[222] The rebel bishops of 1282-3 imagined that they were witnessing the dawn of a brave new world in which they would be permitted to consult freely together while the king restrained the mendicants whose 'molestations' they so energetically deplored. But it was a false dawn. The Infante Sancho was using them just as his uncle and namesake had used them in 1257-8. Very soon they discovered, like Falstaff, the difference between the reckless youth and the reverend signior. The former had led them to believe that the clock might be turned back. All that the latter turned, though, was his own coat, which he did with all the dexterity of the late archbishop of Toledo.

For the bishops not the least galling feature of Sancho IV's treatment of them was his positive enthusiasm for the mendicants: by the close of 1284 the king had lent a helping hand to four Dominican houses,⁽¹⁾ and in the following February he gave solemn warning to the bishops and clergy of the awful consequences of harassing the Franciscan Order in his realm.⁽²⁾ Thus their expectation that Sancho would curb the friars was disappointed. There had been nothing 'curious' about their attitude. It was an episocal commonplace throughout Europe and shared by all who felt their interests threatened by those comparative newcomers. The mendicants represented as great a threat to the 'old order' in the Church as did emergent Aragon in the sphere of international politics at that very time.⁽³⁾ But poverty made the Spanish Churches especially sensitive to the success of these interlopers in securing a share of the limited supply of ecclesiastical alms and patronage. All over the Peninsula the friars [222] clashed with bishops, cathedral chapters and the older Orders.⁽⁴⁾ At court, though -- and especially at the Castilian court -- they won a firm foothold early on and, as confessors, soon established squatters' rights on the king's conscience.⁽⁵⁾ In 1264 Alfonso X openly expressed his devotion to them, and episcopal resentment was hardly less notorious: it was hinted at in the 1279 submission to Nicholas III, given a public airing four years later, and reported to Honorius IV in 1285 when the Order of Preachers sought papal protection against 'nonnulli qui nomen domini recipere in vacuum non formidant'.⁽⁶⁾

By then, though, the mendicants were as firmly bound to Sancho as they had been to his father, even during the civil war (pace Ballesteros).⁽⁷⁾ Their unique capacity for changing masters stemmed from their intrinsic value to the king. Possessing, as they did, such a monopoly of talent and ability, they were essential to Sancho. So were they to the Castilian Church at large, as was proved during the civil war itself, in the very year of the bishops' complaint about them, when the illiterate clique within the chapter of Jaén had to engage the assistance of certain Franciscans because they were not able to cope with the Latin language themselves.⁽⁸⁾ But their alliance with the new king did not necessarily presuppose the advancement of the principles of education, religion or learning. The expertise of the friars was not infrequently misapplied. It was, for example, a Dominican who forged the papal dispensation in favour of the illicit liaison of Sancho and María de Molina.⁽⁹⁾ Moreover, it boded ill for the cause of reform -- which the Dominicans had done so much to advance in Aragon forty years before -- that the individual of that Order most signally [224] favoured by the king, and promoted at his instance to the see of Palencia in 1294, was very far indeed from being a paragon of virtue. The prelate in question was Munio of Zamora who, three years before, had been removed from the post of Master-General of the Order by Nicholas IV on account of certain serious but unspecified offences. It is necessary, however, that we pry a little into the circumstances of his case -- circumstances over which the pope deemed it prudent to draw a discreet veil. The incident cannot be dismissed as 'a Castilian interlude hardly worth the solving'.⁽¹⁰⁾ For it illustrates both the frustration experienced by those bishops who had put their trust in the rebel Infante in 1282, and the attitude of the rebel, after he had become king, to the associated questions of royal control and episcopal prestige.

The papal vendetta against Munio of Zamora has been ascribed to a variety of causes. It has been suggested both that Nicholas IV was by nature an hispanophobe and that Boniface VIII, who forced him to resign the see of Palencia in July 1296, suspected him of being implicated in the fabrication of Sancho's marriage bull.⁽¹¹⁾ Not until 1925, though, was a plausible explanation offered when, in her study of Munio, Gaibrois de Ballesteros drew attention to a letter of July 1281, which had then only recently been published, in which the prioress of S. María de Zamora informed Cardinal Ordonho of Tusculum of the havoc that had been caused in her house by a group of nuns within the community who had denied the bishop of Zamora's authority and his rights of visitation, associating themselves instead with the local Dominican friars. And by association the prioress, María Martínez, meant precisely that. The friars had frequently spent the night there, had accompanied the young nuns to private rooms, had dallied with them 'muy desulutamientre', had exchanged habits with them, and had wandered about the place in their birthday-suits 'comol dia que nascian'. Their leader, she added, was ffre Monio.⁽¹²⁾

Was this the Munio of Zamora who, at Florence seven weeks before, had been appointed Spanish provincial by the General Chapter [225] of the Order? Mercedes Gaibrois insisted that it was: here was 'la respuesta categórica' to the hitherto unanswered questions about his dismissal.⁽¹³⁾ And there is further evidence which suggests that she was right. It does not appear that there was more than one Munio of Zamora, and that the deposed Master-General was punished for the sins of a namesake. Had there been, then the archdeacon of Zamora, Pedro Anays, would have taken the trouble to specify which of them it was who owed him 573 maravedís, when he made his will in August 1294.⁽¹⁴⁾ Moreover, when Bishop Suero Pérez visited the convent in July 1279 in order to reinstate María Martínez as prioress, he was told that frater Munio had taken a leading part in the disturbances which had marred the régime of the anti-episcopal prioress, Jimena, threatening with perpetual imprisonment any lady who remained loyal to the bishop's jurisdiction.⁽¹⁵⁾ Two of the most energetic of the rebels, Elvira Pérez and Sancha Garcés, were referred to as 'consobrines fratris Munionis' in the following March by the prior of Valladolid, executor of the papal mandate against them issued by Nicholas III after the bishop had informed the pope of his findings there.⁽¹⁶⁾

Bishop Suero Pérez was a fiery character and adept at making enemies for himself. But he was not a doctrinaire opponent either of these nuns in particular or of the Dominicans in general. In March 1264 he consecrated the nuns' new church after they had been flooded out of their former establishment,⁽¹⁷⁾ and in the following February he [226] granted the friars of Salamanca an indulgence to assist them with the construction of their new premises in the wake of a similar disaster there.⁽¹⁸⁾ By the autumn of 1272, however, he and the prioress had fallen out, and Gregory X was requested to make his sentence of interdict against her effective. Not that the papal mandate had any immediate effect: it was only in October 1279 that its León executors referred it to the cantor of Ávila for immediate attention.⁽¹⁹⁾ And by then the bishop had gained entrée to the embattled nunnery and had emerged with new and astonishing revelations.

The record of his visitation of July 1279 contains the evidence submitted by some thirty nuns who said that they had resisted the advances of the friars and had contented themselves with the thought of episcopal jurisdiction. The others had gone. Led by Dona Catherina of Zamora and her paramour, they were touring the surrounding villages selling things. Those who were left behind were possibly vindictive and almost certainly disappointed women, and allowance should be made for this when considering their version of events. Yet, even with this proviso, their account of what had happened since the previous episcopal visitation would have been worthy of Coulton's attention -- or, alternatively, of that of Havelock Ellis whose account of Spanish nuns as bandits and bullfighters is well known.⁽²⁰⁾

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room,
And hermits are contented with their cells.

While some of them were out walking in the town one poor nun had her bottom pinched by a friar on the bridge. But, bad as that was, it pales in comparison with the scenes that were enacted when they opened the main gate and let the friars in. "Aqui casamiento de bon lugar", exclaimed brother Juan. So did brother Nicolás, and immediately made love to Inés Domínguez.' They were not alone. Each of the brothers had his sister, and some had several. Inés, in fact, made three hearts beat as one; and Juan Daviáncos (who was old enough both to have known better and to have attempted less) sat with her in the infirmary and disparaged his rival, saying 'mia mengengelina, non diligatis puerum sed diligatis me senem, quia magis valet bonus senex quam malus puer'. It was hardly the time to use the second person plural. Still if 'old me' was out of practice he made the most of his chances. While he was supposed to be preaching he wandered around the choir muttering 'mia mongelina'. Munio, meanwhile, was saying that he would remove Orobona's habit -- and apparently not merely as a symbolic gesture. Pedro Gutiérrez was in full cry, running hither and thither. Eventually he cornered a clutch of girls in the kitchen. They did not reciprocate his feelings, were forced to seek the seclusion that an oven grants, and all but suffocated. Not every night was like that, but there was a regular arrangement [228] whereby the nuns took in the friars' washing, received smart presents in return and retained certain rather intimate garments as souvenirs. Much of the time they seem to have spent stark naked, though doubtless they dressed up when they all went off together for an evening's drinking, leaving the battered prioress to recite compline by herself.⁽²¹⁾

The bishop had a good case, then, and, even with his record, could expect to be vindicated by the commission of enquiry which Nicholas III entrusted to the prior of Valladolid at the end of 1279.⁽²²⁾ And two years later his chances of success looked even brighter. For the Infante Sancho was friendly also, and took his part against the civil authorities of Zamora when they chose him as arbiter of their differences.⁽²³⁾ It is hardly surprising that the dean, Pedro Yáñez, stipulated in his will of April 1281 that his 50 maravedís bequest to the local mendicants should be executed only 'if it please my lord bishop'.⁽²⁴⁾ Nor need we look any further for explanation of the molestationes predicatorum et minorum to which Suero Perez, together with the other rebel bishops, alluded in May 1283. There was nothing 'especially curious' about that grievance.⁽²⁵⁾

