[197] Less colorful than their military brethren, the other religious Orders on the Valencian scene nevertheless stand out by their diversity and multiplicity. Dominican, Franciscan, Mercedarian, Trinitarian, Cistercian, Carthusian, Augustinian, Antonine, Friar of the Sack, and a fair variety of nuns -- each had a post, each a special work. And behind each name stands a small army of dedicated people, some of them gifted beyond the ordinary.

Theirs was by and large a life of dim routine: quietly praying in a cell or chanting the divine praises in the chilly night, tending the sick or serving the poor, arranging the ransom of captives, carrying the university culture to dull rural centers, totting up accounts for a Cistercian sheep grange, or simply being on call with the sacraments, with counsel, with moral example. But it was precisely this form of routine which helped to carry, into an environment framed by minarets, a strong accent of the homeland and a net of social services. These settlers needed this, as they demonstrated through substantial gratitude in wills.

This is not to say that these religious were faultless or uniformly edifying. Their age was a savage and litigious one; they came from the same kind of families and were fashioned by the same kinds of experience as were their fellows. There is little doubt that the visitation records of the diocese, had they survived, would betray much the same defects and even crimes as we read of in other countries. Indeed there would probably be an extra share of harrowing tales here in the warmer clime of the troubadour on a half-organized frontier. But there is enough evidence to suggest that these were in general men ennobled by their respective institutions, and in a measure ennobling their environment.

Function on the Frontier

It is only right that the Mendicants come first. Here as much as anywhere King James was well served by his institutions. Franciscans and Dominicans of the first generation, contemporaries and junior contemporaries of the great Francis and Dominic themselves, came along on the Valencian crusade. Before the city fell they had planned their establishments and secured their charters.

Probably at no time between Benedict and Loyola did a monastic or [198] ascetic movement serve Western society during a religious crisis with such singular aptitude as did the friars. They were to leave the impact of their corporate personalities both on Christendom's heart and head: on contemporary attitudes, affections, images, and thought patterns. To them was owed the birth of the modern pulpit especially and the rise of a new form of piety and art. As a socio-political force they oriented or influenced the energies of Europe at many levels, from the intellectual and artistic to the economic and institutional.

The importance of the friars in the urban centers of the western Mediterranean needs no development here, beyond recalling that they began in the age of Albigensians and Waldensians, of an uninstructed laity who rarely heard a sermon and of a clergy not much better trained, of turmoil and economic dislocation and vague aspirations in the cities. More than any other religious group the Mendicants represented modernity and the forward trends of the thirteenth century. Their city orientation, as opposed to the feudal spirit and forms of the older monasticism, undoubtedly explains some of the attraction they had for King James.

The city and countryside of Valencia were ideally circumstanced for rapid economic advance, producing the consequent inequality of class and the teeming poor who figure in early legacies and legislation of Valencia. Notorious too was the high proportion of undesirables and troublemakers to be found with crusading troops and settlers at this time, since the penalty for a number of antisocial activities was precisely to go on crusade. Convicted murderers or church-burners could have their punishments commuted to crusading; and the rebels of Narbonne in Languedoc were sentenced to crusade at the siege of Valencia for a year, with an additional four years of fighting in the Holy Land.⁽¹⁾

These and other factors of instability were operative in Valencian society. In countering them King James was shrewd enough to assess his Mendicant allies at their worth. The chronicle of San Juan de la Peña, very popular some eighty years after his death, even has him laying the cornerstones "propria manu" for each of the Franciscan and Dominican houses built in the kingdom during his reign.⁽²⁾ True or not, the claim does reflect his strong sympathy for these Orders. The local clergy appraised them too, as rivals for public affection and for affection's barometer, revenues; a diocesan synod at Valencia had to admonish the local clergy to receive them with honor.

The Franciscans

Just before the Valencian crusade, two Italian Gray Friars appeared in the realms of King James, a priest and a lay brother named John of Perugia and Peter of Sassoferrato (near Ancona). After a stay at Teruel, they had descended into the kingdom of Valencia to preach to the Moslems (1228 ?), [199] and to be publicly executed in the capital city for their pains.⁽³⁾ Thus the Franciscan Order is closely connected with the origins of neo-Christian Valencia, since it provided its first martyrs.

The Franciscan movement was contemporary with the progress of the Valencian crusade. St. Francis of Assisi composed his celebrated Testament in the year after King James failed at the first siege of a Valencian city -- Peñíscola in 1225. The companion of St. Francis, Brother Elias (d. 1253), headed the Order from the beginning of the crusade until well after the fall of Valencia. By 1240 the young Order was already able to divide its Spanish houses into three provinces, one being the realms of Aragon. Valencia was soon to become one of the six custodies making up this province. St. Francis himself seems to have been at Barcelona in 1214; and a Franciscan house was there before 1225, though its first church was not built until 1297. In 1226 the friars were established at Gerona, Lérida, and Balaguer; in 1239 at Valencia; in 1244 at Cervera; and in 1248 at Tarragona.⁽⁴⁾

Within a hundred years there would be no less than forty friaries in the realms of Aragon. But by that date there would be over fourteen hundred Franciscan residences in Europe housing thirty thousand friars. Before finis was written to the Valencian crusade, the Franciscans penetrated to the court of the Mongol khan. And just two years after King James died while putting down a Moslem revolt in Valencia, other Franciscan friars began to preach in Ethiopia and India and to establish the church in China.

While the conquered city of Valencia was undergoing its initial organization and reconstruction, academic Europe saw the work of great Franciscan thinkers like Lull, Grosseteste, Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, and, in the last quarter of the century, Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus. The Franciscan spirit, humanizing and sympathetic, more universal and less austere than preceding devotional forms, was actively carrying to the urban poor and to others the novel emphasis on the humanity of Christ which Giotto was soon to write large upon the walls of the Assisi church.⁽⁵⁾

One can see how timely was the Order's arrival at Valencia during this first expansion, by comparing their progress here and in a settled country like England. Only in 1239 would they acquire a church in London, though they had arrived fifteen years earlier, and in Cambridge they did not receive a site until 1238. In England as elsewhere their popularity with bishops and people contrasted with the opposition by parochial clergy, who lost revenue and influence to them.⁽⁶⁾ In Valencia as in all Christendom the poor men of Assisi will provide a counterweight among clergy and laity to the contemporary scandals of greed, pride, and violence.

Franciscan labors after the conquest of Valencia are (not unsurprisingly) badly documented except for property records and legacies. These, however, tell the essentials. The king established the Franciscans even while he was stationed at his forward post at Puig, before the descent on Valencia. [200] There were at least two Franciscans in his army, Peter of the See and Brother Illuminatus (who may have been the Illuminatus accompanying St. Francis on his journey to Syria). To these men King James gave a plot of ground, of modest proportions as befitted their ideals.⁽⁷⁾ Escolano elaborates a fanciful tale of the converted Sa^cîd summoning the Franciscans present in the king's siege camp, and donating his former palace out of repentance for having executed the martyrs of Teruel here in Valencia.

Actually their little church was situated just over the city walls, at the point of their southeast salient, on the road leading to Ruzafa. The site measured less than 500 by 300 feet. A small suburb was to form around the Franciscan nucleus.⁽⁸⁾ There were also some houses given inside the city, in an L-shaped grouping; these the friars probably used at first for a temporary residence. By 1260 the Franciscans required a special area for a cemetery -- an index of their popularity since some clients would already have been buried within the church. James gave them a very large space in front of their residence.⁽⁹⁾ In that year too the general chapter at Narbonne reorganized the sprawling Order, making Valencia one of the seven custodies, each under its own custodian, in the province of Aragon.

Hardly a testament surviving from that era fails to advance the Franciscan work. During the very siege of Valencia the wealthy widow Toda Ladrón, sister of one of the most powerful barons of Aragon, willed 100 solidi "to the house of the Friars Minor" to be established in the city; the will was drawn in the presence of the king, who was to be an executor and who recalls here Lady Toda's "frequent and sustained services to me."⁽¹⁰⁾ Maria, the wife of the porter Martin, left them ten solidi in 1241.⁽¹¹⁾ Aparisi, a porter of the queen, who had been a chaplain to the prince in 1229, left 100 solidi in 1247.⁽¹²⁾ Peter Oller, draper of Valencia, provided another hundred in 1249, as well as a number of smaller gifts.⁽¹³⁾

Peter Armer, dying in 1251, began his list of legacies with the cathedral and the friars. They were to have 10 solidi, half for expenses and half for their church fund. This was as much as he left to his parish church, and more than he allowed to most charities.⁽¹⁴⁾ There were two other interesting legacies from the same year. Queen Violante willed 100 solidi to each of eight Franciscan friaries in the realm, including that of Valencia. Raymond of Morella left 10 solidi.⁽¹⁵⁾ The knight William Ochova Alemán in 1255 gave them his body for burial, together with the princely sum of 1,000 solidi.⁽¹⁶⁾

