[251] The bishop of Córdoba's attitude to curialists had a lengthy pedigree. Since the late eleventh century, at the latest, when a canon of Toledo had described in loving detail the deep potations in which the distended cardinals engaged while his archbishop angled for a grant of legatine powers,⁽¹⁾ Spaniards -- no less than Frenchmen and Englishmen -- had visualised the Curia as an unwholesome place inhabited by mercenary knaves. In September 1301 Jaime II of Aragon was informed by his proctor, Giraldo de Albalat, that on account of the bribes which they were offering Boniface VIII, the agents of Castile and Portugal would almost certainly secure the marriage dispensation which they sought, 'quia tamen papa in adquirendo pecuniam nimis avidum se ostendit';⁽²⁾ but, right though he may have been about Boniface, there was nothing especially fin de siècle about his suspicions. Throughout the century that had just closed they had been very frequently expressed. Skulduggery and the Curia were synonymous. If in the early 1260s Rome's long grasping fingers could reach as far as Compostela and deprive the archbishop of his inalienable rights, was it not natural that when the bishop of Salamanca set off for the Curia at about the same time without so much as a word of explanation to his chapter, a jittery dean should fear the worst and send a frantic letter to his friend, the bishop of Urgel, beseeching him to use whatever influence he had at Rome to prevent the disaster which they all feared?⁽³⁾ For the clergy of Barcelona Rome was the Forbidden City; and 'Rome' meant 'wherever the pope was', according to the Partidas.⁽⁴⁾ Castilian churchmen in Castile [252] could hardly believe that Castilian churchmen at Rome had honourable motives for being there: Fernando Alfonso's bequest of 1294 in favour of student canons of Salamanca stipulated that 'a los que estodieren enna corte de Roma...les non den ende nada'.⁽⁵⁾ And, contrariwise, Castilian churchmen at Rome were wont to protest -- indeed, to protest too much -- to their friends at home that they were by no means savouring their stay and that their only thought was of their return. Rome was an expensive place, as Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo (with good reason) assured his chapter in 1288: he timed his exile by the increasing lightness of his pocket.⁽⁶⁾ Their suspicion that he was inventing 'excusationes frivolas' in order to spin it out rather irritated him, therefore; and the account which they had sent him of their own misfortunes left him cold, wrestling manfully as he was against hopeless odds and pitiless creditors.⁽⁷⁾ The tone of his letter was precisely that of the undergraduate reassuring his increasingly sceptical parents that he will be coming down soon. Their shrewd suspicion that, not only was he rather enjoying himself, but was probably more often tipsy than not, was difficult to allay. So Gonzalo had a tricky letter to write when they decided to make him a Fellow, and the new cardinal-bishop of Albano had to break the news that he would not be coming home at all. He made a poor job of it. There he had been, spending a virtuous evening with his teetotal friends, he told them -- inserting, as an afterthought, that he had been waiting for his final exeat -- when what should happen but that Pope Boniface should promote him. Imagine his surprise!⁽⁸⁾ All of which was made no more plausible by his forgetting the Latin for Cuenca and Olmedo.⁽⁹⁾

[253] Gonzalo strove hard to give the impression of feeling out of place at Rome: a view of themselves which Spaniards have tended to foster in modern times. In 1584 the historian of the Dominican Order blamed the downfall of Munio of Zamora on a curial conspiracy of Frenchmen and Italians, by whom 'la nación Española siempre ha sido aborrecida'; and, as recently as 1956, the same attitude was expressed by Mansilla in his discussion of the part played by the Spanish cardinal, Petrus Hispanus, in the election of Pope Clement V. The Spaniard, it is suggested, was clay in the hands of the unscrupulous Napoleon Orsini and changed sides simply because 'como buen castellano no entendía ni de dobleces ni de intrigas'.⁽¹⁰⁾

It is an attractive theory, perfectly consistent with the celebrated 'Spanish inferiority complex' and wholly creditable to those on whose behalf it is advanced; but, in reality, there is nothing to be said for it. Neither Munio nor Petrus was a political tyro. Munio was as much sinning as sinned against, and his sins were sins of the flesh. Petrus, a boon companion of Boniface VIII, was no stranger to curial intrigue, as the chapter of Toledo acknowledged by engaging him to intercede for them with the pope.⁽¹¹⁾ Indeed, the rather elaborate precautions which he took on the occasion to which Mansilla refers -- arranging to meet Cardinal Napoleon 'ad latrinam, quia alibi loqui non poterant ita secreto' -- suggest that he may even have derived a morbid pleasure from some of its finer points.⁽¹²⁾

And what was true of Petrus Hispanus was true also of Spaniards throughout the previous century. They were in their element at the [254] Curia and hastened there with relish, as flies to the jampot. Like Tawney's early seventeenth-century businessmen at the royal court, many of them, doubtless, went the way of moths around the candle-flame instead.⁽¹³⁾ But the fate of these did nothing to stem the flow of new arrivals. 'Whosoever went to Rome a fool returned a fool', according to a contemporary Aragonese aphorism.⁽¹⁴⁾ Neither that caveat though -- even if 'poverty' were substituted for 'folly' -- nor such misgivings about the Roman climate as Alfonso X mentioned to his archbishop-elect of Toledo in 1262, provided an effective deterrent. Raymond of Peñafort seems to have been exceptional in withdrawing from the Curia for that particular reason.⁽¹⁵⁾ During the pontificate of Urban IV another Petrus Hispanus made himself so comfortable there that it proved necessary to obtain from him a promise to leave 'statim quam assecutus fuerit pacificam provisionem in ecclesia Mindoniensi'.⁽¹⁶⁾

Seven months later, though possessed of his Mondoñedo canonry, he was still there.⁽¹⁷⁾ What was keeping him was that which had induced him to make the long journey in the first place: his determination to jump the queue for benefices in his crowded church, and the equal determination of the bishop and chapter of Mondoñedo to bar his way, provision mandate or no provision mandate -- just as only recently they had successfully resisted the pope's reservation of the archdeaconry of Montenigro for Pedro, magister scolarum of Lugo.⁽¹⁸⁾ Looking about him, Aprilis -- the ingenuous cleric in the verse dialogue about life at the Curia, written in the early 1260s -- saw that others with nothing like his qualifications had received fat prebends from the pope. So he decided to go to Rome himself, secure in the belief that the pope would be only too pleased to help him too. [255] Abril was a Spaniard -- 'Hyspana gente profectus' -- and while there is little reason for treating him as a representation of the bishop of Urgel of that name, his motives for going to Rome were indeed precisely those which would induce the canons of Salamanca -- where Bishop Abril was an archdeacon before his promotion -- to disqualify themselves from receiving grants from the bequest of Fernando Alfonso.⁽¹⁹⁾ Nor, but for papal support, would Pascal Pérez, a native of Zamora with only a pleasant voice to recommend him, ever have reached the head of the queue for prebends in that church, to which Urban IV promoted him in May 1264 after an examination of no great difficulty at the Curia.⁽²⁰⁾

Petrus Hispanus, and Pascal Pérez with his pass degree, were thus provided with at least a notional advantage over their friends at home, where, in common with the other churches of Castile, León and -- though, perhaps, to a lesser extent -- Aragon, Zamora and Mondoñedo were in the throes of an economic crisis to which bishops and chapters were reacting by adopting ever more niggardly measures in order to preserve what they still had. Thus each of them was doing, at a lower level, precisely what the leader of the Castilian Church had done in 1259 -- seeking his own well-being at the expense of his colleagues. The urgent need for solidarity between bishops and their chapters -- to which Alfonso X himself drew their attention -- was commonly ignored; and the result, in the judgement of an early seventeenth-century bishop, was that the autonomy and authority of the Spanish Church was lost to king and pope.⁽²¹⁾ The king's capacity for dividing and ruling has already been considered. It remains to be seen how far the pope also profited from their struggles.