Yet, in the event, the civil war robbed Suero Pérez of satisfaction. When the case next attracted papal attention, six years after his visitation, it was the friars' version, not his, that was contained in Honorius IV's bull of September 1285. It reads like a classic case of episcopal highhandedness. Unprovoked -- so their version ran -- he had forbidden them to preach and administer the sacraments either to the people or to the nuns. When the prioress -- Dona Jimena, evidently -- had objected, he had come to the convent 'as an enemy', dismissed her 'without reasonable cause' and intruded his own appointee in her place, incarcerating some of the sisters and excommunicating others. Some forty of them he had expelled, so that for many years they had been forced to wander about dragging out a miserable existence 'in [229] animarum suarum periculum'. For this Archbishop Gonzalo (who four days before had been commissioned to protect the Order from episcopal excesses throughout the kingdom) was charged to summon him to the Curia within four months.⁽²⁶⁾ His death in the following spring meant that Honorius remained unenlightened,⁽²⁷⁾ and in April 1287 his successor, Bishop Pedro, was persuaded by Sancho IV to make a settlement which was wholly favourable to the friars and conceded unreservedly to them jurisdiction over the convent of nuns.⁽²⁸⁾ True, justice of a sort eventually caught up with Munio, and not even the king's friendship and funds could protect him from the papal campaign when at last it was launched.⁽²⁹⁾ But the faults that make us men -- which were adduced in his favour at the General Chapter of 1290⁽³⁰⁾ -- evidently did endear him to Sancho, and suggest that an old reprobate would make a capital bishop of Palencia.⁽³¹⁾

It was not only his episcopal adherents that the ex-rebel betrayed by advancing a churchman with a record such as Munio's. He also betrayed his better self, as expressed in his Castigos -- a treatise which was in the course of preparation in the very year of Munio's promotion.⁽³²⁾ 'El buen perlado', as envisaged by Sancho, would have met with the approval of John of Abbeville himself. He was to be learned and chaste, concerned not for his own well-being or with that of his linaje but solely for that of God's Church. If the Almighty granted him prosperity, let his motive for rejoicing be that he was thereby enabled to be even more generous in almsgiving.⁽³³⁾

[230] But the episcopate, it had to be admitted, fell far short of this ideal. Indeed, what it enshrined -- to Sancho's official despair -- were the seven deadly sins.⁽³⁴⁾ And, reverting to reality, we may ascribe much of the blame for that to the moralising monarch himself. During the civil war itself he had provided a grim example of what, in practice, he meant by 'el buen perlado'. When Bishop Juan Alfonso of Palencia remained loyal to Alfonso X in April 1282,⁽³⁵⁾ Sancho attempted to oust him from his see and replace him with the dean of Seville, Ferrán Pérez, an archetypal curial cleric with a distinctly unimpressive curriculum vitae.⁽³⁶⁾ It was no difficult task for the old king to paint a sombre picture of a servant whose record and antecedents had not struck him as objectionable while he had observed the political proprieties, and the dean's dossier was duly published by Alfonso's proctor, Master Benedict of Pontecorvo, at Martin IV's court at Orvieto on 24 April 1284, by which time -- unbeknown apparently to those present -- the king was dead.⁽³⁷⁾ Significantly, Master Benedict's main point was not that the dean had sinned against nature, as was well known, but that he had infringed the king's patronal rights, his 'possessio vel quasi' of control of elections in the cathedral churches of Castile and Leon. In the apparently erroneous belief that Bishop Juan Alfonso had died,⁽³⁸⁾ therefore, the proctor protested most vigorously against the dean's intrusion without reference to the king, as was customary.⁽³⁹⁾

Details of the man's personal record seem to have [231] been regarded by the proctor as rather less damning than that. Damning they were, though. His sodomy was public knowledge, and but for reverentia ordinis clericalis the secular courts would have consigned him to the flames long since. He possessed the deanery of Palencia as well as that of Seville and prebends at Toledo, Burgos, Cuenca and Husillos -- all without papal dispensation. Moreover, he was not ordained and was rarely seen in choir, preferring to spend his time hunting and engaged in secular pursuits. He was excommunicated as a partisan of the rebel Infante and conspirator publicus. Indeed, he was alleged to have encouraged Sancho to break with his father; which was not surprising since he was a descendant of that arch-traitor, Vellido Adolfo.⁽⁴⁰⁾ The recital certainly justified the rather lame conclusion, that Ferrán Pérez was not episcopal material.⁽⁴¹⁾ Yet he continued to enjoy Sancho IV's favour, and efforts were made to secure for him the sees of Sigüenza and Seville.⁽⁴²⁾

Sancho's support of the unsavoury dean provides further proof of the bishops' naivety in assuming that the events of 1282-3 might be turned to their and the Castilian Church's advantage. They had merely exchanged one slave-driver for another. Personal promotion remained the prime consideration, and continued to be most surely secured in the royal service. Arias of Lugo, for example, was elected by the chapter in 1294 at the direction of the king whose interests he was guarding at the papal Curia. And on his return a grateful monarch rewarded both him and his see.⁽⁴³⁾ But the grapes of wrath were as sour as the fruits of victory were sweet. On Sancho's accession the archdeacon of Oviedo, Ferrán Alfonso, paid the penalty for having [232] remained loyal to Alfonso X in 1282⁽⁴⁴⁾ by being deprived of his benefices and driven out of the country on the flimsiest of pretexts. That was bad enough in itself, as Cardinal Jordan of S. Eustacius -- whose chaplain the archdeacon was -- reminded the king in August 1287, and not the sort of thing that Fernando III, his exemplary grandfather, would have done, the cardinal fondly imagined.⁽⁴⁵⁾ The worst aspect of the affair, though, was, in his opinion, the part played by Bishop Martin of Astorga who, with not a thought for libertas ecclesiastica, had actually led the attack on the archdeacon.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Clearly the cardinal was quite hopelessly out of touch with Castilian reality. Bishop Martín was the king's man first and the Church's second, if at all. He had his family to consider, and but for being the king's man he would not have been a bishop anyway. It was only because he and his predecessors had allowed themselves to forget where their first loyalties ought perhaps to have lain that the bishops of Astorga presided over a relatively prosperous see.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Moreover, Spanish churchmen, then as previously, were peculiarly susceptible to the whispering-campaign and backstairs-politics which had been the undoing of the cardinal's protégé: he was not the only one to feel the draught of royal disfavour during Sancho's reign. Gómez García, who died as bishop-elect of Mondoñedo in July 1286, was another victim of the same witch-hunt as had brought about the archdeacon's discomfiture and which was automatically incurred by whomsoever the king suspected of not sharing his own conviction about the importance [233] of securing papal approval of his illicit liaison with María de Molina -- a cause for which he was himself prepared to lie and cheat.⁽⁴⁸⁾ But whereas, ironically, Sancho's spite brought Ferrán Alfonso a bishopric,⁽⁴⁹⁾ the malevolent gossip about Gómez García had the desired result of costing him his, so that his epitaph in Toledo Cathedral, with its phrases about the ephemerality of worldly achievement and its refrain of 'here today, gone tomorrow', may be regarded as rather more than just another exercise in formal rhetoric.⁽⁵⁰⁾ It may quite properly serve to commemorate many more of his colleagues, bishops and others, who, having set out to fish for rich prizes at court, soon discovered that their main preoccupation there was to stay alive and afloat.

In December 1283, while the rebel bishops were planning the constitution of the post-bellum Church, some of the consequences of this continuing royal tutelage were considered in the course of a letter written by the local clergy, los naturales, of the church of Jaén. The letter, which was sent to Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo, was a potted history of their diocese, and it had a moral.⁽⁵¹⁾ It recalled that [234] ever since the re-establishment of the Christian religion at Jaén in 1246 the cathedral chapter had consisted of two groups: themselves (los naturales) and los de Soria. Soria, some four hundred kilometres to the north, was prolific of royal clerks -- for which reason Alfonso X had urged its elevation to cathedral status in 1267: a nice illustration, incidentally, of the royal scale of values;⁽⁵²⁾ and, according to los naturales, los de Soria had been using Jaén as an ecclesiastical convenience, monopolising the best benefices in the cathedral church. To date, they complained -- ignoring the unhappy history of the Dominican bishop of Baeza, Domingo, in the pre-1246 period⁽⁵³⁾ -- all three of their bishops had been Sorians. The first, Pedro Martínez the royal chancellor, had arrived there as a corpse, having died on his way back from Rocamadour. So they could hardly complain about him. They remembered his successor, Pascal, though. In general an admirable person, he had had only one serious fault: his tendency to bend over backwards in his anxiety to award benefices to los de Soria rather than to los naturales.⁽⁵⁴⁾ And Martín, the third bishop, had bent even further.⁽⁵⁵⁾

[235] Martín, however, had just died, and los naturales were determined to hold out for home rule and have a local man as bishop for a change. Civil war was being waged, and the king's attention was otherwise engaged they would never have a better chance. But they managed to muff it, thanks to some particularly maladroit electoral tactics, and yet another Sorian, Juan Ibañez the magister scolarum, was elected. This left them with only one card to play: an appeal to the archbishop. It was their method of playing this card that brought blushes to the cheeks of their historian almost four hundred years later.

