[1] Of necessity historians of medieval Spain subscribe to the Pirenne thesis, for it fits that country's history as it does no other.⁽¹⁾ In the mid-twelfth century the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, did, foreshadowing the Belgian scholar by ignoring the Visigoths and arguing that it was not they but the Romans who were overrun by the Moors in 711.⁽²⁾ And that view still holds. The Visigothic period of Spanish history may be described as no more than 'an appendix' to the Late Empire, and the Middle Ages be defined by the Moorish occupation.⁽³⁾ Without Muhammad, Spanish historical scholarship down to and including the most recent article by Professor Sánchez-Albornoz would have been inconceivable.

So it is perfectly understandable that the history of medieval Spain should have become the history of the Reconquista;that the period of reconquest should be thought of as having left an indelible mark on the Spanish collective personality;⁽⁴⁾and, in particular, that historians should have paid special attention to the points of contact, both military and cultural, between Islam and Christendom.

One consequence of this, though, has been that the presumably less spectacular developments behind the front line have attracted the attention of considerably fewer scholars. The history of the Church, [2] for example, has been almost entirely neglected. Though there are hardly fewer ecclesiastical archives than there are tales -- and many of them very good tales -- about the impossibility of gaining access to them, their contents have still to be sorted and analysed. Since Gams and Lafuente in the middle of the last century, no one has attempted a general survey. Only two names, those of Fita and Mansilla, even deserve mention in a review of the study of the subject since then; and neither the penetrating research of the one nor the patient industry of the other has provided any general perspective of the possibly humdrum history of the thirteenth-century Spanish Church. For while Fita dispersed his energies over a vast field, leaving not what would surely have been an incomparable volume but instead a remarkable series of short papers and articles, Mansilla, intent upon continuing Kehr's Papsturkunden, has confined himself almost exclusively to the Vatican archives, which provided the material for his very valuable book published in 1945⁽⁵⁾. The history of that substantial part of the Spanish Church which is not illuminated by the glare of the Reconquista has yet to be written.

The subject to be studied, however, does not present anything like the contrast which is suggested by the preoccupation of historians with the frontier area. Wherever they were, all Spanish churchmen were frontiersmen, to some extent. They differed in degree, not in kind. In matters of ecclesiastical discipline they expressed the frontier-spirit by their contempt for distant authority -- papal authority included -- and their rejection of any reforms which threatened their peculiar institutions, the most ineffectively threatened if not the most peculiar of which was clerical concubinage. The way in which the Spanish clergy as a whole survived and, within a generation, neutralised the fulminations of the Fourth Lateran Council on that topic deserves fuller treatment.⁽⁶⁾Here it is sufficient to observe the working of that frontier-spirit in the diocese of Segovia, and especially at Sepúlveda, in and after 1203 when the combined attempt of Bishop Gonzalo and Archbishop Martín of Toledo to separate the clergy from their women produced not a reformation of clerical morals but [3] widespread clerical revolt.⁽⁷⁾ In 1203 Segovia was not, physically, the frontier see that it had been a century before. Yet from the reactions of the clergy there to reforming notions, it is clear that there had been no decay of that sense of aggressive exclusiveness which characterised settlements all along the frontier and had been enshrined in Alfonso VI's confirmation of the celebrated fuero of Sepúlveda in 1076.⁽⁸⁾

By then, the year 1203, sanctions against concubinage had a long prehistory, but there is special justification for recalling in particular one earlier occasion on which clerical philandering had been condemned: the national council over which the legate, Cardinal Boso, had presided in February 1117.⁽⁹⁾ For the political circumstances of that council illustrate the important point that the truculence of individual clerics or of the clergy in general was far from being the sole obstruction to reform. During the first three and a half centuries of the Reconquista, the Christian kings had frequently solved their dynastic difficulties by marriages which took no account whatsoever of the canonical rules of consanguinity. Not until 1023, when Sancho III consulted Bishop Oliva of Vich on the question of the proposed union of his sister, Urraca, and her second cousin, Alfonso V of Leon, is there any sign that they felt themselves bound by the current disciplinary norms; and even then Sancho chose to ignore the inconvenient reply which he received.⁽¹⁰⁾ Now when, in 1117, some thirty years after the death of Gregory VII, the prelates assembled at Burgos, they met beneath the shadow of a similar union of second cousins, Alfonso I of Aragon and Urraca, the daughter and heiress of Alfonso VI of Castile. Canon xiv of the rather laconic review of canonical discipline issued by them, prohibiting marriages within the seventh degree, amounted therefore to a direct challenge to Alfonso VI's political testament. That the attack was led by Archbishop Bernardo [4] of Toledo, one of the Cluniacs whom Alfonso had invited to Castile to assist him with the Reconquista, provided a further element of poignancy. For though Bernardo may have been a reformer (an excellent thing in primates), he happened also to be the champion of the Burgundian candidate to the Castilian throne, the young Alfonso VII.⁽¹¹⁾ Reform had its political uses and carried with it its political dangers.

This remained true a century after the Burgos Council, at a time when the Spanish Church was in crying need of reform in head and members. Far afield, as far afield as Flanders, tales were told of the incontinence of the Spanish clergy.⁽¹²⁾But the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, 'the most important single body of disciplinary and reform legislation of the medieval church',⁽¹³⁾made no immediate impression upon Castile, Leon or Aragon. For the twenty-three peninsular prelates who, according to the 'official communiqué', were there,⁽¹⁴⁾the Council's highlight was not so much its solemn decrees as the preliminary slanging match over the primacy issue during which Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo dismissed the rival claim of Compostela as being founded on an old wives' tale and brought blushes to the cheeks of the archbishop of Braga by recounting in loving detail the unedifying history of Estevao's predecessor, the anti-pope Gregory VIII.⁽¹⁵⁾

