[73] Only when the incumbent had received from the bishop the cura animarum or care of souls -- the complex of rites and obligations which constituted the legal essence of the parish -- did he become "henceforward a legitimate pastor." His duties would then include: "to officiate at divine services, baptize his parishioners and absolve or refuse them in the internal forum, hold nuptial festivities also, legitimately conduct funerals, and confer all the sacraments of the church which are duly conferred by other priests in the diocese of Valencia."⁽¹⁾ Or, more simply, he is "to celebrate Mass,...with the other religious ministries and the ringing of bells by day and night."⁽²⁾

The Ministry

The pastor must offer the bishop the obedience required by canon law, "attend the episcopal synod and chapters at the accustomed times," carry out the bishop's decrees, and observe his excommunications.⁽³⁾ He is to instruct his people,⁽⁴⁾ provide for the poor,⁽⁵⁾ and bury the dead.⁽⁶⁾ "With care and diligence" he should seek out public sinners, warn them three or four times, and then forbid them the sacraments.⁽⁷⁾ He is the confessor, who hears and judges and forgives the people's sins (confession was becoming more frequent and popular, though communion was much rarer). Through his hands, during the Mass, the Son of God is to enter the confines of the grubbiest of Valencian hamlets.

It was to the pastor that the infant was brought for baptism. It was to him the young people came to be married. Finally, it was by him that the dying were anointed and their obsequies later conducted. For these occasions be kept a careful register. Often enough he seems to have acted as civil notary.⁽⁸⁾ As a social function alone, or as an office of registry, or in its deeper relations to the common faith, the local pastorate was a significant contribution to the frontier. The pastor was a ubiquitous presence, giving a measure of form and unity to the inchoate settlements in remote places. Even the least personable, or the most sinful, of the rural clerics would be all of these things. Men of piety or of presence could easily be more in their respective little worlds.

Each parish had a cemetery, as had some religious Orders and hospitals; this often adjoined the main building. The floors of the churches themselves [74] were ever more widely excavated as time passed, to hold the corpses of men of distinction, members of pious brotherhoods, or substantial families of the locality. In time the open cemeteries by the churches in the capital city would invite passers-by to take short cuts, to dump rubbish, or to set up a convenient market or playing field, as the bishop had to complain by the early fourteenth century.⁽⁹⁾

"The one major church of each place of the realm of Valencia" shared with the cathedral that peculiarly Old Testament institution, the right of asylum.⁽¹⁰⁾ By special decree of the king it was extended as well to the shrine of St. Vincent. Asylum applied to all but a few specified crimes like murder in or near a church. It moderated the medieval urge to a precipitate action or to mob violence; thus it affords a good example of social institutions or customs, involved in the ecclesiastical structure, which helped stabilize the frontier.

Many contemporaries looked upon benefices or pastorates not as spiritual responsibilities but as properties and sources of income. The incumbent might wander off to live upon his revenues as an absentee, casting the care of the parish upon a salaried vicar. A lesser species of vicar, really a resident curate or assistant, would be appointed for the outlying dependencies of the parish. The "vicars of the churches of the city and suburbs of Valencia" early appear beside the rectors.⁽¹¹⁾ In King James's lifetime there was a long struggle to change the city parish of St. Thomas into a perpetual vicariate, a project which achieved tardy success before the century was out. Each Christmas this vicar was to pay the titular absentee rector 200 solidi, and at St. John's day in June 200 more, as well as ten pounds of candles on the patronal feast of St. Thomas.⁽¹²⁾ The church of St. Mary at Játiva, and indeed all the churches of the city and countryside there, present and future, were served by salaried vicars presented to the post by the Játiva archdeacon; the latter pocketed the first fruits and all the revenues (1248).⁽¹³⁾ A parish was similarly attached to other cathedral dignities; in 1260 the dean was given Segorbe and Altura with the obligation of placing vicars; in 1277 a number of other churches were substituted on the same plan.⁽¹⁴⁾

The prosperous parish of Alcira was held by Raymond of Montañans, counsellor to the king, canon of Lérida, archdeacon of Tarragona, and eventually chancellor to the queen of Aragon.⁽¹⁵⁾ Cullera had as rector in 1279-1280 one William Thomas, surely too important a man to have resided personally in that village.⁽¹⁶⁾ The pastor of Holy Savior in the city was granted, as a personal benefice for life, the outlying nonparochial church of St. Julian; this would require a vicar or assistant (1250).⁽¹⁷⁾ At the end of the century, when the king was repeatedly requesting the parish of the town of San Mateo for his secretary's brother, Berengar March, as soon as the present incumbent died, he cited as his reason a principle which reveals much as to the pastors of those days: "because it well befits the bounty of the king to reward his servants and friends according to their merits."⁽¹⁸⁾

[75] A pastor in those days could sell his parish, or rent it out for a time, without a qualm of conscience. But, in 1274, the bishop of Tortosa inveighed against the abuse of selling one's church to a layman who then could appropriate all the fees and income, installing for the ministry any cleric of his choice. The bishop decreed that one must sell only to a priest, and that the priest must seek episcopal approval before taking up the care of souls.⁽¹⁹⁾

A remarkable document of 1273, hitherto unnoticed, illuminates the approved practice in the diocese of Valencia.⁽²⁰⁾ It involves the church of St. Stephen in Valencia city. The pastor was Hugh or Huguet of Lavania, son of the powerful Albert of Lavania. Albert was one of the handful of men closest to King James, so much so that a modern expert seriously discussed him as the possible redactor of the king's autobiography. A Provençal patriot, Albert had been one of the two principal leaders of the Marseilles revolt in 1263 against Charles of Anjou; fleeing into exile, he had soon become one of the most important men in King James's realms.

Master Albert, who signed himself "doctor of laws" and "professor of laws," functioned as judge in the king's traveling curia during the last decade of James's life. He was involved in most of the king's important cases during this period, received a castle and town in 1268 for his services, and was specially recommended by James on his deathbed to his successor King Peter.⁽²¹⁾ Master Albert's own procurator negotiated the parish contract. The judge, his procurator, and a Micer Simon pledged their goods as surety for the agreement. Micer Simon of Monbru, a Valencian from Genoa, was a man of substance; when his brother Pascualino of Monbru, owner of Alcira estates, outfitted a ship and leased it to the king for an abortive crusade to the Holy Land, Simon gave surety to the crown.⁽²²⁾

The contract was thoroughly businesslike. The procurator "sells to you William of Trencard and to yours" the revenues of the parish of St. Stephen's. This included all property and possessions of the parish insofar as they yielded income. The revenues, profits, fees, taxes, "and all else which will accrue through the devotion of the faithful" went to William. The vicar was bound to meet all expenses; but "Albert of Lavania and his aforesaid son," the pastor, agreed to provide the episcopal visitation fee as well as the crusade tithe and similar extraordinary "aids." Vicar William would own such revenues as might exceed the sale price. The contract was to run three years, during which time William was "bound to serve the said church" and to "do and fulfill in all things what the rector is obliged to do."

The price paid was 2,700 solidi, at 900 per annum. The installments came in two equal payments (450 solidi), at the beginning of each year and on All Saints' day; but the first year's down payment was to be 600 solidi with 300 on All Saints' day. St. Stephen's was one of the wealthiest parishes of Valencia. Six years after this contract it returned a crusade tithe of 152 solidi (1279), and in 1280 one of 173 solidi.

[76] William was about to make a tidy profit.⁽²³⁾ The new vicar entered the document to record his "purchase of the said revenues during the said years for the said price in the aforesaid form," promising honest payment of the price.⁽²⁴⁾ The capitular precentor, acting "in place of the lord bishop of Valencia," signed the contract along with James, Simon, and William.

The problem of appointing vicars also arose in parishes held by military and religious Orders. The Orders often held parishes and their revenues, agreeing in turn to present proper candidates to the bishop and to provide a decent share of the income as pastoral salary. Some of these appointees retained the perquisites and even the dignity of pastor, depending upon whether they resulted from patronal presentation or from rectoral choice of a vicar. A sample case is the Hospitallers' candidate John who received the church of Cullera in the Valencia diocese in 1256, "with all its appurtenances and rights existing or to come."⁽²⁵⁾ And in 1263 the Temple lost a long struggle to retain the first fruits of their Valencian parishes in the Tortosa diocese.⁽²⁶⁾

Other clerics were abroad in the diocese, some perhaps as settlers. King James at the Monzón parliament had promised that not only bishops but all "clerics" helping in the conquest would receive "rewards."⁽²⁷⁾ Just as clerics of his curia subsequently received Valencian canonries, so other clerics probably won parishes. Crusading clerics appear in the records from time to time. James the Chaplain came with "the men of Perpignan and Roussillon" and shared their grant; a subdeacon was among the contingent from Navarre that was rewarded.⁽²⁸⁾ Clerics would have come also as members of the baronial households -- men like "William of Caceria priest and familiar" with one of the king's counselors in Valencia.⁽²⁹⁾ Chantry priests and their vicars abound in Valencian documents for religious houses, parishes, and shrines.

Distribution of Parishes in Valencia Diocese

To fashion an ecclesiastical map of the kingdom of Valencia during its formative period, one must sort and evaluate a variety of fragmentary clues. At first sight the task seems too difficult, even hopeless. The diocesan archives of Valencia were destroyed in 1936-1937 in the civil war; the Valencia cathedral archives are specialized in nature; the collections belonging to civil and religious entities furnish only scattered bits of information; and the materials on parish organization for the Segorbe and Tortosa dioceses are disappointing. King Peter in 1280 ordered a list of all the "ancient" parishes, probably to check their charters; but it has not survived.⁽³⁰⁾ A later list by Peter is dismally lacking in detail. Only a few parishes appear there by name: the rectors of Murviedro and of St. Martin's and St. Andrew's in Valencia city. All the other rectors and vicars of the realm are given only as a group, with a number of dignitaries.⁽³¹⁾

[77] The taxation lists for Christendom's crusade effort furnish the most satisfactory general picture, contemporary though not really complete. A fourteenth-century list at the cathedral counts some one hundred and twenty parishes for the diocese of Valencia.⁽³²⁾ The organization of cathedral revenues in 1247 names the rural parishes of Puig and Foyos specifically, with perhaps the implication that the other forty-and-more names are also parishes. It is possible, as Beuter asserts, that a mass Christian immigration took place just after the Moslem rebellion in 1248; if so, this would have caused some reorganization of the parish system as seen in the document of 1247. In any case, it would be interesting to know whether an artificial system had been preimposed, or whether the diocese followed a shifting and unplanned pattern of growth. The parish network must have been fairly established by 1268, when the king issued that document which allowed limited financing of future parishes up to the number of twenty-five.

It would be wrong to assume a parish wherever an organized Christian community is found, as Sanchís Sivera would have us do.⁽³³⁾ But common sense does suggest at least a church to service such a group or cluster of groups.⁽³⁴⁾ Conversely, no real "church" seems to have been planted unless at least a small Christian settlement was found in a given locality. Thus, there was no church at Eslida during the thirteenth century, but only "a kind of chapel inside the castle...because no one lives there except Saracens, nor are any Christians there except the castellan [alcaydus] and some keepers of wine shops."⁽³⁵⁾ Room should be left for exceptions: for example, to establish juridical precedent in areas disputed with other dioceses; to continue a promising center of conversions from Islam; to please a powerful lord; or simply in expectation of immediate colonization as the symmetrical grants and infeudations continued. Thus, there was a rector before 1280 at Chulilla, a town dominated by Moslems to such an extent that divine services shortly ceased to be celebrated. The bishop could only redeem the demoralized town by expelling all Moslems and infusing enough settlers to increase the few Christians, bringing their number to a hundred.⁽³⁶⁾ Again, rights to "churches" might warmly be debated for regions where no actual church building, and few or no Christians, existed; thus there was dispute over future possession of churchless Segorbe.

The preliminary limits of the diocese of Valencia, drawn by King James in a formal statute, were soon incorporated into the municipal law. It was to run north up to the boundary dividing the territory of Almenara castle from that of Murviedro (Sagunto). To the south it reached "down to Biar or beyond," as far as the king would conquer.⁽³⁷⁾ The southern limits of that conquest had been set in advance by the kings of Castile and Aragon in the treaty of Almizra (1244).⁽³⁸⁾ This treaty affected the diocesan limits eventually, especially when Alphonse X of Castile set the northern limits of his new diocese of Cartagena here (December 11,1266). In a formal statute of 1240, [78] the bishop of Valencia spoke of the southern limits of his diocese as being temporarily at Puerto de Biar and Alcalá below Lorcha, and then from these two points southeast to the sea, including the town of Alicante. This was a greedy estimate, going beyond what the diocese would ever possess; but the statute stubbornly adds that even more may be expected, as far as the king will conquer.⁽³⁹⁾ At that time there was talk of collecting the tithes up to a northern boundary closed only by the territory of Burriana.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The Valencia diocese therefore fluctuated in its outline, especially along its bottom and where it disputed with the Segorbe diocese at its top. After 1250 a certain stability prevailed in the south as the first bishop of a diocese of Cartagena held Alicante and its country over to Villena in the northwest, with a salient up the Ayora Valley to Cofrentes.⁽⁴¹⁾

The troublesome southern border of the Valencia diocese may be substantially delineated by a line from Calpe (later Villajoyosa) on the coast, inland to Jijona and up to Biar, then north-northeast to Játiva, again sharply west through Enguera (for a while Ayora), and finally north to Cofrentes at the juncture of the Cabriel and Júcar rivers. Along its western side the diocesan line excluded Utiel and Requena, thus setting off a poor enclave which would belong to the diocese of Cuenca. Above that and along the northern frontier, almost to the sea, was the area disputed with Segorbe diocese. In brief, the external line of the diocese did not differ greatly from that which modern times inherited.⁽⁴²⁾ It covered the modern province of Valencia, but surged across the northern border somewhat into Castellón and south into the province of Alicante. It was an extensive diocese. Later, when King James II was ambitious for a second metropolitanate, to be achieved by a division of ecclesiastical territory into new dioceses (1317), he could suggest to the pope both Tortosa, as being large, and Valencia, as "exceptionally large and extended."⁽⁴³⁾ He proposed the formation of a separate diocese of Játiva, running from Alcira down, while Valencia itself was to be modified to run roughly from Alcira northward to Castellón, at the expense of Tortosa diocese.