Despite the nature of his office at Jaén, Juan Ibañez was not one of their great minds In fact he was illiterate, and, what was worse, even the choir-boys knew it. Amongst those always severe critics he was a laughing-stock, which must have pained him, for - as los naturales slyly remarked - he had children of his own. He also had a plausible way with him and talked them into signing his election decree. They did this (they explained later) lest they should appear bad sports. That settled, the bishop-elect set off with his friends for the court of the rebel Infante, having first arranged for some Franciscans from afar to deal with the archbishop, thus saving himself an interview which, because he had no Latin, Juan Ibáñez did not relish.⁽⁵⁶⁾ It was at this point that los naturales wrote their letter, and, having had the worst of it for almost forty years, concluded with the lapidary generalisation that 'la falta de los perlados letrados e complidos de mucho bien a traido la tierra a este estado'.

Their appeal was a failure. Juan Ibáñez joined the ranks of Sancho IV's bishops where he was not the only father of a family,⁽⁵⁷⁾ and Jaén continued to serve as a rest-home for civil servants. But that final lamentation did not refer merely to the capitular in-fighting of a frontier see. It was a judgement on Alfonso X's choice of bishops and his dealings with the Church in general. It is true that both Alfonso [236] and Sancho are on record as favouring prelates who were letrados,⁽⁵⁸⁾ and the former's court was certainly a haven of learning where Juan Ibañez would have been an embarrassment both to himself and to others. But the intellectual disciplines most assiduously cultivated there had no particular relevance to the episcopal calling. The bishops of Astorga and Segorbe were notable or notorious for translations of Arabic texts⁽⁵⁹⁾ and medical diagnosis⁽⁶⁰⁾ respectively. No theologian, though, of comparable calibre was promoted to a Castilian see during these years. The traditional theology was not a feature of the court's cultural activity, the Primera Partida notwithstanding. There is indeed a suggestion in one of Salimbene's anecdotes that by at least some Spaniards the subject was regarded as unworthy of their attention and best left to foreigners.⁽⁶¹⁾ Of course, the shortage of theological bishops was a general European phenomenon, and not confined to Castile. In Castile, however, the combination of this cultural climate and the political status of the prelate did induce a marked reluctance towards episcopal promotion in many of the abler candidates. Adán Pérez took refuge with the Dominicans at the very thought of Plasencia, and Hermannus Alemannus begged Clement IV humiliter ac instanter not to appoint him to one of the country's richest sees and claimed to be a bastard so that he might remain a scholar as well.⁽⁶²⁾

[236] Amongst the lower clergy for whom the bishops were responsible illiteracy was widespread, John of Abbeville's strictures having apparently produced little practical improvement.⁽⁶³⁾ And the problem was a practical one. It was hardly surprising that sentences of excommunication were so blandly ignored at Salamanca, as the canons of that church complained to the king in August 1289. Less than thirty years before, a Compostela provincial council had explained why. It was impossible to apply the intricate rules for formal excommunication which IV Lateran and I Lyons had established 'propter imperitiam clericorum qui sententiam excommunicationis non scribere nec formare sciunt'.⁽⁶⁴⁾ And the higher clergy were very often no better. From the strictly pastoral point of view the learning of men such as Master Martín, the canon of Orense whose copy of Avicenna was deposited for general use in the cathedral pulpit in 1281, was hardly less barren than the total illiteracy of eight canons of Palencia -- almost 20 per cent of the chapter, including the dean and the magíster scolarum -- thirteen years later.⁽⁶⁵⁾ By the mid-fourteenth century, at the latest, the papacy had come to accept the situation, and was prepared to admit to benefices 'in tota Ispania et Vasconia' clerks whose minimal intellectual achievements were deemed inadequate elsewhere.⁽⁶⁶⁾

The fault lay with the bishops and, beyond them, with the king whose creatures they were. When John XXII deplored the decay of the Castilian Church in 1318 they were all too clearly the lineal descendants of those who had received such a bad press from Diego García exactly a hundred years before. They kept concubines quite openly, endowed their offspring with church property, forcibly prevented their victims and critics from appealing to the Holy See, and [238] regarded the diocesan visitation merely as a means of fund-raising.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Some idea of the seriousness with which the visitatio was treated may be gathered from a treatise devoted to the subject -- the Liber Septenanus -- which was composed not long after 1318 by Rodrigo de Palencia, the archpriest of Carrión, and dedicated to his bishop, Juan de Saavedra.⁽⁶⁸⁾ Rather optimistically the author expressed the hope that the work might enliven the bishop's dull moments. But if he derived any pleasure from the Liber, then Bishop Juan must have been a very dull fellow indeed. Conceived in terms of the essential sevenness of things, it is extremely heavy going, and for its own sake would not be worth rescuing from oblivion.⁽⁶⁹⁾ All that makes it worthy of mention here is the contrast between the theory and the practice of diocesan visitation which, quite incidentally, it highlights While the text insists that annual visitation is merely the minimum obligation, the prologue acknowledges that in fact the bishop's various other preoccupations have a prior claim on his attention.⁽⁷⁰⁾

'For the greater part of the year' the bishop of Palencia was at the royal court or otherwise engaged. The pastoral activity of such prelates was necessarily limited. One such was Bishop Alfonso of Coria, chancellor of the rebel Infante Sancho and subsequently of his widow. During a thirty-year pontificate he hardly ever visited his see, and [239] when Archbishop Rodrigo of Compostela came there in 1315 he found it in a state of almost total collapse 'propter negligentiam et excessus notorios'.⁽⁷¹⁾ The royal court exerted a fatal fascination over the entire peninsular Church. Bishop Soeiro of Lisbon complained to Honorius III about the clergy of his diocese who had abandoned their flocks and were dancing attendance on the king.⁽⁷²⁾ As early as 1241 it was necessary to remind the Dominicans that, if they went there at all, they ought to concern themselves with creating a peaceful climate and not with prosecuting contentious lawsuits.⁽⁷³⁾ The openings there for the educated cleric, as royal counsellor or preacher, were stressed even by Ramon Llull when he was attempting to persuade indolent monks to devote themselves to learning;⁽⁷⁴⁾ and the clergy of Talavera, who, in the Archpriest of Hita's tale, were ordered to renounce their mistresses, clearly regarded the royal court rather than the papal Curia as the spiritual tribunal of final appeal.⁽⁷⁵⁾

From the vantage-point of a Portuguese see, Alvarus Pelagius opined that Spain's bishops were the world's worst. Not one in a hundred was undefiled by simony. They were a public scandal, luxurious, bearded and effeminate, going about with bare arms, not wearing shirts 'ex lascivia' and sporting risqué outfits.⁽⁷⁶⁾ He reminded them that they were forbidden to fight, even against Saracens;⁽⁷⁷⁾ and though, as Alvarus described them, they would seem to have been [240] ill-equipped for it, martial activity was certainly a characteristic feature of the peninsular prelates. They were fighting men. Benito de Rocaberti's speech was well-stocked with parade-ground ribaldry. Sitting booted and spurred astride his mule he uttered 'very dirty words'.⁽⁷⁸⁾ On one occasion Innocent III had to remind Bishop Rodrigo of Sigüenza of the text of St Paul's Epistle to Titus after that sturdy man of God had carried the battle into his own cathedral church, lashed out with his pastoral staff and inflicted fatal wounds on a member of the congregation.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Even when the Holy War had become a distant battle these attitudes persisted, and for all his pious protestations Alvarus Pelagius himself was as deeply imbued with the military spirit as were the brethren whom he upbraided. In his eyes Alfonso XI of Castile was a monarch among kings since, while the others praised God with their voices, Alfonso risked his neck for Him.⁽⁸⁰⁾ And, rather shamefacedly, he was forced to admit that even he was accustomed to kiss the king's hand, as the 'vile Spanish prelates' did -- but 'more out of fear than humility', he added brightly, remembering an escape clause from the Liber Extra.⁽⁸¹⁾

Being a good lawyer and knowing all about inward reservations, Alvarus survived with his conscience intact. The choice for him, as for the rest, was between hypocrisy and sedition. Churchmen in Castile were regarded as having chosen the latter course when they attempted to hold councils, and it was only at moments of serious political unrest -- in 1257, 1279 or 1282 -- that they tabled their plans. On this last occasion they were duped by Sancho IV, and the continuing contrast between the Castilian Church, with its lack of experience of concerted action, and the Aragonese Church in which -- despite Benito de Rocaberti and the interdict occasioned by the War of the Vespers -- something of the practices inculcated by Pedro de Albalat still survived, was graphically illustrated some seven years after [241] Sancho's accession, when Nicholas IV ordered councils to be held in every province of the Western Church to consider ways and means of dealing with recent disasters in the Holy Land. The loss of Acre called for prompt action, and in his two bulls of 18 August and 25 September 1291 the pope stipulated that proctors from the councils should reach the Curia by the following February, or, when that time-schedule had been disrupted by delay in delivering the mandates, as soon after as possible. Accordingly, the provinces of Milan, Tours and Canterbury made haste.⁽⁸²⁾ So also did the province of Tarragona: Archbishop Rodrigo received the papal letters on 2 January 1292 and on the very next day summoned his suffragans 'primo, secundo, tercio et peremptorie' for 1 March. At the same time he forwarded to the bishop of Calahorra a copy of the bull Illuminet in which the indulgences available to crusaders were specified.⁽⁸³⁾ Before the end of April the conciliar proctors were on their way to Rome, while the archbishop took advantage of the assembly and reissued and revised provincial legislation relating to clerical morals and discipline.⁽⁸⁴⁾

