[111] The character of a body of clergy, or of a body of laity, is difficult to appraise. The surviving Valencian documents shed some light especially upon the clergy; though what is seen by that light is not always reassuring. Of course, to criticize clerical shortcomings may be only to criticize the times: saying in effect that, where every age has its faults, here are the faults which shadowed medieval times, exacerbated perhaps in the Valencian situation by the circumstances of a frontier environment. The earliest remaining disciplinary decrees for the Valencia diocese date from the year 1255. There are no synods in the thirteenth century for Segorbe. The synodal materials for Tortosa are exiguous and, because of the dual nature of that diocese, ambiguous.

The Cleric

One of the Valencian decrees is concerned with keeping the suburban priests in their parishes, far from the lively capital. Defrauding the parishioners by their absence, and with peril to their own souls as well, "they enter the city more often than is suitable, participating in prohibited and unbecoming actions."⁽¹⁾ They stay overnight and miss the public recitation of the office at their parishes. From now on they are to come in only twice a month, return the same day, arrange for a substitute to provide for the people in their absence, and while in the city attend, properly habited, the chanting of the various hours at the cathedral. One rather doubts that these country priests were enjoying a rousing time in the city, or the legal vocabulary then available would have supplied this rebuke with phrases much more lurid. It is a scene of life, then, and little else.

Specific prohibitions laid down in 1258 draw a composite portrait of the worldly cleric in Valencia, though it would be unfair to fuse all these vices into a single person. He favored the latest in clothing fads, drank in taverns, patronized the budding theatrical life of the frontier ("shows or women singers"), took part in a floating dice game, wandered about the streets and squares, frequented the market place, and was not above the popular diversion of watching thieves hang, heretics burn, or malefactors suffer interesting and sanguinary ends.⁽²⁾ Supposing this composite subject to have had little interest in spiritual things (not at all a necessary deduction), his [112] vices are not yet spectacular; if anything he seems a bit of a bumpkin. This impression is strengthened by the nature of the pastoral admonitions furnished to his companions at this synod. They must not stare into the faces of penitents making their confessions, especially if these be women. They are to show penitents "sympathetic kindness," and they must never "express consternation over the sins however base they be."⁽³⁾ The doctrinal instructions received here are on the same practical and elementary level.

Elaborate dress had been frowned upon by the synods of 1255 and 1258.⁽⁴⁾ "Many," however, were still uncanonically garbed. From 1268 on, a determined effort to dress the clergy more soberly achieved a measure of success. Red, green, and yellow outfits with ermine trimmings had to be put aside, though the wearer might get a year's use out of them since clothing was expensive.⁽⁵⁾ A special cape was to be worn by the priests; this order was later extended to deacons and benefice holders. Similar injunctions were issued in the following year, again in 1273 because "not all" had obeyed, and by the new bishop in 1276.⁽⁶⁾ Some clergy favored "weapons of different kinds, especially daggers, and swords bigger than laymen carry," to the scandal of the Christian community. When traveling outside the city the cleric should wear a sword only of reasonable size, a "Segovian" being recommended.⁽⁷⁾

Dicing, a universal passion at the time, was not without its clerical clients. After 1268 a heavy fine was imposed. In 1273 this was qualified by the sly device of remitting a third of the fine to fellow clerics informing on the culprits.⁽⁸⁾ A more serious lapse, reported only once (in 1268), was that "some" clerics "shamelessly get drunk, and their drunkenness results in the grave scandal of many." A severe fine was decreed, "no mercy to be shown as to its payment," and canonical punishment threatened besides.⁽⁹⁾

A sinister note, not unfamiliar for those times, was sounded in the synods of the early 1260's. Between a regulation about clean altar linens and the propriety of consecrating a new host weekly for reservation, comes the prohibition "that priests may not associate their children with them in the service of the altar because of scandal" (1261).⁽¹⁰⁾ And there is the indignant revelation that "a number of the clergy of our city and diocese use the goods of the church they are in charge of, to buy possessions and property to provide for their children; these they ought to thrust entirely aside if they have any regard for the dignity of their calling."⁽¹¹⁾

Such rebukes almost surely concern the obligation of celibacy. In interpreting them, nevertheless, allowance must be made for the legitimate married status of the more numerous lower clergy. These men were often placed in charge of a church, or subsequently promoted to the priesthood, thus being exposed to the temptation of using their office to their children's advantage. (Perhaps allowance should also be made for a proportion of priestly marriages, illicit yet valid due to some quirk of local custom law.) It [113] is possible that the second text applied only to the legitimately married lower clergy. In any case, one should not condemn out-of-hand men like "the priest Gerald of Massoteres with his daughter Berga" who received property in Valencia, nor the married clergy at the cathedral of Valencia.⁽¹²⁾ Again: when the synods warn Valencian clergy to take a companion as they visit women of dubious reputation, the mild phrasing and the context of concern for clerical reputation show that these were pastoral and not social visitations.

The severe tone of other regulations, however, as well as the context of the times forbid the minimization of clerical immorality in Valencia. AmDiguity disappears in this decree of 1268:

Since we have very often thought it well to warn the clergy, in synods and in visitations of the churches, to cast their concubines wholly aside and live decently as they ought; and since not many of them have bothered to reform because of these admonitions; we decree that whoever were found in public concubinage from the time of the siege of Murcia, or will be so found from now on, incur automatically a penalty of thirty morabatins.

The evil was rooted and of long duration, though its exact extent cannot be determined. Some Valencian clerics concealed their mistresses in another parish.⁽¹⁴⁾ The Furs provided that clerics with women were to lose the benefit of clerical justice and be treated in court as laymen.⁽¹⁵⁾ The next bishop passed legislation similar to that of his predecessor, though this may have been routine; its interest lies in the fact that it specified "that any deacon, subdeacon, or priest" (the orders on whom the obligation of celibacy fell) who "presumes to keep his illegitimate offspring in the house he inhabits" was to pay a fine of 10 gold morabatins.⁽¹⁶⁾

All this undoubtedly relates to the traditional practice of barraganía, a form of lay and clerical concubinage peculiar to the kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula. This was in no sense a marriage, nor yet quite prostitution, but a semi-permanent arrangement which enjoyed (by way of a necessary evil) privileges in law. Its antecedents lie possibly in the concubinage of ancient Rome. Clerics bound to celibacy did not share in the legal toleration accorded; but they were influenced by the custom and by its degree of social acceptability. The thirteenth century saw a determined campaign to reduce and stamp out clerical barraganía. This raised echoes not only in the lower diocese of Valencia but in the northern part of the frontier kingdom as well.

In 1278 the bishop of Tortosa took up the problem in synod. He reviewed the efforts of popes and Spanish bishops so far in this century against "the [114]disease which brings such infamy upon the clergy of Spain." Apparently needing more practical weapons against too widespread an evil, he commuted the standing penalty of excommunication into a severely punitive money fine. Clerics in minor orders were of less concern; their concubinage cases were each to be handled separately. Still, as late as 1343 the Tortosa bishop was to complain of "very many" clerics, tonsured and in minor orders, who keep women despite the efforts of his several predecessors.⁽¹⁷⁾

Confidence in the clergy of the new diocese as a group is not restored by reading the case of the homosexual pastor of St. Nicholas' church in Valencia city.⁽¹⁸⁾ Misgivings are further increased when one encounters the case of a high cathedral dignitary, the sacristan William of Alaric. Charged in court with the abduction and rape of A. March's wife, William arranged for a royal waiver of prosecution. It is not likely that a formal charge of this magnitude, especially where a waiver of prosecution rather than a clearing trial is sought, would prove to be merely slander; slander would have produced a vigorous rebuttal, or at the very least some indication (as happened in similar waivers sometimes) of lack of evidence. William, a very rich man, was probably a priest as well as a major cathedral dignitary.⁽¹⁹⁾ The episode did not prevent his rising even higher; he soon became archdeacon of Valencia. William was more fortunate than his colleague holding the same dignity at this time in the metropolitan cathedral, whose colder passions directed him rather to counterfeiting (coins of copper covered with gold leaf) and thence to jail for life.⁽²⁰⁾

The financial position of the Valencian clergy seems to have been satisfactory; but "some clerics" were not satisfied. The synod of 1262 had to take drastic measures against those who sought to have what was not theirs, and who went so far as to "conceal and hide and transfer to their own purses sometimes the very money left by deceased persons in restitution for injuries or to pious causes for the sake of their souls." By lengthy court action these mean clerics deferred the day when they had to make compensation. This happened "a number of times to our certain knowledge." A "base impiety and horrible sin," it continued so long that by now it had almost been adopted as a custom, according to popular outcry. Therefore, all executors of wills, under pain of excommunication, were to conclude their business within a year of the client's death, meanwhile depositing the legacies "in a religious building." A salaried "patron" was appointed by the bishop to act under oath as defender-at-large of justice in the execution of wills. Sharp lawyers had stimulated the dishonesty, which mirrored some of the furor legalis of the age.⁽²¹⁾

From the beginning there was trouble with certain clerics' selling or pawning chalices and church goods.⁽²²⁾ Others -- the evil seems widespread -- descended like vultures upon the property of their deceased predecessors.⁽²³⁾ Still others negotiated to acquire "several chantries,"⁽²⁴⁾ farming out the [115] duties to salaried vicars. "Many" irresponsibly swore oaths in connection with contracts and then, from avarice or forgetfulness, neglected the obligations thus shouldered. To uproot this last practice, no one in the diocese was allowed any oath of the sort for a full year, under pain of loss of benefice or, alternatively, excommunication.⁽²⁵⁾ In the tithe dispute, settled in 1268, one notes an intemperate urge to take every penny.⁽²⁶⁾

