[83] On the very day of Pedro de Albalat's death, two of his orphaned suffragans, the Dominicans Andrés of Valencia and Guillermo of Lérida had a copy made of Innocent IV's letter Tua nobis, of 28 August 1248, which had granted the archbishop permission to establish a number of chaplaincies out of the profits of his successful estate management.⁽¹⁾ It was a wise precaution on their part, for the immediate future was to witness the triumph of forces who had little sympathy with Pedro and his objectives, as Andrés and Guillermo already had cause to know.

Still, Pedro's episcopal friends did not fade away at their master's demise. They were made of sterner stuff than that, and mounted a spirited rearguard action in defence of the cause which he had promoted. For example, and in contrast to the Galician prelates, the bishops showed no unseemly haste in taking advantage of more permissive attitude to concubinage which had received papal blessing only a month before Pedro's death. The archbishop may have regarded the problem as one best left to the discretion of each diocesan bishop, but in his public, conciliar pronouncements he invariably identified himself with John of Abbeville's hard line,⁽²⁾ and it was evidently in that light that he was remembered by those suffragans who hesitated to commute the penalties against concubinage which the legate had prescribed. For some twenty years their devotion to his memory proved stronger than the temptation to [84] adopt the new régime for financial reasons. Guillermo of Lérida's imposition of a fine on the offenders, sometime before 1254, seems to have been an additional, not an alternative, deterrent.⁽³⁾ Andrés of Valencia continued the campaign until 1268, and even then he did not formally renounce the use of spiritual penalties.⁽⁴⁾ The earliest instance of commutation on the basis of Cardinal Gil's ruling appears to have occurred at Barcelona in July 1276 when Arnaldo de Gurb, the successor of Pedro de Centelles, adopted as the normal penalty for beneficed clergy of his diocese the confiscation of one year's income.⁽⁵⁾

It was probably fiscal considerations that drove Bishop Arnaldo to take this step. He had recently built a chapel near his palace, opere non modicum sumptuoso, as Bishop Aymo of Vercelli's indulgence to him, granted at Lyons in concilio generali, was careful to emphasise;⁽⁶⁾ and his provision of cut-price authenticated copies of Gregory X's solemn bull for the Cistercian Order, In vestitu deaurato, which both Poblet and Veruela acquired,⁽⁷⁾ points to his need for funds at this time. Gradually, other bishops followed his lead, perhaps for similar reasons. The bishop of Tortosa, Arnaldo de Jardino, relented in 1278,⁽⁸⁾ and Pedro de Urgel did likewise eight years later -- although even after that the bishops of Urgel occasionally revived the legatine penalties.⁽⁹⁾ Practice varied from diocese to diocese, since it was left to each bishop either to choose the line of least resistance or to reject it. Thus, while the clergy of Calahorra had been permitted to enjoy themselves, at a price, eleven years before Cardinal Gil's ruling, those [85] of Pamplona were made to wait until the late 1270s, when the cost of the French invasion of his cathedral city forced Bishop Miguel's hand,⁽¹⁰⁾ and those of Vich until the first decade of the fourteenth century.⁽¹¹⁾ Pedro de Albalat cast a long shadow.

Nevertheless, his death was an immediate disaster for the reformers, for it led to the emergence of one of Pedro's old adversaries as a candidate for the succession. Benito de Rocaberti had been chamberlain of Tarragona at the time of Pedro's promotion,⁽¹²⁾ but the two men soon fell out, ostensibly on account of Benito's refusal to pay the canons the vestiarium in accordance with John of Abbeville's statutes. Deprived of his office by the archbishop, he travelled to the papal Curia, not for the first time, and ingratiated himself with Innocent IV who lent him his support against Pedro and, on 1 October 1248, confirmed him in his office and possession of the castrum de Reddis and other property which Guillermo de Mongrí had granted him⁽¹³⁾ On that occasion Pedro had retaliated by declaring him ipso facto excommunicate exactly four weeks later;⁽¹⁴⁾ but knowledge of the strength of his support at the Curia must have filled the remnants of Pedro's party with considerable alarm when the chapter and suffragan bishops met at Tarragona to elect a successor in August 1251. According to the incomplete record of that meeting, Andrés of Valencia gave Benito his vote -- an improbable departure in any circumstances, and quite impossible to reconcile with the objection to him on two counts, of adultery et quedam alia objecta, which Andrés and the bishops of Lérida and Zaragoza, Guillermo and Arnaldo, proceeded to submit to Innocent IV.⁽¹⁵⁾ Innocent, however, either could not or would not find fault with Benito. In January 1252, as prelude to his final decision, he removed the bar on episcopal promotion which [86] Gregory IX's legitimisation of the chamberlain had contained. A month later he referred the election back to the chapter, and, in April, dismissed the accusations of the three bishops and turned a blind pontifical eye on any flaw which might technically have vitiated the process of election.⁽¹⁶⁾ By the middle of May 1252 Benito de Rocaberti was archbishop of Tarragona.⁽¹⁷⁾

The succession at Tarragona was symbolic of changes in the Church at large: 'a stormy spring passes straight into winter'.⁽¹⁸⁾
But no contemporary critic engaged in solving the fascinating problem Utrum ecclesia melius regeretur per bonum iuristam quam per bonum theologum⁽¹⁹⁾could have found better material than in the contrast between Pedro and Benito. Moreover, the circumstances of his election and the support that he received from Innocent IV identify Benito as the worldly-wise man of affairs who, according to Marsilio of Padua, had prospered at the expense of the godly and with the assistance of the papacy, and had dragged the Church into a state of spiritual decay.⁽²⁰⁾ Not that the rebarbative Benito was an invariably 'useful' servant of the papacy. During his sixteen years as archbishop he was locked in constant combat with his chapter, while the papal nuncio who was commissioned to restore peace to Tarragona was led by his experience of Benito to the conclusion that Spaniards were quite impossible to deal with.⁽²¹⁾ Much of his sixteen years was spent at the papal Curia in the prosecution of his endless lawsuits. Pedro's mainstay, the Dominicans, found no favour with [87] him. They were replaced by the Franciscans,⁽²²⁾ and in common with the rest of the reform party were immediately exposed to the spite of their new father in God.