[5] The primacy issue was only one of the items which interested them more than reform. There was also, of course, the Reconquista. Three years before, the Almohads had been defeated at Las Navas de Tolosa, and the credit for saving 'non solumYspaniam, set et Romam, immo Europam universam' was due to Yspania 'et precipue regno Castelle', as the Castilians were quick to remind the Europeans and some Europeans had the grace to acknowledge.⁽¹⁶⁾ More important, there was the bill for the Reconquista. The Castilian victory cost Castilian money, for, though the Moorish account of the 1212 campaign describes the Christians begging pitifully for assistance 'from Portugal to Constantinople', the truth is that that year marked the closing of the period of foreign aid. The few Frenchmen who did come caught dysentery and abandoned Alfonso VIII before the battle. And they had come as mercenaries. Even the king of Aragon was Castile's pensioner and received from Alfonso stipendia necessaria for his troops.⁽¹⁷⁾Regardless of the crusading indulgences which it offered them, foreigners had always made profitability their criterion for assisting in the Reconquista, and by 1212 better opportunities for booty were available nearer home. This break with the past was completed in the following year when Pedro II of Aragon died at Muret, with his back to the south, defending his French vassals against the crusading hordes of Simon de Montfort.⁽¹⁸⁾In 1147 Bishop Pedro of Porto had cajoled the English into abandoning their journey to the Holy Land and joining the siege of Lisbon by promising them booty and quoting the old Spanish proverb that the road is better than the inn.⁽¹⁹⁾ Sixty-five years later these arguments had lost their force; sixty-six years later they were turned against Aragon. The thirteenth-century Reconquista would have to be a Spanish enterprise.

The 1212 campaign had cost the Castilian clergy half their year's income.⁽²⁰⁾ There are no means of knowing quite what this sacrifice meant for them. It was probably not the first such burden that they [6] had been made to bear. It was certainly not the last. But it can at least be safely assumed that they were not immune to the effects of the nation-wide crisis which dispersed the euphoria of victory and brought the Christian advance to a temporary halt two years later.⁽²¹⁾ Economic relief, in the shape of a papal grant of crusading indulgences for warriors on the Spanish front, was requested by the entire Spanish contingent at the 1215 Council cum quanta potuerunt instantia. In that, if in nothing else, Rodrigo of Toledo had the support of the archbishop of Compostela.⁽²²⁾At least two Castilian prelates, García of Cuenca and Giraldo of Segovia, had been reduced to borrowing their fare to Rome;⁽²³⁾ and if, furthermore, they made their stay there last two full years, as did Bishop Martinho of Porto,⁽²⁴⁾ then the economic consequences of the Council for them may well have been similar to those which forced Bishop Juan Pérez of Calahorra to sell property on his return in order to clear the debts that he had contracted at the Curia.⁽²⁵⁾

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the one issue raised at the Council which riveted the attention of Spanish prelates was the fiscal issue: the tax of a twentieth of the income from ecclesiastical benefices to be used for the launching of another crusade.⁽²⁶⁾ The levying of the tax was given pride of place in the perfunctory passage which Lucas of Túy, writing twenty years later, devoted to the Council;⁽²⁷⁾and this emphasis probably reflects pretty faithfully the attitude of the bishops themselves in and after 1215. To them it seemed inequitable that they should be expected to contribute to a foreign War, however Holy it might be, when they were already bearing the heat and burden of the day on their own national front. In this spirit --a spirit which was to endure throughout the century-- they devoted their energies not to the business of summoning councils and synods and reforming the Spanish Church, but, instead, to the task of sabotaging the collection of the tax: a task for [7] which their spiritual leader, Archbishop Rodrigo, by diverting the funds into his own coffers, proved himself to be admirably equipped. Thus, peculation preceded reform, and because the affair provided the post-Lateran papacy with its first experience of the shortcomings of the Spanish episcopate it is appropriate that some account of it should stand at the beginning of this study.

Throughout Christendom the collection of the triennial twentieth was entrusted by Innocent III to the regional Masters of the Hospital and Temple. In the provinces of Toledo, Braga and Compostela, and the exempt sees of León, Burgos and Oviedo, they were assisted by the cantor and archdeacon of Zamora. Three months after Innocent's deadline for payment, November 1216, nothing had been achieved, and Honorius III sent the Spanish provinces a stiff reprimand. The bishops' ingenuity in interpreting Innocent's mandate had made the collectors' task impossible. Some had alleged that they were not obliged to pay in cash; and others that they were not responsible for summoning diocesan synods for this purpose, although the pope had been quite explicit on this point. In consequence, the collectors had been made to wander the length and breadth of the country, gathering the dues in dribs and drabs of wheat, wine and barley; and at that rate fifty of them, let alone four, Honorius observed, could hardly hope to deal with a province the size of Toledo, which spread over two entire kingdoms. The bishops were reminded that time was short and that the cash was needed immediately. They were to interpret his predecessor's instructions sano et simplici intellectu and to centralise and expedite the business of collection.⁽²⁸⁾ Their Fabian tactics irritated Honorius, as he had already made clear in his reply of December 1216 to a series of questions which the chapter of Compostela had asked concerning the scope of the tax⁽²⁹⁾. Yet while the pope fumed, the game continued.

To some Spaniards the capture of the Portuguese stronghold of Alcacer do Sal in the autumn of 1217 seemed to herald the arrival of that moment, the recommencement of military operations, when, in accordance with Innocent III's promise at the Council, crusading indulgences might be granted to the reconquistadores. Their argument did budge the pope, but only to the extent of granting favours to the[8] victors of that particular engagement. He was not prepared to release them from the oaths which they had taken to join the Fifth Crusade.⁽³⁰⁾ Nor would he assign to Spanish purposes the profits of the twentieth; and in February-March 1218 he made a further effort to chivvy the province of Toledo and the rest of the Spanish Church into taking positive action.⁽³¹⁾