In 1248, four years after the conquest of Játiva, the diocese was divided into two archdeaconries, one continuing at Valencia and the other centering upon Játiva.⁽⁴⁴⁾ An archdeacon being a powerful personage of great authority in the diocese in those days, this step effectively created a semi-autonomous entity on the southernmost frontier of Valencia, under a special personnel. It concentrated here a large measure of attention. It also supposed a preexisting organization in the area which had already advanced beyond the stage of a mere mission. Thirty years later a more thorough adjustment to the needs of the prospering new kingdom resulted in the creation of two more archdeaconries, at Murviedro (Sagunto) above the capital, and at Alcira just below.⁽⁴⁵⁾

The tax lists by the papal collectors of 1279 and 1280 for the crusade may [79] be made to reveal the framework of the diocese at just this time.⁽⁴⁶⁾ It shows the organization substantially as it had evolved during the years after the conquest up to the death of King James in 1276. This tax was the "first truly universal and fully organized" crusade tax upon clerical income; it was gathered from 1274 to 1280 by order of the general council of Lyons.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Christendom was divided for the purpose into twenty-six collectories, each controlled by a collector-general and his subcollectors. One of these divisions comprised the Aragonese realms and Navarre. Each taxee had to submit, under severe penalties, a notarized and exact declaration of all his ecclesiastical income.⁽⁴⁸⁾

The resultant lists are by no means complete;⁽⁴⁹⁾ they represent perhaps two-thirds of the entities constituting the diocese.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Religious Orders, for example, might have been left out by special privilege rather than by reason of juridically exempt status. An income below the minimum taxable amount dispensed many clerics, a circumstance one would expect to find rather more often in the rural areas of frontier Valencia than in more settled dioceses. This was more true of Valencia where by papal permission the parish share of the tithes went to the bishop. Some places in the kingdom of Valencia are therefore omitted. Others are explained. "Because its revenues, after expenses, were not worth seven pounds of Tours, it gave nothing" (Oropesa, La Jana, Villores). "It paid nothing because the place was destroyed by the Moslems" in the recent uprising (Bechí), or because "it has nothing" (Buñol), or because "it has nothing but [must] receive support from the rector of the church of Morella (Cinctorres).⁽⁵¹⁾ Where only Moslems lived, the crusade tithe would have been exiguous or nonexistent.⁽⁵²⁾

When all allowances have been made, the picture of a given diocese which emerges from these lists is substantial enough to be of the highest value in reconstructing the parochial network. The Valencian lists (see Appendix III) are the result of four separate previous catalogues. They were drawn up in the last two years of this first series of taxes, at a time when the listings were more rigorous and complete than before.

The archdeaconries of Valencia and Játiva are separately grouped, the latter as "the church beyond the Júcar River," a phrase recalling the parallel system of civil government then existing in the realm. Under the Valencian archdeacon are over thirty churches important enough to be taxed, excluding those of the capital city. Each church has its own town or village in the diocese and is probably the main parish of its respective region. Only twelve appear in the first list as having rectors, the others being down as under chaplains or merely as churches; but the list for the subsequent year supplies fifty such rectors. Insofar as one can rely upon the sums collected in each as being indicative of the importance of that church, there were prosperous churches at Murviedro (Sagunto), Alcira, Foyos, and Carpesa. Somewhat less wealthy were the churches of Masamagrell, Albalat, Villamarchante, [80] Carlet, Toro, Albal, Algemesí, and Sollana. Lowest in this scale come the churches of Chulilla, Aras, Espioca, Benaguacil, Arcos, Paterna, Museros, Ruzafa, Moncada, and the rest. Beyond the Júcar River there are well over thirty localities, each boasting a central parochial church with its rector. The sums collected were understandably smaller. In relative ability to pay, Cocentaina, Corbera, Canals, Onteniente, and Gandía were important.

No one has been bold enough to attempt a parochial map of postconquest Valencia. Later maps are not much help due to successive reorganizations of the inner structure and to adjustments as Moslems became Christians. From present information, however, a fairly satisfactory map can be devised. Patient analysis and comparison of the two main lists will reveal at least a basic skeleton of the organization. For practical purposes the churches in each list may be considered as parishes -- if not in the juridical meaning, at least in the sense of being the important ecclesiastical center for each locality.

The list of 1279-1280 for the crusade tithe, however incomplete, furnishes perhaps seventy financially well-established churches outside Valencia city. The fourteenth-century listing of some one hundred and fifteen pastors or vicars, attending the diocesan synods from the thirteenth century on, serves in three ways. It is far more complete. It represents a sampling of the parishes under a different formality. Especially, as close examination reveals, it groups the parishes by regions; for example, Albalat in both lists is necessarily Albalat de la Ribera; and such forms as "unxen," "racuna," and "saxona," must be Onteniente, Rótova, and Jijona. There is something yet more striking. If the lists are broken down alphabetically and contrasted in detail, the two overlap exactly, allowing for the greater extension of the later list. An incomplete list of synodal attendance and an incomplete list of financial returns thus concur to indicate that a representative sampling of the Valencian parishes of 1279-1280 is actually to be had in the crusading tithe lists.

There may have been other churches, identical or not with the remainder in the synodal lists; but the thirteenth-century list is not unbalanced or skimpy. This impression is fortified if one projects a map and studies the pattern of the extra parishes which appear only in the synodal list; they reveal no special change of direction in diocesan evolution or any very remarkable elaboration of the parish network between 1279 and 1350. If to all this is added the information which may be gleaned from local histories,⁽⁵³⁾ archeological traces, and occasional asides in other documents, the general picture remains unchanged.

A consideration of population figures tends to confirm this. If King James's formal estimate of thirty thousand settlers at Valencia in 1276 is accepted, and if these are assumed to be households, the population could have been no more than one hundred and twenty thousand, a figure confirmed [81] by the monage tax rolls in the next century.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The parishes at the capital absorbed perhaps twenty thousand of these.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Of the remainder, roughly a third, or perhaps forty thousand in all, would be at this early date in the northern part of the realm, this included Burriana (the second most populous city) and over fifty parishes The remaining sixty thousand settlers, or fifteen thousand families, would fall into the diocese of Valencia The figure represents an average of one hundred and fifty families to a parish or parochial region Statistically considered, this is not unreasonable, considering the urban centers involved; communes like Alcira, Játiva, Murviedro, Denia, Liria, and the like would have absorbed the larger numbers. Parishes within Valencia city at this time averaged two hundred and fifty families, as we shall see, so that the lesser population of a parish of scattered hamlets is adequately offset.

A startling confirmation of these theories comes from the small library of books filled with land grants, listed by King James in 1270.⁽⁵⁶⁾ These compilations, one for each major sector of settlement, have long since disappeared; but their titles allow the pattern of settlement to be traced. There were other collections, such as those for Valencia city and its environs and for Burriana and the northern part of the realm. The present list is mostly for the south, from Cullera-Alcira down; only four are above this line. Almost all of the twenty-three regions listed here occur also on the list of parishes for 1279-1280. The two exceptions, Liria and Cullera, are on the synodal list; in any case, parishes adjacent to them, like Villamarchante and Alcalá are on the tax list. Five apparent exceptions require comment: Almiserá which is equivalently the Finestrat-Villajoyosa area of the tax list;⁽⁵⁷⁾ and Segorbe, Onda, Peñíscola, and Almenara, which were not within the Valencia diocese.

The areas covered by these books may be rearranged under these headings: Albaida, Alcira, Alcoy, (Almenara), Almiserá, Bocairente, Calpe, Castalla, Cocentaina, Corbera, Cullera, Denia, Guadalest, Játiva, Jijona, Liria, Luchente, Murviedro, (Onda), Onteniente, (Peñíscola), Rugat, and (Segorbe). Thus, the parochial network, even in its incomplete listing for the tax of 1279-1280, is coextensive with the settlement pattern. If this is true for the south, it probably holds as a picture of parish distribution for the north as well.

Besides the land grants everywhere to individuals and groups, formal settlement charters were issued to a number of places on the list of 1279-1280: for example, Algimia de Almonacid, Bocairente, Carlet, Carpesa, Chulilla, Masamagrell, Moncada, Museros, Planes, Puzol, Sollana, and Torrente.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Others coincide with those on the second list: for example, Almedíjar, Andilla, Biar, Cuart, Chelva, Finestrat, Pego, Silla, Tárbena, and Villahermosa. There were forty Catalans in the Jalón Valley, and other small groupings at relatively obscure places like Albaida, Alcoy, Carbonera, [82] Cocentaina, Enova, Guadalest Valley, Luchente, Parcent, Perpunchent, Rugat, and Senija.⁽⁵⁹⁾

It will be no easy task to relate this information about land grants and settlement charters to parochial organization. Some settlements were never properly begun; others failed or soon disappeared; others must be reckoned as included under the parochial jurisdiction of one of the castles or villages in the ecclesiastical lists. And numbers of places under religious Orders would have been absent from the tithe list and perhaps not openly counted in the synodal catalogue. Finally, since the lists are admittedly incomplete, perhaps they may best be filled precisely by adding places of probably high population which are otherwise unaccounted for. The final answer on the problem of the Valencian parish is inseparable from the problem of settlement patterns, though it may not be related to settlement alone. Perhaps it had as well a wider dimension of its own, including an artificial symmetry designed to give a wide general coverage of the diocesan map.

The lists of 1279-1280 may be reorganized alphabetically as follows, after having been identified and transposed into more modern spelling,⁽⁶⁰⁾ or into an equivalent location: Albaida, Albal, Albalat de la Ribera, Alboraya, Alcira, Alcoy, Alfafar,⁽⁶¹⁾ Algemesí, Almonacid, Alpuente, Aras de Alpuente, Arcos de las Salinas,⁽⁶²⁾ Benaguacil, Bocairente, Calpe, Canals (near Játiva), Carbonera, Cárcer, Carlet, Carpesa, Carrícola, Castalla, Chella (?), Chirivella, Chiva, Chulilla, Cocentaina, Corbera de Alcira, Denia, Enova, (Benifayó de) Espioca,⁽⁶³⁾ Foyos, Fuente Encarroz, Gandía, Gorga, Guadesequies, Jalón, Játiva, Jérica, Jijona, Luchente, Madrona, Masamagrell, the churches of the Mijares River,⁽⁶⁴⁾ Moncada, Murviedro (Sagunto), Museros, Navarrés, Ollería, Onteniente, Palma de Gandía, Parcent,⁽⁶⁵⁾ Paterna, Picasent, Pina, Planes, Puzol, Relleu, Rótova (with Palma), Rugat, Senija,⁽⁶⁶⁾ Sollana, Ternils, Toro, Torrente, Torres-Torres, Turís, Valle de Alfandech de Marignén,⁽⁶⁷⁾ Valle de Guadalest, Valle de Seta, Valle de Perpunchent, Villalonga, Villanueva de Castellón, and Villamarchante.

Almost all of these names are on the synodal list though they do not exhaust it. Identified and reassembled, these extra parishes within the synodal list are: Almedíjar, Andilla, Bañeres with Serrella,⁽⁶⁸⁾ Bélgida (with Carbonera), Benisuera, Biar, Buñol,⁽⁶⁹⁾ Canales (near Andilla), Castillo de Villamalefa, Chella with Bolbaite, Chelva, Confrides with Abdet,⁽⁷⁰⁾ Cortes de Arenoso, Cuart de Poblet, Cullera, Domeño, Enguera, Jávea, Liria, Orcheta, Pego (but before 1280),⁽⁷¹⁾ Penáguila, Polop, Prado (near Villamalefa), Puig, Segarra (?), Silla, Tárbena, Valle de Alcalá with Valle de Gallinera, Valle de Ayora with Jarafuel, Valle de Pop with Valle de Laguart and with Murla, Valle de Travadell, Villahermosa del Río, Villajoyosa with Finestrat, and Villamalur. Of these, several are known to antedate the fourteenth century, and might just as well have been added to the tax list of 1280: Canales, Cullera, Carbonera, Bélgida, and Liria.⁽⁷²⁾ Other places are known from odd [84]documents -- for example, Enova, whose priest is discovered in a document of 1296, or Penáguila, which was a church at least before 1280.⁽⁷³⁾

These places in general cluster along the coast, and inland along the rivers Palancia, Guadalaviar, Júcar, and Serpis. The number of parishes, and apparently their settlement, diminishes as one goes inland, the hinterland being relatively bare. An apparent exception to this is the scattered network west of Segorbe and the impressive concentration throughout the southeastern part of the diocese.