The bishop dared not leave for the ecumenical council at Lyons in 1276 until he had settled the "many dissensions and scandals [which have] sprung up in our church." The canons in charge of collecting sections of church revenues, at a fixed lease price, had gathered the revenues belonging to others also, and refused to make restitution.⁽²⁷⁾ Some canons appropriated more of the living quarters owned by the chapter than they really needed, then loaned or rented them to laymen or to families of lower clerics ("clerics with wives ").⁽²⁸⁾ What seems to have been an undignified scramble for extra houses and rents likewise required regulation.⁽²⁹⁾ The clergy was forbidden to demand or receive anything for ringing the church bell three times to announce a parishioner's death; nor could they keep the chains or goods of Moslem slaves who fled to the church to be baptized. Certain minute offerings were not to be taken unless freely tendered. Elaborate rules were promulgated to regulate funerals.⁽³⁰⁾

A number of poor corpses were the subject of windy dispute, though the adjective "poor" is perhaps ill-chosen. The Moslems had not been long conquered when William Ferrer, pastor of St. Martin's in Valencia city, was locked in litigation with the Mercedarian church of St. Mary's at Puig, over the body of their donné Boniface and the bodies of his two young sons. No doubt Pastor William felt affection for them as being among his first parishioners; besides, they had given the Mercedarians over 2,000 solidi in burial fees. The pastor won the case in 1256 and was allowed to recover the 2,000 solidi and cart away the three corpses.

This sort of thing was not uncommon, nor was the fault on one side. An occasional litigation of the kind would even be expected, to adjust jurisdictions in the new diocese. But as a pattern -- and the many quarrels over revenue in Valencia indicate pattern -- it betrays a malaise, a worldly preoccupation with every petty right or claim. Pope Gregory IX was referring to this kind of greed-inspired litigation, on the scale of a great plague, in his appeal of 1234: "the abuse of litigation would extinguish the law binding men together, and exile harmony beyond the world's frontiers."⁽³¹⁾ Into this same category falls the childishness of the St. Victorian monks, who systematically slandered the Mercedarians as having bribed the king so that Mercedarians might supplant the monks at St. Vincent's.⁽³²⁾ And the first diocesan synod had to order "that the Friars Preachers and Friars Minor be received with honor by the clergy."⁽³³⁾

There was trouble with absenteeism, a problem "in our Valencian diocese."⁽³⁴⁾[116] There was also trouble with wandering clerical guests and adventurers. These clerics, and all others who claimed to be clerics, had to register at the cathedral, according to a regulation of the new bishop in 1276; they had to have a tonsure and wear clerical dress.⁽³⁵⁾ The bishop had made worldly and turbulent clerics the subject of public rebuke during his sermon at the cathedral. The present regulation had been introduced, he told the synod later, "because of the many scandals and frequent quarrels which come before us, very often, on this score."⁽³⁶⁾ This suggests a migration of unbeneficed clergy toward the frontier. In view of the many churches staffed adequately by the time of King James's death, with vicars to supply for the luckier holders of the profitable pastorate, Valencia would seem to have been a land of clerical opportunity. Small wonder if a fringe of enterprising clerical rascals or floaters had been borne in on this tide of settlement!⁽³⁷⁾

Our curiosity is intrigued by a brace of clerical murder victims. The first was William of Caceria, a priest in the household of the royal counsellor Raymond of Montañans; he was gravely wounded at Alcira by James of Canals. When the victim died, James was apprehended, convicted, and dealt with.⁽³⁸⁾ Had this priest been fulfilling some duty, secular or ecclesiastical, with a consequent unpopularity? A Brother William of Talamacha also came to an untimely end; in 1284 a roundup of his assaulters was in progress.⁽³⁹⁾ Was he an overzealous Dominican? A vicious person? A Hospitaller collecting the rent? A brave monk rebuking sin? We do not know.

Some general conclusions may be drawn from these documents, but with caution. Synodal bodies were not given to temperate language. They dealt with the darker side of clerical life. Some of their decrees would be formal and routine, repeating metropolitan or general church statutes. The mere repetition of decrees was not significant, because the modern idea that decrees stand until repealed did not hold; they would need repetition from time to time to stay in force, and the traditional formulas would recur in them.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Other laws would be illuminative of local affairs, but applicable to relatively few or else to matters of little real importance for an estimate of clerical character.

Perhaps most of all our understanding of the word "cleric" needs adjustment. The modern "cleric," chosen and trained by his church and with a substantial measure of authority and responsibility, would be the medieval bishop and priest and in a measure the deacon or subdeacon, though the elements of choice and training were often at a minimum. The other orders would best be understood today if termed "liturgical assistants." Their share of spiritual powers was usually minute. Their qualifications and discipline were a matter of much less control and their morale was consequently lower. If they had no benefice there was no leverage for disciplinary action [117] against them. A few dozen such adventurers who had contrived to acquire some clerical order as a step to better things could distort legislative records, making it difficult to see how the average diocesan cleric did his job. An examination of the kingdom's clergy is concerned not with the wandering rowdy nor with the young pluralist in his city chambers or his castle, but rather with the de facto incumbent -- the pastor, the vicar, and the like. In any event, this less edifying element may be balanced by those few clergy of sanctity and dedication who graced this frontier and whose reputation was to continue down to our own day.⁽⁴¹⁾

Bearing all this in mind, one is left with a clerical society which sheltered a disturbing number of men unworthy of their calling, but in which the majority performed their round of difficult duties with some sense of dedication. This majority stands quietly behind every statute lashing out at the "some" or "several" or even "many." They are present in the document as loudly by their silence as they would be if listed by name. What was the proportion of unworthy men? As high as 30 percent? As low as 10 percent? What was the intensity of dedication in the average decent cleric? It was enough to keep him chained to a monotonous and exacting liturgical routine at an obscure post, to keep him subject to obedience and rebuke, and to keep him (the three major orders) celibate. He may have been much more, but he was not less. Were his sacrifices compensated proportionately by economic security, by authority, and by self-importance, so that his continuing dedication would lose its quality of the admirable? It seems improbable, especially on that expansive frontier.

The taint of greed and the self-righteous legal strife had roots in contemporary society and patterns of life. These and similar defects perhaps reveal the over-all situation in the new diocese as unhealthy. On the credit side of the ledger stand the vigorous legislation, the high concept of the clergy implicit in the lay indignation when reporting some of the defects, and the concern for liturgical prayer-life throughout the diocese.

In judging the character of the majority, it is even risky to assume a gradation from wicked to good; there may well have been, in the circumstances of patronage and frontier opportunity, a contrasting black-and-white. Nor can one argue, as Michavila has recently done, from the state of the higher clergy to a proportionately worse condition of the pastors.⁽⁴²⁾ The canons and dignitaries were the trained university men, the ambitious or talented, and those who knew the proper people, plus a solid corps of men from the feudal families. They were not drawn off, like cream, from the lower clergy.

All in all, though the Valencian clergy were not untouched by the "pride and greed" of contemporary Europe,⁽⁴³⁾ as a body they do seem to have been adequate to the parochial tasks (as then defined) so important to this frontier.

[118] Last Testaments in Valencia

It is easier to analyze the activities of the clergy or to review administrative history, owing to the nature of the documents which would usually be preserved, than to reach a judgment as to the quality of the mass of laymen. Any assessment of the "church," however, must include the laity. Much of what is classed as ecclesiastical institution or custom exists primarily in and through the layman. It is he who gives them vigor and application, or allows them to decline into formalism. He supports or neglects them; he is passive or responsive or indifferent or ambivalent; rejects, vaguely respects, or enthusiastically mirrors and promotes their inner meaning. The individual layman is not only within the institution, he is within it as a constituent, creative cell. He makes the difference between a living institution and a dead one. In this context it is important to remember that even the reluctant, the apathetic, or the rebel in a society will in turn be shaped by its institutions -- as long as these institutions retain their traditional position among the majority, or their vitality among a dynamic minority.

A theological excursus is probably required at this point. One of the fascinating aspects of medieval life is the tension between ideal and reality -- the one exalted and in the stars, the other often a prey of malice and primitive brutalities. To watch medieval people climb the stairway to the stars, and tumble down, and climb again is an instructive exercise in the study of man. These ideals were sometimes fixed, and almost always modified or influenced in some way, by theological notions.

To the medieval man the church was not simply a religious corporation or an institution of fellowship, socially structured and hierarchically organized. It was not only a tribal people of God, a community or Christendom bound into unity by the New Covenant. It was primarily a spiritual "person," whose soul was the Holy Spirit. In this "mystical body" Christ existed, through it He acted, and by it He incorporated into Himself the individual Christian. The visible organism with all its functions was not a different and separate reality, but another mode-of-being of this inner mystical thing, and simultaneously an instrument by which the latter was realized. Theologians like Aquinas, Albert, Bonaventure, and the other thirteenth-century scholastics gave contemporary expression to this ancient doctrine.⁽⁴⁴⁾

The Christian thus possessed an interior second nature, infused into him and fused with his proper nature, by which he communicated in God's own life and was in a sense divinized. He was now to live, suffer, and triumph within his own local context, not merely as consecrated morally to Christ, but as another Christ by virtue of this new and higher life-principle. The medieval man, therefore, embraced a dizzying paradox. He was at once the weak sinner in peril of his soul, inclined to evil and damnation, constrained [119] to walk warily and in penance through his time of earthly trial, and yet even now partaker of Christ and triumphant heir to all creation.