The significance of the volte face of 1252 was very soon brought home to the reform party by Benito's evident sympathy for that persistent villain of the piece, Bishop Ponce of Urgel, the prelate whose election had been witnessed by Pedro de Albalat in 1230 and whose subsequent career had proved such a grave disappointment to the archbishop and his friends. They had had high hopes of him and had greeted his election as marking the revival of his diocese 'tam in temporalibus quam in spiritualibus'. Instead, however, the Counts of Foix had continued to thrive and heresy to flourish,⁽²³⁾ and by 1251, when his chapter sent a deputation to complain about him to the pope, Bishop Ponce had dug his own grave. For the list of charges which they bore with them to the Curia indicated that what he lacked in moral qualities he made up for in stamina. He was, it was claimed, a murderer and deflorator virginum, the father of ten children amongst whom church property had been distributed. He had slept both with his sister and his cousin, had forged money, squandered the resources of his diocese, e moltes altres coses:⁽²⁴⁾stirring stuff, and not unsupported. Ponce's other enemies weighed in too. The Count of Foix provided some pretty damning detail concerning the man of peace by whom he had been persecuted utroque gladio.⁽²⁵⁾The archdeacon of Aristot recalled that for the last twenty years Ponce had exatcted heavy procurations, without ever once visiting his church.⁽²⁶⁾ The clergy of Lilia complained that, with Ponce's connivance, their provost had stripped the place bare, reduced them to a diet of bread and water which not even the Lenten season had rendered palatable, and had then disappeared 'on crusade'.⁽²⁷⁾
Most damaging, however, were the letters of Pedro de Albalat -- deis fals Archebisbe que é mort, as [88] Ponce's proctor called him -- whose councils Ponce had neglected to attend, and who now opined that the church of Urgel was in need of reform both in head and members.⁽²⁸⁾

But because by the time that these letters were presented at the Curia Pedro was dead, Ponce's chances of riding out the storm were markedly improved, and it was only by dint of strenuous activity behind the scenes that Andrés de Albalat and his associates (already heavily engaged in their hopeless resistance to Benito's promotion) succeeded in having the case referred to Raymond of Peñafort and the minister of the Aragonese Franciscans.⁽²⁹⁾ In the light of their findings, the papal auditor, Cardinal Stephen of Palestrina, suspended Ponce and on is December 1254 informed the new archbishop of Tarragona of his decision.⁽³⁰⁾ Benito, however, had a mind of his own, and was not prepared to brook interference in the running of his diocese from his predecessor's associates. So when Raymond called on him to flush Ponce out of Urgel and to superintend the religious settlement there, he refused at first to co-operate, taking refuge beneath several layers of legalistic scruple and alleging a most uncharacteristic concern for the rights of others.

Raymond of Peñafort was now in his eighties, but his was still a name to conjure with. He was quite capable of coping with jumped-up [89] archbishops, and Benito was soon brought into line.⁽³¹⁾ Still, by his guarded assistance to the unspeakable Ponce, he had proved that the fears of the reformers about the consequences of his promotion were fully justified. And there were other issues. No sooner was his election confirmed than he set off for the Curia to do battle with Andrés de Albalat, claiming jurisdiction over the churches of Jérica and Santa Tecla, Játiva, both of which were already at issue between the sees of Valencia and Segorbe.⁽³²⁾ Nor was it any relief to them that on his return from Italy in April 1253 he summoned a council. For Benito's council was not designed to continue the activity of Pedro de Albalat. Indeed, his view was that there was too much legislation -- a view which, in time, would recommend itself to other Spanish prelates⁽³³⁾ -- and so, having confirmed in the most perfunctory manner the constitutions of Innocent III, Innocent IV, John of Abbeville and Pedro en bloc, he addressed himself to what seems to have been the main object of the exercise, namely the publication and implementation of the cache of papal privileges which he had brought back from the Curia and which empowered him -- at a price, no doubt -- to absolve pluralists, heretics, clerici concubinarii, papal subsidy-dodgers, supporters of Frederick II, traders with the Saracens, and other miscreants, and to dispose of various benefices, collation to which had devolved to the Roman Church.⁽³⁴⁾

While at the Curia, Benito had received permission to retain for the next two years the income of the cameraria of Tarragona.⁽³⁵⁾ But [90] this did not satisfy him, and in September 1253 he entered a claim for back-payment from that source in respect of the period during which he had been suspended from the office of chamberlain by Archbishop Pedro. He even had the effrontery to maintain that his predecessor had desired nothing more than that he should receive the full income of the cameraria.⁽³⁶⁾But Benito was adept at distorting established facts and shifting responsibility on to others. By withholding payment of the vestiarium from the canons of Tarragona during the 1240s he had been foremost in obstructing John of Abbeville's reforms there. Yet in December 1255 he insisted that it was the canons who were guilty of the monstrous crime of resisting the legate's 'statuta salubria et honesta'.⁽³⁷⁾

