[253] Valencia was the king's bright hope and counterweight in his unceasing struggle to elevate the power of the crown, throughout his dominions, from half-effective suzerainty to some form of real sovereignty. And, in this ill-populated frontier kingdom of Valencia, the most important of all the king's instruments for consolidation was the church. King James would go to any length to preserve the freedom of that church from foreign manipulation. Consequently, long before he moved his forces to the siege of Valencia, the king had devoted attention to the problem of the metropolitan under whose jurisdiction the bishop of Valencia would fall.

In pursuit of his aims, he did not hesitate to slander the primate of Toledo, during the lawsuit about to be examined,⁽¹⁾ as he had not hesitated to hang at Játiva a relative and emissary of the bishop of Cuenca on account of his pro-Castilian activities.⁽²⁾ This antagonism between Aragonese and Castilian political interests was to dominate the trial scenes. In the intimate fusion of church and state which characterized the times, it had to be the political body of King James which would fuse with the church of Valencia. To fail would be to put a stranger in his councils, a potential enemy in his castle.

Toledo Versus Tarragona

The rapid conquests of the later twelfth and early thirteenth century were creating a new ecclesiastical geography for the peninsula. In theory and in law each ancient diocese should have fallen, upon reconquest, under the metropolitan who had held it during Visigothic days, although squabbles had to be expected because of the long interval of time, lost documents, and the like. Thus, history and law should have awarded the diocese of Valencia to the metropolitan at Toledo in Castile. Circumstances, however, rendered this conclusion an absurdity. Spain was no longer the Visigothic unity which could tolerate the old Roman axes of authority, running east and west. It was a collection of rival and proudly independent kingdoms, whose jealously guarded autonomy ran in lines from north to south.

Within such a kingdom a bishop was an important lay figure, a vassal with extensive revenues, estates, and castles, enjoying a measure of political, military, personal, and economic power. Conversely, the king was immersed [254] in ecclesiastical affairs, and looked to the influence of his spiritual powers for support in his projects. The very origins of Catalonia as a territorial entity had largely depended upon this interplay of civil and ecclesiastical politics.⁽³⁾ In the thirteenth century the metropolitan had important rights within his subject dioceses, and no little influence in affairs of state. If the church of Aragon had been uneasy under the mild yoke of a relatively weak metropolitan at Narbonne, the church of Valencia would have been much more unhappy under the intrusive and aggressive influence of Castile.

Even the fairly innocuous supremacy of Toledo as primate was repugnant to the bishops of King James's realms. By this office, the metropolitan of Toledo claimed in the Spanish peninsula certain jurisdictional privileges such as convoking national councils and hearing appeals from bishops. These privileges had evolved during the ancient days of national unity which were now an anachronism. Urban II had chosen Toledo, on the occasion of that city's recapture from Islam in 1085, to be the modern bearer of the primatial status. But peninsular unity was long past. Besides, the centralizing activities of the medieval papacy alone would soon have rendered the primatial institution obsolete. At the fourth ecumenical council of the Lateran in 1215, the most important parliament ever held in medieval Christendom, the prelates of Aragon repudiated these Castilian claims to primacy. Rising to address the august assemblage, "the bishop of Vich answered [the claims] in place of the absent archbishop of Tarragona, on behalf of all the [Tarragona] suffragans, many of whom were present, [saying] that the Toledo archbishop was not their primate, nor were they bound to obey him in anything."⁽⁴⁾

At the time of the Valencian crusade, the metropolitan of Toledo was waging a hard battle to retain his prerogatives as primate over the peninsula. Braga claimed the primacy, as having been the first to achieve independence from the Moslems. Compostela claimed it as the heir of Braga. Narbonne claimed it as the successor, after the Arab invasion, to the rights of Tarragona. In the coming struggle for the metropolitan jurisdiction over Valencia, the forces of Tarragona were to yield so far as to concede that Toledo could intervene in Valencia as primate though not as metropolitan.⁽⁵⁾ Ironically, in this question of the metropolitanate, Toledo had the clear claim over Valencia; and its archbishop felt impelled to defend that claim. But Toledo was acting in a vacuum, insensible to the forces of what may be called Aragonese nationalism.

This proto-nationalist trend is discernible in King James's realms in the thirteenth century. In conformity with it, a tendency developed to identify dioceses, and even the personnel and administration of religious Orders, with "national" or rather dynastic units.⁽⁶⁾ The rulers of Aragon were concerned that their clerics be not subject to bishops, monasteries, or superiors of a foreign land. This was partly a capture and exploitation of the church for [255] dynastic or regional purposes, deliberate and progressively ever more successful; it was also the negative defense mechanism accompanying a nascent nationalism. Ironically, the primate of Castile himself had fought the metropolitan of Tarragona over the control of the diocese of Burgos, for similarly nationalist reasons.⁽⁷⁾ In the same spirit the contemporary historian Muntaner (b. 1265), when relating the reception of the Castilian sovereigns on their way to the ecumenical council of Lyons in 1276, was proudly to remind his readers that "the archbishop of Tarragona with ten bishops of his province...are all ruled by the lord king of Aragon."⁽⁸⁾ The situation could not have been phrased more neatly.

Later in the century James II would not even tolerate Castilian Dominicans in his Murcian lands south of Valencia (1297); he took up the topic with some petulance on the eve of the Dominican provincial chapter to be held at Valencia city. Nor did he want the Castilian Cistercians at Piedra (1299). In 1284, as a reprisal for ejection of Aragonese subjects from France, King Peter would not allow the visitation of Roda monastery by French monks. When the diocese of Cartagena was erected south of Valencia, James II protested strongly against it, and in terms explicitly nationalist rather than ecclesiastical.⁽⁹⁾ In the next century the crown of Aragon would blatantly continue to pursue such policies.⁽¹⁰⁾

King James I had a lively sense of the political issues involved in the allocation and "ordination" of suffragan dioceses. He had made determined efforts to incorporate his military conquest of Majorca into his ecclesiastical system as well. Majorca in ancient times fell under the metropolitan of Sardinia; now, after long wrangling between Toledo and Tarragona, Rome lost patience and declared Majorca an "exempt" diocese, directly under the pope (1232).⁽¹¹⁾ In 1245 James I complained to Rome about the activities of the Narbonne metropolitan in the suffragan diocese of Elne (Perpignan), because the diocese was in the realms of Aragon; Innocent IV therefore ordered Narbonne to make express mention of this political fact when drawing commissions for agents to Elne.⁽¹²⁾ In the quarrel over the Valencia province, the lawyers of King James ringingly restated the principle behind the royal policy: the diocese of Valencia must go to the metropolitan of Tarragona because the kingdom of Valencia belonged to the crown of Aragon.⁽¹³⁾

In language, character, and institutions the realms of King James differed acutely from those of Castile. Nor was any love lost between the two lands, as one can easily see in reading the memoirs of King James. Thus, the precise legal issues at stake in the lawsuit between Tarragona and Toledo over Valencia were in effect superficial. The real point at issue was whether a bishop of an important diocese in one strong kingdom could be compelled to accept the permanent rule of a metropolitan belonging to an alien and not always friendly kingdom. Neither side adverted openly to this situation as a [256] factor in the dispute -- except in an occasional indiscretion -- and the courtroom struggle soon degenerated into a series of near-farcical maneuvers on the part of the Aragonese to evade the legal issue.

What was the general ecclesiastical structure into which Valencia was coming? After the wave of Islamic conquest had destroyed the old ecclesiastical province of Tarragona, the churches of Navarre and of Aragon proper came to be under the metropolitan of Auch. The Catalan dioceses -- Barcelona, Urgel, Vich, Gerona, and Roda -- fell to Narbonne. The struggle to be independent of Narbonne, and under a metropolitan more traditionally native to the region, succeeded in 1089. It was still necessary, however, to reclaim the metropolitan city of Tarragona from the Moors (1117), and to name its bishop (1118). The suffragan bishops of this new metropolitanate were the Catalan dioceses of Barcelona, Gerona, Vich, Lérida, Tortosa, and Urgel; the Aragonese dioceses of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Tarazona; the Castilian diocese of Calahorra; and the Navarrese diocese of Pamplona. This was still the situation a hundred years later when King James I began his career of conquest. The dioceses in areas he conquered all became objects of dispute: Majorca, Segorbe, Valencia, and Cartagena in Murcia (exempted and put directly under the pope in 1250).

Only in 1318 would another metropolitanate be added to the peninsular holdings of the king of Aragon; this was at Zaragoza, and for the Aragonese, who themselves resented the dominance of a Catalan metropolitanate. Moreover, bishoprics in the lands of the king of Aragon north of the Pyrenees had yet a different organization.⁽¹⁴⁾ Taking the Spanish peninsula as a whole, at the time of the Valencia crusade, there were four Spanish metropolitans, in the four rival states of the peninsula -- Santiago (from 1120) for León; Braga (1090) for Portugal; Tarragona (1089); and Toledo (1088). Seville became the fifth metropolitanate in 1248, Zaragoza the sixth in 1318.

The problem of metropolitan jurisdiction over Valencia had been foreseen long before the crusade. There was a background of ancient supporting claims on the side of Toledo and of Tarragona. At the trial, the Aragonese were to adduce a celebrated grant by the Moslem king of Denia -- a copy of which has been preserved under the significant date of 1230. As early as 1228, before the Valencian crusade had been undertaken, King James had used this grant to settle the metropolitanate in favor of Tarragona; he did so by addicting to the suffragan Barcelona any future conquests from the Balearics down to the Denia-Orihuela region. At the parliament of Monzón in 1236, as the king prepared his move from Burriana against the capital of the kingdom of Valencia, he formally proclaimed that the diocese of Valencia belonged to the metropolitan of Tarragona because of the latter's many services to the crown. This was a piece of audacity, since the king had no right at this time, in law or in custom, directly to appoint even a bishop, much less to intrude in questions of ecclesiastical organization. As for the [257]claims emanating from the king of Denia, the Toledo party would simply retort: "a Saracen cannot confer churches."⁽¹⁵⁾

The metropolitan of Tarragona did not hesitate to exercise his new authority in the captured capital, intending this as a deliberate preparation for the legal battle which he knew would follow. Traveling with the crusaders, he had ostentatiously performed the many functions proper to the office of metropolitan, even to organizing personally in detail the fallen city's parishes. He was not alone. The agent for Toledo matched his colleague of Tarragona function for function. Representatives of Castile were few enough, but they sufficed to foil the Aragonese plot to claim the diocese by default when the legal battle began. Still, the transfer of churches made by the king in October 1238 was effected through the metropolitan of Tarragona.⁽¹⁶⁾ And at no point in diocesan reconstruction did King James ask advice of, or pay any official attention to, Toledo.

Peter of Albalat, the forceful Catalan crusader and prelate, was metropolitan of Tarragona during the dispute.⁽¹⁷⁾ His brother was to be installed as bishop of Valencia about five years after the final settlement of the quarrel.⁽¹⁸⁾ On the side of Toledo, what manner of adversary faced Archbishop Peter and King James? Roderick Simon of Rada was a man of far greater stature than Peter. As crusader, as statesman, as papal representative and apostolic legate, and as historian (he wrote the De rebus Hispaniae) he is a celebrated figure in Spanish history.

Roderick served as the main chancellor to the crown of Castile. At the decisive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the turning point in the Spanish crusade still celebrated by Spaniards today, his primatial cross had been a rallying point, and his fierce spirit a spur. On a less sanguinary plane he battled heartily to preserve the primatial privileges of his see. He had extended his metropolitan jurisdiction quite widely as well, especially by the use of two principles: that rescued sees were to return to their old jurisdiction; and that he was to have those sees and territories whose own metropolitan still lay under the Moslem yoke.⁽¹⁹⁾

Archbishop Roderick traveled to Rome to table in person his plea for control of Valencia, probably late in 1238 just after the fall of Valencia city. We lack a precise date for his going and coming, but there is no trace of him in Castile from autumn of 1238 to spring of 1239. A papal document of February 23, 1239 indicates that he had explained his case at least before that date. And bulls of April 22-24 show that he made his explanation in person. He returned to Spain perhaps in May.⁽²⁰⁾ Archbishop Roderick based his appeal on a double claim: the new diocese belonged to Toledo de jure communi, inasmuch as it fell within the historic boundaries of that province; it belonged de jure speciali, inasmuch as Pope Alexander III had specifically bestowed upon Toledo in 1166 "the dioceses of those cities which lost their own metropolitans at the Saracen invasion."⁽²¹⁾ Urban II had also [258] supplied Toledo with a similar permission for recovered bishoprics; the pope had been looking to a unified crusade of peninsular forces under Castile, in an earlier period when political circumstances justified this program.