Everywhere in the thirteenth century episcopal elections were a nightmare, for they provided any single individual with the opportunity of indulging his own ambition to the detriment of the rest of the chapter: haec pestis, as Bishop Bruno of Olmutz called it in his report [256] to Gregory X on the state of Europe in 1273, which put self first and produced double elections both in the Church and in the Empire.⁽²²⁾ Ideally, the only sure way of preventing such an outcome was for the cathedral chapter to vest all its powers of election in one man, as happened at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1264 when Domingo Martínez, thus empowered, repaid his colleagues' confidence in him by choosing himself.⁽²³⁾ The usual practice, though, was to proceed per compromissionem, entrusting selection to two or three canons, and, in the later part of the century, to require them to reach their decision in the time that it took a candle to burn right down Yet even with this mesmeric aid to concentration compromissarii sometimes failed to agree.⁽²⁴⁾

Just how serious the consequences of a divided election might be may be judged from the course of events at Burgos after the death of Bishop Juan de Villahoz in August 1269 For though he had only three votes -- as against the forty-three cast for the dean, D. Martin -- Pedro Sarracín, archdeacon of Valpuesta, nevertheless took the case to Rome, and, on account of the long papal vacancy prior to the election of Gregory X, it was not until September 1275 that the affair was settled by the translation to Burgos of Bishop Gonzalo of Cuenca (the future archbishop of Toledo and cardinal). Meanwhile vacancies occurring in the cathedral chapter had remained unfilled, until in October 1272 Gregory had intervened -- not, however, to impose a bevy of venal Italians on Burgos, but instead to invite a committee of the canons then at the Curia to forward nominations.⁽²⁵⁾ He was prompted to act not by the prospect of rents but by the cure of souls which, while the local Dominicans were taking advantage of the [257] sede vacante situation to expand their temporal possessions at the chapter's expense, was being dangerously neglected.⁽²⁶⁾

Although the see of Burgos was directly subject to Rome, Gregory refrained from pressing his advantage: a point which deserves to be stressed, particularly since his theoretical right to intervene in such situations was no more challenged by the secular power in Castile than it was by those other critics elsewhere who took exception to the occasional glaring abuse of power but not to the power itself.⁽²⁷⁾ Spanish churchmen, however, were themselves frequently as hazy about the precise nature of papal powers of collation as they were utterly convinced of the rigour with which they were, or would be, applied. The constitution Licet Ecclesiarum was a dead letter both at Burgos and, at the end of the century, at Tudela where the dean, Master Gil Alvarez, imagined that what prevented him from disposing of the benefice of a canon who had recently died at the Curia was not the universal law of the Church which had been in force since at least 1265, but rather a recently enacted regulation of Boniface VIII.⁽²⁸⁾ Yet, at the same time, the dean and chapter of nearby Calahorra were plagued by visions of an unsleeping papal monster forever on the qui vive for a false move, whom three years later they forestalled by filling a vacant benefice worth all of five maravedís, lest 'per negligentiam episcopi ad quem potestas conferendi jure ordinario termino pertinebat' collation should devolve to the Roman Church.⁽²⁹⁾

There is evidence to suggest that the pontiffs did not deserve this evil reputation. On occasion they were even generous in their dealings with the Spanish churches. During the first half of the century both Compostela and Túy owed a debt of gratitude to Gregory IX and Innocent IV respectively for tolerating a combination of capitular [258] division and electoral sharp practice;⁽³⁰⁾ and in the 1290s the church of Cordoba twice laid itself open to papal intervention and was twice reprieved. First, when the magister scolarum of León, Juan Fernández, resigned his rights as bishop-elect at Perugia during the papal vacancy in February 1294 -- possibly on account of his illegitimacy⁽³¹⁾ -- the chapter held another election and secured the assent of their choice, the archdeacon of Ribadeo (Astorga), within a week of Celestine V's appointment, and their action was permitted to pass unchallenged.⁽³²⁾ Then, on the death of Gil Domínguez and the division of the chapter nine to seven, Boniface VIII admitted the holder of the bare majority, Fernando Gutiérrez, allowed him to borrow his living expenses when he came to Rome, and absolved him from the obligation to make the visit ad limina in person thereafter. Yet on his return to Castile Bishop Fernando showed the extent of his gratitude by telling the old tale that all curialists were scoundrels.⁽³³⁾

Boniface may have been acting in the knowledge that certain of Spain's more distinguished churchmen -- men, that is, who had the ear of the king -- had reached the conclusion that the episcopal dignity involved more trouble than it was worth. It was certainly an expensive business: Bishop Vicente of Porto, who died in April 1296, reckoned that he had spent at least £7,0O0 of his own money 'in servitia et deffensione nostrae ecclesiae cathedralis'.⁽³⁴⁾ Then there was the disagreeable prospect of being brought face to face with two masters at one remove. Rodrigo of Toledo had suffered some nasty moments in the early part of the century when his two worlds clashed; and similar considerations may well have been in the mind of [259] João Martins de Soalhães when he rejected the primatial see of Portugal in May 1292, though the reason he gave the canons of Braga was that the burden of episcopal office was not something that ought to be assumed perfunctorie.⁽³⁵⁾ For when this royal counsellor and diplomat was offered the see of Lisbon twenty months later he accepted it with alacrity and with none of the soul-searching of the previous occasion.⁽³⁶⁾ Lisbon was less problematical. It straddled the politico-ecclesiastical borders. As a suffragan of Compostela it provided its occupant with more room for manoeuvre.

In the 1230s and 1240s the two Johannes Hispani had led a similar double life.⁽³⁷⁾ So had Fernando Johannis de Portucarrario, dean of Braga and notary to Alfonso X, in the fifties, sixties and seventies, as a servant of the Castilian Crown with property in Galicia on both sides of the political frontier⁽³⁸⁾ but little or no sense of gratitude to those amongst whom he had prospered, to judge by the absence of Castilians from the list of beneficiaries in his will.⁽³⁹⁾ It is remarkable, [260] though, that a man of such standing never became one of Alfonso's bishops, for his training had certainly fitted him to act perfunctorie in that office. Perhaps he shared the view of the natural son of Alfonso IX of León, Fernando Alfonso, who declined the see of Salamanca in 1246, preferring to continue as archdeacon of that church; which he did for another forty years, combining that office with the deanery of Compostela and receipt of a pension from Ávila, and by his longevity delaying the more equitable distribution of rents in favour of the other three Salamanca archdeaconries which Cardinal Gil Torres had authorised the year before his rejection of the mitre.⁽⁴⁰⁾

It was not, then, only saintly men and retiring types, like Hermannus Alemannus, who resisted episcopal promotion. For -- though there were, of course, always some whose one ambition was to wield a pastoral staff⁽⁴¹⁾ -- it must have been clear to many that the pastoral staff reversed was a rod for their own backs. Moreover, by exposing themselves to papal scrutiny as contenders for sees, well-heeled archdeacons ran something of a risk, as the cautionary tale of the archdeacon of Trastamar shows. By 1267 Archdeacon Juan Alfonso had, with the king's help, accumulated a fine collection of benefices, but in that year his campaign to secure the archbishopric of Compostela had the result of causing his adversaries in the chapter to draw attention to the fact that Innocent IV's original indulgence to him, upon which the whole soaring superstructure of pluralism was based, had been obtained under false pretences. Whereupon the entire edifice collapsed, and Clement IV reserved all his benefices.⁽⁴²⁾ There [261] was much to be said for the private enterprise of Alfonso IX's bastard, and others followed his example, recognising the nettle for what it was, and choosing not to grasp it.

Understandably, therefore, the popes wooed the reluctant and rewarded the acquiescent with grants and favours. When Mateo Riñal, archdeacon of Palenzuela (Burgos), was promoted to the see of Salamanca in December 1245, and then, eight months later, was translated to Cuenca before he had been consecrated, he received a bonus from Innocent IV on each occasion. His Burgos canonry and prebend were allotted to his brother, Juan; and the debts which he had amassed during his stay at the Curia were referred for settlement to the church of Salamanca which had never seen him.⁽⁴³⁾ Similarly, Bishop Pascal of Jaén's Osma benefices were awarded to his brother, Bartolomé; Bishop Juan of Mondoñedo was permitted to draw the income of his Spanish benefices for two years after his consecration; and Archbishop Sancho of Toledo distributed his among his familiares.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Felipe of Seville and Suero Pérez of Zamora received the same treatment from Alexander IV;⁽⁴⁵⁾ and at the end of the century the practice was continued by Boniface VIII, who allowed Fernando of Oviedo to retain his Palencia benefices for three years, in view of the heavy debts of his new church; Martinho of Braga to assign his to six of his clerici familiares; and Pascal of Cuenca to continue to receive the income of the archdeaconry of Olmedo (Ávila).⁽⁴⁶⁾

The effect of grants and favours such as these was to assist the poor at the expense of others who were no better off. This was an old Spanish practice, but Burgos still needed some persuading when, [262] together with Salamanca, it was required to subsidise Mateo Riñal.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Palencia in the 1290s had no charity to spare for Oviedo or for anyone else, as Bishop Álvaro made clear in the following year by disobeying a provision mandate, only to be reminded by Boniface that, having himself been translated through no merits of his own ('absentem et ignorantem') from that backwater, Mondoñedo, he had a moral -- not to mention a legal -- duty to conform.⁽⁴⁸⁾ It was a bitter pill to swallow; and so was the grant to Pascal of Cuenca, since when Gregory X had originally assigned him the archdeaconry of Olmedo, the chapter of Ávila had retaliated, though in vain, by stripping the dignity of the rents which the constitutions of 1250 had attached to it, and transferring them to the episcopal mensa.⁽⁴⁹⁾

The rights of the churches to which the bishops were promoted were also plundered, to provide funds to cope with the burden of inherited debt and the demands made by needy relatives.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Frequently, papal largesse to bishops took the form of grants of collation to benefices which was normally shared with the chapter⁽⁵¹⁾ or -- as in the case of Alexander IV's aforementioned concession to Sancho of Toledo -- which belonged to other churches within the province.⁽⁵²⁾ When applying for such a grant in October 1247 Mateo Riñal masqueraded as a reformer, stating that it was his intention to introduce literate clerics into the Cuenca chapter;⁽⁵³⁾ but if that was ever the actual effect of this form of papal intervention, it was never its self-confessed purpose.