His truculent nature poisoned relations with his suffragans also, as a document in the archive of Tortosa Cathedral records. It dates from October 1254 and takes the form of an appeal sent to Innocent IV by the canons of Tortosa who, having, at long last, been relieved of Bishop Ponce,⁽³⁸⁾ were naturally depressed at the prospect of having one of the archbishop's friends foisted upon them. Their long and detailed account of negotiations during the previous few weeks was not flattering to Benito who, according to them, had employed a mixture of brute force and low cunning in his dealings. In at Ponce's death, he had immediately urged them to elect a successor de consilio vestro ;⁽³⁹⁾ and when they resisted, had warned them, provocatus et commotus, that there was no escaping him, since however correctly they might proceed they would have to apply to him for confirmation of their choice, and he had no intention of approving any of their own number.⁽⁴⁰⁾ They refused to be cowed, though, and chose the archdeacon, Bernardo de Olivella. Thereupon Benito sent a couple of his cronies, canons of Tarragona, down to Tortosa where [91] they quizzed all and sundry, whether electors or not, in the hope of trapping someone into an indiscretion. Later, when this manoeuvre had failed and Bishop Arnaldo of Barcelona had the temerity to intervene in the cause of fair play -- propter Deum et gratiam ipsius -- Benito proved quite conclusively that he lacked all of the finer feelings. With a look of fury on his face, he clapped spurs to the unfortunate mule upon which he was mounted, let fly a volley of oaths (which the appellants declined to set down, retaining them for the time when to recount them would do him most damage) and declared, more or less, that if Bernardo got Tortosa it would be over his dead body.⁽⁴¹⁾ In fact, Bernardo did get Tortosa, and without inflicting any physical damage on the archbishop. First, though, he had to negotiate a further obstacle. For Benito cussing from the saddle was only half the picture. When bullying failed and the chapter forwarded its appeal to the pope, Benito had recourse to another means of achieving his end: the law.

Benito's cartulary is a copy-book of documents which served him in his many battles, with the chapter, the king and others, and it contains no dross. So, at first sight, it is strange that it should contain a copy of Bishop Enrico of Bologna's declaration of 1238 excommunicating regular clergy who failed to wear the religious habit while they were at the Schools.⁽⁴²⁾ Yet this entry is very far from being an exception to that rule of selection which governed the choice of pieces for inclusion, for it provided Benito with an alternative means of excluding Bernardo de Olivella from the see of Tortosa. While he had been studying at Bologna Bernardo had been ignorant of this regulation -- or so he claimed when he presented his case to the newly elected Alexander IV. Moreover, he alleged, he had since been absolved by the late bishop of Tortosa's penitentiary. Accordingly, in January 1255, the pope referred the matter for a decision to the prior of the Barcelona Dominicans,⁽⁴³⁾ and the outcome was evidently [92] favourable to Bernardo since, despite the foul means and fair employed by the archbishop, it was he who succeeded to the see of Tortosa later that year, and seventeen years after, following Benito's death and a lengthy vacancy, replaced his old adversary as leader of the Aragonese Church.⁽⁴⁴⁾

It was no coincidence that this, the archbishop's first major reverse, followed hard upon the death of Innocent IV and the election of Alexander IV in December 1254. During Innocent's lifetime nothing had been denied to Benito, but Alexander disapproved of many of the recent developments in Church government and Benito was the very type of Innocentian promotion to whom he took the most particular exception.⁽⁴⁵⁾ It was a bad time for Benito to lose friends, for he was adding to his list of enemies all the while. By 1255 he had set King Jaime against him, and in the March of that year the monarch wrote to the pope from Tortosa, complaining bitterly about him and marvelling that the government of thirteen bishoprics should ever have been entrusted to one whose incompetence had been an open secret while he had still been in minor orders.⁽⁴⁶⁾ Jaime's letter and the Tortosa affair probably provided Alexander with his earliest impression of the archbishop of Tarragona. It cannot have been favourable, and justifiable foreboding about the sort of reception awaiting him there may well have prompted Benito, who in other circumstances was an enthusiastic habitué of the Curia, not to make his triennial visit ad limina in person in 1255.⁽⁴⁷⁾ But there was no chance of his escaping papal scrutiny in this way. Self-imposed purdah could not save him while his many adversaries remained vociferous and legates and nuncios travelled back and forth,⁽⁴⁸⁾ and in February 1259 Alexander [93] treated him to a lecture which was hardly less withering than Honorius III's denunciation of the Castilian Church forty years before, and lost none of its sting by being in the form of a reprimand which other prelates also received.⁽⁴⁹⁾

It was a negative achievement of no small order to have presided over the spiritual shipwreck of the Aragonese Church and to have reduced it to the state of that of Castile, and all within a decade of the death of Pedro de Albalat. But the collapse was not the responsibility of Benito alone. Alexander's bull was prefaced by an unexceptional cento of biblical caveats about the negligent shepherd and his flock, yet it is clear that his particular cause for complaint was the vertiginous decline of clerical morals which had followed the death of Pedro de Albalat; and that was a process which Innocent IV's attitude cannot but have accelerated. For even if most bishops had not yet taken advantage of the relaxation of discipline authorised by Innocent, there were many concubinarii who had secured individual letters of dispensation both from Innocent and from Alexander. In February 1259, however, the pope turned the clock back. Just as, four years before, he had repudiated the Innocentian inheritance by dismissing the lengthy queues of benefice-mongers, so now, with a single stroke, he cancelled all general letters of dispensation which failed to specify the circumstances of the beneficiary's case.⁽⁵⁰⁾

The similarity between Benito and Rodrigo of Toledo forty years before extends also to the archbishop of Tarragona's almost total disregard for the papal admonition. Instead of devoting himself to pastoral affairs, he plunged headlong into a further round of litigation. By August 1259 his enemy the sacrist of Tarragona, Jaime Desprats, was at Anagni,⁽⁵¹⁾ and by the following summer Benito had [94] joined him there for what was to prove an extended stay. The hearings and bickering dragged on for three years, while the church's funds were gradually depleted⁽⁵²⁾ and Tarragona benefices were granted to the distinguished curialists with whom once more the archbishop was billeted.⁽⁵³⁾ When, in November 1260, Alexander instructed the provincial churches to hold councils and consider the Tartar menace, Benito was not at his post but at the Curia, 'propter quedam nostra et ecclesie nostre expedienda negotia', frittering away his own energy and his church's wealth; and the bishops of Zaragoza and Vich, Arnaldo de Peralta and Bernardo de Mur, veteran prelates of Pedro de Albalat's following, to whom he delegated his task of summoning the council, hardly disguised their contempt for him in their report to the pope of May 1261. They were not coming themselves to the Curia to inform Alexander of their deliberations, they explained, but were sending proctors, because 'propter angustiam temporis nullus nostrum, scilicet episcoporum, convenienter parare se poterat'.⁽⁵⁴⁾ The shepherd had a duty to his flock, they suggested: a very palpable hit.

