Taming a Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourtheenth-Century domincan Convents

Taming a Brood of Vipers

The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World (formerly Medieval Iberian Peninsula)

Editors

Larry J. Simon, Western Michigan University Gerard Wiegers, University of Amsterdam Arie Schippers, University of Amsterdam Donna M. Rogers, Dalhousie University Isidro J. Rivera, University of Kansas

VOLUME 42

Taming a Brood of Vipers Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents

By

Michael A. Vargas

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

Cover illustration: An ass adoring the host held by Saint Dominic. Detail from a panel depicting the miracles of Saint Dominic, proceeding from the Church of San Miguel de Tamarite, Huesca, first third of the fourteenth century. MNAC 15825. © MNAC – Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Barcelona. Photographers: Calveras/Mérida/Sagristà Maps: Sean Kroencke This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vargas, Michael A. Taming a brood of vipers : conflict and change in fourteenth-century Dominican convents / by Michael A. Vargas. p. cm. -- (The medieval and early modern Iberian world, ISSN 1569-1934 ; v. 42) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20315-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Dominicans. Provincia de Aragón--History. 2. Aragon (Spain)--Church history. 3. Fourteenth century. I. Title. BX3544.A7V 37 2011 271'.20465509023--dc22 2011001061

ISSN 1569-1934 ISBN 978 90 04 20315 0 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments ................................................................................ List of Abbreviations ............................................................................ Maps .......................................................................................................

vii ix xi

Introduction ..........................................................................................

1

PART ONE

EXIGENCIES Chapter One

Success and Successors ..........................................

37

Chapter Two

The Contentious Birth of a New Province ..........

73

Chapter Three

Growth, Crisis and Recovery ................................

99

Chapter Four

Bad-Boy Friars and Complicit Leaders ............... 125

PART TWO

EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE IN DOMINICAN CONVENTS Chapter Five

Friar-Youths and Troublesome Others ................ 163

Chapter Six

Office and Official ................................................... 207

Chapter Seven

Challenged Vows .................................................... 249

Chapter Eight

In Defense of Corporate Honor............................ 279

Epilogue ................................................................................................. Bibliography .......................................................................................... Manuscripts ...................................................................................... Printed Sources................................................................................. Secondary Works ............................................................................. Index ......................................................................................................

317 327 327 327 329 343

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grants awarded by California State University at San Bernardino, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and Fordham University sustained me during a long period of academic maturation. For travel and research support I thank the Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The New York State/ United University Professions Nuala McGann Drescher Leave Program, and The State University of New York at New Paltz School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For institutional support and personal trust, special thanks to Gerald Benjamin, David Lavallee, and Steven Poskanzer, respectively former Dean, Provost and President at SUNY New Paltz, James Schiffer, Dean of LA&S, and Donald Christian, Interim President. Friends at the Universidad de Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Universidad de Zaragoza, Biblioteca de Montserrat, Universidad Pontificia Comillas, and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya rendered generous assistance. Thanks and praise to Vito T. Gómez García for carrying on the work of his confrere, Adolfo Robles Sierra, and for sharing the fruits of their labors with me. Martin Krieger, a paragon of perspicacity, encouraged my academic confidence at a life-changing moment. Long after our collaborations ended Michael Milenski and Claire Peeps have remained for me exemplars of principled creative energy. Richard Centofanti and his family showed me how to have fun with words. I aspire to Richard Gyug’s saintly patience and wisdom, to Maryanne Kowaleski’s scholarly precision and personal warmth, and to Daniel Lord Smail’s scholarly savvy. A hug to Barbara Costa. These mentors and friends have my heartfelt appreciation. Many other teachers, colleagues, and friends have read and criticized, or heard and responded, or prodded and pushed. I include Christopher Bellitto, Lee Bernstein, James Brodman, Caroline Walker Bynum, Paul Freedman, Katherine French, Michelle Garceau, John O’Malley, James Mixson, Janine Petersen, Lou Roper, Teofilo Ruiz, Robert Somerville, and Hamilton Stapell. To the many others who offered me guidance and assistance over the years but who I am remiss

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in mentioning here, please accept my apologies and count the omission as the first of the errors you will encounter in these pages; for the good herein I owe much credit and thanks, but I alone am to blame for the uneven and imperfect results. Finally, I dedicate this book (feeble compensation for years of loving patience) to my family and intimates, especially Mike and Julia Vargas, David and Lois Mugler, Martin Cook, and Joe Perez. And to the memory of Dwight Schuster. I ask readers who gain from this book to sing lauds for the serene patience of my wife Beth and the forbearance of our children Sebastian and Benito.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AFP AST Diago

EV MOPH History

Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum Analecta Sacra Terraconensia Francisco Diago, Historia de la provincia de Aragon de la Orden de predicadores, desde su origen y principio hasta el año de mil y seiscientos (Barcelona: 1599) Escritos del Vedat Monumenta Ordinis Prædicatorum Historica William Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols. (New York: 1968 and 1973)

The Dominican Province of Aragon, Fourteenth-Century Limits

The Province's Convents

INTRODUCTION This book is about Dominican friars, members of the Order of Preachers, especially those who over the course of a troubled fourteenth century lived and worked in the convents that made up the Order’s territorial unit in northeastern Spain called the Province of Aragon. The enquiry is an untidy one, and for good reason since, in broadest terms, our subject is the near collapse of an important medieval religious order. We will witness the exploits of some mischievous, intractable and belligerent bad-boy friars. This, I expect, will make for some good reading, although my purpose is not merely to titillate. Criminals and miscreants are not the focus. Taming a Brood of Vipers pays attention mostly to the more or less law-abiding rank-and-file friars who, while not abusively errant, sought to have their organization serve them in ways that threatened its survival. We will meet thugs and cheats and encounter women and dice and drink, but of more significance are the friars in the workaday majority. Their fistfights, abuse of election processes, and surreptitious forging of letters of privilege attest to internal processes that caused damage to the Order of Preachers far beyond what a few apostates and flagrant sinners ever could have inflicted. To put it succinctly, if perhaps a bit crudely: ambitious students and their teaching masters, useless youths and their intrusive parents, even elder-statesmen and cranky reformers learned to game the Dominican system. Dominican leaders suffered the consequences of managing disordered communities; they felt the everyday predicament of uncertainty about what action to take. The men charged with guiding their Order through present circumstances and into future exigencies – masters general, provincial priors, diffinitors to annual general and provincial chapter meetings, the priors of convents, and others in official positions – sometimes found moral grounds for insisting upon important reforms and sometimes worked real procedural fixes to their Order’s operational ills. Despite their efforts to improve, correct and envision, however, they could not entirely remove themselves from participation in the processes that weakened their Order’s institutions. These are the men who produced the texts we draw upon here, which we must constantly recall give us a much-filtered view of their sometimes conflicted sometimes frustrated objectives.

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If we aim to gain a true sense of the experience of men living with others in Dominican convents, then we cannot separate the dispositions and actions of individual friars from corporate mission, organizational objectives, and operational processes. Regulative structures and written procedures, typically the touchstones of corporate or institutional histories, will have their place, although what Dominican leaders imagined and put into writing about the purposes and means of governance will be read here to discern the customary, the habitual, and the unconscious ways of getting things done. Taming a Brood of Vipers is very deliberately a corporate history, although my concept of corporation remains a broad and open one, no more rigorous, legalistic, or ahistorical than that offered by Lester Little when he referred to the religious orders he studied as lasting partnerships.1 It is one of the premises of this study that the regulative, cognitive, and normative elements of corporate life undergo constant change, in part because the persons who embody corporate institutions come and go. Even if successive generations imagine the organization as immutable, the persons who enter in as replacements are not exactly like those they succeed and so the organization, newly made by its new inhabitants, is not like its former self.2 The Order of Preachers, born into a time of great religious fervor and experimentation early in the thirteenth century, rapidly became one of Europe’s most potent religious enterprises. Within a hundred years much had changed. This study concentrates on the period from 1301 to 1378. The first date is marked by the emergence of the Province of Aragon from the division of the Province of Spain. The Order’s stellar theologian, Thomas Aquinas, as well as the esteemed Catalan friar and Master General of the Order, Raymond Penyafort, had both been dead for over a quarter of a century. The friars best known to us from the period around 1300 were inquisitors, among them Bernard Gui, who authored the Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis. The signal event of 1378 was the Papal Schism, which discombobulated the Dominican Order and left the entire Western 1

Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1978), 17. 2 W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA, 2001) and William Ocasio, “Organizational Change,” in Stewart R. Clegg and James R. Bailey, eds. International Encyclopedia of Organizational Studies, 4 vols. (Los Angeles: 2008) 3: 1020–1025 review recent trends in the study of organizations that provide some grounding for the approach I have taken in these pages.

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Christian Church disheveled. The exemplary Catalan Dominican Vincent Ferrer was just a young student at the time; he reached the heights of sanctity as a preacher and mystic partly in angry response to the division the schism caused. Historians have often posited the beginnings of a decline in the Order of Preachers around 1300, by which time Jordan of Rivalto was excusing his brothers’ indiscretion with the admission that the friars were, after all, flesh and blood. One hundred years later the Venetian friar Giovanni Dominici, clearly concerned for the souls of his brothers and for the reputation of his Order, remarked: “I fear to say we shall be plunged into hell.”3 Here we have two indicators of bad times that frame the fourteenth century, one is an admission of individual deficiencies and the other seeks corporate stability. Right in the middle of this terrible period, just after the Black Death, Nicolau Rossell, Provincial Prior of the Province of Aragon, described his own men as a “brood of vipers,” rebellious discontents whose reprehensible behavior made order into disorder and replaced honor with dishonor.4 He believed that many of his brothers were incorrigible misfits who deserved a beating and time spent in a convent jail. He could cajole a few, threaten some into compliance, and force others to obey, but many friars remained beyond the reach of his persuasive and coercive talents. Rossell and others worked hard to turn the thoughts and actions of reluctant and recalcitrant friars toward higher objectives and along the way they devised some creative ways to improve administrative command and control. We may consider their efforts partial, momentary, and incomplete, even short-term failures, although it would be incorrect to call them inconsequential.

3 From a 1398 letter to Raymond of Capua published in Flaminio Corner, Ecclesiae venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributione (Venice, 1749), 7: 186; cited in Daniel Bornstein, “Dominican Friar, Lay Saint: The Case of Marcolino of Forlì,” Church History 66 (1997), 252–267 at 260. 4 Adolfo Robles Sierra, “Actas de los Capitulos Provinciales de la Provincia de Aragón de la Orden de Predicadores, Correspondientes a Los Años 1345, 1347, 1350 y 1351,” Escritos del Vedat 23 (1993), 306–307: Item, cum evidenter cernamur in Provincia nostra multiplicantur fratres discolos, deordinatos, scandalosos, pro dolor, et rebelles, qui maternae suae sanctae religionis latera velut viperiam progenies disrumpentes fratrum aliorum sibi multipliciter proximorum crimina, punitiones, correctiones, delationes, divisiones, et Ordinis et Capitulorum sacrata propter quae Ordo noster venit apud alios in contemptum secularibus, et aliis a nostra obedientia alienis revelant crudeliter, impie, et maligne, idcirco praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis….

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Dominican leaders did not fully comprehend their predicament. One reason that attempts at positive ameliorative change so often fell short of the mark is obvious, perhaps so matter-of-fact that they did not see it, just as past researchers also often overlooked it: most of the friars studied here believed that they were (most of the time and under most circumstances) good men with good intentions, sympathetic, generally well-mannered, and faithful. This self-perception held true equally for workaday friars and for their leaders. The majority of them tried hard not to act on greed, envy, or malice. The rub is that the fourteenth-century friars were, despite their best intentions, fallible, as open to self deception as the writer of this book and, might I presume, its readers. The friars in these pages, real flesh and blood men with complicated interests and expectations, remained, as has been said about their species, “particularly predisposed to violate their own predispositions.”5 José Ortega y Gasset recognized an implication of this condition when he remarked “we find ourselves always under compulsion to do something but never, strictly speaking, under compulsion to do something in particular.”6 The imperfect friars in the Dominican Province of Aragon acted in response to the situations, constraints and opportunities they encountered. Most did so with the best intention of improving their own physical, mental and spiritual lives and those of others. But without possessing a full awareness of what their actions might mean to the corporate whole, they changed their organization in ways that made its present less than fully worthy of its idealized past. Taming a Brood of Vipers succeeds if it helps to make understandable the fullness of the problems and potentials confronting Dominican friars as members of a complicated religious community in late medieval Europe. A subject of this investigation is agent-centered change in pursuit of perceived corporate improvements. Writers of similar books usually call this “reform,” although I will work hard to avoid the term here. The friars’ records I have examined almost never speak explicitly of reform. Moreover, removing the word from our vocabulary may help to release the reader from some meta-historical preoccupations (briefly discussed below) that belonged neither to the fourteenthcentury friars nor to most readers in the present day. Another reason to leave talk of reform behind is that attempts by fourteenth-century 5

Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley, CA, 2008), 152. José Ortega y Gasset, ‘History as a System’ and other essays toward a philosophy of history (New York, 1961; first published in 1935), 165–166. 6

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leaders to improve their Order’s situation did not succeed as planned. It seems fitting to recall Friedrich Nietzsche’s reflection on human moral energies, to the effect that those who wish to build a new heaven find the resolve to do so by looking into their own hell.7 We can imagine Dante, active in the time and place we will study here, appreciating the sentiment, which captures the difficulties of the relationship of reformers to the objects of their activities. Those who desire to change a world with which they find fault get drawn into a struggle against the inertial tendencies of their time. Despite their striving, Dominican leaders could not free their Order from the pains of the organizational hell that afflicted it. The joys of heavenly corporate change remained distant. In the Dominican Order of the fourteenth century would-be reformers faced fierce resistance to their desires. Their efforts to discipline their brothers were hampered by institutions that encouraged bad habits, and we will see that the defenses of the status quo typically foiled the reformers’ offensive maneuvers. Moralists could find much to complain about, especially when the brothers against whose actions they inveighed refused to heed their call for ameliorative change. In the following pages we address the internal tensions that thrust the Order of Preachers into its corporate chaos, pursuant to Mary Douglas’s observation that “all social systems are built on contradiction, in some sense at war with themselves.”8 Especially relevant will be the contentious relations between agents of change and those who either passively or actively resisted. The emerging might of a cadre of Dominican administrators often confronted the assorted interests of a variety of subgroups within the Dominican corporate body. The various internal collectives comprising the whole body of friars competed one against another as they consummated their differences of rank or status or other measures of power, merit and desire. Preachers and teaching masters benefited from membership; students asserted their rights; and parents and patrons – eventually called “outsiders” in the records – played their part in aggravating the Order’s internal politics. This book puts its emphasis on the unwritten rules of engagement between these parties to a variety of interests and contests. Underlying the sometimes subtle intra-Dominican identity politics,

7 8

Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (III.8) Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, 1966), 140.

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providing fuel for the fires of discontent and instability, was an awkward point of solidarity: defense of custom and the enhancement of privileges. It should be clear already that I do not intend in these pages to embellish the conventional story that depicts Dominic of Calaruega and others constructing an Order of Preachers in the service of a divinelyordained mission. Rather, this book treats a troubled period in which everyday lives seem very far removed from lofty expectations. This remark opens up a problem: in recent generations historians have attempted to describe a sharp break between the Dominican Order’s golden age before 1300 and the supposed years of decadence that followed, but their efforts impose patterns on the evidence that, while covering over the deficits of the first friars give the later friars too much of a roughing up. This book will offer examples of the daily realities of Dominican conventual life, cases of individual and group action that are very much at odds with explanations of the way it should have been but that make the conflict and apparent indiscipline in the friars’ religious communities more intelligible and more appreciably human. This, as it happens, sharpens the focus not only on daily experience in the fourteenth century but also on the habits of the thirteenth-century friars. Along the way we will see that some of the later friars’ troubles had their origins in the Order’s first decades, and this will help us to re-envision how friars both before and after 1300 partook in the repetition of ill-considered and sometimes costly patterns of behavior. Rather than assuming broad periods of good and ill or of decline and reform, we will want to permit the small day-to-day recurrences and changes in the friars’ lives to open up to us. The Inherited Narrative Before we dig into the dirt of the friars’ fourteenth-century affairs, it will be useful to briefly review the standard account of the corporate trajectory of the medieval Order of Preachers as predecessor historians have shaped it for us. Three concepts remain deeply embedded in Dominican historiography: success, disciplinary decline, and reform. After showing that the story as we have inherited it suffers as a result of these generalizations, each of which has been built on some subtle shading of truth, we will endeavor in the following pages to fill in some of the evidentiary gaps with details drawn from one of the Order’s most

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colorful if largely ignored sources. To begin then, here is the rough outline of the story as it is traditionally told: At the start of the year 1217, Pope Honorius III confirmed Dominic of Calaruega and his followers in an order dedicated to preaching the gospel with humility and in poverty (Dominic already had gained the experience of a decade of persistent preaching against the Cathar dualist heretics active in what is now southern France). By August of the same year Dominic sent his few men in small groups to several of the larger and more important cities in Europe, thus giving his nascent association an international presence. Thereafter the Order of Preachers grew rapidly, becoming within decades of its foundation a religious corporation of enormous consequence, not only in its influence over religious developments but also in social and political spheres. Although never the largest religious order in terms of the number of its professed members, it became in the thirteenth century an exemplar among the new orders that sought a return to the vita apostolica. In 1248 Innocent IV recognized the ubiquity of the Dominican preaching friars and the quality of their work when he dubbed their Order Christendom’s “public workhorse.”9 Over nearly the entire course of its first century the Order continued to expand its influence, becoming more deeply integrated into European society, and increasingly taking the lead in reshaping that society. Friars served the spiritual aspirations of an admiring urban laity, employed a range of legal, theological, ambassadorial and inquisitorial skills to the benefit of popes and princes, and they came to dominate Europe’s universities, all the while earning recognition for their zeal, discipline and austerity that made their collective one of the most rigorous options for would-be religious.10 9 Honorius III confirmed the Order of Preachers in bulls dated December 1216 and January 1217. For a discussion of the bulls issued by Honorius III and Innocent IV’s bull in the context of other papal lauds, see Pierre S. Mandonnet, St. Dominic and His Work (St. Louis, 1944), 71–73, and Marie-Humbert Vicaire, “Dominicans: 13th Century,” in Philippe Levaillain, ed., The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, 3 vols. (New York, 2002),1: 506–507. 10 C. H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (New York, 1994), offers the most recent general appraisal of the Order’s beginnings. For more detailed studies see William Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols. (New York, 1968 and 1973) and Pierre S. Mandonnet, Saint Dominique, l’idée, l’homme et l’oeuvre, augmenté de notes et d’etudes critiques par M. H. Vicaire. 2 vols. (Paris, 1938), partial translation by Mary Benedicta Larkin, St. Dominic and His Work (St. Louis, 1944). Studies of the social milieu in which the

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Despite the successes, and against all of the signals in favor of continued achievement, something went terribly wrong for the Order of Preachers in the fourteenth century. As the friar-historian William Hinnebusch explained it, changes in the individual and corporate disposition of the friars resulted from “world shaking events” – economic instability, famine and plague, the Hundred Years War, and the Papal Schism – events each of terrible proportion that together disfigured all Church institutions. “Late in its first century,” Hinnebusch insisted, “the Order entered a decline-decay crisis that reached a climax in widespread collapse of spirit and religious discipline. The crisis originated in the multiplicity of problems that characterized the times and plagued the Church and all the Orders…. The signs of decline began to appear in the order about 1290. They became notably worse by 1325 and reached their peak after the Black Death, 1348–49.”11 In an age of cataclysms, external factors beyond the control of Dominican leaders caused the Order its internal operational and disciplinary distress. It is also part of the conventional story that the flagging discipline of the late medieval friars found its corrective antidote in an Observant Reform. By 1390 Raymond of Capua and others initiated a plan that would renew traditional zeal and observance as it brought wayward friars back onto the true path of religious life. Raymond encouraged some convents in every province to give greater attention to tradition; these houses joined together under reform-minded vicars and then into congregations, followed then by a reorganization of provinces in a process by which the whole Order found itself washed clean by a redemptive wave of reform. Crisis threatened the Order, bringing it close to the point of extinction, but into the fifteenth century and beyond this regenerative reform movement confirmed once again the providential mission of the preachers: the Dominican Order “preserved by Divine Providence… sprung back to new life.”12 Having regained its friars emerged are very numerous. Among the most important interpretations I would include Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: the Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism (Notre Dame, 1995; first published Berlin, 1935); Barbara Rosenwein and Lester Little, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities,” Past and Present 63 (1974), 4–32; and Lester Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 1978). 11 Hinnebusch, A Short History of the Dominican Order (NY, 1975), 71–72. 12 William Hinnebusch, “How the Dominican Order Faced its Crises,” Review for Religious 32 (1976), 1307–1321, at 1307.

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commitment to needful observance, the Order readied itself for New World missions and for its counter-Reformation defense of Catholic orthodoxy. The story recounted here beginning with a thirteenth-century rise, followed by fourteenth-century decline, and completed by fifteenthcentury reform, operates upon meta-historical assumptions, which is to say that it is a faith-story seeking to attach the Order’s past, present, and future to a divine plan. Belief in the Order’s providential promise has a long history, of course, with origins extending right back to the first stories collected about Dominic and his followers, and it remains a core assumption among insiders that Providence continues to guide the friars in their life and work.13 From this perspective, the Order was since its birth and remains into the present “the most perfect of the monastic organizations produced in the Middle Ages.”14 We may accept as an unassailable truth that the Order’s founder and his followers “changed the Church and the world;” and yet, we know that for eight centuries the Order’s own historians have put considerable effort into shining the most complimentary light on their organization’s corporate past. While distinguishing between unconscious obfuscation and willful deceit is difficult, we should not doubt that Dominican history has come to comprise a set of generalizations propping up a number of pious fictions.15 This book confronts the tendency, one very much in evidence in the work of some friar-historians to the present day, to enumerate only the favorable circumstances; but to remember the high points while forgetting the foibles and follies is a common logical fallacy, one that

13 Vicaire, Dominic and His Times, 187–189, cites early Dominican writers who attributed the Order’s extraordinary success to, as he says, “a very miraculous intervention on the part of God.” Also, Hinnebusch, History I, 81, where the author implies that the remarkable rise of the Order serves as a “sign of divine approval.” For a more recent example see the introductory remarks by Juan José Gallego Salvadores, Prior Provincial of the Province of Aragon, in Vito T. Goméz García, Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, Lorenzo Galmés Más, and Vicente Forcada Comíns, ed. La Provincia Dominicana de Aragón: Siete Siglos de Vida y Misión (Madrid, 1999), 9. 14 One can trace variants of this phrase through Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, 4 vols. (Leipzig 1902), IV: 390, to Mandonnet, “Order of Preachers,” in Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) V: 354–370, at 356, and then to Hinnebusch, History I, 169. 15 On the tendency to generalization apparent in Dominican historiography, see Francisco García-Serrano, Preachers of the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile, 1217–1348 (New Orleans, 1997), 4–5. As Douglas, Purity and Danger, 163 puts it plainly: “Sometimes the claim to superior purity is based on deceit.”

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imposes linear patterns on divergent and even contradictory historical truths. The success-story template smoothes over the knotty reality of evidentiary bulges, obscurities, and sticking points, and in doing so it gives shape to a fiction. After eight hundred years of efforts to sanitize and sanctify the Order’s history, cutting out the excesses, smoothing out the bumps and covering over the scars, and fitting the ill-suited whole to a structure of core sophisms like ‘love of the Rule’ or the ‘most perfect organization,’ it has become very difficult to discern the real operational difficulties that the first friars must have faced when building a new religious order in the thirteenth century. The most recent scholarship points out that in first decades the Dominican Order accumulated a range of “creative tensions.”16 Some of these gave the friars pause as they considered their next moves. Others went unnoticed, accumulating and changing shape and thus becoming harder to recognize and treat. It is important to collect more examples of the first friars’ slow starts and missteps, difficult decisions and mixed outcomes, in part because doing so will soften the shock of the supposed failures of their fourteenth-century successors. The fourteenth-century friars did not invent dissent, disunity, and disobedience. The effort to reconsider earlier imperfections sets us on a path that will show us how much of what the later friars suffered was not merely a result of the bad times in which they lived but resulted partly from weak institutions and bad habits bequeathed to them by their predecessors. Friar-historians have clung to their meta-narrative in part to soothe the sting of some very sharp criticism. The attitude of David Knowles is not atypical of members of the older monastic orders who resented the friars’ successes and faulted them for their excesses. Knowles believed that all of the major religious orders suffered disciplinary declines in the fourteenth century, but he reserved his most severe condemnation for the Dominicans, whose over-ambition and carelessness in his view, as well as their tendency to draw resources away from traditional orders, weakened the fabric of monastic life. The dissolution of monasteries in England in the sixteenth century was, as far as Knowles was concerned, the result of the friar’s fourteenth-century folly. The Dominican Order’s decline was a case of reaping what its own

16 John Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers: A Revolution in Medieval Governance,” in Domenico di Caleruega e la nascita dell’ordine dei frati predicatori (Spoleto, 2005), 261–295.

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friars had sown.17 There is no doubt that the fourteenth-century evidence of the friars’ distemper deeply embarrassed some Dominican writers. As a palliative, they found their own meta-narrative a plausible defense, even if it largely ignored a careful contemplation of the sources that describe the daily lives of the late medieval preaching brothers. The second part of the Dominican master narrative posits a period of decline. Decline, along with its related vocabulary – crisis, decadence, entropy and anomie – has a long-established place as a descriptive device, having gained special prominence from the middle of the nineteenth century.18 Decline theorizing pervades Dominican historiography, but we must also be aware of its deeper resonances. In addition to its centrality in Dominican history, decline was until recently a notion foundational to the general tenor of fourteenth-century studies 17 E.g., David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries (Cambridge, 1976), 306–307. The friars, he said, “dealt a heavy blow to monastic prestige, at first by outbidding the monks in fervour, then by draining many of the reservoirs of talent and virtue that would otherwise have served the older orders, next by giving an entirely new challenge to the monks by their intellectual celebrity, and finally by attracting so many recruits, good, bad and indifferent that the edge of their ideal was blunted, and in course of time, both by their direct opposition to the monks and by the criticisms which they themselves incurred, they became the weakest and most vulnerable corps in the army of religious.” 18 As Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, I:41, observed: “Décadence itself is absolutely necessary and belongs to every age and to every people. What should be fought vigorously is the contagion of the healthy parts of the organism.” Reported in Charles Bernheimer, Decadent Subjects: the Idea of Decadence in Art, Literature, Philosophy and Culture of the Fin de Siècle in Europe (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 9. For an early example of decay as an explanatory feature in the general history of religious organizations, see François Morenas, Dictionaire historique-portatif des orders religieux et militaires, et des congregations regulières & séculières qui ont existé jusqu’à nos jours: contenant leur origine, leur progres, leur décadence & les différentes réformes qu’ils ont éprouvées; avec les marques qui les distinguent les uns des autres (Amsterdam: Chez Marc-Michel Rey, 1769). The academic literature on decadence has grown quite extensive in recent years. For an examination of the roots of modern applications of decadence, see Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees, Defining Modernism: Baudelaire and Nietzsche on Romanticism, Modernism, Decadence, and Wagner (New York: P. Lang, 1999). See also Michael James Dennison, Vampirism: Literary Tropes of Decadence and Entropy (New York: P. Lang, 2001), and Liz Constable, Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). The use of notions of decadence in Catholic circles is the subject of Ellis Hanson, Decadence and Catholicism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Entropy as a scientific and historical principle is treated in Patrick Brantlinger, ed., Energy and Entropy: Science and culture in Victorian Britain (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). On the relationship of decadence and entropy to anomie, and their mutual historical development, see Marco Orrù, Anomie: history and meanings (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987).

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and to the histories of medieval Spain.19 One cannot overlook the many tragedies and very real catastrophes of the period, although scholars at present give commensurate attention to the opportunities and potentialities of a period of significant transitions, following Heiko Oberman’s observation that “the historian must respect [the] plurality of phenomena and trends and withstand the temptation to present a coherent pattern.”20 Bad Times and Abnormal Places Until recently it was a matter of routine for historians to present the fourteenth century as a difficult interim between thirteenth-century dynamism and the later splendor of the Renaissance. To recall this middle period of hardship and decline we typically begin by pointing to the shrinkage of land area under cultivation. This left rural families to face the threat of starvation and drew the populations of cities and towns into a deepening downward spiral of economic contraction, food scarcity, price inflation and poverty. Catalan chroniclers memorialized 1333 as the “mal any primer,” the first bad year, after northeastern Iberia suffered a severe grain shortage and famine. Supply-related localized famines caused sharp increases in the numbers of dead in 1323, 1333, 1347 (Valencia’s “any de la gran fam”), and 1375.21 International dynastic and political forces like those that gave rise to the Hundred Years War led to a conflict between the kings of Castile and Aragon called the War of the Two Peters (1356–1375), much of which was fought in and around towns on the Aragonese frontier, including

19 Of course, the language of decline is more pervasive. From Hesiod to Thucydides to St. Augustine and Orosius, Rousseau, Gibbon, Nietzsche and Burkhardt, Spengler and Huizinga, some of the most significant historical speculations have been posited in terms of decline. For an overview see Randolph Starn, “Meaning-Levels in the Theme of Historical Decline,” History and Theory 14 (1975), 1–31. 20 Heiko Oberman, “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” Speculum 53 (1978), 80–93, citation at 93. 21 Tomás López Pizcueta, “El ‘mal any primer’: alimentación de los pobres asistidos en la Pía Almoina de Barcelona: 1333–1334,” in Actes del I Colloqui d’Història de l’Alimentació a la Corona d’Aragó: Edat Mitjana (Lerida, 1995), 613–623. Agustín Rubio, Peste negra, crisis y comportamientos socials en la España del siglo XIV: La Ciudad de Valencia, 1348–1401 (Granada, 1979), 19–22. Jordi Gunzberg Moll, “Las crisis de mortalidad en la Barcelona de siglo XIV,” Revista de Demografía Histórica 7 (1989), 9–36.