In fairness to the pontiffs who made so free with the rights of others, though, it must be said that they were no less lavish with what was [263] theirs, by granting collation of benefices which had devolved to the Roman Church⁽⁵⁴⁾, providing protection against the sentences of judges delegate,⁽⁵⁵⁾ and remitting the bishops' obligation to make costly visits ad limina.⁽⁵⁶⁾ The second of these privileges could be, however, and frequently was nullified; and while the popes were evidently far from anxious to have the Curia cluttered up with Spaniards, the Spaniards themselves were at least as determined to come as Innocent IV and others were determined to keep them away. For the visit ad limina provided a useful opportunity for combining business, and even pleasure, with duty. Rodrigo of Palencia was not the only prelate who preferred to ignore a papal indulgence of this nature.⁽⁵⁷⁾

[264] The pope could suspend the rule concerning devolved benefices in particular cases -- as when the bishop of Segovia, in whose diocese there were many vacancies, dithered at the Curia;⁽⁵⁸⁾ and he could grant indulgences which would or might attract alms to their churches.⁽⁵⁹⁾ When it went beyond this, though, favor apostolicus infringed the rights of others. For example, one type of grant -- permission to employ substitutes for the diocesan or provincial visitation⁽⁶⁰⁾ -- was tantamount to a grant of income tax, since there were few prelates as scrupulous as Goñzalo Palomeque of Toledo who, on hearing that his agents had taken 3,500 maravedís from Jaén and 4,500 from Córdoba, issued a stern rebuke and ordered them to make restitution.⁽⁶¹⁾ And grants of diocesan annates -- normally good for three years,⁽⁶²⁾ but on at least two occasions for five⁽⁶³⁾ -- had the same effect of pandering to the acquisitive instincts of prelates who were hardly in need of any encouragement. The zeal with which the cuckoo-archbishop of Toledo, Sancho of Aragon, proceeded to raise huge loans on the security of his church's revenues as soon as he was promoted and irrespective of the undertakings which he had given to Clement IV,⁽⁶⁴⁾ was shared by others whose pastoral reputation stands higher. His two successors at Toledo, Gonzalo Gudiel and Gonzalo Palomeque, uncle and nephew, both picked their churches clean before moving on to their next posts. The activities of the former -- [265] whom an admirer described as being concerned for the welfare of all the faithful -- have already been mentioned.⁽⁶⁵⁾ His nephew was no better. On his translation from Cuenca to Toledo in 1299 he took with him most of that church's goods and distributed the rest among his lay friends. Three years passed before his successor at Cuenca, Bishop Pascal, received compensation, during which time he, in turn, was dependent on his Ávila income.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Spanish churchmen, like the fleas in the verse, lived off others all along the line.

One of Juan Manuel's tales described the career of a dean of Santiago who rose to be pope, thanks to the magical powers of his tutor Don Illan de Toledo, but was then spirited back to Toledo for having assigned his benefices to his own relatives rather than to the magician's son, as he had promised.⁽⁶⁷⁾ (It was easier to make and unmake a pope than to secure a canonry!) That the perfidious dean should have been associated with Compostela was particularly appropriate, since, apart from being the home of those archetypal pluralists -- the historical dean, Fernando Alfonso, and the archdeacon of Trastamar, Juan Alfonso -- Compostela was also the anchorage of one of the great ecclesiastical pirates of thirteenth-century Spain, Archbishop Juan Arias.

Juan Arias (1238-67) owed his promotion to Gregory IX's admission of a minority appeal from the chapter of Compostela against the postulation of the canonist-bishop of Orense, Laurentius Hispanus, 'eo quod multi in eadem ecclesia reperiebantur idonei'.⁽⁶⁸⁾ In his dealings with others, though, the archbishop showed no such tender feelings for local rights and home rule. Like his predecessor, Bernardo, he stopped at nothing in his determination to extend the [266] hegemony of Santiago.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Though absent from the capture of Seville, he received property in the repartimiento, had his cross carried before him through that province, and pressed for the payment of vota Sancti Jacobi both there and at Badajoz.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Adept at finding benefices in other churches for his own dependents, he secured provision at Orense for his relative Pedro Yáñez, and at León for his Roman proctor Martín Yáñez -- at a time when León could hardly afford to support its own man, Pedro Pérez.⁽⁷¹⁾ He took advantage of divisions within the church of Salamanca -- where Alexander IV had reserved the next election after certain enemies of Bishop Pedro Pérez had reported that he was at death's door, and the dignitaries were at odds with the canons over burial rights in the cathedral -- and rode roughshod over the local clergy and a papal mandate by intruding his own creatures into benefices from which he had ejected Gonzalo Peláez and other denizens, in contempt of Alexander's explicit instructions that they were to remain unmolested while waiting for full canonries to become vacant.⁽⁷²⁾ Again, by misinterpreting a papal mandate he interfered in the rights of collation of churches in his own archdiocese.⁽⁷³⁾ Meanwhile he proved as good a gamekeeper as he was a poacher, and kept his own preserve shut to outsiders. When the representative of Master Abril -- the future bishop of Urgel who had [267] an expectancy there -- requested that the Compostela prebend made vacant by the death of the archdeacon of Palencia be assigned to him, Juan Arias flatly refused, observing that only if the pope intervened in person would Abril receive satisfaction.⁽⁷⁴⁾ And by September 1260, when he and his chapter vowed to disregard all future papal provisions, his attitude had hardened even further. Bernardus Compostellanus may well have had him in mind when he explained that the pope had been moved to reserve episcopal elections 'quia prompti essent archiepiscopi in cassandis electionibus, ut provisionum potestas rediret ad eos.' Contempt for the rights of others, which Juan Arias attributed to the pope, was indeed his own besetting sin.⁽⁷⁵⁾

The squabbling canons of Salamanca laid themselves open to Juan Arias, and -- as at Burgos in the early 1270s -- the luxury of discord proved expensive in material terms. Spiritually too the repercussions were grave, since the type of deadlock reached at Burgos meant that, while unbeneficed clergy were clamouring for livings, cathedral chapters dwindled almost to vanishing point and pastoral administration was brought to a standstill -- the same situation as obtained at Tarragona, Zaragoza, Huesca and Sigüenza because there it was proving increasingly difficult to recruit properly qualified canons who were prepared to abide by a regular rule.⁽⁷⁶⁾ To the Church leaders the spiritual issue may have appeared the less important of the two. Many treated the parish as an economic unit rather than as a social or religious entity. Archbishop Martinho of Braga, for example, wrote to his chapter from Montpellier in April 1302 to assure them that the forty days' residence qualification for new members applied only to their canonries, not to their parochial income. 'Esto non foy nossa entençao',he insisted.⁽⁷⁷⁾ But popular attitudes, which were conditioned [268] by the selfish antics of the higher clergy, were relevant for the Church at a time when spiritual sanctions were proving increasingly ineffective. It was not only in Germany that there was disregard for the thunderings and fulminations issuing from Rome in the 1240s. The malaise was general, and Spain too had its crisis of confidence in the clergy, for which crisis the clergy themselves were responsible. Lucas of Túy noted that the in-fighting among the canons of León over a successor to Bishop Rodrigo in the early thirties played straight into the hands of the Albigensians of those parts 'qui semper sitiunt discordiam cleri' and accounted for the enthusiasm with which the heretics were received there.⁽⁷⁸⁾ At Salamanca, as the constitutions of 1245 observed, popular criticism concentrated on the monopoly of benefices by the few and the exclusion from preferment of worthy local candidates, and simoniacal practices added fuel to the flames.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Soon after the Lyons Council, Innocent IV admitted that the spiritual sword was losing its edge in the province of Tarragona -- an impression which cold steel and the bishop of Gerona's injuries served merely to confirm for Matthew Paris.⁽⁸⁰⁾ The private lives of the clergy were beyond redemption, and the pontiff was soon to have to admit defeat on that score too. But while Pedro de Albalat and his assistants in Aragon continued to defend this last ditch, even after the High Command had given the order for retreat, the battle in Castile was shifted to lower ground and an attempt was made to eliminate the causes of clerical discord by providing constitutions which would regulate the internal economy of the cathedral churches.