Agents for the archbishop of Tarragona undoubtedly resisted these pleas with their own counterclaims. Pope Gregory IX therefore decided, "with the consent of the representatives of both sides," that the case was sufficiently tangled to merit investigation by a legal commission.⁽²²⁾ His bull of April 22, 1239 ordered hearings to be held for two months. One catches a hint in this document of economic threats by the crown of Aragon. King James's slowness to endow the Valencia diocese, here touched on, may well be related to the dispute over metropolitan jurisdiction.⁽²³⁾ One even wonders whether the initial harsh attitude of the Furs toward property acquisition by the Valencian church might not owe at least something to these uncertainties over ecclesiastical ownership?

Three judges were named to sift evidence: the canon of Toledo John Pérez of Arroniz (probably Aranjuez), the Official of the see of Tarragona William Vidal, and Bishop John of Oloron in Languedoc.⁽²⁴⁾ They were instructed to decide the case; if it could not be resolved, they were to appoint a man of their choice to be bishop. Alternatively, an appeal could be carried to Rome. The claims of Berengar of Castellbisbal, who had been put forward by Tarragona already as candidate for the new diocese, would have been canceled by this document, if they were not already formally voided. Consequently, no bishop or procurator for Valencia was at the provincial council of May 1239.

Through their delegates, the abbot and prior of the Cistercian monastery of Fitero in Navarre, these judges cited the agents of the two archbishops to appear, inviting also the agents for the respective metropolitan episcopal chapters (November 3, 1239).⁽²⁵⁾ Prior William delivered his citation to Archbishop Peter at Barbastro in Aragon. The sessions were to be held at Tudela, then the capital of Navarre. This was neutral territory, though ecclesiastically suffragan to Tarragona, and readily accessible to both factions. Its ruler Theobald was away with his vassals on crusade in the East. Pamplona, the only diocese for Navarre, lacked a bishop at this time; the vacancy lasted from 1238 to January 1242.⁽²⁶⁾ When the citations were issued the judges were already sitting in Tudela, at the beautiful new Gothic church of St. Mary (1194-1234) with its twelfth-century Romanesque cloisters. Only five months had been allowed for gathering of documents and drawing of arguments, but this was quite adequate, since both sides had been long prepared.

To underline the importance of the case, both metropolitans took care to be present in person at Tudela when the preliminary sitting went forward on Friday, December 1, 1239. They remained to guide and watch the proceedings for many days; Archbishop Roderick apparently was present for [259] the larger portion of the trial.⁽²⁷⁾ Toledo named as its procurator the canon Gutiérrez Ferdinand; Tarragona named Raymond of Barberá.⁽²⁸⁾ In the opening arguments, Raymond made a formal counterclaim to the position assumed by Toledo. Gutiérrez made no answer for the present. Both parties were ordered to prepare their evidence for the morrow.

Fortunately a transcript of this trial has survived. It affords valuable glimpses into the organizing of the Valencian frontier and into the mentality of the organizers. The trial was a full-scale display of legal talent, costing the Tarragona metropolitan alone 2,300 marks of silver or almost 87,500 solidi.⁽²⁹⁾ This expense may help explain why, fifteen years later, the Valencia diocese remained deeply in debt.⁽³⁰⁾

A Medieval Trial

A certain gusto and engagement of feeling might be expected to characterize so provocative a situation as this politico-ecclesiastical struggle for control of the Valencia diocese. Bishops and metropolitans must act as watchdogs for the privileges belonging to their respective churches. Moreover, any considerable enlargement of one's province or diocese brought in its train a corresponding augmentation of prestige. And the revenues alone were a not inconsiderable prize. National rivalries, the previous angry scenes between representatives of the two metropolitans during the crusade, and similar elements -- each contributed its measure of feeling and conspired to stir the blood of the participants.

Beyond all this, the participants were afloat on the full tide of the legal renaissance. The medieval lawyer, like the later humanist and the scientist, was a dedicated man. His enthusiasms shook and rattled Christendom with a disconcerting ferocity, even while they were contributing to its growth. The realms of Aragon shared enthusiastically in these juridical excitements. And in the kingdom of Valencia, new as it was, lawsuits threatened to be the ruin of the citizenry, so that "the malice" of the lawyers had to be curbed by law.⁽³¹⁾ A similar phenomenon was visible in the church throughout Europe. Gregory IX in 1234 had to deplore excessive clerical litigation as a plague threatening to "exile harmony beyond the world's frontiers"; his Decretals, a landmark in legal history, were meant to serve as a remedy.⁽³²⁾ Pierre Dubois (ca. 1250-1320), the celebrated French legist, viewed the litigation in both civil and ecclesiastical courts as one of the major abuses crying out for reform in Christendom -- "the greatest common evil."⁽³³⁾

From the mid-twelfth century, ecclesiastical lawsuits had increased considerably. The prelates of Spain enjoyed a bewildering series of actions and appeals, some extending over a century or two, others engaging the attention of successive teams of litigants. An empire-building instinct for garnering suffragans occasioned some of the best of these. For example, the suit of the [260] dioceses of Huesca and Roda concerning Barbastro began under Gregory VII in the eleventh century, and ended under Innocent III in the thirteenth. The diocese of Zamora, from its restoration in 1123 until 1228, was fought over by the bishops of Toledo and Braga, of Braga and Santiago, and finally of Toledo and Santiago; the latter emerged victor.

When the legal dust of these more Olympian strivings had settled down at last and the mettlesome metropolitans had abandoned the field, the score would be as follows: Toledo would be holding eight suffragans in place of its Visigothic twenty-one; Seville two for its former ten; Santiago eleven and Braga eight (about the same as in Visigothic times); and Tarragona twelve for a former fourteen. Five would be directly under Rome, four remained unconquered, and a few like Alcalá and Oreto never reappeared.⁽³⁴⁾ Against this background of furor legalis, the metropolitan of Toledo now faced the metropolitan of Tarragona.

On December 2, both parties having been sworn in, the Toledans presented their documents in evidence. These included provincial councils of 610 and 675 when the bishop of Valencia had signed as a subject of Toledo; St. Isidore's descriptions of the Spanish church (which Tarragona was to reject as "fictions");⁽³⁵⁾ auxiliary witnesses like Pliny, the emperor Constantine, and Innocent III;⁽³⁶⁾ the important privilege of Pope Alexander III (1166); and one unfortunate document referring to another Valencia. Especially in evidence was the celebrated ecclesiastical division of the Visigothic king Wamba (672-680), supposedly drawn up at a Toledo council in order to make fairer distribution of church jurisdiction. There is some dispute as to whether the document is a forgery by Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo (1119-1143), using older documents, or else an authentic document preserved in a corrupt text. The Tarragona party scoffed at its use in this trial; but the bishop of Valencia did not hesitate to use it himself less than a decade later, to claim and seize the churches of the diocese of Segorbe.⁽³⁷⁾

Since the trial was intended to be a careful examination of the documentation and traditional claims to Valencia, much more than of any recent facts which affected those claims, the lawyers of Tarragona had perforce to offer some kind of argumentation against the writings. Each metropolitan now proffered a statement under oath, that Valencia had belonged to his province alone. Then the procurator of Tarragona presented his rejoinders: the documents cited could only refer to Toledo's privileges as primate, not as metropolitan; the rescript of 1166 was irrelevant, being at most a property grant; the evidence involving Isidore, Pliny, Constantine, and Wamba was inadmissible because its form in the Toledan evidence was only a translation from the Arabic. One may imagine the indignation of the Toledan party at this lawyer's-mixture of bold denial and delaying tactics.

The next session opened with a presentation of Tarragona's own positive claims: actual possession of Valencia,. privileges of crusade, "and other [261] reasons." The archbishop of Toledo then took the floor "in propria persona," denouncing each of the Tarragonan responses of the previous day as "irrelevant." The question of translation, he admitted, applied to some of the copies, but only to some.⁽³⁸⁾ One of the prelate's points was particularly well taken; it touches the heart of the whole case. The Tarragona spokesman had openly urged the question of national unity: "the kingdom of Valencia is part of the province called Aragon."⁽³⁹⁾ The archbishop of Toledo retorted that the kingdom of Aragon possessed Valencia, but was not itself a province of the church. The argument was solid; there never had been an ecclesiastical province called Aragon, nor was this "kingdom of Valencia" conterminous with the diocese of Valencia. Thus the Tarragonan argument is clearly exposed and challenged: that a national division should dictate an important ecclesiastical partitioning.

Toledo then presented an impressive array of documents gathered from various archives, each of them an official copy witnessed and sealed, giving concrete form to the points previously made as generalities. The documents came from Abbot John at St. Emilian (San Millán de la Cogolla), a Benedictine abbey west of Calahorra and in that diocese; from Abbot Michael at St. Iñigo of Oña, a famous Benedictine abbey in Burgos diocese; from the distinguished Abbot William at the very influential Sts. Facundus and Primitivus near Sahagún in the diocese of León; Prior Nicholas, whose monastery of St. Peter of Cardeña near Burgos was closely connected with the Cid and was his burial place; Guy the chamberlain of St. Zoil at Carrión de los Condes in the Palencia diocese, one of the most important Cluniac priories in Spain; Abbot Martin of St. Isidore in León; the abbot-elect of St. Dominic of Silos, a well-known Benedictine abbey in Burgos diocese; and the bishop of Oviedo.

There being no ready answer to this wealth of parchment, the Tarragona procurator took the offensive. Ignoring the uncomfortable fact that Valencia should belong to Toledo, he asserted that it did actually belong at the present moment to Tarragona, because the king so willed it and prescription confirmed it. He advanced this position in an elaborate charge of over twenty-five separate items. In sum: the metropolitan "had taken possession of the mosques of Valencia by the authority of the illustrious king of Aragon, who actually held the city and kingdom."⁽⁴⁰⁾ This right of conquest was a para-legal argument but was perhaps the strongest of all those put forward by Tarragona. Toledo itself, in happer circumstances, had urged this same claim for the churches of Sabiote, Garciez, and Xodar, against the diocese of Baeza.⁽⁴¹⁾

Aragon was not without its own documents. "The king of Aragon was able to give and grant churches in the diocese of Valencia, which had been established for the archbishop of Tarragona, by reason of a privilege the lord pope had conceded to the king of Aragon."⁽⁴²⁾ This documentary claim [262] the Tarragonans buttressed with practical arguments. All James's predecessors had done everything in their power to liberate the church of Valencia from the pagans. James himself and his bishops had finally succeeded. The Tarragona metropolitanate had always intended to have Valencia as its own, nor had Toledo made objections. That Valencia belongs in fact to Tarragona in our own day is "fama publica" among the people. The metropolitan had in fact exercised his rights in this diocese: chose its bishop and canons, erected altars and established parishes, displayed the pallium and consecrated the bishop of Lérida here, received the obedience of all the clergy, consecrated a cemetery, absolved, excommunicated, and so on.