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Zaragoza and Calatayud, where convents belonging to the Dominican Province of Aragon sustained damage.22 Political developments, local and international, also weakened the foundations of the Church. Worsening relations between the popes and the Empire, and the fact that powerful families within Rome had for long made it difficult for popes to reside in the city, resulted in Clement V moving his residence and much of the papal curia to Avignon in 1309; thus began the Babylonian exile, so-called by Petrarch to condemn the domination of the popes and their administrative apparatus by Frenchmen and French politics. Despite bureaucratic improvements in papal government, and partly because of them, the political deficiencies of the papacy grew as the divisions within Christendom worsened. These discordant politics culminated in the Papal Schism, opened in 1378 with two and later three popes dividing European religious institutions, including the Dominican Order, into rival “obediences.” The most dramatic harbinger of change – the Black Death – arrived at mid-century to become a historical colossus, an event of such monstrous proportions that it remains impossible to comprehend its allencompassing effects. In the short space of time between 1348 and 1350 upwards of a third to three-fifths of the residents of the cities and towns inhabited by the friars went to their deaths, most without receiving the burial rites that they so feared to forego. More than half of the friars in the region’s Dominican convents perished. In Barcelona and elsewhere the plague returned in 1362, 1371 and thereafter, deepening its grip on the historical imagination, although it did not, as earlier researchers presumed, drive the survivors into disconsolate lethargy. Some researchers have called the historical development of Iberia “abnormal,” thus applying the decline thesis to the whole of the peninsula over the entire medieval period and beyond.23 On the one hand, the region was drawn into the same currents that destabilized political and economic affairs across Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. On the peninsula as elsewhere we encounter local 22 L.J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay, eds., The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus (Leiden, 2005); and on attacks upon Aragonese towns, Donald J. Kagay, “The Defense of the Crown of Aragon during the War of the Two Pedros (1356–1366),” The Journal of Military History 71 (2007), 11–31. 23 For a general description and assessment of Spain’s supposed abnormality, see Julian Marias, Understanding Spain (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990).

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and regional famines, outbreaks of plague, dynastic disputes, contentious rivalries between political estates, the effects of papal dysfunction, and the rest. On the other hand, the trajectories of Spain and Portugal differ markedly from the evolution of other European states. The most distinct cultural legacy is, of course, that of Al-Andalus, especially the particularities of a society defined first by the realities of Islamic conquest and rule, then by the question of convivencia, then by disorder in the wake of the Caliphate’s decline, which opened the way to a land grab that slowly congealed into a Reconquista. Out of this densely-layered history emerged a Catholic Spain that increasingly turned toward the persecution of Jews and Muslims and then to their expulsion. Dominicans, according to this reading of abnormality, became especially vigorous agents of Spain’s special obsessions. Their supposed tyrannical participation in the criminalization of aberrant religious belief becoming legendary in the Black Legend reports of an omnipotent Spanish Inquisition. The myth of “The Inquisition” has nothing to do with the quotidian realities of the fourteenth-century friars; nonetheless, we point to it here because, being as tenacious as a belief in ghosts, it has colored almost all histories of Spain. We should see it for what it is, an angry fantasy from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries generated, embellished, and propagated by jealous rivals to Spain’s Golden Age, and then dismiss it for the present purposes of our medieval explorations.24 In recent decades the descriptive utility of crisis and decline as concepts broadly applicable to fourteenth-century Spanish history has diminished.25 Bernard Reilly rightly indicates that the narrative of a “time out of joint” is “more satisfying emotionally than intellectually” since, even in the face of ongoing political and economic instability, a number of factors point to persistent economic and social dynamism 24

Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York, 1988). One reading of the discourse in recent decades takes the following trajectory: J. H. Elliott, “The Decline of Spain,” Past and Present 20 (1961), 53–73, pass through the same author’s, The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1580–1640 (Cambridge, 1963); Henry Kamen, “The Decline of Spain: A Historical Myth?” Past & Present, 81 (1978), 24–50; and Elliott, “Yet Another Crisis?” in Peter Clark, The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985), 301–312, in which the author implicitly criticizes much of the earlier direction of his own thought. For an important reading of the convivencia debate that emerged as an outgrowth of Spain’s crisis of confidence in the early twentieth century, see Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, “Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality,” History and Theory 24 (1985), 23–43. 25

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in northeastern Iberia in the late Middle Ages.26 The Crown of Aragon became a formidable Mediterranean power in the period, demonstrating not just survival but a capacity for prosperity. In the reigns of Peter III and his immediate successors, a Catalan mercantile empire extended its reach from Valencia and North Africa to the Greek coastal cities.27 Barcelona became a significant center for the production and patronage of international gothic painting and sculpture, and became home to a building boom sustained by a continued competitive advantage in international mercantile exchange. Several impressive late gothic structures of great and lasting architectural significance, among them the Drassanes shipyards, the Franciscan Church of Maria del Pi, and the Llotja de Mar, continue to attest to the city’s commercial wealth and political strength in the fourteenth-century as well as its religious fecundity. Patrons of art and architecture in Valencia, the medieval Crown of Aragon’s second-ranking port city 200 miles to the southwest of the comital center of Barcelona, also remained sufficiently prosperous to engage in a cultural and artistic expansion in the same years. The city of Valencia possessed a late gothic Llotja de l’Oli in the fourteenth century, upon which was added in the next century a larger edifice for the exchange of sea-borne goods that was a rival to its Barcelona counterpart.28 The overarching view of fourteenth-century cataclysm and decadence has lost much of its appeal among scholars of religion.29 There is growing sense that previous treatments of medieval monasticism tell a story that is, as Barbara Rosenwein put it, “extraordinarily tidy.”30 The narrative maintains its attractions for some Dominican historians, who continue to blame the Order’s difficulties on desperate times no doubt 26

Bernard Reilly, The Medieval Spains (Cambridge, 1993), 160. J. Lee Shneidman, The Rise of the Aragonese-Catalan Empire, 1200–1350 (New York, 1970). Kenneth Meyer Setton, Catalan Domination of Athens, 1311–1388 (London, 1975). Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, Vol. 1: Precarious Balance (Oxford, 1976). 28 Albert Estrada Ruis, La Drassana Reial de Barcelona a L’Edat Mitjana (Barcelona, 2004). Guillem Morro I Veny, La Marina Catalana de Mitjan Segle XIV (Barcelona, 2005). Santi Torras i Tilló, Mare Aureum. Artistes i Artesans de la Llotja de Mar de Barcelona a l’Epoca del Renaixement (Barcelona, 2001). 29 Howard Kaminsky, “From Lateness to Waning to Crisis: The Burden of the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Early Modern History 4 (2000): 85–125. John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986), 519–552; 539. 30 Barbara Rosenwein, “Perennial Prayer at Agaune,” in Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, ed. Sharon Farmer and Barbara Rosewein (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 37. 27

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because the alternatives complicate their claims to a providential plan.31 Nonetheless, in recent years even friar-historians have avoided talking too vigorously of crisis and decline, partly as a result of secular scholars nudging researchers within the Order to seek greater specificity.32 We cannot blame all of the period’s disabilities on bad times. Many of the difficulties of the period were structural, and some of these structural deficits had precedents in the “jurisdictional peculiarities, long-term disabilities, and short-term disadvantages” which Francis Oakley pointed out had become troublesome to the universal Church before 1300, that is, before the punctuated shocks of plague, war, and Schism.33 Reform as an Analytical Problem Reform – the third part of the rise, decline, reform traditional model of change in the medieval Dominican Order – is, like decay, decline, and decadence, a troublesome and troubled concept. Change in the late medieval Church has been the focus of much productive recent work, some of which points to deficits in the way the reform part of the standard account of the friars gets constructed. Because reform in 31 E.g., Benedict Ashley, The Dominicans (Collegeville, MN, 1990), 57–59. Vito T. Gómez García, “La Provincia en el Primer Siglo de su Historia,” in La Provincia Dominicana de Aragón: Siete Siglos de Vida y Misión, ed., Vito T. Goméz García, Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, Lorenzo Galmés Más, and Vicente Forcada Comíns (Madrid, 1999), 35–68, offers a brief overview of the Dominican Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century, identifying the Black Death as source of change without directly assessing its impact on the province’s friars. 32 E.g., Henri-Charles Chéry, “Les Dominicains,” in Les Ordres Religieux II: Les Ordres Actifs, ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Flammarion: 1980), 375–529: “Le succès même qu’avait recontré l’ordre des prêcheurs contenait en germe la cause des décadences qu’il allait connaître. Au XIIIe siècle tout n’était pas parfait, mais les défaillances sont pour la plupart de temps individuelles, locales ou temporaires. On ne peut dire que ce soit l’Ordre en général, qui en soit affecté dans son élan, dans son dévelopment. Les premières années du XIVe siècle marquent certainement le sommet de la courbe. Après on commence à descendre.” The lack of serious study of the operational trajectory of the Order of Preachers in the difficult fourteenth century has been noted for Spain by Francisco García-Serrano, Preachers of the City: Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile (1217–1348), esp. pp. 4–8, and Rita Rios de la Llave, “Urban Communities and Dominican Communities in Medieval Castile-León: a Historiographical Outline,” in Religion, Ritual and Mythology: Aspects of Identity Formation in Europe, Joaquim Carvalho, ed. (Pisa: University of Pisa Press, 2006), 45–60, at 54. 33 Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 29.

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the fifteenth-century takes its place in framing the meta-narrative that posits decline in the fourteenth century, it is important to briefly illustrate two points about it here. The first is that reform, as it is used by historians to describe change, is a weak conceptual device, often leading to superficial explorations of the nature, means, and ends of change in particular settings. Second, the historical reality of change is more complex than talk of reform allows, being at once more continuous than the sharp breaks of rise, decline, reform imply and, in the same instance, more immediately fixed to the contingencies of time and place. Just before the Second Vatican Council, Gerhard Ladner published an account of the rhetoric of reform as the early Church fathers employed it. The Idea of Reform, which has dominated reform studies for fifty years, expressed the view that reform, at once an expression of the role of the spirit in Christian life and an expression of the human aspiration for spiritual perfection, operates at the Church’s selfperpetuating core, constantly restoring it to renewed awareness of its rootedness in the past while reinvigorating it for a spirited future. Ladner found evidence supporting the belief in a principle of Christian change for the better, one promulgated by writers across the whole of the Christian era, which is to say no less than that talk of reform is essential to the logic and language of the Catholic Church.34 But reform as a concept constructed to make sense of faith increasingly troubles not only faithless secularists but also believers who want substance with their doctrine. After a half-century of exploration of their uses, reform and its cognates (renewal, regeneration, etc.) remain vague and flexible words, empty vessels ready to be filled with any conceivable notion of positive action taken against wrongs in the Church. Even among those who use Ladner’s study as a touchstone, it has become apparent that the categories of a reform typology have multiplied with little substantiation of their analytic utility.35 Many presentations

34 Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform: its impact on Christian thought and action in the age of the Fathers (Cambridge, 1959). 35 Reform, as recent studies have described it, can be personal, institutional, moral, procedural, mystical, programmatic, radical, pragmatic, general, special, of head, of members, top-down, bottom up, national, conciliar, pro-papal, anti-papal, clerical, anti-clerical, magisterial, lay, liturgical, structural, cultural, centralized, local, strategic, organic, focused or diffused, back to the better past, toward the future, true and false. Christopher Bellitto, Renewing Christianity: a history of church reform from day one to Vatican II (New York, 2001), 6–14, reviews some of the vocabulary of reform.

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of reform in religious orders exhibit a problematic circularity and cyclicality.36 Recent research lays bare a number of practical analytical problems that weaken reform’s conceptual integrity. One such problem is periodization. There is now no period in church history that has not been treated as an age of reform, a historiographic reality that robs reform of specific meanings in particular settings.37 The troublesome multiplicity of overlapping chronologies is especially apparent at the breakdown of Catholic primacy in the early modern era.38 John O’Malley has argued that the Second Vatican Council confirmed the “revolutionary” implications of modern historical consciousness, including a recognition that historians must treat the past as so “radically contingent and particular” that it becomes “desacralized.” The study of history is thus separated from consideration of any overarching providential plan while intensifying its focus upon the highly specific and unrepeatable circumstances of its subjects.39 To follow O’Malley’s analysis is to

Louis Hamilton in Christopher Bellitto and Louis Hamilton, eds., Reforming the Church Before Modernity: Patterns, Problems, and Approaches (Burlington, VT, 2005), xv, admits that reform and its analogues are “all words and concepts we scholars commonly use, even if we lack common, readily articulated definitions of what they mean.” 36 E.g., Bruce Taylor, Structures of Reform: The Mercedarian Order in the Spanish Golden Age (Leiden, 2000), 413. 37 A few illustrative examples: On reform through the eleventh century, Ladner The Idea of Reform and “Gregory the Great and Gregory VII: A Comparison of Their Concepts of Renewal,” Viator 4 (1973), 1–26. For the twelfth century, Robert Louis Benson, Giles Constable, Carol Dana Lanham and Charles Homer Haskins, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1982), and Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996). From the thirteenth century into the early modern era: Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250– 1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, CT., 1981); Rudolph Heinze, Reform and Conflict: From the Medieval World to the Wars of Religion, AD 1350–1648 (New York, 2005). 38 E.g., Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: the Shape of late Medieval Thought (New York, 1966). Jaroslav Pelican, Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther’s Reformation (New York, 1964). Guy Bedouelle, Le Réforme du Catholicisme, 1480–1620 (translated and annotated by James K. Farge, The Reform of Catholicism, 1480–1620, Toronto, 2008); John C. Olin, Catholic Reform: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495–1563 (New York, 1990); R. Po-chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998); Eric Nelson, The Jesuits and the Monarchy: Catholic Reform and Political Authority in France, 1590–1615 (Aldershot, 2005). John O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA, 2000) offers a critical appraisal. 39 John O’Malley, “Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento,” Theological Studies 32 (1971), 573–601.

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condemn Ladner’s talk of “metahistorical preoccupations” for its obscurantism. There is little doubt that by the middle of the fifteenth-century Dominican friars could find a great number of reasons to seek change. Recognition of the need for change took shape in a broad movement aimed at increasing the rigor of life in religious communities. From the perspective of this evolving consensus in favor of something different one might speak of an Observant Reform, although it remains unclear how the strands of perceived error and reformist counter-action came together. We admit the early struggle toward rigorous observance among some Franciscans because the fracturing of Francis’s Order of Minor Brothers left a very clear mark.40 Discerning those elements that led to a desire for change in the other orders is more difficult. By the mid-fifteenth century, advocates of change came to broad agreement that the control and use of property by individual monks and friars had become a serious problem in all the orders. James Mixson’s study of property in religious institutes including the Dominicans shows two things with remarkable depth: first, some members of the various orders shared the view that improving religious life was a moral imperative, but second, and no less true, the logic and action of reformers with respect to property holding was often tepid. Across the orders there came to be a broad consensus in support of property restrictions, but each order took its own course, and the willingness to change and the rapidity with which change came about depended upon regional and local factors: “Observant calls to reformed community remained, for years after they were first articulated, a matter of conflict, debate and confusion.”41 I will argue in these pages that explicit attempts to reorganize the Dominican Order from the inside began in earnest in the middle of the fourteenth century. These efforts were hotly contested from within to such an extent that even before the period of the Papal Schism Dominican unity had collapsed. The Schism then divided the Dominican Order into two camps, each following a pope who found little reason to reconcile with his rival. During the ensuing leadership crisis, Dominican leaders moved slowly in tackling the Order’s 40

David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (Philadelphia, PA, 2001). 41 James D. Mixson, Poverty’s Proprietors: Ownership and Mortal Sin at the origins of the Observant Movement (Leiden, 2009), 18.

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internal challenges since competing popes and rival conciliar agendas appeared to them to be the more pressing threats to the stability of the entire church.42 Even under better conditions, multivariate concerns divided those who sought change. Michael Bailey has shown that Dominican reformers in German convents suffered generational differences.43 Michael Tavuzzi’s examination of the activities of Renaissance inquisitors has shown that rival interpretations of early Dominican practices, internal divisions among reformers, and the persistence of pushback by the unreformed impeded reform efforts well into the sixteenth century.44 According to Guillermo Nieva Campo, much of the enthusiasm for Dominican reform in Castile, one of the regions where it is said to have been most complete, came from outside the Order and had as much to do with the social and political obligations of the present than with restoring the order to an imagined better past. In Castile, as elsewhere, reform also brought a great deal of violence by reformers against the unreformed, even when the reformed friars themselves were reformed more in law or envisioned ideal than in practice.45 Daniel Ulloa, Jorge Traslosheros and others have shown these conflicts continuing among Dominican friars in the New World.46 Discrepancies appear in the timing of reform and its rationale on the Iberian Peninsula. Most writers continue to assert that abuses of

42

On the symbiotic relationship between Dominican support for the papacy and papal defense of Dominican privileges, and how the relationship worked to limit the order’s internal reform, Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Council of Ferrara-Florence and Dominican Papalilsm,” in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/39– 1989, ed. Guiseppe Alberigo (Leuven, 1991), pp. 429–443. In his conciliar sermons, for example, Leonardo Dati displayed a willingness to admit a need for moral improvement of individual friars but showed no interest in giving the councils occasion for structural reform. Thomas M. Izbicki, “Reform and obedience in four conciliar sermons by Leonardo Dati, O.P.,” in T.M. Izbicki and C.M. Bellitto, eds., Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, (Laeiden, 2000), pp. 174–192. 43 Michael D. Bailey, “Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages,” Church History 72 (2003), 457–483. 44 Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527, (Leiden, 2007). 45 Guillermo Nieva Ocampo, “Formas de integración socio-funcional de los dominicos castellanos de la observancia: los frailes de San Esteban de Salamanca en la primera mitad del siglo XVI,” Temas Medieval 14 (Buenos Aires, 2006), 157–193. 46 Daniel Ulloa, Los Predicadores Divididos: Los Dominicos en Nueva España, siglo XVI (Mexico, D.F., 1977), esp. 85–141. Also Jorge E. Traslosheros, Iglesia, Justicia y Sociedad en la Nueva España: La Audiencia del Arzobispado de México, 1528–1668 (Mexico, D.F., 2004), 13–15.

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the religious life had their roots in the disorders of the fourteenthcentury, although some argue that excesses brought by relative prosperity of the early sixteenth-century created the impetus for the most demonstrable changes.47 It has been shown that concurrent with the rising prominence of the Mercedarian Order’s convent in Barcelona came a battle between its lay and clerical wings. The difficulties of its organizational survival put the energies of reform in motion early in the fourteenth century, while also keeping reform efforts shifting and unstable until late in the fifteenth century. By the 1550s, reform “gradually fell into chaos in Catalonia” when the house at Barcelona “came under the influence of a desperate and ruthless core of friars drawn in from across the Order.”48 We will see in what follows that regional interests, especially the prominence of Barcelona and a deference to the “nation” of Catalonia, produced similar tendencies in the Dominican Province of Aragon. Histories of the Dominican Order have traditionally placed reform at the end of a meta-narrative cycle that creates and recreates a successful Dominican enterprise. The typical narrative describes an orderly Dominican Observant Reform that made steady progress toward increased discipline and rigor. The reality of reform now looks very different, with new research making the inherited description look like an awkward attempt to impose unity and order on a time when it was in short supply. If a clear plan and directionality to reform emerged, it did so very slowly and incompletely, following upon a number of false starts, considerable trial and error, disagreements about means and ends, and no little dissent, rebellion and violence. Scholarly consensus confirms that the desire for change ran deep in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it also suggests that agents of change too often disagreed about what direction change should take. And if reformers too often encountered resistance to their plans, one reason is that their own dispositions to change often included a good deal of hostility toward their brothers. We will see all of these elements of organizational change as they apply to the Dominican Order’s Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century. 47 Maria Cruz García Torralbo, “La razones de un obispo: Dominicos versus Trinitarios,” Boletín del Instituto de Estudios Geronenses 160 (1996), 37–49; 39. 48 Bruce Taylor, Structures of Reform: The Mercedarian Order in the Spanish Golden Age (Leiden, 2000), esp. pp. 31–52, cited at p. 298. A close reading of the various histories of reform of the various orders in the Iberian peninsula shows major discrepancies in the timing and reasons for reform.

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Acknowledging the imperfections of the rise, decline, and reform model unlocks alternative means and methods of studying change. First, however, having admitted a reluctance to draw upon the overly broad notions of reform, we must recall that medieval Dominican leaders held their own views about how people and organizations change. In the first instance, they employed a language of change and identified strategies to effect the change they sought. We will encounter a number of individuals right in the depths of the Order’s darkest days who sought to make improvements in the conduct of their brothers and in the effectiveness of their corporate operations. We do right by them in taking account of their own understanding of change, but this only sometimes shows an appreciation for the agency of God and the saints or looks back to the restoration of old models. In the fourteenth century the Order’s leaders used words like reform and renewal only in very limited circumstances bound to specific contexts; in fact, the word reform and related terms do not appear at all in the extant annual chapter acts of the Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century. The absence of the expected vocabulary of change in the sources upon which we will draw does not imply an absence of efforts to make improvements. Indeed, it is part of the plan of this book to identify the novel strategies and mechanisms by which men like Bernat Sescala and Nicolau Rossell, provincial priors in the years on either side of 1350, sought to redirect the thoughts and actions of the men in their charge. Personal Endeavor and Corporate Change Recent work in the study of organizations in a range of disciplines has been especially useful in historicizing corporate change. Some of this research is readily applicable to the study of long-lived organizations like the Church and religious orders. Broad consensus has emerged, for instance, on the sound reasons why we should give greater attention to an organization’s informal dynamics than to written rules and procedures. Interpersonal processes are often even greater catalysts for change than major external threats.49 The trajectories of organizations over long terms also follow measureable patterns. Empirical studies of 49 This is the basis of much contemporary research. See for instance M. J. Hatch, Organizational Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (Oxford, 1997), 200.

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administrative heritage, for example, have shown how a corporation’s earliest managerial practices can limit how later leaders respond to changes in their environment.50 Recent studies of the Dominican Order in its milieu have begun to adopt the view that the friars’ foundational ideals and processes contributed to generational disabilities.51 The reform paradigm generally overlooks the possibility that the Order began at an imperfect starting point, assuming instead that its initial state closely approximated an ideal from which individuals and organizations fell away over time. It is unrealistic to expect the harmony of the early Dominicans, if it ever existed, to be either perfect or perfectly durable. Initial states are imperfect; with survival and longevity comes higher degrees of complexity.52 Studies in human cognition and in the sociology and anthropology of organizations also have much to contribute that will enliven our history of the late medieval Dominicans. These studies make abundantly clear the uncomfortable fullness of collective experience in living and working environments.53 Aggression, injustice, and retaliation make up a “dark side” of collective work and action.54 Traditional studies of change in monastic and mendicant orders mostly ignore these realities 50 Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal, Managing Across Borders (Boston, 1989) is the foundational study of the way corporations are limited by their inheritance of administrative principles and practices. The authors intended to explain the hesitancy of corporations to move to multinational status, but the applicability of their research has been broadly felt. 51 See esp. Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers” and Henri-Charles Chéry, “Les Dominicains.” 52 J. H. Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Reading, MA, 1995). Indeed, it has been demonstrated that peak performance in social endeavors is limited by human physiology and brain mechanics. Steven Strogatz, Synchronicity: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (New York: Hyperion, 2003) offers several examples. 53 Ulchol Kim, et al., eds., Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method, and Applications (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1994). Michael T. Hannan and Glenn R. Carroll, Dynamics of Organizational Populations: Density, Legitimation, and Competition (Oxford, 1992). Joel Baum and J. V. Singh, “Organizational Niches and the Dynamics of Organizational Mortality,” American Journal of Sociology 100 (1994), 346–380. Alessandro Lomi and Erik Reimer Larsen, “Failure as a Structural Concept: A Computational Perspective on Age Dependence in Organizational Mortality Rates,” in Dynamics of Organizations: Computational Modeling and Organizational Theories, ed. Alessandro Lomi and Erik Reimer Larsen, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 269–306. Also see Hayagreeva Rao, Calvin Morrill, and Mayer Zald, “Power Plays: How Social Movements and Collective Action Create New Organizational Forms,” Research in Organizational Behavior 22 (2000), 239–282. 54 Ricky Griffin and Anne O’Leary-Kelly, eds., The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior (San Francisco, 2004). Thomas Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (New York, 1982).

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of collective encounter, assuming instead that reform is an either/or proposition in which those who are right, the reformers, and those who are wrong, the reformed, make no room for an ambiguous, conflicted, or contradictory middle ground. We will see here that prelates could be as brutal as the rank-and-file friars who slugged it out in the convent hallways. Personal and corporate honor have their place in organizational history. Public relations and propaganda in the shaping of corporate identity play a crucial role as they spin events and shape opinion, sometimes deceptively, in ways that help corporations to take advantage of opportunities and overcome obstacles to growth.55 The medieval Dominicans were not immune to these processes. A commonality among all of these signals from organizational researchers is a recognition that internal stresses typically bring more lasting devastation to an organization than external change factors. Decline and reform are, from this vantage, incomplete explanations of the fuller problem of corporate survival. The Dominican Order’s appearance at the opening of the thirteenth century coincides with important developments in state and church administration, including depersonalized offices, improved recordkeeping, a rapid evolution and application of canon law and continental common law, the expansion of literacy, growth in the number and academic offerings of cathedral schools and universities, to mention only a few of the most impressive developments.56 Many scholars, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, struggled to define the Dominican Order in terms applicable to government and statecraft. Some saw democratic elements in the Order as precursors to modern democracies while others pointed to contrary evidence of hierarchical and centralized command structures.57 Whether the Order 55 David Fleming, “Narrative Leadership: Using the Power of Stories,” Strategy & Leadership 29 (2001), 34–36, and Stephen Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (San Francisco, 2007), give instructions for propagating myths of corporate strength and success. For an antidote, Robert Cringley, “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date (London, 1992). 56 Some of these advances are treated in Susan Reynolds, “The Emergence of Professional Law in the Long Twelfth Century,” Law and History Review 21 (2003), 347–66. Also see the commentaries and response in the same issue by Piotr Górecki, Charles M. Radding, and Paul Brand. Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, 1970) is one of several important earlier appraisals of the trend. 57 An example of the former is Ernest Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation: A Study of the Growth of Representation in the Church During the Thirteenth Century

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was autocephalous or operated as a bureaucratic arm of a papal monarchy continues to be an issue of concern for some researchers, although, the debate persists because neither the social function nor the organizational apparatus of the Dominican Order is entirely congruent with evolving state or church systems as they are traditionally construed. In fourteenth-century Europe the pace of legal, bureaucratic, and administrative expansion sped up, as indicated among other measures by the multiplication of juridical and deliberative occasions that dramatically increased the output of records of decision. The recordkeeping revolution gave increased attention to preserving the procedures by which parties reached agreement.58 Dominican leaders took their part in this trajectory. Some administrative developments within the medieval Dominican Order were clearly analogous to administration of the emerging state in a number of ways, some mirrored developments in the church or even aimed explicitly to follow papal directives, but this should not prevent us from understanding Dominican administration on its own terms. As Bernard Gueneé has suggested in reference to the chronicler, administrator, and inquisitor Bernard Gui, the Domincian Order’s prelates operated between church and state, learning from both, participating in the affairs of both, engaging in the mutual struggles and difficulties entailed in the increasingly divergent paths of state and church while attending in the same moment to their own very particular institutional needs.59 Friar-leaders of the Province of Aragon did apply the verb administrare to their own work, applying a meaning not dissimilar to present usage.60 One of the things suggested by such usage is that agents of change in the fourteenth century became discontented with the

(Oxford, 1913) and, of the latter, Georgina Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216–1360 (Manchester, Eng, 1925), esp. 177. 58 Thomas N. Bisson, “Celebration and Persuasion: Reflections on the Cultural Evolution of Medieval Consultation,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 7 (1982), 181–204 offers a discussion of the trend. 59 Bernard Guenée, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1991; first published as Entre l’Eglise et l’Etat, 1987), 11. 60 E.g., Adolfo Robles Sierra, “Actas de los Capítulos Provinciales de la Provincia de Aragón de la Orden de Predicadores, Correspondientes a los Años 1345, 1347, 1350 y 1351,” Escritos del Vedat 23 (1993): 257–330; 297, and Vito T. Gómez García, “Actas de los Capítulos Provinciales de la Provincia Dominicana de Aragón, Pertenecientes a los Años 1371, 1372 y 1373,” Escritos del Vedat 31 (2001): 199–242; 206.

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traditional means of correcting error and making effective the call to religious perfection. It will become clear in the chapters that follow that by the middle of the fourteenth century provincial administrators tried to shift the accepted ways of understanding administrative roles and functions away from a conception of prelates and seniors as paternal figures giving advice and offering counsel toward a conception of officers and status-holders as managers having supervisory responsibilities over friar-personnel. Implied is a shift from moral to administrative authority, or, in Max Weber’s terms, from charismatic to bureaucratic types of legitimation. We will see that the shift includes a desire on the part of the Order’s managers to give orders and see them carried out, but these required enhancements in the use of violence and the threat of its use. The ability to command rather than admonish, after all, could be effected only to the degree that provincial administrators augmented their ability to coerce; and they had to convince others that coercion counted among their administrative responsibilities. Not surprisingly, these administrative developments opened new arenas for contradiction and dissent. Administration has often been treated as distinct from politics: political processes produce negotiated decisions; administrators then execute those decisions. Most theorists and researchers are no longer comfortable with this arrangement.61 The following chapters show that the everyday business of living a religious life was intensely political. The friars constantly negotiated their relationships with each other and renegotiated the structures and strictures established to frame those relationships. Traveling friars negotiated per diems; lectors negotiated larger food portions; discontents formed electoral factions. Friars saw the boundaries between themselves and persons outside convent walls as porous. Managers rolled with these punches, sometimes considering a friar’s status in the Order or his personal or family connections when granting dispensations, imposing penalties, or offering pardons. Provincial records show constant adjustment of personal and corporate expectations and continuous attempts by managers to match yesterday’s reality to today’s demands. In such an environment, friars 61 Fabio Rugge, “Administrative Traditions in Wetern Europe,” in Handbook of Public Administration, eds. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre, (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003), 179. In departing from this dichotomy, many theorists and researchers take their cue, if indirectly, from Foucault. See, for example, Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (Chicago, 1991).

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routinely measured the benefits accruing to themselves and others and sought to redefine the political economy to their personal advantage. Since the nineteenth century researchers have read with keen interest the Dominican Order’s Rule and constitutions, the encyclicals of masters general, general chapter acts and, with less acuity, provincial chapter acts, drawing especially upon those materials from the thirteenth century to discover the regulative foundations set down by the first friars. There is little need to demonstrate here that historians have viewed these as core elements of the Dominican legal apparatus. It is worth pointing out, however, that in recent decades legal theorists and other researchers have brought increased attention to the messiness and complexity of what we call law. They have come to regard a rationalpositivist interpretation of governmental sources as fitting only a narrow range of an otherwise extensive regulative, normative and cognitive institutional reality. It is now more widely accepted that pseudo-legal and extra-legal texts as well as normative and habitual operations frame social action, sometimes more directly and immediately than written proscriptions.62 What is missing from earlier readings of Dominican sources is an appreciation of the ambiguities, complexities and paradoxes in the construction and use of administration, politics, and law.63 The political and moral logic of Dominican communal religious life goes beyond a limited conception of law, and so do texts that have often been shoehorned into a legal mold. The Sources While studies of Dominican organization and operations routinely draw from the annual acts of thirteenth-century general and provincial chapters, the same cannot be said for their fourteenth-century 62 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, 1996). A. Javier Treviño, The Sociology of Law: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York, 1996), 443, identifies eight theoretical orientations that “provide the legal sociologist with a multidimensional (although often paradoxical and contradictory) picture of sociolegal reality.” Scott, Institutions and Organizations, 33–47. 63 It is one of the paradoxes of law, according to one view, that “law’s political authority depends ultimately on a certain kind of moral authority; yet the extension of law’s political authority has a seemingly inevitable tendency to weaken or deny this moral authority and hence, in an important sense, to undermine law itself.” Roger Cotterrell, Law’s Community: Legal Theory in Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 315.