Other evidence suggests that these represent scattered rural populations, with poor communications and heavier Moslem environment; a special effort seems to have been made here, through multiple units, to effect a liturgical presence.

The broad pattern seen in the general lists can be clarified by drawing upon the fragmentary, supplementary information in scattered documents.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Alacuás near Valencia, settled by crusaders from Teruel, was a real parish perhaps only from 1300; in 1354 it was to become a perpetual vicariate under St. Nicholas' in the city of Valencia with Dominic Gil as its first vicar. Alasquer near Alcira had Christian settlers but until 1343 no church; it was subject to the Alcira vicar. Alboraya (see lists) formed part of Almácera parish; the two were separated in the fourteenth century. The important commune of Alcira (see lists) had St. Mary's church at first, and before 1248 St. Catherine's church which was the adapted main mosque of the city; a document of 1268 speaks of the latter as being in a plaza on the main street of town.⁽⁷⁵⁾ From 1277 (perpetual from 1327) the archdeacon of Alcira had a vicar at Alcira.

Alcoy (see lists), a fairly settled town by 1256, had a small church of St. Mary built next to the castle. Alcudia de Carlet (see lists) probably had its church of St. Andrew from 1251; Peter Montagut, the lord there, received a statue of the Virgin for it in 1276 from Pope Innocent V. From the time of the conquest, there was a small hermitage and a resident priest at Aras (see lists);⁽⁷⁶⁾ but the parish itself came only in 1299. At Benejama, to the west of Alcoy, a chapel and baptismal font was granted only in 1341, to be erected in the castle; Christians previously held the castle (Giles Martin of Oblites had it about 1276) and probably kept up a private chapel of sorts. Benimaclet was under the parish of St. Stephen in Valencia city. Burjasot seems to have had a nonparochial church of St. Michael. The Callosa (see lists) settlers had no parish, their church belonging to the Polop parish (see lists); only in 1338 was a baptismal font conceded here.

At Castillo de Villamalefa the settlers had as a parish the chapel of St. Lucy in the castle. Chiva (see lists) had a chapel or sanctuary in the strongest tower of its castle, but its parish church was St. Michael's. The commune of Denia had its church in the castle, apparently from the beginning and even as late as 1335; its cemetery was near the sea until 1334 when a new one was [85] allowed near the church. Finestrat and Relleu, separate institutions according to the fourteenth-century synodal list, had only a single priest offering separate Masses on Sundays as late as 1336. The Finestrat church was in the castle, as was that of Guadalest Valley (see lists). The important town of Gandía had the parish of St. Mary and a chapel of St. Nicholas; the latter moved in 1343 to be a sub-parish at the port, Grao de Gandía.

Játiva (see lists), ecclesiastical center in the south, had its major church of St. Mary in the purified main mosque (probably from 1244), the Mercedarian church of St. Michael (before 1251), and the original castle chapel or church of St. Felix; there were also several houses of religious Orders, probably with chapels. The Játiva castle chaplaincy was a post endowed by James I; the crusade tithe of 1280 speaks of the chapel of St. Margaret, perhaps referring to this. The Repartimiento lists churches of St. Peter, St. Thecla, and St. Michael.

Jávea (see lists) has no early documentation, though its church was to be visited in 1343. Liria (see lists) was an important settlement, given in full dominion to Prince Ferdinand in 1238; perpetual vicars served the church until the Porta Coeli monastery assumed it in 1273, at which time the Gothic edifice was already in use. The church of Luchente (see lists) became a center of pilgrimage, because the miraculous linens connected with a battle of the Valencian crusade (1240) were honored here; a chapel was built on this spot in 1335, but a previous or separate church also had existed. Llombay developed early, but before 1329 it was part of the church of the Valle de Alcalá (see lists). Meliana near Valencia was one of the settlements given to crusaders from Barcelona (1238); it was not to achieve independent status until 1309 when it received permission from the crown to build a church. Murla near Pego emerged as a long-established parish in 1317, when a new church was under construction; its title seems to have been St. Michael's.

Navarrés (see lists) must have been a castle-church parish; centuries later, in 1534, it was to appear again as a new Morisco parish, its church an inadequately small ex-mosque. Onteniente (see lists) had a church dedicated to the Virgin; there would be a second church under the invocation of St. Michael in the fourteenth century. Palma de Gandía (see lists) also had its St. Michael's. Pardines developed so rapidly that its church had to be separated from that of Albalat de la Ribera (see lists) and made into a parish by 1316; the church here may have been named St. Peter's. Penáguila had its own priest at least before 1280.

Petrés was another castle-parish from the beginning; until 1603 it was to have no other church except the Moriscos' ex-mosque. Rebollet (see lists) had its castle extensively improved after its conquest in 1239, and a church of St. Nicholas as well as a village built inside the fortifications; ruined by war in 1344, the place had to be rebuilt in 1368. Ribarroja may have had a castle-church for its Christians. The faithful of Rocafort, however, had to [86] make their way to the Moncada church (see lists) for services for nearly a century. At Sagunto (then Murviedro; see lists) the major mosque became the church of St. Mary during the crusade; in 1273 it was given to the Valencia archdeacon who put a perpetual vicar here. There were also churches of St. John and of Holy Savior,⁽⁷⁷⁾ and the churches or chapels of the Franciscans (1294) and Trinitarians (1275).

At Simat de Valldigna there may have been a small church of St. Michael. The Tárbena church (see lists) seems to have been a converted mosque within the castle precincts, the center for the population of what was then called the valley of Tárbena. Tibi apparently had no church or regular ministry until the next century, when the lord of the area received permission to have Mass and other functions regularly in the castle chapel (1339); meanwhile alms were collected for building a church (1337). Villahermosa del Río (see lists) was a colony or expansion of Castillo de Villamalefa (see lists); its thirteenth-century church was probably under the invocation of St. Bartholomew. Though the lists show that Villanueva de Castellón, near Játiva, had a church in the thirteenth century, no further documentation survives before 1358.⁽⁷⁸⁾

The names of many of the parochial clerics have come down to us. Some, like Ferdinand of Ort at the village of Pego, have already been mentioned; others will appear in later chapters. Most of the names are preserved quite by accident; thus, Arnold Darcol, "chaplain of the church of Cullera," wrote up the agreement closing a lawsuit between the communal authorities of Cullera and the religious of the Temple and of the Zaidia at Valencia city, over water rights; this document, and the chaplain therefore, are referred to in a subsequent agreement in 1266. With some industry and patience a large roll call of such clergy could be assembled.⁽⁷⁹⁾

The tax list of 1247 may or may not relate to the parishes. It is interesting, however, that over half of the names clearly or probably⁽⁸⁰⁾ identify with places on the other lists, or with places where a church already existed. Thus we have: Albalat de la Ribera, Albaida, Benaguacil, Chulilla, Cullera, Liria, Lullén, Madrona, Murviedro, Paterna, Picasent, Puig, Puzol, Ribarroja, Torre de Espioca, Torrente, Torres-Torres, Valle de Alcalá (including Aledua, Alfarp, Carlet, and Llombay), Villamarchante, and several dubious names like Segart and Cortes. Does this mean that the remaining places also had churches? These include Alcácer, Almusafes and its region, Catadau, Catarroya, Cheste, Macastre, Manises, Monserrat, Montroy, Náquera, Pedralva, Serra, Terrabona, Tous, Tuéjar, Turís, and ambiguous names like Agües and Sallaria.

Distribution of Parishes in Tortosan Valencia

The separate network of parishes projected by the diocese of Segorbe came to naught. The Tortosa diocese had its base along the seacoast from Almenara to Pratdip, and its interior holdings defined by a great crescent [87] (through Onda, Culla, Ares, Morella, Peñarroya, and Tivisa).⁽⁸¹⁾ Here too a parochial network evolved, related to the well-established older portion of the diocese. Working largely from the crusade-tithe list, one can reconstruct the basic parish groupings of the Tortosa diocese insofar as it fell within the kingdom of Valencia.⁽⁸²⁾

Churches are indicated at Adzaneta del Maestre, Albalat, Albocácer, Almazora, Almenara, Ares, Bechí, Bel, Benasal, Benicarló, Bojar, Borriol, Burriana, Cabacer, Cabanes, Cálig, Canet, Castell de Cabres, Castellfort, Castellón de Burriana, Catí, Cervera, Chert, Chiva de Morella, Chivert, Cinctorres, Cuevas de Vinromá, Culla, Forcall, Herbés, Herbesét, La Cenia, La Mata, La Jana, Lucena, Morella, Nules, Onda, Oropesa, Ortells, Peñíscola, Portell de Morella, Puebla de Benifasar, Rossell, Salsadella, San Mateo, Serrañana, Sierra Engarcerán, Tírig, Todolella, Toga, Traiguera, Vallibona, Villafamés, Villafranca del Cid, Villarreal, Villores, Vistabella, and perhaps a few other places.⁽⁸³⁾ Occasionally an unimportant hamlet boasts a pastor; thus, Berengar Puig is "rector ecclesie Xerer" (Mas de Xirosa) in a 1267 Hospitaller document; but the word rector perhaps is used loosely.⁽⁸⁴⁾ It is significant that the churches, once they are identified properly and drawn up in a list, are seen to include twelve of the fourteen Christian settlements brought into the Morella fief of Blaise of Alagón: Albocácer, Benasal, Castellfort, Catí, Cinctorres, Cuevas de Vinromá, Forcall, Herbés, Ortells, Villafranca del Cid, and Villores; of the other two, Olocau del Rey could have been served from Forcall, while Culla may have received its clergy from the military Orders claiming it.⁽⁸⁵⁾

These lists demonstrate how widespread was the ecclesiastical establishment for both dioceses by the time of the Conqueror's death. Each had its own incumbent and revenue; each probably had its small staff and network of subordinate churches. In terms of sheer activity -- recruitment of personnel, building or at least adapting churches, outfitting for the liturgical ceremonies, arranging for the support of each church from local sources, and so on -- the implications are impressive. This had all been consummated, and the diocese had taken its equal place among other Spanish dioceses for purposes of crusade taxation in the short (and disturbed) span of thirty years after the fall of Játiva.

The parishes of each diocese may possibly have been grouped into rural deaneries or archpresbyteries, each under an archpriest acting as agent of the archdeacon. The archpriest was supposed to gather his pastors into a rural convocation from time to time, visit the parishes, keep the bishop informed on local affairs, adjust lesser problems, and supervise his small area. We have no information on such divisions for the Valencian area. Perhaps they did not exist. As for definite boundaries for the rural areas, again we have no information; they may frequently have corresponded to natural or traditional localities, without distinct borders.⁽⁸⁶⁾

[88] Ecclesiastical Architecture

Both dioceses represented an architectural frontier. Sifting of archeological evidence indicates a widespread urge to replace the mosques with something larger and in the Western manner. This suggests expansive and relatively prosperous communities, not at all abashed by their Moslem milieu. The rural settlements, naturally, were less prosperous than the communes. Even in time of crisis the tax expected from all of them together ("the other rectors of the bishopric and diocese") was only as much as the ordinary cathedral canon paid or as much as a wealthy city parish was assessed.⁽⁸⁷⁾ If less prosperous, the country places were nevertheless affected by the building movement.

