (Valencia, 1515), doc. 65, fol. 19r, v, and doc. 62, fol. 13r, v.

29. Furs, lib. IX, rub. XIX, c. 7. Custom law kept at least some pastors as notaries; see Chapter V, note 8. Also an exception might be made, thus underlining the general prohibition; in 1261 the Valencian monastery of Benifasá was given a privilege by which the abbot could appoint a monk as notary for wills and for monastery business "qui faciat...sua propria manu omnia instrumenta" (Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón: Benifasá, carp. 423, June 9, 1261). Cf. the source cited in Joaquín Miret y Sans, Itinerari de Jaume I "el Conqueridor" (Barcelona, 1918), p. 559n.

30. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,038 bis (Aug. 28, 1238): "cognoscentes quod ad exheredacionem nostram et nostrorum evidentissime...vertitur, quando nostri subditi hereditates...ad milites transferunt vel ad loca religiosa." See also Furs (lib. IV, rub. XIX, c. 8), forbidding alienation to clerics. The Repartimiento has a place and contract ("locum et vocem") given to another, because the owner had sold them to clerics ("eo quia vendidit eas clericis," p. 483). In the contemporary reorganizing of Seville, the cathedral was exempted from a similar prohibition against alienation to the church (Repartimiento de Sevilla, estudio y edición, ed. Julio González, 2 vols. [Madrid, 1951], I, 328). The loss of taxes and feudal services alone in such cases could be substantial.

31. Aureum opus, doc. 38, fol. 12v (June 19, 1251).

32. Furs, lib. III, rub. V. c. 8.

33. The figure "bismille ecclesias in terris quas abstulit sarracenis" is found for instance in the mid-fourteenth-century Crónica de San Juan de la Peña (Ximénez ed., p. 155; Ubieto ed., p. 152); of the churches in the Valencian kingdom it says: "et ilico hedificavit ecclesiam cathedralem et alias multas ecclesias in dictis civitate et regno," plus the monasteries and friaries. Sanchís Sivera repeats the 2,000 number, and tries to reduce its improbability somewhat by speaking of it as implying also monasteries and hospitals (La diócesis valentina, estudios históricos [Valencia, 1920], and La diócesis valentina, nuevos estudios históricos [Valencia, 1921], cited in this book as a single work, II, 137). Even allowing half of this number to the Balearics and fringe conquests, this would mean an average of one church -- counting all religious establishments -- for every thirty souls or seven households in the realm, by the end of his life, though of course he was also building for the future. The figure, which is often cited today, must be taken as quite exaggerated though with a good core of truth: while James was king, churches multiplied over the conquered area in bewildering number. At any rate, royal foundations seem to have consisted largely in assigning to Christians the Moslem mosque of a locality and its supporting properties. It is interesting to note that the mere hasty redecorating of a captured mosque leads King James to speak proudly of "l'esglesia que haviem hedificada" (Llibre dels feyts, ch. 451). Still, even a sketchy founding was expensive, involving the gift of furnishings and regular revenues. Shortly after Valencia's conquest a legal document uses the same terminology: "contulit ecclesias in diocesi Valentie constructas Archiepiscopo Terraconensi" (Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 232; on this citation see Chapter XIV, note 1).

34. "Jacobus fortunatus," his contemporaries called him (Crónica de San Juan de la Peña, Ximénez ed., p. 145; Ubieto ed., p. 143; Martín de Viciana, Tercera parte de la crónica de Valencia [Valencia, 1882], p. 66); they applied it in a military and more passive sense.

35. The history of the medieval church of Valencia has yet to be written. Studies have appeared on isolated aspects -- the labors of Teixidor, Chabás, Sanchís Sivera, and Olmos Canalda have been noted in the preface. Only two general histories of the church in Spain have been published, both of them necessarily brief for this period and region, and both now badly dated: Pius Bonifacius Gams, Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, 3 vols. in 5 (Graz, [1863-1879] 1956), and Vicente de la Fuente, Historia eclesiástica de España, 2nd ed. revised, 6 vols. (Madrid, 1873-1875). The general relations between church and state in this part of Spain, and incidental background, are in Johannes Vincke, Staat und Kirche in Katalonien und Aragon während des Mittelalters, Spanische Forschungen der Görresgesellschaft, series 2, no. 1 (Münster, 1931).