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counterparts. The extant annual acts of general and provincial chapters from the fourteenth century are well-known, but all of them, and in particular the acts issuing from the Province of Aragon, remain untapped sources for the study of daily life and administration in Dominican convents. Most histories of the Order treat its surviving administrative records from the fourteenth century with a jaundiced eye, seeing much to criticize and little that is redemptive. There still has been no systematic effort to understand the disciplinary controls in these sources and study their role in the shaping of the Dominican public image.64 It is true, that records addressing conditions within Dominican communities in the fourteenth century remain especially scarce, and that as a “considerably defaced mosaic” we find them difficult to read.65 We might admit from much of what Dominican administrators recorded in their repetitive protestations and halfhearted legal proscriptions that their efforts at meaningful reform were “stunningly ineffective.”66 Nonetheless, this book finds that abandoning the moral and legal overlays reclaims these sources and opens new interpretive vistas. Much of the evidence for this study comes from the extant annual chapter acts of the Dominican Order’s Province of Aragon, which are by far the richest and most complete of those available from any Dominican province in the fourteenth century.67 Provincial chapters, 64 G. Geltner, “Brethren Behaving Badly: A Deviant Approach to Medieval Antifraternalism,” Speculum 85 (2010), 47–64, at 51. 65 Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres, O.P., “The Dominicans in Cambridge, 1238–1538,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 60 (1990), 313–373, at 314, identify the considerably defaced mosaic. For the paucity of records in Castile, and in the Iberian peninsula more broadly, see Garcia-Serrano, Preachers of the City, 4–5. For the very limited survival of the acts of annual chapters of the Order’s provinces, see “Bibliographiae,” in Dominican History Newsletter, ed. Simon Tugwell, (Oxford, 1992), 18–20. 66 Mixson, Property’s Proprietors, 7. 67 The Acta Capitulorum Provinciae Aragoniae are recorded in two seventeenthcentury manuscripts: Barcelona, Biblioteca Universitaria, Ms. 241 and Saragossa, Biblioteca Universitaria, Ms. 185. Adolfo Robles Sierra edited the acts from 1302 to 1366 in Escritos del Vedat, vols. 20–26 (1990–1996), and Vito T. Gómez García continued publication for the years 1368 to 1399 in Escritos del Vedat, vols. 27–35 (1997– 2005). Very few chapter acts from other provinces survive. The most extensive collection of thirteenth-century acts is Acta Capitulorum provincialium ordinis fratrum Praedictaorum: Première Province de Provence, Province Romaine, Province d’Espangne, 1239–1302, ed. Celeste Douais (Toulouse, 1894), supplemented by Ramón Hernandez, “Pergaminos de Actas de los Capitulos Provinciales del siglo XIII de la Provincia Dominicana de España, Archivo Dominicano 4 (1983), 199–266. Other published collections of general and provincial chapter acts are listed in Hinnebusch,

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typically held in the fall of the year, were occasions for celebration, reunion, and self-examination. An important outcome of the meeting was the composition and dissemination of the province’s annual chapter acts, produced out of the deliberations of the provincial prior with the elected delegates (diffinitors) from each convent. The delegates returned to their convents with acts and had them read in conventual chapter. These provincial chapter acts, which served a number of purposes, quite vividly point to the intersection of social and religious history, an intersection which, as current parlance would have it, is located precisely at the bodies of actual friars. We see friars walking with women, threatening their local priors with knives in hand, stealing chickens from local villagers. By bringing attention to the annual administrative acts extant from the fourteenth century, the present study moves beyond talk of ideals and expectations, beyond the parameters of the thirteenth-century success story and the generalized assertions of decline in the fourteenth century, to uncover continuities in the routine practices and normative realities of actual friars. In many respects the format of the acts remained relatively stable over the course of the fourteenth century, which has made them amenable to substantial internal, year-to-year comparisons, both quantitative and qualitative. In typical years those present in chapter included in their published acts several standardized groups of informational, instructional, admonitory and proscriptive items. For example, every year of extant acts offers a list of assignments and reassignments of friars to and from various convents, normally for the purpose of redirecting friars in their course of study or their place of teaching or other work. These assignment lists are unique to the Province of Aragon, by which I mean that we know of few assignment lists for other provinces, mostly fragmentary and thus lacking comparative potential. Another regular section of the annual acts is a list of friars who died in the previous year and for whose souls provincial authorities obliged living friars to pray. We see, similarly, regular lists of prayers of thanksgiving offered in gratitude for the financial and other support given to the friars by popes, members of royal families, and other benefactors.

History I, 417–418, and “Bibliographiae,” in Dominican History Newsletter, ed. Simon Tugwell, (Oxford, 1992), 18–20, where the limited survival of fourteenth-century acts is evident.

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The acts typically named in other lists friars accorded special titles, awarded various offices, or granted the privilege of advanced study outside the province. All of these lists identify friars by personal and surnames, the latter often being a patronymic, a toponym, or a name related to a family occupation. The acts record the removal of priors from their posts and, in some cases, impose vicars as temporary replacements, although they rarely in these instances list the names. A second range of regularly appearing items includes the announcements, admonitory items and prohibitions that annual chapters published on a wide range of issues related to the governance of local convents and the conduct of friars. In addition, most years include penances imposed by provincial authorities upon individual friars and groups of friars (sometimes whole convents) for offenses ranging from improper dress and petty theft to brawls and insurrections. The admonitory and penitential items sometimes offer the full names of the friars they mean to target, sometimes clearly for purposeful stigmatization. I have used the rich lists from these provincial acts to create a database that, covering the period 1302–1378, counts over ten thousand activities by more than three thousand friars. I hope readers will see my use of the database in these pages as a significant methodological contribution to the study of religious orders. The utility of the database will be most immediately apparent in chapter three, although it undergirds much of what I present in other chapters as well. The records of annual chapter acts from the Order’s administrative provinces are a wonderful source for understanding the internal dynamics of the Dominican community, but they need careful handling. Even when specific events and their participants are not fully disclosed – and, admittedly, the acts are often cryptic – a disciplined and deeply contextualized reading across all of these parts of the whole permits us to discern motivations and actions in many important and revealing instances. While much about the acts seems repetitive in its presentation, the apparent redundancies and patterned quality of the acts can both obscure and reveal real change. Even within blocks of admonitory items that to our eyes appear dreadfully dull as they seem to yaw on about the same old complaints or dully mimic the previous year’s advisories, we see subtle rhetorical shifts, or small changes of structure and process. In some years these amount to real change, and sometimes the acts show participants in provincial chapters acting with shocking abruptness.

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A Summary of Chapter Contents Nine chapters follow. The first explores the emergence and consolidation of what took time to become recognized as an Order of Preachers. The picture I draw will be quite different from depiction of the Order as a “perfect” organization. Even if the thirteenth-century friars believed their Order accurately mirrored an ideal (and I am not convinced that all of them would approve of their later friar-historian brothers holding this view), at no time was the Order so static in practice as to offer close congruency with an unchanging providential ordo. Instead, I place the Order’s beginnings in a moment of significant social, religious and political upheaval; I depict a malleable organization, one taking shape not so much by design as by circumstance; and I credit the friars for their adaptability. I leave fuzzy the outline of an envisioned ideal, permitting the early friars to nurture the ambiguities and ambivalences they felt about their project’s fit to a variety of available conceptions of God’s plan. Chapters two and three review the creation in 1301 of the Province of Aragon as a jurisdictional and territorial unit. They also survey the pace and nature of the province’s growth through the fourteenth century. Chapter two illustrates the conservative and deliberative nature of Dominican decision-making, although, more especially, it indicates how contentious even the slowest and most methodical decision processes could be. Chapter three evaluates the abundant demographic evidence available in the provincial acts, including the movements of over three thousand individual friars. From this material I have estimated hypothetical sizes of the province’s population at various points in time. According to several indicators, the province grew in the fourteenth century, continuing its expansion despite the devastation caused by the mid-century plague. One significant implication is that the internal stresses brought by structural weaknesses and interpersonal afflictions caused greater stress to the Order even than the effects of external factors like the Black Death. Chapter four explores some of the behavioral anomalies, undisciplined acts and questionable activities that most histories of the Dominican Order tend to overlook or ignore. We will identify some bad-boy friars and illustrate some of their exploits, but we will also see that the Order’s leaders contributed to the climate that encouraged less than wholesome behaviors.

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Each of chapters five through eight treats an institutional problem, analyzing in some detail the dynamic processes that motivated the friars and impelled the Order over a hundred years and more. At issue is the play of the friars’ actions and their administrators’ reactions, and also corresponding and contradictory impulses leading from managerial policies to rank-and file responses. Chapter five looks at the development of and competition within and between member cohorts, focusing particularly on the definition of a youth problem, one that led Nicolau Rossell to regard some young friars in his care as unuseful. Incidentally, readers will find a brief mention of Dominican sisters in this chapter. However, because the annual provincial chapter acts mention female houses very infrequently, most often for the single purpose of limiting contact between the friars and their sisters in religion, women attached to the Order will have almost no place in a story that centers on the male convents. In short, male leaders suffered a combination of fear and dismissiveness toward their female counterparts. Chapter six looks at office holding in relation to political and managerial processes. The difficult position of conventual prior is the focus. In particular, the chapter shows provincial authorities increasing pressure upon conventual priors in a way that over time relieved them of much of their local decision making authority. Chapter seven is about obedience, its weakness as an instrument of command and control in the first Dominican decades and attempts in the middle decades of the fourteenth century to strengthen it. Chapter eight examines the problem of Dominican corporate honor, how provincial authorities measured it, feared its diminution, and what efforts they took to restore it. We end with an epilogue that projects the findings of this research into the period of the papal schism and beyond. I have constructed Taming a Brood of Vipers as a series of essays connected by a narrative that remains loose at some points and knotty at others. This is as it should be, I think, since the friars’ reality was far more complex than a single connective thread allows. Certain elements of friar history – unity, for example, or Dominic’s sagaciy – have been so often repeated and so little tested that I will return to them more than once. The repetition is not merely duplicative; it is my attempt to turn the historical prism and then turn it again so that we may examine a question from several angles. Readers looking for a thesis may not find it in one place, but can begin by parsing it from the following set of statements: Young and old friars, higher- and lowerstatus friars, rank-and-file friars and friar-administrators all struggled

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to find security and satisfaction as members of an organization that had much to offer them even as they found their participation in it difficult, even burdensome. A tangle of operational disabilities and interpersonal conflicts tied the Dominican organization in knots, dragged it down and pummeled and poisoned it. The Order’s leaders, seeking ameliorative change, administered antidotes to reverse the effects of their organization’s self-inflicted venom, although the challenges of creating order remained beyond their full corrective capacities. I think readers will find the exploration of this very painful dynamic fascinating even if, in the end, I cannot offer signs that any of the contestants waging institutional war inside Dominican convents actually won anything more than partial and temporary victories. To take the viper analogy beyond where Rossell would have wanted it to go, the evidence admits that the snakes and the snake handlers mostly chased each other in circles, biting and beating each other as they went. I have put the title’s “taming” purposefully in the gerund form as a reminder that the participants to the drama that unfolds here could not easily discern progress, beginnings and endings, winners and losers, success and failure. Instead of reading into the circumstances linear outcomes or either/or inertial trajectories, we see daily life as it so often is: traversed on a viscous path marked by desire, open to impulse and accident, measured in increments, and remade at the margins.68

68 This theory of history is expressed best in my view by the polymath Martin Krieger, Marginalism and Discontinuity (Thousand Oaks, CA, 1989), xvii–xxiii.

PART ONE

EXIGENCIES

CHAPTER ONE

SUCCESS AND SUCCESSORS It is not at all provocative to declare the medieval Order of Preachers a “phenomenal success.”1 Even the Order’s detractors do not deny the religious significance, social prominence, and political reach of the friars in their prime.2 This admission of the obvious, however, only intensifies the burden of understanding the friars: what success means in the context of a medieval religious order’s growth and change is not altogether clear. At the very least, to speak of the success of the Order of Preachers is to recognize a corporate endeavor, a recognition that opens up a range of methodological options. For instance, might we give as much credit to good timing or dumb luck as to strong leadership or a perspicacious regulative scheme? The difficulty, of course, is in distinguishing luck from smart choices, which poses a problem for those seeking a providential plan in the Order’s history. Another example: We speak nowadays of corporations as persons in law, a concept that historians

1 Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300–1500, trans. Isola Van den Hoven (London, 2007), 142. The authors follow the standard insider readings, e.g., Hinnebusch, History I, 54, says “The Order gained immediate success because its aims rang in harmony with the dictates of experience and superlatively carried out the wishes of the Lateran Council.” Cf. C.H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 2nd ed. (New York, 1989), 265: “Their success as preachers and confessors siphoned congregations away from parish churches, and of course with the people went the flow of offerings and pious bequests, which were diverted in the trust funds administered for the friars. Many of the great urban preaching churches of Europe, like Santa Croce in Florence, embellished with frescoes and paved with the monuments of the civic aristocracy, bear eloquent witness to their success in winning the patronage of the city populations of the thirteenth century.” 2 David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries (Cambridge, 1976), 306–307, offers backhanded praise, saying that the friars “dealt a heavy blow to monastic prestige, at first by outbidding the monks in fervour, then by draining many of the reservoirs of talent and virtue that would otherwise have served the older orders, next by giving an entirely new challenge to the monks by their intellectual celebrity, and finally by attracting so many recruits, good, bad and indifferent that the edge of their ideal was blunted, and in course of time, both by their direct opposition to the monks and by the criticisms which they themselves incurred, they became the weakest and most vulnerable corps in the army of religious.”

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of medieval Europe see taking shape in medieval attempts to discern relations between various ecclesiastical institutions, to distinguish “the king’s two bodies,” or to realize the communal unicity of guilds and confraternities.3 We often envision corporations as organisms, composites of human beings in action that operate, in sum, like human beings. To what extent, we might then ask, is the historical trajectory of the Order of Preachers analogous to that of an individual human person: has the Dominican Order followed a lifecycle taking it from its birth, through its prime, to inevitable disability and decline? Such questions must turn back on the fundamental problems of defining and constructing order under changing conditions, and the best answers we have recognize that change happens to individuals just as those individuals shape and are shaped by the institutions they inhabit. Corporations, like the people who are part of them, remain under the spell of certain broad social realities, which are themselves always in flux.4 By the fifteenth century it became a question of fundamental importance whether a corporate organism was directed more by its head than its members, but friars in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries fought over different, albeit equally contested, conceptions of the roles and responsibilities of leaders and followers. This chapter recalls the early achievements of Dominic and his first followers, but it will rediscover between the lines of the familiar success story the difficulties that Dominic and his brothers encountered as they set out to define, claim, and win the mendicant organizational niche. At issue is the increasing complexity of life for friar members of an organization that itself grew more complex with the passage of time. By the chapter’s end we will have entered into the fourteenth century with a greater appreciation for a kind of continuity that is not often discussed in monastic histories: the persistence of organizational problems right from the days of the Order’s youthful vigor through to its middle-aged flaccidity.

3 James Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (New York, 1995), 98–119. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: a study in mediaeval political theology (Princeton, NJ, 1957); Carl J. Nederman, “Freedom, Community and Function: Communitarian Lessons of Medieval Political Theory,” American Political Science Review 86 (1992), 977–986. 4 Of special importance are Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY, 1986) and Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977).

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Success in Dominican Historiography From one perspective, continuities in the telling of the Dominican success story are apparent: from the proceedings of Dominic’s canonization to the most recent histories produced by the Order’s friarhistorians, the Order’s triumphs have been reported as acts of God, or at least as the products of divinely inspired work. We should recall, however, that to survey an eight hundred-year history of the writing of histories about the Order is to read through significant changes in the evolution of how stories about the Order’s mission successes are told. From the records of Dominic’s canonization and Jordan of Saxony’s Libellus de principiis ordinis Praedicatorum in the Order’s first decades to the chronicles composed by Stephen of Salagnac and Galvano Fiamma near 1300, miracles were accepted as clear signs of God’s potent attention to the friars’ activities. Dominic’s sanctity and the Order he founded became special instruments of God’s desire to revivify European Christianity. No reader of medieval sources should find surprising the use of the miraculous to confirm temporal successes, so for the moment I will bypass examples, except to point out that this book’s cover depicts one of the more curious cases in point, that being the genuflection of an ass before the host held up by St. Dominic. Through the next centuries friar-chroniclers continued to pursue and record what they took to be indications of divine approval and guidance, doing so especially in hagiographical accounts that recorded the activities of exemplary predecessor brothers and in annals that collected such documents as the royal and papal privileges that guaranteed some matter of support or sustenance. Of course, not all of the Order’s early historians follow these models. A chronicle issuing from the Province of Aragon in the last half of the fourteenth century, one that will become important to us later, conspicuously lacks talk of divine intervention. The Chronicon of the Catalan friar Pere de Arenys records his postings as a student and teacher. It informs us about his own temporal successes, offering a unique window into the real world patrons and protectors who shepherded his career. It offers surprisingly few details about his religious formation or his spiritual concerns, and it does not invoke God as either a personal or corporate protector.5

5

Pedro de Arenys, Chronicon, ed. José Hinojosa Montalvo (Valencia, 1975).

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Certainly Pere, like other friars in his time, assumed that God took a direct interest in the affairs of the preaching brothers – I have no interest in arguing otherwise. What is curious and interesting for our purposes is how a reading of the Chronicon leaves one with the impression that he measured his own academic success not by how his prayers for wisdom were answered but by which wise teachers provincial leaders happened to assign him to. By the sixteenth century the Order’s first true historians had begun the long process of collecting, sorting and studying records of the privileges and gifts granted to their corporation over the years, drawing on these resources to produce narrative histories. An early exemplar is Francisco Diago’s Historia de la Provincia de Aragón, published in 1599.6 A consequent development was the production of several de viris illustribus compilations recording the exploits of the Order’s greatest preachers and writers and Anales and Lumen domus collections chronicling the brilliant histories of particular Dominican convents.7 Over several centuries friar-historians followed this direction of discovery all the while drawing together scattered materials from diverse convent and other archives. Into the twentieth century, friar-historians adopted elements of a more or less modern narrative of organizational success. In part 6 Francisco Diago, Historia de la provincia de Aragon de la Orden de predicadores, desde su origen y principio hasta el año de mil y seiscientos (Barcelona, 1599). Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “El Historiador Francisco Diago, O.P. (1561–1615), Una Primera Aproximación a su Vida y Escritos,” EV 39 (2009), 281–320. 7 A few prominent examples from the Province of Aragon: Baltasar Sorió, De viris illustribus Provinciae Aragoniae Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. P. José Maria de Garganta (Valencia, 1950); a compilation of materials by P. Tomás Domingo in a Colección de varios documentos para la historia del convento de Zaragoza, Biblioteca Universitaria de Zaragoza, MSS 30 and 32, studied by Rosa María Blasco Martínez, Sociología de una communidad religiosa, 1219–1516 (Zaragoza, 1974); Pau Fluxá, Libro de las excellencias del convent de Santo Domingo de Mallorca de la Orden de Predicadores, Biblioteca del Monasterio de Montserrat, MS 79 (unfortunately in a terrible state of disrepair); Francesc Camprubí and Pere-Màrtir Anglès, Lumen Domus o Annals del convent de santa Caterina de Barcelona, Biblioteca Universitaria Barcelona, MS 1.007; Fr. Antonio Ribas, Relación del estado del convento de Santiago y San Vicente Ferrer de Ibiza, de la provincià de Aragón, desde el año de su fundación basta el presente de 1626, making up fols. 733–746 of Santa Sabina sig. XIV Q: “Colección de relaciones, copias de documentos, estadísticas, etc. referents a las provincias dominicanas de España y de America del Sur”; Pablo Vidal, Anales de la Orden de Predicadores, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona, MS. 748–9. For a limited discussion of some of these documents, see José-María de Garganta, “Los Dominicos de la Provincia de Aragon en la Historia de la Espirituálidad, Siglos XIV–XVII,” Teología Espiritual 1 (1957), 89–112; 91–95.

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we might see this as an updating made necessary in response to the many pressures in the previous century that diminished the potency of sacred history and encouraged further rationalization in the study of religions (throughout the nineteenth century, for example, the Dominicans and other orders suffered a period of desamortización, during which convents were closed and their properties confiscated).8 We might say that secular governments compelled the orders to modernize or go out of business. Particularly in their general histories, the twentieth-century’s friarhistorians integrated seemingly antithetical methods and descriptive forces, in parts providential and rational, stirring into the metaphysical and devotional soup a number of novel analytical and progressive ingredients.9 Admirers and critics studying the Dominicans from the outside also contributed questions and methods that helped give to the Dominican success story its current hybridized form, which reads more or less as follows. The most recent histories credit Dominic’s bishop, Diego of Osma, with recognizing a latent opportunity, but they show Dominic taking the lead, carrying the heavy load, and thus winning the prize of sanctity. The idea of an Order of Preachers began while the two men went traveling through Languedoc, taking the long way home after an ambassadorial mission for the king of Castile. Diego observed Innocent III’s Cistercian legates as they sought to restore the Cathar heretics in Montpellier to Catholicism; and he recognized that the prelates’ refusal to abandon their own displays of wealth and power led to the failure of their efforts (Cathars made their own humility and renunciation a first principle of their anti-Catholic teaching and practice). It was Dominic who then turned Diego’s moment of discernment into an entrepreneurial project. Dominic gathered the personnel and resources that bore fruit in an international religious order. According to one recent commentator, “Dominic must have had an unobtrusive efficiency, a gift for organization and a good sense of communication, 8

Francisco Marti Gilabert, La desamortización española (Madrid, 2003). Take, for example, Hinnebusch, History, 81 and elsewhere, who sees Dominic’s managerial talents become a sign of divine approval. The rhetorical glue in Hinnebusch History is the word “balance,” in part meant to address the relationship of human and divine agency. A more recent example of this tradition is P. Vito T. Gómez García, O.P., “La Provincia en el primer siglo de su Historia,” 35–68. On the secularization of religious institutions in Spain, Francisco Simón Segura, La Desamortización española en al siglo XIX (Madrid, 1973). 9

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for Diego chose him as traveling companion….”10 “As with all great leaders,” says another, “there was an inspirational quality about his strategic decisions.”11 The result of these musings about Dominic’s character traits was the creation of the template of Dominican corporate success that includes as essential attributes entrepreneurial zeal and superb leadership. Dominic, with prayer and perspicacity, founded one of medieval Europe’s most important religious orders because he read the need and the opportunity just right. He also got right the timing of his Order’s expansion when, in 1217, he dismissed the advice of his benefactors and the trepidation of his followers and sent his small band of friars out of the Languedoc to Europe’s major educational centers, an event about which John of Navarre later recalled in a moment of revisionist commemoration “everything succeeded… as Dominic had predicted.”12 From that seminal moment until his death in 1221, Dominic presided over the general chapter meetings that put into effect, according to this telling, a corporate infrastructure at once marvelously rigorous and surprisingly flexible; “The work he did during this time gave the Order the unity and consistency of a great, well-planned organization.”13 At the founder’s death the Order of Preachers possessed advanced systems of command and control, operating according to processes that were “efficient, intricate, and surprisingly modern.”14 10 Maura O’Carroll, “The Cult and Liturgy of St. Dominic,” in Domenico di Caleruega e la nascita dell’Ordine dei fratri predicatori (Spoleto, 2005), 567–612; at 570. 11 C. H. Lawrence, The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (New York, 1995), 65–66. 12 Cited in Rosalind B. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars (London, 1975), 93. 13 Hinnebusch, History, 77: Addressing his last twenty-two months, the period of constitutional consolidation, “The work he did during this time gave the Order the unity and consistency of a great, well-planned organization. Had this work not been done, the Order might have fallen to pieces after his death or remained loosely federated, poorly governed, perhaps torn by factional strife. These months and the final touches of Dominic’s hand shaped its magnificent government, its marvelous unity. The unity has never been broken. The government still exists, essentially unchanged, with the same organs and the same sure knowledge of its goals.” 14 Galbraith, Constitution, 1. Ernest Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation (Oxford, 1913). Also Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 255–56: “the constitution of the order embodied a revolution in the practice, if not the theory, of government. It gave effect to the principles of representation and responsibility to an extent unknown in either ecclesiastical or secular government.” On the quest for protomodern phenomena, see Bisson, Celebration and Persuasion: Reflections on the Cultural Evolution of Medieval Consultation,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 7 (1982), 181–204 and William McKinley, “The March of History: Juxtaposing Histories,” Organizational Studies 28 (2007), 31–36.

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The success of any organization like the medieval Dominican Order – geographically extensive and deeply embedded in a social milieu that it participates in making and remaking – surely has something to do with the authority and aptitude of one or more leaders. The results of entrepreneurial effort and keen management accumulate so that they add up to something big, important, and meaningfully significant. Outcomes result from decisions, with each next decisive push getting added to the last in a way that has lasting benefits, either by reaching a tipping point, accelerating the way the score gets counted up, or piling up resources until the stockpile serves as a formidable arsenal that assures a competitive advantage against foes. That is one theory of corporate success: a theme and variations on agency. Histories regularly applaud the successes of exemplary leaders who study the terrain, set their course and get the job done; indeed, some of the first written narratives tell the exploits of great leaders.15 From an analytical perspective, however, agency presents difficulties. Historians have imagined our Dominic as a man of genius, a possessor of keen intelligence, who with statesman-like vision and a talent for organization set out to found an Order of Preachers. Successor leaders followed close in his footsteps. Jordan of Saxony created the climate for the successful transfer of power after the founder’s death. Raymond of Penyafort, the Order’s third Master General, succeeded in attending to the legal and missionary needs of the organization at a time most crucial in strengthening the Order’s role as a bulwark against heretics and in supporting the expansion of the mission to include the conversion of Jews and Muslims. Humbert of Romans, fifth Master General, saw to other institution-building concerns, including the elaboration of the Order’s ritual and liturgical life. Over a century later, Raymond of Capua plays the part of the reforming saint in the Order’s histories, receiving credit for spearheading the Dominican Observant Reform after 1390. This is the way that the success story gets told: by ascribing the impetus for change to individuals, making them heroes of invention, activism, or reform. But we know that hero myths overlook 15 The twentieth-century leadership guru Peter Drucker once told a student “The first systematic book on leadership was written by Xenophon more than 2,000 years ago, and it is still the best.” The comment introduces Drucker’s interest in military organization, especially on aspects of training, promotional systems, and leadership qualities. William A. Cohen, A Class with Drucker: the lost lessons of the world’s greatest management teacher (New York, American management Association, 2008), 173–174.

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the exigencies of time and place. Dominican leader myths, like all leader myths, work by detaching from group processes, often with the implicit purpose of defending against rival readings of the past.16 In the case of the Dominicans, moreover, the myths lead readers to erroneous conclusions about the relationship of leaders to followers and actors to systems, for example by making workaday friars such loyal followers – “storm-troops,” “foot soldiers” following the commands of a “G.H.Q.” – that they appear to pursue their leaders’ objectives without qualms of conscience.17 Nonetheless, nowadays such hero worship rightly makes us uneasy. Recently, even some friar-historians have come to agree that they must praise the leaders of their Order’s past with greater care. Clinging less tenaciously to the old methodology, the Order as a whole has grown somewhat less defensive.18 Promoters of the Dominican success story, not entirely blind to its evidentiary deficits and conceptual weaknesses, have availed themselves of one feature of yarns spun about successful endeavors: triumph over adversity. Like any long-lived and deeply-engaged organization, the Order encountered obstacles, challenges, moments of crisis. “To know its essential strength,” Benedict Ashley says of his Order, “we need to see it tested, undergoing deformations yet recovering and growing.”19 Hence, as the story goes, the Dominicans’ achievements attracted considerable resistance from competitors, drawing the Order into its “first crisis.”20 The danger grew acute into the 1250s after 16 Christine Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2009), 94–134, illustrates the construction of Dominic’s saintliness as a political enterprise. Also see Robin J.E. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge, 2009), 5–10. 17 Bennett, The Early Dominicans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), esp. 157–175; “storm-troops” at 161. Galbraith, Constitution, 177. Barbara Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ, 2005), 241, calls them “foot soldiers,” implying that, because theirs were “tasks that required realistic men,” leaders permitted no disunity in the ranks. 18 Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “Santo Domingo de Guzmán, los dominicos y la Inquisición Española según la historiografía dominicana española de los XVI, XVII y XVIII,” in Praedicatores, Inquisitores II, ed. Arturo Bernal Palacios, OP (Rome, 2006), 77–114, at 78. On efforts by present-day Dominicans to “help purify our memory,” in the context of medieval inquisitions, see Ordo Praedictorum, Acts of the General Chapter of Provincial Priors (Bologna, 13 July–4 August, 1998); cited in Christine Caldwell, “Peter Martyr: The Saint as Inquisitor,” Comitatus 31 (2000), 137–174, at 137. 19 Benedict Ashley, The Dominicans (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 1. 20 William Hinnebusch, “How the Dominican Order Faced its Crises,” Review for Religious 32 (1973), 1307–1321, at 1308–1309.