In the province of Toledo, meanwhile, nothing happened. Although the pope's letters were delivered to him on 12 December 1291, it was not until 6 January -- twenty-five days later -- that Archbishop Gonzalo sent word to his suffragans to assemble at Valladolid on 20 April -- if, indeed, the summonses were sent.⁽⁸⁵⁾ No record of the Valladolid meeting has survived. Instead, the archbishop proceeded to [242] use the papal mandates as a means of establishing authority over the exempt see of Cartagena, thus turning the tribulations of the Universal Church to the advantage of the church of Toledo.⁽⁸⁶⁾ And the chapter of Braga sede vacante did likewise, having the effrontery to subpoena the bishop of Oviedo, another exempt see.⁽⁸⁷⁾

The archbishop of Tarragona had not let a second sun go down upon his mandate, but almost a month passed before the archbishop of Toledo took action. Possibly he did not feel able to obey the pope until he had consulted the king. Certainly Sancho IV kept the Compostela Council under surveillance. From Zamora on 21 April 1292 he wrote to the assembled prelates asking them to offer prayers for the success of the siege of Algeciras.⁽⁸⁸⁾ Since both the assemblies in his kingdom were planned for the same day there was no chance that one would give the other a lead -- a coincidence that was perhaps too much to the king's advantage to have been entirely fortuitous. And, finally, there is the symbolic aspect of his request for prayers. With the fall of Acre, 'the Crusading movement began to slip out of the sphere of practical politics',⁽⁸⁹⁾ leaving prayer as virtually the only weapon left to the beleaguered Christians. And Sancho IV claimed even that for himself.

He and his father had already denuded the Church of its more substantial endowments. The abuses listed in the bishop of Rieti's memoriale all continued unchecked: expired papal grants were [243] resurrected⁽⁹⁰⁾ and the tercias exacted. Meanwhile, far from receiving 'rivers of gold and silver' from Spain, Nicholas IV, like Clement IV before him, had occasion to complain that Spain contributed nothing to papal funds.⁽⁹¹⁾ If there were any churchmen who took heart from the council or councils of the spring of 1292, then they received a rude shock before the year was out and they were required to come to the aid of the king, the country and Christendom with financial assistance towards the expenses of the siege of Tarifa.⁽⁹²⁾ Sancho IV was not a man to be trifled with, as Archbishop Rodrigo of Compostela discovered two years later when he failed to obey immediately a demand for eighty thousand maravedís for the war against Aben-Jacob, and the king thereupon ordered his property throughout the kingdom to be seized.⁽⁹³⁾ And worse followed after Sancho's death during the minority of Fernando IV. In August 1295 at the Valladolid Cortes the bishops were denied access to their only public forum, the royal court. With the sole exception of the royal chaplains, churchmen were ordered to abandon the young king's entourage and return to their own quarters, 'los arçobispos e obispos e los abbades...asus arçobispados e obispados e asus abbadias, et los clerigos asus logares'. The royal household was to be staffed with 'omes bonos delas villas' [244] as in the reign of Fernando III, which the anti-clericals regarded as Golden Age, just as Sancho's episcopal partisans had regarded it, by their very different standards, a dozen years before; and the seals were to be entrusted to two lay notaries.⁽⁹⁴⁾ The effect of these measures would be to exclude ecclesiastics from the councils of the kingdom, thus cutting their one political lifeline. On 16 August Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo entered a strong protest, having reminded the Cortes four days before of the 'muchos agrauiamientos' which churchmen were accustomed to receiving from kings and nobles. He mentioned, in particular, the excesses committed by laymen during episcopal vacancies. So serious were the depredations that very frequently it proved impossible to give the deceased prelate a decent funeral. Nor were the churches allowed to elect a successor liberamiente, being forced to choose 'contra sus voluntades'. And the same applied to other benefices. Even Bishop Martín of Astorga was willing to join the resistance movement, for the situation was critical.⁽⁹⁵⁾ Yet when they proceeded to lay claim once more to what they had always been denied -- the right of free assembly -- they were again charged with sedition. And the charge stuck.⁽⁹⁶⁾

The Castilian Church continued to be at the king's mercy. The lord king gave, and the lord king took away: the charters which he granted it were commonly either neglected or revoked by him, as the bishops complained in 1279.⁽⁹⁷⁾ Appropriately, it was an exclamation from the Book of Job that sprang to the lips of Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo when he wrote to his chapter from the papal Curia during Sancho's reign.⁽⁹⁸⁾ The church of León was currently being reminded of the value of royal concessions. Having waived its debts to him in [245] April 1288, so that 'en nuestro tiempo sea mas rica e non pierda lo que ha', the king forgot all his promises and assurances when he needed funds for the siege of Tarifa four years later.⁽⁹⁹⁾ No church was exempt from that levy. Palencia, for example, was mulcted to the tune of sixty thousand maravedís;⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ and if Palencia had recovered from the catastrophe of thirty years before when allegedly eleven thousand had died there, fresh disasters were already in store for it. Of all the cities of Castile Palencia suffered most during the civil wars of the late 1290s 'et iacturam maximam est perpessa', according to a contemporary witness, Jofré de Loaisa.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ And meanwhile the richest local benefices were assigned to men such as Alfonso Pérez, the king's scribe and the queen mother's chaplain, who in June 1288 was granted property at Monzón 'por jure de heredat'.⁽¹⁰²⁾

To the papacy, however, the Castilian Church continued to be a dead loss. 'Hispania...suis gravatur oneribus', as Clement IV had observed and Nicholas IV confirmed.⁽¹⁰³⁾ By way of illustration, both of this and of other matters discussed in the foregoing chapters, we may conclude with some account of the Spanish Crusade when the Christian kings took the initiative once more in the early fourteenth century.

In April 1309 Clement V gave his blessing to the campaign which Fernando IV of Castile and Jaime II of Aragon proposed to mount against the kingdom of Granada. Jaime's man at Avignon, Bernat dez Fonollar, advanced the traditional argument: since it was in the Almighty's interest that Granada should be recaptured, the pope and the cardinals were morally obliged to provide every assistance. They, not the kings, would be responsible if the enterprise failed. And, though there were those at the Curia who hinted that the king of Castile's intention was not to rid the Peninsula of what Clement called that 'fetidam nationem', but rather to give them a fright and [246] enrich himself, the pope accepted the argument and granted Fernando a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenue of his kingdom for three years.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

By the end of 1309, however, the progress of the campaign was lending some credence to the reservations of the sceptics. In October the king's uncle, the Infante Juan, and Juan Manuel broke faith and abandoned the siege of Algeciras,⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ and if the pope was uncertain about how he should respond to Archbishop Fernando of Seville's appeal for more funds for the king in February 1310,⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ the events of the following months did nothing to reassure him. Eventually, in July, he declined to authorise a fresh grant and instead directed the three archbishops subject to Castilian jurisdiction to hold provincial councils and report to him on both the general state of the kingdom -- 'ac precipue ecclesiarum, prelatorum et ecclesiasticarum personarum dicti regni' -- and the military campaign.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ That the initiative for consultation, even at this late stage, should have come from the pope rather than from the Castilian prelates themselves is not surprising. When, after a four-year absence, Archbishop Rodrigo of Compostela returned to his church after the Vienne General Council and was informed of the impending Cortes, he had to badger the archbishop of Toledo into taking any precautions at all 'concerning those things which concern yourself ourselves and our churches'. Clearly neither was accustomed to such a procedure: Rodrigo suggested not a council but a gathering.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ In Aragon, by contrast, Jaime II had already acted before Clement contacted the leaders of the Castilian Church, having requested Archbishop Guillermo of Tarragona in the previous October to summon a provincial council for discussion of the ecclesiastical contribution to the fighting fund, 'conspicientes attamen, quod hec absque celebracione generalis concilii nequeunt utiliter explicari'; and, in view of what was said on that occasion, had even interceded for them and requested Clement to relieve the Aragonese Church of its 'onera importabilia' by suspending the collection of the [247] decima.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Admittedly, allowance must be made for, the political machinations of a king whose fondness for his national Church had not prevented him from asking the pope in 1309 for enormous grants of ecclesiastical revenue such as not even the wars against Frederick II and the ransoming of St Louis had warranted.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Still, if only in that Jaime took the trouble to manipulate the Church, there is a marked contrast between his approach and Fernando's; and at least some weight may be attached to his assertion, that he felt bound to plead on behalf of the Aragonese Church which had so readily assisted him in the past.⁽¹¹¹⁾

Moreover, the aftermath of Clement V's intervention provides even more telling evidence concerning the ineffectiveness of papal collectors in the kingdom of Castile. For after the pope had suspended the decima grant in June 1311, for reasons which he did not care to specify but which very probably were connected with Fernando's extortion of the tercias,⁽¹¹²⁾ he then relented and in July 1312 instructed the bishops of Córdoba and Ciudad Rodrigo to secure all unpaid contributions, forward what was owed to the king's naval allies, and provide him with a full account of their dealings.⁽¹¹³⁾ This account has survived, and it records in vivid detail some of the difficulties facing papal collectors in Castile, even when their receipts were ultimately destined for the king himself. It was prepared not by the appointed bishops, but by two clerics -- Juan Fernández, archdeacon of Castro and later dean of Córdoba, and Juan Gonzálvez -- and their assistants, to whom the prelates had the wisdom to refer the whole tedious business.⁽¹¹⁴⁾