It was precisely to promote this unique kind of identity with Christ, and to intensify one's growth into Him, that the liturgical formation of the medieval man, with its ever-changing cycle of ritual, existed in each parish. And it was in the light of this mystical incorporation that the liturgy was centered around sacred history, unfolding the story of creation, redemption by Christ, and fellowship of the earthly community with the saints and martyrs. The para-liturgical ceremonies worked to the same end, as did the popular forms of devotion and celebration, and even the luxuriant hagiological mythology and symbolism.

The historian is often able to do little more than portray the visible structure of the church, with its evolving shapes. The nature of spiritual activity within the medieval community or individual is a relatively inaccessible object of study. The historian, therefore, contents himself rather with the more prosaic external activities, with good works and bad, with generalizations on moral standards, and with tantalizing glimpses of souls caught at single moments in their unceasing change and growth. In an age of strong clerical supervision, the layman may thus appear more as an object, and the active role he played may be obscured. But his permanent, inner life-pattern and function must never be forgotten, otherwise one loses the key to understanding the medieval layman's psychology. Even those who fell ludicrously short of the ideals implied by their divinized status could not completely escape the mentality and forms induced. This mentality and the devices which promoted it had significance both as cultural conditioner and as cultural manifestation. The significance would be shallow but comprehensive for many, profound and intense for others.

The lay people played a role in the administration of the parishes. They centered their guild life on the churches of the religious Orders. In their last testaments they supported the divers institutions of the diocese liberally. And they rapidly multiplied chantries in the churches. Even the ecclesiastical structure was modified by a sort of public opinion or popular pressure. Reactionary or conservative organizational principles yielded before the people's initiative and enthusiasm, as can be seen for example in the popular support of the Mendicants and in the increasing autonomy of the individual parish church in Christendom during the thirteenth century. The phenomenon of a numerous clergy predicates also a very wide base of relatives and neighbors who in proprietary mood could make known their discontents and needs.

The pertinent documents which survive for Valencia often fall into two classes: those recording unusually bad deeds, and those recording unusually good ones. In the mass of the people one can discern also a few currents; there are examples of heresy and of apostasy to Islam, and of sharp disputes [120] between clergy and laity. When it comes to specific individuals, the documents more usually concern the urban than the rural population. As a whole the people were probably not much worse nor much better than their contemporaries elsewhere, since an excess in either direction would have deposited traces in the not overly discreet documents at Valencia in this period. One may begin by attributing to the populace the characteristics, stupidity, wisdom, good-heartedness, cruelty, shortcomings, and virtues common to people of all times and places, as well as the intense amalgam of all these proper to the medieval man located in the more advanced -- that is to say, southerly -- regions of Europe in the thirteenth century.

These were a religious people as a group, rather ebulliently so, as the general run of Valencian documents demonstrates: the preludes and formulas of the documents, the enthusiasm for church construction at the capital and throughout the realm (when a place as settled as Huesca was still managing with a mosque for its cathedral); the people's religious guilds; their concern for the sick and the poor; their dowering of maidens and building of bridges from religious motives; their preoccupation (when they can afford it) both with a proper funeral and with a steady supply of prayers to follow their departed souls; the indications of so many rural shrines, and so on.

In building their new kingdom the people of Valencia responded to the offer of indulgences. These provided a powerful stimulus for building programs, as in the case of the Dominicans at Valencia city, or in the rebuilding of a bridge there across the Guadalaviar after the destruction during the siege, and in projects for community good generally.⁽⁴⁵⁾ No really dramatic stories of the use of indulgences survive for Valencia; since indulgences were used so effectively in Valencia, however, it may be helpful to insert such a story from King James's recent crusade against Majorca, where conditions were so similar. The dead, remaining in great numbers after the battle, had raised the fear of plague. The bishops therefore offered an indulgence of a thousand days "to every man that should cast out from the city the body of a dead Saracen; then the soldiers, by means of horses and mules and nags, thrust out and dragged from the city all the dead bodies gladly, for the sake of the indulgence; and they made a great pile of firewood and burned them, and in this wise gained their pardon." The incident illustrates the use of spiritual means to serve the commonplace temporal needs of a society; and, while showing the church supplementing for a lack of civil institutions in a specific case, it also demonstrates the esteem of King James's people for indulgences.⁽⁴⁶⁾

In the memoirs of King James one may discern something of the spirituality of his people and, by indirection, of the Valencian portion of it: its touching naïveté, its virile energy, the shrewd eye somehow never straying far from the material opportunities, and finally (decently interred by shame [121] at times) the violent sins which scar it. There is also evidence that the intellectual foundations of the faith, especially on the part of the uninstructed masses, were shallow, and on the part of those with more advantages a shade too arrogantly rationalistic.⁽⁴⁷⁾

The last testaments of well-to-do Valencians reveal something of their authors. Direct clerical influence was at a minimum in the making of Valencian wills, for the clergy were forbidden by local law the office of drawing up these documents.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Most of the wills provide for the poor and the church. Many of them especially remember the wretches carried off to Moslem slavery -- "aware," as the king puts it, "that the ransoming of captives holds chief place among the other virtues."⁽⁴⁹⁾ King James's own life reflected this virtue. In 1276 when one of his household had been made captive, he did not hesitate to stop the royal feeding of a hundred beggars daily to divert this revenue to the captive's release, even though at the time James was close to death and concerned to multiply works of charity.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Earlier he gave a Valencian grant to Ramona Cospin, "houses in Játiva free and frank so that she can sell them right away in order to redeem" her captive husband Dominic.⁽⁵¹⁾ In his autobiography the king even rebukes a crossbowman for cowardice during a Valencian skirmish by telling him that, if the Moors had captured him, he could have been rescued easily for only 150 to 200 solidi.⁽⁵²⁾

Valencian last testaments include such works of mercy, along with works of piety and prayerfulness, as a normal pattern. One citizen, "seized with a serious illness from which I fear I shall die," leaves "fifty solidi for redeeming one captive." He makes provision for his parish church, for each of the other parishes inside the city and in the near suburbs, for the cathedral, its sacristan, two hospitals, five religious Orders, his pastor, and (a lump sum to be spent at the executor's discretion) 150 solidi for other pious causes. Like many of his fellow citizens, he takes care of his debts, lest he be unjust, and sets aside twelve pence for every pastor of the city who appears at his funeral. He is not really a wealthy man, and has family claims to consider, so the proportion of his property given to good causes is generous. He asks to be buried at the cathedral.⁽⁵³⁾

"A citizen and resident of Valencia" leaves small sums to every city parish, a special gift to his own parish and to several religious houses, and something to insure an ornamental tomb in the Hospitaller churchyard.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Another, requesting burial in his brother's grave in the cathedral, arranges for "two clerics to offer requiem Mass for my parents' souls" at their burial place in Zaragoza; 50 solidi are for the poor, 90 more for several religious houses and hospitals, the same amount to the cathedral building fund, and the same to buy a fine bier cloth for his funeral -- later to be sewn into a liturgical vestment, a chasuble. He furnishes 50 solidi for redeeming captives, but looks to a mass freeing of poorer slaves. A typical item, besides the twelve pence for every priest at his funeral, is ten gifts of 10 solidi each to be [122]given to the "embarrassed poor," that is, to people who had come down in the world but would be too humiliated to descend further to begging in public.⁽⁵⁵⁾

A knight of large property gives his saddle, bridle, and war horse to the Mercedarians of Arguines, and arranges to be buried at their church in a splendid tomb. Sixteen hundred solidi go to his parish St. Bartholomew's, from rents on houses in the parish, largely to be used for anniversary Masses. There are smaller gifts for five religious houses and for each of the city parishes, including a special gift for St. Mary of the Sea; he had already given great tracts to Merced.⁽⁵⁶⁾ The wife of another knight, having provided for her debts, a proper burial by the nuns of St. Elizabeth's convent, a chantry, a perpetual vigil lamp, and a chalice of silver, leaves 100 solidi to the cathedral, 200 to the Franciscans, five solidi "to every parish" in the city, and her bier cloth for a vestment.⁽⁵⁷⁾ A parishioner of St. Stephen's remembers the parish and the pastor and leaves sums for five religious Orders and the cathedral. His funeral must be done "splendidly."⁽⁵⁸⁾ A great noble disposes of large sums, with a general direction to divide it "among the Templars, and to other religious Orders and the redemption of captives and the dowering of maidens and the care of the poor, especially the embarrassed poor."⁽⁵⁹⁾ A lady of the city, expressing her desire to be put away "into a tomb of rock" of no mean price (300 solidi), also leaves bequests "for dowering maidens" and "for clothing the poor." She orders bread for the poor on her burial day, many Masses for her soul, twelve pence for every priest at the funeral, a vestment made from her bier cloth, and her beds to be given to the hospital. Each parish, nine religious houses, and two hospitals share from her 100 solidi, and the cathedral receives 200.⁽⁶⁰⁾

Citizen Lazarus of Vilella, glumly admonishing that nothing is more certain than death and nothing more uncertain than its hour, provides in this his last illness for burial at the cathedral, naming one set of executors for his Valencia properties and another for those in the region of Zaragoza. Besides 30 solidi to the cathedral, he leaves 10 solidi to its canons, and 10 solidi to five different religious houses, as well as twelve pence to every parish and twelve pence to every priest present when he is buried.⁽⁶¹⁾ The knight William Ochova Alemán in 1255 bequeaths two silver marks for a chalice at the cathedral, 10 marks for prolonged ringing of bells at his demise, and 300 solidi "for making one Bible."⁽⁶²⁾