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university masters, joining the ranks of bishops and priests angry at the invasion of their pastoral turf, challenged not only the preaching mission of the Dominican organization but also the intellectual preparation of its members for their apostolate. The papacy quickly came to the Order’s defense and in so doing girded the friars with privileges and protections that improved the “efficiency, mobility, and flexibility” of their operations.21 Over its course the crisis was well managed and brought “good results”: the Order proved the vitality of its mission, thus demonstrating its utility to church, state and society.22 Having tested and strengthened the durability of its foundations, by century’s end Dominic’s enterprise “stood forth in the fullness of its strength and influence.”23 While it seemed easy to portray the success of the Order of Preachers in its first century as a remarkable result of providential imperative and human sagacity in the face of a crisis, historians have found that the Order’s maturation into the next century presented itself as far more problematic. The lineaments of the success story seemed to fade and disappear and in their place the Order’s trajectory through the fourteenth century took a decisive turn toward tragedy. William Hinnebusch was the greatest expositor of the decline thesis in the English language, although he limited his analysis to only a handful of pages. He perceived a decline beginning around 1300 and then a descent into disciplinary and operational decay by mid century from which it would take more than a century to recover. Dedication to the common life and voluntary poverty waned; friars ignored their studies, their preaching responsibilities and their pastoral duties; they brought meat into their diet, rode horses, acquired extravagant clothing, and decorated their cells. These changes in the individual dispositions of the friars and their effects upon the corporate whole were the result of 21

Lawrence, The Friars, 152–165, surveys the thirteenth-century controversies. Decima Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars and the Mendicants at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1954) studies the contest in the schools at its height in the years 1250–1259. Yves Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la second moitié de XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe,” Archives d’histoire doctrinal et littéraire 38 (1961), 35–151, examines apostolic mission and poverty as structural elements in the ongoing contest. Fernando García-Serrano, Preachers in the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile (1217–1438), 75–94, offers a detailed local example: the Dominican’s successful quest to wrestle spiritual and economic power from the cathedral canons of Castilian Burgos. 22 Hinnebusch, “Crises,” 1309. 23 Hinnebusch, Short History, 71.

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“world shaking events, each a blow to the stability and vitality of Christendom.” Therefore the Order and its friars were not to blame for what their Order suffered.24 Extreme as the adversities were, even the compounding destructive forces of the fourteenth century could not limit the potential of a good success story, which casts the period of decline and decay as preparatory to reform and renewal. Crises might have threatened the Order, bringing it close to the point of extinction, but “preserved by Divine Providence, it has always sprung back to new life.”25 In the decade before 1400 a reform was launched that would prove the Order’s hardiness, restore its sense of purpose, infuse it with renewed zeal, and ready it for new missions. Reforming leaders made it their first objective to restore discipline, renewing for the friars the core values and practices of their monastic life. Amplifying the positive changes and extending them geographically from Germany and Italy to Spain and other European nations, through the sixteenth-century of the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation, the Order re-established its place at the forefront of the Church’s educational, doctrinal, and missionary programs. Catherine of Siena, Vincent Ferrer, and Raymond of Capua receive special attention in reform narratives, the first for her insistence that Urban VI heal the Papal Schism, the second, despite his obedience to the rival Avignon popes, for the infectious intensity of his expiatory preaching. Raymond activated the plan for internal organizational reform by establishing observant convents. Supporting roles by Conrad of Prussia, Henry Suso, Giovanni Dominici, Leonardo Dati and others are also sometimes acknowledged.26 By recalling the Order’s glorious

24 Hinnebusch, Short History, 71–75. De Garganta, “Los Dominicos… en la Historia de la Espirituálidad,” 99. 25 Hinnebusch, “Crises,” 1307. 26 The Dominican reform in late fifteenth century Spain has been extensively studied by Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, especially in Historia de la reforma de la Provincia de España, 1450–1550 (Rome, 1939); also see idem., “Los comienzos de la reforma dominicana en Castilla particularmente en el convento de San Estéban de Salamanca y su irradiación a la provincia de Portugal,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 28 (1958), 221–237; idem, Los corrientes de espiritualidad entre los Dominicos de Castilla durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI (Salamanca, 1941). More recent is Ramón Hernández, O.P. “La Reforma dominicana entre los concilios de Constanza y Basilea,” Archivo Dominicano 8 (1987), 5–50, at 9. For Aragon, where see De Garganta, “Los Dominicos… en la Historia de la Espirituálidad,” 106–107, and Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “La Provincia y la Reforma de los Siglos XV y XVI,” in La Provincia Dominicana de Aragón: Siete Siglos de Vida y Misión, ed. Vito T. Gómez-García, Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, Lorenzo Galmés Más, Vicente Forcada Comíns (Madrid, Edibesa, 1999).

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past, the Observant Reform turned the preachers back toward their future; thus “it was a renewed Order that faced the manifold developments that characterized the transition from medieval into modern times.”27 This is the conventional trajectory of the Dominican organization’s growth and change over the course of its first three centuries: a rise to greatness in the glory years of the thirteenth century; a decline and then decay when the Order fell to the mercy of fourteenth-century catastrophes; a reawakening to new splendor as a result of fifteenthcentury reforms. The narrative offers some broad truths: over much of the thirteenth century the friars’ found many consumers of popular apostolic religion highly receptive to their doctrinaire and firmly orthodox approach to mendicant preaching; in the century that followed indiscipline and disorder increased, as did public notice of the friars’ individual and corporate imperfections; and later, attempts to correct the deficits gained some traction in ‘observant’ convents. Nonetheless, I have been arguing that we should find these generalizations suspect. They provide only weak foundations upon which to theorize a cycle of rise, decline, and reform. They will not sustain the sacred history of an ever-renewing providentially-guided religious Order nor a secular history advancing a medieval corporate success story. Other Approaches We can take other approaches to the events and actions that get fashioned into success stories. While we typically credit success to the bold and the perspicacious, presuming that their moves add up in just the right way, success sometimes means dodging the instant-killer catastrophe, avoiding the stroke of bad luck, steering clear of the bad feelings that sap corporate enthusiasm, or averting the consequences of bad moves and lousy judgment. Sometimes our enthusiasm for the victors is wildly misplaced, since it happens that what often defeats the vanquished is rotten timing, or that they have to suffer impossible odds; their failure may not result from their own rotten decisions or from any

Adolfo Robles Sierra, “La Reforma entre los dominicos de Valencia en el siglo XVI,” in Corrientes Espirituales en la Valencia del siglo XVI, 1550–1600, (Valencia, 1983), 183–209. 27 Hinnebusch, Short History, 90.

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lack of providential grace on their part. Jared Diamond aptly observed that “success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.” Among the possible causes of failure are changes in the ecology in which individuals and organizations find themselves by historical accident.28 Let’s point out, too, that winners sometimes cheat; perhaps not always consciously, but very much as part of the course of their everyday economic calculations.29 It is not an inconsequential musing to consider the gap opened by the two rival perspectives identified here. Providence, individual intelligent decision, and collective determination may contribute to corporate inertia, although the ways we talk about them simplify the people who are their subjects. The simplification, whether purposeful or not, produces an efficient narrative, sweetening the story by leaving out the sour details.30 On the other hand, the explanatory model that accepts the human personal and corporate survival imperative presumes a good deal of muddling through, with any gains made being matched by slippage and slowdowns and backtracking and reversals. For the participants, it supposes learning along the way. For historians of the Dominican Order, it means not pretending blindness when faced with some of the friars’ dirty laundry. The Order of Preachers became consequential, but not just because God supervised its every move or because Dominic and the friars always knew what moves to make. For the sake of greater acuity, we can discount such explanations in favor of a wider array of diagnostic factors and a storyline that is more holistic and accomodating. The ecological model recognizes that not to suffer or die now is to live another day and perhaps enjoy its

28 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, 1997), 157. “We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.” This is in keeping with organization theory borrowings from evolutionary theory – maximizing success means managing survival dynamics of organizational populations. 29 Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York, 2005), offers several examples of cheating; normal and expected, even if, in many situations, unacceptable. 30 Such efforts to enumerate favorable circumstances, what Francis Bacon famously called “counting the hits and forgetting the misses,” has become standard practice in the writing of corporate pseudo-histories and is now part of a growing literature teaching students of business how to manipulate corporate stories. See, for example, David Fleming, “Narrative Leadership: Using the Power of Stories,” Strategy & Leadership 29 (2001), 34–36, and Stephen Denning, The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Action Through Narrative (San Francisco, 2007).

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fruits – a result that often is good enough. Success stories aside, sometimes the best outcome is to survive the present, and over the lifetime of a long-lived corporation like the Dominican Order, present-day survival matters because to the survivor accrues greater measures of survivability.31 Efforts to revise or contradict the Dominican success story are by no means new. A number of alternate readings of the evidence, particularly the thirteenth-century evidence, have gained enough momentum that it seems timely to dismiss the traditional myth-making accounts altogether. Herbert Grundmann’s groundbreaking work in the 1930s became foundational to new research directions when it showed the importance of precursors, the propogating power of the seedbed of precursor ideas and actors in the apostolic movement of the High Middle Ages, thus proposing that the evidence of the broad context of the Order’s emergence did not entirely fit the story as it had been handed down for centuries. Bishop Diego’s moment of insight in 1206, for example, and Dominic’s straightforward success at following up, must be weighed against evidence that the two piggybacked on previous experiments. Dominic and his friars followed a path already explored by others, even heretical others.32 In other words, Dominic and his men, in their dispositions and activities, learned from and profited from what had already taken place within a slowly emerging “mendicant” organizational type; the Order of Preachers became one of the most exemplary mendicant orders because it arrived on the scene after earlier experiments had failed and much ground work had been laid. One of the groups deemed heretical after some years in operation, but who “anticipated some of the most conspicuous features of the mendicant friars,” was the Poor Men of Lyons.33 It serves as an example upon which to elaborate. Around 1176 a cloth merchant and banker 31 A.L. Stinchcombe, “Social Structure and Organizations,” in James G. March (Ed.), Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1965), 142–193. Jitendra V. Singh, David J. Tucker and Robert J. House, “Organizational Change and Organizational Mortality,” Administrative Science Quarterly 31 (1986), 587–611; Josef Bruderl and Rudolf Schussler, “Organizational Mortality: The Liabilities of Newness and Adolescence,” Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (1990), 530–547. 32 Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: the hsitorical links between heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the women’s religious movement in the twelfth and thirteenth century, with the historical foundations of German mysticism, trans. Steven Rohan (Notre Dame, 1995; original publication date 1935). 33 Lawrence, The Friars, 23.

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named Waldes heard a minstrel reciting the story of St. Alexis, a nobleman who gave up his bride and patrimony for a life of poverty in the loving embrace of God. Troubled by the story, Waldes sought advice, and soon a schoolman drew his attention to Jesus’ injunction, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 19:21): “if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Thereafter, Waldes settled his family and business affairs and began a preaching career supported only by what he gained from begging. Others attached themselves to his vision, following his promise to live in poverty, accepting only food and clothing as it was needed. Unfortunately for his fraternity, the Poor Men produced vernacular versions of the New Testament and preached from them – activities that were bound to draw criticism from traditionalists.34 Such practices came under fire, even though, as C. H. Lawrence has remarked about Waldes, “there is no evidence to show when, if at all, he adopted heterodox religious opinions.”35 Waldes began his religious quest with no intention of denying the legitimacy of traditional ecclesiastical authority. Indeed, he sought papal approval of his enterprise at the synod of Lyons in 1181, where he made a profession of faith before the cardinal-legate, assenting, apparently without reservation, to all the points of orthodox doctrine put to him. He refused to concede, however, that preaching was a function of bishops and their appointees, men ordained in that function not by other men but by the Holy Spirit through apostolic succession. This was reason enough to expel him from Lyons. In 1184, the Poor Men were included in the decree Ad abolendam, published at Verona by Pope Lucius III, in which the pope intended to repress unorthodox practices and beliefs. Lucius III published Ad abolendam twenty-one years before Francis of Assisi, in 1205, had a conversion experience very similar to that of Waldes, one that moved him to engage in very similar practices. He issued it twenty-two years before Dominic of Calaruega redirected his own clerical career to matching the activities of Waldes and the many other itinerant beggar-preachers whose operations had become

34 Peter Biller, The Waldenses, 1170–1530: Between a Religious Order and a Church (Aldershot, 2001); Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c. 1170–c. 1570, trans. Claire Davidson (Cambridge, 1999); Lutz Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism. 35 Lawrence, The Friars, 21; cf. Grundmann, Religious Movements, 25–26.

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an increasingly grave threat to the Church. Many historians have read the temporal continuities as circumstantial and the operational similarities as disjunctive. To the contrary, Herbert Grundmann proposed that the Poor Men, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and others could be treated as related manifestations of a single popular religious movement. These groups emerged, Grundmann argued, under roughly comparable conditions within a concentrated period of time, sharing similarities of character, service and function that signaled the new vita apostolica.36 The case of Durandus of Huesca and his Poor Catholics is perhaps the most proximate predecessor to the Dominican Order and is therefore interesting to recall. Durandus became a Waldensian, having been converted to the heresy in his native Aragon. It was perhaps in the period just before the 1184 condemnation of the Waldensians that Durandus composed a Liber antihaeresis, with which he advanced views antithetical to both Catharism and Catholicism. He later left a splinter group of the Waldensians to return to the Catholic fold; indeed, his restoration to orthodoxy at Pamiers in 1207 is credited to Diego and Dominic. He then became a “professional controversialist,” attacking the dualist Cathars “with the zeal of a convert.”37 From 1208 to 1212 Innocent III gave ample support to Durandus and his followers, but their activities gained little traction. Innocent III withdrew aid, and the group foundered and disintegrated at just about the time that Dominic sought approval from Innocent to launch his own Order. We can rightly ask whether the religious order Honorious III finally confirmed for Dominic at the end of 1216 would have looked quite different if ventures like the Poor Catholics had taken another course. Many experiments in apostolic living failed to garner the support they needed for long term organizational survival. For one reason or 36 Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, 3–4: “These investigations derive from the assumption that the rise of the orders and sects was not a series of isolated, mutually independent developments formed only by the will and deed of a founder, nor by the accidental reception of a heretical doctrine; rather they belong together in historical relation to the total religious development of the West. This entails a double duty: on the one hand, the historian must show this common heritage, this emergence from a single religious movement in which religious forces and ideas originally operated in a similar manner, before forming into various orders and sects; on the other hand, the historian must recognize the factors which determined the articulation of the religious movement into its various forms, consisting of orders and sects.” 37 Gillian Rosemary Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 99–105.

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another – a few of them given a modicum of historical consideration – they fizzled out; Church and secular authorities deemed others heretical and fiercely opposed them.38 Historians credit Dominic with defending the Church by absorbing these destabilizing apostolic energies into his Order of Preachers, although they give less attention to why he succeeded where others failed. The key to Dominic’s success, and the failures of others, cannot be found in discussions of heresy and orthodoxy alone. The categories of thought and the modes of action that distinguished one from another did not remain constant, becoming an ever wider and deeper font from which new experiments could emerge. Both the winners and losers drew from this reserve of thoughts, practices, resources and relationships. Specialists in the study of organizations understand the processes at work here, addressing them within an analytical rubric they call “the liability of newness.” Substantial empirical research shows that the earliest entrepreneurial ventures often fail because they cannot garner the enthusiasm and resources needed to build organizations that can be viable for the long term.39 Typically a later generation of entrepreneurs has a higher probability of attracting attention and investment. This happy result has some little bit to do with leadership or administrative capabilities, although this is only the case because in the later waves of experimentation institution builders learn from their predecessors’ errors, and thus making fewer debilitating mistakes. These latecomers can more easily distinguish what structural elements must be put in place in order to advance the new organizational form. From this perspective we should discount arguments about the special insights and proclivities of Dominic, and, for that matter, of Francis too. We might simply say that they happened to be in the right place at the right time, although to take this too much at face value is to combat generalizations with more generalizations. We will want to dig a little deeper. Increased attention to context has added greater depth and color to the picture of the Dominican Order’s origins in other ways. Studies by Jacques LeGoff, Barbara Rosenwein, Lester Little and others have rightly turned attention to the dynamism of the growing urban and 38

See Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Religious Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 101–103. 39 Jitendra V. Singh, “Organizational Legitimacy and the Liability of Newness,” Administrative Science Quarterly 31 (1986), 171–193.

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commercial society of which the friars were part.40 The friars entered into the Order from the households of the urban patriciate. Their sources of finance and other support as members of mendicant communities came from the circles of wealth and enterprise that nurtured them in the households of their youth. Although it is widely asserted that men abandoned wealth and influence when they became Dominican friars, that view now seems quite far from the truth.41 A richer way of viewing the friars’ attitudes to their life and work admits that they took a keen interest in the development of a money economy, and not only to criticize or condemn it. Humbert of Romans, Thomas Aquinas and many other Dominican writers worked to reconcile old fears and prohibitions with the demands of the new commerce. Bernat Puigcercos, writing around 1342 as a friar resident in the Province of Aragon (he was at that time a former provincial prior and an active inquisitor), gave careful thought to the needs of lenders and borrowers without impulsively condemning all lending at interest. A leading Catalan Franciscan, Francesc Eiximinis, although best known for his theological tracts, likewise engaged in softening the debate on usurious and licit contracts some forty years later.42 The point is that we cannot set the Dominicans above their place and time. Openness to friends, family and patrons, and a mutuality of insider and outsider interests, defined their activities as much as adherence to their Order’s particular code of conduct. As we will see, the Order’s Rule and constitutions, and the leadership’s interpretations and augmentations in general and provincial chapter acts, protected some of the normative linkages between friars and their friends. 40 Jacques Le Goff, “Apostolat mendicant et fait urbain dans la France medieval,” Annales: Économies, societies, civilizations 23 (1968), 335–352; Rosenwein and Little, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities;” and Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy. 41 Lawrence, The Friars, 136. 42 Laureano Robles, “Bernardo de Puigcercos, O.P., Economía y Moral en la Edad Media,” Lizargas 2 (Valencia, 1970), pp. 109–126. Josep Hernando, El problema del crèdit i la moral a Catalunya (segle XIV), in La societat Barcelonina a la baixa edad media, ed., Carme Battle i Gallart and Josep Plana i Borràs (Barcelona, 1983), 113–136; and Josep Hernando, “Questio disputata de licitudine contractus emptionis et venditionis censualis cum conditione reverenditionis. Tratado sobre la licitud del contrato de compraventa de rentas personales y redimibles. Bernat de Puigcercos, O.P. (siglo IV),” Acta historica et archaeological mediaevalia 10 (1989), 9–87. Puigcercos made his profession into the Order of Preachers in 1290. By 1315 he served as Inquisitor General for Aragon. He held the office of Prior of Barcelona in 1321 and the office of Prior of the Province of Aragon from 1324 to 1333. He again served as an inquisitor in the 1320s and 1340s.

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The abundant evidence of slow growth is well-digested in the histories, although it is typically tailored to show how the Order conquered crises, hurdling obstacles along a straight path to mission progress. A brief look at even a few examples, setting aside the a priori assumption of an essential forward progress, suggests aspects of organizational growth and change that success stories do not easily incorporate, including set-backs and reversals, disputes requiring negotiated resolutions, and adaptation to changing conditions. The sources tell us very little about Dominic’s activities in the years between 1207 and 1215, that is from the moment that Diego returned to Spain (leaving Dominic in Languedoc to preach) up to the time when Bishop Fulk of Toulouse authorized as preachers in his diocese Dominic and the few men then attached to him.43 Some writers note with surprise the dearth of evidence from these important first years, although the explanation need not extend beyond the observation that Dominic’s activities at the time were of only local importance. In the context of the multiplicity of orthodox and heterodox individuals and groups seeking new routes to the apostolic life, Dominic’s activities seemed rather insignificant to his peers. Dominic had not attracted attention beyond Fulk’s diocese, and so what we know about his involvement is fragmentary. In sum, even friar-historians agree that the total of Dominic’s recorded efforts in those years have not added up to a coherent story because his activities were, in the words of one researcher, “not spectacular enough to attract the attention of chroniclers.”44 One of Dominic’s first activities, opening a house for women at Prouille in 1206, is well known, and often used to illustrate the founder’s ability to get things done, but it is seldom recalled that the house stagnated for several years and required resources that Diego, Fulk and Dominic garnered only with difficulty. Also absent from most accounts, or given a diminutive presence, is that the women Dominic had settled in a partner house at Fanjeaux had to be folded into the Prouille community, and another house for women at Toulouse, opened in 1215, failed to attract local resources and was shut by 1217.45 Dominic and 43 For a recent assessment of these years, see Simon Tugwell, “Schéma chronologique de la vie de saint Dominique,” in Domenico di Caleruega e la Nascita dell’Ordine dei Fratri Predicatori (Spoleto, 2005), 1–24, esp. 7–11. 44 Hinnebusch, History I, 27. 45 Marie Hyacinte Laurent, Historia diplomatica: S. Dominici. Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum 15 (1933), 67 and 78; discussed in Hinnebusch, History I, 39 and 98.

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his small group of committed adherents, faced with the huge problem of a local heresy having turned into an opportunity for political conquest, and with only Fulk’s inconsistent and limited assistance available to them, must have found their efforts to preach a message of charity and conversion extremely difficult. Just as resources did not immediately flow in abundance to Dominic during this “dark period of his career,” he did not easily gain confirmation of his plans for a new religious society.46 Despite the papacy’s recognition of the urgent need to develop new means of confronting heresy in Languedoc, Innocent III equivocated when Dominic and Bishop Fulk requested from him the establishment of an order of antiheresy preachers. There is much we do not know about why Innocent’s approval was delayed. He knew bishop Diego, who may have introduced the pope to Dominic as early as 1203. Dominic’s orthodoxy was not in question (his status as a cathedral canon living under a rule should have worked to his advantage, although why he did not feel obliged to return to his home environs, to his cathedral post, and to the stability presumed of cathedral canons remains a question that lingers). Even if Dominic did not have an earlier audience, Innocent certainly became aware of their mutual interests when he met him in 1215, and one would imagine that Fulk adequately advised Innocent of Dominic’s character, orthodoxy, and record of service. Still the pope demurred, and this even after he had extended privileges to admittedly riskier experiments in orthodox apostolic preaching. As mentioned, the almost concurrent initiative of Durandus of Huesca had gained Innocent’s support. The pontiff had already approved the activities of Francis of Assisi and his followers under the Regula Prima in 1210 when the apostolate of Francis, who like Waldes was another merchant’s son bent on threading the needle of doctrinal dangers, was a mere two years in the making. An observer at that moment might well have wondered whether Francis’ conversion had received sufficient testing since, however orthodox he was with respect to obedience to the dictates of the papacy, his methods still stood out as decidedly unconventional.47 Given his eagerness to probe the possibilities, Innocent’s hesitancy in Dominic’s case is 46 Augustus Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars, and other historic essays (New York, 1892), 23. 47 Kleinberg, Aviad M. Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1997).

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striking.48 Moreover, to magnify the “oddity” of this aspect of Dominic’s objective, Jordan of Pisa told his hearers in a commemorative sermon that when Dominic proposed an order of preachers, the Pope wondered to himself “Who is this man who wants to found an Order consisting entirely of bishops?”49 Kenneth Pennington recently pointed to the serious legal dilemma Innocent faced in admitting Dominic’s project. Simply put, granting Dominic a privilege for preaching beyond Fulk’s diocese would have violated fundamental principles of canon and common law.50 Innocent, who if nothing else was both judicious and mindful of law, could not lightly undertake such a move. Perhaps Innocent saw Dominic’s successes as too few and gained over too long a period to take the risk of approving a mission that was sure to raise the ire of other members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy (which, of course, it eventually did).51 Innocent, of course, was simultaneously engaged in preparing the Fourth Lateran Council, by any measure a major effort at political and administrative reconstruction and one that the pope probably saw as a more worthwhile means of redirecting pastoral energies than changing law and norms to suit the purposes of a single man. At the very least, Dominic’s long decade of obscurity as well as the inching progress he made toward confirmation of a rule and constitutions ought to dispossess us of the sophistic language of the inevitable advance of the friars. In addition, we might well imagine Dominic’s goals taking shape as a consequence of the Fourth Lateran rather than, as it traditional is told, those goals becoming catalysts for the Council’s edicts. Some observers might accept all of the period prior to 1216 as a prelude to the Order’s greatest achievements and thus begin to measure success only after Dominic and his brothers confirmed their activities under a rule. To do so makes a gloss of the reality as it existed 48 On Innocent III’s efforts to manage experiments in apostolic living in the lead up to the Fourth Lateran Council, see Maria Pia Alberzoni, “I nouvi Ordini, il IV concilio lateranense e i Mendicanti,” in Domenico di caleruega e la nascita dell’Ordine dei Fratri Predicatori (Spoleto, 2005), 39–89. 49 Simon Tugwell, ed., Early Dominican: Selected Writings (New York, 1982), 14. 50 Kenneth Pennington, “The Church from Pope Innocent III to Pope Gregory IX,” in Domenico di caleruega e la nascita dell’Ordine dei Fratri Predicatori (Spoleto, 2005), 25–37; 25. 51 Jordan of Saxony indicates that Dominic had only to return to his followers and, in consultation with them, agree upon a rule. Most friar-historians accept this reading, e.g., Hinnebusch, History I, 26–46,

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both before and after that arbitrary starting point. Dominic had to earn confirmation, and it seems that he did not easily make the case. Moreover, confirmation was not in itself a guarantee of survival and success. In the decades after receipt of the Rule, a range of questions of organizational structure, leadership and management came before Dominic and the first friars. They responded to these questions with difficulty. Early on, in fact, Dominic’s followers and supporters regarded some of their founder’s decisions with reluctance, even rejecting some of his schemes outright. A poignant example of some of the early difficulties of organizing the band of preachers comes in 1217, a few months after Honorius III granted approval to found an Order of Preachers. Dominic wished to send his friars away from Languedoc to major European centers, thus making theirs an international rather than a regional order. Not only were the friars resistant at the suggestion but Dominic’s financial sponsors strongly urged Dominic against it.52 According to testimony at his canonization, Dominic had to insist, barking: “Do not oppose me, since I know very well what I am doing.”53 Ultimately, as we know, Dominic’s gamble paid off, and friar-historians, using it to illustrate his inspired doggedness, have made it central to the story of the Order’s success.54 But the story and the way friar-historians have taken it up are strangely puzzling. Dominic’s determination in this situation as it has come down to us seems uncharacteristic, since in the few other testimonies we have about him he is portrayed as an inclusive decision maker, accommodating and often bending to disagreements, spending ample time in tearful prayer as decisions loom. The very real shock and disbelief at what transpired, from the perspective of those Dominic sent into the field, seems justified. Positive results from the early Dominican diaspora came slowly. Of two groups sent to Spain, the best that one could do was to establish a house for women at Madrid, and friars from the other group returned to Dominic with news of their 52 For the reticence of his followers see Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum 147 and 62, ed. Heribert C. Scheeben, MOPH 16, (Rome, 1935), 1–88; Petrus Ferrandus, Legenda Sancti Dominici 31, ed. Marie Hyacinthe Laurent MOPH 16 (Rome, 1935), 197–260; Constantine of Orvieto, Legenda Sancti Dominici 26, ed. Scheeben, MOPH 16 (Rome, 1935), 286–352; Lehner, Saint Dominic, 143–144. 53 Cited in Francis C. Lehner, Saint Dominic: Biographical Documents (Washington, 1964), 143–144. 54 William Hinnebusch, History I, 51.like other modern friar-historians, praised Dominic’s perspicacity, pinning the outcome on an argument for authority by asserting “saintly authority carried the day.”

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failure to secure a foothold. In Paris, where secular masters immediately viewed the new preachers with suspicion, the men Dominic sent there had to rent a house because they could get no one to offer them lodging.55 Initial doubts about Dominic’s wisdom in the matter of the Order’s early expansion out of Languedoc have parallels in other difficult situations Dominic faced early on. We know with some clarity that some of his followers and would-be followers, men and women, disagreed with him, gathering support for their dissent to the point that he conceded. When Dominic asked John of Navarre to travel to Paris, John flatly refused unless granted money for the trip. John’s “disobedience,” as Jordan of Saxony called it, was so sharp and persistent that Dominic, after falling to the young brother’s feet in prayer and with a profusion of tears, agreed to dispense the stipend John sought. John got his travel money.56 The Blessed Cecilia recalled an episode when the convent of St. Mary in Tempulo was transferred to Dominic’s authority in 1220: “From the beginning, all the nuns opposed the plan and absolutely refused to obey the Pope and Blessed Dominic in this matter.” Ultimately, it was persistent persuasion, not saintly authority, that convinced them.57 As we would expect, outcomes in these and other situations resulted from ongoing deliberations, including negotiated settlements about questions of leadership, finances, and objectives, all of which arguably contributed more to shaping the Order’s organizational structure and operating processes over the next decades than did a few decisive steps taken by a single authoritative founder. After eight-hundred years of depuration the early history of the Order of Preachers shines pretty brightly, but we can still see in a few fragments of evidence indications of the Order’s growing pains. One question that arose in 1219 had to do with the daily management of the Order’s properties and financial affairs. By this point the Dominicans had gained a foothold in several towns, including important university centers. Their numbers had increased, making ongoing management of daily affairs a complicated and time consuming business. Dominic proposed a remedy to relieve the clerics of the

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Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 49, 52 and 53. Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 51. 57 Cecilia of San Sisto, Miracula beati Dominici, in Miscellanea Pio Paschini, ed., A. Walz (Rome, 1949) 1: 306–326; cited in St. Dominic: Biographical Documents, ed. Francis C. Lehner (Washington, 1964), 160–162. 56

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responsibilities of internal community management that otherwise diverted their attention from study in preparation for preaching. He sought to put daily administration of buildings, food and finances, and other matters under the care of conversi, non-clerics who did not profess religious vows but who otherwise attached themselves to the life and work of the Order. Not only would placing quotidian responsibilities into the hands of lay brothers focus the corps of religious on their studies and preaching but it also would give observers an impression of the friars’ simplicity, something Dominican thought important as a strategic goal useful in drawing the attention of their potential constituency away from the poverty and humility of the Cathars and others who scorned wealth and clerical privilege. Dominic, however, failed to convince in this matter. The clerical followers refused to accede to his plan. Despite the potential gains for corporate mission, the brothers would not relinquish their interests in the management of the properties they were then accumulating.58 We should also recognize in this incident some of the first evidence of status differentiation within the Order’s ranks that pitted friars of one sort against those of another sort. More status differentiation and meritocratic ranking followed, with results that we will come to know in later chapters. The relationship of the first friars to personal and corporate property remained cozy, if already problematic, in the first years of Dominic’s nascent enterprise, to such an extent that the brothers sometimes heeded Dominic’s wishes to give something up for only as long as he was present to admonish them. At the proceedings for Dominic’s canonization, Stephen of Montferrat reported the founder’s response to a project to expand the dormitory at the convent of St. Nicholas in Bologna. Brother Rudolph, then overseeing the convent, had begun to increase the height of the brothers’ cells while Dominic was away. Upon his return, Dominic ordered Rudolph to stop the building project, which Rudolph did. The story surely served to illustrate Dominic’s love of poverty, except that when Stephen adds that the task remained unfinished while Dominic lived he sharply reminds us that 58

John Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers: A Revolution in Medieval Governance,” in Dominico di Caleguega e la Nascita dell’Ordine dei Fratri Predicatori (Spoleto 2005), 261–295, at 280–281, rightly argues that the set of circumstances and negotiations, which is almost but not entirely washed from the record, is more important than researchers have often made out. For the traditional reading, see M. H. Vicaire, Histoire de Saint Dominique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1957), II: 142–144. Phillip F. Mulhern, The Early Dominican Laybrother (Washington, DC., 1944), 23–28.

