[237] Of special importance in the social fabric of the new kingdom was the hospital, an institution possessed of its own juridical personality.⁽¹⁾ By the middle of the thirteenth century, the hospital movement was in full flower over Christendom. Of the thirty medieval hospitals in Rome, for example, four were founded in the eleventh century, six in the twelfth, ten in the thirteenth, five in the fourteenth, and five in the fifteenth. The Italian communes were foremost in the possession of municipal hospitals; by the fourteenth century the city of Florence had thirty such institutions. Some of the hospitals were quite large, but most were fairly small -- from seven to twenty-five beds.

England could boast one hundred and fifty-five hospitals at the beginning of the thirteenth century and four hundred and fifteen by its end; the number rose to over six hundred during the next fifty years. In 1250 Toulouse in Languedoc had twelve hospitals plus seven small leprosaries, five hospices, and six refuges -- thirty institutions, "all but five of which had been founded after 1180."⁽²⁾ The realms of Aragon shared in the hospital movement. Barcelona in the thirteenth century had nine hospitals and hospices; one of them also cared for abandoned children. At least eleven hospitals appear haphazardly in the thirteenth-century documents for Zaragoza; there were probably more. Tortosa city had at least half a dozen. Tarragona must have preferred parish hospitals, as did Zaragoza, since only two big central hospitals appear in the thirteenth-century records.⁽³⁾ Castile too was rich in hospitals, leprosaries, hospitality houses, and reception centers for redeemed captives.⁽⁴⁾ In the realms of King James the parliament of 1225 at Tortosa placed all hospitals and their holdings under crown protection.⁽⁵⁾

Such hospitals admitted Christian, Jew, or Moslem. The rector could be a layman, but religious groups usually staffed them. It was a pious custom for ladies and townsmen to visit and cheer the sick. The hospitals supplied a desperately needed service to the community. And they were an expression of concern about the poor, as well as a reminder and stimulus for such concern. Thus, the hospitals were a social service for the poor and ill, a civilizing factor benefitting their total environment, and a contribution toward a resolution of tensions inherent in the presence of extensive poverty.

The hospitals combined care of the sick and care of the poor. The well-off could afford to have doctor and nurses at home. The documents therefore [238] speak, as a rule, only about care for the "poor."⁽⁶⁾ But by indirection, in an aside or a legacy, it is shown that these poor were sick people and not just guests. Even as great a scholar as Teixidor was led astray by the references to the "needy"; he came deliberately to the conclusion that hospitality, not care of the ill, was the purpose of a great hospital like St. Vincent's at Valencia.⁽⁷⁾ Actually St. Vincent's had two establishments for the sick: one building for men and one for women. Care of the sick was neither absent in them nor a minor duty.⁽⁸⁾ In the hospitals of Valencia for which there is good documentation, this identity of "poor" and "sick" is assumed.⁽⁹⁾

One sees this also in the thirteenth-century novel Blanquerna, written by the Majorcan Raymond Lull who was familiar with the Valencian and the analogous Majorcan frontiers. He describes the founding of a hospital for the "poor and destitute," where all is done "in the service of the poor"; only in a later chapter does one find that the workers daily "tended the sick" here and "healed many sick folk in the hospital."⁽¹⁰⁾ Lull describes the establishment in detail, including the many servitors and even the beds for the sick; the poorest bed had to be contrived from vine-branches, straw, and a coverlet.⁽¹¹⁾ Maternity wards were common enough in larger hospitals; orphans or abandoned children might be received.⁽¹²⁾ Physicians were not resident, but contributed their services as in a clinic.⁽¹³⁾

There were also other, less formal, ways of caring for sick people who were poor or of small means. The trade confraternities cared for their own; the Cistercian monasteries like Benifasá and Valldigna in the Valencia kingdom had both hospice and infirmary; and a portion of the first fruits in each parish was set aside for its poor. But the hospitals were the cornerstone and major institution for this social service. Care of the sick was here elevated to the status of "a genuine religious observance," on a sustained and dedicated level by a religious congregation, often with lay help.⁽¹⁴⁾

Hospitals And Hospices at Valencia City

A well-established hospital comprised a group of buildings, including chapel or church, hospital for ill women and one for ill men, house of hospitality for the poor, some housing for domestics and lay staff, a monastery or religious residence, and lesser buildings connected with administration, kitchen, farming and the like.⁽¹⁵⁾ At the other end of the scale, there could also be simple hospices and convalescent houses. The elaborate hospital of St. Vincent, just outside Valencia city, was a national shrine as well; for this reason it will be treated at length in Chapter XV.

"At the head of the bridge of the city of Valencia" and in the parish of Holy Savior stood the Trinitarian hospital for the sick, St. William's.⁽¹⁶⁾ Though readily accessible by the bridge, it enjoyed the solitude of fairly open country and the amenity of a flowing river, circumstances prized as [239] hygienic by the medieval man. The Order of the Most Holy Trinity for the Ransom of Captives conducted the hospital.

This Order was a fairly new creation; its founder, the Provençal St. John of Matha, had died only recently in 1213. The mother house was at Cerfroy near Chateau-Thierry; but their active headquarters, where the grand minister resided, was St. Maturin's at Paris (whence their alternate name "Maturins"). Contemporaries sometimes confused these Trinitarians with the Mendicant Orders. Like the Mendicants they were still in their first vigor. The members were commonly called the "Donkey Brothers," because of their predilection for that humble form of transport in an age of pomp and circumstance. Their costume was a white tunic emblazoned with a distinctive cross: the upright bar was red, the crossbar blue.

Innocent III allowed the Trinitarians to be organized in 1198, just a decade before King James was born. James's father King Peter had welcomed them to Lérida, in Catalonia. In France James's great contemporary St. Louis IX especially favored them, choosing Trinitarians as chaplains, taking them on his crusades, and installing them in the chateau of Fontainebleau. In the thirteenth century over a hundred houses were founded from Canterbury to Bethlehem, Valencia being among the first fifty. Elsewhere in James's realms the Order worked at Daroca (1206), Tortosa (1211), Montpellier (1216), Urgel, Lérida, Teruel, Palma de Mallorca, and Barcelona.

The contemporary bishop of Acre described them at length, with appropriate reflections on their being a lesson to one and all. The head of the Order resided at Marseilles, he wrote; the brothers ate meat only on Sundays or feast days, used no linen for themselves, cared for the sick personally, and divided all revenues into three parts in honor of the Trinity: a part for the sick in their hospitals, one for ransoming captives, and one for the support of the Order.

The Trinitarians had been invited down from Toulouse less to ransom captives than to conduct a hospital. Only a third of their income went into ransoming, and in Spain their ransom efforts were much inferior to those of their colleagues in Valencia, the Mercedarians or Knights of Mercy. Still, ransoming was their major work, so that their hospitals sometimes were ephemeral.⁽¹⁷⁾ In Valencia their hospital establishment fortunately proved to be solid and lasting.

William Escrivá founded the Valencia hospital in 1242. The city had only recently been conquered, so actual organization of the hospital seems to have been slow. Besides, William soon died, leaving his project in the hands of his father, also named William. In 1256 the elder William writes:

Let all know that...William Escrivá, the guardian of the children and heirs of his son the former William Escrivá deceased, founded (according to the last wishes of the same William Escrivá, deceased) a xenodox or hospital at the head of the bridge of the city of Valencia, and put in charge of it the minister and Order of the Holy Trinity.⁽¹⁸⁾

It is not easy to untangle the immediate family spoken of in this document. The elder William died perhaps in 1260; his son William died sometime before 1256; his other son Arnold flourished (he was bailiff of Valencia city and procurator general of the realm of Valencia) through the next reign. The younger Wiffiam had children, and Arnold had at least one son, William; this latter may be the William Escrivá of Ibiza who was to increase the family fortunes and die in 1303.⁽¹⁹⁾ The senior William also founded a chaplaincy in the St. William's hospital church, endowed with two hundred mazmodins from his Valencian rents. The titular patron of the monastery and probably of the benefactors was William the duke of Aquitaine; the duke had become a solitary (d. 1156), was canonized in 1202, and was currently enjoying a vogue.⁽²⁰⁾

St. William's appears only infrequently in Valencian wills. The earliest legacy for the hospital dates from 1251. In 1258 Peter of Barberá left 12 pence. In 1272, the Lady Willelma left 10 solidi. The Lady Raynes, apparently under treatment at the hospital, or else an oblate or volunteer worker there, willed them a vineyard sometime before 1276:

At the request of the venerable Brother A., abbot of Fontfroide [southwest of Narbonne], we grant you, Brother Peter of Sigena, minister of the hospital of St. William, a Valencian establishment of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, that you may purchase or keep, for the work of your institution or aforesaid hospital, a certain vineyard which Lady Raynes, a woman of the hospital, left you in her will. However, [this is to be] on condition that the said vineyard be always crown land subject to feudal service to you and to us as are other crown estates.⁽²¹⁾

[241] The Trinitarians were obviously regarded by diocesan authorities as rivals of the city parishes. The answer to their petition fenced them in with restrictions. Parishioners were not to be regularly admitted. The street entrance to the church was to be closed on feast days until the parish Mass was over. (This closing of church doors was a stipulation found elsewhere; it was similarly imposed, for example, on two contemporary hospitals in England.) Half of the free-will offerings at St. William's were to go to the parish. Only the personnel and resident paupers could be buried in the cemetery without special ecclesiastical permission. Confessions and communions of all except the religious community were to be taken care of by the pastor of Holy Savior's, unless he was unable to come. Full tithes and first fruits were to be paid on all their lands, except for a single garden farm.⁽²²⁾ All this may indicate a desire to inhibit potential growth of the hospital as a spiritual power. St. William's position in this respect contrasted strongly with the power of a hospital like St. Vincent's.