And it was, indeed, a tedious, dangerous and cold haul that lay before them when they began their task in November 1313. For [248] Fernando IV had died thirteen months before and the country was in the throes of a civil war of peculiar complexity,⁽¹¹⁵⁾ so that when they summoned the abbots of the surrounding monasteries to meet them at Osma in April 1314 none came They were not prepared to venture out into the war zone on such a trifling errand.⁽¹¹⁶⁾ For the same reason the collectors drew a blank at Calahorra, and failed to pin down the bishop of Palencia who dared not show his face in his own episcopal city.⁽¹¹⁷⁾ At Toledo 'terra erat destructa' and nothing could be collected because the local population were at war with their archbishop and Juan Manuel⁽¹¹⁸⁾ The word carestia occurs frequently in their account, and their living expenses were considerable 'quoniam terra Castelle erat tunc cara'.⁽¹¹⁹⁾It was bitter weather through that winter: 'cum pessimo tempore quo tunc erat' their shoes wore out almost as soon as they were replaced -- which was frequently, and not inexpensive.⁽¹²⁰⁾ The men themselves succumbed to the weather: having been sent on an errand to Villarreal and Alcaraz, Fernando Garcés was brought back an invalid to Toledo on the back of an ass, the snow having affected his legs. The cost of carriage, medication and a new pair of shoes amounted to fifty-six maravedís, all for no return.⁽¹²¹⁾ And their horses succumbed too. The first to go was a mount belonging to Diego Garcés, a nephew of the archdeacon, which had cost its owner four hundred maravedís (sixty maravedís less than was successfully claimed in compensation after its demise at Sigüenza).⁽¹²²⁾ Such modest profit, though, was as nothing compared with what the archdeacon himself made when his steed was taken ill (witness Don Oliverio) as they left Tudela del Duero. Carting the creature to Valladolid on a litter and having it personally attended to for four months cost three hundred maravedís. When it then gave up the struggle a further three thousand was claimed.⁽¹²³⁾ The vast quantities of wax and parchment which they purchased as they went were, in comparison, cheap, though the services of notaries (when they were [249] able to find them)⁽¹²⁴⁾ were not. At Magaz, for example, where there was no competition, Alfonso Rodríguez could demand fifty maravedís, and then a further thirty in settlement of his scruples about preparing the document which excommunicated his lord, the bishop of Palencia,⁽¹²⁵⁾ while at Sigüenza extra had to be offered so that their hired hand might pen his compositions in a suitably minatory style.⁽¹²⁶⁾ Papal mandates alone convinced no one. Gonzalvo Rodríguez, canon of Palencia, carried far more weight than Clement V, bishop of Rome, and if anything was to be achieved it was necessary to purchase his assistance; and similar arrangements had to be made with the bishop of Sigüenza's vicar-general 'ut nobis esset bonus et non impediret nos'.⁽¹²⁷⁾ Indeed their expenditure was so considerable that by September 1314, when they reached Burgos, they were not covering their costs.⁽¹²⁸⁾ And thus it remained until, at the final tally, they found that, having allowed for their various equine misadventures, several changes of clothes and expenses at the rate of thirty-five maravedís daily, their seventeen-and-a-half-month peregrination had cost almost thirty-two thousand maravedís while their receipts had produced rather less than thirty thousand.⁽¹²⁹⁾

Any assessment of the economic relationship of the Roman Church, the Spanish Churches and the Spanish monarchs must give due weight to figures such as these. They are not to be disregarded merely because the collectors were natives and their claims for expenses were so questionable. After all, in Aragon thirty-five years before, foreign collectors had expressed similar fears as they trudged around in pursuit of Pedro III; and, in spite of everything, Juan Fernández rose to be dean of Córdoba. Meanwhile, moreover, Fernando IV was able to assure Clement V that it was 'customary' for him and his predecessors to receive two-thirds of the tercias,⁽¹³⁰⁾ and [250] Clement could observe, when granting four years' procurations to the archbishop of Toledo, that only with papal assistance might that church be relieved of its debts.⁽¹³¹⁾ Yet, then as now, Spaniards naturally assumed that all their woes were attributable to papal collectors, that papal collectors were all as disreputable as the Patriarch of Grado, and that -- the experiences of Adeganius of Parma notwithstanding -- no papal collector would settle for anything less than pure gold. Also at the beginning of the fourteenth century Bishop Fernando of Córdoba wrote to the archbishop of Toledo, warning him in advance of the imminent arrival of certain papal emissaries and advising him to grease their palms well in view of the harm that they might do him. He had been at the Curia, had met their type before, and knew what he was talking about, he said.⁽¹³²⁾

Gossip of this sort, though, does not prove that the criticisms of 1262-3 had any foundation. All that it proves is that some bishops have suspicious minds. For, though it may be possible to produce evidence in support of the bishop of Córdoba's pessimistic view of human nature, the fact remains that it was the king and not the pope who controlled the destiny of the Spanish Church. Asked about the pope's temporal power, an illustrious contemporary admitted that it was considerable, but added that he was certain of one thing only: the pope had less power in Castile than anywhere else. More than that he did not know. Nor could more have been said. The author of the dialogue, Juan Manuel, was a nephew of Alfonso X, and he too, like the bishop of Córdoba, was in a position to know what he was talking about.⁽¹³³⁾

1. Toledo, Salamanca, Burgos, the nuns of Madrid: Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, III, V, xi-xii, xviii-xxiii (nos 7, 16-18, 31, 33-4, 37).

2. Publ. Carrión, AIA, V, 127-30.

3. Cf. Jordan of Osnabrück, above, p. 153.

4. See below, Ch. 12.

5. For royal patronage of the friars in the 1230s, see Lucas of Túy, Chronicon Mundi, 113. Alfonso X's nephew, Juan Manuel, advised his son always to have a Dominican confessor: Libro Infinido, ed. Gayangos, BAE, LI, 266. For Franciscan confessors, see López, AIA, XXXI, 5 ff.

6. Finke, Ungedruckte Dominikanerbriefe, 55; Reg. Nich. III, 743: 'Item occasione nove religionis institute ab eo ecclesie multipliciter aggravantur'; MHE, II, 96; inc. Habundans malitia, 13 Sept. 1285: AHN, 3022/8.

7. See above, p. 137. In April 1282, the prior provincial of the Dominicans (Munio of Zamora), together with other leading friars and the Franciscan bishop of Burgos, Femando, remained loyal to Alfonso in the face of immediate danger: MHE, II, 59-63. Cf. Ballesteros, BRAH, CXIX, 175.

8. Ximena, Catálogo de los obispos de Jaén, 228.

9. Marcos Pous, CTEER, VIII, 97.

10. Boase, Boniface VIII, 198. For a detailed account of Munio's career, see Mortier, Histoire des Maitres Généraux, II, 251-93.

11. Hernando de Castillo (1584), Historia general de Sancto Domingo, I, fo. 491v; Boase loc. cit.

12. Publ. Castro, B. Hisp., XXV, 196-7: orig. in AC Zamora, 13/60 (together with a Latin version of the same).

13. Mortier, II, 171-2; Gaibrois de Ballesteros in Finke Festschrift, 140.

14. AC Zamora, 18/20: 'ffrey Monio y la priora allende rrio'.

15. AC Zamora, 13/61: 'frater Munio comminatus est istis qui fovebant partem ecclesie Zamorensis quod caperet eas et poneret eas perpetuo in catenis'.

16. AC Zamora, 13/62, containing the text of the letter (Sua nobis, 1 Dec. 1279), together with that of the prior's summons of 31 March 1280. Some thirty nuns were summoned to a hearing at Valladolid on 29 April. Not having appeared - 'maguer las atendi diez dias despues del termino' - they were excommunicated on 8 May.

17. Gaibrois de Ballesteros, loc. cit., 140, n. 58, There is some doubt about the date of their move (1238?), since the nuns' miraculous relic which saved them from a watery grave in the Duero allowed their records to perish: J. López, Tercera parte,237; Alvarez Martínez, Historia de Zamora, 190. However, on 23 Jan. 1259, Alexander IV associated the community with the Augustinian convent at Madrid, at the instance of the noblewoman, Jimena Rodríguez: inc. Cum sicut, AC Zamora, 1/3. 'Augustinian', of course, meant 'secundum instituta ordinis fratrum predicatorum': thus began the trouble. The ladies were decently scrupulous about trifles -- for example, the possibility of simony in their purchase of a church from the bishop, about which the papal familiaris, fr. Petrus de Regio, set their minds at rest on 2 May 1273 (AC Zamora, 1/5). For the bishop's other problems, see below, Ch 12.

18. AHN, 1894/16. They had moved in 1256, after the Tormes had overflowed a second time: AHN, 1893/16 (Potthast, 10417); Cuervo, Historiadores del convento de San Esteban de Salamanca, I, 10; III, 628.