As a damaging negative argument, the Tarragonese assumed the position that the Toledo documents were unauthentic anyway. They alleged them to have been improperly drawn. Making these well-known documents "public" now would be easy enough but would consume much time, which was precisely what Tarragona wanted.⁽⁴³⁾

In reviewing his own case later for the appeals court, the procurator of Tarragona emphasized some interesting arguments which are only touched upon briefly by the official transcript. One is that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and that the presumption of law is in favor of the possessor.⁽⁴⁴⁾ This is a good argument; it was hardly applicable to cases of recent theft, however, which was the point at issue. As for the legal precedents, ostentatiously performed by the agent of Toledo during the crusade, Tarragona contended that one does not actually possess what one is physically unable to keep -- and that it was the army of Aragon which kept Valencia while Toledo was establishing its own claims. Tarragona also threw in a large doubt that the bishop of Albarracín-Segorbe, the agent of Toledo, could prove that he represented Toledo or had carried documents to that effect.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Besides, the bishop of Tortosa, who was a suffragan of Tarragona, had exercised ministries like confirmation among the Valencian Mozarabs forty years ago during a daring raid by Alphonse of Aragon, without protest at all from Toledo.

The most shameful of all the sophistries marshaled by Tarragona was the charge of neglect of Valencia by Toledo. In this argument, the "diligence" displayed by Tarragona in the conquest of Valencia fulfilled a church canon which allowed one's fellow bishops to absorb a place belonging to one's own diocese, if that place had been willfully allowed to remain in pagan hands.⁽⁴⁶⁾ An analogy was appended from civil law, that the man who neglects to redeem a captive slave loses title to him. To appreciate the unfairness of this charge, one should recall that the incumbent of Toledo was by far the most prominent and untiring crusader among the prelates of the peninsula; indeed, he was one of the great warrior bishops of the Middle Ages.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Besides, even before the conquest of Valencia had become feasible, its capture had [263] been reserved by treaty to the troops of Aragon! The archbishop of Toledo, however, was modest in his reply: "he had done much to harm the Saracens," at least insofar as it had been in his power.⁽⁴⁸⁾

The Toledans opened the session on Tuesday by contending that the claims of Tarragona added up to usurpation and robbery.⁽⁴⁹⁾ They protested that Tarragona had reversed the roles of plaintiff and defendant by assuming the offensive. The resultant argument consumed much time. The judges finally decided, over Toledo's formal protest, to let Tarragona pursue its positive arguments, as long as this was not understood to commit the judges to the position of acquiescing in the reversal of roles. This was a practical victory for Tarragona even though it involved a suspension of judgment as to its implications in law.

Tarragona now hurried in a parade of witnesses of its own, over continuing protests from Toledo. There were the bishops of Huesca and Tarazona, clerical dignitaries from the realms of King James, and three knights. Several sets of documents were also brought in. These included the charters by which King James had given the church of Valencia to Tarragona and had endowed it, and the bulls of Anastasius IV and Urban II. Toledo would reject the Anastasius privilege as inapplicable, since in law the general principle is assumed even when such a special exception is granted. The bull of Urban would be accepted without a challenge, though it was a forgery; but Toledo would point out that it applied only to patronage of churches within a diocese, not to the larger question of the diocese itself.⁽⁵⁰⁾ A final document from the Tarragona party was a history of the martyr St. Vincent, which contained a phrase useful to their cause but probably interpolated.⁽⁵¹⁾

All of this rather deliberately extended the trial -- with speeches, copying, authenticating, resuming, minutely describing, and so forth. Toledo doggedly ignored this positive attack and continued to introduce its own documentation, gathered from as far away as Cluny in Burgundy and St. Denis near Paris. These in turn were ignored by the Tarragona party; they blandly refused to answer the evidence produced by Toledo, on the grounds that Toledo must yield and answer the positive claims of Tarragona first.

Interviewing Witnesses

Further to confuse the issue, Tarragona now demanded that agents be dispatched by the court to collect evidence and documents as a preliminary to the introduction of further witnesses. Toledo reluctantly agreed, as long as the same would be done for their side. The judges therefore adjourned the court until the day after Epiphany -- January 7, 1240. To conduct the search for evidence, the court swore in one Peter Roland, a cathedral functionary of Toledo, and Master John of Guardia, notary to the bishop of Tarragona. (Master John was to turn up in 1264 as agent, along with two canons, for the [264] metropolitan of Tarragona in building a galley for a campaign of James I against the Moslems of Granada.)⁽⁵²⁾

A phrase included in the agents' instructions suggests that the judges were becoming weary: "taking care that you do not interview an unreasonable number of witnesses, as forbidden by canon law." They were to question crusaders and others as to the acts of jurisdiction exercised by the archbishop of Tarragona, and his clergy, during the crusade and later in the capital. Questionnaires were provided. Did the Tarragona metropolitan "take possession of the greater mosque by the king's will?" "Did he order three altars made?" Did he receive the keys to the mosque, post guards, consecrate the altars, and so on?⁽⁵³⁾

While these two officials were applying their questionnaire in Catalonia and Aragon, another team was to travel over Aragon also and Castile, interviewing witnesses on the claims advanced by Toledo, especially as to authenticity of documents and as to public opinion on the rights to Valencia. This group was headed by Stephen Giles, a cleric from the diocese of Zaragoza who belonged to the party of Tarragona, and by the notary Master Peter, a canon of Toledo. (Stephen appears later in the lists for the crusade collections for Zaragoza in 1279, paying nothing, and again in 1280, paying only eight solidi.)⁽⁵⁴⁾ Both teams were in fact delegate judges, with letters patent allowing them to subpoena witnesses.

Two delaying tactics were introduced by Tarragona, in the form of objections to the wording of the instructions. The judges refused to sustain or to overrule these points, however, simply suspending consideration of them, "lest it happen that while such points are being argued, the progress of the trial be retarded." To this implied rebuke the judges added that they did not wish to disregard the rights of either party, "insofar as these rights ought to be maintained by the law."⁽⁵⁵⁾ This was a tactical defeat for the Tarragona party, whose objections were generally designed to confine the Toledan case largely to proving -- against much badgering -- that Valencia had belonged to them in ancient times now long past.

It was the obvious intention of the archbishop of Tarragona to adopt, irregularly, the pose of plaintiff. His strategy was to insist always upon the present de facto possession; upon his prescriptive rights in the actual exercise of current jurisdiction; on the role of equity as attaching to the right of conquest and to unremitting crusading; and upon the confusion in the popular mind, especially at Valencia, as to who really was metropolitan. Above all, occasional hints must keep alive, in the consciousness of the Toledans, the power situation of a king determined to use any device for keeping his prize. At worst such a situation would end at Rome, where diplomacy might effect something or where perhaps the pattern of Majorcan exemption could be repeated. As for sound legal arguments on Tarragona's side, they were almost nonexistent despite the solemn oaths. On the other hand, Toledo's [265] impeccable legal position was, in the changed modern circumstances, unrealistic. Meanwhile, the organization and staffing of the Valencian diocese could go merrily ahead.

The interviews by the traveling investigators are full of human interest. Descending upon St. Emilian monastery with their staff, the delegates secured the documents there, compiled a minute description of the external qualities of each,⁽⁵⁶⁾ and harried the prior. Were the books authentic? The prior replied that he was sure of it. Why? Because they were in the monastery, and he saw them there constantly. Did he himself think them authentic? Yes. Why? Because he saw many councils recorded, and many other good documents, and because the monks here -- or most of them -- held that these were authentic. How did he know the monks thought so? Because he saw them consulting the books on matters of doubt. What had he heard from the elderly monks? He had heard one say that the script was Toledan and therefore ancient; and the old men read them.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Did he know such older monks? Yes. When? From as early as forty years ago. Had they ever said that the books were authentic? Yes. What did authentic mean? What the church approves!

One witness, the priest Brother Peter, nettled by the questions, retorted crossly that he didn't know they were authentic because he hadn't watched them being made. Pressed for his opinion by the unrelenting inquisitors, he allowed that they were considered authentic by the old monks whom he had known here fifty-one years previously. Asked what authentic meant, he answered: the Gospels, the Epistles, and whatever has the approval of the church and is considered as authentic. The elderly priest Brother Roderick, who had been in the monastery sixty years, offered a good definition of authentic: matching the original.

More cautious, the prior at the monastery of Oña said that "he didn't know whether they were authentic or not because he did not have the required training." Under pressure, he refused to say more, except that he believed them to be good and true because of the script. Another priest here, Brother John, a member of the community for fifty-two years, reasoned that the documents were authentic because good clerics had drawn proofs from them before in legal suits.

As for public opinion concerning the metropolitanate, Toledo had a clear case. The married layman Peter Michael, a citizen of Sahagún and a veteran of the epic battle at Las Navas de Tolosa, had never heard otherwise from old or young, whenever the subject came up. Where, for example? In Toledo, in the crusading army at Las Navas, at Sahagún, and in Pamplona. Personally, he preferred Toledo anyway. The priest Peter Sancho had heard that Toledo was the metropolitan over Valencia, especially from the folks of Medinaceli, but he had no other evidence for his belief. He remembered, in a rambling kind of way, that, "after the capture of the city of Valencia, he [266] heard that there was controversy...on this point, and except for this hearsay he did not know what was the general opinion, but some said...the Toledans and others the Tarragonans, but more said the Toledans." Gutiérrez, the archpriest of Hita, had heard Toledo commonly claimed as metropolitan in Valencia by many places of the Toledo and Burgos regions, for "ten years now, give or take a bit of time."

The priest Sancho was sure of it, for he had been at the siege of Valencia and had received his ministerial faculties there from the head chaplain of the prince of Portugal; this head chaplain served as a vicar in those parts for the archbishop of Toledo. Sancho had also heard clerics talk of going "to Valencia in the province of Toledo." The layman Peter Felix of Sahagún told of an incident in the bishop's house at Pamplona some sixteen years ago, when a gathering of ten or more good clerics had voiced belief in the metropolitan claims of Toledo. A certain Martin Peter opined that "many" people were on either side of the question; when pressed, he admitted that he knew only four or so.

Similar interviews were held in the realms of King James. The archpriest of Molina remembered hearing of Toledo as metropolitan, for instance, ever since he had attained the age of reason, twenty-one years ago. Suspicious of lawyers, he added: "but who they were, he does not remember, and if he could remember, he wouldn't tell." This compromising position was soon amended to an equally unhelpful: "if he could remember, he would tell." The priest Paschase had heard Toledo backed commonly by the majority of the people of Molina. The priest López had heard Toledo given often, both before and after the fall of Valencia. The priest Martin John had heard the same, as long ago as ten years before the conquest of Valencia. The priest of Casteller, Martin, had also heard it, "before the king of Aragon came to besiege Valencia and afterwards" at Teruel, Daroca, Albarracín, Cuenca, and elsewhere.⁽⁵⁸⁾

The knight Gonsalvo Ferdinand named five towns in which he had heard it. Dominic Abbot, a deacon and rector of a church near Calatayud in the diocese of Tarazona (who later appears in the crusade-tax lists), reported that the metropolitan jurisdiction of Toledo had been common talk here, "ever since Valencia was put to siege"; this was true especially in the conversation of the knights and squires of Peter Ferdinand of Azagra, the lord of Albarracín.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The layman López Sancho attested that it was said "that Valencia fell within the area of conquest of the king or Aragon, and that its church should be subordinate to the church of Toledo." An important Catalan baron was reported as having asserted (his name was withheld by the witness) "that when Valencia would be taken, it would be a suffragan of Toledo."⁽⁶⁰⁾

The deacon García had heard about the claims of Toledo more than twenty-five years ago from the bishop of Albarracín. This was also commonly [267] talked of by the people (perhaps sixty of them) in Albarracín. Roderick, archdeacon of Alpuente in the Segorbe diocese, testified in favor of the claims of Toledo for the past twenty-five or thirty years. One of his colleagues was willing to push the time back forty or fifty years; and he did not hesitate to testify that he had heard such comment also recently after the fall of Burriana at least a hundred times in homes, in clerical gatherings, and from veterans returning from the Valencian crusade. Canon Benedict had been with the army besieging Burriana; he remembered the question as disputed then, though only "some" held for Tarragona. Diego, the sacristan of Segorbe, also testified for Toledo. These clerics of course belonged to the party of Segorbe-Albarracín, and were not without their prejudices against the claims of King James.