Disparate bits of data tell a little more about St. William's hospital. The pastor of St. William's church of the Holy Trinity, who was perhaps a diocesan priest, contributed 44 solidi to the crusade tax of 1279, and 41 solidi to that of 1280.⁽²³⁾ The confraternity of calkers seems to have been under the care of the hospital's Trinitarians.⁽²⁴⁾ The rents supporting St. William's attracted the greedy fingers of James Pérez, the son of King Peter. In 1285 the king had to order the justiciar and the municipal authorities to resist such exploitation.⁽²⁵⁾ Another document of that year reveals that the hospital had been receiving twelve morabatins rent from the commercial taxes of the capital.⁽²⁶⁾

The Hospitallers of St. Mary of Roncesvalles were also established at the capital city. They were noted at this time for their care of the sick and of poor pilgrims in the hospital of the "Blessed Mary of Roncesvalles, at the gateway into Spain."⁽²⁷⁾ They had organized in the last century as a local group of canons regular to care for sick and weary Compostela pilgrims passing through the diocese of Pamplona. They dressed like the canons of Pamplona cathedral. They also had three establishments in France.⁽²⁸⁾ A contemporary cardinal eulogizes them, along with another hospital at Rome and one at Constantinople, as outstanding in Christendom for their "warm charity, deep piety, uprightness of life, and severity of discipline."⁽²⁹⁾

These hospitallers of Roncesvalles may well have attended the siege of Valencia, helping the wounded. But perhaps the king invited them here shortly after the city's surrender. King James offered them a third of the township of Puzol in 1243, which he had bought (possibly from William of Entenza), plus some Murviedro vineyards and rural houses.⁽³⁰⁾ They installed themselves in the suburban parish church of Holy Cross, in Roteros suburb, just beyond the city's western wall. Their commander Lope was pastor here in 1245. They acquired some lands in Roteros. And "all the churches of Roteros" had been committed to their care as early as 1242. In 1272 Prince Peter gave the Roncesvalles commander a letter of safeguard in the kingdom of Valencia.⁽³¹⁾

No unpleasantness arose between them and the bishop. A settlement of revenues and jurisdiction came swiftly, in an amicable document glowing with welcome for these "canons and brothers," whose reputation for charity and work among the poor "obliges" the Valencian church to encourage them.⁽³²⁾ The brothers were to have their parishes, all the usual revenues, plus a third of the tithe in the area of Puzol and Roteros -- the latter including Castellón, Raytor, Rafalaxat, Vinocabo, and Ort. The vicar could be a diocesan priest or one of their own, though the bishop required canonical obedience and reserved the granting of the cure of souls.

Contemporary Valencian wills rarely mention the Roncesvalles hospitallers, a circumstance which suggests that their hospital was quite small. Perhaps their strong identification with one locality, Pamplona, made them at once less cosmopolitan and more foreign than the other Orders, and thus affected their fortunes. The knight William Ochova Alemán left them a generous 50 solidi in 1255.⁽³³⁾ Bishop Jazpert of Valencia gave their hospital twenty solidi in his will, later in the century.⁽³⁴⁾ Their land holdings were important enough nevertheless to win them inclusion in a roll call of the important Valencian lords obliged to send a military contingent in the 1277 troubles.⁽³⁵⁾

The hospital of St. Lazarus at Valencia city specialized in incurable and contagious diseases. Was it conducted by the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem? This is by no means certain, though the early appearance of the house in Valencia suggests initiative by some organization. The Order, at its most expansive and active then, also became at the time of the Valencian crusade a military Order fielding troops in the East. Its insignia was a green cross. The houses were each autonomous; there were over eight hundred of them in thirteenth-century France alone. Support derived largely from properties contributed by the incurables themselves. They lived together with the religious in a close, permanent, almost familial relation under an Augustinian rule. In some houses the superior had to be himself a leper; it has been said that the Grand Master had to be both a knight in the Order and a leper.⁽³⁶⁾

At the city of Valencia the Lazarus hospital was just outside the city, on the road to Murviedro.⁽³⁷⁾ Testaments contain such items as: "I leave two solidi for the sick people at St. Lazarus" in 1251; 12 pence "to the leper house of Valencia" in 1258; 50 solidi in 1263 "to the lepers of St. Lazarus"; an item of 5 solidi in 1275; one of 12 pence in 1274; one of 10 solidi in 1277; and in 1279 one of 12 pence for "the sick of St. Lazarus." The wife of Blaise Peter of Fuentes in 1276 willed the hospital her bed.⁽³⁸⁾ St. Lazarus seems to have had its confraternity also.⁽³⁹⁾ In the crusade tax lists of 1279 and 1280, [243] the hospital chaplain returned a contribution of respectively 39 and 36 solidi.⁽⁴⁰⁾ There were similar "leper" houses in James's realms at mid-century at Vich, at Montpellier, and elsewhere.⁽⁴¹⁾ By the end of the century leprosy itself, though still a problem, will be on the wane.

The brotherhood of St. James, the benevolent fraternity of clergy and laymen described in Chapter VII, conducted a small hospital or hospice of their own. This is discovered quite by chance, fully functioning, in a late document of 1316.⁽⁴²⁾ It does not seem to be identified with any of the other hospitals.⁽⁴³⁾ At the turn of the century, in 1301 or 1302, the queen in her testament was to found the municipal hospital of St. Lucy.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The municipal hospital of St. Mary, even better endowed, will be given by a citizen in 1311.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The Knights Hospitallers hospital in the city is discussed below. A number of other hospitals followed in the next century.

Hospitals Elsewhere in the Kingdom of Valencia

Near the end of King James's life, a landowner in Villarreal received the king's permission to endow a hospital there:

We give and concede to you Peter Daher, settler of Villarreal, permission to construct and build in that town a hospital for sheltering the poor, and to transfer and assign to the same hospital buildings and estates which we granted you in that town.⁽⁴⁶⁾

A similar city hospital was planned in Segorbe, as can be seen from a record of land exchange in the royal register. Since García Anadón had previously had his land confiscated, so that the city council might construct a hospital on it, in 1271 he was receiving in recompense "another plot of ground."⁽⁴⁹⁾ The hospital may well have been founded some years before this act of restitution. It was located beside the Teruel gate.

While King James was besieging Murcia in 1266, he granted Peter of Soler, perhaps a relative of the cathedral dignitary, "a hospice in Játiva, with its appurtenances and with all present and future improvements, for the maintenance of the hospital and for the hospital there constructed and built."⁽⁵⁰⁾ This "hospital of the poor at Játiva"⁽⁵¹⁾ is mentioned in the Book of Land Division as receiving three jovates partly planted in vines. The king also gave it three hundred solidi from local revenues, to support a [244] chaplaincy.⁽⁵²⁾ When the Franciscans came in 1295 to establish themselves at Játiva by invitation of the city council, they occupied some buildings outside the walls which had been used as a hospice for poor transients.⁽⁵³⁾ This may have been yet another Játiva hospital. The claim for a Trinitarian hospital at Játiva by 1259 has little probability. The Order does seem to have had one at Murviedro by 1275.⁽⁵⁴⁾

In Algar, a town not far from Segorbe, another hospital operated. Its owner transferred it in 1251 to the Knights of Mercy.⁽⁵⁵⁾ These Mercedarians may also have had a small hospital at Puig, an important shrine; the patronal family there richly endowed, and perhaps even refounded, this hospital early in the fourteenth century.⁽⁵⁶⁾ There was a Mercedarian hospital at Denia⁽⁵⁷⁾ and another at Borriol.⁽⁵⁸⁾ But these Mercedarian establishments in general were probably refuges connected with their ransom work, or hospices.

A hospitaller Order almost unnoticed in the history of Valencia is the Antonines -- the Brothers Hospitallers of St. Anthony. They had been founded around 1095 by Gaston of Dauphiné, next to the church of St. Anthony at St. Didier de la Mothe, and had spread through France, Spain, and Italy. Eventually the sick in the medieval papal household were to come under their care. The epidemic disease of St. Anthony's Fire had been their specialty. They dressed in a black habit, marked with a blue "T" or cross of St. Anthony. Previously laymen, they had just been reorganized with monastic vows in 1218. From 1297 on, their canonical status was to be that of canons regular under the rule of St. Augustine; in 1777 they would merge with the Knights of Malta.