19. AC Zamora, 13/63, containing the text of Gregory's letter of 31 Oct. 1272, Sua nobis.

20. The Soul of Spain (London, 1937), 100.

21. AC Zamora, 13/61.

22. AC Zamora, 13/62. On 5 Dec. 1279 the pope instructed the dean of Salamanca, Pedro Pérez, to investigate the wholesale alienation of conventual property which had occurred. The hearing was held in the following November. The nuns had had permission to acquire property, but not to sell it, since 2 July 1265: AC Zamora, 1/6 (text of Ad audientiam nostram); 13/65; 13/64 (Devotionis vestre).

23. AC Zamora, II.ii/10, containing the text of Martin IV's letter, Sua nobis, confirming the Infante's findings, 7 May 1281.

24. AC Zamora, 18/9.

25. Cf. above, p. 221.

26. AHN, 3022/8; Reg. Hon. IV, 147.

27. Suero Pérez died between May and mid-June: Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, I, 128. Alvarez Martínez, 200, prints the text of his epitaph.

28. J. López, Tercera parte, 240-1.

29. 'Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Finke Festschrift, 141-2. The king's gift of money to Cardinal Ordonho in July 1285, to which she refers (citing the royal accounts: AHN, Códices, 1009bis, fo. 12v) may have been designed to purchase the silence of one who had been informed about Munio four years before by María Martínez. But that is not the only possible explanation: Sancho had other business pending at the Curia.

30. 'Nunquam in capitulis generalibus, exceptis dumtaxat quibusdam levioribus culpis, sine quibus hec vita non ducitur, quas constitucio inter leves culpas connumerat, culpabilis est inventus': Litterae encyclicae, ed. Reichert, 154.

31. Mortier, II, 573 ff. In 1291 the Dominican General Chapter met at Palencia, at Sancho's express wish: Acta Capitulorum Generalium, ed. Reichert, I, 270.

32. Ed. A. Rey from MSS. which are free of the later interpolations that have devalued the work as a reliable source. Cf. Rey's discussion, 9 ff.

33. Ibid. 104 ff.

34. Ibid. 109-10: 'Ca oy dia sy pararemos mientes, todos los siete pecados mortales en los servidores della los fallaras.'

35. MHE, II, 59 ff.

36. Alfonso X had employed him in negotiations with the rebel Infante Felipe, through whose good offices he had secured the deanery of Seville in Jan. 1255: Crónica del Rey Don Alfonso (BAE, LXVI), 16; Reg. Alex. IV, 131. Muñoz Torrado, Iglesia de Sevilla, 142-3, confuses him with another royal agent, Ferrán Pérez de Foçes. Cf. Zurita, Anales I, fo. 232ra-b; MHE, II, 15. In 1280 Nicholas III suspected him of having received bribes from the would-be archbishop of Toledo, Ferrán Rodríguez: Serrano, Cartulario de Covarrubias, 119-20.

37. Cf. Ballesteros, Alfonso X, 1056.

38. Unless he had a successor of the same name, Juan Alfonso lived until Nov. 1293: Fernández del Pulgar, Historia de Palencia, II, 346 ff. Indeed, in Jan. 1287 Sancho IV assured the concejo of Palencia that he meant no harm to them by the privileges which he had accorded to Juan Alfonso 'quando eramos Inifante, nin despues que ffuemos Rey': Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, III, lxxxix (no. 144).

39. AC Toledo, X.2.A.2.5: '...cum de consuetudine et de jure sit quod mors prelati in ecclesiis cathedralibus regnorum Castelle et Legionis notificari debeat et consueverit notificari regi eidem, et monte notificata huiusmodi et iam electione celebrata eidem regi per sollempnes nuntios presentari, ut benignum sicut monis est prebetur assensum; et in ista possessione, vel quasi, dictus dominus Alfonsus tempore suo et predecessorum suorum suis temporibus fuerit pacifice et quiete tam in ecclesia Palentina, cuius est ipse patronus, quam in aliis ecclesiis regnonum suorum, et nunc ecclesia Palentina per mortem domini Johannis Alfonsi vacante...'

40. Ibid.: '...cum...fueritque et sit proditor et de genere proditorum descendens, scilicet de genere Bellid Adolfe qui dominum suum dominum Sancium quondam regem Legionis prodiit et interfecit'. Vellido Adolfo murdered Sancho II of Leon and Castile in Oct. 1072. See Valdeavellano, Historia de España, I, ii, 319.

41. Ibid.: 'et est minus sufficientis scientie ad dignitatem episcopalem obtinendum'.

42. Reg. Hon. IV, 670; Reg. Nich. IV, 493. It cannot have been much to his advantage that Honorius IV referred the Sigüenza affair to the bishop of Palencia in Nov. 1286. For his political services to Sancho, see Sánchez Belda, AHDE, XXI-II, 177.

43. ES, XII, 86-90; Colección de documentos históricos, I, 88-9.

44. MHE, II, 59.

45. AC Toledo, E.7.D.2.3: '...quia fuerat vobis suggestum quod negotia per vos cornmissa vestris procuratoribus in Romana curia expedienda idem archidiaconus impediverat expediri...Rex Ferrandus avus vester...consimiles litteras contra ecclesiasticas personas in dignitatibus constitutas ad suggestionem simplicem alicuius forte malevoli non mandasset...Credendum est potius suggestionibus callidis emulorum per subreptionis astutiam quam ex deliberatione vestri consilii manavisse.' This was to take the charitable view of both grandfather and grandson. Cf. above, pp. 139-40.

46. Ibid.: 'Utinam dominus Astoricensis, in regno Legionis vester prothonotarius, ut cum reverentia ipsius loquamur, curam sibi commissi officii et debitum regiminis pastoralis ac statum ecclesiastice libertatis ante subscriptionem predictam provida deliberatione pensasset.' There was a special reason for the cardinal's sense of disappointment in Bishop Martín: only nine months before he had been one of the three cardinals who had authorised his translation from Calahorra to Astorga: Reg. Hon. IV, 717.

47. ES, XVI, 246; Hergueta, RABM, IX, 330 ff.

48. Jaffé-Finke, AHDE, III, 298 ff.

49. After a further clash with the king and a spell of imprisonment he took refuge at the Curia. By then he was dean of Oviedo, and in 1295 he was awarded that see by Boniface VIII on the death there of the capitular candidate: ES, XXXVIII, 218, 220; Reg. Bon. VIII, 580; AC Oviedo, A/II/I; AHN, 1602/16 (reg. García Larragueta, Catálogo, 512, 510). But for Sancho's vendetta against him it is unlikely that he would have been at hand. He was not at the Curia by choice, and in his will referred to Sancho's reign as 'primo tempore quo eram in curia Romana': AC Oviedo, B/6/12 (reg. García Larragueta, 565).

50.

...Quam sit vita brevis, quam sit brevis...
In me cognosce qui mea metra legis.
Qui quondam potui, qui quondam magnus habebar,
Jam meo nil possum pulvis et ossa manens.
Nil mihi divicie, mihi nil genus adque juventus
Profuit. Hec vita nichil est aliut nisi ventus.
Ergo tibi caveas, ne te deceptio mundi
Fallat. Nam poteris cras, sicut ego, mori:

51. AC Toledo, X.1.D.2.1. Parts of this letter were published by Ximena in the seventeenth century - but parts only, 'por no ofender la modestía y piedad cristiana de los que la leyeren', in view of the 'incredible calumnies' about the bishops which it contained: Catálogo de Jaén, 211, 225-6, 228, 235.

52. Reg. Clem. IV, 406 (publ. Loperráez, Descripción de Osma, III, 200-2): 'Famosum inter alia loca illarum partium et fecundum in populis, tales producit alumnos tam clericos quam laicos per quos non solum regalis curia verum etiam tam propinque quam remote partes Yspanie honorantur.' The results of a census which was done only three years later do not, however, support the claim that the place was well populated: 777 inhabitants in Soria itself and a further 2,385 scattered among 238 villages, with an average population of 1.18 per square kilometre is hardly fecundus. See Jimeno, BRAH, CXLII, 216-17. Had Jaén attracted the cultivators as well as the clerics, as the frontier area had done elsewhere? Or was its royal nursery, in reality, Soria's only recommendation? For Soria clerics in Fernando III's chancery, see Millares Carlo, AHDE, III, 289-90.

53. Paralysis forced Domingo into early retirement: in Jan. 1246 Innocent IV reminded him of the 'exemplum beati Job': Reg. Inn. IV, 1664. He subsequently made a thorough nuisance of himself, making off with books and ornaments belonging to the church of Jaén and leading 'vitam detestabilem et in conspectu Dei ac hominum displicentem'; and, with the reputation of the Dominican Order in mind, the pope ordered him to be placed under house arrest in a distant convent: ASV, arm. XXXI. 72, fo. 107r (Schillmann, Formularsammlung, 461).

54. For Pascal, see above, Ch. 6; for his connexion with Soria, Reg. Inn. IV, 4901. In April 1251 the pope scolded Fernando III for having failed to endow the church of Jaén: ibid. 5216. Alfonso X proposed Pascal for Toledo in March 1266. He died abroad in Dec. 1275: Reg. Clem. IV,1036; AC Toledo, X.I.D.I.I.

55. AC Toledo, X.1.D.2.1: 'En ninguna cosa non remedo al bispo don Pasqual qual si non en levar los suyos adelant e posponer los naturales de aca mucho mas que non fizo don Pasqual.' In July 1264 he had been cantor of the church and one of the king's clerics: Reg. Urb. IV, 1680.

