[214] In an earlier era the Benedictine monasteries had stood in the forefront of the crusading movement on the Spanish peninsula. Their intensive crusade propaganda and vigorous direction "flooded Spain with knights and soldiers coming from all the regions of France" to mount the mighty counteroffensive of the eleventh century.⁽¹⁾ Population followed these foreign monks, organized itself around their abbeys, and helped substantially to colonize the north. The monasteries formed a solid line of support, military and moral, from embattled Spain up into France. Many were under the jurisdiction of other monasteries -- such as St. Mary of Lagrasse, St. Thomas, St. Victor at Marseilles, or the priory of Moissac.⁽²⁾

Their social contribution was impressive -- in agriculture, industry, commerce, aid to the indigent, public works, and loans; in their architecture, music and arts; in their schools, libraries, and scriptoria; and in their liturgy and spirituality.

But the golden age had passed by the time of the Valencian crusade. The rural world was giving way to a more urbanized world, with different needs and opportunities. The monasteries tended to become somewhat isolated, less influential, bogged down in their role of landlord and litigant. Countermeasures were having some success in the realms of King James, where the monasteries formed a federation after 1215 and especially from 1233 on. They met regularly in chapters now, and took steps to sharpen religious observance.

The Cistercians: The Monks of Benifasá

Of the Benedictine monks, only the highly organized Cistercian Order, the White Monks who had been the new monasticism of the twelfth century, were represented on the Valencian frontier. There is something fitting in this, considering the strong tradition developed by the Cistercians as promoters of the crusades and of the crusade spirit. Less than a hundred years had passed since the time of St. Bernard (d. 1153) when the Cistercian tide had been sweeping over Europe. The ebb had now set in, with its gradual lessening of social influence, its decline of spiritual enthusiasm into a certain routine, its appearance of living in the past. In Spain, at about the time the [215] crusaders of Aragon were preparing to fight their way down to Valencia, the Cistercian movement in Europe had already passed its high point. The great donations had fallen off notably, and this situation would worsen. The White Monks seemed unable to adapt themselves to an urban, centralizing, modern world, without dislocating their ideals and pattern of life. Helplessly they watched their feudal jurisdictions fall away to king and bishop and town. Tangled in debt and maladministration, they fell prey to the avarice of rural nobles whose own economic power was declining.

But if the far-flung Order was entering its season of autumn, it was a golden autumn, with a power and grandeur of its own. One example of this was the one hundred and fifty new monasteries which went up during this century, and the many eminent leaders who came from them, like the great Roderick Simon of Rada, crusader, scholar, and primate of the countries of Spain. At this very period an appreciative pope was to use a bold figure, comparing their services to Christendom to the warrior achievements of the Templars and Hospitallers.

Whatever their troubles elsewhere, the brightest spot of all the Cistercian scene on the peninsula was the advancing frontier of the king of Aragon.⁽³⁾ Throughout the rest of King James's realms Cistercian monasteries were having their share of disasters and troubles. But in Majorca and Valencia the monks encountered challenges and opportunities like those of their primitive period. Important new monasteries were established, and others projected which would help change social patterns on these two frontiers.

King James loved the Order and died clothed in its robes. The statutes of the general chapter show him making requests for a foundation at Montpellier, for prayers, for a monk, for a lay brother to assist him, and so on -- though a strained note can creep into the relation when money is involved.⁽⁴⁾ The king's affection for Poblet near Tarragona was particularly strong. Here he brought his banners to be blessed for the Majorca crusade, and here he returned to give thanks. Located in the heart of the realms of Aragon, Poblet was the royal pantheon; here King James would be buried, by his own request.⁽⁵⁾ The abbots of Poblet remained important counselors to the crown. During the first period of consolidation of the Valencian realm Peter of Albalat, the metropolitan of Tarragona and a brother of Bishop Andrew of Valencia, was a Cistercian monk; so were others of the king's bishops, like the former abbot St. Peter Calvó at Vich.

King James had planned to signalize and consecrate his first advance into the realm of Valencia by planting a Cistercian monastery on that spot. He thus added to his foundations of Escarp near Lérida, and La Real in newly conquered Majorca, the foundations of Benifasá in northern Valencia and two convents of Cistercian nuns. The king later gave the central shrine of the new kingdom, St. Vincent's, to the Cistercians of St. Victorian monastery in Aragon for a short time. In southern Valencia King James II will [216] found Valldigna, destined to be one of the great land-owning monasteries of the realm. King James intended to establish two more Cistercian abbeys here. He also gave gifts of property and privileges in the kingdom of Valencia to the older, non-Valencian monasteries.⁽⁶⁾

For a moment of time, the decline of the Order was stayed. They populated towns, set their flocks grazing over the valleys of Valencia, harvested their revenues, and raised fine buildings. Again Christendom had need of them badly, to stand as monuments and reminders of the Christian way of life for the settlers trickling south. King James emphasized this liturgical-social function of the monk, when giving a vineyard and shop to the Cistercian monastery of Benifasá in the kingdom of Valencia: "mindful that religious places, built for the praise and glory of Our Lord, ought to be generously developed by kings and princes, so that the divine office may be conducted there always and continually."⁽⁷⁾

Of the two great Cistercian abbeys, Benifasá was the daughter and affiliate of Poblet, while Valldigna was the daughter of Holy Crosses (Santes Creus). The mount of Benifasá, whose strategic castle and surrounding, pine-dotted territory took their name from a former Moslem commander Beni Hassa, lay along the confines of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, some fifteen miles from Morella. It was a bitter and windy spot, generally unsuitable for farming and not very satisfactory for flocks. "Ventus et ventus et malus conventus," punned a later abbot of Citeaux after a chilly visit here.⁽⁸⁾ For four months of the year, snow and cold dominated this remote wilderness of mountains and hills. Even at the dawn of the nineteenth century an observer told how its few inhabitants regularly eked out their subsistence only with the aid of daily alms from the monastery.⁽⁹⁾

King Alphonse had pre-granted the place in 1178 to the diocese of Tortosa. But when King Peter conquered it, he gave it with Rossell as a fief to the baron William of Cervera (1208). William in time entered the Cistercians. In 1229 King James confirmed Cervera's own grant of Benifasá to the monastery of Poblet, for the erection of a Valencian monastery.⁽¹⁰⁾ This soon came to include a generous and impressive sweep of country. Besides the Benifasá district, there was "the castle and valley of Malagraner, the castle of Fredes, the place and whole country of Bojar with its valleys and plains and districts, and the whole country of Rossell and Castell de Cabres, and the castle of Bel with its districts, each and every castle and place."⁽¹¹⁾ This grant the king gave to the abbot of Poblet in the year Burriana was captured. The whole seignorial estate came to be called the Tenencia or Tinença of Benifasá monastery itself.⁽¹²⁾

The bishop of Tortosa, opposed to the idea of a monastery here, pressed his own claims; in context these were seignorial rather than ecclesiastical. The affair was settled by arbitration in 1233, though not without the later intervention of the metropolitan and of Rome. This agreement arranged the [217] seignorial rights and jurisdictions, and the ecclesiastical and secular revenues.⁽¹³⁾ Like the other baronial powers and religious Orders in this part of Valencia, Benifasá kept a full half of the tithes as private revenue. The bishop took the first fruits, all mills, and half the ovens. The seignorial claims of Tortosa were further satisfied by a compensating grant from the king. Resentment remained, however; new tithe and revenue accords had to be negotiated with the Tortosa diocese in 1241 and 1261, with adjustments in 1281.⁽¹⁴⁾

As for Rossell, the monastery moved into legal battle against a more formidable foe, the Knights Hospitallers. The encounter became a classic of its kind in European legal history. Innocent IV brought it to a halt in 1250; but it broke out on a new front and had to run its furious course to a final arbitration in 1268.⁽¹⁵⁾

Meanwhile the Moors were being cleared away in skirmishes of a more material nature. In 1234 the traditional eleven monks with their abbot John had arrived to take possession.⁽¹⁶⁾ They would have carried with them from Poblet a modest library, especially of service books, and a contingent of auxiliary lay brothers. The first Cistercians settled in the castle, making there a chapel to St. Scholastica, while a monastery slowly went up some distance away. This would be no simple construction but a complex of buildings which made the monastery a little world in itself. There would have been a church and cloister; a dormitory, kitchen and refectory; a chapter house, a hospice and an infirmary; a lay brothers' dormitory; and an abbot's residence. Furnishing such an establishment -- from the writing materials of the scriptorium and the agricultural implements of the fields to the equipment of forge and shop, kitchen and library, pharmacy and choir -- was itself no easy undertaking. Still, progress continued, if haltingly.

A complaint of 1246, that "at present no more than twenty-two monks are able to live there," shows that James had been neglecting the promises he made over a decade ago to the God of battles.⁽¹⁷⁾ The monastery should have housed a much larger community. In a country as underdeveloped as England in this century the average number of Benedictine monks per monastery amounted to about fifty, though some houses held less than twenty-five and some sixty or more. English Cistercians, however, averaged "considerably" fewer: forty to fifty choir monks per house. Twenty-five choir monks should be the minimum on hand; sixty were required by a twelfth-century statute before a monastery could split to found a new affiliate. In its early period, Rievaulx had held six hundred souls, Clairvaux seven hundred.⁽¹⁸⁾

The bishop of Gerona came to Benifasá's aid, though involuntarily. This prelate was the same Berengar of Castellbisbal who had been King James's candidate for first bishop of Valencia. The king now in a fit of pique cut away part of Berengar's tongue. The mutilation shocked the Christian [218] world. Matthew Paris reports how the English Cistercian John Tolet, rebuking the pope in 1247, extravagantly warned: "Spain is raging to the length of cutting out the tongues of bishops."⁽¹⁹⁾ Pope Innocent reprimanded James severely: "Our mind is stunned by the enormity of the crime."⁽²⁰⁾ The outcome was a heavy penance imposed by Rome on the royal sinner. Among other items, James was ordered to expand the facilities of the Benifasá project, so as to care for twice the current number, and to add 200 silver marks (some 7,500 solidi) to help build their church.⁽²¹⁾

Before the decade was out, Abbot William of Almenar and forty-three monks were able to move into the edifice (1250).⁽²²⁾ The names of twenty-five of these monks of Benifasá are to be found on a document of 1268, including those of the abbot, prior, subprior, sacristan, cellarer major and cellarer minor, master of the works (operarius), infirmarian and sub-infirmarian, vestuarian, and porter.⁽²³⁾ The king saw to the completion of the monastery structure, and endowed it with an additional 1,730 morabatins (probably some 14,700 solidi) in 1259 and 1272.⁽²⁴⁾ The first stone for the ambitious church was laid in 1262 under Abbot Berengar of Concabella.⁽²⁵⁾ To push the work to a conclusion, alms were solicited throughout King James's realms with the approval of the metropolitan (1273).⁽²⁶⁾ It was finished, and gracing the conquered land, in the year James died (1276). By this time the monastic scriptorium was probably supplying copies of manuscript books on demand.⁽²⁷⁾

This upland solitude, and the challenge presented by the poor quality of its land, were in the Cistercian tradition. By preference their area was a huge bloc of land, a single economic unit, with the monastery as a center of exploitation. At Benifasá, nearby strips of arable land were put under cultivation and granges were projected. The grange was an institution peculiar to the Cistercians; it was an outpost of the monastery, where a group of lay brothers could be installed in farm buildings under a resident master of the grange, so as to exploit the inconveniently distant fringes of monastic property.