A single document, copied in 1811 from the archives of Valldigna monastery, tells much of what can be known about them in the kingdom of Valencia. They established themselves here before 1276. Their commander for the dioceses of Valencia and Tortosa was one Geoffrey (Jaufrid) of Casca. They had their regional center at Fortaleny in Valencia. In July of 1276, William Rocafull by means of this document formally consigned to Geoffrey in person and to the Order, "the chapel which I caused to be constructed from the buildings I own in the village of Fortaleny." Properties were assigned as endowment. A special condition was that the commander  had to reside here for a longer time each year than he spent elsewhere in the realm of Valencia.⁽⁵⁹⁾ It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that this residence involved a small hospital. The sense of the document is that the Order managed other houses in the kingdom of Valencia, presumably including hospitals.

In 1290 the commander of the Order there, Garino of Romaní, received permission from King Alphonse at Valencia to buy "lands and houses and the like" owned by the crown, anywhere in the kingdom of Valencia.⁽⁶⁰⁾ There is no information on the use actually made of this document, but a [245] similar privilege of 1330 was used to buy lands in 1333 at Orriols near Valencia city and to build a hospital.⁽⁶¹⁾

A hospital at Burriana appears in the Book of Land Division, under the care perhaps of a Knight Hospitaller.⁽⁶²⁾ The hospitals of the knights have left only rare traces, though this had once been among the primary works their institute. Respect for the poor, whom they cared for in hospices and hospitals, was so strong among the knights, according to a contemporary, that it was their habit to "call the poor 'Sirs.'" An obstacle to interpretation in Hospitaller documents, of course, is the ambiguity inherent in the word "hospital" then, as well as the fact that legacies and other documents do not feel it necessary to single out and express this aspect of the Order's work.⁽⁶³⁾

In the case of Valencia city, a document drawn during the siege allowed them houses for a convent, a hospital, and a cemetery for those who should die in the hospital.⁽⁶⁴⁾ There is another hint in a patronage contract concerning the parish of Cullera in 1256, where the pastor agreed to give 60 solidi annually not only to the Order but also to the poor of their hospital.⁽⁶⁵⁾ Elsewhere in Christendom their hospital work had seriously declined, as their military aspect became predominant.⁽⁶⁶⁾ But care of the sick may still have been an important vocation for the Knights Hospitallers in the kingdom of Valencia.

Since all these hospitals and hospices were uncovered in stray documents, some of them quite indirectly, it is logical to suppose that others existed as well, of which no records survive. Nor should it be forgotten that the indigent sick at this period often received care in their homes from visiting confraternity members or from tertiaries.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Moreover, parish hospitals were apparently common in Aragon; thirteenth-century Zaragoza had one in every parish.⁽⁶⁸⁾

The parochial establishments probably were hospices. The traditional situation for both city and parish churches is described in a late decree (1343) from the Tortosa diocese. The description would probably apply also to the Valencian diocese in the southern part of the kingdom. In this decree the bishop indignantly reprimanded the "very many rectors and vicars" who provided no hospitality "in the domiciles, hospices, or buildings" of their churches. "Very many" who had hospices displayed only a few beds, or beds "of little value, broken, in disrepair, worn out" -- all this "to the horror of the viewer rather than to the honor of the rector." The poorest churches were expected to maintain at least four decent beds complete with bedclothes.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Regard for the Poor

Even when the hospital was municipally owned, the religious wellsprings for its existence and for the sacrifices involved in endowing and maintaining [246] it were clearly expressed. "It is a religious thing and great charity to support the poor of Christ, who are in need and suffer want," as the Valencian Bernard Gostanc wrote in helping the Villarreal hospital.⁽⁷⁰⁾ The same spirit was written into the Furs of Valencia. The courts were commanded to hear both poor and rich, and to assign a lawyer free to the poor, because "we ought to maintain in their rights orphans, widows, people elderly and weak, and those whom one should pity as being borne down by poverty and enfeebled by misfortune."⁽⁷¹⁾

Mendicancy was allowed, since public aid fell short of solving the problem of poverty. But authorities legally controlled such begging, and they prosecuted frauds. Housing was supplied to poor folk, not only at hospitals and religious establishments but even in the division of the conquered city's buildings; one house went to "the poor old woman Loba," another to "two poor people," a "very small house" to a poor man, others to a poor woman and to "some poor knight."⁽⁷²⁾

The ban in Valencian law against clerics exercising the profession of civil law incorporated a proviso that they might offer their services in court for the "wretched," a technical term applying to the widow, orphan, ill, old, blind, mutilated, or generally handicapped.⁽⁷³⁾ Because a Christian should not afflict the poor, but mercifully help them, a law of 1255 obliged the city jailer to let his prisoners go, when legally freed, without demanding a further stay from those too poor to pay rent for the lodging so far provided.⁽⁷⁴⁾ The dowering of poor maidens was a favorite medieval philanthropy, often found in thirteenth-century Valencian wills; it meant the difference between being able to find a husband or remaining a burden on one's poor relatives.

An intriguing aspect of the medieval character is the manner in which the mystical entered into even the most prosaic material, so that from high piety issued the lowly and pragmatic. A clear example of this was the passion for building bridges, in the name of Christian brotherhood, for the convenience of travelers, pilgrims, and merchants. It was one of the common items remembered in Valencian wills. Direct organization was resorted to also; King James licensed one Peter Mariner to solicit alms for constructing in wood a rural bridge in the Denia district.⁽⁷⁵⁾ The diocesan almshouse or almoyna, founded around the end of the century, is perhaps indicative of the previous drift of interests; here, under the direction of two priests, the hungry would be fed and alms distributed.⁽⁷⁶⁾

Valencians were generous to the poor, judging from their wills; many singled out the "ashamed" poor who concealed from the general public the fall in their fortunes. Peter Oller, the draper who made his will in 1249, left 300 solidi to the poor, 200 more for clothing them, and 100 solidi in alms to be distributed by St. Vincent's and by the Dominicans; the remainder of his fortune, after other legacies had been taken care of, was to be given "to [247] widows, orphans, and the ashamed poor." The notary of Valencia, William Jaca, in his will of 1263 provided for orphans, for feeding the poor, and for dowering poor maidens. García Chicot in 1279 provided for the ashamed poor, for orphans, and for dowries. A final example is the testament of Peter Marqués in 1275, where 50 solidi were left to the poor, but 100 to the ashamed poor at 10 solidi each.⁽⁷⁷⁾

All this reflects the character of those settling in the kingdom. From King James down, almsgiving was a serious obligation for the well-off. A junior contemporary, the historian Muntaner, even claims this consideration for the poor and lowly as a distinguishing mark of the rulers of Aragon, who "show themselves to their people, and if a poor man or woman calls to them, they draw rein and listen to them, and at once relieve their poverty." A complacent local patriotism is not absent from this judgment; similar concern for the poor by the wealthy and the rulers may be found elsewhere in Christendom.⁽⁷⁸⁾

Such incidents ought not to be used as an excuse for taking a cheery view of life in frontier Valencia. But enough of this spirit was here to found these hospitals, promote these laws, give alms in legacies and in the philanthropic work of the guilds, and in general to make a savage age somewhat less savage, more civilized. It was an element in the refashioning of the kingdom which -- though it should not be exaggerated -- should not be disregarded.

The Knights of Mercy, Ransomers

In a crusading world anyone might be carried away into slavery by Moslem raiders, or lose his freedom in a sudden revolt. Ransoming these Christian captives could no longer be adequately done on a small and private scale. Even the efforts of the crown, especially through a coordinating officer called the exea, was by itself relatively ineffective. Here again the church was the only force capable of developing the necessary institutions on a large scale. As a practice of Christian charity, she did so. From the beginning of the thirteenth century, the great work of the ransom Orders grew to impressive proportions. This need would continue to be felt in Valencia. Even after the conquest and a decade or so of settlement, for example, when the Moslems of Valencia rebelled, "many Christians" of Valencia were "thrown into chains" and led away captive.⁽⁷⁹⁾

One of the most important of the ransomer groups was the Order of Our Lady of Mercy (Mercedarians), or of St. Eulalia of Mercy. Probably a military Order (until 1317), they "exercised their religious vocation of redeeming captives," and were "daily prospering and growing."⁽⁸⁰⁾ It seems more proper to consider this Order here, though technically they might have been discussed with the military Orders. Conversely, even so military an Order as Santiago had an hospitaller function and operated hospices on the [248] Compostela route, while the Calatravans and the Trinitarians similarly exercised a ransoming function.⁽⁸¹⁾

Like the Mendicants, the Mercedarian knights had appeared at just the right time, when the need for them was deeply felt, scarcely a decade before the fall of Valencia. At the core of the Order's structure was a special vow, of a steely and chilling heroism which won the hearts of contemporaries: when funds were depleted, the knights would trade their own lives away lest weaker captives should despair. They conducted refuge houses for captives just returned and did a bit of hospital work.