The Lady Jordana, wife of a knight but apparently in control of the family properties, died in 1256; she named the bishop as an executor and exhorted the king to have a care for her sons. Her major beneficiary, if one excepts a chaplaincy for her soul at the convent of St. Elizabeth and a hundred solidi for the cathedral building fund, were the Franciscans. "Brother Dominic of Tanemar of the Order of Friars Minor" (the superior perhaps) received 100 solidi and the Franciscan apostolate another hundred. There was also to [201] be -- happy custom! -- a feast provided on the day of her funeral in the refectories of the Franciscan, Dominican, and St. Elizabeth communities. This thoughtful act of charity occurred in other wills too, the presence of lay paupers sometimes being specifically required.⁽¹⁷⁾

When the enormously wealthy and probably noble canon of Valencia, Bertrand of Teruel, died in 1256 he specified that his executors be guided in all their decisions by a council of friars: the Dominican prior, the Franciscan guardian, and the Dominican William of Fresney (Frexanet). He left 500 solidi to the Franciscans, 15 more to them for anniversary Masses, and a funeral-day feast.⁽¹⁸⁾ The next year the wife of Bernard Olcina gave a small legacy.⁽¹⁹⁾ Berengar of the Lady Rose willed them 20 solidi in 1258.⁽²⁰⁾ Peter of Barberá remembered them with 3 solidi that same year.⁽²¹⁾ Lazarus of Vilella, who had extensive holdings in Aragon and Valencia, left them 10 solidi in 1259, as he did to four other religious houses of the city.⁽²²⁾ Bernard of Nausa in his will of 1261 gave 50 solidi.⁽²³⁾ William of Jaca, notary and citizen of Valencia, provided 100 solidi in his will of 1263.⁽²⁴⁾

The Franciscans were the only religious houses, except for the Dominicans and the Friars of the Sack, to be remembered in the will of Barberan Oller (1271).⁽²⁵⁾ At about the same time, Berenguela Alphonse, the current mistress of the aging King James, died in Narbonne, setting aside for the Franciscans of Valencia the great sum of 1,000 morabatins. This found its way into the coffers of the king, who paid back 200 in 1273; in 1276 (the year of his death) he awarded for the remaining 700 a royal promise of payment.⁽²⁶⁾

The cathedral canon Nicholas of Hungary remembered the Franciscans in his will (1274), giving a total of 70 solidi.⁽²⁷⁾ Peter Marqués in 1275 willed double and quadruple the amounts he left to the other eight religious Orders in the city: 20 solidi.⁽²⁸⁾ Peter Pérez, a wealthy canon of Valencia who died in 1279, chose to be buried in the cemetery of "the good Friars Minor" rather than in the cathedral, and was presumably a benefactor.⁽²⁹⁾ In the same year García Pérez of Biel left them 20 solidi.⁽³⁰⁾ A wealthy lady, Willelma, daughter of William of Soler, was far more generous to them and to the Dominicans than to any other group -- leaving fifty solidi to each.⁽³¹⁾ Similar legacies followed.⁽³²⁾ One assumes that the high proportion of monied ladies among the benefactors reflects their appreciation of the work done by the friars among the poor, a work much commended in those days to the ladies of noble and bourgeois households.

Read in the light of the contemporary Franciscan expansion over Europe, these fragments persuade one that the friars were performing at Valencia the welcome and vital offices which commended them elsewhere. The shoemakers, leather-workers, tailors, and potmakers held them in high regard. These four guilds, later to be disbanded with others as potential agents of urban turmoil, were to organize themselves again under the Franciscans in the early fourteenth century.⁽³³⁾

[202] Shortly after the death of King James, the guardian of the friary at Valencia appears as the confessor and intimate of his successor, King Peter, who later installed him as bishop of Segorbe. Previously the Friars Minor had entered Morella to set up a residence (1272). In 1295, answering a petition from the people of Murviedro, the guardian of the Valencia city house led three friars to found a house at Murviedro.

There had been a Franciscan presence from the first at Játiva, revealed by a document of 1248 terminating their rental of a mosque. But perhaps this abortive presence was more wish than reality. The permanent Játiva community came only after the stimulus of the Murviedro foundation. It began in 1295, after the city council had asked for a friary and set aside for it a small hospice and farm outside the walls. The Franciscans like the Dominicans, therefore, had their centers almost exclusively in the more urban and less feudalized southern part of the new kingdom. This geographical factor underlines their relevance to the frontier situation.⁽³⁴⁾

The Dominicans

Like the Franciscans, the Dominicans or Black Friars were highly centralized, democratic in their electoral processes, apostolically mobile, and urban-centered. To an esteem for poverty they added an even greater esteem for learning and for the diffusion of theology. Their growth in Christendom chronologically parallels the life of King James of Aragon. Dominic had begun his work in Languedoc, around the years 1207 to 1213; King James had been born at Montpellier in 1208. Dominic had died in 1221, his Order barely founded and its constitutions just drawn for its five or perhaps eight provinces (1220-1221), as the young James was dreaming of the conquest of Valencia. Dominic would be canonized in 1234, shortly after the capture of Burriana, with the northern part of the kingdom of Valencia falling into Christian hands.

By the time Biar fell to James's crusade, the Dominicans already were conducting studia at the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Montpellier, Cologne, and elsewhere. In 1277, the year after the death of King James, a census of the Order shows that the Dominican houses had grown from sixty, at the time of St. Dominic's death, to four hundred and four. There were also fifty-eight convents of nuns. The number of Dominicans at this time was probably seven thousand; thirty years later this will have grown to ten thousand.

This body of clergy was well-educated, enthusiastic, and installed in key posts all over Christendom. Their numerous prelates, preachers, and scholars exercised a profound transforming influence. At the universities this was the century of Albert the Great (1206-1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and many lesser luminaries, Just after the turn of the century Dominican penetration [203] into Asia would be so successful that hierarchies and native clergies could be established in Persia, India, and Ethiopia.⁽³⁵⁾

In King James's realms, the Dominicans were established at Montpellier in 1220, at Barcelona and Zaragoza in 1223, at Lérida and Majorca in 1230, at Valencia city in 1239, at Perpignan in 1243, at Tarragona about 1248, at Gerona in 1252, at Calatayud and Huesca in 1254, at Urgel at least by 1273, at Puigcerdá in 1288, at Játiva in 1291, and at Collioure in 1290. Before the first quarter of the next century was out, they were in five other places of the realms of Aragon.⁽³⁶⁾ Four of King James's confessors were Dominicans: Michael of Fabra, the great Raymond of Penyafort, Arnold of Sagarra, and Berengar of Castellbisbal.⁽³⁷⁾ An episode during the Majorcan crusade indicates how high Dominican prestige stood in James's realms. When the crusading army got out of hand and was plundering the leaders' houses, the king posted two Dominicans to guard his house and treasure, with only ten knights as a concomitant show of force.⁽³⁸⁾

One receives the impression from legacies as well as other sources that the Dominicans were a more important element than the Franciscans in the life of newly conquered Valencia. This may be due to the nature of their apostolate, which demanded better organization and training and more elaborate equipment, and which was so wholeheartedly dedicated to public preaching, to the teaching of theology, and to the conversion of Jews and Moslems. Then, again, the Black Friars seem to have enjoyed greater favor with King James. He speaks of "the Valencian community of the Friars Preachers in our memory forever," and looks upon it as of great importance in the Christianizing of the realm.⁽³⁹⁾

Although men of other Orders in Valencia tend to remain in group obscurity, a number of clear-cut personalities emerge from the Dominican ranks at Valencia. Arnold of Sagarra, said to have studied under Albert the Great at Paris, accompanied James on the Murcian expedition and piqued the royal sinner by refusing him absolution before going into battle.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Berengar of Castellbisbal, a man of noble family, was chosen to be the first bishop of Valencia but became instead the bishop of Gerona, whose tongue was partially cut out by the king. Peter of Lérida functioned as a special confessor and chaplain for the garrison at Puig; when the knights had decided to betray the king's hopes and secretly to abandon the Valencian enterprise en masse, Friar Peter informed King James and thus kept the crusade from a serious setback.⁽⁴¹⁾ Later Peter, now prior of the Valencian Dominicans, signed a pact between King James and his son Alphonse in 1254.⁽⁴²⁾

The bishop to whom the diocese owed most by way of organization was the Dominican Andrew Albalat, chancellor of the king, who annoyed James by his long campaign to recover the ecclesiastical revenues his predecessor had signed away to the crown. Michael of Fabra may have received his [204] Dominican habit from the hands of St. Dominic; he was the first of Dominic's men to become a professor of theology at Paris to fellow Dominicans. For a time he was confessor to King James. He played a prominent role in the Majorca siege, where he urged on the tunneling of the mines;⁽⁴³⁾ later he joined the king in the crusade against Valencia. Because he passed the first phase of the process of canonization, he bears the title "Venerable."⁽⁴⁴⁾ Other Dominicans also appear, like the convert-maker among the Valencian Moslems, John of Puigventós. There is even a reluctant Dominican; a citizen of Valencia named Berengar of Morena protested to the king that his son became a Dominican when not of age and then left the Order, so the Dominicans should cease threatening to discover and seize him.⁽⁴⁵⁾