Surprisingly, a grange was in being as early as 1244.⁽²⁸⁾ The king granted permission for others, on his own land, in 1252.⁽²⁹⁾ Still others existed before 1253 near Ballestar, near Herbés, and near Bojar.⁽³⁰⁾ These latter are mentioned in a papal document which also says: "They are so distant from the mother church that those living there cannot reach it for hearing the divine office." The nightmare travel in that district must be reckoned in terms of time consumed, rather than in geographical distance; so it is with reason that Innocent IV supplies the cause: "because of the hazards of the paths, especially in winter."

The pope therefore allowed oratories to be established here, and perhaps chapels for the people.⁽³¹⁾ Since such places of an exempt monastery would usually be furnished with oratory and refectory, and since the papal letter [219] deferred to the judgment of the bishop of Tortosa, permission for the "cappellae" may especially have concerned the laity, who attended the office even in parish churches in Valencian towns. A document of the previous year from the pope, with a similar reference to the bishop, did in fact speak of the monastery "oratorium" for monks and laity.⁽³²⁾ This latter circumstance must be balanced against the fact that for half a century the Cistercians had been troubled by doubts as to the legitimacy of such chapels, a scruple which was finally settled by a favorable bull of 1255, shortly after these two documents. At any rate, granges were much in evidence at Benifasá. In a document of 1261 the bishop of Tortosa referred to the granges of the Benifasá monks.⁽³³⁾ Any number of other granges doubtless existed but have left no trace in the fragmentary records still surviving.

King James did not altogether forget his abbey. He gave it some Tortosa properties (1234),⁽³⁴⁾ the dominion of Bojar (1235),⁽³⁵⁾ tax exemption for its flocks of sheep (1237, 1247, 1267),⁽³⁶⁾ permission to have one of the monks act as notary public (1261),⁽³⁷⁾ small bits of land such as five jovates at Benimaclet near Valencia,⁽³⁸⁾ and license to buy salt outside the kingdom of Valencia (1261).⁽³⁹⁾ In his last testament he left the monks a thousand morabatins to advance the construction of their church.⁽⁴⁰⁾

The royal endowment had not been adequate, however, to the initial expense of sustaining the monks, and debts accrued during these early years. In 1260 King James promised 7,000 solidi of Jaca, "as a special favor, for the good of my soul."⁽⁴¹⁾ This sum was not immediately available, and the creditors seem to have been pressing the monks. In 1262 the king therefore assigned 4,000 solidi of the promised sum, "to be taken from the revenue, income, fees, hospitality tax, and our other rights, including tithes, first fruits and any others" in nearby Vallibona and Herbés.⁽⁴²⁾ In 1267 he made another gift; and in 1271 he confirmed the mintage tax which he had previously assigned to them in certain villages of Morella.⁽⁴³⁾ None of these piecemeal gifts met the needs of the forty monks, whose obligations were heavy; by 1272 they were barely at subsistence level. In that year James adverted to the lack of bread for the "monks and brothers." So that the monastery "can have enough bread," the king granted to it again his share in the tithe of Vallibona and Herbés (and possibly Herbesét) -- this time in perpetuity.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Private benefactions also helped. In 1248 a benefactor donated to the monks some buildings in Morella. Since a suit would have to be initiated to gain actual possession of these buildings, the benefactor likewise transferred his rights to recover at law.⁽⁴⁵⁾ A cousin of Cervera, Raymond Berengar of Ager, presented the monks in 1241 with rents of 100 solidi per annum.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The Knight Hospitaller castellan of Amposta granted their flocks free pasture in the country of Cervera (1245); and the Calatrava commander of Alcañiz did the same for the countries of Cuevas and Pulpis (1244). A gift came from [220] William of Moncada in 1249 -- the place called Refalgari.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Disturbed in this holding by the Templars, the monks provided themselves with a royal safeguard for it in 1279.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Refalgari (which no longer exists) had been part of the Tortosa countryside, though near the Benifasá border. Since Benifasá followed the public law of Barcelona by the terms of King Peter's 1208 donation, trouble broke out on this point between the abbot and the Tortosa bishop. By a later agreement (1306) the monastery will retain a vicar at Refalgari but the law must remain the costums of Tortosa.⁽⁴⁹⁾

A gift came from William Bardol in 1257, his estate of Lorabar.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Bernard Zamora, a resident of Castellón, in his testament of 1272 left 20 solidi.⁽⁵¹⁾ Tortosa citizens willed a number of gifts.⁽⁵²⁾ Evidence of other small bits of property crop up -- a piece of land bought at Benifasá in 1270, another piece at Liria sold in 1260, and so on.⁽⁵³⁾ But relatively few Valencians seem to have helped the Cistercian work.

The earlier Cistercians had been against appropriations. Subsequently they had drifted toward an opposite practice, as a thirteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury complained with some feeling. "Though they be good men, if God please, still they are the hardiest neighbors that prelates or parsons could have; for where they plant their foot, they destroy towns, take away tithes, and curtail by their privileges all the power of the prelacy."⁽⁵⁴⁾ In consequence there were a number of brisk clashes in Valencia with their neighbors. Besides the central battles with the bishop of Tortosa, and with the Hospitallers over Rossell, there were other fights in plenty.

In 1258 the monks engaged in a boundary dispute with the knight holding Herbés.⁽⁵⁵⁾ In 1259 they came into conflict with the people of Morella and with its governor Peter Ferdinand of Pina over wood-gathering, grazing privileges, and other rights.⁽⁵⁶⁾ After skirmishing with their sister monastery of Escarp, they reached a compromise agreement in 1268 covering taxes and other problems in the countryside of Corachar, Castell de Cabres, and Bojar.⁽⁵⁷⁾ They met the Knights of Calatrava in a boundary dispute (1272),⁽⁵⁸⁾ and one Bartholomew over the estate of Pallerols in the Benifasá district (1274).⁽⁵⁹⁾ They battled the Templars in a "violent" controversy over Refalgari (1278),⁽⁶⁰⁾ with that Order again over crown rents owned by Benifasá, and with the bishop of Tortosa again over the first fruits of Ballestar where the monks maintained a grange (1278).⁽⁶¹⁾ Legal clashes with both Tortosa and Peñarroya over their common borders were not settled until late in 1280. Meanwhile the Peñíscola bailiff William of Ceret had sequestered the monks' hamlet of Irca near Peñíscola; the crown investigator Peter Andrew heard both sides, had Irca returned to Benifasá, and in 1281 arranged a provisional compromise.⁽⁶²⁾

Perhaps the litigations reflect the Cistercians' increasing financial troubles, as well as being a tribute to their large-scale, modernized system of land exploitation. In any case, the times were disjointed, and the stresses of contemporary [221] feudal society were being felt severely within the Order's structure. The statute de non acquirendo had been promulgated in 1180 and repeated by the general chapters in 1190, 1191, 1205, 1206, 1229, 1230, 1239, 1240 and 1242, being discontinued thereafter as ineffective. Similarly, the monks had begun taking tithes before the thirteenth century, a practice finally approved perforce by the general chapter in 1240.

The monastery of Benifasá never became wealthy but it did achieve economic stability, if one may judge by the later ecclesiastical service tax of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Though it paid less than a third of what Poblet and Holy Crosses contributed, Benifasá almost equaled the tax of St. Victorian and passed that of San Juan de la Peña.⁽⁶³⁾

The general chapter of the Order meanwhile was rebuking the abbot of Benifasá for not attending its sessions. In 1275 the abbot petitioned to be allowed to miss one more time.⁽⁶⁴⁾ But by 1282 the general chapter at Citeaux was complaining that he had not shown up "for several years"; it ordered his deposition ipso facto if he should absent himself once more.⁽⁶⁵⁾ The names of at least twelve abbots in charge at Benifasá in the thirteenth century are known: John (1233), Arnold (1241), William of Almenar (1248), Peter Julia (1250), Berengar (1254), Arnold of Mantesana (1255), William Savartés (1260), Berengar of Concabella (1262), William (1283), Peter Vilarnan (1289), Raymond Bernard (1294), and Berengar of Beltall (1300).⁽⁶⁶⁾

The monastic corporation constituted a secular jurisdiction, busily populating and administering its tiny province. A settlement movement was initiated at Bel (1242), at Refalgari (1242), at Benlloc and Herbés (1262), at Fredes (1267), at Malagraner (1269), at Font de la Higuera (1274), and so on.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Besides these organized efforts at group settlement, individual pioneers were brought in, such as the couple who received a grant in 1261.⁽⁶⁸⁾ By an agreement with the bishop of Tortosa -- who kept a jealous eye on his share of the area -- the monks took up the burden of populating the Benifasá Valley. Because they did the lion's share of the work, the bishop agreed to let them have two-thirds of the profit (1261).⁽⁶⁹⁾

The Cistercians at Benifasá were also, in the tradition of their English contemporaries, a sheep-raising body. The relative frequency of documents touching upon this avocation leaves no doubt of its importance to the Benifasá economy. Castile was the dominant country of the European sheep industry at this time, but Aragon also shared in the profits. Conquered Valencia immediately became the "favorite winter grazing ground" for "most of the Aragonese and many of the Castilian transhumantes."⁽⁷⁰⁾ This situation had existed to some extent even when Valencia was Moslem; the Cistercians of Benifasá were well equipped to profit by its expansion now.

They were not the only sheep entrepreneurs in the region. The cattle and sheep industry, traditional here as far back as the days of Rome, grew greatly in the countryside of the Tortosa diocese all through the thirteenth [222] century, becoming in the next century "extraordinary." Here and in northern Valencia the brotherhood or guild of sheepmen (the lligalo) were an important frontier institution; in the thirteenth century its headquarters was at Morella.⁽⁷¹⁾ It was a loose regional organization, unlike the imposing mesta in contemporary Castile. The crown gave grazing privileges in the kingdom of Valencia to other religious or lay groups besides the Benifasá monks; by the early fourteenth century there will even be a special official in charge of royal profits from alien sheep in Valencia.⁽⁷²⁾

As early as 1237, King James gave to the projected Benifasá monastery free pasturage on crown lands in the kingdom of Valencia and free passage for their migratory flocks. These exemptions were confirmed from time to time -- as in 1247, just after the crown had reorganized the 1245 tolls on the sheepwalks of the new kingdom, and in the sweeping exemptions of 1275. The monastic flocks were defended against officious tax collectors.⁽⁷³⁾ Poblet, the parent monastery of Benifasá, had fortified itself as early as 1225 with a crown concession for free grazing throughout the countryside of Peñíscola, Chivert, Pulpis, and "all other lands we shall be able to win from the Saracens." Benifasá, especially in its earlier years, must have shared in this boon.⁽⁷⁴⁾

That Benifasá flocks were brought down to graze along the pleasant coastlands can be seen from the privilege of free passage. Some of the grazing areas are pinpointed in extant documents. Before the monks were properly organized at Benifasá or had begun their church, for example, their flocks were grazing the coastal country of Cuevas de Vinromá, of Pulpis, and of Cervera (1244-1245). By 1252 the crown had given permission to the monks to construct permanent corrals and buildings for their flocks along the empty stretch of coastal country from Viñaroz down to Peñíscola.⁽⁷⁵⁾ Their flocks were also present in Morella country.⁽⁷⁶⁾ Thus the monks brought their experience and skill to the less favored borderlands of the Valencian north.

Whatever its role as rural pioneer or as feudal lord in the less advanced hinterland, Benifasá was above all a religious establishment. In the cloisters of the central monastery of Benifasá, the choir monks continued that intense life of prayer and asceticism and silence which they had learned so well at Poblet. On the grange outposts, lay brothers lived out an example of prayer and work. Of far less importance than what the monks did, was what they were. They represented a dynamic and continuing Christian presence. Solidly ensconced near the gateway to the conquered kingdom, they supplied in all its familiar appearances the traditional monastic backdrop to the more vital work of the new Orders.