The Mercedarians spread rapidly in Europe. They had been founded by the friend of King James, St. Peter Nolasco (1182?-1256?).⁽⁸²⁾ Nolasco's story is clouded by a multitude of forged documents, designed to promote his canonization (1628), and by involved controversies between Mercedarian and Dominican scholars. Born at Barcelona or possibly in Languedoc, of merchant or improbably of knightly family, Nolasco either evolved his Order from an already existing lay confraternity for ransoming or else, with King James and Raymond of Penyafort, directly co-founded it (in 1218 or 1223 or 1228 or better 1234). At any rate, the Order came into being just as the southward thrust of Aragon into Valencia was beginning.

Nolasco was commander general, an office to which William of Bas from Montpellier succeeded before mid-century. Nolasco himself supposedly rescued fourteen hundred slaves.⁽⁸³⁾ He was also ransomer, the Order's official who made the dangerous contacts within Moslem lands and haggled for prisoners. His friend St. Raymond Nonnatus, a Catalan noble, succeeded him in the latter function, in the exercise of which he suffered cruel imprisonment, was narrowly saved from being impaled, and had his lips pierced with a hot iron and padlocked. Nonnatus had returned to Aragon, and had been named a cardinal, at the time Valencia city fell.

Though the Mercedarian mother-house was in Barcelona, it was rather the Valencian frontier which had demanded them. Long before the crusaders rode south, St. Peter Nolasco may have been active in the Moslem city of Valencia, pouring out his inheritance money for captives in five trips there. It is said that the Order ransomed its first slaves in Moslem Valencia and that the only other major theater of ransoms for the Order in those early years was Algiers.⁽⁸⁴⁾

King James spoke of himself as "the patron and founder of this Order."⁽⁸⁵⁾ He was to present to William of Bas as the Mercedarian "habit or sign" forever "the royal shield, to wit, of our battle insignia, and a white cross placed upon it."⁽⁸⁶⁾ Nolasco may have been among those who encouraged James in his crusade against Majorca; "it happened as you had told me," said the king when writing him from the field to ask for prayers, "that God was on our side."⁽⁸⁷⁾

By the end of the century the Mercedarians had three hundred men in [249] over fifty houses, half of these houses with an attached church. Eight or more were in Catalonia, perhaps eleven in Aragon. In Valencia seven houses formed a separate entity, to which were assimilated the two Murcian houses. The Valencian establishments were at Valencia, Puig, Játiva, Arguines, Denia, Burriana, and Segorbe; the last three may have become moribund in time, since they do not appear in the 1317 general chapter.⁽⁸⁸⁾ By 1319 there were provinces of Aragon and of Castile-Portugal.

These Knights of Mercy seem to have come on the Valencian crusade. During the siege, King James gave them (1238) a mosque and some houses hard by the city of Valencia, just beyond the south wall at the head of the public market and near the Boatella gate. Here the Mercedarians established their little church and their hospice. They first named the church St. Eulalia's, but soon changed the title to honor St. Dominic, the great abbot of Silos who rescued captives. The mosque-as-church was flourishing at least by 1245 as St. Dominic's.⁽⁸⁹⁾ In 1238 too the king gave them a small estate at Andarella,⁽⁹⁰⁾ and in 1242 some more properties in the area,⁽⁹¹⁾ to support the establishment.

Arnold of Carcassonne was their central figure in the capital. Bernard headed the Valencia house in 1241, apparently between two incumbencies of Arnold; he was probably the Bernard of San Román who is in charge for a while shortly after mid-century. Raymond is listed in a document of 1248 as prior of both Valencia city and Denia. A chapter of the Mercedarian Order held at Valencia in 1257 has William of Isona as prior of both Valencia city and of Puig hill (though William of Castellfollit is pastor of the Puig church), and Bernard of San Román as Játiva commander. A fairly complete roster can be compiled of the early Mercedarians.⁽⁹²⁾

Before the siege, Nolasco is said to have chanced upon an ancient painting of the Virgin, hidden long before by Mozarab Christians; it was under a bell in the hill castle at Puig which defended the northern approaches to the city (September 1237).⁽⁹³⁾ This was the same place where St. George was to rush up angelic reinforcements during a critical battle. The name of the hill was promptly altered from Puig de Cebolla (Onion Hill) to Puig de Santa María (Hill of St. Mary).⁽⁹⁴⁾ It was the first important shrine established by the king in honor of the Virgin as patroness of the realm he was conquering.

Such religious objects were commonly buried in Spanish countries by Christians fleeing during times of persecution or war, and were later "miraculously" discovered. An image of the Virgin was also found at Carcagente in Valencia in 1250. In fact, in Catalonia, of a hundred and seventy-one celebrated images of the Virgin, "no less then forty-eight were disinterred from their long-forgotten hiding places in caves or beneath the soil by oxen or bulls" in marvelous fashion -- a coincidence which may be of interest to the student of religious folklore.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Over half a century before, King Alphonse had envisioned a Cistercian [250] monastery for this eminence of Puig, to have "a hundred priests." Alphonse and James's father had each planned to be buried in such a monastery here, "if I can conquer Valencia and build the monastery."⁽⁹⁶⁾ It was here, before the altar of the Virgin and surrounded by his knights, that James made his vow never to return north until Valencia was conquered.⁽⁹⁷⁾

In summer of 1240 the king handed this hill to the Mercedarians for a church and shrine, including in the gift a liberal sum of money and eventually a portion of the royal share of tithes.⁽⁹⁸⁾ A wide ecclesiastical jurisdiction here, designated as a parish in a tax document of 1247, was under Mercedarian control.⁽⁹⁹⁾ The castle and town belonged to the Entenza family until 1343, when both came to the crown; the patronage of the monastery also pertained to them.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ The bishop and chapter, apparently without the usual tug-of-war, immediately arbitrated the question of presentation of candidates and of ecclesiastical revenues; Pope Innocent IV approved the arbitration.

The amicable prelude to this document reflects Mercedarian popularity and influence at this time (1240):

Be it known to all that we Ferrer, by the divine mercy bishop-elect of Valencia and provost [dean] of the diocese of Tarragona, wishing and desiring to become partaker of the almsgiving and the other works of mercy of the Order of the Brothers of Mercy, on behalf of ourselves and our successors give and forever concede, for the salvation of our soul, to the aforesaid brothers the church called the Hill of St. Mary.⁽¹⁰¹⁾

The shrine would always hold a place in the affections of the Valencians. The relatively modest buildings first erected fell into some disrepair during the next century. They were replaced and expanded at great cost around the year 1340 by Lady Margaret of Lauria, the last of the patronal family.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ There were legacies for the shrine too in the wills of the Valencians. In 1241 Maria left it twelve pence. In 1251 Peter Armer left two solidi, and in 1258 Peter of Barberá gave three. Lazarus of Vilella willed five solidi, in 1272 the Lady Willelma left another five, and in 1274 Peter Abrafim left twelve. In 1279 García Chicot gave twelve pence. During King James's reign, William Bruny had provided a legacy from the revenues of Rahalaceyt and the Segó Valley; King Peter in 1281 ordered the city fathers of Murviedro to respect this.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾

[251] The Valencian house was also remembered. In 1241 Maria left "to the house of the captives of Valencia" five solidi. And in 1252 Dominic Calderón gave "to the house of Merced of captives of Valencia twelve pence." Other small gifts for the shrine appear, including five shops and a group of adjoining buildings, all in the parish of Holy Savior in the southern part of the city of Valencia (1266); and houses in the parish of St. John near the Mercedarian church (1273 and 1278). King James left sixty gold pieces to the shrine near the end of his life, and remembered it again in the codicil to his testament.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾

In 1255 the great shrine of the realm at St. Vincent's was given briefly into Mercedarian care.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ Their services were also sought elsewhere. Carroz, admiral of Catalonia and lord of Rebollet, gave them a building site and lands in 1241 and 1242, to attract the Order into his territory.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ In Denia the king presented them with eight jovates of land, four fanecates more, and a hospice (1245); these were to support a "hospital in the town of Denia for the honor of God and the service of destitute captives" -- a receiving station for those rescued.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ The knights had a residence halfway between Cocentaina and Muro, at the foot of Mt. Castillo, as well as valuable lands (1248); its commander appears in a document of 1262.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ There were holdings in Gandía, and a fort at Ondara.⁽¹¹¹⁾ There were also "certain houses in Segorbe, next to the houses of the castellan Dominic, with a farm";⁽¹¹²⁾ and an ever-increasing supply of estates from donnés and benefactors.