But Benito did not bruise easily, and preferred to remain at the Curia and to administer his province from there.⁽⁵⁵⁾ Nor did he allow himself to be chivvied by Alexander's successor, Urban IV, who reminded him of John of Abbeville's Tarragona statutes and, in particular, of the accountability of capitular officers,⁽⁵⁶⁾ or when, at last, he made the supreme effort and summoned a provincial council [95] in October 1266, he was concerned not with reform but with ecclesiastical power politics. He had already staked a claim to jurisdiction over the exempt see of Mallorca,⁽⁵⁷⁾ and in 1266, as in 1253, he accorded only minimal attention to the constitutions of the legate and of his predecessor, with the laconic injunction that the bishops publish omnia predicta at their diocesan synods. It was typical of him that the only conciliar decrees of Pedro de Albalat to receive any extensive treatment were those which dealt with the intrusions of raptores ecclesiarum in general⁽⁵⁸⁾ and of the archbishop of Toledo in particular.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Similarly, his revival of the legate's educational legislation reflected his own legal bias by introducing a provision for the training of canonists, in his image and likeness, as well as of theologians.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Meanwhile, he set out to civilise his suffragans by making them eat their meals to the accompaniment of readings from the scriptures: a worthy enough scheme, but one which came ill from Benito of all people and, in the absence of any other sign of anxiety about clerical morality, merely serves to highlight the archbishop's indifference to his pastoral responsibilities.⁽⁶¹⁾

When Benito died in May 1268, still one jump ahead of justice,⁽⁶²⁾ the province of Tarragona was hardly recognisable as the scene of Pedro de Albalat's operations The tradition of annual councils was a [96] distant memory. In sixteen years he had held two, or possibly three,⁽⁶³⁾ such councils in which the prosecution of his predecessor's policies had been the least of his considerations. None of them, moreover, had met on the day assigned by Pedro.⁽⁶⁴⁾ His dealings with his suffragans suggest that his long periods away⁽⁶⁵⁾ were less damaging to the government of the Aragonese Church than his rare periods at home. For his behaviour during the Tortosa election was not exceptional. During that very winter he was engaged in a vendetta against the bishop of Pamplona, though the sturdy Pedro Ximénez proved equal to his devious stratagems.⁽⁶⁶⁾ Appropriately enough, the two prelates clashed again in the early 1260s over the issue which during Pedro de Albalat's lifetime had provided the Aragonese Church with a focal point of co-operation: the provincial council.⁽⁶⁷⁾ It was a sign of the times. Yet, in view of the archbishop's obsessively suspicious nature, as described by the papal nuncio Nicholas of Terracina,⁽⁶⁸⁾it is not surprising that the province should have become an armed camp; and, although a certain measure of joint enterprise did survive Benito's mismanagement, the effect of this disastrous interlude on the progress of clerical reform is not difficult to imagine.

Even in the diocese of Valencia, where Andrés de Albalat and his [97] successor Jazpert de Botonach persisted with the holding of synods, the task proved positively sisyphean, and Andrés on occasion seemed close to despair.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Indeed, in 1296, despite all their efforts and the promulgation of Pedro's Summa, Bishop Ramón Despont O.P. could declare, in the preface to his own Tractatus de Sacramentis -- a rather more learned and reflective work than Pedro de Albalat's -- that the sacraments had as yet received no attention in the synodal constitutions of that church.⁽⁷⁰⁾ And elsewhere the situation was at least as bad. When Archbishop Rodrigo Tello visited the diocese of Pamplona in March 1295 he discovered, inter alia, the cathedral church seriously understaffed, thirty-three clerics holding benefices in plurality, and four hundred and fifty clerici concubinarii.⁽⁷¹⁾

And yet, for all this, the memory of reform did linger on. Both Rodrigo (1288-1307) and Bernardo de Olivella before him (1272-87) held provincial councils, and even if Rodrigo was rather too ready to accept excuses for absence from his suffragans,⁽⁷²⁾ at least their legislation harked back to that of the 1240s.⁽⁷³⁾ The ordinances of John of Abbeville and Pedro de Albalat were Rodrigo's touchstone when he visited Pamplona in 1295,⁽⁷⁴⁾ and later that year he learnt that synods were still held in the diocese of Calahorra, although, according to the clergy of Alava, they were summoned in out-of-the-way places, in [98] locis minus insignibus, instead of at Armentia, the customary place.⁽⁷⁵⁾ The mainstream of reform, in spite of Benito's damming operations, had continued to flow, even though it had gone underground. And it sprang up beyond the province, to irrigate the island of Mallorca. In 1266 Bishop Pedro de Morella issued a set of vernacular statutes which borrowed from both Pedro de Albalat's Summa and the legatine legislation, and displayed the sort of pristine vigour which was so lamentably absent from Benito's council of the same year, to which futile assembly the archbishop had summoned the insular bishop.⁽⁷⁶⁾

The Summa Septem Sacramentorum had a lasting influence. It may have been the model for the set of instructions De celebratione missarum et sacramento eucharistie et aliis divinis officiis which the Pamplona synod of March 1301 ordered the diocesan clergy to acquire within the next three months.⁽⁷⁷⁾ And in the 1360s and 1370s that section of it which dealt with the sacrament of the Eucharist received a new of life when Archbishop Pedro Clasquerin promulgated it at an archidiocesan [99] synod On that occasion it was described as Constitutio sinodalis ecclesie Valentine.⁽⁷⁸⁾ The wheel had come full circle.