Cistercian Monks at Valldigna and Carlet

Valldigna was begun by James II in 1297 under conditions similar to those of Benifasá, but in a rich agricultural area far to the south.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Though [223] just beyond the strict chronological limits of this book, Valldigna must be included as the sister monastery of Benifasá in thirteenth-century Valencia, sharing its frontier function. The story goes that James II, returning from victories over the Moslems a year previously in Murcia, minded to found a monastery in thanksgiving, had pointed out this site to the abbot of Holy Crosses as they passed it. James remarked that this was a worthy place (vallis digna) for a Cistercian abbey. Three castles stood in the valley and at least four small settlements. The whole complex formed part of the general countryside or jurisdiction of prosperous Alcira. The Moslems here were numerous and well-off, as the large tax assessment by the king in 1257 proves. The name of the valley, Alfandech de Marignén, persisted even after the official change by the king to Valldigna.

The monks of Holy Crosses, not of Poblet, supplied the personnel. King James had donated to Holy Crosses, soon after the fall of Valencia, "an estate from which there will always be a substantial income for our monastery, to God's honor and yours, on the day of the Holy Cross every year."⁽⁷⁸⁾ This was no mean gift; the grateful Abbot Gerald gives it prominent place when, for this and other royal benefits, he plans to inscribe "your renowned name, to us sweet and precious," upon all the missals and altars of the monastery so that the monks will always remember to pray for him.⁽⁷⁹⁾

James in 1263 confirmed a previously presented tax exemption for the Valencian properties of Holy Crosses, apparently dependent granges and the farms of vassals:

Because we have made all goods of the monastery of the Holy Crosses frank and free...as is declared in the document...and especially the houses now held in the kingdom of Valencia, or in the future to be held: let no one seize or cause to be seized any appurtenances of the said houses, movable or immovable, be they in the hands of the monastery itself or in those of other persons. Indeed, they are to protect and defend, untouched and inviolate, these houses and the goods therein.⁽⁸⁰⁾

A sweeping jurisdiction was conferred upon Valldigna to include the whole valley, the castles of Marignén and Alcalá, the towns here of Simat, Benifayró, Tabernes, Alfulell, Ráfol, Ombria, and Masalili -- all to be held by the widest powers then possible, short of royal authority. To this the king [224] added the unique privilege of extending this jurisdiction five miles out to sea; the monastery shield would therefore display a castle riding the ocean waves. Nearby Barig came in 1299, and later Rascaña. The crown also gave Barcheta in 1297 and Benavayren in 1298. The town and castle of Almusafes and Rugat in the Albaida Valley were purchased by the monks.⁽⁸²⁾

The monastic jurisdiction was to last until 1814, and Valldigna was to become one of the richest and most famed of Aragon's monasteries. From the beginning, each abbot commenced his rule by going through the prescribed public ceremony of taking possession, before a notary. The valley parish, Alfandech, did not come under the Cistercians until 1335, though they acquired patronage of the church of Ráfol in 1301. When the monks will be temporarily unable to pay the agreed salary of 520 solidi in 1337, a Cistercian rector will have to be substituted for the secular holder.

Was there another monastery of Cistercians in Carlet? Several documents are encountered in the royal archives, of March 3-4, 1272, showing that one was planned. First, the king confirmed the monastery of Our Lady of Grace (Gratia Dei) in the donation a knight made them for this purpose.⁽⁸³⁾ Simultaneously James allowed them to receive of crown lands, "from purchase or gift or the generosity of the faithful, townships and other estates and properties to the sum of a thousand morabatins" or some 12,000 solidi.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Then, finally, he granted "a miliar of land for the monastery of Gratia Dei which is to be built in the country of Carlet."⁽⁸⁵⁾

Very shortly after his conquest of Valencia, King James petitioned the general chapter at Citeaux for yet another abbey, and proffered a site in the new kingdom for their approval. This request the general chapter of 1245 processed:

Inspection of the property, which the lord king of Aragon is assigning for the purpose of founding an abbey of monks in the kingdom of Valencia, is entrusted to the abbots of Peyrignac [in Guienne] and of Veruela [in Aragon] who are to visit the place etc., and whatever else etc., and it is to be the daughter of the monastery of Escaladieu.

By 1298 the Cistercians of the realm of Valencia were important enough to be spoken of, in a financial report of the Order itself, as a separate body: the monks "who are of the kingdoms of France, Navarre, Aragon, England, and Valencia."⁽⁸⁹⁾

[225] The Carthusians

In the latter years of King James's reign there appeared in Valencia that strictest of all Orders of Christendom, the silent Carthusians. They led a life of extreme rigor. Little cottages centered around a cloister, and each monk lived mostly in his own residence as a hermit, in a silence nearly absolute, eating alone and only once a day, taking bread and water half the week, and burying himself in a life of prayer and union with God. The Grande Chartreuse had been functioning since 1100, but so difficult was its vocation that it counted only thirty-nine allied priories by 1300. One of these, an important establishment, the third of its Order to appear in Spain, was on the frontier of Valencia.

The Carthusians commanded the respect both of King James and of the active Dominican bishop, Andrew. Bishop Andrew, who might be thought to have imported a sufficiency of religious establishments by now into his lightly populated diocese, rather precipitately hastened to win the Carthusian services. Without thinking to ask the consent of their general chapter, he arranged to buy a property of the deceased magnate Simon Pérez of Arenós. This was a modest eminence in the quiet valley called Lullén, surrounded by pine-covered mountains. In 1272 King James, "wishing to foster by grace and favor your praiseworthy project, to the honor of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the glorious Virgin Mary," approved the bishop's plans for extensive land purchases.⁽⁹⁰⁾

The valley of Lullén is in the mountain system north of Liria and south of Segorbe, a good distance to the northwest of the city of Valencia itself. Formal possession of this isolated loneliness was acknowledged by King Peter in 1277: the "place called Lullén, for building a monastery," with all its appurtenances, woods, and forests, and all kinds of lands, pastures, revenues, and rights.⁽⁹¹⁾ Soon the monks were constructing their small church and nearby cells. They were allied to the great Carthusian priory of Ladder of God (Escala Dei); this was located in the hills west of Tarragona and should not be confused with the Cistercian Scala Dei, in Bigorre.⁽⁹²⁾ The first prior was Bernard Nomdedeu. The hamlet of Beniparrell near Torrente had been held by them from before 1297, but would be sold before 1313.⁽⁹³⁾ The patronage of the rich church at Liria, served by perpetual vicars, was transferred by the crown to the Carthusians here in 1273 with the approval of Pope Gregory X.⁽⁹⁴⁾

A rather primitive little church now went up, with cells adjoining it. This priory of St. Mary of the Gate of Heaven (Porta Coeli) remained under the patronage of the bishop until 1301. Tithes were required in principle; but these the bishop first commuted to a token 10 solidi a year, and then waived forever. In the light of the Valencian tithe struggle even over places with feeble expectations of real settlement, Bishop Andrew's gesture reveals [226] something of the character of the monks who could inspire it, and underlines the value of their contribution to the spirit of the frontier church.

Cistercian Nuns

The role of the nun on the Valencian frontier is less easy to assess than that of the cleric or male religious. Convents had an assured place in thirteenth-century society, representing the ideal of the bride of Christ. Here the medieval woman could struggle to raise her life to higher levels of devotion and selfless prayer. A host of good and sometimes very remarkable women graced these establishments; mystical writings of a high order issued from them. Such convents had become immensely popular and were multiplying on all sides.

An expansive movement like this posed serious problems of discipline. In a seizure of devotion the frivolous, the obstinate, and the haughty highborn would also be attracted to the ideal, and would remain to taint the communal purity or propriety of their respective convents. Some aristocratic parents even came to look upon convents as dumping places for their unwanted daughters, as happened so often in England.

The English, and to some extent the French, convents were more bedeviled by aristocratic dumping than were those of other lands. This may explain the lack of great English contemplatives or women of force and holiness, such as were produced in surprising number from now on in the multiplying convents of the continent. In the area today known as Belgium, however, the golden age of the convent drew to a close in the thirteenth century, as the nobility began its steady invasion.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Where abuses got out of hand, a convent could decline into a club for local ladies or, worse, into truly pathological depths, with an accompanying din of hysterical slander.⁽⁹⁶⁾ Such convents were in the minority at this time, and usually involved within the house a minority of nuns; but incidents were frequent enough to give pause to prospective founders when selecting their Order. In Valencia this selection was wisely made. In this, as in so many other circumstances of its ecclesiastical origins, the kingdom of Valencia was singularly favored in its opportunities and in its use of them.

Of the nuns related to the monastic Orders, only the Cistercians were to be brought to the Valencian frontier. If the thirteenth century represented a twilight for the White Monk, an autumn in the history of his spiritual enthusiasm and social effectiveness, for his counterpart, the Cistercian nun, it represented a summertime of proliferation and growth. By 1228, in which year alone fifteen foundations were approved, the White Monks felt so submerged by the feminine wave that they decreed an end to further extension. Nuns might independently follow the Cistercian rule, but the general chapter henceforth refused to assume responsibility or authority over them. [227] It was a futile gesture. By mid-century the monks were even reduced to the expedient of securing a papal bull, safeguarding them from having new feminine communities imposed upon them by the pope. By the end of the thirteenth century the grand total of women's convents under their jurisdiction had risen to some seven hundred.

It was not until the thirteenth century that legislation for the nuns found a serious place in the general chapters of the Cistercian monks. This was then codified in 1240 and 1256. It added up to a severe Rule, involving enclosure, silence, manual labor, fasting, penance, and much prayer. The houses had to be adequately endowed; in practice, a convent was usually small and was sustained by only a few holdings. Aside from the proper work of prayer and austerity, other occupations were admitted. These included copying manuscripts, making liturgical vestments, and educating young girls of good family. Each house was an affiliate of an older established convent, and was subject to visitation by the abbess of that convent. The house was under the direction of a Cistercian monk; there might also be a chaplain appointed by him, and even a kind of detached grange nearby.

Behind the Valencian foundation was a woman of force. Though not herself a nun, she seems to have spent her declining years as doorkeeper at the convent. She is cherished in the annals of Cistercian Europe as one of their great and holy women, "the Blessed Teresa, queen." Teresa Giles of Vidaure was a noble lady possessed of beauty and character. She seems to have won completely the passionate heart of King James who gave her gifts of Valencian properties as early as 1238. Eventually, after the death of his second wife (sometime, that is, after 1251), he took her in clandestine marriage.⁽⁹⁷⁾ The bride was soon endowed with estates like Jérica castle west of Segorbe and a particularly handsome holding in Valencia city (both in 1255). This latter was the alcazar or fortified palace of the Moslem rulers of Valencia, the same property which the Moslem king of Valencia had once offered to convert into a royal residence for King James as part of a qualified surrender involving tributary status.⁽⁹⁸⁾

In 1260 it seemed more practical to exchange this alcazar for the fine Zaidia or Lady's Palace, close to the city but across the river, to the north; this estate likewise included an alcazar.⁽⁹⁹⁾ The Zaidia, together with the nearby buildings along the city wall and a farm, had previously been held by the archbishop of Narbonne for his signal services at the siege of Valencia. Not long after these nuptial property transactions, however, the royal ardors cooled -- or at least, under fresher winds, they burned in new directions. Twenty years of suffering lay ahead for the Lady Teresa.

It was at this time that the spurned wife turned her energies to the founding of a convent in her palace. The records of the general chapter at Citeaux for the year 1263 introduce the project. Teresa's offer was provisionally accepted in that year: "Item: Inspection of the place, in which the noble lady [228] Teresa Giles proposes to found an abbey of nuns, is entrusted to the abbots of Benifasá and Escarp. The abbot of Benifasá will inform the latter of this."⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ The monastery of Our Lady of Grace -- Gratia Dei or, simply, La Zaidia - was inaugurated by Teresa early in 1265.

