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ALFONSO PECHA'S TREATISE ON THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT SCHISM: WHAT AN INSIDER “SAW AND HEARD”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2017
Abstract
The Conscriptio of Alfonso Pecha that treats the origins of the Great Schism of the West has not attracted the attention it deserves. Alfonso Pecha was the confessor and trusted familiar of Cardinal Pedro de Luna at the time of the outbreak of the Schism and was well located to be minutely informed of events surrounding the fateful conclave of April 1378. Hence his detailed narrative, albeit explicitly written to promote the cause of Urban VI, is a very valuable source. Aside from recounting numerous lively conversations and depicting vivid scenes, it contains a report of a hitherto unknown mission in the summer of 1378 to King Charles V of France that probably resulted in emboldening the cardinals to break unanimously with Urban in a new election. Moreover, the Schism narrative constitutes only one of three parts of Alfonso's Conscriptio: the other two seek to prove Urban VI's legitimacy by means of supernatural visions and confirmations from canon law. By the analysis of diverse evidence the conclusion is reached that Alfonso Pecha composed the Conscriptio in Genoa in 1386. The work was published by Franz Bliemetzrieder in 1909 on the basis of a single manuscript located in Basel. The present study with appended edition draws on a second complete manuscript copy located in Prague, particularly important for revealing the identity of the dedicatee, a councilor of Giangaleazzo Visconti. It also draws on a small portion of the text from a manuscript in Uppsala.
Keywords
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Fordham University 2017
References
1 Bliemetzrieder, Franz P., “Un'altra edizione rifatta del trattato di Alfonso Pecha, vescovo resignato di Iaën, sullo scisma (1387–1388), con notizie sulla vita di Pietro Bohier, Benedettino, vescovo di Orvieto,” Rivista storica benedettina 4 (1909): 74–100 Google Scholar, drawing on Basel, University Library, A. IX. 8, fols. 87r–100v.
2 The name Alfonso Pecha does not appear in Rollo-Koster, Joëlle and Izbicki, Thomas M., eds., A Companion to the Great Western Schism (Leiden, 2009)Google Scholar. Works that draw on the Informationes but make no mention of the second treatise are Seidlmayer, Michael, Die Anfänge des grossen abendländischen Schismas (Münster, 1940)Google Scholar; Ullmann, Walter, The Origins of the Great Schism (London, 1948)Google Scholar; Jönsson, Arne, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works (Lund, 1989)Google Scholar; and Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (University Park, PA, 2006)Google Scholar. The work is absent from the bibliography of sources for the Schism compiled by Jamme, Armand, “Renverser le pape: Droits, complots et conceptions politiques aux origines du Grand schisme d'Occident,” in Coups d’État à la fin du Moyen Age? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale, ed. Foronda, François, Genêt, Jean-Philippe, and Soria, José Manuel Nieto (Madrid, 2005), 433–82Google Scholar, at 473–75. The Schism literature is large, and I may have overlooked something, but to the best of my knowledge the only secondary works that refer to Bliemetzrieder's edition are Dykmans, Marc, “La conscience de Clément VII,” in Genèse et débuts du Grand Schisme d'Occident (Paris, 1980), 599–605 Google Scholar, at 605, n. 4 (a passing reference); Sensi, Mario, “Alfonso Pecha e l'eremitismo italiano di fine secolo XIV,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 47 (1993): 51–80 Google Scholar, at 78–80 (for establishing a subsidiary point); Jönsson, Arne, St. Bridget's Revelations to the Popes (Lund, 1997)Google Scholar (for ordering Alfonso's writings); Vones, Ludwig, Urban V. (1362–1370) (Stuttgart, 1998), 7–11 Google Scholar, 13 (for St. Bridget's relations with Urban V); and Rehberg, Andreas, Kirche und Macht im römischen Trecento: Die Colonna und ihre Klientel auf dem kurialen Pfründenmarkt (1278–1378) (Tübingen, 1999), 392–93Google Scholar (for references to Agapito Colonna in a monumental study of the Colonna family in the fourteenth century).
3 The second complete copy is Prague, Národní Knihovna, MS VIII. D. 15, fols. 21v–26v. A passage is in Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek, MS C15, fol. 136v–137r, and verbatim borrowings and paraphrases are in Person, Gobelinus, Cosmidromius, ed. Jansen, Max (Münster, 1900)Google Scholar.
4 Lerner, Robert E., “Alfonso Pecha on Discriminating Truth about the Great Schism,” in Autorität und Wahrheit: Kirchliche Vorstellungen, Normen und Verfahren (13. bis 15. Jahrhundert), ed. Potestà, Gian Luca (Munich, 2012), 127–46Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., 128–30, relying on Jönsson, Alfonso; Seidlmayer, Michael, “Ein Gehilfe der hl. Birgitta von Schweden: Alfons von Jaen,” Historisches Jahrbuch 50 (1930): 1–18 Google Scholar; Gilkær, Hans Torben, The Political Ideas of St. Birgitta and Her Spanish Confessor Alfonso Pecha (Odense, 1993)Google Scholar; and Sensi, “Alfonso Pecha,” but with revisions of detail.