King James gave the Mercedarians the village of Canet de Berenguer, which they soon sold to a knight of Segorbe.⁽¹¹³⁾ Raymond of Morella handed over to them his estate of Arguines to be a house of the Order, in a valley to the west of the Segorbe-Torres road (1244).⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Here they built a church of St. Mary and a residence, both functioning in 1251.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ The nearby township of Algar was joined to this estate by Raymond's last will, and a hospital or refuge house as well (1251).⁽¹¹⁶⁾ At Játiva the king granted them a park in 1248.⁽¹¹⁷⁾ The knights set up a residence and a chapel of St. Michael just beyond the Játiva city walls. They were active here from before 1253, on which date their establishment received a legacy of 300 solidi.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Earlier, in 1251, the diocesan chapter turned over to this church a valuable property.

In 1297 the bishop, though denying the Mercedarians a cemetery or parochial rights, elevated the Játiva chapel to the status of a public church, to facilitate their work.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ But even as late as 1317 the Játiva house remained fairly poor.⁽¹²⁰⁾ This house had its own commander at first; later in the century it seems to have passed more directly under the Valencia house.⁽¹²¹⁾

Gifts came to the Mercedarians from Dominic of Teruel in 1254;⁽¹²²⁾ and from the baron Simon Pérez of Arenós in the Murviedro area in 1255, including Borriol castle.⁽¹²³⁾ Bernard of Peñafiel in 1281 willed them his castellanship of the important castle of Rebollet, a gift its overlord-owner [252] then confirmed.⁽¹²⁴⁾ Dominic Carnicer in a will of 1292 gave the Játiva house his Benixira estate, over the protests of his daughter.⁽¹²⁵⁾

A number of people joined the Mercedarians in Valencia as oblates or demi-conversi of one kind or other. Such people had no religious profession in an Order, but commonly made some promise of obedience or loyalty. Arnold of Béarn and his wife became oblates in 1245, surrendering all their properties.⁽¹²⁶⁾ Boniface and his wife Maria did the same in 1253,⁽¹²⁷⁾ as did Raymond of Talavera in 1268, with his holdings at Lérida, Valencia, and elsewhere.⁽¹²⁸⁾ In 1256 at Játiva Bartholomew Cucufat brought himself and his goods to the Order.⁽¹²⁹⁾ And other cases are recorded.

To help the expanding Order, the king in 1255 drew up a sweeping permission: "that all men and women of our entire land or realm, noble or base, soldiers or citizens, may exchange, give or leave to you any estates, properties, and buildings -- crown property or otherwise -- wheresoever they may be."⁽¹³⁰⁾ This was confirmed and extended in 1275.⁽¹³¹⁾ There were still more gifts: art objects from King James, his decree that a free space ten palms wide must be respected by persons building next to their Valencia house, a township of Beniabdulmel (which one finds the Order leasing out in 1293), a vineyard and 1,000 solidi from donnés, and so on. Business records show the Mercedarians buying a Játiva estate in 1298 for 3,200 solidi, renting Cocentaina lands in 1262 at 100 solidi yearly, renting their Denia buildings in 1248 to two brothers, and in general improving their situation.⁽¹³²⁾

At the end of the century (1291), some fifty years after the fall of the capital, Pope Nicholas IV took the Mercedarian lands and houses in the Valencia kingdom under his protection. He made specific reference to Puig, to the "houses, lands, and vines you have in the city and diocese of Valencia," to those in Denia, to their church of St. Dominic in Valencia city, to their holdings in the dioceses of Murcia and Cartagena in the south, to all the properties in such places as "Burriana, Játiva, Algar, Rafelinardha, Rafelatrer, Gandía, Cocentaina, Segorbe, Murla, Artana, Almazora, and Biar" and other "towns and castles."⁽¹³³⁾

Like vague footprints left by a traveler, these property records suggest something of the size, strength, and personality of the Valencia Mercedarians, and the esteem in which contemporaries held them. These Knights of Mercy had combined in one institute the ideals of crusade, corporal works of mercy, and prayer. The vigorous new Order in turn gives a clue to the mentality of the population which supported and approved it.

1. Jean Imbert, Les hôpitaux en droit canonique du décret de Gratien à la sécularisation de l'Hôtel-Dieu a Paris en 1565, L'église et l'état au moyen âge, no. 8 (Paris, 1947), pp. 42 ff., cf. 109 ff. See the canonical position as given by W. Ullmann, "Medieval Hospices," Month, CLXXXIV (1947), 46-49. Esclapés has a brief section on Valencian hospitals, to be used with great caution (Resumen historial, pp. 125-130). J. R. Zaragoza Rubira's "Breve historia de los hospitales valencianos" in Medicina española (XLVII [1962], 152-160) is jejune and of little use for this period

2. J. H. Mundy, "Hospitals and Leprosaries of Twelfth and Early Thirteenth-Century Toulouse," Essays in Medieval Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Austin Patterson Evans, ed. J. H. Mundy et alii (New York, 1955), pp. 187, 201, 203n. For England see Moorman, Church Life, p. 248n.

3. The Zaragoza hospitals are given in note 68. The six Tortosa hospitals besides the cathedral hospital are in Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 580-582. For Tarragona see J. M. Miquel Parellada and José Sánchez Real, Los hospitales de Tarragona (Tarragona, 1959), esp. on the cathedral hospital, pp. 25 and passim. On the Montpellier hospital in James's realms, conducted by a lay confraternity with vows, see Louis Dulieu, Essai historique sur l'hôpital St-Éloi de Montpellier, 1183-1950 (Montpellier, 1953).

4. González, Reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, I, 602-625.

5. Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragón y de Valencia, I, 103.

6. For example King James's document about St. Vincent's in Arch. Crown, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 12v, an. 1265. On the nature of medieval social legislation, its philosophy, institutions, and practice, see Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, a Sketch of Canonical Theory and its Application in England (Berkeley, 1959); hospitals are touched on in ch. 4, esp. pp. 85-87. For Spain this may be supplemented with the more general work of Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Historia de la previsión social en España, cofradías, gremios, hermandades, montepíos. See also my "Los hospitales del reino de Valencia en el siglo xiii," Anuario de estudios medievales, II (1965), 135-154.

7. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 276-277. Teixidor, lacking our documentation, might still have argued back from the ampler documentation of the fourteenth century.

8. See Armer will in Chapter VII, note 53, and quotation from Willelma will in Chapter XV, note 113.

9. Besides St. Vincent's see, for example, the crown document cited in note 16 for the hospital of St. William in Valencia. A chapel is here granted "pro fratribus et infirmis et domesticis," with no mention of the poor, whereas later in the document only the "poor" who die there are mentioned. Cf. Mundy, "Hospitals," p.191 where inmates of the leprosaries of thirteenth-century France are termed simply "pauperes."

10. Blanquerna: A Thirteenth-Century Romance, tr. E. A. Peers (London, ca.1925), book I, ch. 9 and ch. 10, pp. 79, 81-82.

11. Ibid., chs. 10, 15.

12. Imbert, Hôpitaux, pp. 124, 126.

13. Ibid., pp. 138-139.

14. Ibid., pp. 277 ("un veritable service divin"), 124-125. The Benifasá infirmarian and sub-infirmarian are named in a document of 1268 (see Chapter XII, note 23 and text).

15. Rodrigo Pertegás, "Urbe valenciana," p. 307.

16. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,216 (July 25, 1256): "in capite Pontis Civitatis Valentie." The building is gone today but is commemorated in the name of the street there (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 422). Agustín Sales has some pages on the hospital at the beginning of his Historia del real monasterio de la Ssma. Trinidad, religiosas de Santa Clara de la regular observancia, fuera los muros de la ciudad de Valencia, sacada de los originales de su archivo (Valencia, 1761), pp. 1-5. See also Antoninus ab Assumptione, Ministrorum generalium ordinis Ss. Trinitatis series (Isola del Liri, 1936), under Nicolaus, 1231-1257. On the Tortosa Trinitarians see Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 535-537.

17. Imbert, Hôpitaux, p. 218; but cf. Mundy, "Hospitals," p. 187n.

18. Document in note 16. "Noverint universi quod olim Guillelmus scriba tutor filiorum et heredum Guillelmi scribe filii sui quondam defuncti, Cenodoxium seu Hospitale fundaverit ex ultima dispositione ipsius Guillelmi scribe defuncti, in capite Pontis Civitatis Valentie. Et predictum Hospitale tradiderit gubernandum ministro et ordini Sancte Trinitatis." The 1242 date is from Bonaventure Baron, Annales ordinis Ssmae. Trinitatis redemptionis captivorum fundatoribus SS. Ioanne de Matha et Faelice de Valois, 1198-1297 (Rome, 1684), p. 165.