This task, like the question of clerical concubinage, was referred to Cardinal Gil Torres. It seems, indeed, to have been in the light of his investigations into the financial affairs of the Castilian churches that the cardinal became convinced of the futility of John of Abbeville's thoroughgoing measures, his reversal of which has all the appearances of a decision of secondary importance, reached during the discussions [269] about the level of incomes -- the really important issue -- on the advice of Spaniards whose primary purpose in coming to the Curia had been concern for personal property, not alarm about the decline of clerical morality.⁽⁸¹⁾

Neither the concept of written constitutions nor the intervention of a cardinal represented any new departure for the Castilian Church. In the 1170s the legate Hyacinth had fixed the number of canons and prebendaries at Lugo; John of Abbeville had adjusted the incomes of dignitaries at Astorga and Barcelona; and Pelayo Gaitán had provided a set of constitutions for León -- where, possibly, he had once been bishop-elect⁽⁸²⁾ -- as well as attending to the internal affairs of Cuenca and Mondoñedo.⁽⁸³⁾ Characteristically, Juan Arias had not looked for any lead from Rome but had already in 1240 worked out Compostela's salvation, dividing capitular property among the canons, issuing a statute de numero canonicorum which received papal approval six years later, and subsequently urging his suffragans to deal likewise with the parishes for which they were responsible.⁽⁸⁴⁾

Innocent IV's approval of the Compostela constitutions reflected the anxiety which had been expressed at the Lyons Council about the material prosperity of cathedral and collegiate churches.⁽⁸⁵⁾ It was pressure from below that brought Cardinal Gil into action in 1245.⁽⁸⁶⁾ Gil's constitutions, though, differed markedly from earlier examples of the genre. Based on detailed inquisitiones -- surveys of capitular endowments of great topographical interest⁽⁸⁷⁾ -- they were far more extensive than Cardinal Pelayo's for León and, having as their object the partition of the mensa communis between bishop and chapter, were distinct [270] in conception from those of John of Abbeville who had set such store by the corporate existence of the cathedral canons. Since Mansilla has written of them and has published the text of those that were transcribed into the papal registers, there is no need to cover the same ground again. That author, though, underestimates Gil's achievement by confining himself to Vatican sources. He deals at length with only four sets of constitutions -- those for Salamanca, Ávila, Burgos and Calahorra. Details of two more -- for Plasencia and Segovia -- which he merely mentions in passing, are preserved in Spanish archives; and in addition, Córdoba, Cuenca and, possibly, Ciudad Rodrigo were also beholden to the cardinal.⁽⁸⁸⁾

Gil's constitutions were based on two principles which many other Spanish churches adopted piecemeal during the course of the century. One was the partition of endowments between bishop and chapter which Gregory IX described as 'iuxta generalem consuetudinem aliarum ecclesiarum Ispanie' when he sanctioned it at Guarda in June 1234.⁽⁸⁹⁾ The other -- the 'one year rule' whereby the prestimonia of deceased canons were paid to their executors for that, or sometimes a shorter period after their death -- had been in operation at Palencia as early as 1155.⁽⁹⁰⁾ Cardinal Gil thoroughly approved of it, describing it in his Plasencia constitutions as 'consuetudinem laudabilem que in [271] plerisque ecclesiarum Hispanie laudabiliter observatur'.⁽⁹¹⁾ Laudable though it may have been, however, it was primarily a protective measure and was associated with the rule that a canon or prebendary was to receive no income during his first year of tenure.⁽⁹²⁾ It was designed to prevent absenteeism and, at Cuenca for example, was very strictly applied.⁽⁹³⁾

Once the cardinal's partition had received papal confirmation, members of the chapter and their successors in perpetuity were bound by its terms. If, as happened at Calahorra, it proved to be to their disadvantage, the disinherited had no redress but were wholly dependent for relief on episcopal charity.⁽⁹⁴⁾ The chapters were, therefore, all the more anxious to secure the best possible terms, and it was probably their concern that accounts for the long delay which occurred in the process of issuing all but one of Gil's constitutions.⁽⁹⁵⁾ At Segovia, for example, the battle lasted almost two years. In October 1245 Gil expressed some doubt about the feasibility of his provisional allocation of rents to each member of the chapter and, in view of the state of the economy, made its adoption contingent upon the findings of the dean and the archdeacons of Segovia and Sepúlveda whom he [272] made responsible for the preparation of the inquisitio as a basis for the chapter's negotiations with Bishop Bernardo.⁽⁹⁶⁾ His reservations were justified. Even with the assistance of the abbot of Sotosalvos, a disinterested outsider, the parties were unable to provide Gil with their final settlement before 30 April 1247, and its revised terms indicate that the canons had had the worst of the recent tug-of-war. Moreover, though Gil approved their agreement later that year, on 14 September,⁽⁹⁷⁾ he was still involved with certain details of it in the autumn of 1250.⁽⁹⁸⁾

Evidently the bishop of Segovia had fought a hard fight. Whether it had been an entirely clean fight is less clear though, for Cardinal Gil was amenable to pressure and there is reason to believe that he had a special weakness for bishops. Having confirmed the Ávila constitutions on 30 March 1250, he immediately adjusted them in favour of Bishop Benito, explaining that, although he was bound by the rules of fair play, he nevertheless felt obliged to express in tangible form his affection for the prelate. So he offered him, for life, either the 230 marks' pension which the dean of Compostela, Fernando Alfonso, received annually from that church, or, alternatively, the rents of Piedrahita del Barco, Foncalada and Ancados, which the constitutions had assigned to the chapter; and, choosing to alienate his cathedral chapter and not the royal bastard, Benito chose the latter.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Similarly, the newly elected bishop of Salamanca, Pedro Pérez, was left to settle the details of the demarcation of the archdeaconries of that see, and, while the Calahorra constitutions were still sub judice, Bishop [273] Aznar was allowed to reorganise the affairs of the collegiate church of Armentia.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Three years elapsed between the completion of the Calahorra constitutions and their eventual registration.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ That in the case of Plasencia the interval was of only five weeks was probably due to the determination of the dean, Martín Pérez, who had a long standing grievance against Bishop Adán Pérez. Anyway, there was not much for them to squabble about at Plasencia.⁽¹⁰²⁾

The fundamental cause of tension between the bishops and their chapters was the question of promotion to benefices. Both at Segovia and at Salamanca that was the root of almost all the trouble,⁽¹⁰³⁾ as it was, indeed, throughout the century and throughout Europe. Whatever their personal merits, and whether they came in under the bishop's cloak or with a papal mandate, outsiders were alieni and were bitterly resented by the local-born oriundi. They were not welcome and that was that. The chapter of Mondoñedo expressed the classic home-rule view when, in 1297, they told Boniface VIII that any of their number would be 'more useful' as bishop than an outsider. And the same consideration applied to canonries. There was little sympathy for the attitude of Archbishop Gonzalo of Toledo who had put it to his chapter nine years earlier that, provided he appointed suitable men, it mattered not whence they came.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ For 'suitability' was defined by a [374] man's origin, and, moreover, there were oriundi who, though also ydonei, could not be accommodated in their native place.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ Bishops and chapters were not invariably divided on this issue. Together, at Salamanca in the early 1220s, they invoked, with success, their statute de numero canonicorum against one D. presbiter: an incident which became memorable, since Honorius III's decretal entered Canon Law -- though perhaps the most remarkable passage of the pope's letter, which recorded D's having voluntarily withdrawn from the contest on encountering resistance, was not included in the Liber Extra.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Benefice-mongers were normally rather more brazen than the self-effacing D. At Salamanca and Zamora in the thirties and forties, alieni were so persistent that the local clergy despaired of preferment and reverted to secular life,⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ while at Toledo the local residents took the law into their own hands. By October 1236, according to the capitular proctor, Archbishop Rodrigo had brought in so many outsiders that hardly one in four of the chapter was of local stock.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ But by January 1245 the chapter had been expelled and sent packing to Alcalá, 'paucis exceptis qui de illis partibus oriundi sunt'.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ So it was predictable that Cardinal Gil's constitutions should have included regulations in favour of the oriundi.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Such protective legislation was widely [275] sought after. In the diocese of Salamanca the collegiate churches obtained access to the cardinal's seal after his death and forged letters for themselves which accorded them the same protection against intruders as Gil's constitutions had accorded to the cathedral church. At least, that was what Alexander IV was told in August 1255 by Bishop Pedro Pérez, who, now that he was prevented from filling the cathedral chapter with his nominees, was all the more anxious to retain his other sources of unearned income. And the enquiry held at Zamora in the following March bore out the bishop's story. The defendants, who included the concejo of Salamanca, offered no evidence and were condemned, the sentence being confirmed by Pope Alexander in November 1257.⁽¹¹¹⁾

The spirit of autonomy which the fabrication of these pseudo-constitutions indicates was typical of Castile in the mid-1250s. By November 1254, though, when Cardinal Gil died, it was painfully clear that the cause of autonomy had been ill served at Salamanca even by the authentic version. Hitherto we have allowed the Spanish cardinal to remain a two-dimensional figure, obtruding occasionally into the narrative but remaining for the most part offstage, blandly issuing constitutions from afar. But, in fact, he was at the centre of the stage, at the Curia, throughout;⁽¹¹²⁾ and he had friends, not all of whom were bishops. Well before December 1253 he had been asserting himself at Salamanca, reserving, with papal approval, the next three vacancies there for his protégés.⁽¹¹³⁾ The chapter of Ávila, too, had discovered that their bishop's notional loss of influence was not entirely their gain. On the very day on which the constitutions were issued for the benefit of indigeni civitatis et diocesis the cardinal had ordered them to provide for a final dozen Castilian clerics before the shutters went up.⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Cardinal Gil's constitutions provided the Castilian churches with only as much protection from interference as the cardinal himself was prepared to allow them. Just how much that was is the subject of the following chapter.