It was not unusual in those days, once one found one's foot to be inescapably on the high road to the future world, to assume the habit of a religious Order. The status of these conversi in extremis was something of a puzzle for the canonists, who nonetheless tended to hold the vovent to his vows if he recovered. Some people even assumed this status partly to insure themselves of the superior medical service at the monastic infirmary during their final days. In Valencia the custom led to some sharp conditions being [123] dictated by the bishop to the hospital of the Trinitarians; piety was one thing, but a dead layman was of more value to cathedral revenue than was a dead religious.⁽⁶³⁾ King James himself in 1276 would pass from the city of Valencia to the heavenly city garbed, down all the old warrior's nearly seven-foot length, in the robes of a monk of Poblet.⁽⁶⁴⁾

Civil and Ecclesiastical Legislation

The laws codified in the Furs of the city and realm in 1245 and 1276 have a more universal relevance than the wills. These laws were not royal impositions but the product of a legal commission, presented for criticism and approbation to the nobles, clergy, and townsmen of Valencia.⁽⁶⁵⁾ They were intended to fit the needs of this one kingdom. In matters of daily living they bore the stamp of habits or customs. In general, a disciplinary law should indicate, aside from the common permanent needs of men, either prevalent faults or those not easily tolerated. They may point to either of two extremes, then: public laxity or public reaction and vigilance. No matter which is true of a given law, something of contemporary society can be seen in it, at the very least a sense of engagement with the subject of the law.

The laws against blasphemy, for instance, were severe. Such detailed legislation usually indicates a population who take religion with some seriousness. A distinction was made between thoughtlessly "speaking evil of God or the Holy Mary" (for which a fine of ten solidi or a light whipping was imposed), and a businesslike blasphemy for which one must expect to lose no less than 100 solidi. This latter fine diminished to 50 when apostles were the subject, and to 20 for martyrs.⁽⁶⁶⁾ There must have been a brisk activity in blasphemy-fines, which were handled by ecclesiastical courts, because one of the specific points of friction between the bishop and the archdeacon in the earliest days of Valencia was the possession of such fines.⁽⁶⁷⁾

Perjury, involving a false oath before God, was deemed so terrible as to require no legal punishment at all: "it is enough that Our Lord be its avenger, for a sufficient penalty on perjury is the one which he must expect from Our Lord."⁽⁶⁸⁾ The taking of solemn oaths by high and low was a widespread custom in James's realms and often a legal proof of innocence. This law would therefore have been an absurdity on the part of the authorities unless it reflected a general state of mind at the time.

There was a strange prohibition against publicly fashioning the "faces or images of God or of the saints, or making or painting them in the streets, or placing or carrying them to sell there," with a penalty of 20 solidi. Had this some relevance to the frontier situation, representing Moslem influence or reflecting a desire to avoid occasions of conifict? Was it designed to control inept or even disrespectful rendering or to protect a monopoly?⁽⁶⁹⁾ On Sundays and on Good Friday public baths and ovens were to be closed, and [124] respect for the day shown by all subjects, "for Our Lord Jesus Christ wishes that people so abstain on these days."⁽⁷⁰⁾ (The law added, while on the subject of baths, that men and women were never to use the same public baths on the same days.) On holy days shops had to close, and no one was allowed to work in the fields.⁽⁷¹⁾ There were restrictive laws for Jews and Moors, either curbing irreverence or compelling an outward conformity to certain modes of reverence. A physician summoned to the bedside of a fatally ill citizen was not to give his services if the patient refused to prepare his soul properly too.⁽⁷²⁾ In this connection, the settlement charter for Villahermosa (1243) provided that inhabitants were to be freed from the death duty of one-fifth of their goods if they died fortified with the sacraments or else suddenly; but, "if one will have died in illness without confession and the reception of the body of Christ, by his own negligence, let his possessions be taxed."⁽⁷³⁾ The author of this condition was the former Moslem king of Valencia; it undoubtedly issued from the proverbial zeal of the convert. Exaggerations often point to some more moderate common attitude, however, which in this case would be an appreciation of the last sacraments.

There was no mercy in the Furs for heresy; burning with confiscation of all goods was the punishment.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Even aside from specific statutes like this, the very tone of the code in its expressed general motivation and habitual formulas reveals an attitude of intense seriousness toward religion and an urge to engage it with affairs of practical life. Even allowing for the probable influence of clerical draftsmen and canon law, this tone is striking.

Ecclesiastical legislation yields its valuable items. The diocesan synods were concerned not only with clerical but also with lay discipline. They reveal that as late as 1273 "there are many in our city and diocese who do not know the Lord's Prayer, that is, the Our Father, or else do not know it well; and there are very few who know the Creed."⁽⁷⁵⁾ While this reveals nothing of the people's devotion or morality, it speaks volumes for their lack of instruction, since the Pater and Credo were then the basis of what instruction existed. The clergy were told to chant these slowly and loudly during the office, and to teach parishioners their meaning. The legislation against embezzlement of testamentary funds predicates an even more widespread trust in the clergy, inasmuch as they were obviously so often designated as executors.⁽⁷⁶⁾

Gambling at dice, a passion for the layman at Valencia as elsewhere in the Middle Ages, was forbidden by diocesan synods, partly from puritanical motives and partly because the game easily passed the limits of self-control. Violence and blasphemy were, not rarely, concomitants of this sport. The situation seems to have been a problem of the new urbanism which the clergy were unable to meet with anything more intelligent than a universal ban. There is no record of gambling houses in Valencia such as had to be regulated by Alphonse the Learned in his realms in 1276.⁽⁷⁷⁾ These houses soon must [125] have existed, however, because by 1301 James II had introduced legislation for Valencia prohibiting the public licensing of gambling houses.

Public adultery was a problem, though perhaps uncommon enough. Bishop Andrew had arranged to have such people denounced in church as excommunicates, on every Sunday and feast day. Yet the decree had to be insisted upon later, because the sinners had succeeded in casting doubt upon the intention of the law.⁽⁷⁸⁾ Public sinners, duelists, "those who die in tournaments," and usurers were forbidden ecclesiastical burial.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Some superstition existed, especially sortilege with baptismal water, and divers conjurations by witches at marriages, condemned in a decree of 1258. Was it chance that the celebrated Arnold of Vilanova, who grew up in Valencia during this period, later dedicated his work on magic to the bishop of Valencia ?⁽⁸⁰⁾ A recent student of Valencian life, as it was reflected through the office of justiciar during the century after the Christian conquest, was not at all impressed by the moral tone generally revealed in his sources; but perhaps some allowance must be made in this instance for the fact that police records are always depressing.⁽⁸¹⁾

As for the people's devotional practices, the favorite saints for whom they named churches and chantries reveal a catholic taste. They included the warriors Michael, George, and Martin; the persecuted Christians at Valencia in Roman times Valerius and Vincent; the patron of seafaring peoples (today's Santa Claus), St. Nicholas; those favorites of the western Mediterranean, the penitent Magdalene, Lazarus, and John the Baptist; the protomartyr St. Stephen; and some apostles like Peter, Andrew, and John.⁽⁸²⁾ One historian sees in this choice a proof of dominant settlement by Léridans, and presumably a Lérida pattern of piety and devotions.⁽⁸³⁾ In the rural and non-capital areas, the Virgin and St. Michael were favorites. The choice reflects the choosers -- a seafaring, warfaring, militantly Christian, frontier people, who appreciated the need for penance, were mindful of their continuity with Valencia's Christian past, and could not afford to be unmindful of martyrdom.⁽⁸⁴⁾ Their most sacred days, when even the Jews had to close their shops, were Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the feast of John the Baptist, and certain feasts of Our Lady.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Rental contracts often specified one or more of these days, or else St. Michael's day, for payments. Valencians carried candles and a cross in the general processions. They tolled the parish bell thrice to announce a male parishioner's passing, twice for a woman, and "over and over and over again" for a priest.⁽⁸⁶⁾ They fasted twice a week. At confession they accepted severe penances: pastors were ordered to "impose fasts, alms, pardons, prayers, pilgrimages, and the like."⁽⁸⁷⁾

The "unspeakable public sins," which may have been rare, indicate something of the time and place; they are murder, violence to one's parents, running arms to the Moslems, homosexuality, and heresy -- all reserved to the bishop's forgiveness.⁽⁸⁸⁾

[126] Light and Shadow in the Kingdom of Valencia

A number of guilds or brotherhoods existed in Valencia city, religious in aim rather than occupational, though usually organized around a trade.⁽⁸⁹⁾ They seem to have formed here on the frontier from the very first; a law of James the Conqueror soon controlled their number and perhaps even suppressed them briefly. At this early stage of their evolution they were not so much guilds performing works of charity, as charity expressing itself through the handy form of professional groupings. By 1283 fifteen of them -- including fishermen, tailors, barbers, and notaries -- won a powerful place in municipal government. At the turn of the century, King James II will suppress the lot. Apparently fearful of intrigues and monopolies, he left only the prayer brotherhood of St. James. The later charters of a number of guilds proclaimed that they were revivals of similar organizations well established in the immediate past.⁽⁹⁰⁾ They may even be survivals, if the suppression had involved only a revocation of recognition as a public organization.