19. Teixidor's data on the several Escrivás in his Capillas y sepulturas (see above, Chapter XI, note 64 with text) is as confusing as that from Sales (Trinidad, p. 3). Teixidor has the elder William die in 1260 but the junior William in 1303. Sales has the elder William crusade to Valencia from Narbonne (unfortunately this is from Febrèr's Trobes), gives him two sons, Arnold and William, and has young William die childless after founding the hospital. Viciana supplies an essay on the Escrivá family, lords of Paterna from 1239; he claims they came originally from Narbonne as crusaders to Catalonia and subsequently as Catalan crusaders to Valencia (Segunda parte de la crónica de Valencia, pp. 130-132). The registers in the crown archives make Arnold, son of William, tutor for the children of his defunct brother William and administrator of his estate; other documents in the registers have William senior dead at least before 1272, and treat of business affairs of Arnold and his son William. See also in Febrèr's Trobes: "Del Consell de Estat, è tambè de Guerra/Era Secretari Guillem Escrivà" (troba 218, p. 121).

20. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 55-56.

21. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 40, fol. 53 (Dec. 28, 1276): "ad preces venerabilis fratris A. abbatis fontis frigidi, concedimus vobis fratris Petro de Sexeno ministro hospitalis Sancti Guillermi ordinis Sancti Trinitatis domus Valencie quod possitis emere seu retinere ad opus domus vestre seu hospitalis predicti quandam vin[e]am quam na Raynes mulier eiusdem hospitalis dimisit in suo testamento tali tamen condicione quod dictam vin[e]am semper sit de Realenco et fiat pro eadem vobis et nostris servicium sicut pro allis honoribus realenchi." The testament of Willelma is in Chapter VII, note 60; that of Peter Barberá is in Chapter XI, note 21.

22. Document in note 16: "ipse minister et fratres iamdicti ordinis coram nobis fratrum A. dei gratia episcopo Valentino et capitulo dicte sedis venientes humiliter postularunt ut in fundacione dicti Hospitalis dignaremur eisdem nostrum quidem exhibere consensum et eisdem dare licenciarn ibidem oratorium construendi, et in sepulturis et aliis graciam facere specialem." For the English hospitals see Moorman, Church Life, p. 15.

23. Rationes decimarum, I, 256, 263.

24. Gremios y cofradías, I, 35-37, doc. 9; these are the restored califati, from 1306, and presumably their predecessors.

25. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 43, fol. 99v (Jan. 6, 1285).

26. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 56, fol. 33 (Mar. 19, 1285): "ipsi possident duodecim maçmutinas censuales in carregia Valencie," as assigned by the king's judge-delegate.

27. Antigüedades, I, 374 (April 13, 1244): "in introitu Hispaniae."

28. Imbert, Hôpitaux, p. 218.

29. Antigüedades, I, 374; Jacques de Vitry (d. 1244) is speaking: "fervor charitatis, unctio pietatis, honestatis decor, et severitas disciplinae."

30. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,090 (Nov. 15, 1243): "concedimus vobis dilecto nostro A. Episcopo et capitulo Valencie et conventui Fratrum Ro[n]cidevallis alqueriam sive villam que dicitur Poçol." See also the document of March 15, 1243, in Colección diplomática, doc. 264. The hospital sold its share of Puzol to the bishop in 1303.

31. Repartimiento, p. 325 (an. 1242): "Monasterium Roncidevallium: omnes ecclesias de Roteros"; cf. pp. 534, 591, 645. For the churches, which were widespread, see above, Chapter IV, note 36 and text. Peter's safeguard is in Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 37, fol. 45v (an. 1272).

32. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,316 (Nov. 17, 1243). "Dignum est a nobis eos beneficia grata recipere et nostre partem sollicitudinis eisdem comitere qui redemptoris nostri et universalis ecclesie ac hospitalitatis pauperum noscunter obsequiis fideliter institisse, ut et ipsi nos sibi respondisse pro meritis gaudeant, et alii ex eorum remuneracione presenti ad nostrum et ecclesie obsequium Valentine animosius se accingant. Hinc est quod nos A. et totum capitulum Valentinum, attendentes quod si eis...manum aliquam provisionis munificam exibemus, illis pocius ex ordinata caritate provide constringimur quorum obsequium ecclesiis et pauperibus omnibus iamdudum noscitur esse gratum."

33. Document in Chapter VII, note 62.

34. Antigüedades de Valencia, I, 374 (d. 1288).

35. Soldevila, Pere el Gran, IV, [pt. 2, I], 90, doc. 68.

36. On leprosaries see Imbert, Hôpitaux, pp. 149-196; and René Pétiet, Contribution a l'histoire de l'ordre de St-Lazare de Jérusalem en France (Paris, 1914), esp. chs. 1, 2, 4. The first leprosaries of Toulouse appear only in the late twelfth century, and seem to have been self-governed both here and in the rest of France (Mundy, "Hospitals," pp. 185, 192, 196). On the hospital of the Order in Tortosa see Bayenri, Tortosa, VII, 547, 580 ff.; on leper hospitals in Castile see González, Reino de Castilla, I, 616-618.

37. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 281.

38. Peter Armer testament in Chapter VII, note 53 ("item dimito infirmis Sancti Lazan ii solidos"); Barberá will in Chapter XI, note 21 (twelve pence), Jaca will in note 24 ("et leprosis Scti Lazari"). Marqués will in Chapter VII, note 55 (five solidi); Willelma will in note 60 (ten solidi), Abrafim will of 1274 in note 54 ("et infirmis Sancti Lazari xii denarii"), Chicot will of 1279 in note 94 ("infirmis Sancti Lazari"); 1276 will in Arch. Cath., perg. 1,354 (Sept. 30).

39. In 1306 the king gave to "vobis batadors et brunateriis civitatis Valencie" a charter of brotherhood in connection with St. Lazarus hospital, where once a year they were to eat in the patients' building: "domum Sancti Lazari Valencie...in domo ipsorum infirmorum" (Gremios y cofradías, I, 29-31, doc. 6). The two trades apparently designate cloth processers; bruneta was a dank cloth imported into Catalonia, and bata is a robe.

40. Rationes decimarum, I, 256, 263.

41. James gave permission to the "commander" of the hospital of St. Lazarus at Montpellier to marry and live with his family at the hospital, the better to watch over the house and its goods (July 27, 1272). Is this commander the patron, the procurator, the warden, or the head here of a lay brotherhood (Itinerari, p. 469)? Bayerri says the Order had been a branch of the Hospitallers until the Lazarists' rejection of celibacy led to separation; this may explain the commander's marriage.

42. Diócesis valentina, II, 446. Olmos y Canalda, Prelados valentinos, p. 65; on the brotherhood see Chapter VII, notes 95-98 and text.

43. Roca Traver discusses this hospital and is wisely cautious toward the suggestion of Pertegás that it simply continues the Roncesvalles institution ("Real cofradiá de San Jaime," pp. 71 ff.).

44. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 282.

45. Ibid.: many others follow, and Teixidor treats of them in the subsequent pages.

46. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 20, fol. 243v (April 18, 1275): "per nos et nostros damus et concedimus tibi P. dahera populatori ville regalis quod possis construere et hedificare in dicta popula [sic] hospitalem ad pauperes hospitandos et dare et assignare eidem Hospitali domos et hereditates quas tibi dedimus in ipsa populacione..."; this is "dum vita fuerit tibi" and with licence to leave it all his goods "post obitum tuum."

47. Luis Revest Corzo, Hospitales y pobres en el Castellón de otros tiempos (Castellón de la Plana, 1947), documentary appendix, section II, doc. 1 (Mar. 4, 1290). Sarthou Carreres gives 1275 as the date of its foundation but cites no document (Geografía general, vol. Castellón, p. 467). See too Vicente Giméno Michavila, "El antiguo hospital municipal de Castellón," BSCC, XIII (1932), 208-213.

48. Document ibid.: "in presencia et in posse" of the iurati (see p. 38).

49. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 16, fol. 241v (June 21, 1271): "in emendam illius patui terre quod est in Segorbio...quod tibi Garde Anado dedimus ad construendum ibi domos, et postmodum concessimus consilio de Segorbio ad construendum ibi hospitalem, damus...aliud patuum terre." The name may be Anadán.

50. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 13, fol. 286v (Jan. 5, 1266): "confirmamus per hereditatem propriam francham et liberam vobis Petro de Sol[er] de Xativa imperpetuum illud alfondicum...in Xativa...ad opus hospitalis et hospitale ibidem constructum et hedificatum, cum suis pertinenciis...a celo in abissum et cum omnibus melioramentis ibidem factis et faciendis." See the Itinerari, p. 382; James had given it first to Ferrer of Monzón, now to Peter of Soler. Is this the same one as in the Repartimiento, p. 492?

51. Repartimiento, p. 345: "hospitale pauperum Xative."

52. In the confirmatory document in note 50.

53. Martínez Colomer, Provincia de Valencia de la regular observancia, pp. 40-41.

54. Santhou Carreres, História de Játiva, I, 88, 259 (both claims). Teixidor credits both (Antigüedades, II, 63). Sanchís Sivera puts the Murviedro hospital in his Nomenclátor, p. 354.

