No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
The fourteenth-century Kingdom of Aragon enjoyed a reputation as a haven for religious dissidents, doubters, heretical refugees and malcontents. This is particularly true of those fleeing the upheaval that the Franciscan Order experienced early in the century, as debates over the nature of poverty within the order created serious conflicts within communities, between friars and superiors, and between the order and the papacy. These visitors operated at the highest levels of the royal court, as has been well documented in the recent surge of interest in figures such as Ramon Llull and Arnald of Villanova. But the effects were also felt in rural communities, arousing suspicion among local bishops. Court proceedings and other documents reveal the pervasive atmosphere of doubt and suspicion that focused on several Franciscan houses in the diocese of Barcelona as late as the middle of the fourteenth century.
1 Espelt, Josep Perarnau i, Beguins de Vilafranca del Penedès davant el Tribunal d'Inquisició (1345–1346). De captaires a banquers?, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Nuovi studi storici 85 (Rome, 2010), 49, lines 269–75Google Scholar. The manuscript of the depositions that are the focus of Perarnau's excellent critical edition is Barcelona, Arxiu Diocesà, Processo 3.
2 There is a vast and expanding bibliography on Olivi. Among others, see Burr, David, The Persecution of Peter John Olivi (Philadelphia, PA, 1970)Google Scholar; Boureau, Alain and Piron, Sylvain, eds, Pierre de Jean Olivi (1248–1298) (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar; and the online resource ‘Oliviana: Mouvements et dissidences spirituels xiiie–xive siècles’, at: <http://oliviana.revues.org>.
3 In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, until the advent of the Inquisition, Languedoc and possibly Catalonia served as a Cathar refuge: Peters, Edward, Inquisition (Oakland, CA, 1989), 76Google Scholar. In the fourteenth century, the area became a way-station for Franciscans fleeing the fallout of the poverty controversy: Bisson, Thomas N., The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford, 1991), 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Webster, Jill, Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon from St Francis to the Black Death (Toronto, ON, 1993)Google Scholar. Further works on the Franciscans in Catalonia include Sanahuja, Pedro, História de la seráfica provincial de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1959)Google Scholar; y Martí, José Pou, Visionarios, beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (siglos xiii–xv) (Alicante, 1996).Google Scholar
4 Backman, Clifford, ‘Arnau de Vilanova and the Franciscan Spirituals in Sicily’, FS 50 (1990), 3–29Google Scholar; Ziegler, Joseph, Medicine and Religion c.1300: The Case of Arnau de Vilanova (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Burr, David, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, PA, 2001), 53–4Google Scholar.
6 Ibid. 88; Flood, David, ‘Pierre Jean-Olivi et la règle franciscaine’, in Franciscains d'Oc. Les Spirituels (ca 1280–1324), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 10 (Fanjeaux, 1977), 139–54Google Scholar; Yves Congar, ‘Les positions ecclésiologiques de Pierre Jean-Olivi’, ibid. 155–64.
7 Burnham, Louisa A., So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc (Ithaca, NY, 2008), 20–23Google Scholar.
8 Lambert, Malcolm, Franciscan Poverty (London, 1961), 155–6Google Scholar; Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 51, 58, 62–5.
9 i Espelt, Josep Perarnau, ‘Noves dades sobre beguins de Girona’, Annals de l'Institut d'Estudis Gironins 25 (1979), 237–48Google Scholar; idem, ‘Una altra carta de Guiu Terrena sobre el procés inquisitorial contra el franciscá fra Bernat Fuster’, Estudis Franciscans 82 (1981), 383–92.
10 Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 196–206.
11 Eubel, Conrad, ed., Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum Pontificium, 5 (Rome, 1898), 134–5Google Scholar. All three terms were used to refer to errant Franciscans or poverty rigorists who opposed the papal position on Franciscan poverty. Fraticelli is now commonly used to refer to the Franciscans who opposed later papal proclamations on the nature of Christ's poverty: in the past they were often and confusingly conflated with the Spiritual Franciscans. Bizzoche was one of the terms used to describe beguin-like persons in regions of Italy.
12 Burr, Spiritual Franciscans, 91 and n. 66. The term beguin or beguinos as used in Aragon was certainly blurred between tertiaries, female beguines of the kind also found in the Low Countries or referred to elsewhere as pinzocchere or bizzoche, and followers of Olivi: it was used both to identify heretical Olivians at Vilafranca and elsewhere, and in the same period to describe an apparently perfectly legitimate hospital ‘dels beguins’ established in Valencia for male and female penitents (though admittedly the hospital was also connected with the circle of Arnald of Villanova, himself connected with Olivians): Webster, Els Menorets, 247.
13 Webster, Els Menorets, 241–59; Schmitt, Clément, ‘La position du Tiers-ordre dans le conflit des Spirituels et de Fraticelles en Italie’, in d'Alatri, Mariano, ed., I frati penitenti di S Francesco nella società del due e trecento (Rome, 1977), 179–90, at 180–1Google Scholar.