36. César Tomás Laguía, "La erección de la diócesis de Albarracín," Teruel, X (1953), 217: "ex hoc non solum fidelibus poterant spiritualia commoda provenire sed etiam paganorum incursibus facilius obviari."

37. Eventually eight dioceses would be represented by at least a foothold, especially as the kingdom's limits were altered (Valencia, Cartagena, Orihuela, Zaragoza, Tortosa, Teruel, Segorbe, Cuenca); but the bulk of the realm would remain the diocese of Valencia. See the map in F. Carreras y Candi, Geografía general del reino de Valencia, 5 vols. (Barcelona, 1920-1927), general volume on realm, facing p. 120. The diocese of Valencia later became an archdiocese. At least three of its bishops are not likely to be forgotten: the Borgia pope, Alexander VI; the "good" Borgia pope, Callistus III; and the rascally Cesare Borgia himself; Borgias occupied the episcopal throne here without a break from 1429 to 1512.

38. Crónica de San Juan de la Peña (Ximénez ed., p. 157; Ubieto ed., p. 154): "beatus Georgius cum magno exercitu militiae coelestis apparuit, cuius auxilio Christiani nullo eorum in bello mortuo obtinere triumphum." See Zurita, Anales, I, lib. III, C. 27. See too the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, ed.-tr. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger, 2 vols. (London, 1941), I, 237-238.

39. The oldest account of the miracle of the corporals, taken in 1340 from elders under oath, is transcribed by Rafael Esteban Abad, together with commentary and bibliography in his Estudio histórico-político sobre la ciudad y comunidad de Daroca (Teruel, 1959), pp. 74-77. Sanchís Sivera has a long discussion in his Diócesis valentina, II, 171-189, with bibliographical notes.

40. Aureum opus, doc. 23, fols. 10v-11r (May 8, 1247): "in statum debitum iuxta Christianorum morem in melius reformare, ut abiectis vetustatibus et moribus perfidorum...monetam cudi fecimus." It is to bear the sign "salutifere crucis." James had other motives, also, and he would mint Arabic coins to promote trade here; the document is nevertheless instructive.

41. Document cited in note 4.

42. Bernat Desciot, Crònica, ed. M. Coil y Alentorn, 4 vols. (Barcelona, 1949-1950); my translations are from F. L. Critchlow's Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III of Aragon, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1928-1934); I, ch. 28 on the archdeacon. Llibre dels feyts of King James, chs. 53, 62, 207 for the others. William of Aguiló offers the same sort of argument as the king's in Desclot, ch. 49.

43. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 47 (first quote, Majorca crusade), 57, 273. In ch. 430, before a battle in the kingdom of Valencia, James tells his barons that "battles are won quickly, and God gives them to those to whom He wants to give them." But one notes that the king in his campaign leaves no detail of supply, plan, or reconnaissance to chance. Américo Castro has some interesting comments on this mentality and its Moslem coloring (The Structure of Spanish History, tr. E. L. King [Princeton, N.J., 1954]; e.g. p. 219). One fears, however, that he is to some extent a victim of the fallacy of the single source: cf. the review of Kurt Georg Cram's Judicium belli, in the American Historical Review, LXI (1956), 1,005. To James, "faith without works is worth nothing" (Llibre dels feyts, ch. 1); he harps upon this Pauline idea of good works here and elsewhere (e.g. again in ch. 48), making it clear from the context that warfare against the enemies of the people of God is what he has in mind. The wider background to this providentialist spirit here is studied by Francisco Elías de Tejada in his Las doctrinas políticas en la Cataluña medieval (Barcelona, 1950), e.g. pp. 48-51.

44. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 282, 443, 219, 84. James says St. George commonly appeared on such occasions. To the Castilians, who saw a similar knight on a white horse at the battle of Jérez against Ibn Hûd, the figure was St. James (see Lot, L'art militaire, II, 294n.). On St. George as patron of Catalonia see the small book of Ramón d'Alós-Moner, Sant Jordi, patró de Catalunya, in Colecció Sant Jordi, series 3, no.1 (Barcelona, 1922).

45. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 63, 69, 81, 83-84; Desclot, Crónica, ch. 36 (Moncada).

46. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 194, 389-390. The friar was a Navarrese and told James it had "weighed heavily" upon him that God should choose a foreign king, i.e. an Aragonese. Unimpressed by supernal evidences, the knights quarreled with the king and rode out of town in a body to form a league against him.

47. Ibid., chs. 388, 460.

48. Ibid., ch. 224 (at Almenara in Valencia). James takes chaplains with him on his campaigns. His field chapel appears at the conquest of Murcia, for instance, where he uses the furnishings in the mosque of the conquered city (ch. 450). He speaks of "all the clergy" attached to the army (ch. 450). His men commonly confess and receive Communion before battle, e.g. at the siege of Majorca, the battle of Puig in Valencia, at Almenara, etc.; see also Desclot, Crònica, chs. 5, 36, 49, etc. This argues a good supply of priests, as distinguished from other clergy, with the armies. James's chaplains Peter and Matthew received land grants in the Repartimiento, p. 152.

49. These were not the only failings which raised the popes' ire; see José M. Pou y Martí, "Conflictos entre el pontificado y los reyes de Aragón en el siglo xiii," in the symposium Sacerdozio e regno da Gregorio VII a Bonifacio VIII, Miscellanea historiae pontificiae, vol. 18 (Rome, 1954), pp. 139-160.

50. Appended by Pascual de Gayangos to the English translation by John Forster of the Llibre dels feyts (The Chronicle of James I, King of Aragon, Surnamed the Conqueror..., 2 vols. [London: 1883], I, 150n.). (On Nolasco and his documentation cf. below, Chapter XLII, note 84 and text.) Llibre, ch. 237 (vow); Desclot, Crònica, ch. 30 (vigil, before Majorca crusade).

51. Josef Teixidor, Antigüedades de Valencia, observaciones críticas donde con instrumentos auténticos se destruye lo fabuloso dejando en su debida estabilidad lo bien fundado [1767], ed. Roque Chabás, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1895), II, 10, doc. of April 11, 1239 with special reference to the Dominicans.

52. El "Repartiment" de Burriana y Villarreal, ed. Ramón de María (Valencia, 1935), p. 41, carta puebla of Burriana (Jan. I, 1235): "qui intendunt quotidie ad exaltacionem nominis Christiani."

53. Document cited in note 13 (July 10, 1245).

54. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 15 (Gregory IX), fol. 43v (Dec. 23, 1230): the same "veniam peccatorum quam haberent si proficiscerentur in subsidium terre sancte." Auvray, Registres, I, no. 524.

55. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 17 (Gregory IX), fol. 56r, v (June 11, 1233). Auvray, Registres, I, no. 1,401. The concept of colonization as a species of crusade seems not to have been studied, even in the otherwise complete monograph of Michel Villey, La croisade, essai sur la formation d'une théorie juridique (L'église et l'état au moyen age, no. 6 [Paris, 1942]).

56. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Ords. Milits., Montesa, R18 (Sept. 6, 1210): "multa loca a Sarracenis possessa et idolis dicata, Dei sacrificiis et christiano cultui refferantur et reformentur." The father of King James is giving to the Hospitallers, for this purpose, a Burriana grant to encourage its conquest and settlement. The crusade spirit in its wider Spanish setting is a principal theme of J. Goñi Gaztambide's Historia de la bula de la cruzada en España, Victoniensia no. 4 (Vitoria, 1958), esp. chs. 2, 3; see too on this period chs. 6, 7.