6 See the edition below, lines 547–48.
7 Rychterová, Pavlina, Die Offenbarungen der heiligen Birgitta von Schweden (Cologne, 2004), 46Google Scholar, expresses reservations about a purely personal religious experience and justly points out that Alfonso was continually engaged in “political” activities as soon as he arrived in Italy. But this work omits reference to Sensi, “Alfonso Pecha,” showing how Alfonso also immediately associated himself with Italian eremitical ascetics when he arrived in Italy.
8 It is unclear to me whether this self-designation implies that he had formally joined the Jeronimite order (so Rychterová, Die Offenbarungen, 46), even granted that toward the end of his career he lived in the Jeronimite cloister in Quarto near Genoa. While the term “ordinis sancti Jeronomi” was used for friars of this order in the inquest of Medina del Campo (1380/81), Alfonso never (to my knowledge) refers to himself under this guise, and his epitaph (so Sensi, “Alfonso Pecha,” 80, n. 103) states merely “heremeticam vitam duxit.”
9 Sensi, “Alfonso Pecha,” 73.
10 A notarial instrument attested in March 1379 gives “in domo habitationis domini Alfonsi eremite Rome in regione Transtiberim”: Jönsson, Alfonso, 41–42. For an indication that Alfonso's dwelling in Rome was a clearinghouse for news at the time of the papal election of April 1378, see the statement of his brother Pedro Pecha in BNF, MS lat. 11745, fol. 100r: “Item cum essem una die in hospicio dicti domini Alfonsi episcopi, aliqui eorum qui ibi erant dicebant quod dictus Urbanus fuerat electus in concordia.”
11 Seidlmayer, Anfänge, 295, quoting testimony of November 1379 by the papal penitentiary Brother Gundisalvus, OP: “In ipsis diebus pluries ego ivi ad visitandum dom. cardinalem de Luna, tunc dom. meum, quem inveni plurimum impeditum in consilio de pontifice creando in brevi cum suis fidelibus et maxime cum dom. Alfonso olim ep. Gihenensi.” Alfonso refers to himself as the cardinal's confessor several times in his Informationes and Conscriptio and is referred to as such in Responsiva unitatis fidelium ad processum regis Francie sibi directum, in Valois, Noël, La France et le Grande Schisme d'Occident, 4 vols. (Paris, 1896–1902)Google Scholar, 4:512.
12 The work that engages with Martin of Zalva's “Libri de schismate” most thoroughly is Seidlmayer, Anfänge. See especially 197–228, 289–346.
13 Raynaldus, Oldericus, Annales ecclesiastici, vol. 17 (Cologne, 1693), 49–53 Google Scholar; Jönsson, Alfonso (n. 2 above), 181–203.
14 The title Conscripcio bona sub triplici via de eleccione sanctissimi in Christo patris ac domini domini Urbani pape sexti written by a hand different from the one that copied the text was taken by Bliemetzrieder from the top margin of his manuscript copy. In the Prague manuscript the title is Tractatus de assumpcione domini nostri Urbani pape sexti, written in the body of the text by the main hand. Although “tractatus” is used by Gobelinus Person, who was drawing on a copy close to the autograph, I adhere to Bliemetzrieder's title to avoid confusion.
15 Edition below, line 77: “habeo omnia ista in monasterio nostro sancti Jeronimi prope Ianuam.”
16 Edition below, line 340: “per dominum Nicolaum de Cremona, tunc auditorem domini cardinalis sancti Petri qui modo est Neapolitanus archiepiscopus.”
17 The most detailed remains Jorga, Nicolas, Thomas III Marquis de Saluces: Étude historique et littéraire (Paris, 1893), 15, 23–24 Google Scholar, et passim.
18 Jorga, Thomas III Marquis de Saluces, 51, 58; Camus, Jules, La venue en France de Valentine Visconti (Turin, 1898), 11–12 Google Scholar; Jarry, Eugène, La vie politique de Louis de France, duc d'Orléans (Orléans, 1889), 397, 405Google Scholar.
19 A thorough study of this treatise remains outstanding. For a recent summary, with further bibliography, see Rusconi, Roberto, “Profezia e politica alla corte Ferrarese nella prima metà del XV secolo,” in Profezie illustrate gioachimita alla corte degli Estensi, ed. Potestà, Gian Luca (Modena, 2010), 181–201 Google Scholar, at 187–201.
20 Jorga, Nicolas, Philippe de Mézières 1327–1405 (Paris, 1896; repr., London, 1973)Google Scholar, 427, n. 2 refers to a mission to Milan on the part of de Mézières reported by the fifteenth-century chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet that must be dated to 1385 or 1386 because the chronicler's “monseigneur de Milan” is certainly Giangaleazzo Visconti and because the chronicler places it before discussion of the marriage of his daughter with Louis of Orléans, meaning 1387. For the passage in question, see La chronique d’ Enguerran de Monstrelet, ed. Douët-d'Arco, L. (Paris, 1857)Google Scholar, 1:325.