Five Dominicans are known to have accompanied the crusading host as it moved on Valencia; three of them were involved in an important arbitration between the king and the lord of Albarracín during the siege. To the five -- Gregory, Michael of Fabra, Arnold of Barberá, Peter of Lérida, and Roderick of Lérida -- James gave quarters close to the cathedral.⁽⁴⁶⁾ These houses were a temporary expedient; they allowed no room for the preaching mission of the friars. Besides, the bishop seems to have had an eye on the buildings; in 1241 the king gave them to him and his chapter.⁽⁴⁷⁾ In 1248 the king gave the Order an added site for building in the south of the kingdom, just outside the walls of Játiva. They seem to have delayed, however, in establishing themselves here.⁽⁴⁸⁾

The property the friars actually built upon in the city of Valencia had been guaranteed to them by a pre-grant to Peter of Lérida on April 23, 1238. It was a sizable pleasure garden or park, outside the city at its northeast angle near the gate of the Templars. It stretched along the river front, and must have been one of the finest situations available. Its position and quality are a further indication of King James's esteem for the Order. It was prized moreover as being near the place of public execution for Moslem Valencia, and therefore hallowed by the blood of martyrs. This plot of land was confirmed in the spring of 1239.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Here the Dominicans set about building a priory and tiny church. Its size may be imagined from the fact that it later served as porter's lodge for the second church.⁽⁵⁰⁾ About them, especially on the side facing the Templars, was their cemetery; here with the permission of Bishop Arnold and the chapter (1245) they buried many a Valencian knight.⁽⁵¹⁾ Perhaps this was the first religious house in the city, and -- a larger perhaps -- King James himself may have laid its cornerstone. The first proposition is argued from the traditional order according to which the many religious groups marched in medieval Valencian processions; the second, quite possible in itself, is a "tradition" apparently based on a later chronicle.⁽⁵²⁾

A larger church was needed. Aided by the indulgence of forty days granted by Innocent IV to Valencians who helped the project with alms, it was partially [205] finished in 1252.⁽⁵³⁾ Some twenty years or more later, a protective wall brought the Dominican establishment within the city proper, though it was to keep a pleasant rural aspect down into the eighteenth century. At the same time -- a hint of their popularity -- they had to extend the church even further, securing more area for this purpose.

The king gave the Dominicans a privilege to prevent anyone building on the open space before their house,⁽⁵⁴⁾ to pay no taxes on the waters they used, no neighboring terraces or windows overlooking the cloistral privacy, to prohibit the noisy river men from working on their bank, to outlaw the dumping of garbage near their buildings, and to forbid the carting away of sand from their beach (their priory was always in some danger of being undermined by the river).⁽⁵⁵⁾ An unusual privilege came to them in 1257 when King James decreed that anyone conversing with a friar was to be immune from legal attentions or harassment for that moment.⁽⁵⁶⁾

As late as 1275 the Valencian house was still not definitively assigned to one of the eight vicariates constituting the Dominican province of Spain.⁽⁵⁷⁾ The provincial chapter was keeping an eye on this promising area, however, and assigning good men here.⁽⁵⁸⁾ A second house was opened at Játiva (St. Philip's); it was formally commissioned at the chapter general in Palencia in 1291.⁽⁵⁹⁾ (This was a suppressed or transferred place of the Friars of the Sack.) The Valencia and Jativa houses were to quarrel seriously over their respective jurisdictions for preaching in the kingdom. An agreement finally set aside the northern half of the kingdom from Morella to the Júcar River for the Valencia house, and from the Júcar to Bañeres for the Játivans.⁽⁶⁰⁾

The ideal of poverty was remarkably strong in the early Dominicans; this extended to their ownership of property even as a corporation, excepting the properties involved in their churches and areas of residence. Even the costly property they will purchase in 1291 from Raymond of Poblet, a field or farm at two thousand solidi, will be "around your monastery."⁽⁶¹⁾ It is not surprising, therefore, to find that their gifts at Valencia came in the form of direct alms, as with the Franciscans. Legacies to the Franciscans here were almost always coupled with an equivalent item for the Dominicans.

Thus, Toda Ladrón willed them 300 solidi in 1238; Maria, wife of the porter Martin, left ten solidi in 1241; Aparisi left 100 solidi in 1247; and Peter Oller a total of 50 solidi in 1249. In 1251 Raymond of Morella and Peter Armer each gave 10. Dominic of Calderón, who asked to be buried in their cemetery in 1252, left 20. William Ochova Alemán gave 55 solidi in 1255. In 1256 the Lady Jordana provided enough to pay for a feast. In the same year Canon Bertrand of Teruel assigned 2,000 solidi in his will "to construct two arches in their church," 500 more to be spent "to bulwark the house against the attacks of the Guadalaviar River," 20 for annual requiems, and 200 to his friend the Dominican William of Fresney, to pay "for having a breviary made."

[206] There were 5 solidi from the wife of Bernard Olcina in 1257; 30 solidi, and his corpse for burial, from Berengar of the Lady Rose in 1258; 2 solidi from Peter of Barberá in 1258; 10 from Lazarus of Vilella in 1259; 50 from Bernard of Nausa in 1261; a total of 150 from the notary William of Jaca in 1263; 3 from Barberan Oller in 1271; 50 from Willelma in 1272; 50 from Canon Nicholas in 1274; and 20 from Peter Marqués in 1275.⁽⁶²⁾

García Pérez of Biel left the Dominicans 20 solidi in 1279. Crusaders like Bernard Fabra, a Montpellier man of great riches who lived in Alcira, Peter Aznar of ancient lineage, the knight Bernard Castellet, and others, left large sums to establish anniversary Masses in the chapels of their church. More ordinary citizens responded especially to the recent Dominican devotion to St. Peter Martyr; within a decade of his death, St. Peter was a favorite with Valencians.⁽⁶³⁾

Two of the major benefactors of the Dominicans were Mark of Capracava (d.1266) and William Escrivá of Ibiza. The headstone of Mark and his wife told passersby how the knight "did many favors for the friars and the house." William the son of William Escrivá senior, ajurate and justiciar of Valencia, was an unusually wealthy man. Both he and his father were benefactors of the Dominicans; he left them in one bequest 5,000 solidi. In gratitude for the gifts from Mark and William, the friars had their heraldic shields sculptured on the arches of the church.⁽⁶⁴⁾

Perhaps the Játiva house was rather poor; as late as 1312 Bishop Raymond of Valencia left them 1,000 solidi in his will, "to buy rents to provide clothing for the brothers." He also gave them both Summas of Aquinas and a small library. Bishop Raymond left 6,000 solidi to the Dominicans of the Valencian diocese, and supported a Dominican student at the University of Paris.⁽⁶⁵⁾

The Dominicans too had their confraternities to manage. Aptly enough, one of these formalized at the turn of the century a work in which they had distinguished themselves in Valencia from the beginning. "Each and every convert in the city of Valencia, regardless of social status or occupation" could, for the honor of God, the Virgin, Peter, and the house of the Dominicans in Valencia, band together under the guidance of the friars, as a social and benevolent confraternity.⁽⁶⁶⁾ A similar concession bound the hide dealers and belt makers to the church of the Dominicans before 1252. There was apparently a brotherhood honoring St. Peter Martyr also under Dominican care in Valencia by 1269.⁽⁶⁷⁾ These organizations were not simply urban, but included also the people of the surrounding countryside or hinterland.

The function of the Dominicans as teachers contributed an element to medieval civic culture which one might easily overlook, an element not readily expected on a frontier. Perhaps it was in connection with their apostolate of studies that the friars sold a small village and woods which they owned in Játiva in order to purchase an annotated Bible; the time was early 1250, before their church was yet completed, about a decade after the [207] conquest.⁽⁶⁸⁾ When that latest Western institution, the Inquisition, made its way to the frontier at the turn of the century, the Dominicans were to be its instrument.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Their most resounding success was the conversion of a number of Moslems. It was in connection with this apostolate that they conducted their schools of Arabic. These are an important part of the complex story of relations between the two antagonistic social groups who inhabited Valencia.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Dominican tactics -- already successful in the heresy-ridden Languedoc area -- must inevitably have had a great effect on the psychology of the Christian settlers. The beleaguered minority would need some such aggressive and expansive spirit if they were to retain their social identity and impress it upon the new land.