What, though, was the significance of 'reform' and 'the tradition of reform'? We run the risk of becoming absorbed in the plumage and forgetting the dying bird whenever we allow ourselves to be convinced by these clichés that anything certain can be known about the state of popular religion The evidence from the diocese of Valencia alone indicates that frequent synods were no guarantee of effectiveness, and though the survival of synodal and conciliar statutes may provide information about the prelates who issued the legislation it is no guide to the condition of the people at whom that legislation was directed The religious life of priests and people in the parishes of thirteenth-century Spain is almost entirely hid from view. Records of episcopal visitations are extremely rare,⁽⁷⁹⁾ and it must not be assumed that Archbishop Rodrigo's findings at Pamplona in 1295 were representative of the state of his province either then or earlier. Nor, however, can it be assumed that they were not, though there is reason enough to believe that piety survived at the parochial level and that the translator of Innocent III's De Contemptu Mundi was correct in his opinion that there was a market for a vernacular version of the work⁽⁸⁰⁾ Still, the existence of piety at any level of the Aragonese [100] Church cannot be deduced from an analysis of its conciliar or synodal legislation.

However, the conciliar tradition of Pedro de Albalat's making did have a significance which was quite independent of the spiritual matters discussed at his councils: a political significance that enabled the Aragonese prelates to defend their temporal interests against the secular power. Benito de Rocaberti himself had reason to be grateful to Pedro for this. But it is an aspect of the ecclesiastical history of thirteenth-century Spain which may most conveniently be considered in the following chapter where the quite different developments within the Castilian Church are discussed.

1. 'Tam per emptionis titulum quam per industriam tui': AHN, sellos, 65/23. The document was formerly in the archive of Poblet where Pedro was buried on the following day, 3 July 1251.

2. Conc. Tarragona I(1239), c. 1-2; VI (1246), c. I: Tejada y Ramiro, Colección, VI, 30, 42; Summa Septem Sacramentorum, fo. 129vb. The clergy, however, were not dismayed even by these resounding prohibitions. In AC Barcelona, Constitutiones Synodales et Provinciales, fo. 183r, this passage of the Summa is glossed: 'Nota que mulieres permittuntur habitare cum sacerdotibus.'

3. VL, XVI, 311.

4. Aguirre, Collectio maxima conciliorum, V, 208. Six years before, in weary tones, he had excommunicated clergy who bequeathed church property to their children, 'quos debent prorsus a se abiicere, si ordinis honestatem attenderent': ibid. 207. Cf. Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, 309-10.

5. AC Barcelona, Libro de la Cadena, fo. 134rb.

6. AC Barcelona, Diversarum B, 883 (10 July 1274). On 14 Oct. following, Gregory X contributed a papal indulgence: bull Solet annuere: AC Barcelona, Diversarum B, 580.

7. AHN, 2283/I, 3769/2: both copies were made at Montpellier on 19 June 1275, only two months after the original issue of the bull. Cf. Potthast, 21020.

8. VL, V, 286.

9. Ibid. XI, 291-2. Both Pedro and his predecessor Abril had enforced the legate's sentences since 1258. In Nov. 1297 Bishop Guillermo de Moncada, O.P. declared an amnesty and remitted all fines due from clerici concubinarii in the deanery of Urgel, but reintroduced suspension as a penalty for future transgressors who were exhorted 'ad frugem melioris vite totaliter se convertant': AC Seo de Urgel, Registro episcopal fragmentario, fo. 5.

10. AC Pamplona, E 31-2 (reg. Goñi Gaztambide, Catálogo, 713), instructing the church's proctor at the Curia to request grants of dispensation from the legate's sentences against both clerici concubinarii and pluralists.

11. AC Vich, cod. 220, fos. 28r-v, 43v-4r (in 1307).

12. Reg. Greg. IX, 3100; Capdevila, Seu de Tarragona, 151.

13. Reg. Greg. IX, 5986; Reg. Inn. IV, 487, 4140. He had paid an earlier visit to the Curia in Sept. 1232, when Gregory IX had legitimised him: Reg. Greg. IX, 869. By July 1248 he was a member of Cardinal Gil's familia and witnessed the settlement of the Gerona dispute at Lyons: AC Gerona, d.s.n.

14. AHA, Thesaurus, fos. 497-8.

15. VL, XIX, 259-62; Reg. Inn. IV, 5675. Andrés was at the Curia on royal business in Feb. 1252: ACA, Bulas, leg. XII-6 (reg. Miquel Rosell, Regesta, 174).

16. Reg. Inn. IV, 5553-4, 5675.

17. The election was confirmed on 15 May by the archbishop of Narbonne and his colleagues, in accordance with Innocent's instructions of 12 Feb.: Capdevila, BAT, LII, 183; Reg. Inn. IV, 5555 Villanueva misdated this letter and, knowing nothing of the last-ditch stand of the three bishops, believed that Benito was archbishop-elect in the previous August. However, on 29 April 1252, Benito was still addressed as camerario Tarraconensi by the pope: VL, XIX, 186; Reg. Inn. IV, 5675.

18. Beryl Smalley, reviewing Barraclough, The Medieval Papacy, in History, LIV (1969), 259.

19. For this quaestio of Gaifridus de Fontibus, see Glorieux, Bibliothèque Thomiste, V, 162.

20. 'Hos enim tamquam utiles dignificat Romanus pontifex et ecclesie defensores, qui pro temporalibus conservandis vel amplius usurpandis contendere norunt, sacre vero theologie doctoribus tamquam inutilibus reiectis ab eo. "Simplices enim sunt" ut inquit ille cum suorum cardinalium cetu, "et ecclesiam dilapidari sinerent"':Defensor Pacis, II, xxiv, 7.

21. Blanch, Arxiepiscopologi de Tarragona, I, 159 ff.; Morera Llauradó, Tarragona cristiana, II, 289 ff.

22. Capdevila, Franciscalia, 39 ff.

23. Menendez y Pelayo Historia de los heterodoxos I 525-8; Miret y Sans Investigación histórica sobre el vizcondado de Castelibó, 207-12. For further details, see Linehan. AEM, forthcoming.