1. Tractatus Garsiae Tholetani canonici de Albino et Rufino, ed. Sackur, MGH, Libelli de lite, II, 423-35. Archbishop Bernardo's journey to Rome in 1088 provides a possible context for this incident. See Rivera, Iglesia de Toledo, 136 ff.

2. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, I, 102.

3. VL, XI, 238. See Linehan, AEM, forthcoming.

4. Reg. Inn. IV, 3757; Part. 1.9.4. (Academy ed., I, 330).

5. AC Salamanca, 20/2/25-2 (reg. Marcos Rodríguez, Catálogo, 432).

6. AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n: 'nos qui in isto exilio vivimus satis in bursa nostra sentimus'.

7. Ibid.: 'ut de fame et nuditate qua vos perire dicitis et affligi decentius taceamus;...nos qui tantorum honere debitorum quasi sub importabili fasce deprimimur, quos usurarum vorago consumit, quos expense gravant multiplices...'

8. AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n: 'Sane pridem dum sederemus in foribus domus domini cum humilibus servis suis in civitate Reatina cum aliis curialibus permanentes (et ad reditus nostri licentiam laborantes: inserted), placuit memorato patri suorumque cardinalium sacro collegio de vestra ad Albanensem ecclesiam nos transferre et ad preeminentem cardinalatus erigere dignitatem. Ex quo tam subita mutabilitate status et insufficientie nostre conditione pensatis...stupor mentis et varia cogitationum fluctuatio nos invasit': a rough copy, with corrections, on paper.

9. Idem: informing his nephew, Gonzalo Palomeque, of his translation 'de Cursensi [sic] ad Toletanam ecclesiam.' At the end has been added: 'Sane vos volumus...qualiter provisum est Cusensi ecclesie de archidiacono Treverensi.' Cf. Reg. Bon. VIII, 2832, 2908 (Jan.-Feb. 1299).

10. Hernando de Castillo, Historia general de Sancto Domingo, I, fo. 491v; Mansilla, HS, IX, 271.

11. AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n. To Cardinal Gonzalo of Albano, asking him to expedite the return of his nephew, their new archbishop: 'Ca sabed por cierto, Sennor, que mucho es mester que el electo venga a su Eglesia pora razon de muchas guerras e mucha tribulacion que ha en la su tierra e en la su provincia...Et bien sabedes...pedir merçed a nuestro sennor el papa e rogar al Reiferendario, nuestro companero e nuestro amigo que guisasse con nuestro sennor el papa que nos cubiasse a nuestra eglesia' (1299-1300). Cf. Boas, Boniface VIII, 284, 346-8; Mansilla, loc. cit.

12. Finke, Aus den Tagen, lxiv. Another report, sent to the king of Aragon, mentioned, rather more delicately, that the two cardinals had conferred 'ubi deponebant superflua': Finke, Acta Aragonensia, I, 193.

13. Cf. the review of Tawney's Business and Politics under James I (Cambridge, 1958) by K.G. Davies, Ec. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., XI (1958-9), 517.

14. 'Qui foll sen va a Roma, foll sen torna': Chronica del Rey En Jacme, cap. 542, ed. Aguiló, 517; trans. Forster, II, 655.

15. Above, p. 143; Vita S. Raymundi, ed. Balme-Paban, 24-5.

16. Reg. Urb. IV, 353 (Aug. 1263).

17. Ibid. 1023. He was in the company of Cardinal Stephen of Palestrina.

18. ADB, Gav. das Dignidades, 24: inc. Viros litterarum, 23 Feb. 1262. Bishop Nuño Pérez ignored this mandate and awarded the archdeaconry to Fernando Yáñez. At Orvieto in July 1263 Bishop Matheus of Lisbon, as auditor, adjudged the next Mondoñedo vacancy to Pedro of Lugo who, until then, was to receive an annual pension of £40 leoneses from Fernando: ES, XVIII, 158; Reg. Urb. IV, 1118.

19. Carmen Apologeticum, ed. Grauert, Magister Heinrich der Poet (cit. hereafter as Carmen), lines 51, 59ff. For a critique of the identification of Bishop Abril of Urgel, as subject (cf. Marca Hispanica, 534), and as author (cf. Lambert in DHGE, III, 1070), see Linehan, AEM, forthcoming.

20. Reg. Urb. IV, 1715. But that was not the end of it: see below, pp. 301-3.

21. Part, 1.14.9 (Academy ed., I, 397); Sandoval, Catálogo de los obispos de Pamplona, fo. 97v.

22. 'Homines se ipsos amantes praeponunt commodo reipublicae rem privatam': ed. Höfler, Analecten z. Geschichte Deutschlands u. Italians, 19-20.

23. BN, MS. 7112 (Sánchez Cavañas, Historia Civitatense), unpaginated, cap. 6; Nogales-Delicado, Historia de Ciudad Rodrigo, 64.

24. Ballesteros, Historia de España, III, 418, notes this practice (which seems to have originated in Castile), but his references are faulty. The earliest recorded instance was at Oviedo in 1275, where it failed in its objective, as it also did at Cuenca in 1280, Reg. Greg. X, 639; AC Toledo, X.1.E.1.1g. But it was successful there in March 1290, at Jaén in March 1300, and, at about the same time, at Segovia and Ciudad Rodrigo. Soon after, the chapter of Guarda introduced it into Portugal: AC Cuenca, 4/18/252; AC Toledo, X.1.D.1.1i; Reg. Bon. VIII, 4043, 4207, 4470.

25. Reg. Greg. X, 632; Mansilla, HS, IV, 329; AC Toledo, A.7.G.I.I: inc. Illarum ecclesiarum, 12 Oct. 1272.

26. AC Toledo, A.7.G.I.I.: 'Accepimus quod ecclesia Burgensis...ex eo quod plures dignitates, canonie et tam maiores quam minores portiones iamdudum vacarant ibidem, cum sede Burgensi vacante non sit preter Romanum pontificem qui conferre possit easdem, legitimis erat servitoribus et defensoribus destituta'; AHN, 184/9 (below, Ch. 12).

27. Part. 1.16.11 (Academy ed., I, 418); Juan Manuel, Libro de los Estados, ed. Gayangos, BAE, LI, 360; Barraclough, Papal Provisions, 148, 166 ff.

28. Above, p. 184; AC Tudela, 41-12-9: 'Intelleximus a personis gravibus et fidedignis sanctissimum dominum Bonifacium octavum collaciones beneficiorum in curia romana vacancium reservasse simpliciter sue collacioni' (reg. Fuentes, Catálogo, 442), 29 Jan. 1299.

29. AC Calahorra, doc. 492, 18 March 1302.

30. Reg. Inn. IV, 7425. For Compostela, see below, p. 265.

31. He was dispensed in July 1295; Reg. Bon. VIII, 333.

32. AC Toledo, X.1.C.2.7; X.1.C.1.1h: 'Quia predictus Egidius Dominici absens electus fuit et inscius, nec nobis ad plenum constabat ubi esset, licet ab aliquibus diceretur quod Bononiensi studio insistebat', they sent out a search-party on 15 May. He was found near Pamplona on 30 June and after the customary show of resistance ('utinam essem dignus ad tantam ecclesiam regendum') he accepted the offer.

33. AC Toledo, X.I.C.2.8 (= Reg. Bon. VIII, 3634); Gómez Bravo, Catálogo de los obispos de Córdoba, I, 285; Reg. Bon. VIII,3632bis, 3846; above, Ch. 10. Boniface also provided Córdoba Cathedral with certain constitutions, mentioned in a papal bull of 1556; but no record of them has survived. Cf. R. Fawtier, Hand-list of Charters, Deeds, and similar Documents in the possession of the John Rylands Library, I (Manchester, 1925), 71.

34. Censual do Cabido da Sé do Porto, 419-20.

35. ADB, Gav. dos Arcebispos, 16: 'Cum negotium de quo agitur sit arduum et tantum onus subire et suis humeris subportare sit quamplurimum difficile, grave et quodammodo importabile secundum fastigium tante dignitatis, considerando etiam quod nichil est adeo terribile quam officium episcopale si perfunctorie agatur'; ADB, Gav. dos Privilégios do Cabido, 5; Reg. Bon. VIII, 344; Ferreira, Fastos episcopaes, II, 94.

36. ADB, Gav. dos Arcebispos, 17, 19. On 4 Oct. 1297 Boniface VIII forgave him certain offences at the request of King Dinis. In 1301 he was one of the king's proctors at the Curia: ADB, Gav. das Noticias Várias, 21 (inc. Celsitudinis tue); ibid. 20; Finke, Acta Aragonensia, I, 102; Reg. Bon. VIII, 4121.