The Friars of the Sack

When the Council of Lyons drastically pruned the Mendicant movement in 1274, the largest and most important of the Orders cut down was the Friars of the Sack. In less than twenty-five years of existence, it had flourished from Scotland to Palestine in seven provinces and some eighty houses. As part of their priorate or province of Spain these Brothers of Penitence of Jesus Christ had eleven houses in the realms of Aragon during the thirteenth century. The location of these Aragonese houses is significant: the main Catalan city Barcelona, the main Aragonese city Zaragoza, the university city Montpellier, the main ecclesiastical city Tarragona, the Pyrenean capital of Cerdagne Puigcerdá, in Perpignan the main city of Roussillon, in the city of Calatayud and the town of Perelada, in the main city of conquered Majorca, and in the two administrative centers of the kingdom of Valencia, Valencia and Játiva. Apparently they were determined to influence the most important centers, and they included among these the farther reaches of the frontier.⁽⁷¹⁾

Yet they had been founded as late as 1248, by a knight of Hyères in Provence. Only in 1251 did they get their Augustinian form of rule; a Franciscan note appears in their care to have poor and ordinary houses, to refuse properties except for use as alms, and to show the world "a very merry" face.⁽⁷²⁾ They dressed in the sacklike tunic of the ordinary pilgrim penitent, with a cowl and a cheap multicolored mantle. They preached, heard confessions, distributed alms, and in general helped the poor.

The great antiquarian of Valencia, Josef Teixidor, was guilty of an Homeric nod when he installed the friars in Valencia city before 1241.⁽⁷³⁾ They were here early enough, however, with an establishment running along the marketplace, at the south-central edge of the city, just outside the gate called Boatella.⁽⁷⁴⁾ In 1261 they received a substantial alms of ten solidi from Prince Peter.⁽⁷⁵⁾

[208]The Friars of the Sack were also at Játiva in the south some time before 1269. On that date King James I allowed them to accept a gift of land there, despite the Furs of Valencia which forbade transfer of real property to the church: "We approve, allow, and confirm forever to you, the prior and community of the Játiva house of the Brothers of Penitence of Jesus Christ, the gift of a section of land made to you by Raymond Dalila, a resident of Játiva."⁽⁷⁶⁾ A recent historian of Játiva (who erroneously dates the foundation from King James's last testament) locates it by archaeological evidence as having stood between the modern hospital and the ex-priory of the Játiva Dominicans.⁽⁷⁷⁾

In the same year, the Játiva house received from the crown all the goods of a woman named Bernarda Dalila - perhaps a relative of Raymond. She had disinherited her son for becoming a Moslem, and the king transferred the inheritance to the Order. This was designated for use in building their church at Játiva.⁽⁷⁸⁾ The house at Valencia city was also planning expansion in 1269. King James allowed the friars here, and their superior for the province of Spain, Bartholomew of Anas, to take over a large area "in front of the entrance to the monastery"; this "extends in length from the walls of the said monastery all the way to the lower arch of some houses of Peter Stephen," and will be used as a cemetery.⁽⁷⁹⁾

The Friars of the Sack were fairly popular, as is evident from the few surviving legacies for Valencia city. The testamentary documentation is only a sampling -- not only because few wills remain but also because as a rule these were casually preserved by interested parties other than the suppressed friars; there is no cartulary for the Sack friars. In 1271 a man of means in Valencia, Barberan Oller, left them 2 Valencian solidi.⁽⁸⁰⁾ In 1272 Willelma, daughter of William of Soler and wife of Peter Gilabert, left them 20.⁽⁸¹⁾ In 1275 the Valencian notary Peter Marqués left them 5.⁽⁸²⁾ A generous gift had come their way as early as 1263, when the Valencian notary William of Jaca left them 100 solidi.⁽⁸³⁾ King James in his will of 1272 left them a resounding 1,700 solidi.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Legacies surviving cover only the years 1263 to 1275, and are neither as frequent nor as generous as those for the Franciscans and Dominicans. Unlike the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Sack friars have left the names of no individual friars.

After 1274, as the several friars died, the Friars of the Sack diminished slowly into nonexistence. By 1275 King James was preparing for the eventual disposition of their holdings. He wrote Artal Esquerre, a member of the royal household who was collecting bits of Valencian property:

We grant you, Artal Esquerre, that if it happens that the community of the Brothers of Penance of Jesus Christ of Valencia is reorganized, or that the brothers are sent away or vacate this house in line with the papal decree, or alienate it, you and yours are to have and to hold that open space which lies in front of the residence of the Dominicans.⁽⁸⁵⁾

The community at Valencia city lingered on, dwindling, but presumably continuing to influence their surroundings. A bull of Honorius IV in 1286 reveals that "no more than two or three of the friars are left here."⁽⁸⁶⁾ One wonders how many had staffed the house a quarter century before. By this papal document the Dominicans were allowed to purchase the Sack residence, either with the permission of its surviving members or else at their death. The learned Jazpert of Botonach, bishop of Valencia, was to arrange the sale to the Dominican provincial of Spain. The latter indeed had initiated this whole episode by appealing to Rome. However, the Friars of the Sack survived in Valencia city for another decade or more. As late as the summer of 1278 one Raymond Armer, son of the defunct Peter Armer, leaving all his property to his sister Mary and her husband Gerald, made legal declaration of his intent to enter the suppressed Order!⁽⁸⁷⁾

In 1297 Boniface VIII revoked the previous bull and donated the house to the neighboring Dominican-oriented Magdalenes.⁽⁸⁸⁾ These nuns may even have been behind the previous appeal of 1286. If the house was already empty, the nuns could claim it; otherwise they had to wait until the survivors were gone.⁽⁸⁹⁾ As for the Játiva residence -- the Dominicans were allowed to purchase it, by another bull of Honorius IV (1285), because they needed a house in that city.⁽⁹⁰⁾ The archdeacon of Valencia city was to arrange the sale; the profits were to be sent to the Holy Land. This purchase may have been accomplished as early as 1291.⁽⁹¹⁾

A final bit of information on the Valencian Friars of the Sack comes from a document dated fifteen years after Pope Boniface's letter. The last testament of Bishop Raymond of Valencia in 1312 reveals that he had sold the Játiva house for 1,000 solidi -- or more probably put up that purchase price himself as a gift for the Dominicans. The money was in the bank (tabula) of Bernard Planell, destined for the Holy Land. If the bishop's financial agent had recently withdrawn the money, Raymond wanted the account to be reimbursed.⁽⁹²⁾ Ironically, the last echo heard from Valencia about this Order of men so distrustful of property and money derives from this complicated financial transaction.

The Augustinians

The Order of Hermits of St. Augustine organized itself just seventeen years after the fall of Valencia city. They were an amalgamation of various hermit groups brought together into one Order by Pope Alexander IV in 1256.⁽⁹³⁾ Inspired by the example of the centralized active Franciscans and Dominicans, [210] they put aside the contemplative life of the hermit and took up the active life of preaching, teaching, and ministering to souls as Mendicants. Within a few years they had spread rapidly over Europe.

Prior to this reorganization, the Augustinian hermits had especially flourished in the countries of the Spanish peninsula. They had grouped in monasteries which in turn tended to confederate regionally. They therefore became one of the first four provinces forming the background of the new Order, and houses multiplied. A provincial for Spain ruled through his vicars. One early Augustinian historian has the hermit groups in the combined regions of Aragon uniting under a single provincial during the first quarter of the thirteenth century, and even then assuming Mendicant forms. The Italian Fabrian was provincial in 1216, the Catalan Francis Salelles in 1240, Arnold around 1257, Arnulf around 1258, William of Navarre around 1280, and William Salelles from about 1298.⁽⁹⁴⁾

The Order's robes were black, or sometimes white. Various other groups followed the rule of St. Augustine, often in a semimonastic context, and might therefore be called Augustinians, but it was these new Augustinian friars who appeared on the Valencian frontier. They arrived on that frontier quite early, seeming to sense its needs and opportunities. They surely felt a special affection for the place. Long ago when the Moslems had sacked Sardinia, it was said, primitive Augustinian hermits had carried away, to a then Christian Valencia, the treasured miter and staff of St. Augustine. A comparative chronology of the Order's expansion in the thirteenth century indicates the importance of Valencia to it. In 1256, the year of formal union, the first of their houses west of the Rhone is found at Narbonne; by 1275 southern France had a strong representation, with eight priories established. Yet by 1280 the Valencian frontier alone boasted four houses, with another soon to come.⁽⁹⁵⁾

The early years of these houses are lost in obscurity and conjecture. A tradition cited by Zurita in the sixteenth century has King James in conquered Valencia swearing he will raise "four columns" or Orders to support Christendom on the frontier. If the king ever said this, there is still no reason to count the Augustinians as one of the four. A late chronicler of the Order puts a friar named Francis Serelles (Salelles) with the besieging army. The friar asked the king for a priory when the city should fall, then in 1242 began a church and dormitory there. This is almost surely fantasy. The Augustinian annalist Torelli incorporates elaborate scholastic arguments from his predecessors to prove an early foundation at the city; he fails to convince.⁽⁹⁶⁾