24. Reg Inn IV, 5592 VL XI 221-3.

25. VL, XI, 226-7.

26. AC Seo de Urgel, d.s.n. Ponce had expected the archdeacon to entertain thirty horsemen (12 Aug 1251).

27. AC Seo de Urgel, Collecció Plandolít.

28. VL, XI, 221. Ponce had not attended a provincial council since 1242: Tejada, VI, 34.

29. Ponce's proctor's description of the torrid reception given to the canons of Urgel on their arrival at Perugia in Nov. 1251 is printed in VL, XI, 221-2. But Villanueva was wrong to deny that lo Bispe de Valencia who assisted them was Andrés de Albalat: 'No sé de qué Valencia seria este obispo, pero es cierto que no era el de la del Cid': ibid. 83n. Among other churchmen whom the proctor mentioned as having declared against Ponce were the sacnist of Gerona, Guillermo de Mongni, who as archbishop-elect of Tarragona had attempted to deal with the heretics of Urgel (AC Seo de Urgel, Dotium sive dotaliarum ecclesie Urgellensis liber secundus, fo. 71V); and Ponce's own nephew, the proctor of the bishop of Zaragoza, Arnaldo de Peralta. Arnaldo, a member of the anti-Benito faction, had been translated to Zaragoza from Valencia in 1248. Though not himself a Dominican, he was a great patron both of that Order and of the Poor Clares: Sanchis Sivera, BRAH, LXXXII, 40 ff.; Ruiz de Lanrinaga, AIA, IX, 372.

30. AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 16r: confirmed by Alexander IV on 7 Jan. 1255: Reg. Alex. IV, 93. Villanueva suspected that the commission to Raymond of Peñafort (Reg. Inn. IV,5592) bore no fruit, and has been followed by Valls i Tabemer: VL, XI, 85 Obras selectas, I, ii, 292-3. There is, however, positive proof that Raymond and his colleagues came to Urgel 'prosequentes factum inquisitionis impetrate a sede apostolica contra D. Poncium' in a document recording their expenses on that occasion: AC Seo de Urgel, Col1ecció Plandolít (Nov. 1255).

31. The Raymond-Benito correspondence is in VL, XI, 231-6. Raymond's remark that Ponce 'nec exemplo praedicavit sufficienter nec verbo' (p. 236) recalls the language of Pedro de Albalat's Summa, fo. 128rb. In addition it may be noted that a nephew of Raymond served the chapter of Tarragona as one of their proctors in their struggle against Benito: Blanch, I, 161.

32. Two letters, both beginning Venerabilis frater, 30 Nov. 1251: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo.10V-11rr. Cf. Bums, Crusader Kingdom, I, 49 ff. The outcome of the dispute is not recorded, but in May 1259 'Bernardus Dominici presbiter de Xerica' was one of the archbishop's household clerks: Cartoral AB, fo. 36V.

33. 'Consideratione habita diligenti quod constitutionum pluralitas non solum confussionem sed etiam animarum periculum plerumque inducit dum ea quae constituuntur non observantur debita reverentia et legitime ut deceret, constitutiones de novo aliquas edere noluimus in presenti': Tejada, VI, 50; below, p. 310.

34. 'Ibid. 51. Twenty-two acts containing these privileges, all of November-December 1252, were copied into Benito's cartulary: AHA, Cartoral AB, fos. 8r, 9v-11V, 33r-v. Some were registered: Reg. Inn. IV, 6111-14, 6120-1, 6146.

35. Ante promotionem, 2 Dec. 1252: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 33r.

36. At a hearing before Cardinal Gil Torres, Perugia, 4 Sept. 1253: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 12r. Benito's scribe may have miscopied the date. It should perhaps be September1252, for on that day of 1253 the Curia was at Assisi.

37. Petitio venerabilis, 15 Dec. 1255: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 36V.

38. He had died on 29 Aug.: VL, V, 89. Neither Villanueva nor Bayerri Bertomeu, Historia de Tortosa, VII, 395, mentions the following incident.

39. AC Tortosa, caj. Del Arcediano Mayor II, 29. Their appeal is addressed to Benito.

40. Ibid.: '" Ipsa electio saltem per confirmationem habet per nos transire [they reported him as saying]. Et vix fiet per vos adeo canonica vel justa quod si voluenimus possumus cam cassare." Et dixistis et asseruistis quod nullo modo confirmaretis electionem si eam faceremus de aliqua persona ecclesie nostre.'

41. Ibid.: 'Vos, provocatus et valde commotus, dixistis, asseruistis et affirmastis, stricto repente cum quodam impetu calcaribus mulo quem equitabatis, vultu valde turbato, provocatus et commotus jurastis per Deum et sanctam ecclesiam, votum etiam emittendo et alia verba turpissima dicendo que reservamus suo loco et tempore probare coram judice competenti, quod a dret ne a tort dictus electus aliqua ratione non haberet episcopatum predictum quantumcumque horno faceret ibi totum suum posse...'

42. AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 16v.

43. Reg. Alex. IV, 55:publ. Ripoll, Bullarium, I, 269-70.

44. Reg. Greg. X, 22. One of his electors on that occasion was the bishop of Barcelona who had spoken up for him in 1254.

45. According to Matthew Paris, Alexander regarded Innocent as venditor ecclesiarum: Chronica Majora, V, 492.

46. AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 79r: 'Non erat regimen XIII episcopatuum seu gubernaculum committendum illi qui in minori officio constitutus domum tenere non novit' (24 March 1255). The king described Benito, aptly, as de consuetudine litigiosus, and sent a copy of the letter to the College of Cardinals. In the following August Benito asked Jaime to stop persecuting the Church: AHA, Corretja, no. 42. But the quarrel was still raging in Oct. 1258: ibid. no. 44: publ. Morera Llauradó, II, appendix 8.