A series of crusaders deposed that the bishop of Albarracín, representing Toledo, was exercising acts of jurisdiction in the army of siege before the Tarragona archbishop reached the scene. At Valencia after the surrender, the inquiry showed, few had seemed disposed to question openly the claims of Tarragona, who was in possession. Still, "some obeyed and some didn't, and it was said in the city by important barons that Valencia belonged to the archbishop of Toledo, and by others that it belonged to the archbishop of Tarragona."⁽⁶¹⁾ Naturally enough, the opinion of the majority in the army itself favored Tarragona, who held actual power under King James despite the busy show of defiance by Toledo's agent, the bishop of Albarracín.⁽⁶²⁾

Quondam crusaders in Teruel told much the same tale. Ferdinand Peter felt that Tarragona enjoyed actual possession; but he had "heard often, and from many people, that Valencia was the suffragan of the archbishop of Toledo; and they even complained, during the time they were serving in the war of Valencia, because the archbishop of Toledo was not present in the army."⁽⁶³⁾ Others swore that most men had presumed Tarragona owned Valencia, until the bishop of Albarracín had arrived to cause trouble.

The Second Phase of the Trial

When the sessions reopened at Tudela, early in January 1240, a library of the original documents in the most authentic copies available had been gathered; each manuscript book had been requisitioned under pain of excommunication. The covering letters by owners sometimes show trepidation, begging their prompt return, "since of all the church treasures, we hold ancient books the greatest."⁽⁶⁴⁾ Poring over this evidence painstakingly, the judges inspected titles and incipits, miniatures and coloring, the rubrics, dates, script, seals, marginalia, and externals, concluding each examination with a measured opinion as to the antiquity and authenticity of the volume in question.⁽⁶⁵⁾

The care and shrewdness of their report on these heads, it has been [268] remarked, might surprise a modern paleographer or sigillographer. In one manuscript Valencia was spelled both with "v" and "b"; the prior of St. Emilian and the sacristan of San Juan de la Peña, present in the capacity of experts, were consulted as to this Toledan peculiarity.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Where the seal has disappeared on another document, the judges note: "on the upper part there remains a bit of wax" with the bare impression of a cross. A Jew and an Arab -- there were four books in Arabic -- were also sworn ("by their own laws") as experts. The Tarragonan member of the judges' bench proved reluctant to offer an opinion, apparently caught between fear of perjury and fear for his later career in Aragon: "although he was present, he didn't want to say anything as to his impressions of the book, despite our insistence."

Faced with this embarrassing wealth of evidence, the Tarragona faction blandly requested that a full copy of every single book be made for their perusal. Again the agile judges side-stepped the obstacle. Tarragona could choose pertinent passages for official copying. The request for complete copies was not denied, but deferred indefinitely. The ingenuity of lawyers, however, is not to be foiled. A geographic scruple now affected the Tarragona camp. It seems there was another city, in Castile, called Valencia. Could the documents perhaps refer to this place? The judges countered this nonsense by requesting a sworn statement as to whether the Castilian "Valencia" was, or ever had been, a city.

"After some small delay" the bishop's procurator asserted "that he believed it to be a good-sized town, and at one time to have been a city." This brought the Toledans to their feet: "it had never been a city but a mere village," called "Coianca," which had been renamed in a modern settlement program. Coyanza, today called Valencia de Don Juan, is on the right bank of the Esla, southeast of Oviedo and southwest of Santander. Though at the time geographically within the diocese of León, it really belonged jure diocesano to the diocese of Oviedo. This diversionary movement had to be shelved while the attestations gathered by the two teams were presented -- along with some belated books, introduced over the protests of Tarragona that this phase of the trial had passed.⁽⁶⁷⁾

The question of a second Valencia was agitated in the next day's session. It came up again later, during the diligent⁽⁶⁸⁾ collation of the various manuscripts, whose authenticity had previously been examined. It continued to crop up as a serious issue. This absurd question was even gone into, to the extent of seeking out witnesses as to the change of name. One of these said he knew, as surely as he knew there was a God,⁽⁶⁹⁾ that the town had always been Coyanza until twenty years ago. A peppery old soldier, who had fought on the walls of Coyanza, asserted warmly that "he himself had not been present at the founding of the said town" but he had served there for five years before the king had changed the name to Valencia; he also knew from witnesses -- three of them, a hundred of them -- how the king had imposed [269] fines on those using the old name. A knight had heard of the name change from fifty or sixty good witnesses over León, Castile, and Navarre.

Many of the key Tarragona documents failed to impress the judges. Of several they conclude: "however, we judges have not seen this privilege nor do we know if it has been properly copied, because we have not seen a version stamped with seals; nor do we know or believe this version was properly drawn by the officials, nor do we know if it was taken from a legal document." Even the treaty of Cazorla was introduced, by which Valencia had been conceded to Aragon in the mutual division of future conquests; this affected the metropolitanate only indirectly as bearing on the question of neglecting to crusade.

"The work of collating manuscripts" managed to inch forward through these and other excursions, and the hour of judgment was nearing. Again the Tarragona lawyer threw in the question of the second Valencia, which by now he believed "had been a city and an episcopal see, and a bishop had been there, and he believed that from the beginning it had been called Valencia." This led to a protracted wrangle on a point of order, which dragged on until terminated by the lateness of the hour.

The next day two judges decreed that Toledo might introduce more witnesses without having to delay first on the question of the second Valencia. The Tarragona judge had abstained from this decision. The Tarragona party appealed from it to a future court. And Toledo promptly appealed from whatever decision the Tarragona judge might be contemplating, though the latter had said nothing on the point. When the court began to consider the Toledan evidence, the Tarragona judge stalked out of the court, despite the pleas of his two colleagues. He was followed by his bishop, the procurator, and the whole Tarragona party in procession. Irate, the other judges sent after the group to command their presence at the session. If this demand were not received, the messenger was to stand with witnesses "before the door of the inn" to deliver it, then he was to register the proceedings before a notary public.

The maneuver of the Tarragonans had been only a feint, a bit of stage thunder devised by the Bologna professionals. All were on hand for the next court, cheerfully waiving the previous difficulty and presenting (over Toledo's violent objections) a full day of new evidence for their side. This included a lengthy letter from the bishop of Barcelona and another from the bishop of Gerona, predictably recording in detail the practical exercise of jurisdiction by their metropolitan after the fall of Valencia.

The Tarragona party also questioned in outspoken terms the competence of the Visigothic king Wamba, a man they dismissed as "exceedingly presumptuous and tyrannical with regard to his churches." They insisted again that "there were formerly a number of Valencias," at least three of these having their own bishops. Anyway, the manuscripts produced had not been [270] authentic, they charged; they were willing to accept them, however, in order to turn them to the confusion of the Toledans. A restatement of the previously cited documents ensued though these had not gained relevance merely by the passing of days.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Sentence and Appeal

Even court trials have an end. The argumentation had been tedious and spun out far beyond the measure of its syncopated transcript, itself the size of a small book. Phrases crop up such as: "and when the presentation had gone on rather lengthily," or "and the same day the factions made lengthy allegation."⁽⁷¹⁾ Court was in session by December 2, 1239, and, after an interim, had reconvened on January 7 of the new year. This allows just over a month for the entire trial, including the process of gathering new testimony in the field, unless there is question here of a calendar confusion.

Finally the great day arrived. On Tuesday, the vigil of the Conversion of St. Paul, the judges gathered in the chapel of the Holy Spirit at St. Mary's to debate as to the sentence. Unanimity was impossible because of the Tarragona member of the bench. The considerations concluded, the court reconvened in the cloister (crowded with interested spectators), anxious to finish off the business as soon as possible. The date was January 24, 1240.

Before the apostolic rescript could be read, the procurator of Tarragona rose to effect a desperate last-minute maneuver. It was directed against John Pérez of Aranjuez, the canon of Toledo appointed by Rome to be one of the three judges. The procurator denounced him as in fact excommunicate, "on account of the many churches he holds." This had come to his attention only recently, the procurator alleged, and precluded the outlaw judge's further participation in the trial.

Should the excommunicated canon's judgment be taken, however, then "we appeal to the Holy See." Moreover, warned the procurator, Tarragona had proved its case; so, if Valencia were awarded to any but to them, they served notice now of their appeal to Rome. John Pérez was not disconcerted; he had anticipated the trickery. On the spot he presented to the court a privilege from Pope Gregory IX lauding his learning, noble birth, and good life, for which he had been rewarded with plural benefices -- a document "bullatum, non abolitum, non cancellatum, non viciatum in aliqua parte sui."⁽⁷²⁾

The Tarragonans protested that this privilege could not help him. The judges heard the document out and concluded that Canon John was not excommunicated, that in any case he did not hold "several" churches, and that the procurator had neither proved his point nor could be expected to add to it in the reasonable future. The whole incident was more complicated and protracted than this brief summary might indicate. In the transcript of [271] the trial one senses the tension of the Aragonese as they play these final cards of their game.

"The hour for delivering sentence was pressing." While the Tarragona judge sat glumly listening, with both metropolitans personally present, the decision of the court was proclaimed. The bishop of Oloron, the neutral member of the trio of judges, began the reading. Then the warrior archbishop of Toledo and his lawyer began to shout to their own judge, Master John: "read with him, read with him!" "Both of them reading together, they thus pronounced sentence." The decision included a summary account of the proceedings and arguments, with the fateful conclusion: "sentencing with the advice of good lawyers, we award the control of the Valencian church to the archbishop of Toledo." A copy, signed by only two judges, was dispatched to King James of Aragon on January 31, 1240. This was prefaced by anxious references to the king's love of justice, and urged that he quell any popular resentment in his realms -- "far be it!" -- over the decision.⁽⁷³⁾

There was an epilogue. The sentence having been read, the Tarragonan member of the board of judges produced a long document of his own which he begged to read to the court. Before he could begin, however, the Toledo procurator was on his feet, repudiating in advance whatever contribution the judge had in mind, and rejecting his views as void even as he simultaneously appealed from them, whatever they were. The archbishop of Toledo supported his man. The Tarragona procurator nevertheless proceeded to unburden himself of a "long recitation of fact and of law," awarding Valencia to Tarragona and imposing silence on the archbishop of Toledo. He concluded with an appeal of his own to the Holy See against the sentence of his fellow judges. The latter had stalked out when this hubbub began, ignoring the demands to stay which their colleague shouted after them. The cloisters were left in Tarragonan hands. A formal document was now drawn up here by the Tarragona dignitaries.

The following morning, Tuesday, this troop of worthies marched on the "house of St. Christina" where the bishop of Oloron had his quarters. Here the Tarragona procurator began to read out their protestation in the presence of Oloron. No one was in a peaceable mood, and the bishop of Oloron "had words" (as the record discreetly puts it) with a Tarragona champion, Bishop Vidal of Huesca. The upshot of it all was that the bishop of Oloron, finding the battle of stout lungs going against him and wishing to avoid the possible complications in law which might arise from having heard the document through, got up from where he sat and fled with his followers to his own room.

The whole crowd tumbled along after him. Stopped by the locked door of Oloron's chambers, the procurator of Tarragona shouted his message "at the door of the room." Not to be thus easily outwitted, "some of those who [272] were inside, within the room, made a noisy outcry in order to keep the voice of Raymond from being heard." While heads were ringing from this clamor, Procurator Raymond cleverly slipped the paper into the bishop's room through some crevice or opening in the door.

The Tarragonese returned to the attack next morning. But by now all parties had been alerted; and the bishop of Oloron had had time to gather a few shreds of his scattered dignity. All three judges were on hand. They listened stoically to the appeal by Tarragona. There was a brief tussle as the latter tried to force a copy into the hands of the bishop of Oloron. All then sat through a counterprotest read by the procurator of Toledo. The Tarragona procurator demanded a copy of this last document and, when refused, scoffed at its worth.⁽⁷⁴⁾

Perhaps on the principle that there cannot be too much of a good thing, the Tarragonans presented themselves again next day at Oloron's habitation, to assail his weary ear with a fresh appeal to Rome, based on newly researched quibbles. Later the judge from Tarragona devoted much care to composing his own special account of the whole trial.