21 Responsiva unitatis fidelium ad processum regis Francie sibi directum, in Valois, La France et le Grande Schisme (n. 11 above), 4:512: “Nonne, circa principium exorte nequicie dicte pestis, clarus genitor tuus [viz. Charles VI] Karolus III [sic for Karolus V] … illum solertis industrie Philippum de Mageriis, tunc tue adolescencie instructorum … ad Johannem Galea, ducem Mediolanensem, tunc Virtutum comitem, depravandum, de quo confidebat unice, destinavit? Quiquidem tunc comes accersi[vit] ad se venerande memorie Alfonsum, episcopum olim Giennensem … qui confessor fuerat Petri de Luna predicti et Rome secum electionis dicti Urbani et novitatum hujusmodi omni tempore solers procurator intererat; et per ipsum episcopum idem Philippus, per viam electionis, per viam juris, et per viam spiritus confutatus, inanis, et vacuus retrocessit. De his enim plena tua curia esse debet, apparetque inde libellus quidam dicti episcopi tunc confectus.”
22 Edition below, lines 617–18: “Hec autem bene scit dominus Phylippus de Masseris, quia in eodem conventu Celestinorum eodem tempore Parisius fuit commoratus.”
23 Jarry, La vie politique, 393; Valois, La France et le Grande Schisme, 2:137.
24 Person, Cosmidromius (n. 3 above), 78: “Alfonsius … in quodam tractatu suo quem de electione Urbani sexti postea conscripsit.” Person's editor was unable to know the source because he worked before Bliemetzrieder published it. Thus he was forced to assume that Person was drawing on Alfonso's Informationes, and, when he was unable to match quotations, assumed that Person was “elaborating freely” when he was really quoting literally: xlvii and 83, n. 1.
25 Person, Cosmidromius, x.
26 Ibid., 116: “ego in eodem palacio dormiebam.”
27 Here and afterwards numbers in parentheses refer to line numbers in the appended edition.
28 BNF, MS lat. 11745, fol. 100r: “cardinalis de Aragonia die qua intravit conclave audivit missam a dicto domino Alfonso episcopo et recepit sacramenta ab eo.”
29 Ibid: “ipsa nocte qua exiverunt de conclavi statim cum cardinalis venit ivit dominus Alfonsus episcopus ad eum et fuit ab eo certificatus de elecione archiepiscopi Barensis in conclavi.”
30 It is beyond the scope of this presentation to review the voluminous historiography of the Schism.
31 Williman, Daniel, “Schism within the Curia: The Twin Papal Elections of 1378,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59 (2008): 29–47 Google Scholar, at 31, 37, 38, relying on the testimony of the Clementist cardinal Pierre de Cros.
32 Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, Raiding Saint Peter: Empty Sees, Violence, and the Initiation of the Great Western Schism (1378) (Leiden, 2008), 188Google Scholar.
33 Eadem, “Civil Violence and the Initiation of the Schism,” in A Companion (n. 2 above), 11–65, at 36, relying on the Clementist Bartolomeo de Zabrici.
34 Edition below, lines 289–93.
35 Edition below, lines 296–303. This passage and the succeeding one have previously been noticed by Rehberg, Kirche und Macht (n. 2 above), 392–93.
36 Edition below, lines 303–12.
37 For Alfonso, n. 10 above; for Robert and his retinue, Dykmans, “La conscience” (n. 2 above), 599.
38 Edition below, lines 312–16.
39 Jönsson, ed., Alfonso (n. 2 above), 194.
40 Edition below, lines 335–40: I have been unable to locate any further reference to Nicholas de Rocha (the ongoing edition of the Lettres communes of Gregory XI has not advanced to index volumes), but his father Hugh appears as “clericus et consiliarius ac servitor continuus” of King Charles V in a document of 18 January 1369: Urbain V (1362–1370), Lettres communes, 7 (Rome, 1982), 110, #23524. (I owe this reference to Hollis Dvorkin.)
41 On Martin, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church: Biographical Dictionary: [Antipope] Clement VII (1378–1394) Consistory of July 21, 1390 (VIII) Celebrated in Avignon: http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1390.htm (accessed 8 November 2016).
42 Valois, La France et le Grande Schisme (n. 11 above), 1:85–97.
43 Edition below, lines 512–19. One would like to know whether the “et cetera” were Alfonso's words or represents missing text eliminated by a scribe.
44 For this and the document of 1371, Gilles, Henri, “Les auditeurs de Rote au temps de Clément VII et Benoît XIII (1378–1417), notes biographes,” Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire 67 (1955): 319–35Google Scholar, at 324. (Hollis Dvorkin called my attention to this article.)
45 Valois, La France et le Grande Schisme, 1:69.