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Dominic’s presence was only a temporary barrier to the project’s completion.59 Some friar-historians insist on Dominic’s pervasive influence in these years.60 However, Dominic’s guiding presence, no matter how astute and spirit-filled, soon became just one among many competing foci of authority and decision as the friars established mechanisms for shared control. At the Order’s chapter meeting in 1220, the ongoing difficulties of building up the Order weighed so heavily on the founder that Dominic pleaded his ineffectiveness and sought to withdraw from leadership. Some observers have sought to excuse Dominic by pointing to an illness (of which there is no evidence).61 His followers refused to permit his resignation, perhaps in a show of gratitude, but they were also creating mechanisms for shared governance that effectively turned him into a figurehead. John Van Engen has recently made several points that make sense of the evidence. First, there was probably some effort to excise the episode from the record, since it appears in only two witness testimonies and even there only briefly. Second, at this point in 1220 Dominic was an aging canon regular in a new society of university men from Bologna and Paris; he may well have deemed his own organizational skills insufficient, regardless of his state of health. Third, those meeting in chapter arrived at the outcome by common agreement, not by unilateral decision. And fourth, the agreement resorted to a twelfth-century mechanism – the election of diffinitors (difinitores) who would act as a body of representative decision makers.62 After Dominic’s death, leadership of the Order, determined by election, came more to represent the varied and even competing interests of electors rather than the wishes of the founder. The men assembled in chapter 59 Dominic’s successor Jordan of Saxony renewed the building program and completed it in 1233. As Alban Butler and Paul Burns, Butler’s Lives of the Saints: February (Collegeville, MN, 1998), 135, put it: “The success of the priory of St. Nicholas necessitated expansion, and Jordan embarked on a course of building expansion.” In the record of his own testimony at Dominic’s Bologna canonization proceedings brother Rudolph makes no mention of the incident but, interestingly, tells a story, no doubt meant to be self-deprecating, in which Dominic once cautioned him against giving the men in his convent too much to eat. 60 Hinnebusch, History I, 81: “Buttressing Dominic’s authority was his extraordinary personal prestige. It had grown mightily during the three years that his ideas had proved their worth and the Order had expanded beyond all expectation. This sign of divine approval, coupled with his personal sanctity, called forth the loyalty of his sons.” 61 Hinnebusch, History I, 82–83; Vicaire, Histoire II, 206. 62 Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” 261–295.

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introduced a system of electoral offices giving interdependent authority and decision-making powers to universal, provincial, and local level governors and governing councils. On a Bumpy Road To the examples of the Dominican Order’s uncertain first years of growth we can add similar examples of troubled development during the Order’s adolescence, all indicating that the maturation of the Order did not proceed as smoothly as success story mythmakers would have us believe. From the very start of its corporate pilgrimage the Dominican Order traveled a bumpy road. Simon Tugwell has asserted the essential pragmatism of the first friars, a perspective that runs contrary to earlier insistence on inflexible adherence to a foundational legal apparatus. As he summarizes it, “the primacy of their apostolic job necessitated an unprecedented relativizing of the normal conventual and individual practices of piety.”63 Dominic understood that the spiritual explorations of the urban laity could not be undertaken within the existing framework of orthodox institutions and accepted means of expression. The Dominicans secularized religious expression, above all by reminding their own church hierarchy that the primary work of the apostles, and thus the true expression of Christian caritas, was to actively engage the world. The early friars could not realize their enjoyment of a new reading of charity without costs. It is well known that it brought them into conflict with their monastic colleagues. Less understood but no less important is that, while the new outlook helped define the Order and build a sense of camaraderie among its friars, the need to ‘relativize’ monastic obligations, that is to keep rules and practices flexible to new and changing conditions, created opportunities for internal conflict. Flexibility with respect to monastic obligations was not at all an obvious idea to historians within the Order of Preachers in the generations before Tugwell began his research, and many contemporary historians continue to avoid its radical implications. Douais insisted on an innate love of unity and order – a cocksure fiction in its application to the fourteenth century friars and, as this chapter argues, no less 63 Simon Tugwell, “The Dominicans,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright and Edward Yarnold, S.J., (Oxford, 1986), 296–300, at 297.

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a myth for those friars operative in the thirteenth-century. Mandonnet struggled with what he saw as a “dualism” implied in a religious order that mixed monastic contemplation with the active public enterprise of the preacher. Hinnebusch’s variant arranged active and contemplative functions in a “nice balance,” a rhetorically lovely but entirely implausible pretense. In contradistinction to these defensive assertions about how the early friars managed to harmonize contemplative and active aspects of their lives, Tugwell and others have admitted adaptability as an essential quality of the Order in its first decades. John Van Engen, demonstrating the transformation of a small body of canons regular into an international Order of Preachers, has called the required changes in thought, structure and action “revolutionary.” Not wanting to use the word lightly, he first offered one useful measure of the friars’ novel reassessment of the nature of communal religious association: even during Dominic’s lifetime the brothers had begun to think of their corpus as analogous to a guild; thus in cognition and practice they were driving towards operative structures and systems of authority and decision processes very unlike those found in traditionally hierocratic monastic establishments.64 Admitting that the limited record of the surviving copies of the early Rule and constitutions is sparse, Van Engen nonetheless discerned in the record a slow transformation, especially over the years from about 1220 into the 1250s, from a group of canons regular into an Order of Preachers. Papal approval had been predicated on Dominic’s acceptance of an already existing rule and customary, but within a period of thirty years, a series of emendations limited the monastic tenacity of those constitutional foundations and turned them into a legal apparatus distinctly open to the ambiguities of the preachers’ quest. The result, according to Van Engen: “They created a social and cultural world inside their convents quite unlike that ordinarily and previously found among professed religious.”65 The Dominican Order had grown from a loose society of likeminded canons regular into a large, dynamic and highly complex international religious corporation of a novel type offering a range of services to many sectors of a society that remained hungry for its

64 John Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers: Vitae as Life-forming exempla in the Order of Preachers,” in Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, 1998), 7–25. Pennington, “The Church,” 27–28, similarly, sees the friars’ corporate self recognition developing as a “collegium.” 65 Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” 277.

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talents. Tugwell and Van Engen agree that a new kind of order with a new kind of mission required new, malleable organizational structures and processes. Like all true revolutions, the one undertaken by the first Dominican friars was messy. When Dominic abdicated the leadership role his brothers set in motion processes very much beyond his control and design. They assessed a variety of available options, not all of them equally laudable from the perspective of long term success. The decision to embark on a path toward a new model of governance for religious communities opened up questions, many of which remained largely unresolved, including those regarding the relative weight of local, intermediate, and universal decision-making authority. By about 1250 Dominic’s successors had laid out a basic written regulative framework that would not undergo much change over an 800-year history; however, the interpretive functions and normative processes that activated the legislation in the real world of everyday operations remained open to interpretation, and also occasionally to circumvention.66 Rules mattered; but, of course, it was no less true then than now that rules are made to be broken. This is something that the Dominicans knew very well and that they applied in adaptive response to the uneasy relationship between the state of religion and the state of the world. In exploring anew the earliest period of the Order’s development, Van Engen discerned the operation of what he called “creative tensions.” These developed as follows: Innocent III, already resistant to imprudent experiments in apostolic living, imposed upon Dominic the legal obligation to fix his emergent organization upon a known rule. The preconditions of monastic precedent, as well as the recognized errors of other organizational entrepreneurs like Peter Waldo and others, imposed limits on how Dominic and his followers conceived of their organizational niche (they could not yet envision what they would become). Dominic complied with the pope and with the monastic precedents he knew best by adopting the Rule for Augustinian canons and borrowing a set of constitutions modeled on the customary for the monks of Premontré. These documents confirmed a monastic inheritance even as rapid changes in European politics and society opened up new possibilities. Dominic’s leadership energies waned

66 Pennington, “The Church,” treats the uneven and conflicted relationship between constitutional evolution and quotidian practice and procedure.

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just at the time that potential for new structures and practices were becoming apparent, thus leaving his followers to address for themselves a future separated from their founder and his founding documents. The Order took shape, then, in the context of a rapidly changing environment that encouraged a creative struggle between the old ways to which Dominic had attached the Order and the variety of new directions opening up to his followers. Tensions appeared, not because Dominican development was partial or incomplete, nor because the Dominicans resisted institutionalization, but because, given the variety of possibilities, consensus was not easily reached on important matters. As a result, the best the friars could do was to codify and normalize their own ambiguous and unsettled answers to a number of questions about governance. The questions lingered and the answers remained unresolved over the next three centuries.67 What are these creative tensions? One treats the relative decisionmaking powers of diffinitors and priors, that is, it captures the competition entered into by friars engaged in attempts at local and regional power sharing. Another encompasses the difficult question of obedience. Premonstratensian customs made contemplative canons obedient to superiors, but the general chapter of 1228 rewrote a provision of those customs to create a “giant proviso,” “a giant escape clause” that granted to priors of convents the power to dispense individual friars from ritual and other obligations. Another constitutional development, which made the whole of the Order’s legal system obligatory under penalty but not under sin, set the stage for a third set of contests. The Rule and constitutions, which in earlier monastic settings bound the monk by vow to divine law, now explicitly bound the friar only as an imperfect human actor within the temporal setting of the organization. Roughly speaking, a friar might receive a temporal penalty for breaking a rule, but he did not incur the heavier weight and pain of sin that only a sincere confession and absolution could resolve. Minor pricks of conscience need no longer inhibit. The Rule and constitutions became flexible instruments for the continuing process of organizing, not fixed features of an unchanging organization. As such they could facilitate the rapid expansion of the Order of Preachers in the middle decades of the thirteenth century. By not compelling the Order’s managers to stick to a single rigid plan, 67

Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” esp. 290.

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these and other features of Dominican organizational structure and process made the Order highly adaptable to changing conditions. However, as we will see in the following chapters, each of these “creative” tensions had their destructive capacities, creating controversy and, with the passage of time, allowing increasingly debilitating fissures in the Order’s institutional foundations. Administrative sources from the fourteenth-century very clearly illustrate the evolving destructive potential. They show friars and friar factions vigorously attempting to disrupt or fix the outcomes of elections. They show that after decades of customary liberality, dispensations became regularized, common and expected, but also recognized as abused and problematic from the perspective of the Order’s managers. Masters general, provincial priors and conventual priors, having delegated dispensatory powers to the subsidiary authorities who oversaw daily affairs in the locales (teaching masters, for example), found it difficult to quell their friars’ appetites for more numerous and more distasteful dispensations, and attempts by leaders to control dispensations led to acrimony. Releasing friars from the bond of sin for infractions of the Order’s regulations (to be discussed in detail later) had even richer implications. It broke the traditional relationship between personal adherence to community standards and divine punishment for nonconformity. We may assert that it gave the friars leave, without the sting of conscious, to more fully participate in the secularizing tendencies of their age. It also opened up room for criminal behavior, which moved adminsitrators, by way of reaction, to strengthen their conceptions of criminality and find additional means of social control. A Narrative Alternative From the perspective of many centuries it is certain that the Order of Preachers in its first decades did very well to survive and at times even prosper, expanding the ranks of its friars, growing in the number of its convents, gaining access to resources needed for growth. We can predicate all of this on the friars’ ability to meet the needs of constituent communities of Christian believers. Without doubt the first generations of friar preachers contributed to society in so many ways that they and their Order became the subjects of talk about their accomplishments, which became stories that substantially helped to manufacture some of the success they reported. Therefore, while it seems

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best to remain wary of some of the overblown aspects of the traditional narrative, we should still want to understand how the Order did so well in the thirteenth century. The question to examine next, then, considered from the perspective suggested earlier of success being an avoidance of failure is how we might construct a narrative in which the friars avoid their corporate diminution or demise. Three parts of such a narrative emerge from the sources and the historiographical record. The first treats the question of resources, the second looks at competitive advantage, and the third draws attention to the openness of the Order’s leaders to expanding the range of its services. I will attend to these briefly here so that we can move expeditiously to the concerns of friars in the fourteenth century. The first line of argument in an avoidance-of-failure narrative gives primacy to the papacy and leaders of other social and political institutions – kings and bishops, royal and noble families – in promoting and defending the friars in their work. Innocent III was not entirely convinced that resources directed to Dominic and his followers would be well spent, but Honorius III and his immediate successor showed no such hesitation. Kenneth Pennington has argued that Honorius was fully aware that by approving an order of preachers he was inviting trouble that he and his successors would have to avert. Honorious, and Gregory IX after him, worked hard to promote the Dominicans, along with the Franciscans, and did so in the face of serious opposition. The two popes had their own interests in mind, which included drawing recalcitrant bishops, and secular princes too, into a centralized and increasingly bureaucratic vision of papal plenitudo potestatis, in part to further extend the reach of projects like crusades and campaigns against heresy, but also to increase the Church’s pastoral presence. The two popes who did so much to put the Dominicans in the vanguard rewarded them for their services by extending to the young Order numerous introductions and recommendations, legal authorities and privileges, and dispensations from law and custom. This “papalist ecclesiology” was a joint project of lawyer popes and mendicant intellectuals aimed at exploiting weaknesses in the Church’s regulative apparatus that would permit the papacy to gain a foothold against bishops and others who underperformed in their pastoral duties or who showed too little deference to Rome.68

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Absent such support the friars could not have advanced their mission without putting themselves in a very weak position against very powerful enemies. The antagonisms engendered by the joint venture are well-known. Bishops and parish clergy, the Church’s traditional pastors, who had good moral, political, and economic reasons for their suspicions and jealousies, saw the friars as competitors almost from the moment of the Order’s inception. The friars usurped clerical functions and in some cases their papal privileges permitted them to avoid local episcopal oversight. The papacy often came to the friars’ defense, frequently with the result of increasing the capability of the Dominicans to penetrate more deeply where resistance was fiercest, further angering seculars and even non-mendicant regulars, who felt the loss of their former status and prerogatives.69 As C.H. Lawrence summarized it: “Papal support saved the mission of the friars; and they in turn made themselves the foremost exponents of the papalist ecclesiology of the thirteenth century.”70 The Order similarly cemented its relations with royal supporters in Aragon and elsewhere at the same time following similar processes of mutual supportiveness. Beyond the royal houses, top layers of the nobility as well as laypersons of lesser social status also entered into their own bargains with the friars. Organization ecology theorists would concur that the mutual benefits of these relations came at a propitious time for the Order, but they would add that cooperation with the papacy, kings, and others came with uncomfortable compromises. Mutual support at times turned to unhealthy dependency, or to the Order’s leaders being limited to choosing among bad options. Evidence of the costs of reciprocity is abundant, if not yet organized along these lines. For instance, in the face of determined pressure against the friars spearheaded by a delegation sent by the University of Paris to the pope, Innocent IV was forced to backpedal, as often happens when one side or another begins to have doubts about the political expediency of its reciprocal relationships. Innocent issued Etsi Animarum in 1254, which limited the Order’s privileges and for which, some mendicant legends hold, he paid with

69 For recent discussion, see Michael Bailey, “Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages,” Church History 72 (2003), 457–483, and John Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as a Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986), 519–552; esp. 550. 70 Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 267.

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his life, suffering paralysis and dying within three weeks in part as a result of the mendicants’ prayers against him.71 The bull initiated a period of greater balance and temperance (one might call it waffling) in papal dealings with the friars. This kind of unsteady mutuality in the relationship between friars and the papacy became an insidious institutional problem for the Dominicans into the fourteenth century. It increased as the trajectory of the Order’s achievements and failures began to mirror the papacy’s own strengths and weaknesses. A second line of research toward an alternative narrative will see that the Dominicans engaged in both cooperative collusion with and competitive struggle against their Franciscan brothers in a strained relationship admitting its own controversies and disabilities. The two mendicant orders emerged within eight years of each other, with Francis’s Rule approved in 1209 and the first papal privilege to Dominic awarded at the end of 1216. Although historians do not uniformly agree on which features of structure and practice proceeded from one order to the other, there is no disputing cross-fertilization. Hugolino of Ostia, first as cardinal and later as Pope Gregory IX, was especially helpful to both orders and saw to it that the founders of both orders were identified as saints during his pontificate, soon after their deaths and after relatively short canonization proceedings. After Dominic’s canonization in 1234, the two orders each celebrated the feast day of the other in their liturgies.72 The two organizations, taken together, can be said to have shared many of the features associated with duopolies, including working together to deflect the criticism of their critics, controlling the distribution of resources to rivals, and restricting competitors’ access to a market for their spiritual goods. A letter produced jointly in 1255 by John of Parma, the Franciscan Minister General, and Humbert of Romans, the Dominican Master General, urged the friars of each order to act toward members of the other with peace and in unity, thus admitting that individual friars or convents found themselves in conflicts with counterparts in their partner institution while also confirming cooperation at the highest levels of administration for the purpose of quelling internecine rivalry so that each entity could defend itself 71 Brett, Humbert of Romans, 19–26; Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (New York, 1906) 1: 284–285. 72 O’Carroll, “The cult and liturgy of St. Dominic,” 580.

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against their mutual enemies. The timing of the letter indicates its importance as part of a strategic response by both orders to contradict the limitations set upon them by Innocent IV.73 In the following decades the leaders of the two orders colluded to limit the viability of competing mendicant and preaching groups. These efforts culminated in 1274 in an edict issued at the Council of Lyons (Humbert of Romans, then a former Master General of the Dominican Order, advised Gregory X in the Council’s preparations).74 The Dominican and Franciscan orders had won the mendicant niche and, as a consequence, the Friars of the Sack and the Pied Friars died a slow death of resource starvation and the Carmelites and Augustinian friars survived only by accepting severe and long-lasting limits on their operations. What occurred in these years was a kind of corporate fratricide.75 In the same period the two orders competed against each other for recruits and public prominence.76 There existed plenty of room for ambiguity in the space between competition and collusion, as we can see in the way artists for the two orders produced rival portraits of the two founders. The sixth image in the Saint Francis cycle attributed to Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337), completed between 1297 and 1300 in the upper church of San Francesco at Assisi, depicts one of the best known stories of Saint Francis told by his early followers. Taking up more than half of the image on its right side is Innocent III in his bed chamber. He sleeps, clothed in a red and 73 Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium O.P., ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, MOPH V (Rome: 1900), 25–31. 74 Lawrence, The Friars, 158–159. R.W. Emery, “The Second Council of Lyons and the Mendicant Orders,” Catholic Historical Review 39 (1953–54): 257–271. 75 Larry Simon, “The Friars of the Sack and the Kingdom of Majorca” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992), 279–296. R.W. Emery, “The Friars of the Blessed Mary and the Pied Friars,” Speculum 26 (1948), 228–238. And recently, Frances Andrews, The Other Friars: The Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack, and Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (New York: 2006). 76 Ralph Bennett, The Early Dominicans, 143–144 briefly treats both the rivalry and cooperation between the two orders. The evidence has not been systematically collected. Some examples of the controversies between the two orders are well-known. E.g., Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 149–152 and n. 160–162; A.G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford, 1892), appendix III; Hinnebusch, History I, 321–326. The two orders did not confine their collusion and competition to the first centuries. For examples in the events and historiography of new world missions see, for example, the approach taken by Juan de Mata, O.P., Santoral de las dos santissimas patriarcas, y hermanos, nuestros padres Santa Domingo y San Francisco, y de los santos de entrambas sagradas religiones (Granada, 1635); Víctor Balaguer, Los frailes y sus conventos: su historia, su descripción, sus tradiciones, sus costumbres, su importancia (Mexico, 1883); and Luis Weckman, La herencia medieval de México I (Mexico, D.F., 1983), 199–396.

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gold mantle with his mitered head resting on a green pillow. Two bearded men sit cross-legged on the floor beside him, either praying or sleeping or perhaps a bit of both. The image’s left side depicts the pontiff ’s dream. In it, Francis of Assisi supports the Lateran Basilica upon his right shoulder as it seems to fall toward him. He appears to carry the weight effortlessly. The image is well known, often reproduced as iconic of Francis’s utility for the Church: in the years when Innocent III struggled most vigorously to repair the breakdown of traditional ecclesiastical institutions, Francis saved the Church from a catastrophic collapse. Less appreciated is an almost identical image, of no lesser quality from a didactic or propagandistic perspective, housed in the Museo di Capodimonte di Napoli. In the rival image, painted by Andrea di Bonaiuto perhaps seventy years after Giotto’s painting of Francis, Dominic takes the place of Francis in the same dream. We see the same reclining Innocent, and the same seated lazy attendants, but Dominic, not Francis, comes to Innocent’s aid to save the Church from collapse.77 Benozzo Gozzoli and Fra Angelico produced similarly comparable rival images depicting the same scene, and with the same switching of the protagonists, in the mid fifteenth century.78 The supposed meeting of the founders of the two great mendicant orders has similarly become the subject of rival depictions. Benozzo Gozzoli’s portrait of the meeting between Francis and Dominic, painted in 1452, offers a particularly sharp example of continuing ambiguities in the perception of the relationship between the two orders. Here Francis and Dominic hold each other in a vigorous embrace, which for modern Dominican writers exemplifies the respect each saint showed his saintly adversary, although whether the embrace is a loving one or one meant to recall athletes at the start of a wrestling match is not immediately discernable from the posture and visage of each of the two saints.79 The aforementioned image of a donkey revering the host, illustrated on a panel depicting the miracles of St. Dominic from 77 Mariella Utili and Nicola Spinosa, Museo di Capamonte (Milan: Touring Editoriale, 2002) and in the Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, André Vauchez, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) offer image reproductions. 78 Gozolli’s 1452 fresco remains on the wall of the Apsidal chapel of San Francesco at Montefalco. Fra Angelico’s image from about two years later, almost identical except that Dominic is its subject, currently resides at the Louvre. 79 Peter Totleben, O.P., “The Virtues of St. Thomas: Affability,” Dominican Review 3 (Washington, D.C., 2008).

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the church of San Miguel de Tamarite (Huesca), dated to the first third of the fourteenth century and now at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, attributes to Dominic a miracle that early Franciscans attributed to St. Anthony of Padua.80 When sought out, many such duplicate images will be forthcoming to show the two orders in their tug-o-war. To the well-timed and carefully targeted support by popes and others, and to a strategic collusive cooperation with the Franciscans that came with peak moments of competitive spirit, we can add a third feature that explains how the Dominican Order surmounted the liabilities of its youth: the openness of Dominican friars and their leaders to expanding the range of their products and services. Some observers have defined the Order by its preaching, but for the friars pastoral care encompassed much more. As the first generations of friars attended to the daily business of preaching they wove themselves and their Order more and more integrally into the fabric of medieval lay society. Moving well beyond their image of beggar-preachers, the care of souls became more broadly defined to include roles for the friars as promulgators and explicators of law, as agents of anti-heresy inquisitions, as diplomats and international missionaries.81 Each of these efforts helped to strengthen Christian identity and purpose and, in turn, distinguished the Order in a way that drew to it more attention and resources. The friars have also been credited, with hyperbole too often substituting for fact, with leading the Marian and Corpus Christi movements, supporting fraternal associations, and directing conversion campaigns targeted at Jews and Muslims. Taking all of these developments in sum, scholars have recognized the Order’s essential adaptability, but they have done less to consider the costs of such mission plasticity. The friars eagerly extended the range of their products and services, reaching deep into established markets and opening up new ones; but corporations have been known to suffer from too much of a good thing, leaving for us questions that deserve more attention about when and how the friars overextended themselves.82

80 Paulino Rodríguez Barral, La Imagen del Judio en la España Medieval: El conflicto entre cristianismo y judaísmo en las artes visuales góticas (Barcelona, 2009), 180–181. 81 Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” 284; Lawrence, The Friars, esp. 102–126 and 177–201. 82 William P. Barnett and John Freeman, “Too Much of a Good Thing? Product Proliferation and Organizational Failure,” Organizational Science 12 (2001), 539–558.

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In its first century the Order had a share in the problems and potentials of growth that any corporate endeavor faces in its infancy and adolescence. Despite assertions of the Order’s unique purpose in a divinely ordered world, its emergence and development, its struggle to survive within its given environment, followed a path not unlike the uneven road traversed by other organizations in other times and places. Because the principal focus of this book is not the Order’s first century, but its second, a period of its maturation and senescence, I will close this chapter in order to move directly into that later troubled period, leaving plenty of thirteenth- to fourteenth-century continuities to be explored as we proceed.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CONTENTIOUS BIRTH OF A NEW PROVINCE Procedural tensions, institutional instability, and degrees of uncertainty having roots reaching far back into the Order’s first years complicate the generalizations some historians have made about a decline in the Order of Preachers beginning near the opening of the fourteenth century. In the previous chapter I sought to illustrate positive, negative, and progress-neutral manifestations of growth and change. Difficult decisions, uncertain prospects, and unanticipated outcomes were as much a part of the organization’s essential condition from its start as were the determination of saintly leaders, the thrill of some friars’ achievements, and the prospect of new mission possibilities. Turning away for the moment from our previous interest in pointing to continuities, the present chapter begins by identifying an event that marks an important break; here is an alternate starting point. The Province of Aragon began its operational life when the Order’s leaders carved it away from the Province of Spain in 1301. For friars in the new province, the start of the fourteenth century offered a new beginning eighty years into the Order’s history. Nonetheless, efforts by the province’s managers to take advantage of the opportunity fell short when undermined by the habits and expectations their own men, friars like those that Nicolau Rossell would at mid-century derogate as a dangerous brood of vipers breaking away from the mother who nurtured them. Settling the First Friars The factors at play in the long struggle leading to the division of the Province of Spain are not well-recorded, although what remains in chronicles and chapter acts hints at a very contentious process, one that has much to tell us about the nature of broader conflicts in the Order at large. The subject of this chapter is the birth in controversy of the Province of Aragon. The first wave of men sent out by Dominic in 1217 included two groups who went to the Iberian Peninsula to establish convents there. Michael of Ucero and Dominic of Segovia returned to Bologna to

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report utter failure in their effort to find a place for the Order in Spain. The progress of Suero Gomez and Peter of Madrid barely surpassed that of their brothers. The friars’ apparently feeble advance into the Iberian Peninsula has given rise to disagreements about why the region did not produce more and faster results for the Order. Dominic, after all, was Castilian, born to a noble family of Calaruega. Why would he not have taken special interest in his homeland? Dominic made a trip through the region from 1218 into 1219, which included stops at Burgos, Segovia, and Compostela, where convents opened to local aspirants in those years or soon thereafter.1 On the same trip, Dominic also visited Zaragoza, an important urban center within the Kingdom of Aragon. From early on chroniclers have disagreed about the date of founding of the Zaragoza convent, some crediting brothers Suero and Peter, others seeing it as a direct outcome of Dominic’s visit. The house was almost certainly in operation by 1219.2 Barcelona’s convent opened perhaps a year earlier, or maybe in the same year or the next, likely under very different impetus.3 Some historians have deemed the opening of so few convents a meager result and have offered a range of explanatory suppositions: Iberia possessed few towns interesting enough to attract the attention of mendicant preachers looking to concentrate their efforts in urban settings; peninsular towns lacked merchant and aristocratic classes sufficiently strong and stable to offer consistent support to fledgling associations of friars; local ecclesiastical authorities saw greater success than their French or Italian counterparts in resisting the friars’ advance; local potentates invested too heavily in the politics of extraction and extortion to take much interest in making grants to newcomers. Robin Vose, offering a summary, recently opined that “Spain remained something of a backwater for the Order when compared with centers of activity such as France or Italy.”4 1 Jordan of Saxony, Libellus, 59 records Dominic’s visit to Segovia, and indicates that he preached to a large crowd there. 2 Rosa María Blasco Martinez, “Contribución a la Historia del Convento de Predicadores de Zaragoza a través de los Apuntes del Maestro Fray Tomás Domingo 1219–1516,” in Cuadernos de Historia Jerónimo Zurita 23–24 (1970–71), 7–122; 10–15. 3 On foundation historiographies of the Barcelona and Zaragoza convents, see Rosa Maria Blasco Martínez, Socoiologia de Una Comunidad Religiosa, 1219–1516 (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico,” 1974), 8–12. Vose, Dominicans, Muslim and Jews, 63, on the supposed involvement of Bishop Berenguer de Palou. 4 Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 60.

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Despite peninsular peculiarities, the pace of the Order’s growth there may not be so far out of step with events elsewhere that it warrants such deprecation.5 In the first instance, as Vicaire admitted, any attempt to pinpoint foundation dates is fraught by limited evidence, a problem often compounded by dense layers of unsubstantiated claims for one convent’s priority over another. On this question comparative ventures lead to uncertainty. This caveat applies to many convents in all regions before about mid-century.6 Second, the conditions of urban growth and political developments on the Iberian peninsula require their own consideration. At the time of the coming of the friars a ribbon of towns had already grown up along a course from Barcelona northwest to Zaragoza, Jaca, and Pamplona, and from there west through Burgos to Compostela. The expansion of these towns came as a consequence of changes that occurred over the course of the previous two centuries: population growth, Reconquest successes including the extension of Cluny’s militarized frontier monasteries, and increased travel along the pilgrimage route to the shrine of Saint James in the extreme northwest. Given other developmental factors, especially the slower military expansion and population settlement in the interior, towns elsewhere in the peninsula remained remote, more precariously situated, and less densely settled. At the time of Dominic’s return to Spain in 1218 Burgos already had the presence of a regional capital and Barcelona had already begun to concentrate its reserves of political capital and mercantile energy, on the way to becoming the dominant central place of the northeast. The regional centrality of both locations probably limited the mission needs and resource attractiveness of other towns on the peninsula into which the friars might have ventured.7 The foundation of a convent at Barcelona came early and, 5

García-Serrano, Preachers in the City, 28–30. Vicaire, St. Dominic and His Times, 508, n. 58, describes the difficulty of unraveling foundation histories in this way: the documents that might permit production of a chronology of the earliest foundations are missing; there existed no canonical procedure to declare a convent founded, nor was there an administrative-judicial body to make such a declaration; scholars debate whether a convent’s founding begins with a mission contingent arriving in the city or town, a few friars installing themselves in a place, or, perhaps as in the case of Barcelona, after friars erect or adopt a church. At the earliest, the houses at Barcelona and Zaragoza were launched at the time of Dominic’s return from Madrid to Rome in 1219. 7 On the evolution of medieval Barcelona as a central place, see Stephen Bensch, Barcelona and its Rulers, 1096–1291 (Cambridge, 1995), 23–39. On central place theory in its general application to medieval towns, see David Nicholas, Urban Europe 1100–1700 (New York, 2003), 24–33. 6

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thus, regardless of the exact timing in comparative terms, its early arrival must have seemed significant to the first friars. Moreover, given Dominic’s initial mission of restoring misguided followers of heresy to the Catholic Church, faster expansion into areas like southern France and northern Italy, where heresy presented itself as a most urgent threat, would likely have seemed the greater priority. It was a convenient matter of concurrence that populations of students and clerics at Paris and Bologna showed special receptivity to Dominic’s personal appeal. In as much as Dominican convents in almost all locales needed the cooperation, if not the direct sponsorship, of local potentates, an expansionary Dominican Order into the Iberian northeast encountered a significant difficulty: prior to the 1220s the count-king of Aragon was in no position to offer assistance. In the years when friars first settled in Barcelona and Zaragoza, James I, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, had not yet become “the Conqueror” that history, including his own telling of it, would make of him. He was, in fact, still a boy, only recently released (in 1218) from the ‘protection’ imposed upon him by the Templars at Monzon after the death of his father at Muret in 1213. Following a tendentious regency, the young ruler had come into the nominal possession of lands beset by untrustworthy advisers and rapacious barons.8 From the perspective of the first friars thinking carefully about where to invest the resources of their nascent organization, rapid expansion in the Iberian Peninsula may have seemed imprudent. Despite the likelihood that the region was not at the top of the Order’s agenda for foundations, by 1220 the Order could count establishments at Madrid, Segovia, Palencia, Compostela, Zamora, Barcelona and Zaragoza.9 In that year Dominic convened the Order’s first general chapter. Upon gathering his men together Dominic admitted his limitations and offered to remove himself from direct supervision of followers in far-flung convents. The brothers refused, although 8 Historia de España, 43 vols. Menendez Pidal, ed. (Madrid, 1990) II: 97–101; Thomas Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford, 1986), 58–63. 9 On the possible foundation dates of these convents, see García-Serrano, Preachers, 26–30 and Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 62–63. Vicaire, St. Dominic and His Times, 254–257, asserts the seniority of Segovia. The Madrid house, already in operation by 1218, converted to a female house in 1219; thereafter, Segovia became the first male fraternity on the peninsula.