The case went immediately to Rome where in February 1240 the cardinal priest Sinibald, of St. Lawrence in Lucina, began hearing both litigants at his palace near the church of St. Martin in the Hills.⁽⁷⁵⁾

At this juncture a cloud of unknowing envelopes the modern researcher, from which only a few facts emerge. We know that both sides claimed victory and court expenses; in Tarragona's claim these latter were 2,000 gold pieces, in Toledo's claim 1,000 silver marks (38,000 solidi). The latter sum is much less than half the total cost of some 87,500 solidi eventually expended by Tarragona; it is evident that the hearings in Rome were more elaborate and costly even than those at Tudela. The old arguments were windily reviewed at Rome, and some fresh dust was thrown up. Fifteen days were devoted merely to Tarragonan objections to the Toledan petition.

There was of course the question of the excommunicate judge; the sharp-eyed lawyers of Tarragona had, in the interim, discerned yet a second "excommunication" weighing upon the culprit. Tarragona also attempted to twist the sentence of the Tudela court into being a personal opinion of the judge who had delivered it, with both colleagues in disagreement; or else with a neutral member of the bench neglecting to state his own views; or finally with the neutral member refusing to let those views be known, even locking himself in his room in conspiracy with the judge from Toledo. The agents for Toledo pleaded the fact that two judges had actually agreed upon a sentence. The Tarragonans prescinded from the fact and sought to confine the court's attention to the faint ambiguity of the written acts on this point. Tarragona also tended to center its case on the quasi-possession of Valencia.⁽⁷⁶⁾

The outcome of Cardinal Sinibald's hearing was a decision rejecting [273] Tarragona's claims to have already voided the Tudela sentence by means of their previous appeal to Rome. He also declared null the independent sentence of the Tarragona judge. The main point of the trial, however, was cannily deferred. And the wording of the sentence suggests fresh legal battles to come. Subsequently, a document of mid-July 1241 arranged for a further stage of the appeal. Almost two years later, in 1243, a similar document was entered in the papal registers. After that there is only silence; apparently the scene shifted from the courtroom to the discreet chambers of the diplomats.

The Frontier Church in Native Hands

To stop at this point would be to abandon the historian's task. Historians have generally been aware that this sudden ending to the trial is both unsatisfactory and disconcerting. They have tried to soften its abruptness by postulating a decision favorable to Tarragona, preferably in October 1240. Escolano, Teixidor, Villanueva, and some others give the date as October 3, 1239; one may graciously allow a calendar confusion (nativity vs. incarnation) and substitute the year 1240.⁽⁷⁷⁾ The argument is based on a document certainly misunderstood, and now apparently nonexistent.⁽⁷⁸⁾ Chabás has suggested that the final sentence is missing in the transcript of the trial, "por ser contra Toledo."⁽⁷⁹⁾ This is improbable; nor does it explain why no trace exists anywhere else of the decision in so important a case.

Sanchís Sivera believed that he had discovered the date by a comparison of a series of letters in which the "bishop-elect" of Valencia turned into the "bishop." This is founded on a misconception as will be seen below; besides, it does not take into consideration the renewal of the trial at Rome in 1243. Gorosterratzu reasons that the Toledo archbishop finally dropped the case out of despair of ever seeing it solved.⁽⁸⁰⁾ But this trial was young, as medieval lawsuits go; and Archbishop Roderick was a tenacious man in the courtroom. That the case merely withered and died is, for those litigious days, the least satisfactory solution of all.

The Valencian archives have been searched in vain, during the preparation for this book, for further documentation on the problem. The Vatican manuscripts, after a year of work among the materials pertaining to Spain, likewise yielded nothing on this vital point. Assume, then, that the pieces of the puzzle lie before us. They need to be placed against their proper background before they can reveal anything. Both the Roman and peninsular political scenes during these precise years must be examined.

When the appeal reached Rome the reigning pope was stouthearted old Gregory IX, admirer and friend of the crusading king of Aragon. To him, James was one of the few rays of light on a military scene beleaguered by emperor, heretics, Tartars, and Islam.⁽⁸¹⁾ Much might be hoped from Gregory, [274] at the very least in the form of an exempt diocese as in the case of Majorca. In due time the appeal very nearly arrived before Pope Gregory in person. But there was one great enemy -- time. Gregory was nearly a hundred years old.

Things began well. The auditor chosen by Gregory to care for the Valencian case, as was seen above, was the brilliant cardinal Sinibald of Fieschi. Sinibald held the offices of papal vice-chancellor and governor of a critical principality, the Ancona March. As a contemporary poem puts it, he was "the pope's second hand." Only thirty-five years old, of a temperament courtly and firm, he enjoyed a growing legal reputation in academic Christendom. Sometime professor of law at Bologna University, he was to win a permanent place in the history of legal thought under the proud title pater iuris.⁽⁸²⁾

The metropolitan of Tarragona had appointed his procurator for the Roman appeal on February 22, 1240; this was the canon of Lérida, Master William of Soler.⁽⁸³⁾ The metropolitan of Toledo had appointed as his procurator the archdeacon of Calatrava, Master Bernard. It may have been during these hearings of 1240 that Archbishop Roderick of Toledo journeyed across the Spanish countries to take personal part in the fight at Rome. On the way, he had his primatial cross carried before him, somewhere in lands subject to the metropolitan of Tarragona. Tempers were running high, and the incident raised a storm of indignant feeling in Aragonese breasts. The episode may have pertinence for the Roman trial.

The incident of the cross occurred in April or May of 1240. Its locale was possibly Segorbe, which was then claimed by the diocese of Valencia and was equally an object of strife between the metropolitans of Tarragona and Toledo. It might have happened somewhere in Navarre, Pamplona being a suffragan of Tarragona. We are not even sure whether Roderick was going or coming at the time of the incident.⁽⁸⁴⁾ The provincial council of bishops under the metropolitan of Tarragona, assembled in the city of Valencia on May 8 of that year, actually put the primate under excommunication in the event that he should repeat such an act. They also placed under interdict all places where he should happen to stay, for the duration of his passage, while attempting such acts of jurisdiction.⁽⁸⁵⁾ In this episode the resented primatial rights are apparently to the fore, but the metropolitan claims to Valencia seem also to be present at least peripherally. This may be because the primate went out of his way to cross Valencian territory (if he did), or because he spoke too freely and indiscreetly on this subject during the passage (as well he might), or simply because of the psychological advantage gained by an authoritative primatial gesture at this critical moment. The papal rebuke seems to allow for this ambiguity.⁽⁸⁶⁾

The Roman document also went out of its way to stress the locale of the protesting council and its metropolitan frame-of-reference: "at Valencia, which he asserts belongs to his province." Gorosterratzu suggests that Rada [275] had secured his series of bulls of mid-1239, in support of his primatial claims, precisely for use in the Valencia trial over metropolitan jurisdiction. It is interesting and perhaps significant to note that not until 1245 would the metropolitan of Tarragona receive from Rome the privilege of having his cross carried before him within his own province. The primate of Toledo was to be excommunicated by the metropolitans of the realms of Aragon yet again in 1320, for having his cross carried before him here.⁽⁸⁷⁾

Before the year was out, Sinibald had reached the preliminary decision already mentioned. He could not form a more definitive opinion without in effect initiating a new trial; his own hearing seems to have centered upon a review of procedure. Pope Gregory IX had meanwhile been waging his interminable wars with Emperor Frederick II, a struggle which reached its crisis in 1240 and the following years. He now called the princes and bishops of Christendom to meet at Rome, in Easter week of 1241, for an ecumenical council. By this means he sought wider support against his opponent who was "more cruel than Herod and more impious than Nero."⁽⁸⁸⁾ The fleets of the emperor foiled this plan. In May 1241, Frederick could boast of having "over a hundred" prelates and ambassadors, from many countries, in his prisons.⁽⁸⁹⁾ The council was never held.

Under such circumstances, with papal finances and administration in confusion, it is not surprising that the Valencian case made little progress during the first six months of 1241. Sinibald himself had been called away from his residence into Rome in December 1240 just after the hearings had ended. In April 1241 the pope had to advert again to the Valencian situation; he delivered a stinging rebuke to the church of Tarragona for the childish conduct of its prelates during the cross-bearing incident.⁽⁹⁰⁾ In the month of July, when the emperor and his army had advanced as far as Rieti and were preparing to move directly on Rome, the pope did manage to reactivate the Valencian case.

"Since it had not been possible to decide the case on its merits" in the first review, the pope now assigned three judges to renew the trial.⁽⁹¹⁾ These were Master Pérez of Bayonne, a canon of Toledo; Peter Albert, a jurist and canon of Barcelona; and the Dominican Peter Guarner of Bordeaux. Both factions were instructed to summon witnesses before the judges. The points at issue were to be those chosen by Sinibald for more intensive investigation. Four months were allowed for the taking of evidence; and the materials were to be turned over to the pope for a personal decision.⁽⁹²⁾

The case could be expected to have reached a conclusion by the end of 1241. It might have dragged on for years, as had many another case, but the pope seems to have hurried it along. The legal issues were not complicated as they were, for example, in the Segorbe case. Tarragona had gained its desired procrastination. There were several diplomatic pieces on the chessboard now -- especially the possibility of help from Aragon against Frederick [276] II, and King James's almost successful project of joining Provence to Toulouse so as to contain the French advance southward. But the game ended abruptly. Gregory had been ailing for some time; on August 22, 1241 he died.

Rome was immediately plunged into turmoil. The Valencian trial must have ground to a halt a little more than a month after its inception, as savagery and self-interest combined to effect the notorious "conclave of terror." The emperor had just laid waste the Campagna, and had brought his armies within sight of Rome. Senator Matthew Orsini, who held almost tyrannical power in the city, tried to force a rapid election. He had the ten cardinals thrust rudely and forcibly into conclave before the emperor could bring influence to bear upon them. They were held prisoner in a half-ruined building, under appalling conditions. The leaky roof of their chamber was mockingly used as a latrine by the soldiery. The impact of brutality, ugly threats, and the August heat of Rome brought all the cardinals down sick. The English cardinal, Robert of Somercote, died miserably while the soldiers jeered; two others were to succumb later from the effects of their treatment. Sinibald himself was brought to death's door.

When a new pope was finally chosen on October 25, he lasted only seventeen days, dying on Sunday, November l0. The cardinals immediately fled the nightmare atmosphere of Rome. There would be no pope for over a year and a half. During this long interregnum Christendom had only thirteen cardinals; ten of them were in Italy -- four held at Rome, four in refuge at Anagni, and two prisoners of the emperor. The administrative machinery of the church was badly crippled by war and deprived of leadership. There would have been small prospect at this time for progress on the Valencia case. At mid-year, and again in 1243, the emperor attempted to capture Rome. His military failures coupled with an indignant public opinion made it wise for him to allow a free election.

The new pope (June 25) proved to be none other than Sinibald of Fieschi, count of Lavagna, the very cardinal who had been auditor for the first appeal in the Valencian case. One of his first acts as Innocent IV, even before he went down to Rome, was to order a fresh trial between the partisans of Tarragona and Toledo over Valencia (July 14, 1243). Four months were again allowed. Witnesses were to be "called and diligently examined."⁽⁹³⁾ The judges were the same -- in fact, the whole process was to be a repetition of the 1241 decree. But nothing seems to have come of the move. This was to be a year of trouble and woe.

The imperial program of Frederick II involved a slavery of church to state such as could not be tolerated even by a well-disposed pontiff. Alternatively, the canonists' pretensions to papal dominance in the unitary Christian society, which Innocent IV held in an even more flagrant form than had his predecessor, were equally impossible of acceptance by an emperor. Half-hearted [277] hearted gestures of diplomacy were attempted, but there was no middle ground. The cudgels were taken up again, and the fight was to go on to a finish. In mid-1244, Innocent had to flee in disguise from Italy. By early December be had set up his court in the fortresslike monastery of St. Just at Lyons, where he began to prepare the ecumenical council of 1245. All the resources of propaganda were marshaled by papal and imperial partisans; each of the antagonists called on the princes of Christendom to rally to his just cause. Despite the uproar Innocent IV managed to bring to a solution any number of less pressing problems. But he seems never again to have taken up the Valencian case. It is not impossible that the case had become a dead issue by this time.