When this new approach failed, Honorius tried other methods: the appointment in October 1218 of two papal collectors, Master Cintius, and his chaplain Huguicio, two canons of St Peter's.⁽³²⁾But, if anything, the cure proved worse than the disease, for Honorius had made no allowance for the villainy of Archbishop Rodrigo. In January 1218 Rodrigo had been invested with legatine authority of a martial character throughout the kingdoms of Leon, Castile and Aragon, in connexion with the fresh Christian offensive;⁽³³⁾ and now, combining his new status with his native wit, he teamed up with Huguicio, to their own shameless advantage and the Church's considerable loss. In February of the year 1219 -- a year of disastrous harvests throughout Europe, Spain included⁽³⁴⁾ -- Honorius demonstrated his affection for the archbishop by granting him half of the income of the twentieth in the dioceses of Toledo and Segovia, adding airily (and in the light of later developments, most inadvisably) that there was no need for Rodrigo to tax his conscience overmuch about calculating his share of the takings ad unguem.⁽³⁵⁾And the recipient was evidently still held in high regard twelve months after, for then the entire uncollected [9]balance of the tax from the whole area subject to his legatine jurisdiction was made over to him⁽³⁶⁾ : an act of papal liberality which was doubtless prompted by favourable reports on the archbishop submitted by Huguicio.

Huguicio had every reason for giving the archbishop a good press. In March 1218 he had been appointed to the Toledo canonry which Rodrigo had conferred eight years before upon another Roman clerk;⁽³⁷⁾ and between then and July 1220, when the scales at last fell from the pope's eyes, the simplex nuntius passed himself off as a full-blown legate, committed multa enormia et abusiva, and received various grants from the see of Segovia, of which Rodrigo had recently been given charge.⁽³⁸⁾When, eventually, all this came to light, Honorius acted purposefully, for once. Rodrigo was administered a stinging rebuke and informed that his stock at the Curia had fallen sharply.⁽³⁹⁾The archbishop of Tarragona was instructed to investigate and, on the very same day, 1 July, the pope called Rodrigo's fellow countryman, Cardinal Pelayo of Albano, to render account of his receipts from the Hospitallers of Paris. Honorius suspected, perhaps, that the archbishop's chicanery had even wider ramifications.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Retribution was swift. On 4 July Rodrigo was deprived of his income from the twentieth on the grounds that his proposed campaign against the Moors -- which, as the pope now remembered it, had provided the justification for the grant⁽⁴¹⁾-- had never materialised.

In fact, Honorius's memory played him false. The grant of six months before had been made on account of Rodrigo's past achievements and not in expectation of future action.⁽⁴²⁾ But inconsistency -- the mark of all of Honorius's dealings with the Spanish Church -- was [10] of less consequence than the fact that the discovery of the scandal dispelled whatever illusions he may still have entertained regarding Rodrigo's integrity. For, though he managed to escape the graver consequences of his actions,⁽⁴³⁾Rodrigo would have to wait for Honorius's death for his stock at the Curia to rise again. His legatine status lapsed,⁽⁴⁴⁾and once again Spain was required to contribute to the Fifth Crusade.⁽⁴⁵⁾

Historians have not paid due attention to this archiepiscopal fall from grace.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Yet by July 1220 the pope already had other good grounds for despairing of Rodrigo. An earlier incident had shown that the archbishop's zeal for libertas ecclesiastica, which Innocent III had entrusted to his care in 1208,⁽⁴⁷⁾ was considerably less fervent than his determination not to fall out with the civil power. This incident arose out of Fernando III's refusal to surrender certain property which his grandfather, Alfonso VIII, had bequeathed to the church of Osma. In the autumn of 1217 the bishop of Osma, Melendo, complained in person to the pope and caused Bishop Sancho of Zaragoza and two archdeacons of that church to be commissioned to investigate the affair. The delegates, domiciled in Aragon, found for Melendo, but the very freedom from Castilian pressure which enabled them to reach a decision unfavourable to Fernando prevented its implementation. On-the-spot assistance was needed, and so, in April 1218, they engaged the archbishop of Toledo to act for them. To be required to read his king a lecture was a nightmare for any medieval prelate, and that duty had now devolved upon Rodrigo. He failed the acid test. After some delay he sent the judges a plaintive reply. He had urged the king and queen 'often and diligently' to accept the decision, he said. But he had been unable to bring himself to impose sanctions when the royal couple ignored his admonitions, 'on account of the scandal and not inconsiderable difficulties [11] to which such action might lead'. Let this chalice pass, he pleaded, quia sicut nobis ita aliis poteritis demandare.⁽⁴⁸⁾

The lenient judges were obliging, and transferred the burden to the bishops of Burgos and Palencia, Mauricio and Tello. But, alas for justice, they were made of the same stuff as the archbishop, and did nothing. Safe and sound behind a national boundary, Sancho of Zaragoza treated them to a scornful diatribe of quite Innocentian fervour and flavour, calling as his witness ille qui hominum corda scrutatur et renes. Had they, perchance, forgotten the text that required them to lay down their lives for their brothers? If they were typical prelates, he concluded, then the prospect was indeed gloomy.⁽⁴⁹⁾Indeed it was, as the same pair of prelates proved in and after 1223 when the pope himself failed to rouse them into assisting the bishops of Calahorra and Segovia whom the king had exiled and whose churches he was pillaging.⁽⁵⁰⁾It was a serious matter that the three Castilian churchmen most frequently commissioned as judges-delegate and executors during Honorius's pontificate⁽⁵¹⁾seem to have taken Gilbert Foliot as their model rather than Thomas Becket.

Honorius must have known about this spineless display when in October 1219, some months before Rodrigo's unmasking, he sent the archbishop and his suffragans a letter of (for him) quite unusual asperity, the message of which was not at all distorted by its rich assortment of biblical tags. The Castilian Church was in a state of collapse. Heresy was abroad. Monastic discipline had been abandoned. Modestia clericalis was neglected. And the fault was theirs. It was the bishops who promoted scoundrels to benefices while themselves dissipating the goods of the churches entrusted to their care. They had ignored completely the message of the Fourth Lateran Council. And they now received a solemn warning: let them hasten to implement the statutes of 1215, 'et illa presertim que salutem respiciunt animarum'.⁽⁵²⁾[12]

The papal fury was impressive. It might have been Innocent III talking, or Sancho of Zaragoza. The bishops were torpid and negligent, dumb dogs and broken reeds.⁽⁵³⁾ Still, scalding though it was, Honorius's condemnation of them appears as a cooling draught when set beside the testimony of the Spanish cleric, Diego García. In his devotional treatise of the previous year, Planeta, Diego had also called the bishops dumb dogs, and much more besides. They were a positive force of evil triumphant in a dying world.⁽⁵⁴⁾Tot sunt episcopi quot latrones. They were the ruin of the Church, the oppressors of the poor, not only unlettered themselves but also enemies of learning, 'non episcopos se putantes esse set dominos'.