A peculiarity of the Valencian Augustinians was their taste for solitude. Despite the Mendicant activism, the spirit of the hermit seemed still to cling. This peculiarity marked their first foundation strongly. It was in the hidden valley of Aguas Vivas (Aigues Vives), considerably south of the conquered [211] city, and somewhat southeast of Carcagente. If one accepts the traditional founding date of 1239 (and there is no strong reason to do so), this was an unconquered, dangerous hinterland. Again we must be satisfied, with a tale: the king heard of hermits scattered in the Alcira mountains and gave them some land to help form a community. At any rate, there really wias an Augustinian priory of Our Lady here, a member of the 1256 union, functioning by 1260 (perhaps 1267): King James spoke of the buildings at that time in extending its land holdings. Its Prior Raymond received a royal tax exemption in 1272 and free pasturage for the friars' flocks on crown lands.⁽⁹⁷⁾

The Castellón Augustinians may have been founded in 1260 or 1280. Almost certainly they did not exist before 1260, though Jordan, the early historian of the Order, blandly lists the house as founded by St. William in the mid-twelfth century and moving within the walls in 1298! The Castellón house emerges clearly and noisily into prominence in 1298 when Bertrand Torrens, rector of the "Mother Church" of that town, raised great opposition to their rebuilding and especially to their efficient garnering of revenues and legacies. The dispute culminated in a truce and the sharing of monies, carefully worked out that year. (A decade later Prior James Berengar was excommunicated and St. Augustine's priory lay under interdict for declining to continue this arrangement with Bertrand's successor Francis.)⁽⁹⁸⁾

St. Augustine's at Alcira was a third house, just north of Carcagente. Raymond of Canals is listed as prior (perhaps he was the founder) in 1270; this house purchased lands in 1277 and 1278. Even deeper on the frontier, a priory sprang up at Alcoy. Saurina Entenza, wife of the great admiral Roger of Launa and close relative of James I, was foundress (1290 or 1299).⁽⁹⁹⁾ Sucías suggests that James placed the house in the Moslem suburb for more effective preaching to the infidel.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Another house has been claimed for Castielfabib, with no real evidence.⁽¹⁰¹⁾

A house of the friars stood in the countryside just beyond the walls of Valencia city. As with the Castellón house, it would be included within the expanding city when a new circle of walls went up in the next century. Valencia's priory was established by 1281, or perhaps a number of years previously. It does not appear, however, in the earlier wills. Among gifts received by St. Augustine's here was a service ornament from King Peter.⁽¹⁰²⁾ Before 1298 the priory church had become the center for such brotherhoods as the blacksmiths and silversmiths.⁽¹⁰³⁾

Augustinian plans for expansion in the Valencia kingdom are recorded in a royal concession of 1273:

We grant to the brothers-hermits of the Order of St. Augustine...that in some of the cities, castles or places...they may freely and without hindrance build for themselves monasteries, in which they ought...to follow their vocation, with the counsel of the deputies of the cities and [212] towns...We give them permission and full power to accept houses or other properties given them, or also to purchase these.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

The Carmelites

The White Friars or Carmelites were the last of the four great Mendicant Orders to reach the Valencian frontier. Like the Augustinians, they had resulted from the reorganization and sudden spread of a previously existing group. They had organized in Palestine in the middle of the twelfth century for a life of eremitical solitude and prayer. When Moslem pressures made their position precarious, they began to shift their forces to Europe, simultaneously undergoing a metamorphosis in favor of the active life of the Mendicant. All this occurred, as luck would have it, just after King James had conquered the northern part of Valencia and was moving to siege the capital city.

The first migration of the Order consisted of two hermits who reached Valenciennes in 1235, though perhaps a few others had come ten years earlier. Then, in about 1238, a massacre in Palestine caused the Order to approve a general transmigration. One finds them in Messina and Cyprus in 1238, in England in 1241, and in Marseilles at least from 1248. Around 1254 the greatest of their generals was elected, the Englishman Simon Stock. For twenty years he reorganized, stabilized, and defended the White Friars. From Innocent IV he secured permission thoroughly to adapt the rule to the times after the fashion of the Mendicants.

The Carmelites appeared in the cities and towns now, ever spreading. They were also at the universities: at Cambridge, Liège, and Brussels in 1249; at Oxford in 1253; at Montpellier and Cologne in 1256; at Bologna in 1260; and so on throughout the century. For the realms of Aragon, there are claims for their presence at Perelada as early as 1206, at Perpignan in 1213, and with more probability at Lérida in 1278, and at Gerona and Barcelona in 1295.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

In the very swirl and center of this expansive movement, the Carmelites [213] found their way down to Valencia city, in 1281. Thus, they were on the frontier the same year in which they settled in the Rhone Valley at Lyons, and five years before they favored with a monastery such cities as Nuremberg or Ghent. The ecumenical council of Lyons had just abolished a number of new Orders but had approved the Carmelites as one of the remaining Mendicant big four (1271). When the Carmelites arrived at Valencia, they would still have been wearing their original bizarre mantle -- the white and black vertical stripes which gained them the undignified name of Magpie Friars. But in 1287 a white, wool mantle replaced this dress, changing their appellation to White Friars.

In 1281 "the prior and community" received permission from the crown to acquire properties up to a total value of 3,000 solidi: "You may receive, from all places you choose outside the city walls of Valencia, buildings and lands by gift [or] purchase or any other just title,...to build or to construct your monastery and buildings, for the salvation of Christians."⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ By 1283 they owned properties in Roteros;⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ perhaps their temporary residence was in that suburb. The new priory was on the river bank, a short distance beyond the western wall of the city. It was completed, with church, between 1288 and 1292.⁽¹¹⁰⁾

From sometime before 1306, as a terminal date, the Carmeite friars directed in Valencia city a brotherhood of millers from the city and countryside.⁽¹¹¹⁾ Although no further documentation on their work in Valencia has survived, as the strictest of the four Mendicant Orders they would surely have had in Valencia the same invigorating and expansive effect which they were having in the other regions of Europe. And their presence, like that of the Augustinians and the Friars of the Sack, reinforced the Franciscan-Dominican influence in reshaping the new kingdom.

1. In Arch. Crown. James I Reg. Canc. 13 fol. 171 (May 11, 1264) James sentences a culprit to crusade because of his crime of murder. Ibid., Bulas, legajo VI, no. 17, a letter of instruction to the bishop of Barcelona, who was organizing the Valencian crusade, arranges for the absolution of men who had burned down churches or engaged in trading weapons to the Moors. The rebels of Narbonne are in Pierre Belperron, La croisade contre les albigeois et l'union da Languedoc a la France, 1209-1249 (Paris, 1946), p. 409. At the end of the great Languedocian uprising (from 1242) thousands were convicted by the Inquisition; but the bishop of Albigot got many sentences commuted to crusading in Egypt (1247); see Louis de Lacger, "L'albigeois au siècle de Saint Louis, les évêques Durand de Beaucaire et Bernard de Combret, 1228-1271," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, LII (1957), 42-43.

2. Ximénez ed., p. 155 Ubieto ed., p. 152. The origins and nature of the Mendicant movement with the premovement and psychology producing it are explored in G.G. Meersseman's Dossier de l'ordre de la pénitence au xiiie siècle, Spicilegium friburgense, no. 7 (Fribourg, 1961). On the Mendicant movement see Felix Vernet, Les ordres mendiants (Paris, 1933); and on the several Orders in towns of King  James which are now French see R. W. Emery, The Friars in Medieval France, a Catalogue of French Mendicant Convents, 1200-1550 (New York, 1962).

3. Luke Wadding, Annales minorum seu trium ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, 3rd ed. revised, 31 vols. to date (Quaracchi, 1931- ), I, lxxi, 367, and III, xlvii, 272. Acta sanctorum, ed. Jean Bolland et al., 67 vols. to date (Paris, 1863- ), August, VI, 495-496. León Amorós Payá, "Los santos mártires franciscanos B. Juan de Perusa y B. Pedro de Saxoferrato en la historia de Teruel," Teruel, XV (1956), 5-142, especially 28-46. Episcopologio valentino, ch. 26. From the Moslem side, see Ibn 'Idârî al-Marrâkusî (1173-1232), Al-Bayân al-mugrib fi-ijtisâr ajbâr muluk al-Andalus wa al-Magrib, Los Almohades, ed.-tr. A. Huici Miranda, 2 vols. (Tetuan, 1953-1954), I, 321.

4. Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 480.

5. Further data may be drawn from Anastasio López, La provincia de España de los frailes menores, apuntes histórico-críticos sobre los orígenes de la orden franciscana en España (Santiago, 1915); ch. 8 covers the early Valencia story. Pedro Sanahuja does not treat Valencia but offers excellent background in Historia de la seráfica provincia de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1959). Vicente Martínez Colomer has a routine chapter on the Valencia foundations in Historia de la provincia de Valencia de la regular observancia (Valencia, 1803, ch. 2), as does José Antonio de Hebrera in Chronica real seráfica (Zaragoza, 1703-1705; lib. I, c. 3). Only a few of the documents in Ambrosio de Saldes, "La orden franciscana en el antiguo reino de Aragón, colección diplomática," apply to Valencia (see Revista de estudios franciscanos, I, 1907, 88 ff.).