In May 1268, King James I allowed the formal and legal existence of the furriers, under Dominican tutelage: "We James,...to honor the Dominican house in Valencia, St. Dominic's, grant that the skin processors of the city of Valencia may establish and cause to be established...lawfully and without any impediment a brotherhood."⁽⁹¹⁾ This is a valuable document, in view of the almost total lack of documentation of the early confraternities. A similar precious glimpse into the existence of this organization, in a Valencian will of 1252, shows that it had been flourishing sixteen years before this charter of foundation; it may have been organized during the decade after the conquest of Valencia city. The will was made by Dominic Calderón, who left" to the confraternity of furriers of Valencia five solidi"; he ordered "that to the same confraternity the twelve pence which I owe them be paid." The Dominicans also seem to have had a brotherhood in honor of St. Peter Martyr from 1269.⁽⁹²⁾ There was a brotherhood at St. Bartholomew's fairly early. In a will of 1261 Bernard of Nausa left it five solidi.⁽⁹³⁾ Another Valencian, García Chicot, in his 1279 last testament spoke of it: "I leave to the Brotherhood of St. Bartholomew, of which I am a brother, five solidi."⁽⁹⁴⁾ A noted brotherhood was that of St. James, a spiritual and benevolent association of a hundred select laymen, and probably their wives, together with a body of canons and clerics. Their center was the altar of St. James at the cathedral, where King James gave some of his rents to found a chaplaincy.⁽⁹⁵⁾ They soon had a little house near the back of the cathedral just off to its right. Peter of Barberá left 20 solidi to them in his will of 1258, one of the two largest items in that will.⁽⁹⁶⁾ Their origins go back to a clerical brotherhood begun at the cathedral in 1246. In 1263 King James gave his official blessing to their formal organization:

[127]Seeing the charities and alms and sacrifices which you canons and clerics, and your companions, perform in the brotherhood you have recently formed under the title "St. James," we grant...that you and the hundred laymen aforesaid may construct and build, and cause to be constructed and built, an altar of St. James in the Valencian cathedral.⁽⁹⁷⁾

The Hospitaller church in Valencia also had its brotherhood; Teixidor thought this the oldest for which a document exists, but earlier evidence has been seen above. The Hospitaller group appears in the will of Bernard Dalmau in 1273: "I admit and profess that I am a co-brother of the house of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and I choose and determine my I burial in their cemetery of Valencia." Bernard was a lawyer, who in 1259 had won from the king as remuneration for his services a pension of two hundred Valencian solidi.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Guilds were not confined to the capital; for example the crown confirmed an existing brotherhood of artisans at Murviedro in 1289. But documentation is richer at the capital.

Pious lay corporations, professional and nonprofessional, were no novelty in Christendom. In the thirteenth century, however, they were emerging in new forms, often closely associated as participants in the prayers and merits of a religious Order, and with a remarkably varied field of action. Besides the expected devotions and the works of mutual benevolence and charity, one finds them fending off wolves, fixing roads, erecting installations against threatened floods, running small hospices, acting as lawmen, fighting usury, caring for strangers, collecting and distributing alms, and so on.

No field of social aid, however bizarre, seems to have been foreign to the brotherhoods of medieval Europe. At Toulouse, just north of the Aragon kingdom, one confraternity fielded five thousand militia for a campaign in the Albigensian crusade. A Valencian confraternity consisted of converts to Christianity -- presumably from the Moslem majority. Information is lacking as to the work being done specifically by the Valencian brotherhoods, though the movement is well documented elsewhere in Europe and Spain. The value of such organizations for a frontier area is obvious, both for the social activities of each group and for the more pervading contribution they would make as framework to the lives of participating citizens. They also cut across the arbitrary parish lines to unite professional or other groups arriving on the frontier from many regions.

In all times and places, scoundrels abound; only an excess of them in quantity or intensity would be pertinent here. Thus, that Roderick of Montoro waylaid the merchant Hugh Robert at Alcira in 1268, robbing him and abusing him and "pulling out his teeth" so that he died, is really of little interest to the history of social morality.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Sometimes, however, the solution of a crime reveals a strong sense of family honor in the population. [128] At Játiva in 1273 one Simon is to be set free by the court if his defense be shown true: that "you found your wife the defunct Tolosa, and A. Sarcedel defunct, committing fornication or adultery together, and you killed them both."⁽¹⁰¹⁾ We may disregard the more colorful vices and violence, where they seem to have no connection with the generality of the population as such.

The red-light district, for which the city of Valencia was shortly to become notorious among the floating population of the maritime world, may not have existed yet. However, there is evidence of prostitution from the time of the crusade. In the book of Valencian land grants, which seems to have something for almost everybody, a house in the respectable Tarragona quarter is conceded to "Mary the Portuguese, prostitute." She may charitably be considered a repentant sinner, or at least retired from her profession. She has as neighbours the houses of two archbishops and of two bishops, as well as a church. There is a grant also to the "king of the harlots," but the literal meaning of arlot is "youth". This functionary may be the superintendent of court troubadours and entertainers, as Vincke believes; or he may already have become what he certainly was in Valencian legislation of the early fourteenth century, the municipal master-pimp.

Legislation on the subject of prostitution began in Valencia with the reform law of 1311; by that time severe measures were required to discourage the business, and this reflects on the preceding decades as well.⁽¹⁰²⁾ It is probable that during the thirteenth century the prostitutes had been gathering already into that pleasant spot just beyond the walls between Roteros, La Pobla, and the Moslem quarter.

The institution of slavery, with its inevitably corrupting influence upon the owners, merits at least a passing notice. It was not uncommon in the realm, though not yet so very widespread as it was to be in the next century.⁽¹⁰³⁾

The nobles of the countryside assay a certain percentage of shabby personalities. They mounted a sustained opposition, for instance, against the conversion of the Moslem workers, even when the latter were freemen. The reason lay in the consequent diminution which the ecclesiastical tithe would make in the owner's own revenue.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ One also discerns an instinct in this gentry toward insinuating a hand into the revenues of church and monastery. Among those who "do not fear God nor honor man,"⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ as King James complained, there was a rowdy delight in damaging religious houses.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ These were general conditions, and Valencia may even have suffered less from them than did other realms of King James, though the charters of protection frequently given suggest otherwise. A number of papal and local ecclesiastical decrees, condemning those who misused or unjustly held church property and dating from this period, are found in the archives of the cathedral of Valencia. King James thought knights "bad people" in general "because there are no people in the world so arrogantly highhanded [sobrer] [129]as are knights."⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ But James was not as objective an observer in this matter as one might wish.

To curb such violence, the king gave his charter of protection freely to churches and churchmen in Valencia. Those holding it could carry royal pennants and fly them on their houses. A breach of such a charter could bring swift retaliation from the king. The Furs demanded restitution and double damages from the culprit; the charter often specified a severe fine besides; and the king would take such further action as his wounded dignity required and his limited armed forces allowed.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ One such charter (1254) the bishop and canons of Valencia set the fine at 1,000 morabatins and secured the beneficiaries from seizure of goods for various legal causes.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Some of those charters given to clergy or religious in the realm of Valencia are short and formal, others impressively elaborate.

The unpleasantries of the nobility against clergy can more usually be ascribed to such origins as feudal rivalry for property or grievances over the tithe, rather than to spiritual dissatisfaction. This may be why James, in giving to the church the town of Puzol, promised to guard them in the holding against all opposition but "particularly against William of Entenza and his supporters."⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Considerable numbers of nobles could be generous, a number of them even to the point of heroism. Some landowners of the kingdom joined the Order of Merced, bringing with them their properties. A man in Villarreal gave up his estates in his own lifetime to found a hospital. The high noble William of Cervera, one of the king's closest friends and advisers, became a Cistercian (his brother was already abbot of Poblet).

The appearance of a few people eminent for their attempts to recreate Christ's personality under a form suited to their times and environment betokens a segment of population religious enough to discern their merit (for canonizations then depended as much upon popular advocacy as upon intrinsic merit) and to be influenced by them. On the other hand, the rise of such men to prominence may seem less a tribute to a society capable of producing them than a measure of reaction by part of that society to contemporary wickedness. The Valencian saints, separately discussed in an appendix, were not products of the Valencian scene in this early period, but shapers of it.

A number of relevant topics have not been touched, such as the violence and even fanaticism of religious feeling among the masses, or the attitude of Christians toward converts from Islam and toward the Jews, or the unhealthy influences of urban poverty and clerical inadequacies. It suffices, for the scope of this undertaking, to have seen the mutual causality of people and institution. That is, the institutions were not just outside the people, directing them; they were rather a body to which the people were a soul. The institutional mechanisms could not properly operate on the frontier unless one supposes this financial and moral support, this esteem and active [130] cooperation and participation by the laity. Through these institutions the populace or a considerable portion of it was both answering a need it felt and expressing itself. Through activities, laws, generous legacies, and compliance with restrictive ecclesiastical injunctions, it manifested underlying aspirations and principles which formed a recognizable mentality, a climate of public opinion.

The foundations may have been weak. A lack of instruction is evident, a strain of materialism, and a sufficiency of clerical and lay scandal. The interaction of populace with institution nevertheless persisted; through this interaction the people were as much creative agents of the institutions as they were its acquiescent instruments. Despite the small number of settlers the intentions and spirit of the frontier people, incarnate in their institutions, were adequate to the task of imposing the Christian pattern of society, the communal personality, upon the conquered land.

1. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 197: "ingrediuntur civitatem frequentius quam expediebat...illicitis et inhonestis se actibus immiscendo." La Fuente considers these early synods of Peralta and Albalat "curiosísimos para el estudio de la disciplina y liturgia del siglo xiii en España" (Historia eclesiástica, IV, 260).

2. "Constitutiones," p. 201. "Spectaculis vel choreis mulierum" may have been the work of wandering entertainers. See R. S. Loomis and G. Cohen, "Were There Theatres in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries?," Speculum, XX (1945), 92-95. More to the point, the great metropolitan council for the realms of King James, held at Lérida scarcely a decade before the fall of Valencia, warned the clergy: "ioculatoribus, mimis, et histrionibus non intendant" (Colección de cánones, III, 333, no. 9).

3. "Constitutiones," p. 198: "in spiritu lenitatis eis compatiendo"; "nec admirentur de commissis quantumcumque turpibus." In the Summa of Penyafort there is an instruction on hearing confession (lib. III, tit. XXXIV).

4. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 197 (an. 1255); also p. 201 (an. 1258): "clerici pannos listatos non portent, nec manicas sutitias, nec sotulares rostratos, et maxime Presbyteri."

5. Ibid., p. 208: "pannis rubeis, viridibus et croceis in chilamydibus Chori longis, et colorum similium."

6. Ibid.: "non omnes" (an. 1273); ibid., for synod of 1269.

7. Ibid.: "arma portant diversorum generum, et signanter costalarios, et gladios maiores quam laici"; "portent ensem pennatum vel Segovianum publice." They are to put this aside after arrival in a town (an. 1269).

8. Ibid., pp. 201, 208; "ita quod probari potest," the latter decree prudently adds. Penyafort has a long treatise on clerical dicing in his Summa (lib. II, tit. VII).

9. "Constitutiones," ibid.: "nonulli se inebrient impudenter, et eorum ebrietas cedat in grave scandalum plurimorum." There is to be "nullam super hoc misericordiam habiturus."

10. Ibid., p. 199: "ne Sacerdotes habeant secum prolem ad servitium altaris propter scandalum."

11. Ibid., p. 207: "quod plures Clerici nostrae Civitatis, et Dioecesis de bonis Ecclesiae, cui praesunt, emunt possessiones, et immobilia ad opus filiorum suorum, quos debent prorsus a se abiicere, si Ordinis honestatem attenderent."

12. Repartimiento, p. 493: "Geraldus de Massoteriis sacerdos cum filia sua Berga." See cases below, in note 28 and text.

13. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 208: "item cum multoties, tam in Synodis quam in visitationibus Ecclesiarum, Clericos duxerimus commonendos, ut abiectis a se penitus concubinis, honeste viverent, ut deceret; nec propter hoc multi ex ipsis se curaverint emendare; statuimus, quod quicumque fuerunt inventi publici concubinarii a tempore obsidionis Murciae, vel de caetero poterint inveniri; ipso facto triginta morabetinorum poenam incurrant..."; "qui de caetero de tam damnato coitu generabunter, distrahendos esse censemus." Cf. Penyafort in his Summa, lib. III, tit. XIX, "de filiis presbyterorum et caeteris non legitime natis."

14. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 208.

15. Furs, lib. III, rub. V, c. 8: "enadi lo Senyor Rey que clergue que port corona, a haje muller, sie tengut de respondre en poder de la cort del loch de tot pleyt."

16. Sanchís Sivera, "Derecho valenciano," p. 145: "prohibemus ne quisquam diaconus, subdiaconus vel sacerdos civitatis vel diocesis Valentine, prolem suam illegitimam in domibus quas habitant tenere presumant."

17. Viage literario, V, 284-287, 311 (Tortosa synods). See also "Barraganía" in the Enciclopedia jurídica española, 30 vols. (Barcelona, 1910), IV, cols. 277-282, and the shorter article in the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada [Espasa], VII, cols. 894-896; E. Jombert, "Concubinage," DDC, III, cols. 1,513-1,524; A. Aunós Pérez, El derecho catalán en el siglo xiii (Barcelona, 1926), pp. 68-70; Bienvenido Oliver, Historia del derecho en Cataluña, Mallorca y Valencia, código de las costumbres de Tortosa, 4 vols. (Madrid, 1876-1881), II, 349-353. For the Tarragona metropolitanate area see the laws of the provincial council in 1229 against clerical concubinage and lay "contubernia" in Colección de cánones, III, 332-333, 335.

18. Documents in Chapter V, note 135.

19. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 12, fol. 62 (June 1, 1262). "Per nos et nostros remitimus, absolvimus et diffinimus vobis dilecto nostro Guillermo de Alarico [Alarch?] Sacristano Valencie et familie vestre et vestris imperpetuum omnem petitionem, questionem et demandam et omnem penam.. . quam contra vos et dictam familiam vestram et bona vestra possemus facere movere infligere vel imponere ratione sive occasione querimonie quam A. March contra vos opponebat coram nobis pro facto uxoris sue quam ut ipse asserebat vos cum dicta familia vestra in Gerunda abstuleratis et eam carnaliter cognoveratis. Ita quod ratione predicta non teneamini nobis nec dicto A. March nec alicui alie persone unquam aliquo tempore in aliquo respondere." Since Bishop Andrew wished the office of sacristan to be held only by a priest (Constitutiones sive ordinationes, fols. 57v-58r, an. 1255), William of Alaric may well have been one. In 1271 William appears in a document loaning the prince a thousand solidi of Jaca (Reg. Canc. 28, fol. 32, May 31, 1271).

20. The trial record of this Blaise (Blasco) Pérez is preserved at Zaragoza, dated 1267 (MSS, Diputación del Reino de Aragón). King James tells the story in his Llibre dels feyts, chs. 465-470. Was it in order to pass his coins freely that he and a pensioner of the diocese obtained from the crown a license for treasure hunting ("liberam potestatem querendi thesaurum subtus terram in termino Tirassone")? See Itinerari, p. 366.

21. "Constitutiones synodales," pp. 205-207: "item, quia cum avaritia, quae est idolorum servitus, nonnullos Clericos adeo excaecet, quod non solum non contenti terminis, et stipendiis suis, aliena qualitercumque habere satagunt, sed ipsos etiam exponendo venales..."; "illud modicum, quod ipsi defuncti pro suis restituendis iniuriis, vel ob modum, et remedium animarum suarum, ad pias caussas reliquerunt, aliquando subticent, et occultant, et in proprias bursas convertunt." The legacies are to be placed "in Aede sacra." The sin was "quaedam turpis impietas et peccatum horribile" which "quasi in consuetudinem fit redacta."

22. Ibid., p. 201. Bishop Jazpert will later rebuke this at some length as an ingrained evil ("huic morbo letali...in nostra diocessi dampnabiliter inolevit") of "some" -- whether cleric or lay is not specified. All sorts of church goods are thus sold, "maxime calices ubi Corporis et Sanguinis Domini beatissimum conficitur sacramentum." (Sanchís Sivera, "Derecho valenciano," p. 146.)

23. Sanchís Sivera, ibid.; this too may apply to the laity.

24. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 207: "plures Cappellanias" (an. 1263).

25. Ibid. (an. 1263).

26. Treated in Chapters VIII and IX.

27. Constitutiones sive ordinationes, fols. 70r-71: "quod multae dissensiones et scandala in nostra ecclesia multoties sunt exorta."

28. Ibid., fol. 26v (an. 1286).

29. Ibid., fol. 28v (an. 1286).

30. Arch. Cath., perg. 6,082 (April 27, 1268); Aureum opus, doc. 22, fol. 11r, v (May 8, 1247); Colección diplomática, doc. 941. Cf. also the opinions of Penyafort in his Summa, lib. I, tit. XVI.

31. Faustino Gazulla, "El puig de Santa María," doc. 2 (Dec. 9, 1256), Congrés III, 649-650. Arch. Vat., Reg. Vat. 17 (Gregory IX), fol. 206v (Sept. 5, 1234); cf. Registres, I, no. 2,083: "ius humani federis litigatorum abusus extingueret et...concordiam extra mundi terminos exularet."

32. See Chapter XV, note 129 and text.

33. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 200: "item mandamus, quod Fratres Praedicatores et Minores honorifice a Clericis recipiantur."

34. Sanchís Sivera, "Derecho valenciano," pp. 143-144; "in nostra diocesi Valentina"; for three months' absence excommunication is decreed. Cf. pp. 142-143 (an. 1258). "Citamus talem et talem," says another decree, "qui sine licentia nostra se illicite se [sic] absentant, ut infra duos menses, et alii absentes infra sex menses" ("Constitutiones synodales," p. 202, an. 1258).

35. Sanchís Sivera, "Derecho valenciano," pp. 144-145.

36. Ibid.; "propter multa scandala et frequentes quaerelas quae ex ista causa coram nobis multoties perveni[u]nt."

37. See Chapter IV, note 136 and text.

38. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 60, fols. 68-69r and 88v; Reg. Canc. 61, fol. 120 (March-April 1283), four documents. "Guillem de Caceria presbiterem et familiarem dilecti nostri Raimundi de Muntanyana consiliarii dicti domini Regis" is the victim. Caceria may be Cáceres, or perhaps Cárcer. On William see Chapter II, note 127 and Chapter V, notes 15, 29 and text.