37. Above, Ch. 6.

38. Above, p. 204. He was prior of Guimarães as well as dean of Braga; and in León, apart from Crastello, he held property of the abbey of Celanova at Ecclesiola and Sande (Túy). The document confirming his rights there was witnessed at Seville in July 1263 by Bishop Juan of Orense, the injured party in the Crastello episode: ADB, Gav. dos Arcebispos, 33; Gav. das Religioens, 10.

39. He prepared his will at Burgos in Nov. 1272. It provided for wine to revive the canons of Braga after vespers; a standing offer of one maravedí for any canon who managed to attend matins every day for a month; and £50 for the Franciscans and Dominicans of Guimarães with the request 'quod si in aliquo eis erravi parcant mihi': ADB, Livro I dos Testamentos, fos. 13r-14r. Not that these provisions were necessarily executed, for, on 31 March 1276, Innocent V informed Pedro Hispano, cardinal bishop of Tusculum (the future John XXI) that, after the dean had died 'curiam nostram sequentem apud Sanctum Saturninum [Saturnia, 60 kilometres north-west of Viterbo?]', his property had been seized by his nephew, Martinho Peres de Portucarrario, and by João Martins de Soalhães, 'non sine camere nostre ad quam taliter decedentium bona de antiqua et observata consuetudine spectare noscuntur preiudicio'. The cardinal was charged with its recovery, and on 16 May he wrote from Rome to Archbishop Ordonho of Braga, instructing him, in accordance with the mandate Dilectum filium, to have the dean's goods entrusted to Giraldo, archdeacon of Couto: ADB, Colecçao Cronológica, d.s.n. Conceivably, the dean had been in Italy on Alfonso X's business.

40. Reg. Inn. IV, 2317. For his relationship to Alfonso IX, ibid. 1275. The fifteenth-century Memoria de los aniversarios in AC Salamanca (fo. 17v) described him as 'el fijo del rey Don Fernando que gano a Cordoba y a Sevilla'; and Mondéjar, Memorias,490, as a son of Alfonso X. For Cardinal Gil's Salamanca constitutions, Mansilla, Iglesia castallano-leonesa, 325. See also Portela Pazos, Decanobogio de Santiago, 99-102; Julio González, Alfonso IX, I, 314; idem, Correo Erudito, III, 194ff.

41. One such was Martín, the dean of Burgos who almost won that see in 1269, and eventually secured Sigüenza in May 1275; Reg. Greg. X, 608. In 1263 he had made a bid for Ávila, and in 1264 for Toledo. On that occasion Urban IV had warned him that if his claim proved flimsy he would be punished by being deprived of his benefices: Reg. Urb. IV, 331, 664, 2826.

42. Reg. Clem. IV, 545. In Aug. 1264, when Alfonso X had written on his behalf to Urban IV that 'nullum (es) adhuc in regnis ejus per sedem apostolicam vel aliquem prelatorum dictorum regnorum ad precum ejusdem regis instantiam, beneficium assecutus', he possessed -- apart from the archdeaconry of Trastamar -- the archdeaconry of Carballedo (Astorga), the deanery of Lugo, the secular abbacy of Arbas (Oviedo), rents at Orense and a León canonry -- all of which the pope was prepared to believe were worth less than forty marks per annum: so he was provided to a León dignity: Reg. Urb. IV, 2080, 2093. See above, p. 140.

43. Reg. Inn. IV, 2317, 3142; AC Burgos, vol. 71, fo. 77v(reg. Mansilla, AA, IX, no. 12); Reg. Inn. IV, 3191.

44. Reg. Inn. IV, 4901 (Oct. 1250); 4162 (Oct. 1248); 7334 (March 1254): the last of these made an exception in favour of poverty-stricken Palencia. In the event Sancho retained his Burgos benefices: above, p. 170.

45. Reg. Alex. IV, 98 (Jan. 1255); 871 (Oct. 1255).

46. Reg. Bon. VIII, 1301 (= AC Oviedo, A/II/8: reg. García Larragueta, Catálogo, 529, misdescribed); ADB, Colecçao Cronológica, III/4/24; Reg. Bon. VIII, 3240.

47. Reg. Inn. IV, 3283 (Oct. 1247).

48. Reg. Bon. VIII, 1807, 2879, 2640.

49. AC Toledo, caj. I.12, d.s.n (inc. Ad audientiam nostram, 1 April 1286); X.2.D.1.5. For the Ávila constitutions, see Mansilla, 346.

50. Sancha Páez wrote from Galicia to her brother, Bishop Abril of Urgel, asking him to take one of her sons into his household and to send her some of the money reserved for the poor of his diocese: AC Seo de Urgel, d.s.n: publ. Linehan, AEM, forthcoming.

51. For Oviedo, March 1257, renewing a grant of Innocent IV: Reg. Alex. IV, 1919; Vich, Dec. 1256: above, p. 44; Palencia, pre-June 1263: Reg. Urb. IV, 281; Cuenca, Dec. 1263: above, p. 185; Seville, May 1264: ibid. 1625; León, July 1264: ibid. 1946; Barcelona, Sept. 1265: Reg. Clem. IV, 147; Compostela, March 1273: Reg. Greg. X, 135.

52. Renewed for Sancho of Aragon in Oct. 1272: Reg. Greg. X, 125.

53. Reg. Inn. IV, 3284.

54. Oviedo, July 1245: Reg. Inn. IV, 1387; Oct. 1290: AC Oviedo, A/10/12 (reg. García Larragueta, 496); Sept. 1296: Reg. Bon. VIII, 1367; Pamplona, June 1247: AC Pamplona, V Episcopi, 20 (reg. Goñi Gaztambide, Catálogo, 557); Tarragona, Dec. 1252: Reg. Inn. IV, 6114; León -- together with grants of annates and tercias, Aug. 1254: ibid. 7959-61; Dec. 1256: Reg. Alex. IV,1641; Sept. 1290: Reg. Nich. IV, 3403; Compostela, July 1264: Reg. Urb. IV, 1872; Feb. 1290: Reg. Nich. IV, 2128; Seville, Sept. 1289: ibid. 1460; Huesca, March 1291: AC Huesca, 2-82 (reg. Durán Gudiol, AA, VII, no. 127); Ciudad Rodrigo, July 1298: Reg. Bon. VIII, 2619; Toledo, Jan. 1300: ibid. 3510 (=AC Toledo, A.7.H.1.5).

55. During Innocent IV's pontificate alone: Calahorra, Etsi libenter, 21 March (year missing): AC Calahorra, doc. 276; Oviedo, 17-8-1245: Reg. Inn. IV, 1432; Valencia, Vestris devotis, 22-10-1245: AC Valencia, perg. 2382 (reg. Olmos Canalda, Pergaminos, 175: misdated); Toledo, Dignus es, 25-10-1245: AC Toledo, A.6.H.1.2; A.6.H.2.4a; Gerona, Tue pacis, 27-2-1246 (renewed, 24-11-1246, with superscription 'Petit eciam episcopus Gerundensis sub nova data renovari de gratia speciali'): AE Gerona, 6/57; 6/59; Astorga, Personam tuam, 26-9-1246: AD Astorga, 3/53 (reg. Quintana Prieto, AA, XI, no. 60); Palencia, 4-6-1247: Reg. Inn. IV, 2743; Tortosa, Sincere devotionis, 23-10-1248: AC Tortosa, caj. del Illmo Sr Obispo II, 33; Mondoñedo, Meritis tue, 7-3-1251: AC Mondoñedo, diplomas sig. XIII, d.s.n; Toledo, Exigentibus tue, 12-8-1252: AC Toledo, A.7.C.1.3a; Tarragona, Affectu benevolentie, 2-12-1252: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 33r.

56. Porto, 'de biennio ad triennium', Oct. 1235: Reg. Greg. IX, 2812; Palencia, June 1247: Reg. Inn. IV, 2809; Lisbon, reduced from biennial to triennial, July 1263; abolished completely, June 1267: Reg. Urb. IV, 305; Reg. Clem. IV, 476. During the pontificates of Honorius IV, Nicholas IV and Bonifice VIII, the bishops of Lamego, Astorga, Salamanca, Sigüenza, Cartagena, Tarazona, Seville, Ávila, Huesca, Lérida, Valencia, Barcelona, Tarragona, Oviedo, Gerona, Osma, Pamplona and Calahorra all received either partial or total remission: Reg. Hon. IV, 615, 730; Reg. Nich. IV, 20, 903, 1433, 1470, 1499, 2735, 2830, 2931, 4162, 7119; Reg. Bon. VIII, 520, 2228, 2071, 3822, 3846. It may be noted that the archbishop of Tarragona's obligation, reduced from biennial to triennial on 30 Jan. 1292, had previously been triennial: AHA, Index dels Indices, fo. 37r; Reg. Alex. IV, 908 (Nov. 1255).