A clue to the final solution of the quarrel may perhaps be found in peninsular affairs of late 1243. It was becoming obvious that nothing would be settled by the pope for a year or two, and that he was so encompassed by problems, both in and out of Christendom, as to be amenable to para-legal reliefs. Aragon and Castile had come very near to war at just this time. Castile had feared that King James would not stop his conquest at the agreed southern border of Valencia. Conversely, Castile coveted Játiva and Alcira, deep within the Valencian area she had assured to Aragon. The Moslem ruler of Murcia, adjacent to Valencia on the south, had given homage for his region to Castile in 1243, and most of it was now safely in Castilian possession. Alphonse the Learned (not yet king but prince) seized Enguera; King James seized Villena. On the brink of war, Castile requested a conference. It proved to be stormy but ultimately successful, resulting in the treaty of Almizra (March 26, 1244). This was a general settlement of outstanding differences, an amicable agreement on a Valencia-Murcia boundary, and an alliance. The atmosphere at the signing was one of friendship and concession on the part of Castile.

It seems probable that during these conferences a secret understanding was reached concerning the diocese of Valencia. As part of the quid pro quo interchange, Castile may have agreed to withdraw her support of Bishop Roderick's suit at the papal court, and even to intimate to the pope -- himself a resourceful diplomat -- her satisfaction with the situation at Valencia as it stood. This could hardly have been openly stated because theoretically neither country had a say in such a strictly ecclesiastical affair. Any documentation, however slight, of collusion would have embarrassed both kings; Bishop Roderick would then have been able to reopen his case from a strong moral as well as legal position. Yet this diplomatic procedure would have been the sensible solution, at this time, to what had become in fact a political problem. Nothing more could be gained by either king in the courtroom. Exemption was the likeliest outlook, as had happened to the Aragonese conquest at Majorca in 1232, and as would happen soon in Murcia to the Castilian conquest in 1250. An exempt diocese would be a diminished victory for [278] James -- and there was always the chance that he might lose anyway. The civil authorities of Castile by now could hardly have hoped for a victory; exemption would be a loss for them in any case, and King James's claims were politically reasonable.

The problem was not like that of Segorbe, where the prize was less important, where there still remained much to be said by the lawyers on the Castilian side, and where at that precise moment, as a consequence of definite papal decisions, both the legal and the psychological advantages lay on the side of Castile. The renewed activity of the Segorbe bishop just after the treaty of Almizra, however, suggests that events there had been waiting on a solution of the Valencia dispute, and that such a solution had at last been reached. Significantly, the bishop of Valencia himself was present at the conferences of Almizra, though he was not an active politician like his successor Bishop Andrew, nor notably a crusader.⁽⁹⁴⁾ His presence might be explained to the curious on the grounds that the southern borders of his diocese would be affected by the treaty. His signature at the treaty-making is not proof positive of the signatory's presence, but it is very persuasive evidence; as a methodological principle, therefore, the two are normally equated. A final query: would Innocent IV have permitted himself to intrude thus into local politics or lend himself to such solutions? The pope who mixed himself into the politics of France, England, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and Bohemia, who deposed and confirmed kings and interfered in the English civil strife, would not have hesitated.

Archbishop Roderick could not be expected to retreat, despite the diplomatic situation. But his chances of success would have been diminished almost to the vanishing point. After the ecumenical council he again journeyed to visit Innocent IV, who was still at Lyons. We do not know the reasons for this trip, though a combination of the primacy question and the Valencian injustice seems a reasonable conjecture. He died there, however, perhaps by shipwreck in the Rhone River (June 1247).⁽⁹⁵⁾ With this strong and prestigious fighter removed from the scene, any hope of reopening such a case died.

During all the incident and maneuver, what was the status of the bishop of Valencia? Berengar of Castelibisbal seems quietly to have been shunted aside. We do not know whether the metropolitan had consecrated him. It does not seem probable, since no evidence of his action as bishop appears anywhere, even in the records of the trial at Tudela. As late as April 1239 Rome urged that the king endow Valencia for its "future" bishop. Chabás contends that Castellbisbal was previously proposed but not elected. Escolano has him performing some functions as episcopal nominee, but Escolano's authority is dubious. (And the bishop-elect of July 7, 1239 proposed by Olmos y Canalda, Chabás, Teixidor, Raynaldus and others actually belongs to the diocese of Valence in France).

[279] Ferrer of Pallarés appears suddenly as bishop-elect in documents of May and June 1240. He is traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Valencia; the cathedral constitutions assign June 22 as the date of his consecration. The modern historian Fita has him consecrated on April 5, 1240 and has him offer formal obedience to the Tarragona metropolitan on October 21.⁽⁹⁶⁾ As for actual evidence, much of the argumentation turns upon the precise time at which Ferrer ceased to designate himself "elect" and began to employ the term "bishop." Analysis here can occasionally be confounded by the difference between nativity and incarnational chronology, which renders suspect the dates between late December and the subsequent late March.

Sanchís Sivera believes Ferrer to have been consecrated on October 21, 1240 because on that date he signed one document "elect"⁽⁹⁷⁾ and another document "bishop."⁽⁹⁸⁾ But Ferrer had confusingly done the same thing earlier,⁽⁹⁹⁾ so the signature as such proves nothing. What is more to the point, and vitiates this line of reasoning, is the circumstance that neither "elect" nor "bishop" was a stable term. Thus, the Toledo metropolitan Roderick Simon of Rada, when previously bishop of Osma, had designated himself usually "elect" but sometimes "bishop."⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ It was the custom in medieval León and Castile for the bishop-elect to allow himself the title bishop.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ On the other hand, even when an actively ruling bishop regularly signed himself as such, "it meant only that he governed his see with full authority, but not that he had been consecrated";⁽¹⁰²⁾ at Osma, for example, Roderick had been only in deacon's orders.

Nor had any conclusion been reached at Rome as to the Valencian case then, to clear the way for an early consecration. There seems to be some question as to whether Ferrer ever was confirmed by Rome. Affairs there had fallen into chaos, and remained thus during the year and a half of papal interregnum which parallels much of Bishop Ferrer's reign; Ferrer was dead, and his successor elected, before Innocent IV could be chosen. Any concession from Rome concerning the Valencia episcopate, which would fit current theories on Ferrer's consecration, would have had to come during or at the end of Sinibald's inconclusive first hearing. Even the final endowing of the diocese in 1241 by King James offers no clue; it was apparently prepared during the conclave of terror at Rome, and published only a week after the election of the fifteen-day interim pope, Celestine IV. The Tarragona metropolitan called Ferrer bishop in 1242, and in May 1243 the provincial council did the same. The term is as ambiguous here as in the earlier documents. Innocent IV referred back to him in 1245 as the bishop, and the cathedral necrology placed him as the first bishop.⁽¹⁰³⁾ In the absence of any definitive evidence, all one can say is that Ferrer was elected in 1239 or early in 1240, and probably consecrated by the metropolitan -- either immediately, or after a few months' delay to see in which direction the appeal [280] at Rome was drifting, or just after the tumultuous interregnum had begun at Rome.

Since there was no pope to judge or confirm the situation, Ferrer's moral and legal status in the latter case would have been somewhat superior to that of his predecessor Castellbisbal. The confirmation of his successor would also have to be postponed, while Innocent IV reopened the old trial. But then chaos would take over again; finally, the settlement of Almizra (1244) cleared the way for definitive abandonment of the appeal on the part of the Toledo church, and a consequent quiet confirmation for Bishop Arnold. If these conclusions are not altogether satisfactory, they seem at least to represent the furthest penetration of the problem which is possible on the present evidence.

The legal virtuosos who fought for Tarragona doubtless prospered in their subsequent shifty careers. Raymond of Barberá turns up in 1244 as "chamberlain of Tarragona," delegated by the metropolitan to arbitrate a tithe dispute between the bishop of Tortosa and the monastery of San Cugat. William Vidal, who held the dignity of Official for the see of Tarragona and who served as judge at the Tudela trial, was to be one of the nine candidates -- luminaries such as abbots and archdeacons -- proposed in 1248 for election to the see of Valencia. William Soler, the Lérida canon who handled the first appeal at Rome for Tarragona, emerges in a 1252 document as part of the legal machinery in an action involving the king; in a 1257 document he and a Dominican have just concluded a successful flushing of heretics from the Lérida diocese.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

It comes as no surprise to learn that King James of Aragon eventually carried the day. The breach in the walls of his national church had been stoutly defended, and the entire legal campaign had been conducted and finished, before the Valencian southiands were conquered or the reorganization of the conquered areas had been carried to maturity.

The scene of these conflicts in law lay far from the land of Valencia. But they had all formed a definite part of the reorganization of that realm. They had been meticulously prepared, before and during the crusade, with as much care as was devoted to the construction of catapults or the provisioning of troops. No expense had been spared, no legal pebble left unturned. In caution and sure-footedness, in bold planning, and in fierce tenacity of purpose, the project bears the characteristics found in all the conquest and reorganization of Valencia by James of Aragon, the Conqueror.

King James was no mere warrior on horseback, surrounded by stout arms and empty heads. He was the central and dominant figure of a smoothly functioning organization, staffed by clever bureaucrats and lawyers. Perhaps our concept of the crusades is a shade too romantic. These were hardheaded, well trained, clear-visioned men who knew just what must be done [281] to achieve their purposes. The banners and the flashing steel and the brave show on battlefields were not unimportant. But the patiently moving pens of scribe and notary -- recording the plans, forestalling the opportunities, clarifying, dissembling, pettifogging, pleading, commanding, denouncing, reckoning, and rewarding -- were mightier than the swords.

1. Arch. Cath. Toledo has two contemporary manuscripts of the trial about to be considered; both are in clear, easy script. The original roll is Becerro II de la catedral de Toledo; the bound version is included in the Liber privilegiorum ecclesie toletane. Over a decade ago the Toledo archivist Juan Francisco Rivera announced his project of publishing an edition of the latter, including the trial. See his remarks in "El 'Liber privilegiorum' de la catedral de Toledo y los documentos reales en el contenidos," HS, I (1948), 165. Bibl. Nac. Madrid MSS have a fragmentary copy of Tarragona cathedral's lost version, no. 13,028, D-47, fols. 2-21, with the 1248 Valencia statute on fol. 33. Arch. Nac. Madrid has a copy of the Toledo roll, as sig. Mod. 1,241, fols. 126-180, Becerro II. Arch. Vat. has its own, slightly different original; it is often fragmentary, is badly preserved, and was difficult to use. It is filed under Archivum arcis (Archivio di Castel San Angelo), armaria inferiora, arm. I-XVIII, 2,222, Processus causae vertentis inter archiepiscopos toletanum et terraconensem super subiectione ecclesiae valentinae.

F. Martorell has published parts of the Vatican record as "Fragmentos inéditos de la 'Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae'" in the Cuadernos de trabajos of the Escuela española de arqueología e historia en Roma, I (1912), 81-127. R. Chabás gives large samplings of the Madrid library copy in his Episcopologio valentino (pp. 375-397, with an index). J. Sanchís Sivera has copied the Madrid archives version into his Diócesis valentina (II, 191-412). The director of the diocesan museum at Valencia, Vicente Castell Maiques, has begun collating texts for a critical edition of the whole record; his recent paper at the congress of studies on the realms of Aragon, giving full information on available texts and bibliography, is being published by the Consejo Superior in the proceedings of the congress. For practical purposes citations in this book refer to the defective Sanchís Sivera copy, under its title Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, since its quality of availability for the reader outweighs its disadvantages of hasty transcription.

2. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 339-340.

3. Ramón d'Abadal y de Vinyals lucidly traces the evolution in his Els primers comtes catalans, Biografies catalanes, serie histórica, no. 1 (Barcelona, 1958); see part 1, chs. 6-8, and part 2, chs. 5-6.