14 Sensi, Mario, Storie di bizzoche tra Umbria e Marche (Rome, 1995)Google Scholar; Simons, Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the medieval Low Countries (1200–1565) (Philadelphia, PA, 2003)Google Scholar; Makowski, Elizabeth, ‘A Pernicious Sort of Woman’: Quasi-Religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington DC, 2005), 44–9Google Scholar. While John XXII clarified his position in Ratio recta (1318), this clarification did not circulate widely.
15 i Espelt, Josep Perarnau, ‘Opere di Fr Petrus Johannis in processi catalani d'inquisizione della prima metà del xiv secolo’, AFH 91 (1998), 505–16Google Scholar, at 506–7; idem, ‘Noves dades’; idem, ‘Una altra carta’.
16 Much of the correspondence is published in Heinrich Finke, Acta Aragonensia, 3 vols (Berlin and Leipzig, 1908–23).
17 Péquignot, Stéphane, Au Nom du roi. Pratique diplomatique et pouvoir durant le règne de Jacques II d'Aragon (1291–1327) (Madrid, 2009)Google Scholar.
18 Webster, Els Menorets, 250–1; Perarnau i Espelt, ‘Una altra carta’.
19 Burnham, So Great a Light, 82 n. 94.
20 The Kingdom of Naples was then under the rule of Robert of Anjou and his wife Sancha, a Mallorcan princess related to the Aragonese royal family. Like Aragon, it has been identified as a destination for religious dissidents and refugees: Musto, Ronald, ‘Franciscan Joachimism at the Court of Naples, 1309–1345: A New Appraisal’, AFH 90 (1997), 419–86Google Scholar, at 422, 483.
21 Perarnau i Espelt, Beguins de Vilafranca, 27–41.
22 The incident is recorded in the episcopal register for the diocese of Barcelona: Barcelona, Arxiu Diocesà, Register Communium VI, fols 122r–v, 140r–v. For details of the heretical preaching of local Franciscan Pere Mercer, see ibid., fol. 122v. On conflict between Catalonian parish clergy and Franciscan houses, including those of Vilafranca, see Webster, Jill, ‘Unlocking Lost Archives: Medieval Franciscan Catalan Communities’, Catholic Historical Review 66 (1980), 537–50Google Scholar, at 540–3.
23 Perarnau i Espelt, Beguins de Vilafranca, 149–52, contains an excellent chronological summary of events, with corresponding document references.
24 Ibid. 28–30, 44, 149. Louis of Toulouse, a relative by marriage of the Aragonese royal family, spent part of his youth as a hostage at the Aragonese court. He subsequently renounced the throne of Naples and became a Franciscan, and his family made him a bishop and later promoted his rapid canonization. Despite his royal connections, his ascetic lifestyle was reminiscent of the goals of the Spiritual Franciscans: Toynbee, Margaret, S. Louis of Toulouse (Manchester, 1929)Google Scholar; Pasztor, Edith, Per la storia di S. Ludovico d'Angio (Rome, 1955)Google Scholar; Paul, Jacques, ‘Saint-Louis d'Anjou, franciscain et évêque de Toulouse (1274–1297)’, in Les Évêques, les clercs et le roi (1250–1300), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 7 (Fanjeaux, 1972), 59–90Google Scholar.
25 Perarnau i Espelt, Beguins de Vilafranca, 49–50.
26 Ibid. 44.
27 Ibid. 128, referring now to Barcelona, Arxiu Diocesà, NC 14, fol. 14v (16 December 1345): ‘Petrus de Pocha sanch, civis Barchinone, manulevavit a reverendo in Christo patre, domino episcopo . . . sororem Franciscam, de tercia regula, que capta detinebatur pretextu cuiusdam violencie, quam, uti dicitur, intulit fratri Francisco Iohannis, de dicta regula’ (‘Peter of Pocha sanch, citizen of Barcelona, frees by surety from the reverend in Christ father, the lord bishop . . . sister Francesca of the Third Order, who was held on the pretext of some sort of violence which, it is said, she inflicted upon Francesc Joan, of the said Order’); ibid. (4 March 1346): ‘Fuit cancellata predicta manleuta de mandato dicti domini episcopi, de voluntate predicti fratris Francisci Iohannis’ (‘The aforementioned surety was ended by the order of the said lord bishop, by the wish of the aforementioned brother Francesc Joan’).
28 Perarnau i Espelt, Beguins de Vilafranca, 93–103, 115–17, 154–5, 160. On Naples, see n. 22 above.
29 Ibid. 135–6.
30 i Espelt, Josep Perarnau, ‘El bisbe de Barcelona fra Bernat Oliver (1345–1346) i els framenors de Vilafranca del Penedès. Un episodi de la “Questió franciscana” a Catalunya’, Estudios Franciscanos 83 (1982), 277–306Google Scholar.
31 Girona, Arxiu Diocesà, Lletres Episcopals, U–10, fols 69r–v (26 June 1346).