His account of their condicio truculenta included all the bishops.⁽⁵⁵⁾ But there was one in particular for whom Diego reserved his sharpest shafts and his deadliest venom. Hardly surprisingly, the writer did not identify this episcopal sink of iniquity whose stamina in vice placed him beyond the ranks of ordinary mortals.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Yet in view of Diego's unqualified devotion to Archbishop Rodrigo, to whom the work is dedicated in the most obsequious terms,⁽⁵⁷⁾it may be presumed that the butt of this savage attack was one of the bishops of the Toledo province with whom in 1218 the archbishop was at odds. Of the various possibilities the most plausible is Bishop García of Cuenca;⁽⁵⁸⁾ and because it both provides substance for the pope's gloomy verdict of 1219 and also sheds some light on the murky nature of Rodrigo's dealings with his suffragans, the course of their quarrel is worth following and the issues which divided them are deserving of analysis.

Rodrigo had designs on part of the territory of the see of Cuenca and its rents. When the bishopric of Cuenca had been established in [13]1182, after the reconquest of the area, it had been given all the rights enjoyed in the Visigothic period by two sees, Valeria and Arcavica, on account of its poverty. Rodrigo now wanted this arrangement annulled because, according to him, Cuenca's income had increased considerably during the intervening period. He was certainly in a position to judge and in possession of information about the economic condition of the diocese, for while he had been at Rome he had arbitrated an involved rents dispute between Bishop García and his diocesan clergy.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Yet when he opened his campaign in January 1218 -- the year of Diego García's attack -- he was careful to disguise his personal ambitions. Evidens utilitas, he maintained in his petition to the pope, was what prompted him to raise the matter.⁽⁶⁰⁾It was only at a later stage, at the hearing of the case by Bishop Mauricio of Burgos and his colleagues in March 1220, that what he and his church stood to gain was mentioned: the previous nine years' income of the see of Cuenca. And three months later his proctors put forward a further claim -- to the 'villa que dicitur Moia cum terminis suis'.⁽⁶¹⁾

García, however, was a bonny fighter, and the archbishop's hopes of a quick victory were soon dashed. At the first hearing he attempted unsuccessfully to incriminate the bishop, alleging (of all things) that García had curried favour at court and falsis persuasionibus had robbed him of the friendship of the king and queen.⁽⁶²⁾ The reappointment of the judges-delegate as arbiters proved equally inconclusive,⁽⁶³⁾ and the case was still unsettled eight years later,⁽⁶⁴⁾by which time García was dead.

Of greater significance, though, than Rodrigo's failure to carry all before him was the unedifyrng zeal with which he set about discrediting his adversary in 1218. For the suggested identification of Diego García's cisterna nequicie is not the only indication of a concerted campaign of vilification directed at the bishop of Cuenca and masterminded by the archbishop of Toledo. García had other [14] enemies, and one of them was a cleric of his own diocese, the Archpriest Julián of Huete, who since the very beginning of Honorius's pontificate had been busy at the Curia complaining oportune et importune about the bishop's 'intolerable' behaviour.⁽⁶⁵⁾ García was charged with simony, mismanagement and incontinence. It was alleged by Julián that, having made a pact with death, he was scurrying thither on all fours; and in December 1217, a month before Rodrigo applied for the division of the diocese of Cuenca, the pope ordered an investigation.⁽⁶⁶⁾

For Rodrigo's purposes the archpriest's accusations were most timely, and appearances suggest that the bishop's two enemies were in league. Their complicitly may be inferred from the fact that papal protection was granted to Julián and his property on the very same day in January 1218 that Rodrigo's case against García was initiated.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Moreover, when in the following June the judges appointed at Julián's instigation were reminded of their commission by Honorius, a copy of the rescript was sent to the archbishop, although he had no prima facie interest in the matter.⁽⁶⁸⁾They fought together, and they failed together: in January 1221, six months after the unmasking of Rodrigo, Julián's charges were dismissed, and in March 1222 Bishop García was declared by the pope to be held in odore bone opinionis.⁽⁶⁹⁾

Rodrigo's tactics against his suffragan do him little credit. The fomenter of sedition within his own province, he was constitutionally incapable of providing the foundation of peace and concord upon which the reform of the Castilian Church might have been based. Instead, he gave an example of truculence and set the tone of ecclesiastical behaviour throughout his province. 'Truculent' was the adjective which Diego García applied to the Castilian bishops, and with a leader of Rodrigo's calibre it is hardly surprising that there should have been 'manifest adversaries' within the episcopate.⁽⁷⁰⁾For [15] the Cuenca affair was not an isolated lapse. While it was still at issue, Rodrigo committed further acts of piracy in the diocese of Palencia, demanding excessive procurations while en route for an interview with the king and suspending Bishop Tello, regardless of the appeal which had been lodged with the pontiff. 'Deductum est in scandalum et discordias totum regnum', Tello complained to Honorius (whose dossier on the archbishop was already substantial), adding that the primate, who had abandoned Melendo of Osma and had had the effrontery to object to García of Cuenca's connexions at court, had issued his sentence of suspension unceremoniously 'ubi curia regis erat'.⁽⁷¹⁾