57. Above, p. 149. On 3 Jan. 1298 - only four months after his obligation had been remitted -- Bishop Bernardo of Gerona sent proctors to the Curia 'ad limina apostolorum.. .visitandum, ad impetrandum etc. et exponendum domino pape vel aliis loco sui miserum nostrum et ecclesie Gerundensis statum et oppressiones quibus una cum ipsa ecclesia affligimur': Reg. Bon. VIII, 2228; AE Gerona, Liber Notularum (1294-1300), G.1.1, loose doc. between fos. 77 and 78.

58. Reg. Nich. IV, 482 (Feb. 1289).

59. Salamanca, Feb. 1289: AC Salamanca, 16/1, fos. 8v-9v (reg. Marcos, 415, 414); Oviedo, July 1290 July 1291: Reg. Nich. IV,3019; AC Oviedo, Plomados, 3/15 (reg. García Larragueta, 500); Valencia, June 1291: Reg. Nich. IV, 5370.

60. Oviedo, July 1290; Zaragoza, July 1291: Reg. Nich. IV, 2994, 5716.

61. 'Lo erraran muy gravamente...non debieran rrecibir dinero si non la visitacion fecha': AC Toledo, X.1.C.2.3 (Dec. 1301). The pope had issued the grant, which was good for two years, on 21 Jan. 1299. One of the executors -- Bartholomew of Capua -- ordered the province to pay within six days. It had been renewed in 1300: AC Toledo, A.7.H.2.1 (inc. Venerabilisfrater noster); A.7.H.2.2b; Reg. Bon. VIII, 3310.

62. Sigüenza, May 1289; Zaragoza, June 1289 (renewed July 1291); Tarragona and Seville, Sept. 1289; Tarazona, Oct. 1289: Reg. Nich. IV, 904, 1020, 5726, 1385, 1604, 1602.

63. Ibid. 2040 (= AC Salamanca, 23/75: reg. Marcos, 420), 4491.

64. Reg. Clem. IV, 1156 (Nov. 1266).

65. See Alonso Alonso, Comentario al 'De Substantia Orbis' de Averroes por Alvaro de Toledo, 275-6; above, pp. 134-5.

66. Pascal's grievance was referred to judges delegate in Feb. 1299, but it was Bishop Simón of Sigüenza, as arbiter, who awarded him damages of 20,000 maravedís in March 1302: Reg. Bon. VIII, 2832; 3338; AC Toledo, X.I.E.2.2. The state of Cuenca after Gonzalo's ravages may explain why the archdeacon of Talavera, Sancho Martínez, declined the see in Feb. 1299: Reg. Bon. VIII, 2908.

67. El libro de los Enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio, ed. Knust, 45-51.

68. Reg. Greg. IX, 4177, 4588; Mansilla, Iglesia castellano-leonesa, 174-5; García y García, Laurentius Hispanus, 16-17. López Ferreiro, Historia de Santiago, V, 151, bases his account of the election of Juan Arias on the passage in the Tumbillo de Tablas, AC Santiago de Compostela, fo. 83v, which states simply that he was elected 'per viam Spiritus Sancti'.

69. For Bernardo's prevention of the restoration of the see of Mérida -- a skeleton in Compostela's cupboard since 1120 -- see Mansilla, 78-81; Lomax, Orden de Santiago, 24; Reg. Greg. IX, 3226; Valdeavellano, Historia de España, I, ii, 418. He trespassed within the dioceses of Astorga and Oviedo, and demanded vota Sancti Jacobi from the concejos of the archdiocese of Toledo: Quintana Prieto, AA, XI, nos 49, 52-3; AC Santiago, Tumbillo de Tablas, fos. 100v-103v AC Oviedo, B/4/15-16 (reg. García Larragueta, 266, 281); AC Toledo, Z.3.D.1.20, inc. De Toleto, 13 Aug. 1228.

70. Above, Ch. 6; Ballesteros, Sevilla en el siglo XIII, cx-cxi; inc. Venerabilis frater noster, 28 Feb. 1259: AC Santiago, Tumbillo de Tablas, fo. 84r; ADB, Gav. dos Votos, 9, fo. 1r-v.

71. Reg. Alex. IV, 864, 1647; Reg. Inn. IV, 6317; Reg. Urb. IV, 906, 2826. After Archbishop Juan's fall from grace, the León proctor was made a charge on Compostela: ibid. 2025.

72. AC Santiago, Tumbillo de Tablas, fos. 85v-6r: 'Credens per hoc datam tibi per litteras ipsas potestatem ad providendum de alienis beneficiis prorogari in ecclesia ipsa et aliis ad eorundem prioris et capituli collationem spectantium': inc. Dilecti filii prior, 7 Aug. 1257.

73. AC Santiago, Tumbillo de Tablas, fos. 85v-6r: 'Credens per hoc datam tibi per litteras ipsas potestatem ad providendum de alienis beneficiis prorogari in ecclesia ipsa et aliis ad eorundem prioris et capituli collationem spectantium': inc. Dilecti filii prior, 7 Aug. 1257.

74. AC Seo de Urgel, Collecció Plandolít: publ. Linehan, AEM, forthcoming.

75. Barraclough, Cath. Hist. Rev., XIX, 291-2; López Ferreiro, V, 158.

76. In the late 1240s Pedro de Albalat sought to regularise the chapter of Zaragoza on account of the lack of 'persone litterate et ydonee' in those parts: ASV, arm. XXXI.72, fo. 101v (Schillmann, Formularsammlung, 401). Cf. Reg. Inn. IV, 4567 By June 1265 the Augustinian chapter of Sigüenza was reduced from twenty canons to six, for the same reason, 'sicque dicta ecclesia defectum in divinis officiis et in suis juribus non modicam patitur lesionem...cum non sit qui pro ea se tunc murum defensionis opponat acjura tueatur ejusdem quampluribus diripientibus bona ejus': Reg. Clem. IV, 129. Change, though, was delayed for almost forty years: see below, Ch. 12, and for Huesca; for Tarragona and Burgos, above, pp. 41, 256.

77. ADB, Gav. dos Privilégios do Cabido, 7.

78. De altera vita, III, ix, ed. Mariana, 169.

79. 'Unde non levis instantia et contemptus gravis tam adversus episcopum quam clerum in populo consurgebant': publ. Mansilla, 323; Reg. Hon. III, 2272 (MDH, 252). See also Fueros leoneses, ed. Castro and Onís, 167, 192-3, for the penalties prescribed in the fuero of Salamanca for abusing bishop or clergy.

80. 'Hispania usque ad ascisionem linguarum episcopalium desaevit': Chronica Majora, IV, 579; above, p. 79; 'Non absque dolore cordis et plurima turbacione didicimus quod ita in plerisque partibus ecclesiastica censura dissolvitur et canonice sententie enervuntur...': AHN, 161/2, 2 Oct. 1245.

81. 'Nos cum prelatis et aliis viris discretis Hispaniae apud Sedem Apostolicam constituti': VL, V, 285-6.

82. Mansilla, 194; above, Ch. 2. For the León constitutions, see Reg. Hon. III, 5017 (MDH, 504); Mansilla, AA, I, 53 fE; for Pelayo, below, Ch. 12.

83. AC Cuenca, 4/17/243; Reg. Hon. III, 5629 (MDH, 571).

84. López Ferreiro, V, 156-7, 186-9; appendix 22.

85. Can. 13, Cura nos pastoralis: Hefele-Leclercq, V, ii, 1649-51.

86. AC Segovia, doc. 241: 'Hinc est quod clamoribus vestris quod tenuitate proventuum intolerabili, ut asseritis, pressi, subveniri vobis de prestimoniis vestre ecclesie supplicastis, dominus papa...sub dissimulatione non potuit preterire...' (Lyons, 3 Oct. 1245).

87. The Burgos inquisitio was publ. by Flórez, ES, XXVI, 482-9; and the Calahorra inquisitio by Hergueta (from BN, MS 704: a late sixteenth-century copy), RABM, xvii, 423-32. Those for Ávila and Segovia - AC Ávila, doc. 15; AC Segovia, doc. 17 - seem never to have been published. There is no inquisitio in AC Salamanca.

88. Mansilla, 193 ff, 321 ff., 344 ff., 359 ff, 371 ff. For Segovia, see following pages; for Córdoba, Gómez Bravo, I, 263-4; Muñoz Vázquez, Bol. R. Acad. de Córdoba, XXVI, 71. The text of the Plasencia constitutions (mentioned by Fernández, Historia de Plasencia, 36) is in RAH, MS C/7-9/5427, fos. 134v-43r. The only record of his intervention at Cuenca is in Morales' reference to a document, seen at AC Cuenca c. 1750, concerning Gil's reduction of the number of racioneros and medio-racioneros to ten and twelve respectively (April 1251): BN, MS 13071, fo. 55. The date of the Ciudad Rodrigo constitutions -- Jan. 1252 -- suggests that Gil may have had a hand in their preparation: BN, MS 7112, cap. 4.

89. Reg. Greg. IX, 2087. In March 1224 Bishop Pedro of Astorga and his chapter had prepared a distinctio of the property of the see, in order to avoid any occasio discordie: conf. by Honorius III, Cum venerabilis, 7 June 1225 (LDH, 66).