55. Faustino D. Gazulla, "Los mercedarios en Arguines y Algar (siglo xiii)," p. 69. See below, note 116.

56. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 354.

57. See note 109; its explicit purpose was the care of ransomed captives.

58. Faustino Gazulla, "Don Jaime de Aragón y la orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced," Congrés I, p. 383.

59. Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 322: "capellam quam ego construi feci in domibus quas habeo in Alcania de Fortaleny." Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 232. In 1741 this church would be given by the commander of the Hospital of St. Anthony to the diocesan clergy. On the Antonines see Germain Maillet-Guy, Les origines de Saint-Antoine, xie-xiiie siècles (Valence, 1908).

60. Antigüedades, ibid.

61. Ibid.; Nomenclátor, p. 326.

62. Repartimiento, p. 223: "Hospitali pauperum Burriane fr. Michael hospitalario." "Hospitalanius" of itself, of course, could signify an administrative officer of the hospital (see examples in Mundy, "Hospitals," p. 193n.).

63. Thus the will of Peter Abrafim in 1274 speaks of burial "in cimiterio hospitalis sancti Johannis Jherusalemis," and the wife of Blaise Peten has a legacy for "hospitali sancti Iohanis," but these expressions tell us nothing. See also Vicente Ferrer Salvador, "Monasterio de Gratia Dei," p. 497, reference to hospital of St. John. Quote by contemporary in James of Varazze (Jacobus da Voragine), Golden Legend, I, 118.

64. Antigüedades de Valencia, I, 296, Teixidor's interpretation.

65. Arch. Cath., perg. 4,639 (Dec. 23, 1256).

66. Imbert, Hôpitaux, pp. 215-216 and nn.; but for Toulouse see Mundy, "Hospitals," nn. 41, 64, 77.

67. The earliest statutes of the Valencian silversmiths and metal-workers, for example, incorporate this tradition; unlimited care is pledged for the ill member in his own home until he is cured or dead. On this aspect of the brotherhoods in the realms of Aragon see Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Historia de la previsión social en España, pp. 65-71, 549-550.

68. Ricardo del Arco, Zaragoza histórica, p. 143. A will here in 1218 had legacies for six separate parish hospitals. In Tortosa the cathedral conducted a hospital for the sick at this period (Bayerri, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 432). For the Tarragona cathedral hospital see above, note 3.

69. Viage literario, V. 313 ff. The conquests below the kingdom of Valencia will have their own hospitals; thus, at Alicante a hospital received a legacy in 1307 of a hundred solidi (Cláusulas testamentarias relativas a la iglesia de San Nicolás, de Alicante, siglo xiv, ed. Vicente Martínez Morella [Alicante, 1954], doc. 1).

70. From the grant of land by Bernard Gostanc to the Villarreal hospital see note 47: "pium est et magna karitas subvenire pauperibus Christi qui egeant et indigentiam patiantur."

71. Furs, lib. I, rub. III, c. 112; and lib. III, rub. IV, c. 7: "nos deuem devant tots los altres mantenir sens tota diffuyta en son dret pubils, viudes, homens vells e debils, e aquells als quals deu hom hauer merce quant seran venguts a pobrea o debilitat per cas d'aventura."

72. Repartimiento, p. 643, "Loba vetula et paupera"; p. 616, "de duobus pauperibus"; p. 571, "quidam pauper: domus parvissima"; p. 616, "quidam miles pauper"; p. 628.

73. Furs, lib. II, rub. VI, c. 33. On these "miserables" see Tierney, Poor Law, pp. 18-19.

74. Aureum opus, doc. 49, fol. 16v (an. 1255): "ratione pensionis canceragii."

75. Arch. Crown, Reg. Canc. 21, fol. 151v (Jan. 6, 1273 or 1274). This wooden bridge was replaced in the early fourteenth century.

76. Arch. Cath., perg. 5,028 (July 23, 1303). Esclapés gives the date as 1288 (Resumen historial, p. 166). Olmos y Canalda, Prelados valentinos, pp. 79, 85.

77. Testament of Oller in Chapter Xl, note 13 (" inter pannos, lini et lane"; "detur viduis, orfinibus, et pauperibus verecundantibus"); of Jaca in note 24; of Marqués in Chapter VII, note 55; of Chicot in note 94 ("et palleis orphanis maritandis et captivis Christianis redimendis").

78. Muntaner, Crónica, ch. 20. King James of Aragon once arranged for alms to be given annually to a thousand poor; the sums were to be drawn partly from Valencian revenues -- 180 solidi from Valencia city; 20 solidi to each of twenty poor men, from Murviedro; the same respectively from Játiva, Alcira, Gandía, and Beniope (Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 2,242 [Sept. 9, 1275]). Even so unsavory a thirteenth-century king as John of England sustained an impressive system of crown almsgiving; see C. R. Young, "King John of England: An Illustration of the Medieval Practice of Charity," Church History, XXIX (1960), 264-274; see also Hilda Johnstone, "Poor Relief in the Royal Households of Thirteenth-Century England," Speculum, IV (1929), 149-157. There was an alms system at the parochial and monastic level in medieval Europe (cf. Tierney, Poor Law, ch. 5 passim), but only hints of its exercise have survived in our documentation for Valencia.

79. Desclot, Crónica, ch. 49. Less important institutions involved in the work of ransoming included the fraternities of craftsmen; on these and the office of the exea for official safe-conduct out of Valencia for ransomed or exchanged Moors, see Faustino Garulla, La orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, estudios histórico-críticos (1218-1317) (Barcelona, 1934), esp. chs. 1-3.

80. Colección diplomática, doc. 520 (Sept. 30, 1255).

81. A document (of doubtful authenticity?) in the Merced codex at Arch. Crown gives a military role to the Order at the siege of Valencia: "quando ego expugnavi et cepi Valenciam contra sarracenorum gentes fortiter praeliastis lancea et sento et multi vestrorum vulneribus mortui ceciderunt" (Itinerari, pp. 137-138, Dec. 27, 1239). Gazulla insists on their military role both in the crusade and as garrison; see his evidence in "Jaime I y Merced," pp. 374, 377-378, 380, 384. Vázquez, however, feels that they had few occasions or personnel for fighting. On the ransomer role of Calatrava see González, Reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, I, 620 ff.

82. Garulla, "Jaime I y Merced," passim.

83. Verlinden, Esclavage, I, 832. Gazulla claims he had rescued 1,200 with his personal patrimony alone ("Jaime I y Merced," p. 329).

84. Verlinden, Esclavage, p. 537; see also pp. 606 ff. Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," pp. 371-373. Guillermo Vázquez Núñez in his Manual de historia de la orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced (1218-1574) (Toledo, 1931) maintains that some of the most important documents for Nolasco's life are late forgeries, including the document of the seals itself and the testimony of Peter Armengol in 1304 (p. ix). An uncritical essay, useful for its industrious compilation of details, is Ameno Sancho Blanco, "San Pedro Nolasco y sus primeros compañeros y la confirmación y constitución apostólica de la orden," Estudios [Mercedarios], XII (1956), 233-264; he has a long list of the thirteenth-century ransom expeditions claimed for Nolasco and his early companions, with the numbers freed each time (pp. 246-249).

85. Document cited in note 80: "nos quieiusdem ordinis patroni et fundatores sumus." See Manuel Mariano Ribera, Centuria primera, pp. 57-58; intriguing bits of information on the origins of the Order may be gleaned from this old work, especially in chs. 1 and 2. The masters general from Nolasco on are discussed on pp. 289 ff., and many members from the first century of its history are considered on pp. 430 ff. There are problems with the chronology, but William of Bas seems to have been second master general from 1249 to 1260; Bernard of San Román and William (now in his second term) apparently filled the decade 1260-1270; Peter of Amer governed the Order from 1271 to 1301. William, perhaps a relative of Berengar, may have been master by 1245, "si el document és autèntic" (Itinerari, p. 174; cf. also pp. 193, 207, 214, 224, 244, 248). On origins of the Order, especially in connection with the kings of Aragon, see the same author's rambling Real patronato de los serenísimos señores reyes de España en el real, y militar orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, redención de cautivos, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1725). See also Gazulla's "Jaime I y Merced."

86. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarios, leg. 2,043, arm. 44, fab. 2 (Sept. 16, 1256): "habitum sive signum illud quod decetero deferatis, scutum scilicet signi nostri regni et crucem desuper positam albam"; see also the document of June 13, 1251 in Colección diplomática, doc. 1,069.

87. King James to Nolasco, letter appended by Gayangos in Forster's English translation of Llibre dels feyts, I, 150n. Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," p. 371. This document may not be authentic; indeed, wherever Nolasco himself enters the story, it is prudent to be skeptical.

88. See the houses in Guillermo Vázquez Núñez, Breve reseña de los conventos de la orden de la Merced (Rome, 1932), esp. pp. 26-32; his edited Actas del capítulo general de 1317 celebrada en Valencia (Rome, 1930), esp. p. 10; and his Manual, esp. p. 125.