The parish church at San Mateo, a Valencian town founded by King James in the Tortosa diocese, began as a Romanesque structure of one nave, with an octagonal tower and a fine main door. As wealth increased, it was expanded and transformed into a Gothic structure. A document of 1257 mentions it. Today it is designated by law as a national monument.⁽⁸⁸⁾ The parish church of Castellón de la Plana in the Tortosa part of Valencia, St. Mary's, was erected sometime between 1251 and 1288 on the same site as the modern edifice. A simple Gothic structure with a wooden roof, it was to burn down in 1337. The very earliest notice surviving about this church comes from 1272, when the Castellón resident Bernard Zamora willed it ten solidi, leaving as well five solidi for its rector Luke (who owed Bernard 10 solidi besides).⁽⁸⁹⁾ At Alcira stood another St. Mary's; it may have been a fine new building beyond the ordinary, since King James in 1276 designated it as an alternative to the cathedral to be a temporary burial place for his body.⁽⁹⁰⁾

The church of La Sangre at Liria, boldly rising on a hill at the western fringe of the Valencian huerta, has also been declared a national monument. Originally a rectangle ninety feet long, it had a single nave, with four Gothic arches supporting a wooden roof; built perhaps around 1260, it was used for worship at the latest by 1273.⁽⁹¹⁾ Basically the same as Liria's boxlike Gothic, though somewhat smaller, is St. Peter's in Segorbe, probably built around mid-century.⁽⁹²⁾ Murviedro's rectangular St. Savior is another example of this species.⁽⁹³⁾ The king was to sign a tithe document in 1305 "on the porch of St. Mary's of the church of Murviedro," a new title suggesting perhaps a previously rebuilt church.⁽⁹⁴⁾ "One of the most interesting Gothic churches of the Levant region," and a national monument today, is the parish church of St. Mary's at Morella in the Tortosa diocese. Dominating its region from a remarkable hilltop site, it has been called a landlocked Mont-Saint-Michel. This Gothic gem was begun in 1265, consecrated only in 1318, and completed in 1330.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Puzol had a Romanesque church; its entrance, dating from the first half [90]of the thirteenth century, still remains, "a lovely example of the Aragonese Romanesque style."⁽⁹⁶⁾ There was a church of St. Roque at Ternils; of this only a Romanesque door, simple but impressive, survives.⁽⁹⁷⁾ At Chert in the Tortosa diocese the Hospitallers seem to have adapted some available building, perhaps a mosque, for a few years; as settlement increased, at least by mid-century, a church was planned and begun.⁽⁹⁸⁾ At Alcoy a Gothic church seems to have been started shortly after the conquest (around 1253); in April 1276, when the Moslem rebels attacked the town, most of the Christians were in this church assisting at the Mass being offered by their priest Raymond Torregrosa.⁽⁹⁹⁾ We hear also of the thirteenth-century church of St. John in Albocácer, a primitive church of St. Nicholas in Castellón, a thirteenth-century church at Villarreal (all in Tortosa diocese), and so on.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Churches built in the reconquest era, in fact, are fairly numerous.⁽¹⁰¹⁾

The church of St. Felix in Játiva has been called "the prototype of a Valencian church of the thirteenth century." It is neither large nor particularly beautiful, but it has a solid simplicity and an intriguing regional character of its own. It is admired today as an historical document in architecture, one of the few of its period saved "from the frenzy of the restorers." There had been a Visigothic church here and later a mosque. The mosque was torn down just after the conquest of the city, and a larger edifice was erected on the same site. The ex-king of Moslem Valencia, the convert Sa^cîd, contributed toward the construction.⁽¹⁰²⁾ These Gothic churches in general were derivative, even imitative, as is only to be expected on the frontier.

St. Felix, like its counterparts at Segorbe, Murviedro, and Liria, hardly seems Gothic at first. In floor plan it resembles a rectangular box. There is no vestibule to distract from this simplicity. More exactly it is a parallelogram 67 feet by 45, more like a room than a church. But three very solid Gothic ribs spring out from the walls to support the peaked roof of wood. The effect is of cryptlike solidity. The exterior is attractive, especially along one side where an ample porch runs, distinguished by a striking and severe Romanesque portal. St. Felix too has been declared a national monument. Lavedan sees in the Játiva church, as in those at Segorbe, Murviedro, and Liria, a kind of native tradition, perhaps harking back to Mozarabic antecedents, or perhaps representing in architecture the political turning away of the Aragonese realms from Languedoc.⁽¹⁰³⁾ This search for a new national destiny could most freely express itself on the frontier.

Two last aspects of the general parochial organization in the dioceses of King James's realms were significant in the building of a new society. First, the parish was an accepted social and administrative unit in the towns. Secondly, it was a remarkable source, at least in the kingdom of Valencia, of civil revenue. Often the words "parish," "church," and "commune," were synonymous.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ When King James decreed that counselors were to be [91] chosen to assist the Valencia city justiciar, he arranged to have one drawn "from each parish" every three months.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ He ordered a similar election of two from each parish to form the town government.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Tax collectors for regalian and municipal fees were similarly elected, two or more from each parish throughout the realm.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ Under James's successor, the city fathers in each commune of the realm of Valencia were to elect one man from each parish annually as the official nominees for the office of justiciar.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Houses in the official listing of grants were sometimes by parish, as happened also in grants for other parts of James's dominion.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Contracts often located properties according to parish. To pay a debt King James assigned his creditor the rent of four shops in the district (partida) of Holy Savior.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Castellón, a century later (1385), referred to its use of parishes for administrative civil units as a custom dating from "ancient times" and operating "as in times gone by."⁽¹¹¹⁾

The country or small-town church also served to some extent as political center and meeting place. In 1289 at Castellón, for instance, the magistrates and people gathered in the church of St. Mary to swear homage to their feudal lord, the abbot of Poblet.⁽¹¹²⁾ The celebrated chronicler Muntaner, a delegate from the city of Valencia to the coronation of King Alphonse IV of Aragon early in the next century (1328), describes how "each parish brought its bull, decorated with the royal devices" from Valencia city to the bullfights in the Zaragoza arena.⁽¹¹³⁾ The parish was the focus for a kind of district patriotism. It enjoyed "a certain autonomy" in civil organization and "concentrated the whole life of the district."⁽¹¹⁴⁾ This would have been more than ever true on the frontier, where other corporations and groupings as yet offered no rivalry and where the population elements had dissolved the traditional ties with their homelands.

Even as a source of civil revenue, especially in frontier circumstances, the parish system can hardly be overestimated. It is difficult to imagine King James sustaining the military and organizational programs in his frontier state without the assured, considerable income afforded to the crown by the parish tithe. The tithe was an all-embracing tax on income. It cut into every productive human activity, sometimes as deeply as 10 per cent. It touched everyone from king to peasant to (indirectly) slave. It was backed by the sternest of ecclesiastical penalties. And the share of king or noble was a half or a third of the total. Where in a kingdom could an equivalent revenue, or one so comprehensive and effective, be found?

City Parish Life: The Parish of St. Thomas

During the primitive stages of parish development in the cities, as the new organism was asserting itself in strange surroundings, what is known of its inner history? Little enough remains to serve as parish records. In any event [92] these would have been largely administrative, with the small dramas decently interred. It is possible, nevertheless, to gather some ideas. Despite the strong hierarchical pattern framing the system, the active unit was practically autonomous in its ordinary affairs. The rector, who was probably appointed from the crowd of clergy forming part of the crusading host, was at the head of this parochial organism. He cared for the endowment properties, chanted the daily Mass and office along with his other spiritual duties, and ruled his household and flock.

He did not rule his parish by himself. There was a strong admixture of medieval commune in it. The parishioners elected a lay organization to represent and execute their own wishes. The lay council also had a financial function. The elected parishioners were responsible for the parish economy and property. They considered applications for burial and for founding altars. They planned and organized the frequent public feasts. They had a voice in the selection of sacristan, acolyte, organist, bell ringer, and other officeholders. They imposed and collected a tax for the upkeep of the church. And they took charge of building the new churches.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ The best surviving records of this kind of lay activity come from the following century. Thus it was the town council, operating through three functionaries, who rebuilt the Castellón church in 1341 after a fire; they also had charge of guarding the liturgical treasures at Castellón and supervised expenses connected with worship.⁽¹¹⁶⁾

Unlike his modern counterpart the Valencian pioneer did not merely possess a church, or support a church, or attend a church. To an active degree difficult to appreciate he was the parish church. He created a tiny parish community, "completely laic,"⁽¹¹⁷⁾ and felt himself to be a part of its strength, a trustee or an elector whose opinion should be courted. In many documents he identified himself as "a parishioner of St. Andrew's" or "a citizen of Valencia of St. Catherine's parish."⁽¹¹⁸⁾ The concept of lay community as self-administrating parish adds another dimension to our view of the church as a frontier institution, as an essential in the rapid development of the Valencian frontier.

From the beginning there were ten such communities within the city walls of Valencia.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Three more stood just beyond the walls, and there were others not far away.⁽¹²⁰⁾ They had been plotted and assigned immediately after the surrender of the city.⁽¹²¹⁾ These churches seem to have been small mosques, abruptly converted to Christian use. Picturing the city roughly as a square, with its northern end based on the Guadalaviar River and its southeastern corner flaring out to form a large salient, let us quarter the square and briefly locate each parish church in turn. In the northeast quarter near the river are Holy Savior and St. Stephen's. Continuing in clockwise fashion, St. Thomas appears in the southeast segment; St. Andrew's stands within the deep salient here, and St. Martin's to its west just clear of the [93] salient. St. Catherine's is encountered next, in the southwest quarter of the city. In that area is St. Nicholas'⁽¹²²⁾ and below it St. Bartholomew's (the former mosque of Beb Alcántara). Finally, in the northwest quarter near the river lies St. Lawrence's. At the cathedral, which sits in the center of the city like a hub, the side altar of St. Peter, in the left or Gospel nave of the church, serves as center for the smallest parish.

Sanchís Sivera denies territoriality and true parochial status to St. Peter's.⁽¹²³⁾ Perhaps he was misled by the custom of allowing any citizen to be baptized, married, or buried at the cathedral parish.⁽¹²⁴⁾ But an organizational decree of 1240, in assigning revenues, gives the sacristan the first fruits and small offerings "in the whole parish assigned to the major church of St. Mary"; these are expected to be few, and the bishop must supplement them when they fall below the sum of 40 besants.⁽¹²⁵⁾ A cathedral document of 1270 locates a shop "in the city of Valencia in the parish of St. Mary of the [episcopal] see" near the bishop's buildings.⁽¹²⁶⁾ The "chaplain of St. Peter of the see" is taxed 54 solidi in the 1279 crusade tithe and 52 solidi in the 1280 tithe.⁽¹²⁷⁾ In 1276 the wife of Blaise Peter of Fuentes leaves a legacy of 10 solidi to this chaplain of the Valencia see.⁽¹²⁸⁾

The parish of St. Peter Martyr presents a knottier problem. The sixteenth-century historian Escolano makes this the tenth city parish, growing out of a previous oratory of St. Nicholas "before 1278." His colleague Diago puts it down as an oratory to St. Peter Martyr which soon evolved into a parish, only later acquiring St. Nicholas as copatron. The eighteenth-century antiquarian Teixidor refutes both positions without really clarifying the problem. In the present century Chabás concludes the discussion by erecting St. Peter's as an eleventh parish; it appears toward the end of the century and disappears in the fourteenth by incorporation into St. Nicholas'.⁽¹²⁹⁾ Actually the St. Peter Martyr parish seems to be St. Nicholas' under a new (or perhaps double) invocation. The St. Peter Martyr church and its rector appear in the crusade-tithe lists of 1279 and 1280. It is one of the richest parishes in the city. The lists account for every other city parish except St. Nicholas', indicating that only a title-change is involved.⁽¹³⁰⁾

Is it possible to establish an earlier date for St. Peter Martyr's? In his will, drawn up on March 1279, García Pérez of Biel chooses burial "in the cemetery of the church of St. Peter Martyr of Valencia," giving 40 solidi to its fabric (opus) and speaking of its rector Peter Ferdinand.⁽¹³¹⁾ More important is a deed of sale in the cathedral archives, locating a property "in the city of Valencia in the parish of St. Peter Martyr." It bears the date 1258.⁽¹³²⁾ It would be difficult to find a date much earlier since Peter Martyr, a Dominican of Verona, had died only in 1252. Canonized in 1253, he was being regularly honored by the Valencia public before 1257 in the Dominican church.⁽¹³³⁾ Already progress has been made beyond the position of Beuter, who attempted on a loose tradition to place the foundation of the church of St. Peter [95] Martyr between 1259 and 1268 after a local miracle had turned Valencians toward this devotion. But the gap can be further narrowed, for one Bartholomew signed an important agreement as rector of St. Nicholas as late as 1255.⁽¹³⁴⁾

What happened between September 18, 1255 and the fall of 1258? A document drawn up a decade later gives one terrible glimpse. Accused and convicted of homosexuality, Bartholomew had fled the country, and his lands in Almenara and in the valley of Pego had been confiscated. Allowing two years for this scandal to erupt, and for the bishop to counter it partially by retitling the church, gives an initial date for the name change (late 1257), and an understandable motive.

Why should Peter Martyr have been chosen? Perhaps it suffices to say that Bishop Andrew was a Dominican and this was the latest Dominican saint. But normally such titular patrons were more traditional and ancient; this was an unusual departure from the pattern. The career of Peter Martyr gives a clue, for it called to mind Bartholomew's crime and in a symbolic way countered it. To the mind of the western Mediterranean townsman of this period, Bartholomew's homosexuality carried a strong suggestion of the Albigensian heresy. In Valencia the crimes of heresy and sodomy were linked in the same statute and drew the same terrible punishment, burning at the stake. The sodomite, like the heretic, was an outlaw in the Valencian Furs; any man might arrest him "without a court order." His goods, like those of the heretic, were confiscated. Valencian contemporaries knew Peter Martyr as a man born of Albigensian parents, who had spent himself in inquisitorial pursuit of the deliberately homoerotic Albigensians and of other heretics, and who had finally been cut down by Albigensian assassins. The very name of Peter Martyr conveyed the extreme opposite of all that the pastor Bartholomew's crime evoked.⁽¹³⁵⁾

The parish was to keep its new invocation for a generation, past the turn of the century. But the name St. Nicholas seems to have persisted in popular usage; at any rate Nicholas was destined first to join and later to supplant his young colleague as patron.