39. Arch. Crown, Peter III, Reg. Canc. 76, fol. 221 (July 8, 1284). The king tells the justiciar of Morella "quod custodiat bene et diligenter los [sic] de Vilarnau quos captos tenet racione mortis fratris G. de Talamacha de qua fuerunt predicti inculpati, et quod capiat quoscumque invenerit culpabiles in dicta morte." The king gives his attention to this business from his camp "in obsidione de Albarrazino."

40. Moorman, Church Life, p. 267n.

41. See Appendix II, "Saints on the Valencian Frontier."

42. Antonio Michavila y Vila, "Apuntes para el estudio de la vida social del reino de Valencia en la época de los reyes de la casa de Aragón," Congrés III, II, 144-145.

43. "Orgoglio e cupidigia," a phrase used to characterize Assisi by a contemporary chronicler (St. Francis of Assisi, the Legends and Lauds, ed. Otto Karrer [London, 1947], p. ix).

44. See in this connection the chapter on the corpus mysticum by Ernst Kantorowicz (The King's Two Bodies, a Study in Mediaevai Political Theology [Princeton, N.J., 1957], ch. 5) and the works of Mersch, Ladner, de Lubac, and others whom he cites; though the theological foundations are slighted in favor of the external juristic and institutional aspects, one can see how popular at this period was the concept of the corpus mysticum, even to its being applied in a sort of secular analogy to the very different idea of corporate personality, thus becoming significant in the origins of modern patriotism and nationalism.

45. See Chapter XI, note 53 (Dominican church) and the indulgence in the Ordinatio given at St. Vincent's for a bridge.

46. Desclot, Crónica, I, ch. 47.

47. The subject will be dealt with more fully in my work, now in progress, on the Moslem problem in the kingdom of Valencia.

48. Furs, lib. IX, rub. XIX, c. 7.

49. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,069 (June 13, 1251): "attendentes quod redempcio captivorum inter ceteras virtutes obtineat principatum."

50. Itinerari, p. 537, doc. of July 23, 1276.

51. Repartimiento, pp. 460-461: "Raymunde uxori Dominici Cospin: domos in Xativa franchas et liberas ita quod incontinenti possit eas vendere prae redemptione sue corporis."

52. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 229.

53. Arch. Cath., perg. 5,975 (April 24, 1251) will of Peter Armer: "gravi egritudine dete[n]tus de qua mon timeo" -- one of several formulae; and "quinquaginta solidos in redempcione unius captivi." One bequest is for the port (Grao) church: "item operi sancte Marie mans, ii sol." There are two documents on a property of Armer in the cathedral archives; his wife was Mary; his son, daughter, and son-in-law appear by name in the document quoted in Chapter XI, note 87.

54. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,351 (June 24, 1274) will of Peter Abrafim: "vicinus et habitator Valencie."

55. Arch Cath., perg. 2,917 (June 4, 1275); of Petrus Marchesii (March, or Marqués) whose brother was already buried at the cathedral: "duo clerici qui celebrent missa[m] de requie pro anima [sic] parentum meorum"; "ita quod dantur cuilibet captivo ii solidi." On Marqués see Chapter XV, note 153.

56. F. Gazulla, "Los mercedarios en Arguines y Algar (siglo xiii)," BSCC, VI (1925), 69.

57. Arch. Cath., peng. 5,011 (Mar. 16, 1256) will of Jordana, wife of the knight John Garcés of Mazón: "item dimito omnibus et singulis operibus Ecclesiarum parochialium Valencie infra muros eiusdem unicuique earum quinque solidi."

58. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,105 (Nov. 13, 1271) will of Barberan Oller: "honorifice."

59. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,098 (May 22, 1268) will of Jazpert, viscount of Castellnou: "inter Templarios et alios religiosos et captivos redimendos et ad virgines manitandas et reservandos [?]pauperes maxime verecundos."

60. Arch. Cath., pergs. 3,910 and 3,507 (Oct. 16, 1272): "in tumulum de petra"; "pro virginibus maritandis" and "pauperibus induendis." She is Guillelma (Willelma), daughter of William of Soler and wife of Peter Gilabert. Twenty solidi seem to be given to a confraternity at the cathedral, "et quod detur eis victus una die"; a similar bequest to the "fratribus Sancte Marie" is in the will of Peter Marqués (document in note 55.)

61. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,330 (May 11, 1259). Perg. 5,980 (Dec. 30, 1257) is a similar will, rather too dim for comfortable detailed analysis.

62. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Valencia, Franciscanas, Concepción, leg. 2125, arm. 45, fab. 2 (Jan. 15, 1255): "ad opus unius biblie." The name may also be spelled Alamany or Alemany.

63. Arch. Cath., perg. 1,216 (July 25, 1257). See J. Bonduelle, "Convers," DDC, IV, cols. 562-588; Moorman, Church Life, p. 300 for the infirmary service.

64. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,009 (July 21, 1276): "noveritis quod nos, volentes ex nunc Dei servicio totaliter intendere, ut Paradisi gloriam facilius consequi mereamur, suscepimus modo habitum ordinis cisterciensis et destituimus ac relinquimus canissimo filio nostro infanti Jacob, regnum et terras..." And in his Llibre dels feyts, the writer of the last chapters says for James: "I became a monk of that Order" (ch. 565).

65. Furs, lib. I, preface.

66. Ibid., lib. III, rub. XXII, c. 8: "si alcun jurara en joch dient mal de Deu, e de sancta Maria, pach X solidos o nuu sossira X açots...si alcun dira mal de deus: o de sancta Maria pach C solidos et si dira mal dels Apostols pach L solidos, e si dels Martirs sancts XX solidos." The whipping, "nuu," as we learn from a later (1342) addition, applies to men and women ("nudi...tectis dumtaxat brendis") but is commuted to a money payment at least from the latter date, for those whose status is above that of manual laborer.

67. Arch. Cath., perg. 2,310 (June 14, 1242), with perg. 2,312 (Feb. 11, 1243).

68. Furs, lib. II, rub. XVII, c. 13: "assat es que nostre Senyor ne sie venjador. Car abaste la pena del perjuri la qual spera de nostre Senyor." The prospective grantees of the Peñíscola territory were to swear upon the four Gospels that they would reside upon the properties received, residence being a sore point with the authorities at that time (Arch. Nac. Madrid, Montesa, R95; Jan. 28, 1250).

69. Furs, lib. I, rub. XV, c. 1: "les vults ne les ymatges de deus ne dels sancts no sien entailats publicament ne feyts ne pintats en les places, ne sien posats, ni portats a vendre per les places, e qui ho fara pach vint sous per pena." Light may perhaps be thrown on this prohibition from a similar later law (1375) designed to control the unseemly multiplications of images on clothing and the like (cf. Escolano, Décadas, I, 527).

70. Furs, lib. IX, rub. XXIII, c. 10: "sia celebrat de tots Chrestians, e de juheus, e de sarrabins: car nostre senyor Iesu Christ volch que hom se abstengues..."

71. lbid., lib. I, rub. VIII, c. 2. A law passed at this time in Lérida reminded barbers that "neither they nor a substitute may presume to cut hair or shave anyone from the evening before a Sunday or feast. . . after the time arrives in which one cannot shave without a light," until the dawn of the day after the feast; nor may they lend the equipment to a client to serve himself (Colección diplomática, doc. 587, Sept. 17, 1257).

72. Furs, lib. IX, rub. XXXII, c. 1: "si doncs primerament lo malalt no haura presa penitencia" (apparently referring to impenitent public sinners).

73. "Colección de cartas pueblas," no. XV, pp. 166-168: "si obierit [in] sua egritudine sine confessione et receptione corporis Christi sua negligentia quintetur suum haver."

74. Furs, lib. IX, rub. VII, c. 63: "sien cremats"; confiscation in c. 70; outlawing in lib. I, rub. VII, c. I.

75. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 208: "multi sunt in nostra civitate, et Dioecesi, qui ignorant Orationem Dominicam, sciicet, Pater Noster; seu ipsam perfecte non sciunt; et sunt paucissimi qui sciunt Credo in Deum."

76. See Chapter I, note 29 and Chapter V, note 8 on the prohibition of clerics drawing wills.

77. Sanchís Sivera, "Vida íntima," pp. 114-115. Later problems were caused by the loafers who, for lack of a convenient public shelter from sun or rain, stepped into the cathedral to continue their dice or cards, and also people who carried along lunch to devotions (ibid., pp. 112-113, citing Aureum opus for 1314; this is a relatively late legislation). The cemetery was a favorite gaming place too, according to this law. Packing a bit of lunch to long devotions is an eccentricity not unobserved in the churches of some lands in our own day; as for getting out of the sun, an English tourist of a generation past reported a horse stepping into the cathedral of Pisa for this purpose and remaining there unremarked and undisturbed by the devout.

78. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 208.

79. Viage literario, 1, 183-188, doc. 3, a codification of funeral customs by Bishop Deçpont near the end of the century; "illi qui in torneamentis moriuntur."

80. "Constitutiones synodales," pp. 198, 200: "et caveat Sacerdos, ne de aqua baptismali sortilegia fiant"; "ne sortilegia fiant, nec maleficia nec ligationes, quae fiunt per malificas mulieres" -- at marriages; under pain of excommunication. Cf. also above, Chapter II, note 65 and text on Arnold of Vilanova's dedication to the bishop of Valencia of his work on witchcraft.

81. F. A. Roca Traver, citing his unpublished book "El justicia de Valencia," in his "Vida mudéjar," p. 147 and n.

82. St. Martin also recalls the Carolingian antecedents of the Catalans; Holy Savior was a devotion widespread in early thirteenth-century Catalonia.