6. Moorman, Church Life, pp. 387 ff.

7. Repartimiento de Valencia, p. 250; the editor Bofarull has transcribed "fratres minores" as Michael Mores. "Frater Illuminatus et fratres minores" appear on p. 170; "of the See" is de sede. The place today is a plaza and street (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 421). See also Colección diplomática, doc. 195 (Jan. 11, 1239). Escolano, Décadas, lib. V. c. 7.

8. Rodrigo y Pertegás, "Urbe valenciana," p. 329.

9. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,129 (Dec. 21, 1260); see too Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 22.

10. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 720 (1238). Cf. Colección diplomática, doc. 182; Episcopologio valentino, p. 439; Viage literario, XVII, 331; Tourtoulon, Jaime I, I, 464. "Et domui minorum fratrum eiusdem loci C solidos"; "multa servida que diu nobis fecit." She appears in a number of property documents in the crown archives, as a person of considerable wealth and power. Her brother En (or Dompnus) Ladrón, a great rich hom (the highest feudal class) of Aragon and associate of the king, witnessed the will; he appears a number of times in the king's Llibre dels feyts, and signs over thirty documents in the Itinerari. Toda's defunct husband was Giles Garcés.

11. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Franciscanas, Concepción, leg. 2,124, arm. 45, fab. 2 (1241).

12. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., St. Vincent, leg. 2,079, arm. 45, fab. 1 (Oct. 26, 1247 an. inc.); see Chapter XV, note 101. On Aparicius see Itinerari, p. 79.

13. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., leg. 2,079, arm. 45, fab. 1.

14. Armer will in Chapter VII, note 53. He added five solidi for his pastor; the other parishes got twelve pence each; the Merced and St. Lazarus houses received two solidi each, and even St. Vincent's got but ten. The proportion therefore, as well as the placing in the document, indicates the favor in which the donor held them.

15. For the will of Raymond, see Chapter VII, note 56. The queen's is in Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,264 (Oct. 12, 1251); also Colección diplomática, doc. 4,0; Tourtoulon, Jaime I, II, 437; Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 129-130n.

16. Document in Chapter VII, note 62.

17. See document cited in Chapter VII, note 57. Her husband, John Garcés of Mazón (de Mazonis) knight, is to control her Valencian properties as long as he does not remarry.

18. Arch. Cath., perg. 5,012 (Nov. 4, 1256); perhaps seventy solidi more, in an ambiguous item, is left for the anniversary sum. Alternatives to William's name include Frayssinet in Languedoc and the Cid's Fraxino (Fresno de Caracena, near Albarracín).

19. Arch. Cath., perg. 5,980 (Dec. 30, 1257). There is a Bernard Olcina in the Trabes of Febrèr, as well as a Léridan and a Barcelonan of the name in the Itinerari (pp. 270, 312).

20. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Franciscanas, Concepción, leg. 2,125, arm. 45, fab. 2 (Sept. 14, 1258). "Berengarius domine Rose" may be a clumsy translation for the Berengar Narossa from Tortosa in the Repartimiento; he is here a resident of Valencia city. There are several Ros families in James's realms.

21. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,556 (Feb. 28, 1258 or 1259). The name is not uncommon; after Peter's death a Peter of Barberá was involved in a number of land negotiations in the cathedral archives; and a Peter of Barberá in the crown archives was a cloth dealer in 1262.

22. Document in Chapter VII, note 61 (1259).

23. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,334 (Aug. 4, 1261).

24. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, St. Vincent, leg. 2,079, arm. 45, fab. 1 (3 docs.), October 2, 1263.

25. Will cited in Chapter VII, note 58.

26. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 18, fols. 88v-90. The lady died on June 20, 1272, and was buried in the Franciscan convent of Narbonne. The registers speak "de illis mille morabatinorum quos eis legaverat domina Berengaria Alfonsi in suo testamento." See also Reg. Canc. 22, fol. 48v (July 9, 1276). It is possible that the delay was owing to legal complications, but the issuance of a promise of payment by the crown suggests a forced loan. The registers have half a dozen documents from about 1258 connected with the Lady Berenguela's financial and feudal business, showing her to be the owner in free and frank alod of a large number of castles, as well as of other important properties.

27. Arch. Cath., perg. 692 (Dec. 28, 1274).

28. Document in Chapter VII, note 55; but the Dominicans were similarly favored.

29. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,362 (Nov. 2!, 1279); "eliguo [sic] meam sepulturam in ciminterio bonorum fratrum minorum Valencie."

30. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,357 (Mar. 4, 1279).

31. Document in Chapter VII, note 60.

32. John Baldovini, for example, left them three hundred Jaca solidi; King Peter will order the justiciar in 1282 to clear payment on this (Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 46, fol. 78v, 13 April 1282).

33. Gremios y cofradías, I, 71 ff., docs. 17-20, 28. The dates are from 1329 to 1332, but the organizations had existed earlier, some of them apparently in the third or fourth quarter of the thirteenth century. Thus the charter of the shoemakers recalls that James II had suppressed all guilds, except that named St. James, "inter quas confratriam olim per sutores seu çapaterios dicte civitatis editam et multo tempore observatam noscitur sustulisse." Each group had an altar and patron and, besides meeting regularly, met once a year in the Franciscan convent to eat with the friars. There is no way of knowing if the Franciscans or another group had been their original sponsors; but since the document treats of a reorganization of the same guild, it was probably the Franciscan group. On the brotherhood movement see the general treatment above, in Chapter VII.

34. See Chapter III, note 75 and text on the Segorbe bishop; and Chapter XIII, p. 244 on the Játiva establishment.

35. Pierre Mandonnet has a collection of studies under the general title St. Dominic and His Work; tr. M. B. Larkin (London, 1945) where this background material is presented topically; see also his "Frères Prêcheurs," DTC, VI, cols. 363-372. M. H. Vicaire's recent definitive work on Dominic and the early years of the Order is now available in English, St. Dominic and His Times (New York, 1964); see also his "Dominique," DHGE, IV, cols. 592-608.

36. M. M. de los Hoyos, Registro documental, material inédito dominicano español (Madrid, 1961), p. 72; with further dates from Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 883.

37. López, "Confesores de la familia real," p. 146.

38. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 87.

39. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, To: "de conventu Valentino Fratrum Predicatorum in nostra memoria sempiterna" (Mar. 16, 1249), and also document of April 11, 1239.

40. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 426.

41. Ibid., chs. 236-237.

42. Itinerari, pp. 239-240.

43. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 69. See Appendix II, "Saints on the Valencian Frontier."

44. Pedro Antonio Pérez Ruiz, La fe, la historia y el arte en el antiguo convento de predicadores de Valencia (Valencia, 1952), p. 33. On Fabra, see too the uneven life in Biografía eclesiástica completa, 30 vols. (Madrid, 1848-1868), VI, 38-42. See also Builarium predicatorum, I, 115; Vicaire, Dominic, pp. 215, 236, 507.

45. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 43, fol. 83 (Dec. 9, 1284) is the Morena episode; but this may be one of many contemporary efforts to force a son out of his Dominican vocation (see Vicaire, Dominic, p. 347). Diago devotes a section to Puigventós and his work among the Moslems of Valencia; see his Historia de la provincia de Aragón de la orden de predicadores (Barcelona, 1599), chs. 47, 48. Baltasar Sonó has a few words on him in the De viris illustribus provinciae Aragoniae ordinis praedicatorum, ed. J. M. de Garganta Fábrega (Valencia, 1950), p. 48.

46. Itinerari, p. 133 (Aug. 1, 1238). Arnold, Roderick, and Peter signed. Was Arnold from Barbairan near Carcassonne or from the conca of Barberá to the west of Vich? At the same time Gregory, Peter, Arnold, and Roderick signed a related document (Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 729).

47. Aureum opus, doc. 12, fol. 4r, v (Nov. 2, 1241). Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 8. The older chroniclers of the Order contribute relatively little to our information and even muddy the waters with fanciful stories. Thus, Pablo Vidal in his manuscript history, now in the university library at Barcelona (Anales de la orden de predicadores, 1172-1624), mislocates their first site, has Fabra with cross in hand animating the siegers, puts a Dominican standard-bearer at the head of the victorious procession into the city, and so on. Diago and other authors retail the legend of Fabra's image or ethereal other-self appearing vengefully in the skies during the siege and terrifying the Moslem defenders; see Diago, Historia de la provincia de Aragón, p. 118; Escolano, Décadas, I, 497.

48. Sarthou Carreres, Historia de Játiva, I, 111. See notes 59, 90.

49. Repartimiento, p. 167; see also pp. 244, 214. The document of 1239 is in Colección diplomática, doc. 197 (April 11, 1239); and in Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 10.