Archbishop Rodrigo was at home ubi curia regis erat, and his predilection for the royal court provides part of the explanation for his desultory performance as a reformer. It was a characteristic which was to be shared by Castilian prelates throughout the century, but Rodrigo's biographers have been much exercised by the slur upon their hero contained in the pope's letter of October 1219, and have been at pains to explain it away. The ingenious Estella, having already insisted upon the archbishop's 'indefatigable reforming zeal', was reduced to the argument that his inactivity in this regard was actually yet another endearing attribute, further proof of his essential humanity. After all, 'manchas tiene el sol y no deja de ser el astro rey, que fecunda e ilumina la tierra'. Moreover -- and here the historian of the twentieth century reiterates the justification offered in the thirteenth -- algún discuido has to be allowed in view of Rodrigo's various contributions to the Reconquista.⁽⁷²⁾ Another apologist, Ballesteros Gaibrois, took the other course, and interpreted the thirteenth century in the light of the twentieth. Writing in the late 1930s, he attributed the ills of the Castilian Church, as described by the pope, to Jewish infiltration of the 'clean' Spanish people: an interpretation for which Honorius's bull (which he misdates) provides no support whatsoever.⁽⁷³⁾ And when all else fails the archbishop's modern friends are [16] able to cite the Guadalajara Council, which met sometime before 1221, as irrefragable proof of his reforming zeal.⁽⁷⁴⁾ They are not discouraged by the fact that, though no record of its statutes has survived, Rodrigo's intention at Guadalajara seems to have been to abrogate Bishop Giraldo of Segovia's disciplinary provisions by temporising with the clerici concubinarii of Sepúlveda and Pedraza.⁽⁷⁵⁾ He has even been credited with a whole series of councils, despite the difficulty of reconciling this claim with the anxiety of Gregory IX and the emphatic statement of Gregory's legate in 1228 that the provisions of the Fourth Lateran Council had been almost entirely neglected in Spain.⁽⁷⁶⁾

The fact is that the summoning of councils and synods hardly figured at all on Rodrigo's list of priorities. He was no saint, no spartan, no reformer. His own and his church's temporal state were infinitely more interesting to him; and, as the legate was to observe in 1229, Archbishop Sparago of Tarragona was hardly less negligent in the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre. Apart from a single casual reference to a Pamplona synod, held probably in 1216,⁽⁷⁷⁾there is no sign of ecclesiastical assemblies in that region during Honorius III's pontificate. With that one exception, mention of councils and synods at this period occurs only in the course of agreements in which the obligation of a monastic community to be represented at episcopal synods was mentioned as a token of subjection, without any suggestion that such assemblies were indeed summoned. Such was the case in the settlements between the bishop of Burgos and the abbey of Covarrubias in July 1222, and between the bishop of Palencia and the abbey of San Román de Blaye in May 1224.⁽⁷⁸⁾ For the implementation of reform the twelve years after the Fourth Lateran Council were twelve years of stagnation in the Spanish kingdoms. Part of the blame for this must be borne by Honorius himself. Innocent III's successor lacked the single-mindedness which was most [17] urgently needed at this juncture. His fumbling incompetence in dealing with Archbishop Rodrigo was typical. Moreover, in the style of the successors of that other epoch-making pontiff, Gregory VII, he was unduly sensitive to the special pleading of regional groups, and was judicious to a fault in circumstances which called for a measure of recklessness. The policy of stooping to conquer, though at least a century old, had achieved precious little;⁽⁷⁹⁾ and in the Spanish situation it was hopelessly inappropriate. That, though, was Honorius's policy, with the result that the earliest post-Lateran stirrings there received from him not encouragement but condemnation. In July 1217 the clergy of the cathedral cities of the southern part of the province of Compostela -- those, namely, of Zamora, Ávila, Plasencia, Coria, Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca -- complained that Archbishop Pedro and their bishops had held a council, 'irrequisitis clericis ipsis', at which a number of constitutions greatly prejudicial to them had been issued, contra antiquam consuetudinem. What had aggravated them particularly were the measures taken to restrain abuse of the privilege of clergy in cases involving laymen, and to improve the moral condition of the clergy. The bishops had proposed that facile death-bed repentance should not have the effect of removing all the stigma which a lifetime of vice had merited: rough justice, perhaps, but preferable, on balance, to total episcopal inactivity and the clerical decadence discovered by the legate on his arrival eleven years later. Honorius's cancellation of the conciliar constitutions, without even hearing the bishops' case, was, therefore, as disastrous in practice as it was defensible in point of law.⁽⁸⁰⁾ The legate would display no such delicacy; for 'custom' might well be a euphemism for 'corruption', as the province of Braga was reminded by the legate's master in May 1233.⁽⁸¹⁾ And if, furthermore, the pontiff were always to capitulate to objections based on 'difficulty', such as induced him in July 1219 to absolve Archbishop Pedro from the obligation to hold annual councils in the far-flung province of Compostela;⁽⁸²⁾ then the difficulty which any change for the better necessarily involves would invariably be cited as an objection to reform.

The thirteenth-century successors of Honorius III, Rodrigo of [18] Toledo and Pedro of Compostela would frequently choose the line of least resistance. All the elements of the complex future relationship of the Spanish Church and the papacy were present during this pontificate, and the relative unconcern of Honorious with the issue of reform is the inevitable conclusion of a study of his dealings with Spain, the outbursts of October 1219 notwithstanding. The fiscal question was far more interesting for him, as it would also be for the pontiffs who followed him. Archbishop Rodrigo's misappropriation of funds presented him with the recurrent problem of the means of collection.