47. He sent three proctors in his stead, two of them Franciscans: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 35v: publ. Capdevila, Franciscalia, 41.

48. See Ch. 9.

49. AHA, Cantoral AB, fo. 21v: decree Si vere quod dicimur (13 Feb. 1259). Cf. Reg. Alex. IV, 2853; Potthast, 17480 (for Rouen, Salzburg, Drontheim).

50. Ibid.: 'Si vero huiusmodi concubinarii quorum culpas contigerit canonica districtione feriri, super appellatione aut absolutione vel restitutione sua litteras apostolicas reportarint, illas nisi forsitan in eis appellationis aut excommunicationis seu amotionis sen huiusmodi causam expresserint manifeste, decernimus nullius esse momenti.' Cf. Barraclough, EHR, XLIX, 193 ff.

51. 3 He was with Cardinal Richard Annibaldi on 12 Aug. when the cardinal annulled the Concordat of Estella of 1255 between Teobaldo II of Navarre and the bishop of Pamplona: AM Pamplona, caj. F., d.s.n., XXX, 5 arr. I (=Reg. Alex. IV, 2958). Cf. Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 112. The sacrist had opposed Benito's election in 1251 VL XIX 262 Cf Capdevila Seu de Tarragona, 149.

52. On 9 Aug. 1260 Benito was permitted to borrow 500 marks sterling on the security of his see: Cum sicut: AHA, Cantoral AB, fo. 39r.

53. On 7 July 1260, 'attendentes bonitatem Petni nepotis dilecti magistni Marganiti, Panormitani archidiaconi et rectoris ecclesie de Reddis Tarraconensis diocesis', he appointed Petrus to a canonry in the collegiate church of S. Miguel de Escornalbou, Tarragona, of which he was prior ex officio: AHA, Cartoral AB, fo. 3v. The church de Reddis had previously been attached to the cameraria of Tarragona and had been at issue between Benito and Archbishop Pedro in the 1240s: Reg. Inn. IV, 4140.

54. Capdevila, AST, II, 511, 516. Capdevila was wrong in claiming that 'de la peninsula ibènica, fins ana, no es coneixia cap assemblea eclesiàstica que s'hagues ocupat d'aquesta qüestió', p. 501. Thirty-three years before, Fita had published, from a Túy MS. of a Commentary on the Psalms, a record of the parallel Braga Council of 1 July 1261: BRAH, XXII, 209 ff. (also published, independently, by Feio, RPH, I, 141-3). Cf. Hefele-Leclercq, VI, i, 95 ff.; Powicke-Cheney, Councils and Synods, I, 600 ff.

55. AHA, Cartoral AB, fos. 47V-8r, 58v-66v, 78v. He was still there in Jan. 1263: ibid. fo. 48r.

56. AHA, Index dels Indices, fos. 571v-2r: two bulls, 5 June and 11 Oct. 1263: formerly Arm. de les butlles apostoliques, 45, 48.

57. Ibid fo 32V (23 July 1265) formerly Arm de la dignitat arxiepiscopal 18.

58. Tejada, III, 388; VI, 53-4. The constitution was Olim excommunicasse (ibid. VI, 43), the second of the two constitutions of which the chapter of Valencia secured copies in the early fourteenth century: AC Valencia, doc. 8987 (above, p. 81, n. 7).

59. Marca, De primatibus, 367-9, published two documents from the archiepiscopal archive at Tarragona (identifiable as Arm. de la dignitat arxiepiscopal, 23-4: AHA, Index dels Indices, fo. 33r), the second of which reiterated Pedro's constitution De archiepiscopo Toletano issued in May 1240 at the height of the struggle for control of Valencia Tejada VI, 33; Burns, I , 274 The documents do not strictly speaking belong to the council, being dated 11 and 13 Nov. 1266. They must, however, be mentioned, and not least because in the first of them Benito quoted a canonical tag which he might have pondered more often to his own advantage. He reprimanded the archbishop-elect of Toledo, Sancho of Aragón, for trespassing upon his rights by bearing his cross through the province of Tarragona, 'cum non liceat alicui in alienam messem ponere falcem suam'.

60. Tejada, VI, 53. Cf. Conc. Lérida, c. 7, which does not mention the study of canon law: ES, XLVIII, 311.

61. Tejada, loc. cit.

62. VL, XIX, 187. In the following month Clement IV dismissed various clerks whom he had promoted illegally to reserved benefices: Reg. Clem. IV, 1377 (Martène-Dunand, Thesaurus, II, 607).

63. Tejada, VI, 52, and Valls i Tabemer, AST, XI, 260, credit him with a third council on 16 May 1256, or 1257. However, its constitutions, as published by Tejada, are exactly the same as those of the 1253 council. Moreover, it is not mentioned among his constitutions in the fourteenth-century MS. BC Tortosa, cod. 187, fos. 24.r-6r. Cf. Bayerri Bertomeu, Códices medievales, 344-5.

64. 8 April 1253; 16 May 1266.

65. According to Morera, II, 295, he was at the Curia permanently from 1257 until 1266.

66. Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 113-14, 224-5.

67. In 1264 the proctor of the clergy of Murillo claimed that Bishop Pedro's sentences of excommunication were invalid since he himself had been excommunicated for failing to pay his share of the expenses of the agents 'qui mittendi erant ad cuniam romanam ratione negotii tartarorum' from the 1261 Council. His share was 155 maravedís. The agents had been provided with 1600: AC Pampolona, II Episcopi 23 (reg. Goñi Gaztambide, 655); Capdevila, AST, II, 516.