83. F. Mateu y Llopis, "Lérida y sus relaciones con Valencia" (running title for "Datos y documentos para la historia monetaria de Lérida, siglos xiii a xviii"), Ilerda, V (1945), 41-43; there is much supporting argumentation in this article for the similarity of the two populations.

84. The twenty-four parishes of Seville also recently conquered by the Christians included most of these titles, with understandable local deviations. These invocations were also found in the dioceses of origin of many of the Valencian settlers, whose tastes had been formed in those places previously. To some extent therefore the choice must have been conventional and reflexive. But, since it was a free choice, designed to please the people and conform to their devotion, it is not without significance. See Repartimiento de Sevilla, I, 356, and chart on 357 for variant patterns of the Castilians.

85. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 80v (Feb. 23, 1268); cf. Furs, lib. I, rub. VIII, c. 2. On feast days and fast days, what to do and what to avoid, the contemporary Catalan spirit is reflected in Penyafort's moral Summa, lib. I, tit. XII, esp. no. 2.

86. Viage literario, I, 183-188, doc. 3: "saepe atque Saepissime."

87. "Constitutiones synodales," p. 199; "debent enim iniungere [confessores] ieiunium, eleemonsynas, venias, orationes, peregrinationes et huiusmodi."

88. Ibid., p. 198: "peccata enormia...publica."

89. For evidence for early existence of trade brotherhoods in Valencia and some discussion of their nature see Luis Tramoyeres Blasco, Instituciones gremiales, su origen y organización en Valencia (Valencia, 1889), pp. 41-51; Leopoldo Piles Ros, Estudio sobre el gremio de zapateros (Valencia, 1959), pp. 15-19 and ch. 6; the Marqués de Cruilles, Los gremios de Valencia, memoria sobre su origen, vicisitudes y organización (Valencia, 1883) under individual trades (e.g. pp. 62, 65, 79, 136, 143, 148, 152); Francisco A. Roca Traver, "El gremio de curtidores de Castellón: unas ordenanzas desconocidas del siglo xiv," BSCC, XXVI (1950), 195-215 with the thirteenth-century documentation cited; Roca Traver's more general article, summing much of our present knowledge on the thirteenth-century brotherhoods, is cited below in note 97. José Ibarra y Folgado, Los gremios del metal en Valencia...en los siglos xiii al xviii (Valencia, 1911) has little for this period. In a more general way, see the survey of Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Historia de la previsión social en España, cofradías, gremios, hermandades, montepíos (Madrid, 1944), esp. ch. 5 on medieval background, and appendix of documents and lists of brotherhoods. H. Durand has an article "Confrérie" in the DDC, IV, cols. 128-176.

90. The brotherhoods may be found in Gremios y cofradías de la antigua corona de Aragón, ed. Manuel de Bofarull y de Sartorio, 2 vols., Colección de documentos inéditos del archivo general de la corona de Aragón, XL-XLI (Barcelona, 1876), I, docs. 4 ff. On these brotherhoods see too below, chapters on the Orders.

91. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 15, fol. 98 (May 3, 1268): "nos Jacobus...ad honorem Sancti Dominici domus fratrum predicatorum Valencie, concedimus ut pelliparii civitatis Valentie quod faciatis et facere possitis...licite et sine aliquo impedimento confratriam."

92. Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Val., Franciscanas, leg. 2,124, arm. 45, fab. 2 (Mar. 3, 1252): "et dimit[t]o confraternitati pellipaniorum valencie y sols et quod solvatur xii d. eidem." Is this the Dominic pelliparius of Itinerari (p. 197, June 21, 1249)? The pelliparius was processer of furs and skins after the tanning. On Pelliparius (Pellicer) as a family name see Chapter VIII, note 82. Teixidor considers the Peter Martyr brotherhood in his Capillas y sepulturas del real convento de predicadores de Valencia, 3 vols. (Valencia, [1755] 1949-1952), III ad initium; for the furriers he could push the date back only as far as 1290.

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

94. Arch. Crown, Peter III, perg. 166 (Oct. 24, 1279): "dimitto confratrie Sancti Bartholomei cuius sum confrater quinque solidos." Chicot (Xicot in the document) was a "vicinus et habitator Parrochie Sancti Bartholomei Valencie" in whose cemetery he was to be buried; he left five solidi to the rector and five to the "opus" (building, or perhaps furnishing and upkeep) of the parish church. At Toulouse, confraternities were "among the earliest associational forms known," and "were known all over the Midi at this period" (for their activities see Mundy, Toulouse, pp. 55, 64, 267-268, 276).

95. Colección diplomática, doc. 1,051 (Jan. 28, 1246). King James was not the founder of the group, though King Peter IV in 1371 was later to make that claim; it was a spontaneous association of local origin. King James I appointed as lifetime chaplain to the altar of St. James the priest James of Brull (ibid.); this priest later also received the secretariate of the town of Elbayo (Itinerari, p. 460, Mar. 23, 1272).

96. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 1,556 (Jan. 29, 1258).

97. Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 12, fol. 23 (April 29, 1263): "attendentes caritates et helemosinas ac sacrificia quas et quas vos canonici et clerici...cum suis confratribus facitis in confratria quam nunc fecistis et vocatur Sanctus Jacobus, per nos et nostros concedimus vobis predictis canonicis et clericis quod possitis recipere in dicta confratria centum laicos...[et] concedimus in hunc modum quod vos simul cum centum laicis predictis construatis et hedifficetis et construere et hedifficare teneamini altare Sancti Jacobi in Sede Valencie ex quo dicta confratria ut dictum est Sancti Jacobi nuncupatur." Cf. the Antigüedades de Valencia, II, 339-342, and the thorough discussion with documents and maps by F. A. Roca Traver, "Interpretación de la 'cofradía' valenciana: la real cofradía de San Jaime," Estudios medievales [Valencia], II (1957), 37-83.

98. Arch. Crown, James I, perg. 2,289: "faticam et laudimium censuales ipsius capelianie et operatorium pro quibus ipsum fit censuale." See the two bequests to this confraternity (1272, 1275) in note 60.

99. Antigüedades de Valencia, I, 299-300: "recognosco et confiteor quod sum Confrater Domus Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani, et in Cimiterio eorum Valentiae digo et statuo sepulturam meam." On Dalmau see Itinerari, p. 287. On brotherhoods under the guidance of Orders see the individual Orders below, Chapters X to XII.

100. Itinerari, p. 140 (Mar. 17, 1268): "extrahendo sibi dentes...et dando et salmorrada bibere et aliis modis pluribus quod dictus Hugo in dicta capcione diem clausit extremum."

101. Ibid., p. 486 (Sept. 7, 1273): "invenisti Tholosam uxorem tuam quondam et A. Sarcadel quondam simul fornicacionem sive adulterium comitentes jet] ipsos ambos interfecisti." The penalties for both fornication and adultery are given in Furs, lib. IX, rub. II.

102. Manuel Carboneres has gathered all the materials on prostitution in medieval Valencia into his study Picaronas y alcahuetes ó la mancebía de Valencia, apuntes para la historia de la prostitución (Valencia, 1876). Repartimiento, pp. 534, 621: "[Maria] Portogalesa meretrix." Vincke, EUC, IV, 71; cf. R. Chabás, "Glosario de algunas voces oscuras usadas en el derecho foral valenciano," ACCV, XII (1944), 12. See Vicente Boix, Apuntes históricos sobre los fueros del antiguo reino de Valencia (Valencia, 1855), p. 137.

103. There is nothing satisfactory on slavery in Valencia in the thirteenth century; but a useful introduction is the monumental work of Verlinden, L'esclavage, with the articles by Miret y Sans and others cited there.

104. Llibre dels feyts, chs. 36-37, and my article "Journey From Islam" cited above in the preface.

105. Colección diplomática, doc. 452 (Dec. 3, 1221), about the attacks on Poblet.

106. Ibid., doc. 590 (Sept. 18, 1257) where James speaks of it as a problem throughout his realms; "simus multipliciter obligati ut omnes domos religionis et cetera sua loca nostri dominii ab incursibus et infestacionibus malorum hominum viriliter deffendamus." For Valencia one might cite here the damage done by men of Tortosa to the Benifasá properties (Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 10, fol. 7v, Aug. 10, 1257), though the townsmen were involved in this; and a similar case in Peter III, Reg. Canc. 49, fol. 67 (April 1, 1281). See too the severe letter of Pope Innocent IV against the "malefactors" who harm Benifasá by seizure of properties (Arch. Nac. Madrid, Clero: Castellón, Benifasá, carp. 421, Sept. 30, 1245).

107. Llibre dels feyts, ch. 237.

108. Furs, lib. IX, rub. XX: "de guiatge e de treues." An instance of such retaliation is given in the Llibre dels feyts after a knight had plundered another knight traveling under protection.

109. Arch. Cath., Liber constitutionum, fols. 61v-62r. Again in perg. 2,395 (July 17, 1263); Colección diplomática, doc. 1,178. One to the bishop is in Arch. Crown, James I, Reg. Canc. 37, fol. 66 (July 30, 1273); one for a holding of the Escarp monks in the Valencia kingdom ibid., Peter III, Reg. Canc. 60, fol. 48 (Feb. 11, 1282). There are many for Valencian ecclesiastical properties in the archives.

110. Colección diplomática, doc. 264 (Mar. 15, 1243): "specialiter contra Guillelmum d'entenza et suos."