50. On October 21, 1273 James confirmed the grant of the site with many details of the boundaries and holdings, "ad construendum monasterium cum suis officinis et ad faciendum ibi viridaria, hortos, ciminterium et ad quelibet ahia," i.e. for large improvements on these (Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 19, fol. 64v). Some chroniclers, confusing the Majorcan with the Valencian situation, make this site the palace of the Moor king; they even have the friars later move to the present St. Nicholas' parish (Pérez Ruiz, Convento de predicadores, pp. 21-22). On the modern site, see Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 421.

51. Pérez Ruiz, Convento, p. 25. This document of February 10, 1245 was repeated by Bishop Andrew on October 21, 1268. It was supported by a papal privilege of 1257, that no one impede their right of burying any who chose their cemetery (Builarium predicatorum, doc. in I, 133).

52. Pérez Ruiz, Convento, p. 21 gives the tradition; note 2 above has the chronicle reference.

53. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, S. Dom., leg. 2,107, arm. 45, fab. I, copy dated 1252: "ecclesiam et alia edificia." St. Dominic lived from about 1172 to 1221.

54. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 4v (July 31, 1271): "quod in platea que nunc est ante domos vestras non fiat aliquo tempore aliquid edificamentum et semper sit ibi illa platea." On the history of this site see also Reg. Canc. 20, fol. 274v (July 21, 1275); and Peter III, Reg. Canc. 59, fol. 128 (Oct. 17, 1282).

55. The location of the Dominican house may be seen in Tosca's map, the pertinent part of which is reproduced by Pérez Ruiz, Convento de predicadores, facing p. 30. There is a confirmation of lands held near the Temple, in Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 19, fol. 64v (Oct. 21, 1273). A dispute between a miller and the house, "super...decursu aequarum," is recommended to arbitration in Reg. Canc. 16, fol. 258v, May 16, 1271.

56. Teixidor, Capillas y sepulturas del real convento de predicadores de Valencia, III, 121, quoting from lost document of May 21, 1257.

57. Acta capitulorum provincialium ordinis fratrum praedicatorum, premiere province de Provence, province romaine, province d'Espagne (1239-1302), ed. P. Douais (Toulouse, 1894), p. 618 (1275). See also Hoyos, Registro documental, p. 22.

58. Acta, pp. 612 (1250), 626 (1281). On the other hand, one finds no mention of the Valencian house being established, nor of its progress before mid-century in the wider Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis praedicatorum (1220-1303), ed. B. M. Reichert, Monumenta ordinis fratrum praedicatorum historica, no. 3 (Rome, 1898), except for the notice of two houses founded "in Hispania," in the chapter of 1245 (p. 33).

59. Three houses commissioned in Spain, of which "unam ponendam in Zativa" (Hoyos, Registro documental, p. 23): See above, note 48 and below, notes 90-91.

60. Arch. Munic. Val., Suelas codex Conventos, I, 47-49.

61. Bibl. Univ. Val., codex 799, doc. 4: an "ortum," "circa monasterium vestrum." See the study on this early period (1206-1220) by W. A. Hinnebusch, "Poverty in the Order of Preachers," Catholic Historical Review, XLV (1960), 436-453, esp. 441, 443-444.

62. Wills in manuscripts cited in notes 10-14, 17-30, and in Chapter VII, notes 53-54, 56, 61-62, 92. In Bertrand's will, "ad faciendos duos arcos in ecclesia eorum"; "in defensione domus versus flumen de Godaloviar"; "ad opus unius breviarii."

63. Teixidor, Capillas, esp. I passim; each chapel and benefactor is considered at length. On Peter Martyr see text above, p. 95.

64. Ibid., I, 36, 63-65. Pérez Ruiz, Convento de predicadores, p. 33. On the Escrivás see below, Chapter XIII, note 19. In Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 19, fol. 107v (Feb. 26, 1273), the king owes the friars 4,300 solidi which he consigns to be taken from his Alcira revenues; this may be a legacy, intercepted by the king for some pressing need, as sometimes happened.

65. Viage literario, IV, 313-323 (testament).

66. Gremios y cofradías, I, 31-33, doc. 7: "concedimus vobis universis et singulis ad catholicam fidem conversis in civitate Valencie habitantibus cuiuscumque artis seu condicionis existatis presentibus et futuris..." The year is 1306; I have taken seu as a disjunctive in translating.

67. Ibid., docs. 24, 26 (an. 1329). On these two brotherhoods see documents in Chapter VII, notes 91-92.

68. Colección diplomática, doc. 476 (April 16, 1250); the king is allowing the (Dominican) bishop to alienate this property and, since it had been a royal gift, to keep the book at the convent in James's memory: "damus vobis venerabili episcopo valentino et precemptori plenariam potestatem, quod locum et lignum que dedimus fratribus predicatoribus Xative, possitis vendere...et precium...ponatis in una biblia glosata, que semper sit in conventu valentino fratrum predicatorum in nostra memoria sempiterna."

69. See Johannes Vincke, Zur Vorgeschichte der spanischen Inquisition, die Inquisition in Aragon, Katalonien, Mallorca und Valencia wührend des 13 und 14 Jahrhunderts, Beiträge zur Kirchen- und Rechtsgeschichte, no. 2 (Bonn, 1941), esp. pp. 55-56. On the Inquisition in neighboring Tortosa see Bayerri, Tortosa, VII, 449-451. On Dominican schools in Valencia, see above, Chapter VI, note 45.

70. Burns, "Journey From Islam" (see Preface). This intriguing subject requires extensive treatment and must be left to a later book.

71. See my "The Friars of the Sack in Valencia," Speculum, XXXVI (1961), 435-438. Bibliography on the Order consists of a handful of such articles; G. G. Giacomozzi, "L'ordine della penitenza di Gesù Cristo, contributo alla storia della spiritualità del secolo xiii," Studi storici dell'ordine dei servi di Maria, VIII (1957-1958), 3-60; his edition, "Le 'Constitutiones fratrum de poenitentia Jhesu Christi,'" ibid., X (1960), 42-99; R. W. Emery, "The Friars of the Sack," Speculum, XVIII (1943), 323-334; his "Note on the Friars of the Sack," ibid., XXXV (1960), 591-595; A. G. Little, "The Friars of the Sack," English Historical Review, IX (1894), 121-127; and the articles in Hélyot (III, 421-424) and in Heimbucher (I, 540-541, 612). Cf. again the background in Meersseman's Dossier.

72. "Multi hyllari et voce iocunda" (Little, "Friars of Sack," p. 126).

73. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 118. Teixidor wrote in 1767, but the error has not been detected by his modern editor nor by subsequent scholars like Sanchís Sivera. Teixidor cites a document of September 13, 1241, but gives no reference. I have found an original of this document in Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 11, fol. 232v; it is written in Aragonese and locates the city's market place with reference to the house of the friars. A Latin version of the document was incorporated into the book of municipal privileges, later published as Aureum opus, fol. 18v. The year, however, is 1261 in both, not 1241 -- a transposition of the Latin "XL" being involved. The date is not September 13 either, but the xiii kalends of September, i.e. August 20.

74. Antigüedades, ibid.: "coram domibus fratrum penitentie Ihesu Christi ad portam de buatella"; and cf. document below in note 79. Heimbucher puts them in Valencia in 1251 (Orden und Kongregationen, I, 541); it seems unlikely. Emery had pushed the date back only to 1274, and for Játiva to 1272. Giacomozzi follows Emery for Játiva, Heimbucher for Valencia.

75. Soldevila, Pere el Gran, III, 444, doc. of expenses at Valencia: "Fratribus de Sacs -- x solidos."

76. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 133v (Jan. 28, 1269): "laudamus, concedimus et confirmamus vobis priori et conventui fratrum ordinis penitencie Ihesu Christi domus Xative imperpetuum donacionem quam Raimundus dalila abitator Xative vobis fecit de quondam trocium terre." The name may be a form of Çalila, Sabella, etc.

77. Sarthou Carreres, Historia de Játiva, I, 86-87. Beuter thought it should be where St. Mary Magdalene's church stood in his day (Coronica del reyno de Valencia, primera parte, p. 219).

78. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 16, fol. 185v (Aug. 1, 1269). "Intelleximus...quod Bernarda d'alila quondam defuncta ultima voluntate dimisit...filio suo...et modo filius suus factus sit sarracenus. Ideo nos ipsum sicut mortuum reputantes per nos et nostros damus et concedimus vobis priori et eonventui fratrum penitencie Ihesu Christi domus Xative...omnia bona predicta per dictam Bernardam dicto filio suo dimis[s]a ut dictum est...pro remedio anime nostre et parentum nostrorum ad constructionem operis ecclesie vestre Xative foro Valencie in aliquo non obstante."

79. Antigüedades, II, 118: "quandam partem eiusdem Platee, que est ante introitum Monasterii dictorum Fratrum Penitentie domus Valentie, et extenditur in longum a parietibus dicti Monasterii usque ad inferiorem arcum quarundam domorum Petri Stephani." Anas, for "de Annasio" is conjectural.