Teresa was not the only relative of the king guiding a convent. His sister Constance -- widow of the viscount of Béarn who was killed on the Majorca crusade -- recruited for and administered a convent in the Lérida diocese, first as a laywoman and then as superior; she founded another convent on Majorca. The Lady Sancha of Aragon (d. 1254) was a nun in the Lérida house. The king's daughter Mary (d. 1307) became superior of a convent in the Perpignan diocese.

In November of 1265 the crown exempted Teresa's convent from all legal restrictions on purchasing or inheriting properties. Episcopal permission for the establishment was belatedly sought and granted early in 1266. Citeaux had not as yet committed itself to acceptance. But the abbots of Benifasá and Escarp were formally involved, and the Cistercian convent of Vallbona had undertaken the actual organization, in the persons of the nuns Beatrice of Anglesola (who was to remain as abbess throughout Teresa's life),⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Catalana of Montblanch, and Willelma.⁽¹⁰²⁾

The wandering eye of the crusader king had by now definitively alighted upon the person of Lady Berenguela Alphonse. In an ill-advised moment James even had the impertinence to ask his admirer, Pope Clement IV, for an annulment of his marriage with Teresa (1266). Few kings can have been so cuttingly tongue-lashed by a pope as was the old warrior. Clement "marveled greatly" at the "irresponsible" request, so "antagonistic to God, abominable to the angels, and monstrous to men," by which the pope would be made to "share in the pollution of [your] illicit union." The papal letter concluded: "whom God has joined together, how shall the vicar of God put apart? Far from us be this crime!" And in mid-year, when congratulating his majesty on the brilliant conquest over the Moslems of Murcia, the pope thrust deeply into the wound. "Conqueror of armies, you are conquered by your own body, so badly that you have forgotten the fear of God and gravely offend the eyes of the divine majesty..., carrying about with you an adulteress, as a bad example to many."⁽¹⁰³⁾ On the perilous battlefield of Murcia, the king's confessor had refused him absolution.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

King James refused to take back his wife. Teresa now seems to have plunged more deeply into her monastic project. By 1268 the Cistercian chapter was finally prepared to admit her group. "The incorporation of the convent of nuns of the Grace of God in great Valencia is committed to the abbots of Escarp and Benifasá, and it is to be a daughter of Citeaux."⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ In February of that year the abbot of Benifasá, the bishop, and other dignitaries solemnly refounded the Zaidia convent. As an endowment the entire site was given, plus rentals from three separate places at the capital amounting [229] to almost 250 mazmodins yearly. Teresa was to be patroness for life, with a veto right over postulants female or male -- this last suggesting the attached cell or grange alluded to above.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾

A later document affords a glimpse of the administrative officers. The abbess was the same Beatrice of Anglesola already spoken of; Catalana of Montblanch was prioress, with Suriana as cellaress and Elissenda of Tornamira as sacristan; the nun Margaret also appears. Other unnamed nuns are mentioned, of whom "counsel" has been taken.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ Three noble ladies who became nuns in the convent in this century were Ursula Omedes, Beatrice of Agreda, and Violante of Cardona.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾

The convent is mentioned in the royal registers half a dozen times. There was a privilege to the abbess and community in 1268 to "buy freely, in any place at all, properties up to the amount of a thousand morabatins," a total of 12,000 solidi.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ At about the same time the king awarded them all the goods of the deceased Peter Maciot, confiscated by the crown because he had willed them to "unworthy persons who ought not to inherit the aforesaid goods."⁽¹¹⁰⁾ The residence was then in process of reconstruction, to adapt it to the needs of religious life, and the confiscated properties were to be used "according to the counsel of the director of works there."⁽¹¹¹⁾ Shortly after this gift, the king transferred "our part, and all our rights which we receive and hold and ought to receive, from the mills in the confines of Campanar, in which we receive and should receive the third part."⁽¹¹²⁾ Three years later he allowed them to build and operate a public oven (1271),⁽¹¹³⁾ and to buy a piece of land "for a vineyard."⁽¹¹⁴⁾ James also transferred to them his third-tithe of the Ruzafa suburb at Valencia city.⁽¹¹⁵⁾

The Zaidia nuns were remembered in a number of wills still extant. The citizen of Valencia William of Barcelona left to his niece Elissenda, who was a nun here, his rents "from certain mills located in the district of Patraix," a suburb southwest of Valencia city.⁽¹¹⁶⁾ These were to continue in the possession of the convent after her death, and may possibly have been meant as a dowry. In 1272 the Lady Willelma left them ten solidi, through the abbess, and twelve pence for each nun.⁽¹¹⁷⁾ A layman's will of 1275 left them 10 solidi.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Other considerable gifts accrued: 600 solidi in 1271 from the Játiva estates of Hugh of Baux; 100 solidi from Louis of Procida; and from Arnold Escrivá some Campanar lands and Ruzafa estates.⁽¹¹⁹⁾

Teresa seems to have remained at the convent, but to have traveled to her Jérica estates upon occasion for business purposes.⁽¹²⁰⁾ By 1274 the old king, infatuated with his latest mistress, had managed to wangle a divorce from the complaisant bishop of Valencia, a circumstance not calculated to increase admiration for local ecclesiastical policy.⁽¹²¹⁾ The king pleaded that Teresa had been stricken with leprosy. Such a charge was irrelevant, and probably untrue; but it does indicate an illness of Teresa serious enough to suggest the fabrication. The saintly pope known to posterity as Blessed [230] Gregory X struck back immediately. In a letter of July 1275, he underlined the double adultery of which James and Berenguela were guilty. Later, ten months before James died, Pope Gregory ordered a change in the king's life within a week, instructing the archbishop of Tarragona to excommunicate the royal sinner in case of noncompliance and to put all Aragon under interdict.

Teresa survived her unfaithful husband only two years. She seems to have died in the spring of 1278.⁽¹²²⁾ In her will she left the convent 1,000 gold morabatins (some 12,000 solidi) with which to buy properties, another thousand morabatins for the construction or upkeep of the chapel, and a foundation to support four chaplains.⁽¹²³⁾ A series of Valencian towns and castles in her possession (some had already passed to her sons) were left to relatives, with provision for their reverting to the convent should the legatees die without issue. The towns of Altura and Castellmontán were given to the nuns. A clue to Teresa's enthusiasms and spirit is that the only preference she displays in her last testament, besides the Cistercian Order, is for the vital new Mendicant groups.

Buried by her own request at the convent and in the habit of a Cistercian nun, the "holy queen's" body remained incorrupt in the tomb. She had obviously been the soul and support of her establishment. It was to continue now for many centuries without her. But in her own turbulent time, so parlous for the spirit of religion and dedication, it owed much to her generosity, to her choice of rule, to her forceful role as patroness, and to the example she gave as portress in the convent.

Franciscan Nuns

The Franciscan movement for women was still in its vigorous, sturdy youth during the progress of the crusade against Valencia. The friend and intimate of St. Francis, St. Clare of Assisi, had founded the Order under his guidance; she continued to direct it until her death in 1253. (It was only at that late year too, that her rule finally was approved by Rome.) In 1241, three years after the fall of Valencia city, occurred the famous scene in which Clare bravely confronted the Saracen troops of Frederick II in the convent garden. Less than a decade after that event, and about fifteen years before the great woman's death, a convent of Franciscan nuns had been organized in Valencia city. Nuns of the Order had come to Barcelona in 1234, and to Balaguer and Valencia soon after; just after mid-century they were at Tarragona and Majorca; in 1267 they reached Tortosa, and by the end of the century Montblanch.⁽¹²⁴⁾

These Poor Clares, or Poor Ladies of San Damiano, followed a rigorously severe life characterized by enclosure, perpetual silence, fasts, mortifications, and strict poverty. The practical lawyer-pope Innocent IV had just arranged [231] (1247) for communal ownership of properties, so that the convents might be decently supported. St. Clare had fought back with the fervor of the idealist, wishing to subsist on alms alone. One must not expect, then, to find any considerable holdings of the convent in this century. There would be need for financing the construction and the outfitting of the establishment at Valencia, for the soliciting of alms, and for the founding of chapels and chaplaincies. Beyond this, it is difficult to decide whether the Valencian convent had yielded to the practicalities and actually owned other supporting properties.

The nuns had been in Valencia city perhaps since 1239, but in more informal quarters than they subsequently occupied.⁽¹²⁵⁾ In the late 1240's the baron Simon Pérez, lord of Arenós and lieutenant general for the kingdom of Valencia, granted to the nuns his buildings just outside the city walls at their southwest angle; his condition was that the convent be placed here rather than somewhere in the Valencian countryside. The property bordered along the Moslem quarter, just beyond a suburb called Roteros. It was flanked by a major highway, and conveniently included a small mosque.⁽¹²⁶⁾ Wherever the convent may previously have been housed, it was already in juridical existence. The abbess at this time was Tarina, and the prioress was Catherine (though the two names involve problems).⁽¹²⁷⁾

Another substantial gift came in 1249, from the noble Roderick and his wife, 60 solidi annually in rent from properties lying somewhat to the west of the city in the Mislata suburb.⁽¹²⁸⁾ The convent itself was named after a recently deceased and canonized in-law of King James, St. Elizabeth or Isabel of Hungary (1204-1231), wife of Ludwig IV of Thuringia, a Poor Clare tertiary and mystic known for her labors among the poor. The nuns had a public chapel and many loyal clients.

They appear quite often in the wills. The king, though he left 100 morabatins to each of four convents of Poor Clares in his realms, left 200 to that of Valencia city.⁽¹²⁹⁾ A quarter century earlier, in 1251, Queen Violante assigned to them the same amount, together with some valuable cloaks -- presumably to be sewn into vestments.⁽¹³⁰⁾ That same year Raymond of Morella left them 5 solidi. In 1252 Dominic Calderón gave twelve pence. In 1255 the knight William Ochova Alemán provided 200 solidi for their church.

Canon Bertrand of Teruel in 1256 put aside 100 solidi for them, and the Lady Jordana settled a benefice worth 150 solidi a year on their church -- where she also assigned her body to be buried. In 1258 Peter of Barberá remembered them with two solidi. In 1259 Lazarus of Vilella gave 10 solidi, and in 1261 Bernard of Nausa gave five. In 1262 the son of the Moslem ex-king of Valencia, a Christian convert named Ferdinand, willed them 200 solidi. In 1271 Barberan Oller left two solidi. Next year the king's concubine Berenguela Alphonse founded a chaplaincy at the convent (providing one [232] Simon of Ort as chaplain). In 1275 Peter Marqués gave 10 solidi; and in 1272 Willelma left 10, as well as twelve pence for every nun.⁽¹³¹⁾

By early 1252 the Abbess Tarina possessed sufficient capital to purchase from Peter Ferrer, a draper in the city, a farm in nearby Roteros suburb. Looking toward further purchases and gifts, she secured a license for this purpose from the king, up to the amount required for building her monastery.⁽¹³²⁾ The nun Raymunda here must have been a close friend or relative of Catalina, the wife of William of Montagut, for Catalina left her 30 mazmodins in her will of 1288, and gave 10 more to the convent.⁽¹³³⁾

Dominican Nuns

The Dominican friars also had their counterpart in Valencia, an Order of cloistered nuns likewise in its vigorous formative years. St. Dominic was a senior contemporary of King James; in fact, it was partly owing to Dominic's presence and inspiration that James's father had lost the critical battle of Muret and with it his life. Dominic's first foundation, and the center from which his work was to develop and spread, was the convent for nuns at Prouille near Toulouse in 1205. The Dominicans were reluctant, however, to make a regular policy of governing convents of women. This struggle within the Order was still going strenuously at mid-century.