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Dominic’s hesitation made it clear to them that they had to conceive of an administrative apparatus that would survive their founder, one that would include a schema for layers of administrative bureaucracy capable of managing anticipated growth. Thus the Order’s second general chapter of 1221, over which Dominic presided (since delegates to the first chapter refused to permit his resignation), combined into regional groupings, called provinces, convents that up to that point had been subject only to the supervision of local conventual priors and, beyond them, to Dominic himself. Among these territorial and jurisdictional subdivisions was the Province of Spain. In total the chapter created either five or eight provinces, depending on how one wants to read the sparse evidence.10 The same general chapter that first defined a provincial structure also created the office of provincial prior, whose duty it was to undertake those administrative duties put between local priors’ responsibilities over individual convents and Dominic’s leadership of the universal order (later the leadership of the master general). The general chapter of 1221 made several significant changes to corporate governance. Among them, it established rules for the election and conduct of provincial priors. It also established the system whereby local priors and elected representatives cooperated with the provincial prior as diffinitors in deliberating and authorizing new policy and practice at provincial chapters convened annually.11 There is evidence at this point against awarding peninsular convents backwater status. Dominic and those meeting with him in chapter ranked the provinces, so that, at subsequent annual general chapter meetings, representatives from provinces with the oldest convents took seats closest to the master general. Spain, with Suero Gomez as its first provincial, took 10 The number of provinces created in the first round is a matter of minor controversy. Galbraith follows Bernard Gui, “Notitia Provinciarum et Domorum Ordinis Predicatorum,” ed. Wailly, Delisle and Jourdain, Receuil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France XXIII (Paris, 1876). The Notitia Provinciarum is Gui’s detailed history of the Province of Provence, which he served as provincial prior. He claimed that the 1221 general chapter created eight provinces. Vicaire, Histoire II, 206, admits Gui’s guidance as a “conscientious scholar” but, lacking evidence to substantiate Gui’s claims, confirms the establishment in 1221 of only five provinces. Hinnebusch, History I, 82–83, follows Vicaire in the view that only five provinces were launched in 1221, but asserts, without evidentiary support, that seven others were “projected.” L. Getino, “Capitulos provinciales y priores provinciales de la Orden de S. Domingo en España,” La ciencia tomista 13 (1916), 91–94, examines the early expansion of convents and provincial administration within the young Province of Spain. 11 Hinnebusch, History I, 92–93.

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pride of place at general chapter meetings, holding the first chair at the right hand of the master general. The Province of Spain became the first among equals, assuming a voice more proximate than others to the ear of the master general. From this date, the operative procedures of the Order’s general and provincial chapters were representative, although not egalitarian.12 Following upon Dominic’s effective recruiting efforts, especially in Bologna, Reginald of Orleans, Roland of Cremona, Jordan of Saxony and others soon brought hundreds and then thousands of new men into the Order. With growth in the numbers of friars came new and more widely distributed convents, and given its continued territorial expansion, the general chapter of 1228 created new jurisdictions, so that it recognized twelve provinces in total.13 In creating the new provinces the 1228 chapter determined that in the future the vote of each new, junior province at general chapters would equal only one-half the vote of a senior province.14 The geographic boundaries of the provinces remained so extensive as to encompass all of Europe and Palestine, including very large areas in which the friars had not yet established convents. In hindsight, the creation of a few very large and vaguely delineated provinces contributed to a number of difficulties, including those that gave rise to the dissent within the Province of Spain that both encouraged calls for its division and that complicated attempts to bring such division to fruition. The years around mid-century saw fast growth in the number of convents in Iberia. By 1250, the Province of Spain, from which the Province of Aragon would later emerge, was home to no less than twenty convents. These were spread across the peninsula from Compostela and Lisbon to Zaragoza and the island of Majorca.15 In the realms of the Crown of Aragon in Iberia’s northeast, friars settled first at Zaragoza and Barcelona, where they began almost immediately to argue about

12 Galbraith Constitution, 93–97. Bernard Gui, De fundatione et prioribus conventuum provinciarum Tolosanae et provinciae ordinis praedicatorum, ed. P.A. Amargier (Rome, 1961), 183–184, recognized the relative status of old and new provinces. 13 Galbraith, Constitution, 97–102; Vicaire, St. Dominic and His Times, 361–363; and Hinnebusch, History I, 92–93. 14 See Galbraith, Constitution, 93 and Hinnebusch, History I, 173. 15 These are listed in the acta of the provincial chapter of 1250, held at Toledo. Acta capitulorum provincialium ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum: Première Province de Provence, Province Romaine, Province d’Espangne, 1239–1302, ed. Celeste Douais (Toulouse, 1894), 611–612.

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which convent could claim the earliest establishment.16 As James I consolidated and expanded his territories, adding the Island of Majorca and the Kingdom of Valencia by military conquest, Dominican establishments followed in lock step: Lerida in 1229, Majorca in 1231, Valencia in 1238. Tarragona, Gerona, Calatayud and Huesca all gained convents in 1253 or 1254. Pamplona and Estella, in Navarre, hosted Dominican friars by 1242 and 1259 respectively.17 By 1250, five Dominican friars had won the region’s most prized bishoprics: Pere de Centelles (Barcelona, 1241), Bernat de Mur (Vic, 1243), Berenguer of Castelbisbal (Valencia, 1238; Gerona, 1245); Andrew de Albalat (Valencia, 1248); Guillem de Barberan (Lerida, 1248). That friars had laid claim to these five handsome prizes by mid century is an indication of the Dominican Order’s vigor in the region despite relatively few houses, or perhaps because it had done well to concentrate its efforts. Just before the breakup of the Province of Spain in 1301, a total of thirty one convents had opened across the peninsula (including, in the territories of the Crown of Aragon, Urgell in 1273, Puigcerda in 1288, and Jativa by 1291).18 By contrast, at century’s end the provinces of France, Provence, Rome, Lombardy, and England all possessed comparatively more convents, by an additional ten or more in each case. This leaves us with a bit of a puzzle. On the one hand, expansion of the Province of Spain when compared to other provinces seems lacking; on the other hand, by the middle of the thirteenth century the Dominican Order in the part of Iberia that would become the Province of Aragon 16 At the earliest, the houses at Barcelona and Zaragoza were launched at the time of Dominic’s return from Madrid to Rome in 1219. Diago, Historia, 104r declares the Barcelona convent founded in 1219 on the grounds that the convent was already three years old when Ramón de Peñafort took the habit there in 1222. Another Dominican memory has Bishop Berenguer of Palou initiating the activity that eventuated in a Barcelona convent. However, the bull Episcopus Servus, issued by Honorius III to aid the friars’ entry into a new locale, was not presented to Berenguer de Palou, the bishop of Barcelona, until 1222. Diago copies the bull at f. 105r. 17 José Goñi Gaztambide, Historia Eclesiástica de Estella, 3 vols. (Pamplona, 1990) II: 23–80, especially 23–38. Vose, Dominicans, Muslim and Jews, 73–75. 18 Before 1300 the convent at Puigcerda disappeared from the roster of convents in the Province of Aragon and thereafter pertained to the Province of Provence. An assignment in the 1294 acta of Provence at Montpellier placed friar Ger. Palherii at “Conventui Podio cerdani.” See Douais, Acta, p. 384. For the location of Puigcerda within Catalan territory, see Bisson, Medieval Crown, 43. The Puigcerda convent was home to one of the few surviving mid-fourteenth-century frescos from a convent in the Catalan region, now at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. For a reproduction and brief description, see the exhibition catalogue Medieval Catalonia (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura, 1992).

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had begun to reach “a zenith of its influence” just as the Crown of Aragon under James I the Conqueror and his progeny was flexing the mercantile muscle that would make Barcelona the heart of a Mediterranean empire.19 At the very least the Dominican Order had a stake in three very important port cities – Barcelona, Valencia, and Majorca – each of which, most especially the first, became and then remained for centuries a powerhouse in political and inquisitorial affairs as well as in mission efforts. Desire for Change Local conversations about subdivision of provinces appear in the sources as early as 1250. In that year the chapter acts of the Province of Provence record an interest in petitioning the general chapter to consider division of territories.20 Whether members of that chapter had division of their own province or another in mind is not clear.21 General chapters appear to have ignored the request until 1266, when an inchoatio, the first in a three-stage deliberative process was begun to consider the need to divide some provinces, among them the Province of Spain.22 What brought Master General John of Vercelli and the chapter diffinitors to their decision at that time cannot be discerned in its details. William Hinnebusch insisted that discussions were guided by purely administrative factors. As evidence he pointed to the system of vicariates. In some provinces several vicars assisted the provincial by visiting and providing oversight to geographically proximate subsets of convents. For a short time the vicariates served as a remedy to the problems created by growth but, so the argument goes, inefficiencies in management and decision making required territorial subdivision as a longer term solution.23 Very fast growth by mid-century in the number

19

Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 73. Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 41. 21 It would not be until 1305 that division of the Province of Provence produced the Province of Toulouse. 22 For an overview of the division of the province of Spain, see Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20, 238–239. Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis Praedicatorum, ab anno 1220 usque ad annum ad annum 1303, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, MOPH III (Rome, 1898): 238 and 249; Galbraith, Constitution, 97. Celedonio Fuentes, Episcopologio Dominicano de Valencia (Valencia, 1925), 15–74. 23 Hinnebusch, History I, 173–174, insists the division of provinces was purely a matter of improving administrative efficiency, and 93, that Dominic and the 1221 20

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of houses within each province certainly exacerbated the difficulties of provincial administration, especially the provincial’s oversight of discipline and mission. The emphasis on administrative efficiency is not satisfactory. From a purely operational perspective, division need not be seen as the most efficient reorganization outcome. One can imagine large concentrations of men and convents producing economies of scale, leading, for instance, to the most effective distribution of courses in convent schools and to cost-saving reductions in teacher-to-student ratios. In truth, the sources offer no guidance about whether the Order’s managers turned their discussions to any question of rational assessment of objectively identified criteria; nothing in the record explicitly suggests forethought about managerial or bureaucratic-structural gains. Various sources indicate that the brothers sought a territorial rearrangement that they would find better and more useful, a vague indicator of a broad range of disagreements. One can imagine, as Hinnebusch appears to have done, that growth contributed to inefficiencies because more convents meant more disputes over preaching territories, more disagreements about the division of resources, and similar matters.24 In ways not dissimilar to the settlement of disagreements between convents about preaching rights, which had to be settled by delineating preaching “limits” between convents, the process for provincial division was clearly contentious, with the rule being argument and negotiation rather than passive and neutral bureaucratic response to the numerical growth of friars and convents. Arguments over the identification of provincial boundaries encompassed concerns that included nationality, relative status and the distribution of resources.25 Juan Antonio Llorente, who served as secretary to Spanish inquisitors early in the nineteenth century and then became one of the fiercest anti-inquisition and anti-Dominican writers, saw the territorial division of the Province of Spain as less than entirely amicable. In drawing a relationship between the division of the Spanish province and the chapter established the geographic boundaries of the first provinces a matter of administrative convenience having nothing whatsoever to do with ecclesiastical, national or linguistic factors. Here he appears to follow Daniel A. Mortier, Histoire des Maîtres Généraux de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, 3 vols. (Paris, 1905) II: 383. 24 On the “territorial problem” of preaching limits, see Hinnebusch, History I: 267–272. 25 Robles Sierra, Actas, EV 20 (1990), 238, indicates “las inquietitudes religiosas, intelectuales y apostólicas plantearon….”

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work of the medieval Dominican Order’s Spanish inquisitors, he noted that thirteenth-century pontiffs and the Order’s masters general gave to Castilian Dominicans “preference and domination” over inquisitions on the peninsula out of respect for Dominic of Guzman’s Castilian heritage, but as discussions about division advanced, the question of inquisitorial authority in the divided territories became pressing: to which part, the shrunken Province of Spain or the projected Province of Aragon would belong the papal and royal privileges accorded to inquisitors and their friar-assistants?26 Llorente was correct in asserting that leaders of the projected Province of Aragon, pointing to precedents leading back to 1246 that gave inquisitorial powers to Catalan and Aragonese friars, would not easily forego the rights and prerogatives that came with managing inquisitions in their territories. However, it appears now that he put the problem too simply as one that only permitted winners and losers. The struggle over which province held inquisitorial rights contributed to the in-fighting that stalled plans for division, but the outcome ultimately was a compromise aimed at avoiding just such a zero-sum result. In 1301 Jaume Aleman, the last provincial of all of Spain, named Fray Bernat Peregrí inquisitor of Aragon. It helped that Aleman, like Peregrí, was Aragonese. Peregrí later followed Aleman into the position of provincial prior.27 That the Province of Provence brought up the question of division as early as mid century is informative. That province was not especially unwieldy in terms of the geographic distribution of its convents, especially when compared to the Province of Spain, and breaking it into two units would not seem to have offered immediately obvious administrative benefits. The social environment of the region, however, points to a different set of criteria. Languedoc had become a dense and diverse collection of towns made distinct one from another by geography, place histories and other factors that created cultural, religious and political distinctions. The friars had done well to adapt their apostolic 26 Juan Antonio Llorente, Histori critica de la inquisición de España, (Barcelona: Imprenta de Oliva, 1835), 150–152. Fernando Garrido Tortosa, Historia de la Persecutiones Politicas y Religiosas Occurridas en Europa, 6 vols. (Barcelona, 1866), I: 626, makes a similar assertion, apparently following Llorente. See Edward Peters, Inquisition (Berkeley, 1988), 278–283, for background on Llorente’s work. 27 This Bernat Peregí is not to be confused with the Franciscan, Bernat Pelegrí, bishop of Barcelona from 1288–1300. Sebastià Puig i Puig, Episcopologio de la Sede Barcinonense (Barcelona, 1929), 226–231.

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mission to the needs of the region, although doing so came at a cost. The province’s chapter acts indicate unsettling disciplinary diversity inside Dominican convents by mid century.28 Friars from the disciplined corps within some of the province’s convents may have developed suspicions or jealousies about the incontinent practices of their brothers in other convents, creating fissures that contributed early on to talk about division. The acts of the general chapter of 1266 make clear that internal divisions within provinces, treated in the texts as a need to restore peace among the brothers, required a resolution of questions about division of provinces.29 We may never know the exact nature of the dissent within the ranks or the nature of cultural and other differences that motivated calls for division, but it is certain that even as disagreements and disunity created the need for division these same factors prevented the achievement for several decades of the peace the friars sought. On several occasions general chapters initiated a process for division of provinces, but these plans, once initiated, did not attain final approval. Despite first signals in 1250, and general chapter deliberations since at least 1266, no agreement had yet been reached by 1275. By this time general chapters conceded that they would find no agreement upon a blanket solution to the division of all provinces.30 Negotiations for the division of provinces would from that time proceed according to the circumstances of each province, which, of course, admits that local and regional political considerations mattered. Absent a single solution for division of provinces across the entire Order, the Roman Province came to division first. The general chapter of 1296 agreed to the creation, out of what had been to that time part of the Province of Rome, a new Province of Sicily, consisting of the island of Sicily and the lands in continental Italy controlled by the Angevin rulers of France. Political control over the island of Sicily was disputed at the time, held by the brother of King James II

28 Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 38–40, for example, treats a range of disciplinary problems including suspect proximity to women, insufficient oversight of youths, and improper itinerancy. The cosmopolitan diversity of the region in the context of the Dominican Order’s mission is well treated by James B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, & Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, 1997), 5–12. 29 Reichert, Acta capitulorum generalium, MOPH III, 135. Cf. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 238. 30 Hinnebusch, History I, 174.

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of Aragon but claimed by the Angevins.31 Sicily had come under the control of the Catalan kings following the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, when the Sicilians evicted their Angevin overlords and then welcomed Catalan support. The possession of Sicily became an important move in a greater Catalan political expansion that came to encompass territories as far into the eastern Mediterranean as Greece. But Charles of Anjou and his papal allies resisted and by 1295 an accord had been reached whereby James II of Aragon agreed to restore Sicily to Rome in exchange for taking possession of Sardinia and Corsica. By the date of the formation of the Province of Sicily, however, the Sicilians still rejected Angevin claims and had chosen as their king James II’s brother Frederick, who accepted despite past agreements. From this perspective the Dominican Order’s impetus for achieving a division of the Province of Rome had to do with the play of international political tensions inside the province. The result was to carve Sicily away from the Roman core while rival claims over the island played out. But the division should not be read as a neutral, purely administrative, maneuver; indeed, because Popes Celestine V and Boniface VIII, themselves under pressure to restore Sicily to Angevin rule, appear to have repeatedly presented the division to the Dominican Master General as a fait accompli, it seems a clumsy and heavy-handed means of trying to keep the island of Sicily under Angevin-papal control at a time when, following the Silician Vespers, the popes were engaged in relieving the Aragonese of their influence there. That some diffinitors at successive general chapters refused to support this territorial subdivision seems certain given the time elapsed from initiation to conclusion of the process. At least one Franco-era Catalan nationalist asserted that even at this early date Catalan Dominicans felt the weight of Spanish, French, and papal “coercion against the intermediate Catalano-Provençal nation.”32 Such conspiracy theories need not detain us here, although they do remind us of the intensity of feelings that rose up as papal and international dynastic pressures shaped the Dominican Order’s internal affairs.33

31

See Bisson, Medieval Crown, 87 and 90–94. Josep Casals, The Spirit of Catalonia (New York, 1946), 9. 33 Creation of the Province of Sicily did not end calls for realignment. The general chapter of 1378 made the island of Sicily a separate province, carving it away from the mainland part of the former province, which now took the name Provincia Regni. See Galbraith, Constitution, 98; Hinnebusch, History I, 174. 32

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In the meantime, the Province of Spain continued its growth and expansion, comprising by the time of the 1266 chapter at least twentynine far-flung houses and convents.34 But local interests and reputational concerns, variously measured and not entirely distinct one from another, now began to stall efforts to divide the Province of Spain. It is interesting to note that the province’s chapter acts of 1250 had already begun to list convents in roughly geographic groupings, and the assignment lists from 1275 and 1281 show much greater precision at distinguishing convents that would ultimately fall into two orbits, Castilian and Aragonese-Catalan. In those years assignments to the convents that eventually would be gathered into the Province of Aragon were listed ahead of those that would remain in the Province of Spain, with the exception of friars assigned to Murcia, who in 1281 were registered between friars assigned to convents at Toledo and Cordoba. As early as 1275 the split that would be effected probably seemed inevitable, despite considerable resistance that lasted for a quarter century more. By 1299, the provincial acts list Murcia in the group of convents destined to form the Province of Aragon.35 From this evidence come three observations: First, as provincial chapters firmed up the routines for recording assignments they also took greater care to project regional groupings. Second, those regional groupings suggest that national political and cultural identity groups had begun to take shape and play a role within the Order, which by this point had grown too large to be envisioned as a collective of entirely like-minded men. Third, the hesitancy about where to place the convent of Murcia within developing but still fluid inter-provincial categories is symptomatic of longstanding political rivalries between Castilian and Aragonese kings, who had conflicting claims for dominion over the town and its hinterlands. All three of these points make division as much a matter of politics and cultural identity as a matter of administrative efficiency. The practice of imposing vicars adds further evidence that convents would eventually be divided in a way that facilitated state politics and cultural affiliation. Leaders of the Spanish province, with implicit support of the masters general, attempted to impose vicars as a temporary

34 The chapter acts of the Province of Spain for 1266, Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 618–619, list the convents and houses. 35 Ramón Hernandez, “Pergaminos de Actas de los Capitulos Provinciales del siglo XIII de la Provincia Dominicana de España, Archivo Dominicano 4 (1983), 199–266; 255; Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 611–612, 618–619, 625–630, 637–643.

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means of improving provincial oversight while the struggle to make lasting plans for division continued. The provincial acts of 1275 recognized vicariates in groups: Catalonia, Aragon and Navarre make up the first; Castile, Frontera (southern Portugal), Leon, Galicia, and Portugal form the second. The provincial chapter could not decide in which vicariate to put Valencia, so the provincial and diffinitors left the decision to the Master General.36 To defer on the question of which vicar should visit and give oversight to Valencia indicates disagreements motivated by regional politics. Competition existed between the two powerful Christian kings of Castile and Aragon over the territory only recently regained in conquest. Aragonese and Catalans also argued about their relative stakes in the new Kingdom of Valencia. It was quite easy for friars in their locales to take opposing sides. The stop-gap measure of instituting vicars failed as an effective remedy to the problems of administrative oversight because administrative need was trumped by national politics. Moreover, as best we can tell the administrative duties of the vicars remained ill-defined, making vicars imposed by provincials or by the master general and general chapters equally problematic from the point of view of local friars who likely saw outside vicars as a threat to local autonomy and interests. In either case, the establishment of the system of vicariates and its breakdown together highlight problems in the operation of the Order’s institutions of representative government. An additional question of importance for those considering how to divide the Province of Spain had to do with how to recognize the priority of veteran convents within the system of older and newer provinces. In the earliest years of the provincial system, friar-administrators recognized the Province of Spain and the Province of Provence as senior to other provinces, due either to the seniority of establishment of certain houses within those provinces or to Dominic’s founding importance in the early history of each region. Priority came with important rights, including the seating of diffinitors from those two provinces in the most prominent places at the general chapter meeting table, to the immediate right and left of the master general.37 The question of the

36 Hernandez, “Pergaminos, 265 and also Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 618; Cf. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 238. 37 Bernard Gui, Notitia Provinciarum, 183–184; Galbraith, Constitution, 93–97.

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status ranking of the provinces after division frustrated efforts to divide the Province of Spain. A proposal of 1287, aborted in 1289, suggested that after division the new province that possessed the oldest convent would retain the place at the general chapter table held by the formerly undivided province.38 According to this effort the projected Province of Aragon would lose priority seating if Castile had the better claim to the earliest foundations of convents on the peninsula. The convents of Barcelona and Zaragoza were founded early, with some friars in both convents insisting on foundations as early as 1217. Early on both became relatively populous houses supported by powerful benefactors. Nevertheless, Madrid and Segovia continued to hold the best claims to the earliest foundation dates. Undoubtedly, the friars attached to the convents at Barcelona and Zaragoza, as well as their supporters, would have preferred a settlement that protected the interests and privileges they shared with the first established convents, but this would be difficult if they passed to a new province of lesser rank. Separation from the Province of Spain The Province of Spain became the first to effect a split after the creation of the Province of Sicily. In the end its division followed the reckoning provided by the 1287 general chapter, although the friars in the northeast bought time for more than a decade. The inchoation of 1298 set the parameters: Inchoamus. Quod provincia Hispanie dividatur. Et dividimus eam in duas. Ita quod Castella. Legio. Gallecia et Portugallia sint una provincia et vocetur Hispanie, et teneat primum locum a destris. Aragonia vero et Cathalonia et Navarra. Sint alia provincia et vocetur provincia Aragonie. Et teneat locum in dextro choro immediate post provinciam Grecie.39

After decades of false starts and interruptions, separation of the Province of Aragon from the Province of Spain became a reality in 1301 when the general chapter finally confirmed the separation plan presented in two previous general chapters.40 The friars meeting at the

38 Reichert, Acta capitulorum generalium, MOPH III, 238 and 249; Galbraith, Constitution, 97. 39 Reichert, Acta capitulorum generalium, MOPH III, 287. 40 Reichert, Acta capitulorum generalium, MOPH III, 301, and 295 for the intermediate approbatio.

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first provincial chapter of the new Province of Aragon, held in 1301 at Lerida, elected as the province’s first provincial prior the friar-inquisitor, Bernat Peregrí. At inception the new province comprised fifteen convents within the territories contiguous with the kingdom of Navarre, the lands associated with the count-kings of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia) and the apanage kingdom of Majorca.41 The Province of Aragon also took possession of the tiny frontier enclave of Murcia, over which generations of Castilian and Aragonese-Catalan ambassadors had disputed.42 In the acts of 1302 Bernat Peregrí and the diffinitors working with him assigned nine friars there.43 But the new provincial and diffinitors ceded Murcia to the Province of Spain in 1305 following a treaty between the Castilian and Aragonese crowns that redrew political boundaries and put Murcia on the Castilian side.44 Once again, dynastic politics, not administrative concerns, dictated the course of change. It undoubtedly hurt the pride of the new province’s friars, especially those from Barcelona, that at the general chapter meeting in 1302, the year following division, the Province of Aragon took the fifteenth place at the meeting table.45 Its representative no longer sat in the chair most proximate to the master general. Subsequent events indicate that not all friars affected by the outcome received it well: at the general chapter of 1305 some friars tried to reunite the recently divided provinces; an inchoatio was recorded in that year, but subsequent chapters dismissed the proposal.46 Such intransigence is common in the recorded attempts at division of other provinces, too, for example in the case of the separation of an Irish from the English province attempted in the

41 Reichert, Acta Capitulorum Generalium, MOPH III, 301; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 242–246. These included Catalan convents at Barcelona, Gerona, Tarragona, Lerida and Urgell; the convents of Valencia, Jativa, and Murcia; Majorca on the largest of the Balearic Islands; Huesca, Sangossa and Zaragoza in Aragon; and Calatayud, Estella, and Pamplona in Navarre. 42 Bisson, Medieval Crown, 112 and 115; Joseph F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, NY, 1975), 402. 43 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 244. 44 O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, 402. Extant general and provincial chapter acts make no mention of the convent’s transfer; rather, it simply disappears from the records of the Province of Aragon. 45 Galbraith, Constitution, 97–99. 46 Acta capitulorum generalium, ab anno 1304 usque ad annum 1378, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, MOPH IV (Rome, 1899): 9; cf. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 238–239 and Hinnebusch, History I, 174.

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years just after division of the Province of Spain. In this case appeals to outside potentates successfully preventing division for generations.47 Despite its contentious birth and grudging acceptance by its friars of the new province’s lesser place at the general chapter table, evidence shows a positive, healthy and vigorous infancy for the Province of Aragon. Some friars accepted the promise of change enthusiastically and made immediate attempts to promote the distinctive merits of the new province. Chapters under Peregrí’s direction promulgated a number of refinements to the dress, conduct and liturgical activities of the friars in his charge.48 Attention was given to ridding the province of those activities that endangered friars’ souls, impaired the finances of convents, and brought scandal to the Order.49 These chapters took special care to see that students pursued their studies with zeal.50 They also passed ordinances attempting to put some controls on the perennial difficulty of friars having too ready access to temptations beyond convent walls.51 Peregri’s successor in the provincialate, Miguel de Estella, also a distinguished elder friar, showed similar reformist zeal by advancing his own improvements in communal observance.52 The Province of Aragon as a Conglomerate of “National” Identities Competition between the nascent Iberian kingdoms and a growing sense among friars of their “national” identities complicated 47

T.S. Flynn, The Irish Dominicans, 1536–1641 (Dublin, 1993), 2–3. Berengar of Landora established processes that constituted Ireland as a distinct province, but English intransigence prevented their coming to effect. Approval came in 1378, but English friars appealed to Urban VI and had it revoked. The general chapter of 1397 confirmed Urban’s decision “in a way that ran contrary to normal Dominican practice,” but that successfully ended efforts toward division. Hinnebusch, 175–176, reports on attempts by Irish Dominicans to seek independence from England, albeit without any hint of political tension. 48 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 246–248, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 257–258, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990). 49 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 268. 50 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 246, repeated in the following year with some modifications, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 257. 51 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 247 52 For an overview of early reforms in the province, see Gómez García, “La Provincia en El Primer Siglo,” pp. 37–41. On Miquel de Estella, see José Goñi Gaztambide, “Historia del convento de Santo Domingo de Estella,” Príncipe de Viana 22 (1961), 11–61; at 42. About de Estella’s election as provincial prior Diago, Historia, 13v., writes “del convento de predicadores de Estella saliese una estrella para norte y guía de la provincia de Aragón.”

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negotiations for division of the Province of Spain and, thereafter, continued to influence administration of the province. Well before 1301 the acts of the province began to show Iberian national identities taking shape in geographic groupings of convents. One item of business at each annual provincial chapter was the selection of visitors (visitatores), officers charged with traveling to a group of convents for the purpose of scrutinizing local operations and reporting their findings back to the provincial assembly in the following year. In 1299, provincial administrators named eight visitors and determined their visitation tours in a way that corresponds roughly to the political boundaries of the various Iberian principalities as they then existed. Certainly the eight-fold division gave some consideration to the distances between convents, but the most efficient convent-to-convent routes were not maximized for the visitors in every case. The nature of the division as set out in the acts is transparently geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic: 1) Conventus Portugalie; 2) Conventus Gallecie; 3) Conventus Legionis; 4) Conventus Castelle; 5) Conventus Frontarie; 6) Conventus Aragonie; 7) Conventus Catalonie; 8) Conventus Mayoricarum, Xative, Valentie, Murcie.53 In the division that became effective in 1301 the Province of Spain retained convents that coincided with the realms of King Dinis of Portugal and Fernando IV of Castile. The remaining convents that passed to the new Province of Aragon, fifteen in total, fell within the territorial borders of the Kingdom of Navarre, the realms of the Crown of Aragon, and the Kingdom of Majorca. But even the identification of these kingdoms does not address the full extent to which the Province of Aragon was a composite. Friars within the new Province of Aragon identified themselves as belonging to one of three “nations.” Each of these national identities – Navarese, Aragonese, Catalan – possessed its own history, language, culture and political processes distinct from the others. Friars in each region could find reasons to question the participation of their part in the whole even as they shared reasons to join in contradistinction to the Castilians, Portuguese and others who remained part of the Province of Spain. It is often assumed that a number of “leveling” factors worked to make friars in one place more or less indistinguishable from those in another. Among the factors most cited are the all-encompassing rules of the Order, its emphasis on a universal system of conventual education,

53

Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 650.