Ten parishes in one city was a generous supply for that day and place. The Moslem population had left the city of Valencia en masse, a circumstance not true of any other Valencian city except Burriana where surrender conditions had been equivalent. Moslems remaining behind would mostly have been in the suburbs around the city. Thus there was need for no more than a single mosque for the natives, with perhaps a shrine or two. The Moslem minority was soon transferred outside the walls; incidental to this removal, apparently, was the suppression of a parish church named St. Michael's. Its pastor Peter signed a document of 1245 along with other pastors; but the church appears on neither the 1279 nor the 1280 crusade lists. Its position inside or near Valencia city is something of a mystery.⁽¹³⁶⁾

[96] Just beyond the walls, upstream or to the west, was Holy Cross parish in the suburb of Roteros. Directly south of the city was St. John's in the suburb of Boatella. A liberal choice of more independent churches and chapels supplemented the parish centers. Most of these were held by religious communities. The king's chapel at his Valencia residence was within the boundaries of St. Stephen's parish; its major incumbent in 1272 was John Martin.⁽¹³⁷⁾ Worthy of special note are the chapels of St. George (treated below in Chapter X) and St. Thecla -- respectively a center for a confraternity of crossbowmen, and a shrine to honor the spot where St. Vincent had been martyred. St. Thecla's apparently stood a short distance to the southeast of the cathedral, on the east side of today's Plaza del Reino.⁽¹³⁸⁾

Each city parish extended into, and was responsible for, a rural district nearby. Down by the ocean was the port suburb, Villanueva del Grau (Grao). James named it Villanueva del Mar and began to wall and improve it (1249). The church here was Our Lady of the Sea. The will of Raymond Morella in 1251 left twelve pence to this church; Peter Armer in 1251 left it two solidi; Peter Oller, a draper, in 1249 left it five solidi for upkeep and lights.⁽¹³⁹⁾ One hesitates to attempt a delimitation of these wider rural boundaries for the city churches; but illustrative notes are at hand. The Benimaclet church was under St. Stephen's; Mislata belonged to St. Nicholas'; Patraix, it would seem, belonged to St. John's; Campanar had a church under St. Catherine's.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ Within the city, the delimitation made by the metropolitan just after its conquest was confirmed again by him during the incumbency of Bishop Ferrer.⁽¹⁴¹⁾

Parish sizes and shapes would have depended upon many factors, such as the natural disposition of city sectors, the collective prosperity of each segment lest revenue and burdens be disproportionate, the predominance of residences as against shops or public buildings, the promise of future expansion in a district, the presence of large colonies of settlers from one region or language group, the collaboration and rivalry of nearby religious Orders, and all those errors of judgment, those accidents and immediate small problems which influence action but are hidden from the historian. Examining on a map the plotting of parishes after the conquest of contemporary Seville, one is struck by the disparities of size and the vagaries of shape. Some are small, a few huge, some moderate in size, others larger; in contour they recall the modern art of gerrymandering.⁽¹⁴²⁾

At some remove from the city certain other suburbs enjoyed their own pastorates. St. Valerius', for example, was the parish center for the suburb of Ruzafa, a short walk away to the southeast of the city. It was attached to the office of dean (1242), whose vicar ran it. Though other cities in the frontier kingdom were equally well organized, their parishes were understandably far less numerous.

At least half of the city parishes were prosperous, returning a crusade tax [97] of 100 solidi or better. The parishes of St. Stephen, St. Catherine, St. Lawrence, and St. Martin were wealthiest, with those of Holy Savior, St. John, and St. Andrew close behind. The pastors of St. Thomas', St. Bartholomew's, and St. Peter's can have had few economic worries, but their income was appreciably lower.⁽¹⁴³⁾ The names of all the first pastors of the churches of the city of Valencia have been preserved in a document of 1245.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ The order of signature is: Peter of Romani (St. Peter's, at the cathedral), William Ferrer (St. Martin's), John of Campol (St. Andrew's), Thomas (St. Thomas'), Peter (Holy Savior's), Raymond (St. Nicholas'), Peter Ferdinand (St. John's), John Michael (St. Catherine's), Peter (St. Michael's), Lope (commander of the Roncesvalles hospital, for his vicar at Holy Cross), Peter Simon (St. Lawrence's), William of Pelagals (St. Stephen's), and Dominic (prior of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre in Aragon, Majorca, and Valencia, for his vicar at St. Bartholomew's). The order followed in the prefatory section of the document differs somewhat.

Not much more can be said about the individual pastors. They appear now and again, affording brief glimpses of their activities or personalities. The legal holder of the pastorate of St. Peter's at the cathedral was Bernard of Vilar, priest and canon, apparently from 1241 to 1280; the vicar, after Peter of Romani, was Bernard Ferrer.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ At St. Martin's, William Ferrer is still pastor in a document of 1255,⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ and again in 1266 when a judicial decision was handed down in his favor against an attempt by the city fathers to usurp the cemetery lying along the city wall near the Boatella gate.⁽¹⁴⁷⁾ He appears under the title of rector in cathedral documents of 1270 and 1272.⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ At St. Andrew's, John of Campol was still the incumbent in 1252 ;⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ the previous year he had been cogranter of a settlement charter for three hamlets of the Carlet area.

The rector of St. Andrew's, perhaps the same man as in the 1245 list, went on crusade and was dead by 1279; there was a new rector in 1280.⁽¹⁵⁰⁾ At Holy Savior's one Arnold had succeeded Peter by 1250.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ At St. Michael's, Peter supplanted the cleric Justus at least by 1242, but he was apparently the last rector before the suppression of this parish.⁽¹⁵²⁾ At St. Lawrence's in 1280 the incumbent was Dominic of Biscarra.⁽¹⁵³⁾ At St. Catherine's, Raymond of Bellestar was rector in 1252 and as late as 1261.⁽¹⁵⁴⁾ At St. Nicholas', Bartholomew had replaced Raymond by 1255.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ Very little is known about the assistant clergy serving at these churches; in an analogous situation in contemporary Seville at the end of the century, there were generally at least three to a parish church.⁽¹⁵⁶⁾ Were the rectors of all the parish churches of the city grouped together in a collegiate alliance or corporation, with their own customs and president? When they act in union there is no hint of such a formal organization.

It speaks loudly for the vigor of these small communities at the capital city that before the death of James the Conqueror every parish save one [98](delayed by litigation) had torn down its mosque to replace it with a sizable church "in a Christian style."⁽¹⁵⁷⁾ This involved the election of parish treasurer, notary, and procurator-general. These functionaries would decree a building tax to be collected on such occasions as marriages, baptisms, and funerals.⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ They would hire an architect and -- if they followed the example of the cathedral -- contract for the services of a wandering troupe of builders. They would also seek royal permission to buy extra land for the expansion.⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ They already had in the cities a royal privilege of free circuit around each church. No buildings could touch it, the streets must remain wide and un-bridged around it.⁽¹⁶⁰⁾

Any number of last testaments in Valencia during this period leave money for the opus of their parish. It is dangerous to argue from a single Latin word, especially one which may refer loosely to conservation or decoration of an existing building; but these gifts may well have been part of a fund for building the first churches and furnishing them. King Peter in a codicil to his will in 1285, leaving money for the opus of the Valencia cathedral and for churches elsewhere, provides for using the money as alms in those churches not having such a program ("in quibus opus non fit"). The phrasing suggests that other gifts to Valencian parish opera were for construction and substantial improvement rather than for upkeep.⁽¹⁶¹⁾

The parish of St. Thomas was probably as typical as any. Dedicated to the doubting apostle, medieval patron against dogbite, it was off in a corner of the city. Enclosed within its borders was the Jewish synagogue and district with its money tables. The pastor, suitably named Thomas, was installed at the conquest in 1238. He appears again as incumbent in 1245.⁽¹⁶²⁾ In the division of the city the mosque called St. Thomas' received the house of Mohammed Annagar, and in the delimitation of the parish a set of boundaries which would remain substantially the same into the nineteenth century. As with most parishes in Valencia city, St. Thomas' had a rural section outside the walls dependent upon it, including the harbor suburb.⁽¹⁶³⁾ The popular church of the Knights Hospitallers was located in this parish.

By modern times the St. Thomas parish boundaries would hold over twelve thousand souls; but they contained little more than a twelfth of that number, in some four hundred houses, when Valencia was a renowned and prosperous sixteenth-century port. In the thirteenth century it seems improbable that St. Thomas' could have held a great deal more than half that total. In 1239 the parishes of Valencia taken at an arbitrary average would each have numbered two hundred and fifty families or some thirteen hundred people.⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ Using a somewhat different methodology, one finds an average of over eleven acres or four and a half hectares per parish, with one thousand five hundred and sixty souls in two hundred and sixty-one houses, plus whatever rural population belonged to each parish.⁽¹⁶⁵⁾

An even more useful set of figures comes from the monage lists of 1355, [99] only a lifetime after the close of the period examined in this book. The number of taxpayers may be multiplied by five to arrive at a parish population: St. Andrew's 310 taxpayers, St. Bartholomew's 243, St. Catherine's 605, St. Stephen's 547, Holy Cross in Roteros 385, St. John's in Boatella 723, St. Lawrence's 187, St. Martin's 634, St. Nicholas' 352, St. Peter's at the cathedral 315, Holy Savior's 289, and St. Thomas' 139. This gives a fair idea of the respective population size of the parishes. The numbers fluctuate in the next monage list (1361), St. Thomas' being 193 or almost a thousand souls; there was perhaps some imprecision as to parish boundaries, especially beyond the walls. In any case, St. Thomas' was one of the three smallest parishes.⁽¹⁶⁶⁾

St. Martin's, the only parish for which a certain figure survives from the thirteenth century, contained two hundred and eighty-two houses, though the meaning of house (domus) in the records is ambiguous. This would probably mean a parish population of over twelve hundred for St. Martin's.⁽¹⁶⁷⁾ Using Lot's methodology of figuring four to four-and-one-half souls per hearth, there were less than 1,269 persons in St. Martin's. Thus the city parishes of Valencia were both far fewer and far larger than those of big cities of contemporary England. Contemporary Seville, just conquered, was organized into twenty-four parishes, double the Valencian number; since this number was not needed, problems arose.⁽¹⁶⁸⁾

Pastor Thomas may have entertained ambitions of building a fine new church, as every one of his fellow pastors was planning to do. But this project must have been submerged in the uproar following upon his demise.⁽¹⁶⁹⁾ The cathedral chapter proposed to annex the parish to their office of sacristan and by this device drain away its revenues. The bishop stood stubbornly against the plan. Bishops die, however, and the corporate body survives. In 1276 the chapter, in a complaint against the policies of the deceased Andrew, insisted upon the annexation of St. Thomas'.⁽¹⁷⁰⁾ Oddly enough, this did not take place for another twenty years; in 1294 the cathedral sacristan James Albalat took over the parish, naming as his resident vicar William of Castellnou.⁽¹⁷¹⁾ By the thirteenth century the traditional control of chapter over parishes was breaking up; the unity of ministry had become a diversity in Europe. Chapters tended to cling to remaining prerogatives; but probably popular pressures were working against the monopolies of ministry. Meanwhile, the parishioners had been able to get on tardily with their building program, buying houses to clear away.⁽¹⁷²⁾ Soon a Gothic structure in stone was up, consisting of a single nave and containing a simple main altar.⁽¹⁷³⁾

Of the assistant clergy nothing is known. Bartholomew Despont founded in the chapel of St. Francis (February 1285) a benefice to the honor of St. Barnabas. Shortly afterward Peter of Prades established at the main altar a benefice in honor of the parish patron St. Thomas.⁽¹⁷⁴⁾ This Peter, a pious [100] layman of the select confraternity of St. James at the cathedral, supplied the Valencian common people with a horrendous bit of ecclesiastical folklore. His tombstone was removed to the outside of the church at the next remodeling, and the legend prevailed that he had been a priest of the time of the conquest, walled up alive for breaking the seal of confession!⁽¹⁷⁵⁾

St. Thomas', like all parishes, had its adjoined cemetery, its annual patronal festivity, its daily Mass and chanting of the hours, its electioneering for civil office at stated times in the year, its great processions on funeral or feast days, its round of marriages and christenings, its absorption in the progress of the new church going up -- all quite important to the relatively few families who comprised this little world. No doubt it also had its share in the wordy struggles with the religious Orders and with the tithe-gatherers. St. Thomas' was the new realm in microcosm. Of such minutiae was the frontier kingdom patiently built up.

1. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,316 (Nov. 17, 1243): "ex tunc tanquam veri rectores"; "in divinis ministrent officiis, parrochianos suos baptizent, et in foro penitenciali solvant, eligent [sic], nupcias eciam celebrent et cum iure funerandi omnia conferant ecclesiastica sacramenta quae per sacerdotes alios rite in Episcopatu valencie conferuntur." In a Vich document of 1234 the new rector is seen swearing fidelity and canonical obedience to his bishop (Diplomatari de Sant Bernat Calvó, doc. 44, Dec. 13, 1234). Cf. F. Claeys-Bouuaer, "Cure" and "Curé," DDC, IV, cols. 889-900 and 900-942; X.A. Baraniak, "Curé religieux,"ibid., cols. 941-959.

2. Juam Puig, "Capbreu d'algunes persones distingides d'Ares del Maestre," BSCC, XIII (1932), 432: "causa celebrandi...cum divinis quoque rebus, ac eciam schibis pulsandis nocte diebus."