Meanwhile, a rule of life for nuns was being progressively worked out; this assumed its final form by 1259. Each convent was to be properly endowed, and was to hold property as a corporate community. An elected prioress would be superior. Each house was independent but subject to a hierarchy consisting of the provincial prior, the master of the Order, and the Dominican general chapter. The life was to be a mixture of prayer, penance, choir, and manual work.

The Dominican convent of St. Mary Magdalene stood just beyond the southern wall of Valencia city, close to the residence of the Knights of Mercy.⁽¹³⁴⁾ It must have been projected even before the capture of the city, for a small building had been donated toward its support and perhaps to serve as a temporary residence, in the 1239 division of city properties.⁽¹³⁵⁾ Immediately after the fall of the city, during those hectic days when the metropolitan was multiplying acts of jurisdiction to establish his claims, he reconciled "some mosque" as the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene; perhaps this was the temporary convent for the nuns who meant to come to Valencia.⁽¹³⁶⁾ Further gifts from king and benefactors followed. By 1246 work was going forward on a large convent. Even before that year Pope Innocent IV had already offered indulgences to all who would contribute to the building, and to such necessary furnishings as books, lamps, and clothing. Bishop Andrew of Valencia offered a similar indulgence in 1246, as did the prelates of Tarragona, Lérida, Zaragoza, Tortosa, and Majorca.⁽¹³⁷⁾

[233] In view of the contemporary opposition of the Dominicans to accepting new convents, the Valencian house seems to have remained juridically a local Augustinian foundation, under the special direction of the Valencian Dominicans and with Dominican admixtures in their rule. They were fully incorporated as Dominicans only by the bull of Honorius IV in 1286, and by the letters of the Dominican master in the following year. A Valencian Dominican of noble family, Bernard Riusech, was named their prior.⁽¹³⁸⁾

King James speaks of their church in a grant of mid-1271: "we grant to you, Alanda of Romani...and to all the ladies of that monastery...forever as much space, from the property where the market is held in the city of Valencia, next to your houses and church, as is required for the entrance way to the door of your church."⁽¹³⁹⁾ Alanda or Adelaide de Romaní was possibly a relative of Arnold of Romaní, a man with wide holdings in Valencia who figures many times in James's registers for this period, once as bailiff of Valencia. In 1268, James had granted this prioress 10 Josephine mazmodins annually (40 solidi), to be collected from the rents of certain mills.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ And, when an estate of over two hundred jovates came onto the market in 1271, after the death of its owner Bononat Gia, a crown functionary, King James allowed Prioress Alanda to buy it.⁽¹⁴¹⁾

The Dominican nuns were remembered in many wills. The queen's porter Aparisi left them 10 solidi in 1247; the draper Peter Oller 10 in 1249; in 1251 Peter Armer and Raymond of Morella each willed them 5 solidi. Dominic Calderón provided twelve pence in 1252; William Ochova Alemán 100 solidi in 1255; Canon Bertrand of Teruel 50 solidi in 1256; Peter of Barberá twelve pence in 1258; Lazarus of Vilella 10 solidi in 1259; and Bernard of Nausa 5 solidi in 1261. Ferdinand Pérez, the son of the Moslem ex-king of Valencia, left 50 solidi in 1262; Barberan Oller willed 2 in 1271. Willelma gave 10 solidi for the prioress in 1272 and twelve pence for each nun. Peter Marqués left 10 solidi in 1275. Catalina the wife of William of Montagut willed them another 10 in 1288.⁽¹⁴²⁾ Other properties were acquired later; for example, James II will give them his third-tithe for the town and region of Foyos near Valencia.⁽¹⁴³⁾

A letter of 1282 from King Peter to the prioress of the house at Valencia city, herself of a very wealthy family, requested her "to accept as a sister and nun of the said monastery, at our request, Agnes the sister of William of Sala, scribe of the venerable bishop of Valencia."⁽¹⁴⁴⁾

Other Nuns: Magdalenes, Augustinians, Augustinian Canonesses

There was yet another group, settled perhaps close to those Augustinian nuns who became Dominicans. They even bear the same name, St. Mary Magdalene. These were the Magdalenes or White Ladies. Their chronological [234] origins are obscure, but their convents emerge into the light of frequent documentation in the thirteenth century; perhaps this century could even be accounted their time of origin. They appear in Germany in the early thirteenth century, in France only from 1272, and in Valencia perhaps from 1239.

The vocation was an unusual one, since it sought recruits among wayward women -- by which term one may understand anything from former prostitutes or incorrigible sinners to simple unfortunates. The name Magdalene thus had a literal and very Christian meaning. But in fact many innocent women were drawn to this life of penance and humility, so that some houses were completely composed of them. Such a convent was often at once a striking work of social rehabilitation and a monument to the basic teachings of Christianity. As the century progressed, numbers of these convents were to affiliate with the strict new Mendicant Orders.

Was this vocation represented on the Valencian frontier? There are provocative bits of evidence which hint at this; but it is only in deference to the authority of the great antiquarian Teixidor that one can give them much weight.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ Detailed contemporary wills inexplicably seem to overlook this single convent. Besides, the appellation "Sisters of Penance" was a common one for many penitential convents of quite different origins; and many groups precisely so named were then under Dominican direction. More seriously, the term appears in the documentation of the previous Augustinian-Dominican house at Valencia. Still, it is just possible that there existed a sort of dependent ministry, a species of third Order attached to and supported by the main convent of St. Mary Magdalene. Such a suggestion may find support, though it is unlikely, in the somewhat tautological reference of 1265 to "the church or monastery of Blessed Mary Magdalene, and the community [conventus] of nuns [dominarum] who are to dwell there for reason of penance."⁽¹⁴⁶⁾

This conclusion may also appease the lovers of legend, who feel an attachment for the tale told by the fourteenth-century James Roig. The poet tells how an outraged husband, one of the high nobles on the Valencian crusade, founded such a convent to confine his unchaste and wandering wife:

la pecadora
qui gran senyora
fon, e contesa.

Returning again to solid ground, an establishment of Augustinian nuns, the Ladies of St. Julian, may be noted. They were situated beyond the city walls to the north, on the road to Murviedro (Sagunto). Their name derives [235] from the small sub-church of St. Julian which was a dependency of the city parish of Holy Savior from about the year 1250.⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ These nuns seem to have appeared only in the last decades of the century. They turn up occasionally in the testaments of the day. For instance, the will of the widow of Bernard William of Mompalau left them three solidi in 1298.⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ They were the feminine counterpart of the Mendicant Augustinian friars, but they had no part in the 1256 union nor were they a confederation. Their houses were autonomous, often with some sympathetic bond or affiliation with the friars. Their life was an open and active one, the activity varying from place to place.

Another type of Augustinian nun -- counterpart to the older Augustinian canons who were halfway between the monastic and diocesan clerical states -- was the convent founded by the king at Alcira. The documentation for endowing the convent, which James "in pious gesture built and endowed"⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ for them there in 1273, is useful for rounding out one's knowledge of what was required to found such an establishment. In that year the king handed over to the Lady Timbors, prioress of the Augustinian canonesses of St. Mary Magdalene at Montpellier, a complicated series of rents to be used in founding and supporting a house of the Order at Alcira.⁽¹⁵⁰⁾

The rents came especially from mills operating on the Albaida River and from such public properties as ovens and meat-stalls; Játiva rents were prominent. This ultimately represented an endowment of over 1,300 solidi per annum. King James laid down certain conditions: the community was to consist of thirteen nuns, each to be replaced on death; the income must be spent on this house, none of it going to the governing house at Montpellier. The manner of electing the local prioress was also spelled out. The document names three of the nuns coming to found the convent under Lady Timbors: Willelma, Bonafos, and Auda.

In a companion document the king listed the holdings given: fifteen groups of mills, of which they are to have the king's rent (here, usually half of the profits); a plot of land; rents totaling 380 solidi; 60 more solidi; 60 morabatins; and from ovens at Játiva rents of 30, 22, 20, and 40 solidi.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ In 1275, King James gave: "permission...to buy for your purposes, a farm...which fronts on your aforesaid monastery, and to buy in the country around Alcira a hundred pedonates of crown land to make into vineyards."⁽¹⁵²⁾ In 1279 King Peter confirmed his father's gifts to the convent, and renewed their privilege for buying Alcira crown lands; he added the boon of his royal protection over the establishment.⁽¹⁵³⁾ These nuns contributed generously to the crusade tax, apparently rejecting the privileged status granted to most other religious Orders in Valencia. In 1279 they gave 306 solidi; in 1280 they gave three separate contributions, totaling 625 solidi, one of the largest sums taken that year.⁽¹⁵⁴⁾

Some years after the turn of the century, a terrible flood wrecked their building. The bishop of Valencia, moreover, had appropriated and alienated [236] much of their endowment for his own purposes.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ As a consequence, the nuns thought it wise to remove to Játiva. They changed their affiliation as well, becoming Cistercians under the direction of Valldigna (1316).⁽¹⁵⁶⁾

As for hermitages for women, and the associations of Mendicant tertiaries so prominent and effective at this period in Europe, there is no information for Valencia in its frontier period. In the hospitals like St. Vincent's or St. Lazarus, pious laywomen of the towns of Valencia undoubtedly added their services to those of the staffs, as was done in the rest of Christendom.

The period of the Valencian crusade, with the previous generation or two, saw a release of women's energies into service outside the home. If it was hardly the Female Era (tempus muliebre) hailed by the feminist abbess St. Hildegard of Bingen (d.1179), in which the public efforts of women were destined to restore a Christendom shattered by male ineptitude, it did offer many women some public role in the community. The strong tide of feminine monasticism was reflected here in Valencia. Along with the monks, who continued to be an important element in the Reconquista settlement now as in centuries past, the nuns too found a place on the frontier for their devotion, example, and talents.

1. Philibert Schmitz, Histoire de l'ordre de Saint BenoIt, 6 vols. (Maredsous, 1942-1956), I, 223-224.

2. Ibid. and p. 216.

3. Justo Pérez de Urbel in his Los monjes españoles en la edad media (2 vols. [Madrid, 1930-1934], II, 526-597) puts the generalities in vivid detail, and points to the Aragon frontier as the bright spot. The malaise was a Europe-wide phenomenon but it must not be exaggerated; see, for example, the sensible evaluation by David Knowles, who concludes that the Cistercians had remained fairly free of luxury and relaxation of spirit despite internal structural changes (The Monastic Order in England [Cambridge, Eng., 1941], p. 689). Moreau praises their vigor and spiritual influence in Belgium at this time, discerning the signs of decay in the later thirteenth century and the real decline in the fourteenth (Église en Belgique, III, 404, 415, 419). On the crisis of the monasteries see Schmitz, Ordre de St. BenoIt, III, 3-5, 116-118. See too the recent article with bibliography, "Espagne cistercienne," in the DHGE, XV, cols. 943-970. On the monastic federation and reform movement in Aragon see Philipp Hofmeister, "Die Verfassung der ehemaligen claustralen Benediktinerkongregation in Katalonien und Aragon," Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens and seiner Zweige, LXX (1959), 206-235.

4. E.g., on this last point, the complaint of the general chapter in 1267 (Statuta capitulorum, III, 55-56, no. 55). James's general connections with the Order may also be reviewed in Ángel Manrique, Cisterciensium seu venus ecclesiasticorum annalium a condito cistercio, 4 vols. (Lyons, 1642-1659), IV, index sub "Iacobus."