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the broad travels and posting of the friars in foreign convents, and the friars’ place within a church structure that made Latin their working language. There has long been reason to doubt that such centralizing processes reduced localisms.54 Within the composite Province of Aragon the distinctions of language, political orientation, and other cultural factors posed a constant threat to Dominican unity. National identities manifested immediately in the geographic distribution of convents and convent schools. In political and cultural disposition Navarre has appeared to historians more French than Iberian. Under constant threat from its powerful neighbors, the Navarese royal house often supported either Castile or Aragon against the other as circumstances warranted.55 Pamplona housed the most important convent in Navarre. The convent received a substantial proportion of students assigned to studies in both logic and grammar. Based on the extant acts it ranked fourth in the size of its logic program (with 152 friars assigned to logic from 1301 to 1378) after Barcelona (285), Tarragona (214), and Majorca (183). The Navarese convent of Dominican friars at Estella also consistently received a relatively large influx of assigned students of grammar (121), exceeded only by Zaragoza (127) and Pamplona (123). The place of Majorca in the composite Province of Aragon must have seemed as tenuous as that of Navarre. James I the Conqueror (King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona) took Majorca from its Muslim inhabitants in 1229, later giving the kingdom to his third son, James, as part of a divided inheritance. In 1300 Majorca was ostensibly a separate kingdom under the control of the younger James (James II, King of Majorca and Lord of Montpellier) although its political identity remained defined by constant rivalry with inheritors of the Crown of Aragon. Ambiguities were finally resolved in 1344 when Peter IV of Aragon (Pere III of Catalonia) reclaimed the island by force, jailing James III of Majorca until he died later in the year.56 Despite Majorca’s separation from the Iberian coast and the rest of the province by sometimes treacherous waters the Dominican convent there became

54 G. G. Coulton, “Nationalism in the Middle Ages,” Cambridge Historical Journal 5 (1935), 15–40; 16. 55 O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, 408–409, 423–424, and 526–528. Joaquín Salcedo Izu, “Historia convegente de Aragón y Navarre,” Iacobus: Revista de estudios jacobeos y medievales 15–16 (2003), 99–112. 56 Bisson, Medieval Crown, 66–68, 86–87, and 106–107.

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a focus of the province’s educational pursuits, annually outpacing all but a few others in its receipt of assigned students. Emerging from the Majorca convent to bring notoriety to his Order, his province, and his convent was Nicolau Rossell, who served as royal chaplain of King Peter IV of Aragon, and served simultaneously as Inquisitor general of Aragon and Provincial Prior of the Dominicans in the Province of Aragon. As inquisitor Rossell gained recognition for his defense of the Church against Francisco Batlle, Berengar de Montfalcó and Valencian beghards. Rossell’s work as provincial prior from 1350 to 1356 is central to this book’s investigations, in no small part because the sharply worded acts promulgated by his annual chapters illustrate the tension between prevailing norms and attempted reforms. In 1356 Rossell became Cardinal of San Sisto, appointed by Innocent VI, and moved to Avignon. The prominence of the convent at Palma, Majorca, continued to grow into the fifteenth century and beyond.57 The largest and most dynamic of the various royal political constructions whose territories became part of the Dominican Province of Aragon was the Crown of Aragon. The Crown of Aragon was a dynastic federation of kingdoms and counties consolidated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by royal marriage and conquest and held together as much by good fortune as by an uneasy mutuality of royal, baronial and commercial interests.58 Even within the domains of the Crown of Aragon, the Kingdom of Aragon, the Catalan counties, and the Kingdom of Valencia were in many ways strikingly dissimilar. Aragon was a landlocked kingdom whose powerful barons exploited a rural Christian and Muslim peasantry from their castle strongholds. The mountainous terrain lent itself largely to animal grazing; agricultural pursuits competed for access to the well-watered valleys which sustained a few towns. The most prominent convent in Aragon was at Zaragoza. Huesca held a position of lesser important. The Zaragoza convent was large and prominent enough to serve as an important political center. In 1348, for example, the convent’s refectory served King Peter IV of Aragon as the setting for his “ritual savaging” of the records and seal of the defeated Unión of rebellious barons, an episode

57 Juan Rosselló Lliteras, “El Convento de Santo Domingo de Mallorca, s. XIII–XV,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lulliana: Revista d’estudis històrics 41 (1985): 115–130. 58 On the vitality of the Crown of Aragon in the years leading up to 1300 see Bisson, Medieval Crown, esp. 58–100.

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which, in addition to pointing out the occasional participation of Dominican houses in regional political affairs, underscores the large size and suitability for large gatherings of at least some Dominican convents.59 Beyond lackluster architectural reviews and propagandistic writings promoting local saintly figures, studies of Dominican convents are few in number; Rosa María Blasco Martinez’s study of the convent at Zaragoza is a notable exception.60 Catalonia was urbanized, oriented toward the sea, dynamic in its commerce and culture. The friars had sizeable contingents in several important places. The house at Gerona appears to have been fairly large if the numbers of students assigned there serves as a measure.61 Tarragona, seat of a metropolitan bishop, averaged second only behind Barcelona in the numbers of logic students assigned to it. The thriving commercial and port city Barcelona, a city of international stature and the seat of royal governance, was home to the Dominican convent of Santa Catalina, which ranked first among the province’s Dominican houses. It remained the largest convent in the province, at least in terms of the number of friars moved in and out each year. From the 1290s, it possessed the first studium generale in the province, that is, a school recognized as capable of attracting students from across Europe and conferring teaching licenses upon their completion of a set course. The Barcelona convent was host to the order’s general chapters in 1261, 1323, and 1349 and to provincial chapters in 1307, 1320, 1323, 1349, and 1369.62

59 Bisson, Medieval Crown, 108. Galbraith, Constitution, 67–68 reports that the “Mad Parliament” of English barons and clergy met at the chapter house of the Dominicans at Oxford in 1258. Janet P. Fogie, Renaissance Religion in Urban Scotland: The Dominican Order, 1450–1560 (Leiden, 2003), 17, shows the business of the Scottish exchequer routinely transacted within the Dominican convent at Edinburgh. The colosal proportions and impressive exterior of the Dominican house at Estella, according to Gaztambide, Historia Eclesiastica, II: 28, gave rise to popular exaggerations about how many religious resided there when instead the grandeur of the house served local political and ceremonial purposes. 60 Blasco Martínez, Socoiologia de Una Comunidad Religiosa. For a similar examination of a convent in the Province of Spain, see Elida García García, San Juan y San Pablo de Peñafiel, Economia y Sociedad de un Convento Dominico Castellano, 1318– 1512 (Salamanca, 1986). 61 Alberto Collell Costa, “Aportación documental a la historia del convento de Santo Domingo de Gerona,” Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Geronins 14 (1960): 185–200 62 Galbraith, Constitution, 254. The locations of most provincial chapters are recorded in the extant acta or can be inferred from them. For 1307, see Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 273; for 1320, Thomas Kaeppeli, “Cronache Domenicane di

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In the Kingdom of Valencia, still a frontier territory in 1300 six decades after the reconquest of 1238, a majority of sometimes rebellious Muslim horticulturists worked lands controlled by Christian overlords who lived in a few densely packed towns. The political center was the large and prosperous city of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. The Dominican convent in Valencia city was established immediately upon the city’s capture as a result of privileges granted by James I to Dominican friars participating in the reconquest.63 It quickly came to house a large contingent of friars and claimed a place as one of the largest and most prominent convents with a school that came to rival that in Barcelona.64 St. Vincent Ferrer, one of the most influential Dominicans at the end of the fourteenth century (at least as later promotion of his cult has it), was born in Valencia and took the Dominican habit there, and not long after his death became the patron saint of the kingdom’s friars.65 A convent opened in nearby Jativa in 1291 is well known as an early center for the study of Arabic, following the lead of Raymond of Penyafort and others to penetrate Muslim texts by preparing friars in the language of those texts with the purpose of converting Muslim communities to Christianity by rigorously attacking Muslim tenets. Assertions of the success of the conversion effort and the long term value of the language school at Jativa have been overstated.66 It took some time for the friars in Valencia and Jativa to settle their disagreements about preaching territories, although the puny Jativa outpost was bound to lose the battle in the end.67 The appointment of preachers general in the Province of Aragon, which was one of the first acts carried out by the province’s first chapter, illustrates how provincial administrators regularly took account Giacomo Domenech, O.P. in una raccola miscellanea del card. Nicolo Rossell,” AFP 14 (1944), 37 and Diago, Historia, fol. 26v.–28r; for 1323 and 1349, Kaeppeli, “Cronache Domenicane,” 37–39; for 1369, Gomez García, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 266. 63 Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 202–207. 64 Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “Los Dominicos en la Ciudad y Universidad de Valencia,” EV 36 (2006), 177–204. 65 Emilio Callado Estela and Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “1239–1835: Crónica del Reial Convent de Predicadors de València,” in Daniel Benito Goerlich, ed. El Palau de la Saviesa: El Reial Convent de Predicadors de València i la Biblioteca Universitària (Valencia, 2005), 131–139; 132. 66 Antonio Giménez Reíllo, “El Árabe como lengua extranjera en el s. XIII: Medicina para convertir,” in El Saber en al-Andalus: Textos y Estudios IV, ed. Clara María Thomas de Antonio and Antonio Giménez Reíllo (Seville, 2006), 147–187, offers a recent bibliography and discussion of the friars’ language training in Jativa and elsewhere. 67 Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 205.

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of the complicated particularities of friars’ various and competing national interests. When Bernat Peregrí and his diffinitors met at provincial chapter in 1302 it remained their charge to fill some of the offices that would be important to the administration of the new province. This included identifying individuals who would possess the honored title and special licenses of preachers general. The 1302 acts named thirty preachers general, eighteen for Catalonia (a term not always but usually, as in this instance, inclusive of Valencia and the Balearics); six for Aragon; and six for Navarre. In the same set of acts Peregrí and his diffinitors asserted as the policy of the province that the 3:1:1 ratio established in the naming of these preachers should be followed strictly in the future. Additionally, no more than thirty preachers general were to be named, and a friar might become a preacher general on behalf of his nation only upon the decease of another from that nation.68 Gaps in the data prevent us from discerning whether this policy remained fixed in all of its features, but it is clear that later extant acts identify newly appointed preachers general as representing one of the three “nations.” The distribution of preachers general reflects the strong position of Catalan friars in the province relative to those of other nations. Other indicators also point to the greater prominence of the Catalans. Numerous instances can be found in the acts of administrators choosing a Catalan friar as a diffinitor to the general chapter, or selecting a Catalan as a diffinitor’s socius, even when it seemed a friar from another nation ought to have been next in line by virtue of an implicit but clearly recognized national rotation.69 In these cases, administrators tried to soften the blow to the expectations and pride of their non-Catalan brothers by announcing that the friars from the Aragonese and Navarese 68 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 250–251: Ordinamus etiam quod predictum numerum tricenarium non excresat, sed si contingit, quod aliquis Predicator Generalis decedat in aliqua nacione, instituatur alius in sequenti Provinciali capitulo. Ita quod nullus alius fiat de alia nacione, nisi forsitan contingeret aliquos vel aliquem similiter decesisse. 69 A statement in the acta of 1353, for example, demonstrates the customary nature of this kind of rotation even as it shows these customary rights abrogated. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 270: Significamus fratribus huius Provinciae universis, quod Diffinitor Capituli generalis sequentis pertinet ad Nationem Aragoniae secundum huius Provinciae consuetudinem diutius observatam, set ipsi propter reverentiam Nationis Cataloniae, et propter afeccionem specialem quam ad Priorem gerunt Barchinonensem pro isto anno, et ideo frater Iohannes Gomir Prior supradictus est Diffinitor Capituli Generalis, et damus ei in Socium fratrem Martinum de Aierbio. Similar statements are common in later years.

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nations participating in chapter had offered their acquiescence (de gratia et cessione) to the decision and they further declared that the friars of Aragon and Navarre would hold future rights to those offices to compensate for the present loss.70 In the new province’s first decades administrators applied and regularized the same nationality-based considerations to the selection of candidates for advanced education in the Order’s international schools.71 Catalan dominance was a fundamental reality of conventual life in the Dominican Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century. Catalans significantly outnumbered friars from other nations. This is most certainly the case if one accepts that the acts often recognize the friars of Valencia and the Balearics within the Catalan orbit. Moreover, the greater number, size and character of the towns serviceable by the Catalan convents gave Catalan friars access to larger constituencies, which in turn gave to the Catalan friars more extensive networks of benefactors and supporters than friars in other regions could access. The Catalan part of the province experienced the most rapid and continuous growth in the number of its convents in comparison to Aragon and Navarre, a point from which we can admit that the Catalan convents controlled larger, more generous and more diversified resource bases. In sum, the Catalan friars were politically, culturally, and financially richer than their counterparts to the northwest. One implication of the foregoing is that Catalan friars in leadership positions controlled, and more often wished to control, the mission and conventual

70 In 1366, for example, the electors of the Master General, Guillem Cunilli and Jaume Magistri, the Diffinitor to the General Chapter, Martí de Jeusa, and the socius to the Diffinitor, Miquel Pichón, all Catalans as indicated by their numerous appearances on the acta lists within Catalan convents, were elected despite the apparent interests of Aragonese and Navarese friars. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 139: Diffinitor capituli Generalis est frater Martinus de Ieusa de gratia, et cessione fratrum Aragoniae et Navarrae pro isto anno reservato sibi iure in posterum si quod habent. Electores Magistri Ordinis sunt fratres Guillermus Cunilli, et Iacobus Magistri, de gratia et cessione fratrum Aragoniae et Navarrae pro isto anno reservato sibi iure in posterum si quod habent… Socius Diffinitoris ad Capitulum Generale est frater Michael Pichoni, et de gratia et cessione fratrum natione Aragoniae. 71 E.g. the acta of 1327, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 137: Mittimus extra Provinciam ad Studium Parisiense fratrem Petrum de Boccenich pro cathalonia, et revocamus ab eodem fratrem Bernardum de Requesens cum compleverit duos annos…. Item mittimus ad idem Studium pro natione Aragoniae fratrem Eximinum Petri de Seron pro primo anno, et fratrem Sancium de Eslava pro secundo anno, quorum anni incipient cum frater Petrus de Sors, qui est ibi, compleverit unum annum.

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living activities of their brothers in Aragon and Navarre, endeavoring to do so by restricting access to the most important offices and schooling placements, and by limiting recruitment, expansion and building plans. This likely created resentments and tensions manifested in the fistfights, election fraud and other disorderly acts that we will encounter ahead.

CHAPTER THREE

GROWTH, CRISIS AND RECOVERY In Dominican historiography a “first crisis” – when an old-guard of recalcitrant bishops and jealous schoolmasters tried to block the progress of the newcomer mendicant preachers – ended in the friars’ favor, with the result that the Order of Preachers continued its trajectory of growth and success into the decades approaching 1300. The same historiographical tradition has it that the Order’s leaders carved away from the Province of Spain a new Province of Aragon in order to resolve the administrative pressures brought by the growth that came with mission successes. This reading, as we have seen, does not account for all of the evidence. International politics, internal contests and local pride of place played their part in advancing and forestalling plans for division, perhaps contributing even more, from the perspective of workaday friars, than an ill-defined push for administrative efficiency. Historians have also admitted a second crisis, beginning around 1300 with a slow decline of discipline caused by external intrusions upon the common life and then intensifying into decay as the result of a singularly brutal event – the Black Death. As William Hinnebusch lamented, following the wisdom of generations of friar-historians who claimed that conditions created by the plague’s ravaging of Europe in the years from 1347 to 1350 nearly brought the Order to its demise, the plague left behind it “empty priories and devastated provinces.”1 The fourteenth century was not a good one for the Dominican Order, certainly not for friars in the Province of Aragon, but it is nonetheless worth testing the story of a blow to the pride and purpose of the fourteenthcentury Dominicans caused by external factors. Crisis and decadence function well in so many contexts, to the point of having become tropes, precisely because their emotional tenacity substitutes for critical description.2 In the Dominican case, as

1

Hinnebusch, Short History, 71–75. John Van Engen, “The ‘Crisis of Cenobitism’ Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150, Speculum 61 (1986), 269–304, and J. H. Elliott, “Yet Another Crisis?” in The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative 2

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generations of friar-historians sought solutions to the meta-historical predicaments uncovered by their research, “crisis” became an answer both suitably vague and sufficiently poignant to permit the entire fourteenth century to serve as a placeholder in a sacred narrative. The Order’s first century was remarkable, which is to say providential: Dominic’s divinely inspired efforts perfectly matched the needs of the time. And a later development, the fifteenth-century Observant Reform, regained commitment and zeal, thus anticipating New World missions and a counter-Reformation defense of Catholicism.3 Sandwiched between these ages of enterprise, the fourteenth century stands as a long period of wanting and waiting, an interim during which the Dominican vessel drifted, without direction, wrenched from its moorings by forces largely beyond the friars’ control. This traditional view of slow disciplinary decline turning to operational decay in the wake of the Black Death has gone largely unchallenged, and is routinely reiterated by some friar-historians without much consideration of the substance of the assertions.4 Among the few weak supports of the decay-decline thesis are untested assertions about demographic decline, assertions that have stuck in Dominican historiography largely because evidence to the contrary has remained scarce and fragmented.5 But the chapter acts of the Province of Aragon, being the most complete of any fourteenth-century provincial records, offer an exceptional opportunity for a reappraisal. Until recently they suffered two constraints that prevented their thorough examination: first, the historiography of Spain’s exceptionalism discounted their value in

History, ed. Peter Clark, (London, 1985), 301–312, offer important criticisms of the concept of “crisis” in earlier and later contexts. Agustín Rubio, Peste Negra, Crisis y Comportamientos Sociales en la España del Siglo XIV: La Ciudad de Valencia (1348– 1401), 109, cautions against the tendency to mythologize direct linkages between the Black Death and the many other social, political and economic disturbances in the fourteenth century. 3 The most concise and direct expression of this meta-narrative is found in Hinnebusch, “How the Dominican Order Faced its Crises,” 1307. 4 E.g., Ashley, The Dominicans, 57–59. 5 García-Serrano, Preachers of the City, 4–8; Rita Rios de la Llave, “Urban Communities and Dominican Communities in Medieval Castile-León: a Historiographical Outline,” in Religion, Ritual and Mythology: Aspects of Identity Formation in Europe, ed. Joaquim Carvalho (Pisa, 2006), 45–60; 54. Vito T. Gómez García, “La Provincia en el Primer Siglo de su Historia,” in La Provincia Dominicana de Aragón: Siete Siglos de Vida y Misión, ed., Gómez García (Madrid, 1999), 35–68, offers a brief overview of the Dominican Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century without directly assessing the impact of the Black Death on its friars.

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the eyes of some observers, and, second, an understanding of their richness awaited the application of computing tools available only in recent decades.6 Recognizing and thus moving beyond these constraints, we can now employ the acts to reopen the question of plague devastation. Indications of Growth The following reappraisal of growth and change in the Dominican Order’s Province of Aragon examines the period from 1301 to 1378, that is, from the originating year of the new province to the rupture caused inside and outside the Order by the papal schism.7 The analysis and findings presented here have their grounding in the various lists of assignments, deaths, and honors recorded in the province’s annual chapter acts. The Dominicans were extraordinary record keepers in a time when medieval society showed great care for improving the production, storage and retrieval of written records.8 Administrators of the Province of Aragon appear to have excelled even beyond their brothers in other provinces. In addition to what might be considered a straight reading of these lists, the background work for this chapter included building a database recording the activities of every

6 Garganta, “Los Dominicos de la Provincia de Aragon,” 93, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 237–241, offer general assessments and address the utility of the texts. William Hinnebusch had a copy of Zaragoza manuscript in his possession but apparently used it only to tally the deaths of friars. See Hinnebusch, History I, 417, and 301, n. 1. 7 The periodization is in no way arbitrary. The period begins with the province gaining its territorial and jurisdictional independence from the Province of Spain and ends when the Papal Schism split the Order into rival “obediences,” which disrupted customary operations, limiting opportunities for friars to study and offer service beyond their home provinces and altering relationships between provincial and general chapters. See the collected essays in Jornadas Sobre el Cisma d’Occident a Catalunya, les Illes i el País Valencià (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1986). 8 James Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, 25. Josep Baucells i Reig, Vivir en la Edad Media: Barcelona y Su Etorno en los Siglos XIII y XIV, 1200–1344 (Barcelona, 2004), 243, indicates the significant improvements in recordkeeping in the diocese of Barcelona after the appointment of Ponç de Gualba as bishop (1303–1334), this occurring about the same time that we see similar improvements in the records of the Dominican Province of Aragon. One might expect even greater symbiosis between episcopal and Dominican recordkeeping in the years when the Dominican Ferrer d’Abella was bishop, 1335–1344, especially since, as Baucells i Reig, Vivir en la Edad Media, 473 has shown, Bishop Ferrer did not shy from showing favoritism to his own Dominican brothers.

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individual friar named in the extant provincial acts for these years, accumulating to a total of 10,264 activities by 3,077 individuals. This database permits a reconstruction of the province’s changing population. In conjunction with the narrative admonitory and legislative statements promulgated in the annual chapter acts and other sources, this demographic analysis yields insights into administrative trends and policy. In sum, it leads to the quite surprising conclusion that the Dominican Order in the Province of Aragon did not suffer demographic instability to the degree historians have come to believe. We begin with a survey of the numbers of convents in the Province of Aragon, which illustrates continued growth up to and beyond mid-century. At its birth the new Province of Aragon boasted fifteen convents. These included the Catalan convents at Barcelona, Gerona, Tarragona, Lerida and Urgell; the convents of Valencia and Jativa; Murcia, the southernmost convent at the frontier limits of Christian Reconquest; Majorca on the largest of the Balearic Islands; Huesca, Sangüesa and Zaragoza in Aragon; and Calatayud, Estella, and Pamplona in Navarre. Whether this distribution seems meager or well-balanced is, as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, a matter of current interpretive controversy. Robin Vose has argued that because they opened so few convents over so vast a territory, Dominican leaders likely deemed northeastern Iberia a “backwater” unworthy of considerable investment. However, while political and resource factors may have restricted growth in comparison to elsewhere in Europe, here as elsewhere kings and members of the royal family, nobles and merchants, and some of the region’s most astute bishops, recognized the friars’ value and invested in the Order. That investment continued into the fourteenth century. After it turned back the convent at Murcia to the Province of Spain in 1304, the Province of Aragon did not lose or close any convents throughout the whole of the period to 1378. Rather the province opened six additional convents. In contrast to conventional presentations of fourteenth-century decline and decadence, here is an indicator of continued expansion from which we can assume that the province’s leaders succeeded in gathering and employing resources. Three convents, at Castellon (Castelló d’Empúries), Cervera, and Manresa, first appear in the acts in 1321.9 The impetus for their

9 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 107. Alberto Collell Costa, “Ayer de la Provincia Dominicana de Aragon,” Hispània Sacra 19 (1966), 217–255 at 227.

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foundations remains unclear. Diago credited the Provincial Prior Jaume Aleman with founding the three convents, although his role is unknown. King James II of Aragon offered the resources to open the house at Cervera. Ponç Hugo, Count of Ampurias, served as patron to launch the convent in his domains. Near the point of his death in 1317, he invited the Dominicans to execute his will in a way that would prevent royal encroachment, and that offered financial support for a new house. Four years later the new Provincial Prior, Bernat Puigcercos, had to fight to confirm Hugo’s wishes in a compromise with prince Peter, the future king of Aragon, who contested the will.10 The year 1321 is significant for the large number of grammar students newly assigned or reassigned in that year: 79 in all, well over twice the number of grammarians listed on the schedules of assignments of any prior year.11 By 1327, the number of assigned grammarians fell back down to thirty-four, but the numbers of students in logic had reached a new high since by this later date the demographic bulge created by the former grammarians had pushed its way into higher educational ranks. These figures suggest two rationales for the opening of the new houses. One might argue that in the years from 1315 to 1320 – years for which we have no extant chapter acts – a short term leveling or decline in the student population caused administrators to pursue more rigorous recruitment efforts, which by 1327 had succeeded not only in restoring the province’s friar population but in augmenting it substantially. The narrative portion of the acts offer no indication of a deliberate policy of increased recruitment efforts at this time. On the other hand, it is clear that administrators felt pressure to offer the province’s educational program to more students and that provincial authorities responded by opening new convents with grammar schools that could accept new friars. There is evidence of this in the distribution of grammar schools and grammar students across more convents. Evidence also comes from the admonitions issued in the annual chapter acts, which indicate increasing pressure to accept the sons of proven men ( filii Proborum Virorum), regardless of their preparation for religious life.12 In the mid 1320s a domus (a house not sufficiently well established to be called a convent) was opened at Balaguer under the encouragement

10 11 12

Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews, 74 and 83–84. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 148–151. E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 277.

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of King James. It attained convent status in 1330.13 By 1345 the province also opened a house in the coastal town of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia, which by that time remained, if uneasily, part of the growing Catalan mercantile empire. Evidence from assignments indicates that this house remained small, but it did not close after the plague at mid-century, and there is no evidence that provincial administrators felt reluctant to staff it.14 It is important to note that none of these institutions closed after 1350.15 Another small house opened at Sant Mateu in 1370, bringing the total number of convents opened from the 1320s to six and the total number of active convents in the province in 1370 to twenty.16 In addition to these openings of new convents, the acts also show provincial administrators placing lectors at cathedral schools in Tortosa and Valencia. In 1365, for instance, Francesç Provincialis received the assignment to serve as lector at the cathedral school of Valencia; and in the same year Bartolomeu Gasconi served at the cathedral school of Tortosa.17 In 1391 Provincial Prior Pere Correger received permission from the general chapter, celebrated that year at the province’s convent at Zaragoza, to open three additional residences.18 The province saw

13 Count Hermengaud of Urgell initiated the plan for the convent as early as 1314. Diago, fol. 276r–276v. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews, 75, and Collell,” Ayer de la Provincia,” 227. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 156, registers the first assignments, which included Dalmacio Moner, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 165, indicates the change to convent status. 14 Acta 1345, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 271: Conventui Calaritano assignamus pro Lectore fratrem Guillelmum de Criario. Item, assignamus ibidem fratrem Bernardum de Monte. To the end of the period, the acta of most years record assignments of 2 to 3 friars to the convent. The assignment list in the acts of 1347 records the names of ten friars, three of whom were to study grammar. No other extant year specifies what studies, if any, the friars sent there engaged in. 15 The Province of Aragon is not unique in this respect. Richard Emery, The Friars in Medieval France, A Catalogue of French Mendicant Convents, 1200–1550 (New York, 1962), 17–21, shows the mendicant orders continuing to found new houses in France through the later Middle Ages, although less vigorously than they did in the initial period of their expansion up to 1276. María del Mar Graña Cid, “Franciscos y dominicos en la Galicia medieval; aspectos de una posición de privilegio,” Archivo IberoAmericano 53 (1993), 231–270, esp. 232–245, reports continued expansion of the number of mendicant convents in northwestern Spain through the fourteenth century. 16 Diago, 277v, says Innocent VI approved plans as early as 1359 to open the convent. 17 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 116. 18 Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 34 (2004), 277.

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continued if more limited growth in the number of convents in the next century.19 In the Province of Aragon Dominican managers saw fit to increase the number of the province’s convents, a policy they could pursue only with the consent of general chapters and only by identifying the sources of support that new convents would need over time to support the lives and work of resident friars. The expansion in the number of the province’s convents suggests that administrators perceived a continued demand for vocations, not only in the towns in which they already possessed convents but also in locales not yet converted to the Order and its mission. Lacking the large land assets and derivative rents and revenues of traditional monastic communities, the friars relied on gifts. Begging continued to be a valued part of the Dominican corporate image, even if it fulfilled the mostly tactical function of recalling for constituents the friars’ honored status as humble followers of an apostolic calling.20 It is well understood that increasingly throughout the fourteenth century individual friars enjoyed benefices and other regularized favors, just as their convents enjoyed limited endowments and fixed rents. Still, in no instance does even a sizeable royal or noble gift appear to have met the costs of a convent’s regular maintenance. Each convent faced its own financial problems and potentials, and required a diversified base of resources that required consistent attention.21 As their brothers in Castile did, friars in the Province of Aragon typically sought broad support among the urban middle classes when they first arrived in a town not yet served, then, once settled, established ties to the urban aristocracy for the purpose of gaining financial security for the longer term.22 Being especially careful in the advantage they took of growth opportunities, Dominican authorities first tested the mission potential and resource base of communities before establishing

19 Emilio Callado Estela and Alfonso Esponera Cerdán, “1239–1835: Crónica del Reial Convent de Predicadors de València,” in El Palau de la Saviesa: El Reial Convent de Predicadors de València i la Biblioteca Universitària (Valencia, 2005), 131–139. 20 Del Mar Graña Cid, “Franciscanos y dominicos en la Galicia medieval,” 244–245. 21 García-Serrano, Preachers of the City, 103. Elida García y García, San Juan y San Pablo de Peñafiel. Economía y sociedad de un convento dominicano castellano, 1318– 1512 (Salamanca, 1986), and Rosa Blasco Martínez, Sociología de Una Comunidad Religiosa, make the point in brief economic portraits of Dominican convents, one in Castile, the other in Aragon. 22 García-Serrano, Preachers of the City, 72.