80. Will cited in Chapter VII, note 58.

81. Will cited in Chapter VII, note 60.

82. Will cited in Chapter VII, note 55.

83. Will cited in note 24.

84. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,385 (Aug. 26, 1272): "ad operi [sic] fratrum penitencie Ihesu Christi domus Xative." Published also in Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. E. Martène and U. Durand, 5 vols. (Paris, 1717), I, col. 1,139; and elsewhere. The gift is actually 200 morabatins.

85. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 20, fol. 274v (July 21, 1275): "concedimus vobis Artallo esquerre quod si forte domus ordinis penitentie Ihesu Christi Valentie mutetur vel fratres dimittantur seu deserent ipsum domum iuxta summi pontificis ordinacionem vel ipsum alienaveri[n]t, vos et vestri habeatis et teneatis plateam illam que est ante domos fratrum predicatorum ordinis." Is this a slip of the pen for "predictarum ordinis" (the aforesaid Order)? There was a space also in front of the Dominican house (rented in part, for example, on April 10, 1275 by the king to his chaplain; Miret y Sans, Itinerari, p. 516). On May 19, 1276, King James granted the house of the Friars of the Sack at Montpellier to the Franciscans there (p. 532); but a little more than a decade later it was in the hands of the Benedictines of St. Pons de Thomières.

86. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 43 (Honorius IV), fol. 153r, 93v-94r, no. 349 (Feb. 23, 1286). Noted but not published in Prou, Registres d'Honorius IV, col. 261, no. 353. A copy of this long document, now lost, was preserved in the convent of the Magdalenes at Valencia, and is published in full by Teixidor (Antigüedades, II, 118-119); "non nisi duo vel tres remanserint ex Fratribus."

87. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,920 (Aug. 31, 1278): "ego Raimundus Armerii filius Petri Armerii quondam volens et cupiens intrare ordinem Fratrum Penitencie Jhesu Christi ad honorem illius..."; his goods both movable and immovable go to "Geraldo pictori Valencie civi cognato meo et domine Marie uxori vestre sorori mee." His father (above, in Chapter VII, note 53) died in 1251; thus, there seems to be no question here of a calendar confusion.

88. Published by Teixidor from the copy, now lost, in the Magdalenes' archives (Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 120). The documents speak of plural "buildings" (domus); these would probably be confiscated Moslem suburban residences thrown together into a unit.

89. Ibid.: "si vacuae sint...alioquin illas cum illas evacuari continget." Emery had advanced the date only as far as to 1286 ("Note," p. 594); actually they may have hung on for some time after 1297.

90. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 43 (Honorius IV), fol. 23r, no. 79 (June 7, 1285); noticed but not published in Registres (col. 66, no. 83) by Prou, who corrects the "Villaxacina" to the proper "Villa Xativa" in his introduction (p. xcix); published in Thesaurus by Martène-Durand, I, 1,143.

91. Sarthou Carreres has the Dominicans buy the house from the city fathers (sworn officials or iurati) in 1291 for 50 "ciclos" (Historia de Játiva, I, 111).

92. Viage literario, IV, 312-323, item "de pretio domorum ordinis saccorum."

93. See E. A. Foran, The Augustinians from St. Augustine to the Union, 1256 (London, 1938); and Luigi Torelli, Secoli agostiniani, 7 vols. (Bologna, 1659-1682), IV and V. Allied documentation is in the Bullarium ordinis ereinitarum S. Augustini, ed. Antonio Barberini (Rome, 1628). A survey and bibliography is in the recent "Ermites de S. Augustin," DHGE, XV, cols. 787-791. Jaime Jordán has a very uneven and uncritical survey of the early Valencia story in his Historia de la provincia de la corona de Aragón de la sagrada orden de los ermitaños de nuestro gran padre San Augustín compuestos de quatro reynos, Valencia, Aragón, Cataluña, y las islas de Mallorca y Menorca, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1704-1712), I, lib. II, c. 1.

94. Jordán, Historia, I, lib. I, c. 23. He provides biographies of Francis and William Salelles (lib. II, c. 4).

95. The data on France was gathered by Richard Emery, "Notes on the Early History of the Augustinian Order in Southern France," Augustiniana [Louvain], VI (1956), 336-345. The French houses ran in a line along the Mediterranean and thence up to Bordeaux, numbering sixteen by 1300. In 1275 the houses were at Narbonne, Montpellier, Toulouse, Marseilles, Grasse, Aix, Arles, and Avignon.

96. Torelli, Secoli agostiniani, IV, 344, cf. pp. 336-337. Arch. Munic. Valencia, Sucías codex Monasterios, I, 9 ff., 18; Conventos, III, 7-8. Jordán, Historia de la provincia, I, lib. II, c. 1.

97. Sarthou Carreres, Monasterios valencianos, p. 131 (with a 1250 gift as well). Torelli has "Aquevive nel regno di Valenza" in 1239, citing a lost document of 1260 done by James at Oliva (IV, 344 and V, 648). Cf. Sucias codex Conventos, III, 16-19, but with same document dated 1267. Jordán lists the house as of 1239 but offers no detail.

98. Torelli, Secoli agostiniani, V, 201-202 with doc., 336. The Sucías codex, Conventos, suggests that it was founded in 1251 (III, 27). Cf. Traver Tomás, Antigüedades de Castellón, p. 313. The phrase in the document, "de novo facere nitebantur," and the revenues suggest long pre-existence.

99. Real Acad. Hist., Miguel Eugenio Muñoz ms. book, Descripciones de...las iglesias...de Valencia (partly documents, partly "tradition"), fols. 332 ff.

100. Arch. Munic. Val., Sucías, Conventos, III, 31-32. On the Alcoy house see Nomenclátor, pp. 43-44, 91. Sarthou Carreres furnishes an excellent photograph of the foundress' skull (Monasterios valencianos, p. 216), and more pleasantly her portrait as a motherly lady with a disconcertingly stern jaw (p. 204). Torelli has the house only "della terra d'Alcodio" in Aragon, but dates it from 1270 (Secoli agostiniani, V, 220; On Alcira house, p. 758). Jordán lists the Alcira house as beginning in 1274, the Alcoy house in 1300. Sarthou Carreres has the Alcira monastery, a Gothic structure, begin in 1277 (p. 135).

101. Jordán devotes a chapter to this Castielfabib house, St. William's, supposedly begun in 1155 (I, lib. I, c. 19). Sucías suggests a 1290 foundation here.

102. On the Augustinian dispute with the Carmelites over an earlier date see, besides Torelli (in note 100), Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 33-34. Sucías only allows them 1300 as the founding date (Conventos, III, 37) as he does for Alcoy (p. 47). Peter's gift is in Torelli, V, 345 from a 1428 inventory; cf. VI, 210.

103. Gremios y cofradías, I, 23-27, doc. 4. Fabri, miniscalci, and argentarii (blacksmiths, farriers, and silversmiths) were given a brotherhood at the Augustinian monastery to promote union, piety, charity, and the redemption of members in captivity. They could also have "en la Esglea de Sent Agusti de Valencia una lantea la qual crem nit et dia devant laltar del dit bonaventuros Sent Aloy." Nine years later a less specialized confraternity of a hundred laymen was granted to the Alcira house (doc. 10). In 1329 the agricultores (farmers) of Valencia city would have their guild approved, under Augustinian patronage (doc. 21); and the ferrarii (farriers or smiths; doc. 22), the aluderii and pergaminerii (skin-dressers and parchment makers; doc. 23) in 1329. These documents of 1329 all refer back to a previous existence of the group ("confratriam olim per...editam et multo tempore observatam"), though not necessarily implying a connection with the Augustinians then. The number of brotherhoods and diversity of occupations represented argue a previous popularity of the Augustinians. On the brotherhood movement see the general treatment above in Chapter VII.

104. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 80 (an. 1273): "concedimus fratribus heremitis ordinis Sancti Augustini...ut in aliquibus civitatibus vel castris sive locis...possint libere et absolute...edificare sibi monasteria in quibus debeant deservire cum voluntate proborum hominum civitatum et villarum...damus eis licentiam et plenum posse accipiendi domos seu loca alia...sibi data et emendi similiter."

105. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 46, fol. 54v (July 14, 1281): "racione vendicionis per vos nobis facte de quadam hereditate quam quondam Berengarius habebat in termino de Corbera."

106. Jordán, Historia de la provincia, I, 190.

107. Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 851.

108. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 44, fol. 204v (Nov. 17, 1281): "possitis habere in quocumque loco extra murum Civitatis Valencie eligeritis causa empcionis, donacionis vel cuiuslibet alterius iusti tituli domos et hereditates...et hedificare seu construere monasterium vestrum et domos ad salutem fidelium."

109. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 38. Cf. the document described by Esclapés (Resumen historial, p. 84); the prior was Arnold de Bachris.

110. Antigüedades, ibid. Their residence became the modern provincial museum and their church a parish church (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 421).

111. Gremios y cofradías, I, 33-35, doc. 8; Teixidor has a later copy (Antigüedades, II, 37-38).