5. See Bernardo Morgades, Historia de Poblet (Barcelona, 1948), pp. 67-68; Llibre dels feyts, ch. 564. In his wider discussion of Poblet, Jaime Finestres has a treatise on Benifasá too; see his Historia del real monasterio de Poblet, 6 vols. (Barcelona, [1746] 1947-1955), II, 250-288. The Poblet abbot here connected with the Benifasá foundation in Valencia was Vidal of Alguaire (1232-1236); his predecessor had just become archbishop of Aix in Provence, and his successor as abbot (Simon, 1236-1237) was to be made bishop of Segorbe-Albarracín, his successor in turn (Raymond of Siscar, 1238-1241) becoming bishop of Lérida.

6. Thus the abbey of Escarp (which had a feebler beginning under James's father) was given Corachar near Benifasá in 1230; it was secured from its actual holder in 1235. See the series of documents relating to this property in Arch. Nac. Madrid, carp. 418, 419, 422. An important document from this collection is reproduced in photo and in copy by Agustín Millares Carlo, Tratado de paleografía española, 2nd ed. revised, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1932), I, 286, and II, 65 (May 2, 1235). A later document recalls their pacific possession from the time of this original grant (Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 60, fol. 48, Feb. 11, 1283). Their Alcudia estate appears in a document of June 19, 1246, bounding the property of a knight "Don Drogo miles" (Arch. Cath., perg. 5,970: "quod ortum est ante Monacorum descarp"). Escarp also received Macelmaida in 1237. We hear of one of their vassals in a dispute concerning his land (Arch. Cath., perg. 4,640, Aug. 7, 1257): "ortum vestrum quem vos Bernardus Michus tenetis pro monachis descarp." Their subjects in Valencia seem to have enjoyed immunity from army duty and its fee, because this claim is being investigated in 1280 (Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 48, fol. 24). See also Chapter IX, note 74. Ripoll monastery held Burjasót from 1238 to 1258. Holy Crosses (Santes Creus) had Valencian properties; King James ordered his officials and subjects in 1263 to recognize these (Arch. Crown, Reg. 12, fol. 85v, June 1). Poblet's holdings are noted in Chapter XV, note 134. On St. Vincent's in monastic hands, see ibid., notes 8-11 with text.

7. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 419, doc. 6 (Dec. 11, 1234); see too Colección diplomática, doc. 1,033: "attendentes quod loca religiosa ad laudem et gloriam domini nostri...hedifficata, debeant a Regibus et principibus multipliciter augmentari prout divina officia ibi semper et indessinenter celebrentur."

8. Honorio García, "El monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Benifazá en Valencia," ACCV, XV (1947), 226. A good account of the early years of Benifasá is given by the same author: "Real monasterio de Santa María de Benifazá," BSCC, XXVI (1950), 19-35. And see his "La iglesia del monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Benifazá," ACCV, XX (1952), 184-191. There is a cartulary for Benifasá among the codices of the Arch. Nac. Madrid (sig. mod. 871), and two copies of the codex Llibre de la fundació (1586) of Miquel Joan Gisbert (sig. mod. 578 and 896). See also Manrique, Annales, II, an. 1234, ch. 5 and Finestres, Poblet, in note 5.

9. A. J. Cavanilles, Observaciones sobre la historia natural, geografía, agricultura, población y frutos del reyno de Valencia, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1795-1797), I, 2.

10. Itinerari, pp. 78, 548n. (June 14, 1229). Colección diplomática, doc. 120 (Nov. 22, 1233). See Manuel Betí, "Fundación del real monasterio de monjes cistercienses de Santa María de Benifazá," Congrés I, p. 414, and Morgades, Poblet, pp. 67-68; from 1224 to 1229 the abbot here was Raymond of Cervera, perhaps a relative of King James. For the grants and the pre-grants, see also Viage literario, IV, 153-154. Pertinent early documents are in Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 418 (an. 1226-1233). On an early (1208) settlement attempt by King Peter, see Bayerri, Tortosa, VII, 143.

11. Arch. Nac., ibid., document of November 22, 1233: "et castrum et vallem de malgraner et castrum de Fredes et locum et totam terram de Boxar cum suis vallibus et planis et terminis et totam terram de Rossell et Castrum de Capris et castrum de Bel cum suis terminis, que omnia castra et loca singula..."

12. Ibid., carp. 422 (Sept. 25, 1254): "ipsum locum...cum terminis et pertinenciis suis."

13. Ibid., document of August 13, 1233; related documents passim, including the papal confirmation and the agreement of February 20, 1243. See also García, "Real monasterio," pp. 22 ff. At the Arch. Cath. Tortosa, see cajón Benifasá, nos. 2-3; cart. VIII, fols. 127-128.

14. Arch. Cath. Tortosa, ibid., nos. 1, 10, 24, 27; cart., fols. 59-63.

15. Manuel Betí has gathered the story into his small monograph, Ro[s]sell, pleito que por su dominio sostuvieron en el siglo xiii la orden de San Juan de Jerusalén y el real monasterio de Benifazá; besides the brief forty-two pages of text, there are fifty pages of documents.

16. John of Malacara or (in García, "Real monasterio," p. 26) John of Cortit. García dates the arrival at nine days after the royal confirmation of November 22, in 1233.

17. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,059 (Oct. 20, 1246): "ad presentes non possint ibi plusquam viginti duo monachi esse." The king had also given houses in the city of Valencia and five jovates of lands in Benimaclet, but these the monastery never got (see the Repartimiento de Valencia, pp. 157-158).

18. Knowles, Monastic Order in England, p. 223 and n.; Moorman, Church Life, pp. 256-257.

19. F. A. Gasquet, Henry the Third and the Church, a Study of His Ecclesiastical Policy and the Relations Between England and Rome (London, 1910), p. 268. On the connection of the bishop of Gerona (Berengar of Castellbisbal) with Valencia see Chapter II, note 37 and text.

20. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 21 (Innocent IV), fols. 305r-306v, June 22, 1246; notice in Berger, Registres, I, no. 1,992; "mens nostra obstupuit enormitate flagitii."

21. Perg. in note 17: "et acceptamus satisfactionem quam obtulistis spontaneus pro offensa predicta videlicet quod monasterium de Benifassa Ordinis Cisterciensis per vos feliciter inchoatum dotando et edificando, taliter consumetis, ut...valeant ibidem quadraginta commode susten[t]ari, et quod fabrice eiusdem ecclesie ducentas marchas argenti impendatis."

22. Viage literario, IV, 155, document of January 1251; the move was made on November 1, 1250 (Garcia, "Real monasterio," p. 27).

23. Betí, Rosell, doc. 15. Knowles explains all these administrative officials in his Monastic Order, pp. 427-431.

24. Ibid., p. 160, documents of 1259 and 1272.

25. Ibid., p. 150. García has Bishop Andrew bless and place the first stone, and on August 15, 1264 ("Real monasterio," p. 34). See also his "Iglesia del monasterio," pp. 184-191.

26. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 425, doc. 11 (May 8, 1273): "opere pl[uri]um sumptuoso noviter fabricari, ad cuius operis consumationem sit subsidium Christi fidelium non modicum necessarium."

27. Enrique Bayerri, in his Los códices medievales de la catedral de Tortosa (Barcelona, 1962), believes that Benifasá was making books available to the Tortosa library by the end of the thirteenth century (p. 45).

28. Itinerari, p. 551n. (Feb. 11, 1244); it is the subject of a land exchange. On Cistercian wool-growing and farm techniques at this period see David Knowles, "The Agrarian Economy of the Cistercians," in his The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 1950-1959), I, ch. 6.

29. Colección diplomática, doc. 427 (July 13, 1252); Itinerari, p. 223.

30. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 422, doc. 9 (May 19,1253): "eorum Grangie de Borriana de Albar et de Bellestar." In the Roman scribe's Albar can be discerned Arberos or Herbés. But it is improbable that the transcription Borriana can be Burriana; the context calls for a place where winter makes the roads hazardous.

31. Ibid.: "a matrice ecclesia adeo sint remote [grangie] quod existentes in ipsis propter viarum discrimina hyemali presertim tempore pro aud[i]endis divinis officio [sic]...nequeant accedere ad eandem, construendi capellas in eisdem Grangiis licenciam ipsis concedere curarem."

32. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., doc. of January 4, 1252.

33. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 423, doc. 13 (June 16, 1261).

34. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 419, doc. 6 (Dec. 6, 1234): "quandam vineam nostram cum terra," and "quendam Cellarium nostrum...in Civitate Dertuse."

35. Itinerari, p. 549n.

36. Ibid., notes on pp. 550, 552. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 420, doc. 4 (1275); carp. 422, doc. 9 (1247); and carp. 423, doc. 7 (1259) ordering the "alcaydus" of Morella to respect their grazing privileges.

37. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 423, doc. 11 (June 9, 1261). See Chapter I, note 29.

38. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 127.

39. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 423, doc. 14 (Aug. 20, 1261); there is a copy under Ords. Milits., Montesa, R119. Cf. Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 135.

40. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 2,126; Colección diplomática, doc. 1,385 (Aug. 26, 1272): "ad opus opens ecclesie."

41. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 11, fol. 238 (Jan. 2, 1260; fol. 237v is also marked confusingly 238): "ex gratia speciali ob remedium anime nostre."

42. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 12, fol. 51v (May 15, 1262): "recognoscimus et confitemur debere vobis Abbati et Conventui monasterii...quattuor millia solidos iaccenses quos vobis damus ex gratia speciali...Quos assignamus vobis habendos et percipiendos in redditibus exitibus questiis cenis et aliis iuribus nostris tam decimis primiciis quam quibuslibet aliis Vallis bone et Erbers...aldearum Morelle." See the companion document of the same date on this page. There is a copy in Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 423, doc. 16 (May 14).

43. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 69r, v (Oct. 27, 1267); this first gift is rather a "concambium et permutacionem," involving minor Lérida revenues. The second gift is in Reg. Canc. 14, fol. 132v (Dec. 16, 1271): "conventui et monasterio benifaçiani monetaticum nostrum...in [a list is given] aldayis Morelle quas iam a nobis assignatas...tenetis cum carta nostra." See too Arch. Nac. Madrid, Benilasá, carp. 425, doc. 2.

44. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 57 (Aug. 26, 1272): "attendentes et considerantes monasterium benefaciani per nos edificatum non habere...sufficienciam panis...idcirco ut dictum monasterium...panis possit habere sufficienciam ... concedimus vobis...imperpetuum totam ab integro partem nostram et iura omnia quam et que percipere debemus in decima totius bladi integriter frumenti scilicet ordei avene millii panicii et adacie...in Vall bona et arbers Sobirans aldeis Morelle et in terminis suis." "Sobirans" may be a third town, but I have been unable to find such a place in early Valencia; it may here distinguish between Herbés and Herbesét, or even be construed as modifying both towns. Sobirà in Catalan means higher, superior, sovereign.

45. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 422, no. 16 (Nov. 2, 1248).

46. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,278, showing that they are receiving this before 1267 ("racione donacionis quam inde de ipsis habetis a Raimundo Berengarii cum publico instrumento").

47. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 422, docs. 1, 2 (Aug. 7, 1249); docs. 3, 4 are a royal confirmation (Aug. 15); cf. note 60. See too Colección diplomática, doc. 1,059.

48. Llibre de la fundació, fol. 84.

49. Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 274.

50. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Benifasá, carp. 422, doc. of March 20, 1257; also in Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 10, fol. 50v. "Laudamus...illam donacionem quam G. Bardol vobis fecit de loco qui dicitur Lorabar in termino Burriane." Is this Lombar, or La Llosa?

51. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Poblet cartulary (B-1220), pp. 28-34, doc. 12.

52. Bayerri, Tortosa, VII, 533, four gifts; in 1305 the monks will purchase Aldea village (p. 285n.).

53. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 11, fol. 12 (1260 Liria sale). Arch. Nac. Madrid, Benifasá, carp. 425 (1270 land purchase).