In this, however, he was well served by an individual of proven trust, Master Gonzalo García. Between 1215 and 1225 Gonzalo was the key figure -- indeed, the only figure -- of papal diplomacy in Spain. Innocent III had sent him to collect the Spanish and Portuguese census.⁽⁸³⁾ In 1217-18 he received a number of gifts from the archbishop and chapter of Toledo -- though if it was Rodrigo's intention to suborn him, as he later suborned Huguicio, he failed dismally, for it was on the strength of a report from Gonzalo that in November 1221 Honorius revoked the indulgence which he had granted two and a half years before, during the archbishop's salad days and at the request of Fernando III, waiving the conciliar legislation on distinctive dress for Jews.⁽⁸⁴⁾And there is also reason for believing that it was Gonzalo who brought the Huguicio affair to the pope's attention, since in the late autumn of 1219 he had been sent to North Africa on a mission to the sultan and had dealings with the Christian forces there.⁽⁸⁵⁾ In 1222, after the archbishop's disgrace, he was again in Spain. At Tarazona on 1 August he received from the prior of Tudela two aurei, the previous ten years' census of that church,⁽⁸⁶⁾ and he was still nearby in the following month.⁽⁸⁷⁾ A little later, he seems to have visited Portugal on diplomatic business,⁽⁸⁸⁾ and thereafter he becomes less easy to trace. When, at [19] Toledo in April 1226, he exchanged some land with the abbot of Valladolid, he was described ascommendator de Castrello de Ferruz.⁽⁸⁹⁾ By March 1231, in which month Gregory IX authorised him to retain the office of sacrist of Osma despite the rules of his Order,⁽⁹⁰⁾ it may be assumed that his career as a mobile papal agent had ended.

Gonzalo's role was both diplomatic and fiscal. He collected the census and, possibly, the crusading twentieth too after the discovery of the Huguicio-Rodrigo scandal.⁽⁹¹⁾ These matters were uppermost in Honorius's mind in his transactions with the Spanish Church. The bishops remained obdurate,⁽⁹²⁾and by October 1225, when another collector was sent to take charge of the balance due from the provinces of Braga and Compostela and the exempt sees of León and Oviedo, the Crusade -- which had provided the justification for the tax -- was in ruins. This new collector was a Spaniard, Pelayo, bishop-elect of the Palestinian see of Ludd. He had connexions with the church of Orense, and by May 1227 was re-established at Salamanca in partibus fidelium.⁽⁹³⁾Mindful of the previous fiasco, the pope kept him on a tight rein, for Honorius was very concerned about the repercussions of that affair and about the damage that it had done to the prestige of the Roman Church.⁽⁹⁴⁾ The prestige of the Spanish Church, however, which was far more seriously affected by clerical corruption than by archiepiscopal embezzlement, hardly moved him at all. The first, and last, serious attempt to refurbish that reputation had to await his death and the accession in March 1227 of Pope Gregory IX.

1. 'Probablemente.. . a ningún otro país como al nuestro. . . se puede aplicar la tesis de Pirenne. . . La idea es especialmente aplicable a España': Maravall, 'La idea de Reconquista', 177-8.

2. 'Nam statim Romano languescente immo pene deficiente imperio. . . Arabum vel Sarracenorum hac peste infectorum surrexit principatus, atque vi armata maximas Asiae partes cum tota Africa ac parte Hispaniae paulatim occupans, in subiectos sicut imperium sic et errorem transfudit': Summa Totius Haeresis Saracenorum, in Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, 1964), 140, n. III.

3. Vicens Vives, Manual de historia económica, 81; Font y Ríus, Rec. Soc. Jean Bodin, vi, 264: 'Chez nous le moyen âge commence avec cette invasion et finit avec l'expulsion des maures.'

4. Vicens Vives, Aproximación, 192.

5. Iglesia castellano-leonesa, which deals with the period up to 1254. The Papsturkunden project has so far only reached the year 1227, and does not incorporate original, unregistered letters, for details of some seventy of which from Honorius III's pontificate, see Linehan, AA, xvi, 385 ff.

6. Below, pp. 51 ff.

7. In the course of an inquiry into the affair, the abbot of San Tomé, Sepúlveda, stated 'quod ipse scit quod clerici Septempublicenses de villa et de aldeis pro maiori parte tenebant concubinas ante inicium istius cause et multi eorum adhuc tenent': AC Segovia, doc. 16. See also Colmenares, Historia, 168-9; González Davila, Teatro, nr, 538-9. The clergy of Sepúlveda helped to drive the next bishop, Giraldo, into premature retirement over this and other issues: González, Alfonso VIII, I, 425-7.

8. Cf. Sáez, et al., Fueros de Sepúlveda, 45-9; González, Hispania, III, 243-5; Lacarra, Moyen Age, LXIX, 218.

9. Fita, BRAH, XLVIII, 396

10.Pérez de Urbel, Sancho el Mayor, 109-14; Abadal, L'Abat Oliba, 246-7.

11. Fita, BRAH, XLVIII, 398; Defourneaux, Les Français en Espagne, 32-7, 201-3; Rivera, Iglesia de Toledo, 125 ff.

12. For the cautionary tale of quidam presbyter of 'Hyspania' who had slept with a woman, see Balduini Ninovensis Chronicon, 539 (s.a. 1211). Cf. the view of González: 'La moralidad del clero ofrece reducida... documentación, indicio de que no era de nivel bajo': Alfonso VIII, I, 419.

13. Kuttner and García, Traditio, xx, 163.

14. Lucharie, Journal des Savants, III, 562, whence Hefele-Leclerq, v, ii, 1730. There are two Toledo MSS., BN, vit. 15-5 (olim BC Toledo, MS. 15-22) and BC Toledo, MS. 42-21, which give different lists of Spanish prelates from that of the Zurich MS. Used by Luchaire. The former (fo. 22r) notes 'quod XIIII fuerunt episcopi in isto concilio de regno Castelle, Legionis et Portugalie' and mentions the bishop of Oviedo but not those of Astorga, Salmanca, or Mondoñedo, while in the other (publ. Rivera, HS, IV, 337) the bishop of Astorga's presence is noted, but not that of the others or of the bishop of Segorbe.

15. 5 BN, vit. 15-5 fos. 22r-3v (Fita, Razón y Fe, II, 178 ff.); Foreville, Mélanges... Crozet, 1125-7; Kuttner and García, Traditio, xx, 136-8; Hefele-Leclercq, v, ii, 1319-20. There is a briefer version of Rodrigo's speech in BC Toledo, MS. 42-21, fo. I (Rivera, HS, IV, 336-7). For a more balanced account of the career of Mauricio Burdino, the anti-pope, see David, Études historiques, 441 ff.