90. Lomax in Homenaje Vicens Vives, I, 286. Adopted at Compostela, Feb. 1223: AC Santiago de Compostela, Tumbillo de Tablas, fo. 109r; León, Jan. 1241: ES, XXXV, 428-9 (conf. Jan. 1256, not 1227 as García Villada, Catálogo: AC León, doc. 1528) Vich, Feb. 1246: AC Vich, 37-1-11 (conf. July 1251; Aug. 1293: AC Vich, cód. 220, fos. 47v-8r; 37-16-10); Córdoba, March 1255: Gómez Bravo, I, 270; Oviedo, May 1255 AC Oviedo, B/5/1 (reg. García Larragueta, 359); Gerona, Sept. 1255: AC Gerona, Cartulario Carlomagno, fo. 75r; Zamora, July 1256: AC Zamora, 13/49; Valencia, Aug. 1277: AC Valencia, perg. 1289 (reg. Olmos, 527); Cartagena, June 1281: publ. Torres Fontes, Documentos del sig. XIII, 67-8. A 'six month rule' was adopted at Mondoñedo, April 1251: AC Mondoñedo, diplomas sig. XIII, d.s.n; and at Urgel, March 1258: AC Seo de Urgel, Dotium sive dotaliarum liber secundus, fos. 20v-2r. Generally, the rule was effective only when death occurred at a particular period of the year: e.g. after 24 Dec. at Burgos, Jan. 1264, and Cuenca, 1265: ES, XXVI, 329; AC Cuenca, 3/L/11/149; after matins on Christmas Day, at Calahorra, conf. Sept. 1270: AC Calahorra, doc. 356; between vespers on Holy Saturday and the end of that era, at Toledo, conf. May 1291: BN, MS 13041, fo. 20r; after 15 Aug. at Salamanca, Dec. 1299: AC Salamanca, 43/2/82 (reg. Marcos, 463); before 1 Sept. at Jaca, Feb. 1298: Arco, BRAH, LXV, 70.

91. RAH, MS C/7-9/5427, fo. 138v.

92. Huesca: Durán Gudiol, REDC, VII, cap. 114-16; Lugo, March 1285: AHN, cod. 1042B, fo. 21v; Palencia, Aug. 1288: AC Palencia, 4/1/5.

93. '...quod omnes illi qui decetero recepti fuerint sive in canoniis sive in portionibus teneantur facere residentiam in ecclesia Conchensi per unum annum integrum ita quod si una dies defuerit iterum teneantur annum incipere, et tempus quo antea servierint minime computatur. Alioquin non detur eis portio seu canonia in studio seu extra': AC Cuenca, 5/20/277 (an. 1250).

94. Bishop Rodrigo, in Nov. 1281, and Bishop Fernando, in May 1303, assisted the canons with grants of revenue, the latter referring to the 'magnam lesionem' which Gil's constitutions had inflicted upon them: AC Calahorra, doc. 396, 506.

95. The exception was Salamanca -- where Bishop Martín was on the point of retiring, and had, perhaps, no stomach for a fight. Only a fortnight elapsed between the cardinal's decision and registration: Reg. Inn. IV, 1262 (= AC Salamanca, 15/2/51:
reg. Marcos, 215, 217); 1439.

96. AC Segovia, doc. 241. See above, p. 178.

97. AC Segovia, doc. 17 (the inquisitio, dated 1 June 1247); doc. 36. Each member of the chapter had the 1245 proposed allocation reduced by 30 maravedís: thus the canons, whose share was cut from 80 maravedís to 50, were much harder hit than the dean (400-370). The episcopal mensa was endowed with rents worth five thousand maravedís. Colmenares, Historia de Segovia, 201, mentions only this final settlement.

98. On 10 Aug. 1250 he wrote from Lyons, approving their agreement about the size of the chapter, and ordering measures to be taken against dignitaries of the church who had failed to provide, at the time of their admission, 'una decentem capam de xamito vel de alio pretioso panno serico...prout in ordinatione nostra plenius continetur': AC Segovia, 224, 265.

99. AC Ávila, doc. 14 (copy in AHN, cod. 1443B, fo. 11va-b). The bishop had been with Gil in the previous month: Reg. Inn. IV,4751. In Oct. 1256 the Ávila constitutions were supplemented also: López-Arévalo, Un cabildo catedral de la Vieja Castilla,297-302. By then the rents in question had been restored to the chapter; the canons had the bishop's letter of renunciation (of July 1255) confirmed by the pope: Reg. Alex. IV, 920.

100. Reg. Inn. IV, 2419 (Feb. 1247) AC Calahorra, doc. 302bis (July 1249).

101. Reg. Inn. IV, 6379 (publ. Mansilla, 371-7, misdated). In the registered version of Nov. 1252 the cardinal's judgement was dated Oct. 1249; but the constitutions were prepared by March 1249, in which month the proctor of the twelve priests of Gerona copied them onto a spare leaf of his libellum: AC Gerona, Causa del Any 1240, fo. 32ra-vb. AC Calahorra contains two pieces of correspondence between Aznar and Gil - doc. 296, 300 -- but neither is legible. The date of the final ordinatio is May 1257: AC Calahorra, doc. 229. Hergueta assumed this to be an error in the BN copy (RABM, XVII, 414); but it is perfectly consistent with the extended negotiations that occurred.

102. 22 April-29 May 1254: RAH, MS C/7-9/5427, fo. 143r. Cf. Reg. Greg. IX, 5964, for Martín Pérez's opposition to the bishop in 1241; Fernández, Plasencia, 36.

103. 'AC Segovia, doc. 36: 'Intelleximus quod prefati scandali radix et seminarium, origo ac fomes ex co potissime pullularat...Unde de facili sequebatur adversum patremfamilias non levis occasio murmurandi et mortalis infirmitas cui molestum est per inopiam affici et indigentiam perpeti difficulter scrupuloso corde commota videbatur sibi iustam habere materiam conquerendi'; Mansilla, 322-3.

104. 'Pensantes aliquem de ipsius Mindoniensis ecclesie gremio utilius quam extraneum ad ipsius fore regimen assumendum': Reg. Bon. VIII, 2227; 'cum etiam si omnes posuissemus extraneos, dum tamen ydoneos, jure nostro utentes, nulli crederernus iniuriam intulisse': AHN, papel, Toledo, 7216/2, d.s.n.

105. Two such cases, both from Burgos: Pedro Alejándrez, canon of Étampes, 'qui, sicut assent, de civitate Burgensi traxit originem et diu disciplinis scolasticis insudavit' at the court of Blanche of Castile, widow of Louis VIII of France: Reg. Urb. IV, 1623. Master J. could secure only a half portion there, although 'ipse longo tempore Parisius in artibus, medicina et demum in iure civili adeo studuit laudabiliter et profecit quod in medicina et artibus ipsis licenciam habuit et rexit ibidem': ASV, arm. XXXI.72, fo. 205r (Schillmann, 1457).

106. 'Asserens quod super receptione sua potius volebat implorare gratiam episcopi et capituli quam contra eos invitos per sententiam obtinere': Reg. Hon. III, 5237 (MDH, 53°). Cf. Decretal. Greg. IX, II, xxviii, de appell, c. 63 (Friedberg, Corpus luris Canonici, II, 439).

107. Mansilla, 323; below, Ch. 12.

108. AC Toledo, A.6.H.1.24 (publ. Gorosterratzu, Don Rodrigo, 303-5). Estella, of course, makes a case for Rodrigo: El fundador, 173-5. The creation of twenty capellanías for the new cathedral had been authorised in the previous January: AC Toledo, E.1.A.1.2(=Reg. Greg. IX, 2904). Cf. Lambert, L'art gothique en Espagne, 296.

109. Reg. Inn. IV, 908. Estella notes the move, but fails to account for it.

110. Mansilla, 323 (Salamanca), 347 (Ávila); RAH, MS C/7-9/ 5427, fo. 136v (Plasencia). Neither at Calahorra nor at Burgos were alieni explicitly excluded: instead the principle of promotion by seniority within the chapter was stressed, 'nisi litterarum scientia vel generis nobilitas et morum honestas vel alia causa rationabilis ipsum exigant'. The same qualifications were admitted for Salamanca archdeaconries -- with the exception of generis nobilitas (they already had the dean of Compostela on their hands): Mansilla, 364, 372, 324.

111. Reg. Alex. IV, 747 (Aug. 1255). The rest of the story is derived from Alexander's bull Hiis qui (9 Nov. 1257) which Bishop Pedro of Salamanca had registered in Dec. 1291: Reg. Nich. IV, 6365. Cf. Beltrán, Cartulario, 65-6.

112. Contra, Beltrán, 61, 71, 73.

113. Reg. Inn. IV, 7302.

114. Mansilla, 347; AHN, cod. 1443B, fos. 11vb-12ra: the list included two of the dean's nephews, a nephew of the cantor (who was at the Curia at this time), Adán of Burgos, and Domingo Domínguez and Domingo Martínez, both of Soria.