4. J. F. Rivera, "Personajes hispanos asistentes en 1215 al iv concilio de Letrán: revisión y aportación nueva de documentos, datos biográficos," HS, IV (1951), 336: "pro terraconensi autem archiepiscopo, quod erat absens, respondit uicensis, suffraganeus eius, pro se et omnibus suffraganeis suis, quorum multi erant presentes, quod to[leta]nus archiepiscopus non erat eorum primas nec tenebantur ei in aliquo obedire." The bishop of Compostela insisted at the council "quod erat falsissimum" that Toledo was "primas Hyspaniarum." The incident, and the speeches connected with it, have long been the subject of heated debate, but the substance can hardly be challenged today; see Stephen Kuttner and Antonio García y García, "A New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council," Traditio, XX (1964), 124, 136-138. The council brought together 71 higher prelates, 412 bishops, 900 abbots and priors, legates of the Byzantine and Holy Roman emperors, and 5 kings (including England and Aragon).

5. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, ch. 10 and passim, e.g. pp. 177, 326-327. Some background documentation on the Toledan primacy to 1216 is in the Monumenta Hispaniae vaticana (see index sub "primacía"). The documentation on Roderick's primatial rights, requested from Rome in 1239, is in Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 19 (Gregory IX), fols. 144 ff., partially published by Auvray in Registres, III, nos. 5,025 ff.

6. Johannes Vincke has explored this subject in a number of articles and monographs such as his "Kloster und Grenzpolitik in Katalonien-Aragon," and the introductory essay of his Documenta selecta (esp. pp. xviii-xix). He finds by about 1300 "nun fast alle Landesklöster und Ordenshäuser durch eigene Provinzen oder Kongregationen zusammengefast" ("Kloster und Grenzpolitik in Katalonien-Aragon während des Mittelalters," Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, III, 1931, p. 163; cf. pp. 161, 164). The origins of nationalism in the Middle Ages is a thorny question; an able survey is Boyd Shafer's Nationalism, Myth and Reality (New York, 1955), ch. 5.

7. "El rey de Castilla no estaba dispuesto, a tolerar que la sede de la cabeza de Castilla dependiese eclesiásticamente de la metrópoli de Tarragona, a la que en otro tiempo perteneció." Urban II ended the dispute by putting it as an exempt diocese directly under himself. See Demetrio Mansilla Reoyo, "Episcopologio de Burgos, siglo xiii," HS, IV (1951), 314.

8. Crònica, ch. 23.

9. James demanded that all friars, "qui de nostro dominio non existunt," be replaced by those "de nostro oriundis dominio" (Documenta selecta, doc. 77 [Sept. 14. 1297]; the pope finally granted this in 1304; cf. "Kioster und Grenzpolitik," p. 162). The "monachi de dominio regni Castelle" at Piedra he accused of treasonable sympathies, and ordered every one back to Castile (Documenta, doc. 85 [Dec. 16, 1299]). The Roda incident is in doc. 39 (Nov. 17, 1284).

10. The king proposed that "ea que, de et sub episcopatu Cartaginensi qui est sub dominio regis Castelle, sunt infra terram regis Aragonum" be detached and put under an Aragonese metropolitan as part of a new diocese of Játiva (Documenta, doc. 318 [Nov. 22, 1317]). In the mid-fourteenth century the crown of Aragon would not allow John Gratian to be archbishop in Sardinia because "nullatenus pateremur prelatum...nisi Aragonensem aut Cathalanum origine" in a key post (doc. 543). Here too no more than four non-Aragonese friars were allowed in Franciscan or Dominican houses, nor any superior "nisi sit Aragonensis originaliter vel eciam Cathalanus."

11. The only other explanation, one which does not take into account the context of the Valencian and similar contemporary quarrels, is the ingenious theory of Miguel Ferrer Flórez, who sees it as a reassertion of primitive Gregorian Reform ideals before the watching powers of Europe (" Mallorca y la teocracía pontificia," AST, XXIII, 1950, 16-30). Innocent IV in 1250 was to do the same for Cartagena, just south of Valencia, because of the bitter fight between Toledo and Tarragona over it. See the similar quarrel of the two over Burgos, and its exemption, above, in note 7. On the word "ordinare," see the Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine, histoire des mots, comp. A. Ernout and A. Meillet, 2nd ed. revised (Paris, 1939), p. 712; and F. Arnaldi and M. Turriana, "Latinitatis italicae medii aevi...ad annum MXXII lexicon imperfectum," Bulletin Du Cange, XX (1950), 194 ff.

12. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 22, fol. 214 (July l0, 1245); and in Berger, Registres, I, no. 1,378; see the allied prohibition of October 6, 1248 in Registres, II, no. 4,185.

13. See note 39 and text.

14. On the ecclesiastical divisions of Spain at this time see the careful descriptions of Mansilla Reoyo, Iglesia castellano-leonesa, pp. 98 ff., esp. pp. 103-104. The ecclesiastical structure as elaborated in the taxation lists of the contemporary Rationes decimarum are also instructive.

15. These activities and documents are in Chapter III, section 1, "The Metropolitan Founds His Diocese"; see esp. notes I, 11-14 with text. Quote is from the trial record Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 409: "sarracenus ecclesias conferre non potuit."

16. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,302 (Oct. 18, 1238).

17. See Chapter III, note 8 and text.

18. Chapter II, note 59 and text.

19. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, with documentary appendix in pp. 411-469; on the correspondence between the names Jiménez and Simon here see pp. 20, 471; on his work as a historian see ch. 18; on his role at Las Navas see ch. 12; on the two principles see p. 57. A brief, less scholarly biography is Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois, Don Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (Barcelona, 1936); pp. 159-160 touch upon the trial. See also Gams, Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, II, part 2 (see index sub "Rodrigo").

20. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 324-325. Two bulls of July 19 speak of damage done to Roderick's church during his absence from Spain. A series of authenticated bulls dated May and June of 1239 were given to agents of Roderick, he himself having left Rome; these concerned his primatial claims and could well have been acquired for use in the Valencia case (p. 326).

21. The document is in Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 19 (Gregory IX), included in Gregory's letter, fol. 146, June 27, 1239, and published by Aúvray, Registres, III, no. 5,041. Cf. the Ordinatio, p. 195 "illarum civitatum diocesis, que sarracenis invadentibus, metropolitanos proprios amiserunt."

22. Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 196: "de utriusque partis procuratorum assensu."

23. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 19 (Gregory IX), fols. 102v-103r; published in Registres, III, no. 4,815. There are late copies in Bibl. Nac. Madrid and in Arch. Cath. The concluding portion of the document, only partially published by Auvray, reads: "efficaciter moneatis ut pia meditatione considerans quod in celestes thesauros congeritur quidquid ad laudem et gloriam divini nominis deputatur, futuro episcopo et cathedrali ac aliis ecclesiis Civitatis predicte dotes ita congruentes assignet ut sicut olim sic et in posterum munificam in prosperis divine sentiat dexteram maiestatis."

24. Arroniz seems to be Aranjuez, to the northeast of Toledo. On John Pérez see note 72. On Vidal see text, p. 280. Oloron, at that time subject to the viscount of Béarn, is west of Lourdes and southwest of Pau; in 1858 it incorporated with the bourg of Ste. Marie, below on the plain and across the river, into modern Oloron-Ste-Marie. John was bishop here from 1231 to 1246.

25. Ordinatio, p. 198 and see p. 398. The monastery of St. Mary of Fitero was just to the southwest of Fitero between Pamplona and Tudela, in the diocese of Tarazona. It had one of the largest and most important of the Cistercian churches in Spain; Roderick Simon of Rada may have begun it when bishop of Osma.

26. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 328-329, 277. This background is given fully in José Goñi Gaztambide, "Los obispos de Pamplona del siglo xiii," Príncipe de Viana, XVIII (1957), 41-237.

27. Ordinatio, pp. 329-330. Roderick arrived at the end of November. On December 30, 1239 he was at the fortified town of Brihuega, a holding of the see of Toledo. But this absence was during a lacuna in the trial, when evidence was being gathered; nor was Brihuega very far from Tudela; so Roderick may well have returned to the scene later, at least from time to time. He was certainly present and active again at the final stage (see below, note 73 and text).

28. See note 104 and text.

29. Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 275.

30. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 25, Alexander IV, fol. 19v (Feb. 12, 1257); noted but left unpublished by Bourel de la Roncière in the Registres, II, no. 1,749: "ecclesia valentina magnis sit debitis obligata."

31. Aureum opus, doc. 56, fol. 17v (July 7, 1258). As it affected the realms of King James, some background to this legal movement may be found in Tourtoulon, Jaime I, II, chs. 6, 7, and (for Valencia itself) 8; see also Miret y Sans, "Escolars catalans al estudi de Bolonia en la xiiia centuria," pp. 155, passim. See above, Chapter VI, note 6 and text.

32. Doc. quoted in Chapter VII, note 31.

33. Dubois, The Recovery of the Holy Land, tr.-ed. W. I. Brandt, Columbia University, Records of Civilization series (New York, 1956), pp. 141-142, with supporting quotations from his Summaria.

34. There was some transfer of ownership in the reshuffling, so that for example a reduced number would include new acquisitions. See Mansilla Reoya, Iglesia castellano-leonesa, p. 110; on Oreto, p. 71. Background on the Visigothic dioceses may be found in the rather summary work of Luis Duart, Obispados godos de Levante, aportación a la historia eclesiástica del reino de Valencia (Madrid, 1961); and in a more general way in Zacarías García Villada, Historia eclesiástical de España, 3 vols. as 5 (Madrid, 1929-1936), III, ch. 9, and map on p. 215.

35. Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 410: "fabulosam." The trial was to bring out that the bishops of old Valencia had regularly appeared in many Toledo councils but not at those of Tarragona.

36. See the Vatican copy in Martorell, "Fragmentos inéditos," p. 92.

37. Luis Vázquez de Parga has a critical study of the Wamba document, La división de Wamba, contribución al estudio de la historia y geografiá eclesiásticas de la edad media española (Madrid, 1943); its use in this trial is discussed on p. 46. It was also used in confirming the boundaries of the Zaragoza diocese in Aragon (1158).

38. Ordinatio, pp. 213-214: "impertinens," "alicubi sic, alicubi non sic."

39. Ibid.: "regnum Valentie est pars illius provincie que dicitur Aragonia sive Arago."

40. Ibid., p. 232: "fuisse ingresum possessionem meçquitarum Valentie auctoritate illustris Regis Aragonum, qui civitatem et regnum occupavit." The Abbot William above was suggested by King St. Ferdinand III in 1239 as papal negotiator with the empire; he will be used in this capacity in 1243, and created a cardinal in 1244.

41. Mansilla Reoyo, Iglesia castellano-leonesa, p. 93n.; the author considers this the strongest part of Tarragona's case for Valencia.

42. Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 233: "rex Aragonum potuit conferre et contulit ecclesias in diocesi Valentie constructas Archiepiscopo Terraconensi ratione [privilegii] domini Pape regibus Aragonum concesse."

43. Ibid., p. 405. Cf. p. 410: "nec me movent libri nec monumenta ex parte domini Toletani producta cum non publica sit sed privata."

44. Ibid., p. 407: "presumptio iuris pro possessore faciat." Other forms of the original argument come up: "favorabiles sint [leges] rei quam actores" in civil and canon law; and the possessor is preferred "cum promptiora sint jura ad solvendum quam ad condempnandum" (p. 411).

45. Ibid.

46. This applied only when reconquest was obviously possible by the negligent bishop; his neglect must previously have been called to his attention by a convention of neighboring bishops, so as to give him a chance to do better (ibid., p. 408).

47. See note 19. In fact, his biographer feels constrained to defend this fierce aspect of his character (Ordinatio, pp. 391-392).

48. Ordinatio, p. 409: "multa mala contulit sarracenis"; "pro viribus."

49. Ibid., p. 235: "expoliavit...vel spoliari mandavit...vel ratam habuit spoliationem."

50. Ibid., p.409 (Anastasius, Urban); cf. Chapter IV, note 124 and text.

51. Martorell, "Fragmentos inéditos," p. 88. The phrase only appears in this one version, a passio incorrectly attributed to Prudentius and based upon the acta of St. Vincent's martyrdom.