16. CLI: B. Hisp., X1V, 357-8; Sicardi Episcopi Cremonensis Chronica, 180.

17. Anónimo de Madrid y Copenhague, 122; Defourneaux, 185 ff.; CLI: B. Hisp., XIV, 355.

18. Defourneaux, 125 ff.; Renouard, Annales de 1' Université de Paris, XXVIII, 16-17.

19. 'Non Iherosolimis fuisse sed bene interim invixisse laudabile est': De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, 76. Afonso Henriques' expectation that they might assist him for reasons of religion -- pietas -- and not for loot was soon disappointed: ibid. 98, 110.

20. CLI: B. Hisp., XIV, 355.

21. Ibid. 368; Primera Crónica General, para. 1023.

22. Bishop Soeiro of Lisbon and others to Honorius III, autumn 1217, in Reg. Hon. III, appendix I, 7(MDH, 95).

23. Rivera, HS, IV, 340-I.

24. The fact was mentioned in the early 1250s, in the course of a lawsuit between the churches of Braga and Porto: ADB, Gav. dos Arcebispos, 24.

25. AC Calahorra, doc. 251,255: publ. Menéndez Pidal, Documentos lingüísticos, I, 126-7.

26. Hefele-Leclercq, V, ii, 1390-95.

27. Chronicon Mundi, 113. Similarly Gil de Zamora, ed. Fita, BRAH, V, 312.

28. Reg. Hon. III, 337 (MDH, 35). Cf. Lunt, Financial Relations, 242 ff.

29. Reg. Hon. III, 132 (MDH, 16).

30. Ibid. appendix I, 7; 997 (MDH, 95, 134); Herculano, História de Portugal, IV, 80 ff. For the papal attitude, cf. Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la Bula de la Cruzada, 133 ff., except that Goñi refers to a tax of 20% rather than 5% (p. 135).

31. Reg. Hon. III, 1116, 1547 (MDH, 162, 182).

32. Ibid. 1634 (MDH, 187).

33. 4 AC Toledo, I.4.N.I.20=Reg. Hon. III, 1042 (MDH, 148). Cf. Goñi, Historia, 141 ff., according to whom Rodrigo had obtained 'el oficio de legado ordinario en España durante diez años' in 1215 (p. 143): an allegation for which the earliest authority dates from the year 1253: BN, vit. 15-5, fos. 22v, 33r. Rodrigo does not figure as legate in the Papal Registers before Jan. 1218: cf. Zimmerman, Die päpsthiche Legation, l00, 244, The legatine status accorded to Archbishop Estevao of Braga in Jan.1219 probably had the same quasi-military quality: ADB, Gav. II das Igrejas, 194; Rerum Memorabilium I, 66; Cunha, História ecclesiástica dos arcebispos de Braga, II, 96.

34. 'Per totam Teutoniam, Allemanniam, Frantiam et usque Ispaniam excussa fuerunt grana': Aegidii Aureaevallensis Gesta Episcoporum Leodiensium, 119.

35. Reg. Hon. III, 1864 (MDH, 207)=AC Toledo, A.6.H.I.,Ioa; IIb; IIc (three copies).

36. Ibid. 2488 (MDH, 269)=AC Toledo, A.6.H.I.Ioc. On the previous day, 4 Feb.1220, an identical mandate had been sent to the archbishop: AC Toledo, A.6.H.I.8d; IO (two copies); and Sparago of Tarragona and other prelates within Rodrigo's legatine jurisdiction were ordered to render him auxilium personarum et rerum: AC Toledo, A.6.H.I.8b; 9 (MDH, 268); AHA, Index dels Indices, fo. 567v. On 5 Feb. they were directed to pay Rodrigo the balance of the tax: AC Toledo, A.6.H.I.8c.

37. Reg. Hon. III, 1181 (MDH, 167); Potthast, 3921 (MDhI, 420).

38. Reg. Hon. III, 2516, 2716, 414, 2700 (MDH, 300, 326, 43, 323); Colmenares, 185 ff.

39. Reg. Hon. III, 2516 (MDH, 300).

40. Ibid. 2515 (MDH, 299); 2517.

41. 'Non tamen pro eo quod processeras sed quia procedere intendebas': ibid. 2525 (MDH, 301).

42. Ibid. 2488: 'Attendentes expensas et discrimina et labores quos.. . archiepiscopus... aggressus est Mauros viriliter impugnando' (MDH, 269).

43. In Sept. 1220 the allegation of the chapter of Toledo that Rodrigo's grant of the canonry to Huguicio had been made extra numerum was referred for a decision to Bishop Domingo of Plasencia, an old friend of the archbishop: AHN, cod. 996B, fo. 44V (MDH, 319); Rodericus Toletanus, De Rebus Hispaniae, 202.

44. The last occasion on which the pope addressed him as legate seems to have been in Nov. 1221. By Sept. 1225, at the latest, he had ceased to use the title: AHN, 3019/1 (MDH, 381); AC Ávila, perg. 12.

45. AHN, 2129/15; Linehan, HS, xx, 180 ff..

46. Mansilla mentions the papal reprimand, but not its consequences: Iglesia, 54.

47. Potthast, 3680 (MDhI, 398).

48. Reg. Hon. III, 743, 776 (=AC Burgo de Osma, perg. 34); 810 (MDH, 84, 89, 93); AC Burgo de Osma, perg. I, 21 (=AC Toledo, X.2.C.2.Ia); Burriel, Memorias, 257ff.; Loperráez, Descripción, III, 57 ff.

49. 'Si enim hoc semper episcopis esset timendum contra reges et principes, semper justitia dormitaret': AC Burgo de Osma, perg. 25; Burriel, 258, 338, 345.

50. Mansilla, Iglesia, 168-71 Reg Hon III, 4298, 5465, 5922 (MDH, 436, 554, 600).

51. Registered letters only considered, Mauricio received 19 commissions, Tello 13, and Rodrigo 7.

52. AC Toledo, I.5.A.I.I. (MDH, 246, from BN, MS. 13116 -- not MS. 1311, as Mansilla -- fos. 10r-11V: Burriel's mid-eighteenth century copy which ascribes the letter to Honorius II).