3. Document in note 1: "ad Episcopalem Sinodum et Capitula conveniant temporibus consuetis."

4. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,364. See in the 1258 synod the instruction: "et ab ipsis Sacerdotibus populo praedicetur" (Collectio conciliorum Hispaniae, V, 197). The metropolitan council of 1229 at Lérida noted the lack of qualified men for parish preaching and ordered the bishops to provide special auxiliary clergy for this function where needed, especially in the bigger churches (Colección de cánones y de todos los concilios de la iglesia de España y de América, ed. J. Tejada y Ramiro, 7 vols., Madrid, 1859-1863, III, 331, no. 5). See too the sensible comments of D. W. Robertson, Jr. in his "Frequency of Preaching in Thirteenth-Century England" (Speculum, XXIV [1949], 376-388); though the point is still under discussion, parish preaching seems to have been more common than was previously thought.

5. Cf., for example, Chapter IV, note 106 (1263, Morella). Part of the service fee the appointee to the church of Cullera had to pay to his patrons the Hospitallers, 60 solidi every Christmas, was to be spent on the poor under their care (Arch. Cath., perg. 4,639; Dec. 23, 1256).

6. See note 1. This cherished privilege led to argument with the religious Orders (see Chapters X-XIII). The cemeteries appear in wills for example in 1271: "eligo namque sepulturam meam in ciminterio Sancti Stephani valencie" (Arch. Cath., perg. 1,105).

7. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 201: "caute et diligenter." The rector of a parish could even excommunicate according to Penyafort (though he cites as well the opinion of Hostiensis against this).

8. This is a neglected aspect of the history of notaries in James's realms. In 1282 a crown inquiry was being made, with documents to the justiciars of Valencia, Játiva and Morella as well as elsewhere in the kingdom of Aragon, as to all the parish churches both under diocesan and other jurisdiction where the notarial office has been filled "ex antiquo" by parish rectors (F. Carreras y Candi, Miscelánea histórica catalana, 2 vols. [Barcelona, 1905-1918], II, 350, doc.). See above, Chapter I, note 29.

9. Sanchís Sivera discusses the Valencian cemeteries of the time from the documents in "Vida íntima de los valencianos en la época foral" (ACCV, VI [1933], 40ff.); the bishop's complaint was made in 1316. A synodal decree of 1262 forbade "ne aliquis sepelliatur intra principales parietes ecclesie" ("Para la historia del derecho eclesiástico valenciano," ed. J. Sanchís Sivera, AST, IX [1933], sub an. 1262).

10. Furs, lib. I, rub. IX ("daquells qui fugiran a las iglesies"). In c. 4 James grants the right "a la iglesia de sancta Maria, e de sent Vicent; e a la huna major iglesia de cascun loch del regne de Valencia." The barons also claimed this right, but King James refused to acknowledge it (Llibre dels feyts, ch. 324). See also the contemporary Catalan, Raymond of Penyafort, "De immunitate ecclesiae," in his Summa, lib. I, tit. XIII, 113 ff. For the general legal background see O. Le Bras, "Asile," DHGE, IV, cols. 1,035-1,047. In Valencia this privilege was formally spelled out, with treason an exception, in a letter to the chapter in 1265 (Arch. Cath., perg. 2,379, Dec. II, 1265): "quod si aliquis vel aliqui intraverint et receperint se in ecclesia valentina racione alicuius maleficii ab ipso vel ipsis perpetrati quod non expellantur vel extrahantur de ipsa ecclesia per iustitiam Valencie vel aliquem alium nisi illud maleficium prodiciose [?] fuerit perpetratum ut in foro Valencie continetur."

11. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,391 (Sept. 18, 1255), rectors "et vicariis civitatis et suburbii Valencie." The obligation of personal residence found in an occasional document suggests that absenteeism was a problem in the early church of Valencia, though on what scale we cannot say (see, e.g., perg. 2,432). In contemporary Vich, one canon had at least seven parishes (1250); as rector he appointed a procurator to designate vicars and to collect revenues (F. Carreras y Candi, "Notes dotzecentistes d'Ausona," BRABLB, VI [1911], 10). At Vich in 1256 a rector farmed the revenues of two of his churches to a group headed by two priests, for 700 Barcelonan solidi (ibid., doc. on pp. 10-11). In contemporary Huesca a statute was promulgated urging that the clerics in possession of parish churches be ordained priests.

12. Document of 1294 in J. Sanchís Sivera, La iglesia parroquial de Santo Tomás de Valencia, monografía histórico-descriptiva (Valencia, 1913), pp. 15-16.

13. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,091 (July 8, 1248): "vicarios" in a document of Bishop Arnold, given in a document by his successor Jazpert who is renewing the privilege. In practice perhaps the seizure was not so universal, since Jazpert in his introduction prefers to say "some" churches; but the word is ambiguous: "noverint quod vir discretus Arnaldo de Rezacho Archidiaconis Xative coram nobis Jaçperto postulavit ut donatione...Ecclesie beate Marie Xative cum quibusdam Ecclesiis seu Capellis infra eius terminos constitutis et constituendis ac unionem sanctam ipsi Archdiaconatui de predictis per Venerabilem in Christo patrem bone memorie dominum Arnaldum Episcopum Valentinum sicut in eius ordinatione cuius forma subiungitur plenius continetur, dignaremur liberaliter confirmare." The resident vicar of St. Mary's of Játiva appears in a document of 1272: "Berengarium Martinum vicarium Xative" (perg. 2,389, June 6, 1272); he was being appointed to a perpetual chaplaincy here as well, according to the last testament of Mary Núñez, the wife of a Játiva resident, Simon Zapater.

14. Lloréns, "Deanato de Valencia," pp. 9-11, doc. pp. 16-17.

15. Regestum Clementis V, II, 128-129, no. 2,119 (June 22, 1307). It is hard to say in what order he held offices; by 1307 his Alcira pastorate was somewhere in his past; he appears as Lérida canon in the Rationes decimarum for 1280 (I, 135).

16. Rationes, I, 255, 261. Cullera was a Hospitaller church but conducted by secular priests for the knights. William had the important job of collecting the crusade tithe of exempt groups in 1279 and 1280, a task not entrusted to obscure village pastors.

17. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,381 (July 19, 1250). "Pateat universis quod nos Frater Andreas miseracione divina Valentinus Episcopus commendamus tibi Arnaldo Capellano Ecclesie Sancti Salvatoris Valencie in vita tua Capellam sive Ecclesiam Sancti Juliani que est iuxta viam que itur apud Murum veterem. Ita ut eam teneas habeas et possideas ac fideliter deservias omnibus diebus vite tue libere et pacifice ac quiete." The two churches were to be kept in every way independent of each other.

18. James II to the Knights Hospitallers who had the patronage here (mid-1301), published in BSCC (II [1921], 106n.): "regie benevolentie convenit domesticos et familiares suos iuxta merita beneficiis decorare." The parishes of the Valencia crusade-lists in 1279 include a rector for Pina who is absent on crusade (Rationes decimarum, I, 256). It is just possible that a rector was assigned to the poor village of that name north of Jérica; if so, his crusading might suggest knightly status. But this Pina should probably be identified with an alien barony; its owner Simon Pérez, who also held Benimaclet in Valencia, put his brother into this parish of Pina. Even so, the pastorate underscores the general thesis. (The Nomenclator omits Pina; its rector apparently held some Valencian benefice.) See Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,234 (Mar. 21, 1250): "concedimus et ad feudum tradimus vobis Eximino Petro de Pina et Guillelmo rectori ecclesie de Pina fratri tuo et vestris successoribus imperpetuum Castrum nostrum de Pina cum valle eidem contigua." On Simon Pérez, see Itinerari, pp. 132, 211, 273, 340, 347. Other knightly rectors who probably did not attend the round of liturgical duties may include William of Coll rector at Benifayó de Espioca (Nomenclátor, pp. 404, 119) and Peter of Albalat vicar at Alpuente. The former is apparently the landowner who appears in the crown registers, and the latter bears a prominent family name; but this is conjecture.

19. Viage literario, V, 283-284, synod of 1274.

20. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 2,176 (Jan. 11, 1273).

21. Itinerari, pp. 539-541 with Miret y Sans's consideration as redactor. Albert appears in the Llibre dels feyts as Micer Umbert (ch. 466). The recommendation to Peter by King James's will is in perg. 2,287. Soldevila, Pere el Gran, II, 196, 199-202.

22. Pascualino de Montbrun or Montbrú leased the ship for 36,000 solidi in 1269, his brother Simon appearing as witness (Itinerari, p. 424).

23. See later in this chapter, the discussion of Valencia city parishes in the tithe lists. On St. Stephen's in general, see Teixidor's chapter in Antigüedades de Valencia, I, 339-340. In late 1239 the pastor here received a house, noted in the Repartimiento. In 1245 the pastor was William of Pelagals.

24. This rare and valuable document demands full transcription. "Sit omnibus notum: quod Ego Jacobinus de Solario Procurator Alberti de Lavania Patris legitimi Hugueti de Lavania Rectore Ecclesie Sancti Stephani Valencie auctoritate procuracionis predicte qua fungor vendo vobis Guillermo de Trencard Presbitero et vestris a primo venturo festo Sancte Marie Candelarie usque ad tres annos primos venturos et continue completos omnes redditus exitus et proventus taxia et defunciones et omnia alia que ex devocione fidelium pervenerint per dictos annos ad Ecclesiam Sancti Stephani predictam vel eidem Ecclesie aliquo modo pertinent vel pertinere possunt ac debent et etiam statica Domorum dicte Ecclesie cum uno cubo et una bota predicta omnia vobis vendo, precio nongentorum solidorum regalium Valencie pro precio uniuscuiusque anni dictorum trium annorum quos in primo anno in hunc modum solvatis videlicet DC solidos in presenti; et residuos CCC solidos in festo proximo omnium sanctorum. Et in secundo anno persolvatis dictos DCCCC solidos in hunc modum scilicet CCCCL solidos in introitu ipsius anni scilicet in festo Sancte Marie Candelarie et residuos CCCCL solidos in festo tunc venturo omnium Sanctorum. Et Soluciones tercii anni proregnantur ut in secundo anno. Et teneor vobis quod dictus Albertus de Lavania et filius suus dictus solverint per dictos annos cenas Domini Episcopi Valentini et etiam Decimam subsidii terre Sancte, et etiam omnia alia subsidia Domini Pape seu alterius persone, que infra dictos tres annos facere ac dare opportuerint pro eccl^a dicta. Et si vos et vestri habeatis et percipiatis per dictos annos, dictos redditus exitus et proventus taxia defunciones et omnia alia que dicte Ecclesie pervenerint et ex ipsis faciatis voluntates vestras et etiam habeatis per dictos omnes statica Domorum dicte Ecclesie cum cubo et bota predictis vos vero teneamini servire per dictos annos dictam Ecclesiam et facere et complere in ea omnia que rector facere tenetur. Et si dicti redditus in anno valuerint ultra dictum precium illud vobis et vestris dono et relinquo auctoritate procurationis predicte. Et sic promito dictos redditus vobis et vestris servare, et facere habere tenere possidere et expletare per dictos annos in forma supradicta. Obliganda ad hoc vobis et vestris auctoritate procurationis predicte bona dicti Alberti de Lavania ubique sint et Ego certificatus de jure meo obligo vobis et vestris pro predictis complendis bona mea ubique sint habita et habenda. Et ad maiorem firmitatem dono vobis et vestris fidanciam salvitatis Micer Simonem de Montebruno civem Valencie qui de predictis omnibus vobis et vestris teneatur ad forum Valencie quam fiduciam Ego Micer Simon de Montebruno predictus facio et concedo vobis dicto G. de Trencard super bonis meis que ad hec vobis et vestris ubique obligo. Ad hec ego G. de Trencard predictus recipio a vobis Jacobino de Solario procuratore predicto empcionem dictorum reddituum per dictos annos sub dicto precio in forma supradicta. Promittentes servare per dictos annos dictam Ecclesiam ut moris est et facere, et complere, omnia in ea que rectos facere tenetur, et dictum precium quolibet anno dictorum trium annorum persolvere dicto Alberto de Lavania vel cui ipse mandaverit terminis predictis: obliganda ad hec me et bona mea dicto Alberto de Lavania et suis ubique. Quod est actum Valencie. III. idus Ianuarii anno Domini M.CC.LXX. tercio. Signum lacobini de Solario = Signum Ser Simonis de Montebruno = Signum G de Trencard: predictorum qui bec firmamus = Ego P. Michaelis Precentor Valencie gerens vices Domini Episcopi Valencie qui hec laudo et firmo. Testes sunt inde Magister R. Nepotis Capellanus, G. de Picco. Bg. de Na Johanna, et G. Gaucerandi Nobilis Valencie. Signum Bernardi Gaucerandi Publici notarii Valencie qui hec scripsit."

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

26. "Repartiment" de Burriana, p. 50.

27. Arch. Cath., perg. 24 (Oct. 28, 1236).

28. Repartimiento de Valencia, pp. 258, 267, 506.

29. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 46, fol. 221 (July 8, 1284). Family chapels began to become common in England in the thirteenth century, especially appearing in the records after 1277 (Moorman, Church Life, with examples, pp. 15-17).

30. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 49, fol. 48v (Mar. 3, 1280).

31. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 56, fols. 108-110; assessments for military expenses. The other dioceses offer more detail. Secondary works touching individual Valencian churches are generally quite disappointing for these early years since so little material exists. Contemporary England had some 9,500 parishes, most of them manor churches in origin; the overwhelming majority (9,000) were rural. In such a long-settled area, twenty parishes per city was not uncommon, with London boasting one hundred, and Norwich, Lincoln, and York about fifty. The average population of these parishes would be three hundred (two hundred for a city parish). It would comprise some 4,000 acres, including the outlying churches; the Winchester statutes wanted such an outlying church, with cemetery, for every hamlet situated more than two miles from the main church. (Moorman, Church Life, pp. 4-5, 12.)

32. Arch. Cath., codex 98, Constituciones synodales ecclesiae valentinae, fol. 1.

33. Diócesis valentina, II, 129.

34. For example, Arch. Cath., perg. 2,341 (Feb. 7, 1241), a settlement of ecclesiastical affairs including the tithe with a feudal lord, looks forward to "parishioners" and their "chaplain" here, when settlement is made; but this simply safeguards ecclesiastical revenue, without telling us what present or future plans for a resident cleric or for a parish had been intended. Some churches probably had a brief life, soon disappearing; an example is the parish at Mas de Xirosa in 1267 in the Hospitaller encomienda of Cervera, where Berengar Puig is "rector ecclesie Xerer" (Manuel Betí, Ro[s]seIl, pleito que por su dominio sostuvieron en el siglo xiii la orden de San Juan de Jerusalén y el real monasterio de Benifazá [Castellón de la Plana, 1920], p. 15, doc. of Feb. 24, 1267).

35. Honorio Garcia, "La parroquial del Santo Angel de la Vail de Uxó," BSCC, XXII (1946), 320: "quaedam capella intus castrum...cum non habitent ibi nisi sarraceni, nec sint ibi christiani nisi alcaydus et aliqui tabernarii vina vendentes." No church appears for Eslida in the Rallones decimarum either.

36. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,450 (an. 1340): "in quo loco dei servicia cessantur fieri"; "ad completum numerum centum presentibus et recipientibus." See too the Rationes decimarum, I, 263. The rector of Chulilla will also appear, in the early fourteenth century, on the list of pastors who had attended the synods for some time past.

37. Aureum opus, doc. 12, fol. 4v (Nov. 2, 1241): "a finibus termini castri de Almenara quod dividit terminum cum murvedre usque ad Biar vel ultra." See also Collectio conciliorum Hispaniae, V. 189-190. The Visigothic diocese had penetrated inland as far as Alpuente and had run from Silla to Murviedro, at least if one is to believe the division of King Wamba (Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, pp. 204-205).

38. Almizra evolved from the previous agreements of Tudilén (1151) and Cazorla (1179). Castile got most of modern Alicante province, Murcia, and Granada. In 1304 the treaty of Agreda was to put within the kingdom (but not the diocese) of Valencia the territory down to Orihuela.

39. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,309 (June 23, 1240): "usque ad Aichala sub Yorca et usque ad portum de Biar et usque ad Alachant et usque in mari."

40. Ibid. The document speaks of the territory rather than of the diocese of Valencia, a term moreover not applicable in context to the countryside or municipal environs alone; so it is possible that certain tithe rights had been gained by royal gift until such time as the rest of the diocese to the south could be conquered.

41. Gonzalo Vidal Tur, Un obispado español, el de Orihuela-Alicante, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Alicante, 1961), I, 29-30. See also Pedro Díaz Cassou, Serie de los obispos de Cartagena, sus hechos y su tiempo (Madrid, 1895), ch. 2.

42. There have been important changes recently in the diocesan map of the area formerly comprising the Valencian kingdom. Castellón and Segorbe now form one diocese with two centers; a map of the present archdiocese of Valencia, prepared with great care, was published in the 1963 Guía de iglesia en la diócesis de Valencia (see my bibliographical essay). Some idea of the ancient Valencia diocese may perhaps be had from the rare official map of 1761 above in vol. I, following p. 82.

43. Documenta selecta, doc. 318 (Nov. 22, 1317): "magna valde est et difusa."

44. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,091 (July 8, 1248).

45. Arch. Cath., perg. 289 (Aug. 13, 1277): "quod sit unus novus Archidiachonus qui...Archidiaconus Murivetenis appeletur"; and another "qui scilicet Archidiaconus de Algezira vocetur"; the former is to receive 200 "aureos" yearly from the rector of Murviedro. Neither new archdeacon appears in the Rationes decimarum, either because of poverty owing to initial expenses or because effective organization was not yet accomplished.

46. Rationes decimarum, I, 255-260 and 261-267.

47. Though information of value may be found in the prefatory pages of each volume of Rius Serra's edition of the Spanish tax lists (the Rationes decimarum cited throughout this book), a far longer and fuller disquisition on the decimae is supplied by Pietro Guidi as an introduction to his Rationes decimarum Italiae nei secoli xiii e xiv (in the volume Tuscia, la decima degli anni 1274-1280, no. 58 in the series Studi e testi [Rome, 1932]). The quotation is on p. xiii. The payments were due on December 25 and June 4, so that a list for 1279 represents the two lists of the fifth year, i.e. late 1278 and early 1279. See also the remarks of W. E. Lunt in his Papal Revenues in the Middle Ages (New York, 1934), I, 40 ff., 51, 71-75, etc. By the thirteenth century ecclesiastical temporalities, as well as spiritualities, were assessed (p. 73). See too the general treatment by Adolf Gottlob, Die päpstlichen Kreuzzugs-Steuern des 13 Jahrhunderts (Heiligenstadt, 1892), with appendix of Clement IV and Gregory IX on exemptions and problems of collecting.

48. A severe example of this in the kingdom of Valencia occurred at this time. The king writes of the collector: "intelleximus...vos...excomunicasse omnes canones dicte Ecclesie Segorbicensis...qui decimam...solvere recusabant," and have absolved only two (Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 40, fol. 97, April 22, 1278). At the time, the Segorbe church was upset and angry over its great loss of territory (cf. Chapter III, note 74 and text).

49. Rius Serra thought rather the opposite since a few places which did not pay were listed along with their excuses (Rationes decimarum, I, x-xi).

50. This is the conclusion of Guidi (Tuscia, la decima, p. xxxvi) concerning the Lucca diocese for which he has independent, complete listings to serve as checks; his experience with decima lists leads him to conclude that the two-thirds percentage is probably valid for other diocesan lists also (p. 245). Of the parish churches of Valencia city, all are in evidence in our own lists (St. Michael's having just been suppressed, and Peter Martyr's apparently being the former St. Nicholas'); but the sub-church of St. Julian's is not here nor the sub-churches like that of the port (Grao). Income from a church in the Valencia diocese seems not to have been taxed unless about 20 solidi could be realized. There is a scattering of tithes of only 18 on 19 solidi and one of 17; lesser amounts belong to chantry or similar incomes or to what appear to be rare cases of partial default (e.g. St. Andrew's pays 10 solidi on p. 262 but supplements this with 96 on p. 267 for the same year).

51. Rationes decimarum, I, 175-177. Since the assessment itself was nominal "and usually much below the gross income actually received" (Lunt, Papal Revenues, I, 74), deductions and interpretations will always be on the safe side.

52. This is not true of the ordinary diocesan tithe assessed on the resident lord's income, including his rents from Moslems. But the tithe in Valencia was not part of the parochial revenue, and therefore did not affect the crusade tithe required from the local rector.

53. Sanchís Sivera has extracted a great deal of pertinent data from the older local histories for his Nomenclátor de Valencia. The results, though meager for this earlier period, are sometimes quite valuable. On the local histories see bibliographical essay.

54. The king's own figure (in Colección diplomática, doc. 1,341, Nov. 1270) is given in a context of formal recrimination and, if it had been too inexact, would have invited retort from the knightly families whose land grants had been revoked. J.C. Russell, authority on medieval population, arrived at a population of little more than quarter of a million in the fourteenth century, using the monedatge tax records ("The Medieval Monedatge of Aragon and Valencia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CVI [1962], 497). The vastly different internal organization of the modern diocese is not helpful to us; Sanchís Sivera, writing several decades ago, puts it at three hundred and forty parishes, containing a million and a half people.

55. The total number of taxpayers in the twelve parishes of the city in 1355 was 4,729 which gives a city population of almost 30,000 by that time (Russell, "Monedatge," p. 495 with tables).

56. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 16, fol. 192 (June 7, 1270).

57. Almiserá, to judge from its place in the list, refers to this rural borderland, apparently taking its name from an extinct Moslem village. It is not impossible that Almiserat in the Gandía region is meant or even Almizra which stood just north of Biar at modern Campo de Mirra. In all these cases nearby parishes can be found in the tax list.

58. Miguel Gual Camarena, "Contribución al estudio de la territorialidad de los fueros de Valencia," EEMCA, III (1947-1948), esp. the systematic chart on p. 272 and the map on p. 280. Should one be prepared to admit also the possibility of specimens of the old-type iglesia propia, surviving and unrevealed by records? It seems unlikely that many would escape both the tax and synodal listings.

59. See, for example, the patterns worked out by Sobrequés Vidal ("Patriciado urbano," pp. 28-40).

60. In both lists, working from the transcriptions of Rius Serra and Sanchís Sivera, allowance must be made for their occasional lapses. There are curious forms in our several lists: "Nonarres" (Navarrés), "Ans" (Aras), "Albaxeraje" (Alboraya), "Garti" (Gorga; not Garg), "Feta" and "Sera" (Seta), "Oraful" (Jarafuel).

61. Not the Alfafara above Alcoy, but the place near Torrente given to Michael and García Lodréu in 1238.

62. "Archubiis"; perhaps not a satisfactory identification, though in the context it is impossible to suggest a more probable one. It lies just over the modern border, north of Aras de Alpuente.

63. Torre de Espioca itself no longer exists; nor does Rebollet, for which Fuente Encarroz is substituted here; however, there was later a church at the latter place as well, erected in 1329.

64. The jurisdiction would seem to include Cirat, Ayódar, Ribesalbes, Cortes de Arenoso (which appears in the later, synodal list), Puebla de Arenoso, Espadilla, and so on.

65. A problem in identification: "Parcaciis" near Jalón, served by a vicar from Játiva. There is also a "Morariis," perhaps Moraria near Alcira, or Mora just outside the diocese to the west of the churches of the Mijares River. Another problem is "de Senentries de Parataciis," which may represent Senija and Parcent together; if Senentries is Sinarcas, this parish may be deleted from the synodal list which follows ("Senargues").

66. A dubious identification: "Centya," "den Sentiu."

67. Simply Alcalá in the synodal list, Alfandech in the tax list; the identification is probable.

68. Serrella, to the east of Bañeres, is a logical but not necessary identification; context excludes Albalat dels Sonells, while Soria and Soraya are dubious.

69. The knight de Lizana held this from 1238; other owners followed and it reverted to the crown in the early fourteenth century. The rector received a licence in 1334 to absent himself for studies. James I gave a legal decision for Buñol that the Moslems were to pay first fruits to the church here. It was under Siete Aguas later, and not a parish until the sixteenth century.

70. Sanchís Sivera believes this to be Agnes, but this may well have been served from Bocairente; the two places had a total of three hundred and twenty settlers by 1255 (Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 16).

71. Cf. Chapter IV, note 84.

72. Nomenclátor, p. 272; on Canales and Cullena cf. Chapter IV, notes 35, 37.

73. Ibid., p. 224.

74. Except where otherwise noted, the following information has been gleaned from the geographical Nomenclátor of Sanchís Sivera; items may be traced alphabetically. The author drew his information both from documents and local histories; he is a good authority, but not all his evidence has equal value. A dubious methodological principle he resorted to was assuming that churches founded by James I could be discerned from their later titles (see his principle on p. 453); he also speaks loosely of "ancient" or "conquest period" churches, when the evidence does not really carry back into the thirteenth century. Again, the juridical title to a church one hopes will appear is not the same as an actual church in an area already settled; so that one cannot really say of the transfer of title from Segorbe to Tarragona in 1247, for example: "nos prueba su existencia en aquella época" (p. 85). Some of the findings may now be corrected too by such recently uncovered documents as the Rationes decimarum.

75. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 10, fol. 62 (April 28, 1268): "operatorium in A[l]gezira in placia Sancte Katarine que est in carraria maiori eiusdem ville."

76. Aguilar, Noticias de Segorbe, I, 104.

77. The Rationes decimarum for 1275 and 1280 give only the "ecclesia maior de Muro veten" on "rector de Muro veten" (at 600 solidi tithe each time), with a benefice in the church too; and the rector of St. John's of Murviedro, at 155 and 76 solidi, plus a supplementary 131 solidi (see pp. 256, 263, 267). The Nomenclátor gives Holy Savior's; it may be St. John's on it may be a third church (p. 378). The Trinitarian church was St. Michael's.