89. Repartimiento, p. 189; cf. p. 253; confirmed by the king February 21, 1263 in Itinerari, p. 334. The (corrected) date of the grant is July 14, 1238. There is a plaza on the site today, named after them (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 422). Pope Innocent IV refers to this church in 1245 (Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 45). See also Escolano, Décadas, I, 498. Despite Teixidor's intense refutation of Esciapés, the Mercedanians do seem to have named their little mosque St. Eulalia's; it so appears in the 1240 document below in note 92. St. Dominic's (or St. Eulalia's) would be the old mosque remodeled; by 1382 St. Dominic's was already reported as "ancient and threatening to collapse."

90. James confirmed to the Barcelona commander six jovates of land in "Naquarella" (probably Andarella) on September 18, 1238, but this was never actually received; it was shortly compensated by Alcira property ("Aliaciria"). See Faustino Gazulla, "Los religiosos de la Merced en la ciudad de Valencia (siglo xiii)," BSCC, VI (1925), 1.

91. Ibid., p. 2 see also his "Jaime I y Merced," pp. 377-380.

92. Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 5. Arnold of Carcassonne or also "de Gasconibus" may really have been prior general; in 1265 he was prior at Lérida. Arnold was prior of Valencia in a document of July 1240 (Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 5; Itinerari, p. 144). Raymond was prior in the document below, in note 109. Sancho Blanco culls Mercedarian names for the realms in his "Nolasco," as does Vázquez in his Manual; see also the names involved in the 1317 Actas del capítulo general en Valencia.

93. Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," pp. 376-377, from a 1260 document.

94. Puig is simply the Latin podium, a descriptive designation of the small hill; the Arabic equivalent of this, repeated by the medieval Christian, emerged as Juballa or Capulla or Cebolla -- hence Puig de Cebolla or Onion Hill. It also bore the name Puig de Enesa. In old Catalan this hill was "Pug de Sebolla" or "Pug de Sancta Maria."

95. J. Langdon-Davies, citing Narciso Camós, in Gatherings from Catalonia, p. 133. On the Puig monastery see Gazulla, "El puig de Santa María," 593-654; and Francisco Boyl, N[uestra] S[eñora] del Puche, camara angelical de María santissima, patrona de la insigne ciudad, y reyno de Valencia, monasterio real del orden de redentores de Nuestra Señora de la Merced..., (Zaragoza, 1631), fols. 7 ff., 112-113, and passim.

96. Cartulari de Poblet, ed. J. Pons i Marqués (Barcelona, 1938), pp. 11-12, docs. 29-30, and p. 19, doc. 41; each planned a conquest, a monastery, and burial there. Supplement with Antigüedades de Valencia, II, docs. on pp. 48-49. The Cid had made his headquarters here at one time, and it has been called "the Covadonga of Valencia."

97. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 237.

98. Itinerari, p. 144; Antigüedades, II, 46 (July 26, 1240).

99. See Chapter VIII, note 136.

100. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 354.

101. Arch. Cath., perg. 2363 (Aug. 27, 1240): "sit notum cunctis quod nos Ferrer miseracione divina Electus Valentinus et prepositus Tarrachonensis, volentes et cupientes participes fieri elemosinarum et aliorum merce[de] operum que fuerunt in hordine Fratrum de la merce[de] per nos et successores nostros damus et perpetuo concedimus pro salute anime nostre fratribus antedictis Ecclesiam que vocatur podium sancte Marie."

102. Ibid.: "hominum ibi commorancium."

103. Arch. Cath., peng. 2,364 (Sept. 15, 1244).

104. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 354.

105. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 46, fol. 66 (Mar. 9, 1281) for the Bruny gift (Segó is Vall de Segó, also called Valletes de Sagunto). "Ipsi habeant privilegium franquitatis concessum eisdem a domino Iacobo...in quo continetur quod totam partem eos [sic] contingente[m] de peyta pro alqueriis de Raphalaçeyt et de Valle de Segon quam Guillelmus Brunii eisdem legavit in suo testamento...relaxari deberet..." See Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," p. 383. The testaments are in Chapter VII, notes 53, 54, 60, 61, 94, and in Chapter XI, notes 11,21.

106. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Puig, has a special section for these Mercedarian benefactions. Maria's gift was to the "domus captivorum Valencie," Dominic's to "domui mercedis captivorum Valencie" (see wills in Chapter VII, note 92 and Chapter XI, note 11).

107. Colección diplomática, doc. 520 (Sept. 30, 1255). A four-year quarrel ensued with the previous incumbents. See doc. 1,109; Itinerari, p. 248; and Chapter XV, devoted to St. Vincent's.

108. Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 2.

109. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarians, leg. 2,043, arm. 44, fab. 2 (Aug. 6, 1245): "semper teneatis Hospitale in Villa Denie ad honorem dei et servicium pauperum captivorum." See also on this document Itinerari, p. 174 (July 29, 1245).

110. Faustino Gazulla, "Los mercedarios en Játiva durante el siglo xiii," BSCC, IV (1923), 131. See also Sarthou Carreres, Monasterios valencianos, p. 270, who puts the foundation in 1248.

111. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Játiva," p. 131; Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarios, leg. 2,043, arm. 44, fab. 2 (Jan. 4, 1242). The Ondara fort is in Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," p. 378.

112. Itinerari, p. 193 (Sept. 1, 1248): "quasdam domos in Segorbis [sic] contiguas domibus Dominici castellani, et unum ortum."

113. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 170.

114. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Arguines y Algar," p. 67 (Mar. 5, 1244). He gave it to St. Peter Nolasco, retaining a fourth of the wine and wheat, and stipulating that a convent of the Order and a church be built, and a chantry provided for the souls of his relatives, himself, and the king.

115. Ibid., p. 68. They may have administered it from 1244, receiving ownership in 1251.

116. Ibid.; but possession would have been taken only after his death in 1252.

117. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Játiva," p. 129 (May 5, 1248; Játiva was conquered in 1244).

118. Ibid. (Oct. 1, 1253), a legacy from a canon of Barcelona and Gerona.

119. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Játiva," p. 137 (June 7, 1237). There were two altars in the church at the time; its name was changed from "St. Michael" to "St. Michael and St. Bartholomew" (pp. 137-138).

120. Actas del capítulo general de 1317 celebrada en Valencia, pp. 34-35: "careat non modicum facultatibus."

121. Sarthou Carreres, Historia de Játiva, I, 87.

122. Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 4 (Mar. 19, 1254).

123. Ibid. (April 2, 1255); see his "Jaime I y Merced", p. 383. See too the Murviedro holdings in Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarios, leg. 2,043, arm. 44, fab. 2 (Mar. 4, 1266; and an. 1270); the last is "in valle Fecundi termino Muriveteris." These are for the Puig shrine.

124. Gazulla, "Jaime I," p. 384.

125. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Játiva," p. 136 (Feb. 13, 1292).

126. Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 3 (Feb. 8, 1245). On oblates or donnés see the works cited in Chapter XV, section 2, "Beneficiaries, Staff, Pensioners."

127. Gazulla, "Merced en Valencia," p. 4 (Mar. 28, 1253); see the two documents about them in the appendix to Gazulla, "Puig de Santa María," pp. 647-650, docs. 1, 2.

128. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarios, leg. 2,043, arm. 44, fab. 2 (Oct. 13, 1268): "dono et offero me ipsum in fratrem ordinis." These were for the support of the Puig shrine; he was a former Léridan, resident in Valencia.

129. Gazulla, "Mercedarios en Játiva," pp. 135-136 (Oct. 2, 1256).

130. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,074 (Mar. 12, 1255); Itinerari, pp. 244-245: "quod omnes homines ac femine, tam nobiles quam ignobiles tocius terre nostre aut regni, tam milites quam cives...possint vobis...permutare, dare insuper et legare...quaslibet hereditates possessiones ac domos...regales vel non regales ubicumque sint."

131. Ibid., p. 518 (May 4, 1275).

132. Gazulla, "Jaime I y Merced," pp. 387-388; "Mercedarios en Játiva," pp. 136 ff., 139; "Merced en Valencia," p. 4. Sarthou Carreres, Historia de Játiva, I, 87.

133. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Mercedarios, leg. 2,197, arm. 46, fab. 2 (Aug. 22, 1291): "in podio Sancte Marie, Domos terras et vineas quas habetis in Civitate et diocesi valentini"; "domos terras et vineas quas habetis in Villa Denie"; "Ecclesiam Sancti Dominici sitam in Civitate Valentina cum omnibus pertinenciis suis"; "Domos terras vineas possessiones quas [habetis] in Castris et Villis que Burriana, Xhativa, Algar, Rafalinardha, Rafalatrer[?], Gandia, Cosentanea, Segorb, Mula, Ariona, Almaza, et Beier vulgariter appelantur."