52. Itinerari, pp. 353-354.

53. Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, pp. 249-250: "precaventes ne effranatam multitudinem testium recipiatis contra canonicas sanctiones"; "occupavit meçquitam maiorem de mandato regis...mandavit fieri tria altaria...recepit claves meçquite...apposuit custodes...consecravit eadem [altaria]"; similar questions are provided concerning the other claims.

54. Rationes decimarum, II, 103, 120. It is possible, though not likely, that he is the "Stephenus de Ariberti clericus" who witnessed the 1279 Zaragoza accounts (p. 91). He should not be confused with the Tarragona citizen, Stephen Giles Tarín, who signed an important political document in 1260 and received a broad tax-exemption for life from the king in 1265, but who died in 1276 (Itinerari, pp. 307, 364, 531).

55. Ordinatio, p. 252: "ne dum de hoc diceptaretur, contingeret processum negotii retardari"; "in quantum de iure debet esse salvum."

56. Ibid., p. 336, e.g.: "in fine aliud folium conglutinatum cum tabula."

57. Ibid., pp. 336-339. The Toledan or Visigothic script preceded the French script which, though it was in Catalonia in the ninth century, was carried into Spain especially by the Cluniac monks at the end of the eleventh century.

58. Ibid., p. 340: "non erat tantae scientiae"; p. 345: "post captionem civitatis Valentie audivit quod erat controversia...super ea, et alias nesciebat quod esset fama sed aliqui dicebant...Toletane et aliqui quod Tarraconensi, sed plures dicebant de Toletana"; p. 346: "decem anni, vel parum plus, vel parum minus"; p. 347: "que est in provincia toletana"; p. 348: "de quatro arriba"; p. 349: "sed qui erant non recordatur, et si recordaretur non diceret"; "si recordaretur, diceret"; "antequam rex Aragonum veniret ad obsidendum Valentiam et post."

59. Ibid., p. 350: "ex quo fuit Valencia opsessa." "Dominicus dictus abbas" is in the Rationes decimarum in 1279 for this diocese (II, 78). Peter Ferdinand's own bishop, who also claimed Segorbe diocese in the kingdom of Valencia, was Toledo's agent within the crusading army of King James (see Chapter III, section 1, "The Metropolitan Founds His Diocese").

60. Ordinatio, p. 350: "quod Valentia erat in conquista regis Aragonum, et quod ecclesia debebat obedire ecclesie Toletane"; "quod cum Valentia caperetur, quod esset suffraganea Toletana." This was said "a quodam magno viro de Maioribus terre."

61. Ibid., p. 358: "quidam obediebant et quidam non, et dicebatur per civitatem a magnatibus quod spectabat Valentia ad archiepiscopum Toletanum et ab aliis quod spectabat ad Terrachonensem." The word "magnates" probably bears its technical meaning here: men of high feudal station, the barons and great knights on the crusade.

62. For example, the witness who recalls: "et plus regebat se exercitus pro eo quam [sic] pro episcopo [Albarracensi]" (ibid., p. 260: cf. p. 356).

63. Ibid., p. 365: "audivit multotiens et a multis quod Valentinus erat suffraganeus Archiepiscopo Toletano, et etiam murmurabantur dum erant in exercitu Valentie quia Toletanus non veniebat ad exercitum."

64. Ibid., pp. 287-288.

65. E.g.: "de Romana [littera]...nec videbatur littera multum antiqua"; "debebat multum apreciari"; "antiquum et bonum"; "satis antiquus."

66. Ibid., p. 276: "presentes erant non iurati."

67. Ibid., p. 280: "in superiore parte remansit aliquantulum de cera"; p. 284: "per leges suas adiurati"; p. 275: "quamvis presens esset, noluit aliquid dicere quid sibi videbatur de libro, licet super hoc a nobis requisitus"; p. 285: "post aliquantulam moram"; "quod credebat ipsam bonam villam, et aliquando fuisse civitatem"; "nunquam fuerat civitas sed villula."

68. E.g.: "repperitur 'Iohannes' et reperiuntur due 'ss'...sed in tribus aliis...non sunt ibi due 'ss'" (ibid., p. 291); "ibi locus vacuus sine rasura, et capax tante scripture vel maioris" (p. 293).

69. Ibid., p. 375: "ita bene sicut credit Deum esse."

70. Ibid., p. 372: "ipse non fuit in fundatione predicte ville"; pp. 297-298: "nos autem iudices non vidimus istud privilegium [originale] nec scimus utrum sit transcriptum, quia non vidimus bullatum nec sigillatum, nec scimus nec credimus quod publica manu sit roboratum, nec scimus utrum ab aliquo instrumento sit extractum"; p. 314: "operam collatiendi librorum"; p. 315: "fuisse civitatem et sedem episcopalem et ibi fuisse episcopum et credit quod ab initio fuit vocata Valentia"; p. 317: "ad ostium domus ospicii eorum"; p. 321: "rex Bambe fuit multum presumptuosus et abutens potentia...sua circa ecclesias"; "olim plures fuerunt Valentie."

71. Ibid., p. 324: "et cum fuisset diutius disputatum," or "eadem die esset diu allegatum a partibus" (ibid., p. 324).

72. Ibid., p. 329: "propter plurimas ecclesias quas habet"; "ad Sedem Apostolicam appellamus"; p. 329-330 (Gregory). There is record of a dispensation in 1234 by Gregory IX, by which he could hold an extra benefice; other dispensations may have come later. (See Mansilla Reoyo, Iglesia castellano-leonosa, p. 246 and doc. in n. 288.) On John Pérez of Arroniz see above, note 24.

73. Ordinatio, p. 330: "instaret ora ferendi sententiam"; p. 388: "legite cum eo, legite cum eo"; "ambobus legentibus sic pronunciaverunt sententiam"; p. 333: "de bonorum iurisperitorum consilio sententiando, adiudicamus ordinationem ecclesie valentine archiepiscopo Toletano"; p. 388: "quod absit." See also the transcript by Fita in "Don Pedro de Albalat," pp. 342-345. On the metropolitans being present see pp. 388, 392; and cf. note 27.

74. Ibid., p. 335: "longam recitationem facti et iuris"; p. 393: "inter se verba habuerunt" (cf. pp. 391-392); p. 395: "ad ostium camere"; "quidam qui intus erant, in camera, clamabant ne vox Raymundi...audiretur"; "per quoddam foramen ostii"; "dixit quod valeret appellatio et valere poterat [sic]."

75. Both S. Martino ai Monti and S. Lorenzo in Lucina are in Rome. On May 14, 1240 Cardinal Sinibald noted the appeal by Tarragona (see Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, p. 330 and docs. of March and December on pp. 464-465).

76. lbid., pp. 388, 384, 386, 399.

77. Diócesis valentina, II, 430 and n.; Martinez de la Vega cited a bull of February 15, 1240 (ibid.).

78. One of the surviving documents may have been misinterpreted; if there was a document now lost, it too was misread, as the events about to be narrated show.

79. Episcopologio valentino, p. 397.

80. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, p. 331.

81. H. K. Mann, The Lives of the Popes in the Middle Ages, 18 vols. (London, 1906-1932), XIII, covers Gregory's pontificate well except in connection with Aragon. The political history of the papal state and the changing policies of the popes are examined in detail by Daniel Waley, The Papal State in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1961).

82. Mann, Lives of Popes, vol. XIV, is a detailed but overly sympathetic biography of Sinibald; Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, 1194-1250, tr. E. O. Lorimer (New York, 1957), supplies useful detail but from an overly hostile viewpoint. By the pious he is presented as a hero, by the German nationalist as a villain. On his legal side see Mann, pp. 14-17nn. The Ancona March, a critical post which he governed from 1235 to 1240, will be held by the bishop of Valencia from 1291.

83. Document dated from Calatayud A.D. 1239 but actually incarnational (1240), inserted into the Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 389. Was he a relative of the canon Bernard of Soler at Valencia cathedral, who was also papal subdeacon, notary to the king, and apparently judge-ordinary in Cerdagne from 1263?

84. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 327-338; on p. 326 the date 1241 is incorrect. A bull of April 24, 1239 had confirmed his primatial rights, and he left Rome for Spain shortly afterward; he may therefore have crossed the Tarragona province just after the provincial council of 1239. On August 25 he would be invited to return to Rome for the ecumenical council of 1241.

85. Collectio maxima conciliorum, V. 189. Episcopologio valentino, pp. 370-371n. Cf. Diócesis valentina, II, 418-419n.; Morera, Tarragona cristiana, II, 277-278.

86. See note 90; it speaks of Toledan rights "que sibi competere poterant ex indulgentia sedis apostolice speciali" (what is the exact force of "poterant" here ?), and notes that a complaint could have been entered at Rome. The quote below is: "apud Valentiam quam ad suam assent provinciam pertinere."

87. Viage literario, XIX, 330-331. For Gorosterratzu on the bulls see above, note 20. For the papal rebuke see note 90.

88. Mann, Lives of the Popes, XIII, 305, quoting a pamphlet of that year; this seems to have been a stock epithet for Frederick (see Kantorowicz, Frederick, pp. 593, 546). See also Waley, Papal State in the Thirteenth Century, pp. 146 ff.

89. Kantorowicz, Frederick, p. 549.

90. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 20 (Gregory IX), fol. 68v (April i6, 1241). The document is published by Auvray in the Registres, III, no. 5,978, also in the Episcopologia valentino, pp. 371-372n., and in Diócesis valentina, II, 419 ff.

91. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 20 (Gregory IX), fol. 87v (July 14, 1241): "cum non potuisset liquere de meritis causae." Auvray notes the document (Registres, III, no. 6,086), and Gorosterratzu publishes it (Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 466-467, doc. 164).

92. Ibid.: "coram ipso papa compareant." Peter Guarner is of "Burdegala." On Peter Albert see Itinerari, pp. 125, 179, 279, 319 (an. 1236-1262).

93. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 21 (Innocent IV), fol. 3v: "testes recipiant ac diligenter examinent." The document is noted by Berger (Registres, I, no. 17), and published by Gorosterratzu (Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, p. 466, doc. 165) and in the Bullarium ordinis praedicatorum, I, 119-120.

94. Itinerari, p. 167. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 343 ff., 348. For the treaty see Colección diplomática, doc. 269; it was also signed by Archdeacon Martin of the Valencia

cathedral.

95. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 392-393.

96. Olmos y Canalda discusses the date (Prelados valentinos, p. 59). See also Diócesis valentina, II, 415; Escolano, Décadas de Valencia, I, 285; Fita, "Don Pedro de Albalat," p. 34. The metropolitan council held at Valencia on May 8, 1240 has Ferrer's signature as bishop-elect. For Castellbisbal's life see above, Chapter II, note 37 and text; for Ferrer see ibid., notes 38-50 and text. The April 1239 papal document is in Chapter VIII, note 4.

97. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,308 (Oct. 21, 1240): "nos Ferrarius dei gratia sedis Valentie electus."

98. Diócesis valentina, II, 429; Viage literario, XIX, 127.

99. As early as June 23, 1240, appearing as elect but signing as bishop (Arch. Cath., perg. 2,309). In perg. 2,330 he has "nos F. dei gracia Episcopus Valencie," yet the date is March 4, 1240 (cf. Diócesis valentina, II, 430); and later (Aug. 27, 1240), in an agreement with the Mercedanians, he has again become "electus valentinus."

100. Gorosterratzu, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, pp. 47, 55.

101. Ibid., p. 163.

102. Ibid., p. 53.

103. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,310 (June 14, 1242) when the metropolitan was reviewing the organization of the Valencian church. Diócesis valentina, II, 440 for the council and necrology.

104. Cartulario de "Sant Cugat" del Vallés, ed. J. Rius Serra, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1946-1947), III, 501-502, doc. 1,385 (Feb 22, 1244): "camerarius Terrachone." On William of Soler see Itinerari, docs. On pp. 222, 261.