78. Nomenclátor de Valencia, p. 452.

79. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,874 (Jan. 21, 1266): "capellani Ecclesie de Colera." The Lucena rector is in Bibl. Univ. Val., codex 145, chanter of Alcora; the Morella quote is from Arch. Cath. Tortosa, cajón Diezmos, doc. 25.

80. The original list (see Chapter VIII, note 136) should be examined. It is not difficult to trace "Nichera" to Náquera and "Baleta" to Valle de Segó, or to correct such forms as "Pictacen," "Amacasta," "Alhala," and "Benalcuacir"; but can one be sure that "Captuli" is correctly related to Catadau, "Temis" to Turís, and "Tubar" to Tuéjar? The transcription is not satisfactory, and the document itself needs restudy.

81. Through Almenara, Uxó, Nules, Onda, Bounegre, Alcalatén, Mona, Culla, Ares, Morella, Matarrania, Peñarroya, Flix, Garchia, Marzá, Cabaces, Tivisa, Pratdip, to Coll de Balaguer and the sea.

82. Rationes decimarum, I, 165-178. The tax here was collected, or at least reckoned, in Valencian money; elsewhere in the diocese of Tortosa the solidus of Jaca prevailed. To reconstruct the diocese the only help in the Tortosa cathedral archives, at least in their present half-organized condition, is an 1818 index culling manuscript references to all rectories medieval and modern in the diocese. Of twenty-six entries over half coincide with churches in our own listing.

83. Some modern equivalents for the names in the original lists are suggested in the index to volume one of the Rationes, and by F. Mateu y Liopis in his "La circulación monetaria en las diócesis de Tortosa y Segorbe-Albarracín en el reino de Valencia, según la décima de 1279-1280," BSCC, XXII (1946), 497 ff. There are a few remarks on the thirteenth-century parish at Chert, especially on the raising of a new church, in Miguel Segarra y Roca, Historia eclesiástica de Chert (Tortosa, 1949), pp. 11-13. There was apparently no parish or church at Vail de Uxó (Xon or Son to the Moors); see García, "La parroquial de Uxó," p. 319, and his Notas para la historia de Vall de Uxó (Vail de Uxó, 1962), pp. 44 ff., 75 ff., 80-81.

84. Manuel Beti, Ro[s]sell, pleito que por su dominio sostuvieron en el siglo xiii la orden de San Juan de Jerusalén y el real monasterio de Benifazá (Castellón de la Plana, 1920), p. 15, document of February 24, 1267.

85. See Chapter X, note 133.

86. Cf. A. Amanieu, "Archiprêtre," DDC, I, cols. 1,004-1,026. Even an established diocese like Dax in southwestern France seems to have had no archpresbyteries at all until the second half of the thirteenth century, when they were constituted along ancient geographical divisions (C. Higounet, "Dax," DHGE, XIV, col. 133).

87. Document cited in note 31; "aliis nectorìbus Episcopatus et diocesis."

88. Juan Puig, "Iglesia arciprestal de San Mateo, su construcción, modificaciones impertinentes, su restauración," BSCC, XXX (1954), 72 and n., 73, plates II and VIII; documented from the municipal archives. Monumentos españoles, catálogo de los declarados histórico-artísticos, ed. J. M. de Azcárate, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1953-1954), I, 339, with plan, interior photograph, and bibliography.

89. Bernard's will is in Arch. Nac. Madrid, codex of Poblet (B-1220), pp. 28-34, doc. 12: "Lucas rector ecclesie Castilionis." See also on this church Manuel Sanz de Bremond, "La iglesia arciprestal de Sta. María de Castellón," BSCC, XXIII (1947), 302, 305. V. Traver Tomás, Antigüedades de Castellón de la Plana, estudios histórico-monográficos de la villa y su vecindario riqueza y monumentos (Castellón de la Plana, 1958), pp. 164-165, 223-228 (for the considerable endowment by 1341).

90. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 564.

91. Monumentos españoles, III, 305-306 with plan, interior photograph, and bibliography. Lavedan, L'architecture gothique en Valence, pp. 68-69 and plate II.

92. Lavedan, Architecture, p. 69. The other or cathedral mosque replaced at Segorbe seems ironically to have been itself a reconverted Visigothic church (J. Carot y García, Origen y vicisitudes del templo catedral de Segorbe a través de los tiempos [Castellón de la Plana, 1949], pp. 5-6).

93. Lavedan, Architecture, pp. 69-70, with plate 12.

94. Bibl. Univ. Val., codex 145, doc. 39: "en la porche de Santa Maria de la Iglesia de Morvedre."

95. Monumentos españoles, I, 336 with plan, interior photograph, and bibliography. Lavedan, Architecture, pp. 192-196 with comparisons to the Valencia cathedral and St. Catherine's parish church of Valencia city.

96. Nomenclátor de Valencia, under Puzol.

97. Ibid., p. 399, perhaps an early fourteenth-century structure.

98. Segarra y Roca, Historia eclesiástica de Chert, p. 12.

99. José Vilaplana Gisbert, Historia religiosa de Alcoy desde su fundación hasta nuestros días (Alcoy, 1892), pp. 18-19, 22, 27.

100. Provincia de Castellón (in the Geografía general del reino de Valencia), pp. 501, 360, 461n.; see also pp. 639, 646, and passim. Benito Traver, Historia de Vilarreal (Villanreal, 1909), p. 258.

101. Fortunato de Selgas, "San Félix de Játiva y las iglesias valencianas del siglo xiii," Boletín de la sociedad española de excursiones, XI (1903), 5o; and cf. its plates and plans. See also C. Sarthou Carreres, Datos para la historia de Játiva, 4 vols. (Játiva, 1933-1935), I, 81-86.

102. Quotes from Selgas, ibid. See also Monumentos españoles, III, 303-305 with bibliography.

103. Lavedan, Architecture en Valence, pp. 68, 81-82.

104. So Mateo Rotger y Capllonch believes, in his monograph on Pollensa, one of the eight divisions of Majorca after its conquest (the situation here was analogous to that in Valencia); thus "ecclesia de Ginyent" meant there was a parish and a municipality (ca. 1250), the two being also conterminous. One is reluctant to accept transference of the three words in places thinly settled; besides, "ecclesia" is used several times in Valencian records for semi-public chapels. But the relation, if not the universal identity, between the words is significant. (See Rotgers Historia de Pollensa, I, 126).

105. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 9, fol. 25 (Mar. 7, 1257): "placet nobis quatenus de unaquaque parochia civitatis unus probus horno super predictis officiis...et casis infra civitatem, et super aliis negociis principalibus communitatis qui donent consilium et auxilium..." These men are also to oversee the roads, watercourses, and the like. See Aureum opus, doc. 55, fols. 17r-18v (Mar. 7, 1257). In thirteenth-century Barcelona the seven parishes of the city were its only interior administrative divisions (Font y Rius, "Regimen municipal," XVII [1946], 242-243). In Toulouse at this time all but the most recent of the six divisions of the cité "coincided with [the ancient] parishes or parts of parishes"; the bourg divisions were mostly by gates, but this too may reflect parochial divisions (Mundy, Toulouse, p. 371). The "universitas parrochianorum" in the thirteenth century here even sued in court (p. 372).

106. Aureum opus, ibid.

107. Ibid., doc. 53, fol. 13v (an. 1251).

108. Furs, lib. I, rub. III, c. 30: "sex probi homines sint electi uniuscuiusque parrochiae..."; "iurati cum quattuor hominibus de unaquaque parrochia eligant unum probum hominem et nominent pro lustitia..." See the Aureum opus, doc. 55, fols. 17r-18v (Mar. 7, 1257).

109. "In parroquia Beati Martini" (Repartimiento, p. 656; "in parrochia Sancti Thome," p. 223). Elsewhere in his realms, James sometimes specified a place by its parish: e.g. an alod in the parish of St. Marcellus (Colección diplomática, doc. 791), a castle to be built in the parish of St. Felix (doc. 379).

110. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 10, fol. 69 (July 3, 1258): "illis quattuor operatoriis...in partida Sancti Salvatoris." Two similar examples are given in notes 126 and 132.

111. José Sánchez Adell, "Las murallas medievales de Castellón," BSCC, XXVIII (1952), documentary appendix, doc. 10 (Dec. 26, 1385): "en temps passat" (for the use as administrative units) and "en temps antichs" (for the origin of the divisions). This may not refer back a full hundred years, but it should go back far enough to confirm this point. There was at first only a single parish when James moved the town to its present site, and some time must be allowed therefore for growth. A municipal salary was paid to the layman who headed the parish council here, and taxation for public works was made by parishes, all according to this old pattern (ibid.). The early fourteenth-century parishes and their growth are displayed on maps in Traver Tomás, Antigüedades de Castellón, pp. 162, 171. Cf. Mundy, Toulouse, pp. 155, 371-372.

112. Sanz de Bremond, "Iglesia de Castellón" [XXII (1946)], p. 430.

113. Crònica, ch. 296.

114. Repartimiento de Sevilla, 1,354.

115. Sanchís Sivera, whose Santo Tomás has furnished this information on the Valencian parish structure, is probably using early fourteenth-century documents; but one has no hesitation in subscribing to his conclusíons, both because he knew so well the ecclesiastical archives of Valencia and because it is antecedently improbable that such an organism, which appears full-blown and in possession in the early fourteenth century, did not also exist in the later thirteenth. There are besides hints of it above in the cartas pueblas.

116. Traver Tomás, Antigüedades de Castellón, p. 225. On thirteenth-century power of the purse by laymen in parochial affairs, see treatment of the first fruits on pages 91 ff.

117. "Era pues una institución completamente laica, entre cuyos fines ocupaba el primer lugar el religioso"; this lay domination survived here until the sixteenth century (Sanchís Sivera, Santo Tomás, pp. 31, 33).

118. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 20, fol. 322v (Feb. 14, 1275): "civis Valencie parrochie Sancte Katerine." See also Arch. Cath., perg. 1,351 (June 24, 1274) and perg. 5,975 (April 24, 1251).

119. Their choice was one of the very first activities upon the capture of the capital; the metropolitan "fecit X ecclesias parrochiales in civitate Valentie de decem locis que fuerunt meçquite sarracenorum" (Ordinatio ecclesiae valentinae, p. 233). Whether the choice was influenced by surviving memories of the mosques converted here by the Cid in 1096 is not known; St. Catherine's had become the major mosque at that time (Menéndez Pidal, España del Cid, pp. 522, 807).

120. It is to these that the Ordinatio seems to refer, when it speaks in general terms: "instituit rectores in ecclesiis que sunt extra Valentiam de eiusdem diocesi quarum tenent Christiani" (pp. 233-234). The reference is to hurried acts of diocesan jurisdiction to establish precedent, and it therefore seems unlikely to relate to the business of establishing the more distant network of parishes; besides, the Christians resident in the diocese in these first days were largely congregated near the capital. Escolano has a chapter of dubious value on the Valencia parishes (Décadas de Valencia, lib. V, chs. 4-5). Mentioned in the Repartimiento are: the cathedral (pp. 223, 244, 264, 271, 286, 289, 298, 301, 308, 557, 578, 617, 633, 635, 636), St. Andrew's (pp. 245, 252, 267, 268, 272, 316, 325, 383, 524, 616), St. Bartholomew's (pp. 230, 548, 601), St. Catherine's (pp. 256, 31 1), Holy Cross (pp. 325, 534, 591, 645), St. Stephen's (p. 225), St. Lawrence's (pp. 598, 641), St. Martin's (pp. 231, 268, 281, 304, 313, 318, 656), St. Michael's (p. 604), St. Nicholas' (pp. 384, 647), Holy Savior's (pp. 583, 639), St. Thomas' (pp. 223, 324, 382, 579), the Boatella churches (p. 325), and those of Roteros (pp. 325, 534, 591, 645). Cf. the Chabás index in Episcopologlo valentino, p. 364.

121. It would be possible, with a late nineteenth-century map of Valencia and much patience, to delineate the boundaries of each city parish much as they were from 1238 to 1896, from the streets listed for each of them in Antigüedades de Valencia (II, 410-425).

122. It is not in the Rationes decimarum for 1279 or 1280; nor is Holy Cross, exempt perhaps because owned by the order of Roncesvalles. St. Michael's had been suppressed before the time of this tax list. St. Andrew's crusader-rector was dead in 1279, but the church appears in two entries for 1280.

123. Diócesis valentina, II, 119.

124. Antigüedades de Valencia, 1, 221.

125. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,309 (June 23, 1240): "in tota parochia assignata Ecclesie maiori sancte Marie." In a 1245 document he signed before all the other rectors but as "Clericus Altaris Sancti Petri Ecclesie Maioris"; the prologue of the document shows that clericus and rector are here equivalent terms (Antigüedades de Valencia, I, 212-214). Under the Cid the cathedral parish (at St. Catherine's: see above, note 119) was also St. Peter's altar, named for St. Peter of Cardeña according to Menéndez Pidal (España del Cid, pp. 549-550n.; see also Diócesis valentina, pp. 36-37n., 46).

126. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,229 (June 6, 1270): "in civitate valencie in parrochia sancte Marie sedis."

127. Rationes decimarum, I, 258, 263; possibly he had thirty solidi more from this office; on this, and allied ambiguous evidence, see below, note 130.