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Heresy, Doubt and Identity: Late Medieval Friars in the Kingdom of Aragon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
Abstract
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.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 135 - 149
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016
References
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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.
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16 Much of the correspondence is published in Heinrich Finke, Acta Aragonensia, 3 vols (Berlin and Leipzig, 1908–23).
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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).