54. Moorman, Church Life, p. 42.

55. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 423, doc. 2 (Aug. 2, 1258): "Dompnum Iohannem Garces de Ianuis milite[m] dominum de Arberos"; Arberos is Herbés, and the dispute concerns its border with Castell de Cabres.

56. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., doc. 7 (Oct. 3, 1259); cf. Itinerari, p. 294.

57. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 424, doc. 8 (June 10, 1268).

58. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 425, doc. 9 (Feb. 7, 1272).

59. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., doc. 15 (1274): "super quodam honore qui vocatur Palerols in termino de Benifasa"; "tenebatur facere statica in dicto honore..." Is this something in Valderrobres to the northwest of the monastery? And is it the "Patrols" which the monks have here in a document of 1258? On the Pallerols in the Lérida diocese, given to Poblet monastery in 1276, see Itinerari (pp. 356, 535) and Rationes decimarum (I, 123).

60. The fault here, or at least the open aggression, lay with the Temple. The king writes: "Quia nobis constat quod fratres Templi eiecerunt violenter vos...monachos monasterii de Benifaçano de Rafalgari quam vos tenebatis, ideo auctoritate presentis instrumenti restituimus vobis...possessionem" (Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 422, doc. 6 [Aug. 26, 1250]). Cf. notes 47-48 and text.

61. See the charter in Chapter IV, note 103.

62. Arch. Crown, Peter III, perg. 261.

63. Vincke, "Patronatsrecht," p. 65.

64. Statuta capitulorum, III, 148, no. 51 (an. 1275).

65. Ibid., III, 223, no. 23 (an. 1282): "per plures annos."

66. J. M. Canivez lists the abbots in his brief notice "Benifasá" (DHGE, VII, cols. 1,310-1,312); cf. the list in Viage literario (IV, 161). Arch. Munic. Val., Sucías codex Monasterios, I, 44-69 has a list, with some different spellings (Arnold of Manresa, Peter Vilarnau, William of Sarrates).

67. The charter for Benlloc and Albar is cited in Chapter VIII, note 129; that for Fredes is no. XLIX of the "Colección de cartas pueblas" (BSCC, XIV, 1933, 339-341 [Dec. 27, 1267] but misdated there as 1266). For Ballestar see the charter cited in Chapter IV, note 103. Other settlement documents may be found in Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, passim. See also BSCC, XXXVII (1962), 349 ff.

68. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., carp. 423, doc. 9 (June 9, 1261): "quoddam extremale."

69. Ibid., doc. 13 (June 15, 1261). This refers to the tithe from which the Cistercians were of course exempt, but reflects the tangle of secular jurisdiction here.

70. Julius Klein, The Mesta, a Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273-1836 (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), p. 157; cf. p. 150. See pp. 34-36 and passim on the merino sheep and on the Castilian wool dominance, so important to the medieval cloth manufacturer. The mesta was the national guild of herdsmen and sheep owners of Castile, formally organized by Alphonse the Learned in 1273 into a single group from the previous flourishing local guilds. Klein has useful observations on the role of these privileges in the reconquest, and on the necessity of checking a privilege against its actual use in the local context (pp. 303-304). Valuable comments on the thirteenth-century stockman's frontier of Castile are in C. J. Bishko's "The Castilian as Plainsman: the Medieval Ranching Frontier in La Mancha and Extremadura" (in the symposium, New World Looks at its History, pp. 47-69).

71. Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 337-342; James confirmed the lligalo at Morella in 1270. On the frontier origin of the stockmen's associations see Bishko, "Medieval Ranching Frontier," pp. 58 ff.

72. A "comission de las Cavannas d'Aragon en el Regne de Valencia"; see the "Super officiis Aragonum," ed. J. E. Martínez Ferrando, Hispania, IV (1944), 535. The military Orders were also great stockmen in Spain (cf. Bishko, "Medieval Ranching Frontier," pp. 55-56); there are echoes of this concern in the Valencian documents.

73. See doc. of 1259 in note 36; also Colección diplomática, docs. 106,428, 1,037, 1,053; and Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 38, fol. 93 (Nov. 28, 1276), a quarrel with the king's collector over their rights.

74. Itinerari, p. 56 (September 5). Piedra monastery had to pay for their sheep in the Jérica region -- see the document in which Teresa Gil Vidaure cancels the bill (ibid., p. 470, September 1272). The Holy Crosses monastery also sent its flocks south. In 1251 this was the subject of arbitration with the diocese because of tithe claims (Arch. Cath. Tortosa, cajón Obispo, no. 95).

75. Itinerari, p. 223 (July 13, 1252).

76. See document of 1259 in note 36.

77. Document (Mar. 15, 1298) in José Toledo Girau, Castell d'Alfandech, pp. 65-67 but in Catalan translation. See too on Valldigna the same author's "El monasterio de Valldigna, contribución al estudio de su historia durante el gobierno de sus abades perpetuos," ACCV, VIII (1935), 74-81; and his "Compendio histórico de Simat de Valldigna," ibid., XXV (1957), 66-92.

78. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,276 (Jan. 1, 1252): "similiter adquisito regno Valencie deo effuso sanguine ad decus totius christianitatis, tribuistis nobis ibi honorem de quo sit semper plena pitancia conventui nostro ad honorem Dei et vestri, in die scilicet sancte crucis madii annuatim." See Itinerari, p. 218. The 1249 crown decision including this area as part of Alcira's terminus is ibid., p. 199.

79. Arch. Crown, ibid.: "vestrum illustre nomen et nobis dulce et carissimum."

80. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 12, fol. 85v (June 1, 1263): "cum omnia bona monasterii sanctarum crucium francha fecerimus et libera...sicut in privilegio...continetur et specialiter domos qui nunc sunt in regno Valencie et pro tempore ibidem fuerint institute, videlicet quod de dictis domibus aliqua bona mobilia vel immobilia sive fuerint ista ipsius monasterii vel aliarum personarum, aliqui...non abstrahant nec abstrahi faciant, immo ipsas domos et bona que ibidem fuerint illabata et inconcussa ... protegant et defendant."

81. Arch. Munic. Val., Sucías codex Conventos, I, 225.

82. Nomenclátor de Valencia, pp. 433-435, 54, 90, 99, 272, and passim. A considerable documentation on this relatively late foundation is in Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Valldigna, e.g. leg. 2,211, arm. 47, fab. 1; running from 1212 to 1255; it is difficult to say just when these early properties eventually came under Valldigna control. In Arch. Crown the Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae gives them "Barc Aliebal" in Alfandech Valley in 1299 (fol. 62v, doc. 2), probably the same as Barig.

83. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 14 (Mar. 3, 1272).

84. Arch. Crown, ibid., but a separate document (Mar. 3, 1272): "ex empcione vel donacione ac largicione fidelium, tot alquerias et alias hereditates et possessiones...[ad] mille morabatinorum."

85. Arch. Crown, ibid., another document (Mar. 4, 1272): "concedimus monasterio Gratia Dei quod edificari debet termino de Carlet unum miliare terre," free and frank forever. See too Reg. Canc. 37, fol. 62v (Mar. 8, 1273), doc. of Prince Peter (there is a misbinding in this register, fol. 62 following fol. 70).

86. Statuta capitulorum, II, 294 (an. 1245): "inspectio loci quem confert Ordini dominus rex Aragonensis ad fundandum abbatiam monachorum in regno Valentiae, de Perinacio et de Berola abbatibus committitur, qui ad locum etc., et qui inde etc., et sit filia Scalae Dei." This is not Escala Dei: see note 92 and text.

87. Ibid., II, 305, no. 23 (an. 1246): "negotium abbatiae monachorum quam vult aedificare dominus rex Arragonensis, iterato committitur..."; "hoc eis denuntiet."

88. Ibid., II, 319, no. 22 (an. 1247): "negotium...usque ad finem debitum prosequantur."

89. Ibid., II, 296, no. 8 (an. 1298): "qui sunt de regno Franciae, Navarrae, Arragoniae, Angliae, et Valentiae."

90. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 21v (April 18, 1272): "attendentes et confidentes devocionem quam vos venerabilis frater Andreas Episcopus Valentinus habetis erga cultum fidei Christiane...idcirco nos volentes vestrum laudabile propositum prosequere gratia et favore ad honorem domini nostri Jhesu Christi et gloriose virginis Marie...empcionem vel empciones quam vel quas vos facietis a manumissoribus nobilis viri Eximen Petri de Arenoso quondam et a quibuslibet aliis personis in loco vocato Lullen..." See too Zurita, Anales, I, lib. III, c. 79. The charter of foundation, given under the general Gerard (1267-1273), is published in Nicolaus Molin, Historia cartusiana ab origine ordinis usque ad temptis auctoris 1638, 3 vols. (Tournai, 1903-1906), I, 349-351. See also Arch. Munic. Valencia, Sucías codex Conventos, II, 1-275.

91. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 22, fol. 76v (Dec. 7, 1277): "loco vocato de Luleyll ad edificandum monasterium."

92. See the companion articles on the two in DHGE, XV, cols. 838-848.

93. Arch. Crown, Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae, fol. 56v, doc. 3; cf. Molin, Historia cartusiana, I, 351.

94. Molin, Historia cartusiana, ibid.; cf. Nomenclátor, under Liria. The priory soon expanded, especially with a Gothic church in 1325, acquiring endowments from the rents of Puig. Its principal benefactor was the Lauria family. Eventually the priory accumulated estates, became agriculturally wealthy, and emerged as a cultural center and social-aid bulwark for the local population.

95. Moreau, Église de Belgique, III, 358 ff. See also Moorman, Church Life, pp. 247, 258, 260-261, 310.

96. Examples may conveniently be found in Eileen Power's Medieval English Nunneries (Cambridge, Eng., 1922), an industrious if somewhat uncritical compilation centering upon the weaknesses and problems from 1275 to 1535.

97. Since James's first marriage had been annulled, Teresa was in fact the second of his two wives. There is a brief but sometimes useful article on her by Julián Avellanes Coscojuela, "Teresa Gil de Vidaure y Jaime el Conquistador," in Congrés I, pp. 790-798; the quotation just above is taken from the Cistercian martyrology of 1670, quoted on p. 797. A short archival study of Teresa by R. Chabás, "Doña Teresa Gil de Vidaure," is in El archivo, VI (1891), 22-35; on the Valencian properties given her in 1238 see p. 26, and the Repartimiento de Valencia, p. 187.

98. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 242.

99. The document for the alcazar property is copied in Antigüedades de Valencia (II, 133 [April 10, 1255]); the document for the Zaidia is on p. 135 (April 5, 1260). Zaidia represents the feminine equivalent of Cid (Sadid), Lord. There is a reference to its alcazar: "intus Alchaçer Monasterii vocati gratia dei constructi in Çaydia Valencie, sub dominio eiusdem Monasterii" (Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Bernardas, Zaidia, leg. 2,075, arm. 45, fab. 1). Later the convent would disappear, to be rebuilt in modern times on the same site (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 422). See also Escolano, Décadas, I, 500-501.

100. Statuta capitulorum, III, 16-17, no. 52 (an. 1263): "item. inspectio loci in quo fundare intendit abbatiam monialium nobilis domina Teresia Aegidii, de Benefassano et de Scorpion [Escarp, Lérida diocese] abbatibus committitur, et Abbas de Benefassano hoc ei denuntiet."

101. Chabás, "Doña Teresa," pp. 31-33.

102. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 138-139.

103. Ibid., pp. 136-137 (Feb. 17 and July 5, 1266): "miramur plurimum qua licentia quo instinctu nobis petitionem obtuleris Deo contrariam, abominabilem angelis, et hominibus monstruosam"; "coniunctionis illicitae pollui participio ex consensu"; "quos ergo Deus coniunxit, Dei vicarius quomodo separaret? absit a nobis hoc scelus." "Tantorum victor hostium, a propria carne sic vinceris, ut divino timore postposito...cum multorum scandalo circumducas adulteram et incestu cumulans adulterium, graviter oculos divinae maiestatis offendis."

104. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 426.

105. Statuta capitulorum, III, 65, no. 44 (an. 1268): "incorporatio abbatiae monialium de Gratia Dei in magna Valentia de Scarpio et de Bonifacano abbatibus committitur, et sit filia Cistercii."

106. Antigüedades, II, 139 (Feb. 10, 1268).

107. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Bernardas, leg. 2,075, arm. 45, fab. 1. The nun is: "Margarite nepote nostre monache monasterii ordinis nostri."

108. Vicente Ferrer Salvador, "El real monasterio cisterciense de Gratia Dei (Zaidia) en Valencia, aportación a su historia," ACCV, XXII (1961), 68.

109. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 95 (April 25, 1268). "Fidelibus suis universis notariis publicis Valencie et omnium aliarum vilarum et locorum Regni totius Valencie, ad quos presentes pervenerint salutem et gratiam. Noveritis nos concessisse abb[at]isse et conventui monasterii de Gracia...quod possint libere...emere quocumque loco...hereditates usque ad summam mille morabatinorum, foro Valentie in aliquo non obstante."

110. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 91 (April 16, 1268). "Concedimus monialibus vocate de Gracia quod de novo hedificatur in loco vocato Çaydia termino Valencie presentibus et futuris in dicto monasterio imperpetuum bona omnia quae quondam fuerunt Petri Macioti pelliparii Civis Valentie mobilia omnia et immobilia et totum ius et peticiones quos et quas habemus et habere debemus in dictis bonis, quae quidem bona nobis confiscata sunt, ex eo quod fuerunt relicta indignis personis qui succedere non debebant in eis bonis predictis Petro Macioti. Damus siquidem in hunc modum, quod bona omnia predicta ea scilicet que immobilia sunt vendantur...et ponantur simul cum aliis bonis mobilibus...monasterii construendi ad cognitionem operarii eiusdem monasterii." The grounds for such unworthiness are examined in the Furs, lib. VI, rub. IX, fols.157. ff.

111. Arch. Crown, ibid. (text given there).

112. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 100 (May 12, 1268): "partem et iura omnia nostra quam et que percipimus et habemus ac percipere debemus in molendinis sitis termino Campanarii, in quibus tertiam partem percipit et percipere debet..." Cf. ibid., codex Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae, fol. 98r, v.

113. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 16, fol. 242v (May 3, 1271): "concedimus vobis abbatisse et conventui monastenii de gratia termini Valencie quod possitis facere et habere in rambla que est ante ipsum monastenium...unum furnum cum suis exigenciis et pertinenciis ad faciendum..."

114. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 7v (an. 1271). The manuscript is worth transcribing here at length because it is instructive to see the mechanics involved in such a small purchase by a religious group. "Licentiam et potestatem emendi in termino dicte civitatis unam iovatam terre que a nobis ad censum non teneatur, ad opus vinearum...Quas iovatas terre ad opus vinearum habeatis vos et conventus dicte monasterii ad ipsum monasterium imperpetuum ad vestras et dicti conventus voluntates perpetuo faciendas. Mandantes firmiter baiulo nostro Valencie ut in predictis vobis nullum impedimentum vel contrarium faciant [sic]. Mandantes etiam scriptoribus Valentie universis quod de empcione vel empcionibus...faciant vobis cartas licite et secure non obstante foro Valencie in contrarium faciente. Vos enim...in carta seu cartis que inde fient confirmamus per nos et nostros, concedimus et laudamus."

115. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 374.

116. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Bernardas, leg. 2,075, arm. 45, fab. 1, doc. of June 26, 1249: "super quibusdam molendinis sitis in termino Patraix."

117. Document in Chapter VII, note 60. The bequest is to the "monasterii dominarum sancte Clare de Saydia," possibly a scribe's error running the two convents together; the same kind of gift is also left to St. Elizabeth's and to St. Mary Magdalene's.

118. Peter Marqués; see document in Chapter VII, note 55.

119. Ferrer Salvador, "Real monasterio de Gratia Dei," p. 70.

120. Itinerari, pp. 470, 532, documents of September 1272 and April 1276: these do not justify Miret y Sans's conclusion that she lived here rather than in Valencia. Cf. also pp. 387, 394, 401, 406, ambiguous references to an earlier period (1266-1267).

121. Ibid., p. 503 (July 29, 1274); Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 137-138 and n.

122. Chabás, "Doña Teresa," p. 33 (July 15, 1278).

123. Antigüedades, II, 141-142.

124. Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 846 ff.

125. Andrés Ivars, "Año de fundación y diferentes advocaciones que ha tenido el monasterio de la Puridad o Purísima Concepción de Valencia," Archivo ibero-americano, XIX (1932), 439. Cf. Repartimiento de Valencia, p. 262 and the reference apparently to the Poor Clare convent of Tarazona on pp. 593, 645. See also Martínez Colomer, Historia de la provincia de Valencia de la regular observancia, pp. 33 ff.; and Hebrera, Chronica seráfica, lib. I, c. 6.

126. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Franciscanas, leg. 2,124, arm. 45, fab. 2: "cum mezquita et era...[ex] una parte in cequia, ex alia parte in moraria, ex alia parte in via publica qua itur apud Quart." If the nuns built elsewhere, the property was to revert to Simon Peter's heirs. Sanchís Sivera locates this convent of La Puridad, from 1239, on the site bounded in modern times (1922) by the streets Rey Don Jaime, Moro Zeit, and Conquista (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 421).

127. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., document of October 18, 1249. Catherine is "abbess" here but must be prioress, because Tarina continues to appear as abbess. The two Christian names are variants of the same name and can refer to one person, except of course where the two are found together, as in note 126. Is this Catherine the Catherine Berengar who was abbess of the Tarragona convent in 1260 and went then to Majorca to establish that convent? (See Bartolomé Guasp Gelabert, "Unas religiosas clarisas en Mallorca," AST, XXII [1959], 56.)

128. Arch. Nac. Madrid, ibid., "dompnus Rodericus de Arandiga"; it is "in carraria de Mezlata."

129. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,385 (Aug. 26, 1272): "et dominabus Sancti Damiani...domus Valencie ducentos morabatinos."

130. Queen's will cited in Chapter XI, note 15: "alium mantellum meum de amoret violat et supertunicale eiusdem panni."

131. See documents in Chapter VII, notes 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 92; and in Chapter XI, notes 18, 21, 26. Marqués gives to "monasterio Sancte Helisabet," Peter Armer to the church of "Sancte Ysambelle"; Berenguela provides a "presbyter de meo in Ecclesia dominarum Sancte Elizabet," with burial "in cimintenio dominarum." Ferdinand's will is in Arch. Cath., perg. 5,013 (Oct. 22, 1262); cf. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 130n.

132. Colección diplomática, doc. 414 (Mar. 4, 1252): "confirmamus vobis Tarine abbatisse monasterii sancte Elisabet civitatis Valencie siti in Roteros et sororibus eiusdem monasterii in perpetuum, empcionem quam fecistis a Petro Ferrarii draperio Valencie de quodam horto qui est in Roteros et vendiciones et donaciones que...de cetero facta fuerint, in tantum videlicet, quantum pendet edificium ipsius monasterii; que omnia habeatis per alodium proprium, franchum et liberum in perpetuum." See Itinerari, p. 219.

133. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,375 (July 31, 1288; from Lérida).

134. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 421; the site is a market today. Cf. Escolano, Décadas, I, lib. V, c. 8.

135. Repartimiento de Valencia, pp. 550, 625.

136. Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 358: "quamdam meçquitam," which may be identical with the house or building above. The eyewitness who reports all this also saw the cathedral ceremony and thus is not confusing St. Mary and St. Mary Magdalene; but he is not certain as to the name, believing it to have been St. Mary Magdalene.

137. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 123-124.

138. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 43 (Honorius IV), fol. 153r, ep. 91 bis (July 28, 1286), and attached unnumbered letter to the Dominican master and the Spanish provincial (Aug. 25, 1286). Only a notice of these is given in the Registres, no. 588; cf. Prou's list in the introduction, p. civ. See also Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 125. A Bernard Riusech appears in the Repartimiento; Raymond Riusech, perhaps a relative, was bailiff for the kingdom of Valencia over many years in the thirteenth century.

139. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 4 (July 29, 1271): "concedimus vobis Alandi [sic] de Romani...et omnibus dominabus ipsius monasterii...imperpetuum tantum spacium terre de mercato nostro civitatis Valencie contiguum domibus vestris et ecclesie vestre quantum protenditur portificus vester qui est ante ianuam ecclesie vestre..."

140. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc., 15, fol. 82v (Feb. 29, 1268). Sec also Itinerari, p. 409. Cf. the codex Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae, fol. 294v, doc. 9 (undated).

141. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 4 (July 29, 1271), a separate document from that in note 139. The registers of James have a dozen documents on Gia (or Guía) in Valencia, connected with his tax gathering for the crown or with his own purchases of property; his widow was selling his Alcira lands to cover his debts.

142. Wills in manuscripts cited in notes 131, 133; in Chapter VII, notes 53, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 92; in Chapter XI, notes 12, 13, 18, 21, 23.

143. Arch. Crown, codex Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae, fol. 136, doc. 4; contrast Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 233.

144. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 60, fol. 60 (Mar. 19, 1282). "Venerabili et dilecte priorisse monasterii sancte Marie Magdalene Valencie. Rogamus vos quatenus Agnetum sororem Guillelmi de Sala scriptoris [?] venerabilis Episcopi Valencie recipiatis in sororem et monialem dicti monasterii nostris precibus et amore..."

145. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 113-121 passim. A refuge would be founded in Valencia in 1345 (cf. II, 235) but would not be a convent.

146. Ibid., p. 124. The document of 1242 (p. 116) may refer to the previous convent (in which case Catherine was prioress at this date) or perhaps to a subjoined ministry or set of tertiaries.

147. Ibid., pp. 151-153.

148. Ibid., p. 152 (May 19, 1298).

149. Documenta selecta, doc. 118 (1306) where James II recalls the founding by James I; "accione pia constituit seu construi fecit et dotavit."

150. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 2,169 (Sept. 10, 1273): "in regno nostro Valencie apud Algeziram." Perg. 2,170 is a copy.

151. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 19, fol. 45 (Aug. 19, 1273). He begins this very long document by announcing "idcirco nos Jacobus...monasterium de beata Maria Magdalena in Regno nostro Valentie, apud Algeciram in ecclesia Sancti Bernardi, hedificatum duximus ac eciam construendum."

152. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 20, fol. 329v (Mar. 6, 1275): "licentiam...emendi ad opus vestrum, ortum...qui etiam affrontat cum...monasterio vestro predicti, [et] emendi in termino Algezire centum pedonatas terre nostre ad opus vinearum..."

153. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 44, fol. 112 (Mar. 15, 1279). Reg. Canc. 44, fol. 168v (Nov. 24, 1279); pergs. of Peter, no. 173, recalling the gifts of James I "super construendo eorum monasterio apud Algeciram," and listing the mills, vines, rents, shops, etc. See also codex Liber patrimonii regni Valentiae, fol. lv, doc. 2.

154. Rationes decimarum, I, 256, 262, 267, 268.

155. Document cited in Chapter VIII, note 22.

156. Documenta selecta, doc. 225 (July 29, 1314), a request from James II to the Cistercian general chapter to have the Játiva house, "quod illustrissimus dominus Iacobus...avus noster dotavit et fundavit," made Cistercian and put under Valldigna. See also Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 177-178.