53. Ibid.: 'dum canes muti proiectum ramulum [ranunculum in MDH] in os habent, et sunt quasi baculus arundineus iam confractus'.

54. Planeta, ed. Alonso, 182-97, esp. 184: 'Unde prelati mutis canibus comparati, latratu quodam terribili sepe terrent hospites, nunquam lupos.'

55. Ibid. 185, 405.

56. Ibid. 186-95, esp. 186: 'Cum enim sit quasi cisterna nequicie et sentina odii, templumque tristicie et tronus avaritie, falsitatisque puteus et mare mortuorum viciorum ad instar rufini pessimi.'

57. Ibid. 162 ff.

58. Diego, obscurely, refers to García, who had been bishop of Cuenca since 1208, as having ruled his church 'per novem annos continuos minus decem': ibid. 191.

59. On 7 Feb. 1216, together with Cardinal Pelayo of Albano: AC Cuenca, 4-17-243.

60. Reg. Hon. III, 1040 (MDH, 146). Cf. Mansilla, Iglesia, 71; Vázquez de Parga, División de Wamba, 122.

61. AC Cuenca, 5-20-276; AHN, cod. 996B, fo. 48ra-vb; Serrano, Don Mauricio, 50-1. Moia: Moya (prov. Cuenca; part. jud. Cañete).

62. AC Cuenca, 5-20-276.

63. AC Cuenca, 4-17-241; AHN, cod. 996B, fo. 48vb.

64. 6 AC Toledo, I.4.N.I.18: Significavit nobis (7 April 1228).

65. Reg. Hon. III, 924 (MDH, 104). Julián had not been at the 1215 Council: Rivera, HS, IV, 337.

66. Reg. Hon. III, 924.

67. Ibid. 1034, 1040, 1045-6 (MDH, 145-7, 150). No. 1034 is concerned with the recovery of a loan advanced by Julián to enable the bishop of Segovia to attend the Lateran Council. In July 1215 Julián had witnessed a further loan for the same purpose at Segovia: Rivera, HS, IV, 340-1.

68. Reg. Hon. III, 1460 (MDH, 176).

69. Reg. Hon. III, 2954, 3864 (MDH, 356, 396).

70. Ibid. 2577 (MDH, 306): García of Cuenca of Melendo of Osma, July 1220.

71. 'In calore animi, nulla monitone premissa, in hora vespertina ubi curia regis erat, non sedens sed stans, statim': inc. Querelam venerabilis, 2 March 1221: AC Toledo, X.2.A.2.6 (LDH, 44). The two prelates reached an understanding in the following August: AC Toledo, X.2.A.2.12; AC Palencia, 2/1/35.

72. Estella, El fundador, V, 91-3.

73. Ballesteros Gaibrois, Don Rodrigo, 152. The same author, in 1941, wrote a piece which amounts almost to a caricature of the view of Rodrigo which is questioned here. The archbishop was represented as 'un hombre de pura e indiscutible raza española, concreto, normal' who at the Lateran Council had defended 'la causa española': Príncipe de Viana, II, 69, 72 (my italics).

74. Ballesteros Gaibrois, 107; Estella, 92.

75. Colmenares, 185 ff.

76. See Ch. 2.

77. García Larragueta, El Gran Priorado, II, 168; Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 68.

78. Serrano, Cartulario de Covarrubias, 79; AC Palencia, 2/1 / 37.

79. Its advantages were described by Pascal II in March1106: Southern, St Anselm, 178.

80. Reg. Hon. III, 623 (MDH, 63).

81. Reg. Greg. IX, 1324.

82. Reg. Hon. III, 2145 (MDH, 231)=AC Santiago, Tumbo B, fos. 224v-5r.

83. Reg. Hon. III, 1635 (MDH, 188). He was in Portugal in 1213: Herculano, IV, 57, 307.

84. Reg. Hon. III, 223, 1943 (MDH, 24, 212); Fita, Actas inéditas, 235-6; AHN, 3019. Cf. Hefele-Leclercq, V, ii, 1386.

85. Reg. Hon. III, 2190 (MDH, 243); Primera Crónica General, para. 1033.

86. AC Tudela, 5-P-I (reg. Fuentes, Catálogo, 206). The dating clause of the receipt contains an error: August 1222 fell in Honorius's seventh pontifical year, not his eighth.

87. Reg. Hon. III, 4113 (MDH, 413).

88. In November 1224 the dean of Lisbon was thanked by the pope for having rendered assistance 'fratri Gonsaldo nuntio nostro in negotiis nostris': ibid. 5136 (publ. Sousa Costa, Mestre Silvestre, 136, n. 245). Cf. Herculano, IV, 162 ff.

89. AC Valladolid, XXIX-7: publ. Mañueco Villalobos, Documentos, II,110-11, where Castrello de Ferruz is identified as Castronuevo de Esgueva.

90. Reg. Greg. IX, 564; Delaville le Roulx, Cartulaire, II, 416-17. He had been sacrist since at least Aug. 1222: AC Tudela, 5-P-1.

91. This is not certain, but since the pope did turn to the Templars again at this time it is likely. Cf. AC Burgos, vol. 71, fo. 53r (MDH, 387).

92. Sparago of Tarragona was unco-operative, especially while the proceeds were destined for Rodrigo: Reg. Hon. III, 3729 (MDH, 390). See also Fabre-Duchesne, Liber Censuum, I, 14*: 'Archiepiscopus Compostellanus debet camere pro succursu Terre Sancte DCCC libras.'

93. Reg. Hon. III, 4197, 5693, 5888 (MDH, 430, 584, 598); Reg. Greg. IX, 101. He had either died or resigned the see by July 1229: AC Salamanca, 3 /3/59 (reg. Marcos Rodríguez, Catálogo, 181). See also Mansilla, 55.

94. Reg. Hon. III, 5693, 2515 (MDH, 594, 299).