56. Ibid.: 'E el cabildo pronon semeiar cosa de moços non quiso nenguno contradeçir e firmaron luego el decreto...E tomaron los de Soria el fecho sobre si e la mensagenia por yr a don Sancho con el, e son ydos, porque han de razonar en romanze. Ca si ante Vos oviessen a yr non quernien a ello meter porque avnien a proponer en latin. E han puesto mas de enviar freyres menores a Vos por la conffirmacion.'

57. Ximena, 229. Almost four years passed though before, still ordinandus, he took his suffragan's oath to the archbishop: AC Toledo, X.1.D.1.1e. Martín of Astorga was also married, and Sancho's secretary and chaplain, Gonzalo Pérez (archdeacon of Ubeda, abbot of Santander; bishop of Jaén, 1301) had two sons: ES, XVI, 246; Ximena, 236, 321.

58. Part. 1.16.2 (Academy ed. I, 411); Castigos, 106.

59. Hermannus Alemannus, bishop of Astorga, 1266-72. See ES, XVI, 241-3. Luquet's article, Rev. de l'hist. des religions, XLIV, 407 ff., discusses his translations of Averroes but says nothing of his presumably German origins. At Paris he had studied with the future Clement IV and shared lodgings with him; in Castile he was patronised by Bishop Juan of Burgos: Reg. Clem. IV, 1157; Millás Vallicrosa, Las traducciones orientales, 56. See also Haskins, Studies in the History of Medieval Science, 16.

60. Aparicio, bishop of Segorbe, 1284-1300 (for these dates, AC Toledo, X.1.G.1.1i-j. Cf. Eubel, Hierarchia, I, 443). His unostentatious bearing and pastoral zeal (which extended to collecting samples of urine) attracted much criticism; and not until the seventeenth century were his eccentric habits appreciated: VL, III, 62-3; Villagrasa, Antigüedad de la iglesia catedral de Segorbe, 107; Zunzunegui, AA, XVI, 15-16. The medical pope, the Portuguese John XXI, was thought equally unprepossessing by Ptolemy of Lucca who criticised him for making himself too approachable. 'Et quamvis magnus fuerit in scientia, modicus lumen fuit in distinctione': Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. 23, cap. xxi, RIS, XI, 1176.

61. On failing to qualify as a magician at Toledo, the clerk Philip (archbishop of Ravenna in 1251) was told by his tutor there: 'Vos Lombardi non estis pro arte ista, et ideo dimittatis eam nobis Hyspanis qui homines feroces et sirniles demonibus sumus. Tu vero, fili, vade Panisius et stude in scniptura divina, quia in ecclesia Dei adhuc futurus es magnus': Cronica, ed. Holder-Egger, 393-4.

62. Reg. Greg. IX, 5964 (below, Ch. 12); Reg. Clem. IV, 1157.

63. In so far as they concerned the parish clergy, that is.

64. Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, III, clviii (no. 262); López Ferreiro, Historia de Santiago, V, appendix 29, cap. 10.

65. Duro Pella, HS, XIV, 187; AC Toledo, X.2.A.1.1 (publ. Mortier, II, 573 ff.). Of 31 canons of Pamplona in Nov. 1254, one only was a graduate and four were illiterate; while at the Cuenca election of March 1280 neither the capellanus maior nor the archdeacon of Alarcón knew how to write: Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, xviii, 132; AC Toledo, X.1.E.1.1g.

66. 'Juramentum examinancium in Romana Curia deputatorum', publ. Tangl, Die päpstlichen Kanzleiordnungen, 48. Cf. Tihon, Bull. Inst. hist. beige de Rome. V, 77. For remarks about Spanish culture in the Statutes of the Spanish College at Bologna (1375-7), see references in Linehan, Studia Albornotiana, II.

67. Goñi Gaztambide, HS, VIII, 413.

68. BC Burgo de Osma, cód. 17, fo. 1ra: 'Reverendo patri domino speciali ac refugio meo singulari, domino Johanni divina clemencia episcopo Palentino ac nobilissimi Infantis domini Petri maiori cancellario, Rodericus vestra plantula et factura vester archipresbiter ac servus inutilis cum debita reverentia ac humilitate servili terram coram vestris pedibus osculatur.' The MS is summarily described by Rojo Orcajo, BRAH, XCIV, 728. Cf. García y García, 'La canonística', 432. Bishop Juan was canciller mayor to the Infante Pedro by Feb. 1325, and had retired from the position by Jan. 1343: Fernández del Pulgar, III, 14-15.

69. Fo. 1rb: 'Idcirco in hoc opusculo consideravi si possem...aliquantulum vestrum tedium sublevare.' In addition to sections on the seven sacraments, seven vices, etc., the Clementines are treated as the seventh liber decretalium, and under the heading 'Septem sit species falsitatis litterarum apostolicarum' Innocent III's decretal on that subject is reproduced (fos. 27ra, 35rb). Cf. Poole, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery, 156-7.

70. Fo. 4vb: 'Non solum semel in anno debemus visitare sed et bis vel ter, si opus fuerit et subditos tales se reddiderint.' Cf. fo. Iva: 'Quia fere pro maiori parte anni estis cum domino rege vel regina seu infante ab ipsis vocatus, et plunibus ibi suis et vestris ac subditorum vestrorum negociis et circa plurima occupatus, ita quod non potestis, ut desideratis, insistere circa subditorum vestrorum salutem studio et labore...'

71. BN MS 13076 (Calderón de la Barca, Memorias...de Coria, 1752), fos. 21v, 131v. Cf. MHE, II, 109. In 1288 Nicholas IV had declined to authorise his translation from Coria to Sigüenza since Sigüenza required 'sponsus legitimus et ydoneus', which Alfonso was not: ASV, arm. XXXI. 72, fo. 351r (Schillmann, Formularsammlung, 3138). Cf. Reg. Nich. IV, 341.

72. Reg. Hon. III, 4665: 'qui vel sectando regalem cuniam vel se aliis negotiis mancipando in ecclesiis suis residere non curant' (Jan. 1224).

73. Douais, Acta Capitulorum Provincialium O.F.P., 607 (AC Burgos, 1241, cap. ix); similarly, ibid. 610 (Palencia, 1249, cap. ii).

74. 'Libro de Evast y Blanquerna, in Ramon Llull: Obras literarias,ed. M. Batlloni and M. Caldentey (Madrid, 1948), 313-14.

75. Libro de Buen Amor, 'Cantica de los clenigos de Talavera', copla 1696: 'Ado estavan juntados todos en la capilla,/levantose el dean a mostrar su manzilla,/diz': Amigos, yo querria que toda esta quadrilla/apellasemos del papa ant'el rey de Castilla', ed. J. Corominas (Madrid, 1967), 625-31.

76. De Planctu Ecclesiae, II, fos. 54ra, 55rb, 205ra-b, on the 'vainglorious Spaniards' 'in suis pessimis moribus et vitiis gloriantes'.

77. Ibid. II, fo. 55rb: 'Tamen non possunt pugnare manu propria, etiam contra saracenos...Contra quod prelati in Hispania et Alemannia faciunt tota die, de hoc conscientiam non habentes.'

78. Above, p. 91.

79. Potthast, 3850 (MDhI, 412): Oportet enim episcopum...esse...non percussorem' (Ep. ad Titum, i. 7).

80. 'Quomodo regnum Castelle praecellit alia:...Alii reges vocibus laudant Deum: tu pro eo corpus exponis': Speculum Regum, ed. Pinto de Meneses, I, 22. Cf. Castro, Structure of Spanish History, 124: 'A few Renaissance thinkers wrote Utopias, but the Spaniards have shed their blood for such dreams on more than one occasion.'

81. De Planctu Ecclesiae, ii, fo. 52ra: '...Sed qui ex timore facit iam non facit, extra de reg. iii qui ex timore.' Cf. Friedberg, Corpus luris Canonici, II, 928.

82. Dire amaritudinis; Inter cetera (Potthast, 23783, 23828); Hefele-Leclercq, VI, i, 327; Powicke-Cheney, Councils and Synods, II, 1097 ff.

83. AC Seo de Urgel, d.s.n; AC Calahorra, doc. 456 (Potthast, 23756).

84. AGN, 3/43 (reg. Castro, Catálogo, 421, misdated: Goñi's correction in Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 189, is confirmed by the reference in the document to one of the proctors as Bishop B(ernardo Peregni) of Barcelona); Tejada, Colección de cánones,III, 409 ff. The council belongs to the year 1292, not 1291 as Tejada believed: and its acta, as Tejada published them, contain at least one subsequent addition. Cf. Valls i Taberner, AST, XI, 264; Hefele-Leclercq, VI, i, 329.

85. AC Toledo, I.5.A.1.2 (Inter cetera), dorse: 'Nuncii pape venerunt xij die decembris.' The summonses are still in AC Toledo, addressed to the bishops, etc. of Cartagena, Burgos, Oviedo, Palencia, León (3 copies) and Cuenca: I.5.A.1.2a-b-c-d-g-h-h:bis-k. One of the León copies is publ by Tejada, VI, 58-9. In the mid-eighteenth century Burriel made copies of some of these, and suggested that the León summonses were not used because the archiepiscopal scribe had erred in addressing the bishop of León as Fernando: BN, MS 13116 fo. 23v. But even this explanation were correct (which it is not) it would not account for the preservation of the other summonses at Toledo. Furthermore, none of the cathedral archives of the province contains any mention of the council.