68. In his letter of Aug. 1257 to Alexander IV, publ. Blanch, 162-6, Benito had objected to Nicholas's dining with the provost and canons: 'et fateor quod verum est, nam et cum ipso archiepiscopo et cum prefatis frequenter et sepe comedi et ipsi mecum, nam nolebam de me dici quod numquam mecum amicus in hospitio receperat canitatem'. His other experiences with Benito led him to speculate about national characteristics: 'nam ex eo quod scio omnes hispanos impatientes esse, ut fama praedicat et facta demonstrant, non solum quod non timeam eisdem hispanis dicere aliquid, imo vereor eos respicere pusillanimus, pavidus et timens, ne ex aspectu provocentur ad iram et reputent se offensos'.

69. For Jazpert's synods of 1277, 1278 and 1280, see Sanchis y Sivera, AST, IX, 143-7.

70. Publ. Sanchis y Sivera, AST, X, 123 ff. Two extracts will suffice to demonstrate the gulf between the Summa and the Tractatus: cap. 15, Quod pueni debent confiteri: 'Reifert enim b. Gregonius in Dialogo quod quidam gravidaverit nutricem in nono anno'; cap. 17, De penitentiis mulierum: '...nam sexus mulieris potius debet moneri quam terreri'.

71. AGN, caj. 4, no. 101 (reg. Castro, Catálogo, 581); Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 189-90.

72. In June 1294 he wrote to Bishop Miguel of Pamplona, informing him of the Lérida Council which was planned for August, and adding that 'licet autem ut juris et moris est universos et singulos episcopos suffraganeos nostros ut ad dictum personaliter accedant concilium specialiter convocemus, propter tamen locorum distanciam et viarum discrimina necnon et pericula gravia que possent in itinere inveniri', he would tolerate pacienter the sending of proctors instead: AC Pamplona, II Episcopi 38 (reg. Goñi Gaztambide, 821). The contrast with Pedro de Albalat and his contempt for his suffragans' excusationes frivolas is most striking.

73. Tejada, III, 402 ff.; VI, 54 ff.; Valls i Taberner, AST, XI, 262-5.

74. He described pluralism as 'contra constitutionem domini Johannis Sabinensis episcopi et contra ordinationem domini P. predecessoris nostri factam in ecclesia Pampilonensi' (referring to Pedro's sede vacante synod there): AGN, caj. 4, no. 101.

75. AC Calahorra, doc. 473 (Estella, 6 Nov. 1295). In 1297 Bishop Almoravid complied with their demand, at Logroño; publ. Bujanda, Berceo, I, 132-5. Similarly, the monks of Leyre complained that, though they were exempt from his jurisdiction, Bishop Miguel of Pamplona had summoned them 'ad locum non tutum ad propter guerrarum discrimina et viarum pericula que in illis partibus ingruebant, accedere vel destinare nuntium non valebant': inc. Sua nobis (11 Jan. 1303): AHN, 1408/20.

76. The statutes are published by Nebot, BSAL, XIII. Fragments only have survived the section De Penitentia (pp. 195-7), but the connexion with Pedro's Summa is suggested by, for example, the instructions De Matnimoni beginning: 'per so cor matrimoni es feit corporalment entre totes gents' (p. 253; cf. Summa, fo. 129rb). El cardenal de Sabina and his constitutions are frequently mentioned (pp. 239-40,253, 269, 295-7), and the bishop published without modification 'la constitucio cardenal del cardenal de Sabina qui fo legat del apostoli en espanya (denunciam) por sospeses tots los preveres, diaches o subdiaches e tots los beneficiats qui tenen o tenran publica- ment en lurs cases o en altres, drudes e les drudes e altretal dels clergues damunt dits denunciam per vedats, e si es monien en aquest pecat soterrarlos hi han no en cimiteni dons son heretges' (p. 269). El consyl de Tibur and a constitution of Gregory IX are also mentioned (pp. 240, 269). The source for the provision of the synod of Oct. 1270 which deterred rectors from visiting Palma and obliged them to attend services in the cathedral when they did (p. 335), may have been the Valencia synod of 1255: Aguirre, V, 197: Ne clerici in civitatem. Fon Pedro de Morella, see VL, XXI, 141ff.

77. BC Pamplona, Libro de Constituciones, fo. XXX(va). Both Sandoval, Catálogo de los obispos de Pamplona, fo. 96r, and Monet, Annales, III, 274, regarded this as the first Pamplona synod. Cf. Goñi Gaztambide, Príncipe de Viana, XVIII, 187.

78. AC Barcelona Libro de la Cadena fo. 184r.

79. The only such thirteenth-century record that has come to light is a single leaf of the year 1258, contained in the Urgel MS. already mentioned: above, p. 84. Cf. Linehan, AEM. The Index dels Indices in the AHA, fo. 30r, mentions 'un altne plech que conté diverses visites fetes antigament per los archebisbes y sos visitadors en diverses yglesies catedrals y parroquials de la provincia'; but it is now lost Visitation records of great interest survive from the early years of the next century at Barcelona: Sanabre El archivo diocesano, 14; and at Vich for the years 1330-9 publ. Junyent Miscelánea Griera I 369 ff.; while for Huesca a document of the year 1338 which is not a visitation record but is of equal value, is publ. by Durán Gudiol, Argensola, VII, 368-9.

80. Ed. Artigas in Bol. Bibl. Menéndez y Pelayo, I-II, from a fourteenth-century MS.Entitled Libro de la miseria de omne the translation may have been made in the mid-thirteenth century (I, 35) The author explains his motives in the prologue (I, 36): 'libro de miseria de omne sepades que es llamado conpuso esas rrazones en buen latin esmerado. Non lo entiende todo omne sinon el que es letrado porque yaze oy muchos postpuesto e olvidado.' A copy of Innocent's original work was in the library of the vicar of S María de Uncastillo, Sancho Jordan, in 1263: Serrano y Sanz, Erudición Ibero-Ultramarina,III,119, item 49; Escagüés Javierre, Rev. Bibliografía Nacional, VI, 203-5. Neither of these MSS. is mentioned by M. Maccarnone in his ed: Lotharii cardinabis (Innocentii III)'De Miseria Humanae Conditionis' (Lucca, 1955).