86. Cf. Fita, Actas inéditas, 189-92; Torres Fontes, Hispania, XIII, 524-5. Toledo had had no such opportunity since Innocent IV had declared Cartagena an exempt see in 1250: Potthast, 14032; Fita, BRAH, III, 273. No mention has survived of any Toledo council in 1261 to discuss the Tartars.

87. ADB, Gav. dos concílios, m: the chapter's letter (21 April) informing bishop Miguel that the terms of Dire amaritudinis applied 'provincie prelatis tam regulanibus quam secularibus tam exemptis' and summoning him to a council on Whitsunday (25 May), 'cum sitis licet exempti de provincia Bracarensi'. The bishop stalled, promising 'que el daria aquella respuesta que deviesse' if they could justify their claim (3 May). Cf. Ferreira, Fastos episcopaes, II, 93. The archbishop of Toledo also had designs on Oviedo which, licet exempta, the papal penitentiary in 1280 had believed to be part of the province of Compostela: AC Toledo, I.5.A.1.2.c; Eubel, Arch. kath. Kirchenrecht, LXIV, 33. For the origins of this confusion, see David, Etudes historiques sur la Galice et le Portugal, 119 ff.; Mansilla, HS, XIV, 9-11; Gaiffier, Anal. Bollandiana, LXXXVI, 77; Rivera, Iglesia de Toledo. 252-5.

88. The letter was seen by Morales in the archive of Badajoz Cathedral in 1753-4: Rodríguez Amaya, Rev. Est. Extremeños, VIII, 408.

89. Runciman, History of the Crusades, III, 427.

90. At the Haro Cortes of Aug. 1288 Sancho freed his subjects from 'la demanda dela deçima que el Papa dio a nuestro padre por seyes annos pora ayuda dela guerra': hardly a generous concession, since the six-year grant had been made thirteen years before: Cortes de Castilla, I, 103; above, p. 213. And later still -- between 1289 and 1294 -- Innocent V's bull of 28 March 1276, Exurgat Deus (Potthast, 21135, undated) which had committed the preaching of the peninsular Crusade to the then archbishop of Seville, was being used by Miguel, abbot of S. Millán de Lara, 'vicario e procurador general de don Garcia arçobispo de Sevilla, executor del negocio de la Cruz': AC Lugo, 21/3/22.

91. Reg. Nich. IV, 6857: 'De terris vero Castelle subiectis nichil umquam percepit ecclesia, cum felicis recondationis Gregorius papa...clare memorie Alfonso regi Castelle ipsam decimam ex certis causis duxenit concedendam' (to Edward I of England, Feb. 1292).

92. On 18 Dec. Sancho received 35,400 maravedís from the sees of Palencia, Burgos and Calahorra 'pora la hueste de Tarifa'. His total receipts from the Church exceeded 800,000 maravedís, and in March 1294 he informed Bishop Gil of Badajoz that, because of the heavy costs of the campaign 'que sera grant onrra et grant pro de nos et de toda la Christiandat, et sennaladamente de toda la nuestra tierra...avemos menester gran aver, el cual non podemos escusar, como quier que no sea mui grave': AC Burgos, vol. 48, fo. 213; Gaibrois de Ballesteros, BRAH, LXXVI, 75, 431, 432 ff.

93. Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, III, ccclxvii, ccclxxxi-ii (nos 534, 562): 'e tomad todo quanto ffallarades en los sus çillos e peyndrat a los sus vasallos otrossi quanto les ffallaredes'.

94. Cortes de Castilla, I, 131. Cf. above, p. 221.

95. AC Toledo, I.5.A.1.6; Cortes de Castilla, I, 133-5.

96. In the nineteenth century the regalist criticism of those prelates who had attended the 1302 Peñafiel Council was voiced by Lafuente: 'No era noble, en verdad, hacer alarde de rigor contra una mujer virtuosísima y un niño de catorce anos, los que tanto habían callado ante el temible y astuto Sancho el Bravo': Historia eclesiástica, IV, 407. Fita, very properly, called this 'regalismo farisaico', since the Peñafiel legislation was altogether defensive and restrained: Actas inéditas, 181. Cf. Tejada, III, 433 ff.

97. Reg. Nich. III, 743.

98. AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n.: 'Conceptum sermonen tenere quis potent?: hanc quidem Job exclamationem proponimus, quia reticere non possumus quod sentimus' (Job, iv, 2); in response to a whole stream of complaints about their plight (c. 1288).

99. Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Sancho IV, III, cxv-vi; idem, BRAH,LXXVI, 437 ff. Bishop Martin's will of Dec. 1288 lists debts of more than 30,000 maravedís: ES, XXXVI, clix.

100. Gaibrois de Ballesteros, BRAH, LXXVI, 432.

101. Ed. Morel-Fatio, BEC, LIX, 363. Palencia's reduced population in the early fourteenth century is noted by Carande, RBAM, IX, 255-6. See also Deyenmond, AEM, I, 613 ff.

102. BM, MS Egenton 442, fo. 34r. By May 1308 he was prior of Husillos, and canon of Palencia and Murcia: ibid. fo. 34v.

103. Reg. Clem. IV, 1117; above, pp. 185, 243.

104. Reg. Clem. V, 4046; Finke, Acta Aragonensia, III, 200-2; Gallardo Fernández Origen...de las rentas de la Corona de España, III, 70 ff. For details of these negotiations, see Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la Bula de la Cruzada, 265 ff.

105. Giménez Soler, Don Juan Manuel, 367 ff.

106. ASV, Instrumenta Miscellanea, 490 (neg. Milian Boix, AA, XV, 531, no. 43).

107. Reg. Clem. V, 5484, 5494.

108. The word he used was ayuntamiento: AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n. (1 Dec. [1312]).

109. Vincke, Documenta selecta, nos. 151, 153.

110. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, in, 207-11.

111. Vincke, no. 153: '...attento quod prelati et clerus dicte provincie semper prompti existunt beneplacitis nostris obtemperare et subvenire pro posse, pro eis intercedere et pro ipsorum relevacione preces efundere reputamus nos forcius obligatos' (March 1311).

112. Reg. Clem. V, 6939: 'iustis tamen et rationalibus causis que impresentianum animum nostrum movent inducti'. See above, p. 207, for Clement IV's misgivings about granting church revenue to the royal spoliator.

113. Ibid. 8591.

114. ASV, Reg. Avinionensia, 91, fos. 225n-41n. Cf. Loye, Les archives de la Chambre Apostolique au XIV^e siècle, 209.

115. See Giménez Soler, 51 ff.

116. 'Non audebant exire de locis suis propter guerram quam habebat, et timebant si exirent incurrere mortem, quam nolebant recipere propter nos': Reg. Avin., 91, fo. 234v.

117. Ibid. fos. 237v, 239n.

118. Ibid. fo. 226r.

119. Ibid. passim; fo. 229n.

120. Ibid. fos. 231r, 232r: 'Et omnes ipsos sotulares dabamus hominibus propter magnas nives que tunc erant, et rumperunt statim sotulares propter hoc.'

121. Ibid. fo. 229v.

122. Ibid. fo. 233r.

123. Ibid. fo. 240n.

124. Ibid. fo. 234v: 'De Gonmaçio non deportavit Petrus Ferrandi testimonium quia non invenit notarium publicum.'

125. Ibid. fo. 239r.

126. Ibid. fo. 231r: 'ut littere haberent maiorem robonis firmitatem et plus timerentur'.

127. Ibid. fo. 239v: 'ut esset nobis bonus et favorabilis quum sine ipso nihil poterat fieri in illa terra'; fo. 231r.

128. Ibid. fo. 239V: 'Nos feceramus magnos sumptus multo plus quam inde habueramus.'

129. Ibid. fo. 240v: 'videntes quod primo comederemus in duplo ante quam collegissemus'; fo. 241r.

130. On 1 Jan. 1308 the pope granted the king two-thirds of the tercias for three years after Fernando had submitted 'quod...de tertia vero parte hujusmodi decimarum quae dicitur fabricae, tu et progenitores tui consuevistis ab olim percipere duas partes'. For his no less traditional abuse of this grant the king was later excommunicated and his kingdom interdicted: AC Toledo, Z.3.D.1.7 (publ. Gallardo Fernández, III, 67-70); Reg. Clem. V, 9727.

131. AC Toledo, A.7.H.1.3c: 'a quibus non potest absque nostre provisionis auxilio relevari' (= Reg. Clem. V, 2032).

132. 'E ha mester, Sennor, que les mandedes fazer honra e los fagedes merced, ca tales omes son que pueden enpeçer por el oficio que traen que aprovechar. E comoquier, Sennor, que lo vos bien sabedes, enpero mejor lo sabemos nos ca los conosciemos alla en la Corte a estos e a otros e sabemos qual es su oficio': AC Toledo, X.1.C.2.4.

133. 'Otrossi ha muy grant poder en lo temporal; mas cuál o cuánto es este poder, porque yo sé de Castiella, et los reys de Castiella et sus reinos son mas sin ninguna subjeccion que otra tierra del mundo, por ende non sé yo mucho desto': Libro de los Estados, ed, Gayangos, BAE, LI, 357.