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fully-staffed convents there.23 Robin Vose put it right for most instances: “Patronage was ultimately the crucial element: friars went where they were invited and they were invited for the most part by the king.”24 We may safely conclude that in the Province of Aragon, as elsewhere, those friars charged with the management the Order’s affairs had access to the resources needed for expansion, resources that in large part continued to be garnered, as in the past, by nurturing relations with royal and noble houses and by engaging in well-planned community activism. Increasing the number of convents also presumes some level of administrative foresight. The province’s managers may have projected growth in the population of the province’s friars and then looked for the resources to fulfill their goals. Perhaps more likely, although no less a demonstration of forward thinking, was their responsiveness to changing conditions and openness to opportunities. At the very least, they responded to demand coming either from a sufficiently large pool of possible recruits or from the invitation of a local donor to fund a new settlement. An examination of the annual assignment lists recorded in the chapter acts demonstrates vividly that in the years leading up to the Black Death provincial authorities decided to assign an increasing number of friars to schools and other activities in the province’s convents. The number of friars assigned annually never corresponded in exact proportion to the total number of friars available for assignment, although it is apparent that in addition to an increase in the number of convents the Province of Aragon saw growth in the number of friars over its first half century.25 Assignment lists in the province’s first years offer a baseline for later comparison. In 1302, Provincial Prior Bernat Peregrí and those 23 By opening a domus, Dominican administrators could test the mission potential and the resource base of a location before establishing a fully-staffed convent there. García-Serrano, Preachers of the City, 36 and Hinnebusch, History I: 254 and 269 24 Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews, 76. 25 The rosters of annual assignments do not indicate the activity of every friar in every year. The number of friars assigned in any one year represents a portion of the total population of friars in the province, mostly focused on those younger and junior friars who moved from one convent to another for training in the convent schools. Mid-career and senior friars appear less often in the lists. The assignment lists identify some of these men as they move from one convent to another to take up teaching posts, or to serve as priests to convent churches. For the most part the assignment lists, and the acts more broadly, ignore the residency in convents of workaday friars. We will return to the question of how the data represents various friar cohorts, although, for the moment, the assignment lists show themselves to be very productive tools for helping us understand some broad population trends.

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with whom he met in chapter assigned 220 friars to fifteen convents. The cluster of extant records up to and including 1314 shows assignments ranging from a low of 182 to a high of 221, demonstrating little deviation from an average of 209. This observation appears to confirm the broadly accepted view that a period of flat population growth initiated a longer period of stasis and then decline in the province's population. Assignments for these years, and beyond to 1378, are indicated below in a table that also identifies the years of extant chapter acts: 1302 1303 1304 1307 1310 1312 1314 1321 1327 1328 1329 1330

220 213 182 214 208 221 209 256 254 222 241 238

1331 1345 1347 1350 1351 1352 1353 1354 1355 1357 1358 1363

215 314 302 257 229 243 248 265 253 279 273 236

1365 1366 1368 1369 1370 1371 1372 1373 1376 1377 1378

210 219 262 263 269 275 260 276 267 269 273

Other evidence also seems to confirm the old formula. In northeastern Iberia the plague at mid-century arrived as only one in a string of critical events, which is to say that plague was not the only factor that worked to depress the province’s population. For example, listed in 1307 are the names of 41 friars who died over the course of the year prior to that year’s chapter meeting, twice the number of deaths recorded in any previous year.26 Something – we do not know what – led to a spike in deaths among friars in that year. The region witnessed a severe grain shortage and famine reaching a point of crisis in 1333, remembered in Catalan chronicles as “the first bad year.”27 Unfortunately, no records of deaths, nor of assignments, survives for the period from 26 We may accept the lists of deceased friars as accurate in most years since the names of the dead friars are listed according to the convents in which they died, so that we can track which convents did and did not render accounts of their dead. Similar lists may have been kept in other provinces but have not survived as a regular feature in thee acts of other chapters. 27 Tomás López Pizcueta, “El ‘mal any primer’: alimentatción de los pobres asistidos en la Pía Almoina de Barcelona: 1333–1334,” in Actes del I Colloqui d’Història de l’Alimentació a la Corona d’Aragó: Edat Mitjana (Lerida, 1995), 613–623. Rubio, Peste Negra, 19–22.

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1332 to 1344, although we might expect that the province’s convents reported high mortality in 1333 and in some subsequent years. The average of recorded deaths in the years between 1328 and 1346 for which we do have evidence is about eleven. The reported death statistics are as follows: 1302 1302 1304 1307 1310 1312 1314 1321 1327 1328 1329 1330

21 16 17 41 24 16 20 13 20 * 13 11

1331 1345 1347 1350 1351 1352 1353 1354 1355 1357 1358 1363

10 11 29 12 10 3 7 4 * 10 8 *

1365 1366 1368 1369 1370 1371 1372 1373 1376 1377 1378

9 * 6 3 3 33 23 12 15 13 7

* The acts did not record deaths in these years or recorded deaths were not copied into surviving manuscripts.

While such evidence fits expectations of population decline, the predominant signs point to an expansion of the number of friars active in the Province of Aragon up to mid century. Six years of extant records from 1321 to 1331 show that the average number of friars assigned to convents ranged from a low of 215 to a high of 256. The high point appears at the start of the series, in the year 1321, and the low point at the end of the series in 1331. Still, the average across these years of 234 is substantially higher than the average of about 209 for the period of seven years of extant assignment lists from 1302 to 1314.28 From the earlier to the later period assignments rose by about ten percent. The slight reduction of assignments in the years 1328 to 1331 from levels recorded in 1321 and 1327 appears to result from a policy decision, not from any decrease in the population. Following an initial redistribution of men into new convents operating their own grammar schools, fewer friars required year-to-year reassignments to receive their schooling. No copies of the provincial acts of Aragon are extant for the years 1332 to 1344, the largest gap in the manuscript record. We might well imagine that mortality was especially high in 1333 and in the years following as a result of food shortages and dislocation in supply and 28

Assignments for 1327 through 1330, respectively: 254, 222, 241, 238, and 215.

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distribution of food and other resources, although there is no direct evidence to confirm that what has become a general supposition for residents of northeastern Iberia in the fourteenth century applies to the Dominicans active there. Despite assurances by their twentiethcentury confreres to the contrary, the privileged social position of the fourteenth-century friars may have insulated them from the hardships faced by other social groups. Judging from later assignment records, it would appear that the province’s leaders faced few difficulties right through this time of troubles in staffing convents and filling schools. In 1345 and 1347, just before the onset of plague, recorded assignments reached their fourteenth-century zenith, totaling 314 and 302 respectively. These numbers represent an increase in the numbers of friars assigned and reassigned, over the numbers registered in the earlier period up to 1331 of more than thirty percent.29 Disaster and Recovery By the spring of 1348, of course, conditions had changed dramatically. In northeastern Iberia, as elsewhere, the plague assault of 1348–1350 was a catastrophe like none before it, a social trauma on a scale beyond reckoning. The Province of Aragon suffered no less than other Dominican provinces.30 Nonetheless, the province’s managers acted quickly and with apparent success to restore the population of the province to robust levels within a very few years. 29 Some readers might suppose that increased admission into the Order indicates a influx of men who sought whatever protection the organization could provide against the hardships outside its walls. Such an assertion would need to grapple with the realities inside Dominican convents of gathering the resources needed to feed newcomers, since the family and friends of recruits must count among the most likely givers in both good and bad times. In any event, the increase in the population of the province’s friars presumes that the Order’s managers had resources to manage growth. The admonitory section of the annual acts offer little reason to dispute this. 30 The social effects of the first attack of plague in Catalonia are well treated by Jordi Günzberg i Moll, Vida Quotidiana a la Cuitat de Barcelona Durant la Pesta Negra, 1348 (Barcelona, 2002). As elsewhere, the universal chorus of distress issuing from the survivors of the first wave of plague in 1348–1350 grew more tempered and directed toward local and practical efforts at treatment in later attacks. To compare responses to later plagues, see Cohn, “End of a Paradigm,” 6–7, and Manuel Camps i Clemente and Manuel Camps i Surroca, La peste del segle XV a Catalunya (Lerida, 1998). Rubio, Peste Negra, 17, encounters plague or other serious epidemics in Valencia in 1326, 1333– 1335, 1348–1350, 1362, 1375, 1384, and 1395. No chapter acts exist for any of these years, with the exception of 1395. In that year the list of deceased friars totaled twentynine friars, a high number matched in the extant acts for the fourteenth century only in the year 1347 and exceeded only by the forty-seven deaths registered in 1307.

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I have argued that the Province of Aragon saw growth right through the first half of the fourteenth century, both in the number of its convents and in the total numbers of friars assigned regularly from convent to convent. I have asserted further, and will soon demonstrate, that the Black Death did not act to depress the population of the province for long after it struck. This contradicts the traditional view of decline and decay, and it seems especially confounding when considered in the context of Black Death historiography. For generations of friar-historians the appearance of plague at mid-century has stood above all other causal explanations in stories of the Dominican Order’s decline. Assessments of demographic catastrophe in the province have relied principally on two informants, the first being Jaume Domenech, a noted inquisitor and, from 1363 to 1367, prior of the Province of Aragon. In a chronicle he produced in the 1370s, Domenech reported 510 dead in the years 1347 and 1348, adding that the greater part of those who died were the best and most senior friars.31 He offered no means of substantiating his assessment, although, as someone who as a young friar lived through the crisis of the mid-century plague, he seemed to generations of researchers a trustworthy purveyor of information about what transpired. The second source, Francisco Diago, likely had read the accounts of Petrarch, Boccaccio and others, and undoubtedly shared their grim assessments. He had read Domenech, too, and in his Historia he reworked Domenech’s account into a plausible arithmetic account of the disaster. Positing a pre-plague population of 640 friars, less Domenech’s reported 510 deaths, Diago claimed that survivors of the “pestilencia grandíssima” numbered one hundred and thirty. Convents in Aragon, as in other Dominican provinces, were left nearly empty, “casi sin frayles.”32 Diago’s calculations suggest that the mid-century Black Death wrecked the province by killing 85% of active friars. Generally willing to follow the assertions of the early friarchroniclers like Domenech and Diago, the leading friar-historians of the twentieth-century claimed that the mid-century cataclysm had destroyed the vitality of the Order for the next several generations.33 31 Kaeppeli, “Cronache Domenicane,” 5–42; 39. Cf. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 257–258. 32 Diago, Historia, 40r. 33 Hinnebusch, Short History, 72–73 makes the Black Death the keystone of his decline-decay argument. He explains that when Hervey of Nedellac, Dominican Master General from 1318 to 1323, wrote an encyclical urging his charges toward vigorous pursuit of the common life, “accelerating decline … was evident,” but that decline

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In the words of the distinguished Catalan friar-historian José-Maria de Garganta, “in the domestic history of the mendicant orders… that sorrowful event has remained the single and universal factor in the destruction of observance.”34 Neither Diago nor Domenech offered a foundation upon which to verify their accounts of their province’s decimation by plague. Neither chronicler made mention of any post-plague recruiting, and neither had the capacity to distinguish the broader direction of net population flows through the period. We will see that considering those factors changes the story substantially. Not all friar-historians accept these reports of a singular disaster for their Order brought by the Black Death. Adolfo Robles Sierra has raised doubts about Francisco Diago’s assertion of a population collapse in the Province of Aragon, and my own findings confirm Robles Sierra’s skepticism.35 In 1350, for instance, when the intensity of the Black Death had begun to diminish, 257 friars appeared on the province’s assignment list. This is almost twice the number Diago says survived. Could it be true that nearly half of the men listed in that year were newcomers who entered the Order in that very year? Of the 257 friars listed in the 1350 assignments, 158 friars appear on earlier assignment lists, showing themselves to have been active friars before the onset of plague.36 In later years even more friars active before 1348 appear on the lists. In short, whereas Diago believed the number of active friars fell to 130, we can account for a far greater number – at least 215 friars – who were active both before and after the mid-century plague. If we accept Diago’s pre-plague population of 640 friars, mortality rates among the province’s friars should be put closer to the current mortality estimates for the region’s population as a whole, which

“turned to decay twenty-five years later after the bubonic plague had done its work.” “The Black Death,” he lamented “left behind it empty priories and devastated provinces.” 34 José-María de Garganta, “Los Dominicos de la Provincia de Aragon en la Historia de la Espiritualidad, Siglos XIV–XVII,” Teología Espiritual 1 (1957), 89–112; at 99: “En la historia doméstica de la órdenes mendicantes, en particular en los historiadores del siglo XVI, ha quedado aquel hecho luctuoso como el factor único y universal de la destrucción de la observancia.” 35 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 257–258. For a discussion of the methodological problems associated with plague demography see Rubio, Peste Negra, 103–110. 36 Perhaps Diago arrived at his count of 130 survivors by taking a similar tally. If so he either miscounted or estimated based on a partial count.

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range from fifty to seventy percent with sixty to sixty-five percent being the most likely.37 As regards deaths within various friar cohorts, the damage done by the Black Death does not look now as it did to earlier generations of friar historians. Domenech said that deaths were highest among the most senior and distinguished friars.38 Basing his assessment upon this and similar reports, William Hinnebusch counted among the Order’s post-plague woes that it lacked a sufficient number of skilled leaders to train new recruits, thus exacerbating disciplinary problems that existed before the plague. Plague researchers now know that the first wave of plague was an equal opportunity killer, ravaging all population cohorts, indiscriminately killing young and old, the robust and the enfeebled. Plague recurrences fell more heavily upon the young, who had not been previously exposed, and upon the sick and elderly. The distribution of mortality and survival in the Dominican Province of Aragon took a similar shape. Among the 215 known survivors we can count many men already in leadership positions before the plague. Guillem Arnau, for instance, who served Gerona as lector in 1347, served as a visitor to Catalan convents in 1350 and 1352, became prior-vicar at Gerona in 1352, and died in Gerona in 1370 honored as a Preacher General. Francesç Cineris, Antoni Domenech, Bernat Falconer and Guillem Lupet, among many others, similarly held leadership positions before and after the plague or were, before the plague, in advanced stages of study preparing for the positions they later took up. Without a doubt plague mortality was very severe. There are notable examples of high numbers of dead in some religious houses, including Dominican houses, especially well-attested in the fifteenth century.39 Sound local studies tell us that it fell especially hard upon populations in Catalunya, especially Catalan coastal towns. The Catalan population continued to decline through the remainder of the fourteenth century and much of the fifteenth.40 However, as regards the Dominican Order 37 Ole Jørgen Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (Rochester, NY, 2004), 273–284. 38 Kaepelli, Cronache domenicane, 38–39: “ex dicta pestilentia obierunt in Provincia Aragoniae quingenti decem fratres, et pro magna parte fuerunt mortui antiqui et meliores.” 39 E.g., Bartolomea Riccoboni, Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1436, ed. Daniel Bornstein (Chicago, 2000). 40 Rubio, Peste Negra. Günzberg i Moll, Vida Quotidiana. Paul Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge, 1991), 154–166 offers valuable data and bibliography on local and regional effects. Richard F. Gyug,

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assertions of devastation rest on fragile evidence. This is in part because of the methodological and computational difficulties of the sources. The assumption persists that the Dominican population must have suffered at least as much or more than the general population. However, even if deaths inside convents matched those outside, the recovery of the Dominican population did not depend as much upon death and birth rates as did the general population. Despite high mortality, it will become clear that many young men offered themselves for entry into the Dominican Province of Aragon in the years immediately after the pestilence. Surprisingly, assignments to the province’s convents in the period after 1350 show a pattern consistent with annual assignments recorded in the first half of the century: despite intermittent episodes of high plague mortality, assignments increased. The numbers of friars assigned in the annual acts fell dramatically in the years immediately following the mid-century plague, from 302 in 1347 to 229 in 1351, as would be expected in the midst of post-plague chaos. However, even after the precipitous decline the number of assignments in 1351 of 229 friars exceeded the average of annual assignments recorded for the province’s first decades (in 1351 provincial administrators registered the movements of 229 friars, compared to an average of 209 friars on the lists from 1302 to 1314). The drop in assignments was not as dramatic as the reports issued by Domenech and Diago might lead one to expect. Moreover, there quickly ensued a modest but persistent return to increasing numbers of friars on the assignment lists. By 1357 Provincial Prior Nicolau Rossell and his associates had raised assignments up to 279, well above the average of 234 friars assigned annually over the years 1302 to 1347. Another population decline caused by the recurrence of plague in 1363 was also followed by a similar increase in the number of friars mobilized. Assignments fell to a post-plague low of 210 in 1365 but by 1371 had climbed again to 275. Figure one summarizes the long-term trajectory. As those men elected to lead their province assigned their brothers year upon year to various tasks in each of the province’s convents, the numbers of friars assigned climbed upwards.

The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death (Toronto, 1994), 14–17, reviews this literature in the context of episcopal provision of benefices.

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Figure 1: Total Assignments, 1302–1378

The long-term upward trend is striking: the chapter acts of 1302 assigned 220 friars to fifteen convents; by 1378 the acts distributed 273 friars among twenty convents. Despite the Black Death and other periods of peak mortality, the number of friars assigned to convents in the Province of Aragon in 1378 exceeded assignments in 1302 by nearly twenty-five percent. Unless the ratio of assignments to the total population increased, we would expect this to point to an increase in the total population. We will want to see whether growth in assignments is or is not a reflection of proportional increases in the total population. Population Trends: Five Benchmark Years In considering the relationship between assignments and the total population it is fortunate that the thirty-five chapter acts that exist for the years from 1301 to 1378 fall into groups. In four clusters a continuous or near-continuous series of five or more years of data provides sufficient information to make it possible to generate an estimate of the minimum level of the province’s population in the end year of each series. This goes beyond simply counting the numbers of friars moved from here to there in a given year. The peculiarity of the surviving record permits references to individual friars to accumulate over successive years in the computer database as net population inflows and outflows. In the following paragraphs, after a short explanation of

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methods, I will illustrate the value of the database for determining minimum and maximum population levels for the province in several benchmark years. Gaps in the record and the difficulty of assessing the extant material do not present an impenetrable barrier to reconstructing some longterm population trends. Friars typically appear in the record first as students, most in either the grammar or the arts programs. After appearing in the acts as students they often disappear for some time during their active years as preachers and confessors. During this midcareer period, some friars found themselves mentioned in the chapter acts as they received penances or punishments. Others appeared in parts of the annual acts identifying them as socii or diffinitors to provincial or general chapters, as they received the title of preacher general, as the provincial prior absolved them of their service as conventual priors, or as a result of other indications of their official or unofficial responsibilities or reputation. Many reappeared for a final time when the acts recorded their deaths. Excepting the period of missing records from 1332 to 1344, the available data capture at least one or more incidences of activity for the majority of the friars active in the period 1301–1378. The names of some friars who began their careers in the periods 1315–1320, 1322–1327, and 1332–1344 are lost, but the accumulation of names in other periods offers some assurance that the extant acts account for the majority of friars. If we must proceed without a complete record, the fact that the missing years of data are not randomly distributed but fall into groups is helpful to the analysis. The extant recorded activities of friars in the provincial acts amount to a mass of data that I could render useful only after some preliminary organization and analysis. Most friars appear more than once in the various lists of assignments, penances, deaths, etc. Pere Luppi de Bielsa, for instance, appears in the record twelve times, first as a student of logic at Huesca in 1345 and finally in 1378 when he is listed as having died in Zaragoza honored with the rank of Preacher General. In addition, the many orthographic variants needed some assessment and standardization. Pere de Ischo, to take one example, appears seven times in assignment lists with four spelling variations of his surname.41 Finally, the data had to be checked to uncover the presence of multiple

41 He appears four times as de Ischo (1366, 1369, 1372 and 1373), once as de Ixos (1366), once as de Izquo (1368), and once as de Yscho (1371).

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friars with the same name. When a friar by the name of Domenech Sobrini died in 1310 at Calatayud, having served the convent as teaching doctor, another friar of the same name had only recently completed his studies in logic in the same convent.42 After taking account of this orthographic variety and overlapping entries of multiple friars with like names, the database offers an accounting of 10,264 activities undertaken by 3,077 individual friars. About 800 of these friars appear four or more times. The majority of friars appear two or three times. The reader can visualize in the following way how I sorted the data for the purpose of rendering an assessment of the number of friars active in any given year. Guillem Gerau is mentioned in the acts eighteen times from 1327, the year before he started training in logic, to 1379, the year he died. Imagine examining the range of available entries for Guillem as a horizontal bar indicating first and last entries as well as all intermediate years. He left a substantial record of his active membership in the province from 1327 to 1379 and thus the horizontal bar representing his activity is a long one. About Bartomeu Tarragó the extant acts indicate only that he died at Jativa in 1310 and, similarly, the only recorded activity of Jaume Tomàs is his assignment to study grammar at Urgell in 1321. The bars representing the activity of these two men are very short, covering only one year’s time; still, we know even from this limited data that Tarragó was active in 1309–1310 and Tomàs in 1321. Some of the leanest data can be made more useful by making a modest assumption about deaths. The acts offer notice of when friars died, and these death statistics generally offer little reason to doubt their comprehensiveness. I begin with the assumption, therefore, that a friar active in any one year must also have been active in all immediately subsequent years for which there are records, unless those records show him as deceased.43 Guillem Zamaza, for example, appears only in 1327, but because the death records for 1328, 1329, 1330 and 1331 offer no account of his demise, I have counted him as alive and active in all of

42 The first, presumably elder, Domenech Sobrini received a license for disputing in 1302. He was then serving the convent of Calatayud, already recognized as a Doctor. He was assigned again to Calatayud in 1303 and 1304. He died in the same convent in 1310. The younger Domenech Sobrini studied logic at Huesca in 1302, and at Calatayud in 1303 and 1304. The acta of 1329 assigned him to Calatayud without specifying his duties. 43 Beyond friar deaths, we should discount the effect on the total population of other ways friars might leave the Order. One might suggest, for example, that a friar could

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those years. His name does not appear in any later record. Because there exists a significant span of years after 1331 in which he likely died (from 1332 to 1344, 1346, and the period of the mid-century plague) I have not counted him as active beyond 1331. The difficulty here for the aggregate is that for the majority of years from 1301 to 1378 we lack death notices: of the 3,077 friars noted in the records for those years, we have specific notice of the death of 439 friars. I have thus made conservative assumptions about the likely timing of friars’ deaths in order to minimize the possibility of inflating the population. I have suggested that we can imagine each friar’s known activity in the province as a horizontal bar, some like Gerau’s very long, stretching from 1327 to 1379, others like Tomas’s and Tarragó’s very short. Guillem Zamaza’s, given one very modest assumption about how to read the death notices, is of an intermediate length. We can further imagine stacking these bars of data one upon the other, beginning for example with those friars we know died in 1302 and ending with those active in and beyond 1378. Taking vertical slices through these horizontal bars offers one means of counting up a minimum number of active friars in any given year. One can also see from these slices in what year a friar makes his first appearance in the extant records. Added to the death records this is valuable information for measuring actual and estimating potential in and out flows to the total population. Clearly, these vertical slices are more accurate for those years in which the data is most abundant, i.e., in those years that follow upon and complete a series of years of extant data.44 leave the Order as an apostate, or that he might join another order, or that one who might appear in the acts as a novice might have failed to make full profession. There were apostates, although there is no indication that their numbers were sizeable. Administrators sought to capture and imprison them, so from the administrative perspective they would still have been considered members of the Order, although not, as we would say, members in good standing. Leaving the order for another was extremely difficult due to the canon law requirement that religious could move only to an order that imposed stricter discipline. Whether it was or was not in fact, papal privileges recognized the Dominican Order as among the “harsher” orders. Finally, one may wonder whether a large number of students assigned to grammar schools left after a few years’ education without gaining access to higher levels of training and participation. The acts say nothing about the possibility of non-professed students and recognize all those assigned as “fratres.” Moreover, even if some relatively small portion of the assignments denotes novice friars who failed to make final entrance, they nonetheless were active for a time and thus are properly counted as active members of the population without fear of their overrepresentation in the sample. 44 For background on the utility of counting up names in this way, see Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps and Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (New York, 2005).

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The years of extant acts from 1301 to 1314 identify a total of 873 individual friars identified at least once in the period. Of these, the database records 155 as having died in the seven years of extant data. For present purposes I have estimated that an additional 132 deaths occurred in the six years for which data is missing (extrapolating from the average of extant years of 22 deaths per year).45 Thus I contend that the total population at the end of 1314 was no less than 873 minus 275, or 598 friars. Similarly, for the period of complete records from 1327 to 1331 the names of 387 friars appeared in the acts for the first time and a total of 202 friars from earlier years continue to show activity. The consecutive extant acts for these years record the deaths of fifty-four friars. Thus the lowest possible number of friars active in the year 1331 is 535.46 Similar processes for 1355, which comes at the end of a sixyear succession of records, and 1373, at the end of five years of continuous data, offer minimum population levels in those years of 575 and 602 respectively. Following this procedure renders a picture of the total population of the province for four benchmark years that offers the most comprehensive and conclusive cumulative data. In addition, I have also determined a minimum threshold population level for the year 1350. The names of ninety-six friars appear for the first time in the 1350 chapter acts. Adding this to the 215 friars active in the province before the 1350 plague who continued to be active in 1350 and in immediately consecutive years of available data puts the minimum population in that year at 311. To recount, I have estimated the minimum number of friars active in the Province of Aragon in each of the benchmark years to be as follows: 1314 1331 1350 1355 1373

598 535 311 575 602

45 Twenty deaths per year is a suitable average given the distribution of known deaths. Recorded deaths were: twenty-one in 1302, sixteen in 1303, seventeen in 1304, forty-one in 1307, twenty-four in 1310, sixteen in 1312, and 20 in 1314. Known deaths averaged twenty-two per year. The median number of deaths for the seven years of available data was twenty. 46 The four clusters are: 1) 1302–1304, 1307, 1310, 1312, 1314; 2) 1327–1331; 3) 1350–1355; and 4) 1368–1373.

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Leaving off the extraordinary circumstances leading to the much lower number in 1350, comparing the estimates of minimum population levels in the four other benchmark years points immediately to their consistency. When viewed across the decades of records on either side of the Black Death, the province’s population remained relatively stable. Over the four periods of comparable records, the highest and lowest estimates of population minimums vary by only sixty two friars. One might wonder whether maximum population levels in any of these years might be significantly higher than the minimums posited here. Achieving an estimate of population maximums is a tricky undertaking given the limitations of the data. Researchers have often assumed that the numbers of friars assigned in any one year’s acts represented a relatively fixed proportion of the total population available for assignment. Francisco Diago seems to have assumed a ratio of about 1:2 when he imagined 640 friars active in the province before the Black Death (a bit more than twice the 302 friars assigned in 1347). This ratio is certainly too low, since, with the exception of 1350, doubling for each of the benchmark years the number of friars named on the assignment lists achieves a total well below the minimum population levels as I have determined them. It is more likely that the ratio varied considerably and could be much higher. Depending on recruitment and morbidity factors that are difficult to measure in the aggregate, assignment to total population ratios probably ranged from 1:2.5 in the earliest and latest years studied to 1:4 or more in the years just before mid-century. It makes sense to envision the demographic situation up to mid century in this way: As the province expanded, gaining more recruits and new convents, the province’s leaders moved as many men as they could from convent to convent for training and work, but as the friar population ballooned out of proportion to the mission potential more men moved less often from place to place. Another means of estimating population maximums is to develop a model that can account for a range of assumptions about inflows and outflows of individuals in the years for which we lack good data. Such a model must incorporate assumptions about possible means of population change as variables, and then measure the effects of changes to the variables. Several results have become clear to me as I have built the rudiments of such a model. First, it is nearly impossible to create conditions in which the province’s population in the years from 1314 to 1331 did not grow very substantially. To illustrate, let us begin by fixing the total population in 1314 at its minimum of 598 friars (the ratio of friars

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assigned to the total would thus be 1:2.8). To this figure we will make only two changes. The first is to add friars on the assignment lists in the years 1321 and 1327–1331 (thus purposefully undercounting). The second is to subtract a conservative estimate of deaths per year based upon known deaths (twenty in each year for the period from 1315 to 1320 and fifteen for each year from 1322 to 1326). This done, the population by 1331 approaches 900 friars. Only substantial inaccuracy in the death records for extant years or severe mortality in one or more years of the lost records would lower the size of the population below this number. And, to be clear, this number clearly undercounts friars whose names would appear on the assignment lists from 1322 to 1326 if they were extant. The finding is an extraordinary one for several reasons. First, with 215 friars assigned in 1331, the ratio of assigned friars to the total population would have exceeded 1:4. Second, extrapolating forward from 1331 to the late 1340s based upon the same conservative reading of assignments and deaths, although recognizing that the significant gap in the record makes this much more speculative, a population of 900 friars in 1331 would have grown to perhaps 1100 in the years just before the Black Death. The approximate ratio of assigned to total friars in the province at that point may then have been 1:3.6. Estimates of the maximum extent of the total friar population in the Province of Aragon following the Black Death will vary depending upon the broad range of assumptions made about the decline of the population in the years 1347 to 1350 and mortality in subsequent plague years. Nonetheless, the model allows us to discern important changes in the direction of population growth and decline: from its low point immediately after the Black Death the total population of the province grew rapidly; it then declined substantially in the years coinciding with the recurrence of plague in 1363; thereafter it climbed quickly once again. The complete series of acts for the years from 1350 to 1355 identifies at least 380 friars not noted in the acts of any previous year. Adding these to the known minimum population in 1350 of at least 311 friars yields a population estimate of 691. Any increase in the starting population in 1350 would increase the 1355 population accordingly.47 Similarly, over 434 names appear in the acts for the first time in the years from 1365 through 1373. This being the case, only an

47 The death lists for these years, apparently complete except for the year 1355, indicate only thirty-six deaths. The acts of 1355 record no friar deaths. This might be due

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elimination of about half of the population by plague in 1363 would have reduced the population to below 700 in 1363. I would hazard to posit the following population maximums: 1314, 700; 1331, 1000; 1347, 1100; 1350, 500; 1355, 750; 1363, 400; 1373, 800. These numbers are based on a careful reading of a large body of detailed evidence; nonetheless, I would not want to have read into them anything more than an improved understanding of broad trends. At their upper extremes these estimates become tenuous. Measured over the whole course of the period from 1302 to 1378 the population of the Province of Aragon remained stable, seeing periods of expansion interrupted by waves of sudden declines. Growth came in bursts, with the strongest increase in the years for which we have no records, from 1332 to 1346. The population of the province’s friars declined in the early 1350s, perhaps by as much as seventy percent, and declined again, perhaps just as severely, around 1363, but after each momentary decline the province resumed a growth trajectory. It is one of the implications of the foregoing that administrators in the Dominican Province of Aragon had consistent access to a large pool of recruits. In good times administrators saw potential to expand their ranks. In times of high mortality, too, they replenished their diminished population. The vigor and success of recruiting efforts, so much in evidence before the mid-century plague, is demonstrated even more clearly for the post-plague years. For example, the province’s recruiters brought nearly 400 newcomers into the region’s convents in the five-year period after 1350, restoring the population to near the level from which it fell at mid-century. Many questions remain. We would like to determine with some accuracy, for example, how managers measured the availability of resources as they consistently increased the province’s population of friars. Growth in the numbers of men in the province may have strained the capability of gathering the necessary food resources, although it is also well known that individual friars increasingly brought funds with them as they entered the Order, which they used to arrange for private cells and books, hire personal servants or indulge their confreres in anniversary meals.48 It may well have been an expectation in the decades before mid century that newcomers brought with them a to a failure to record deaths that occurred, although it is just as likely that no friars died in that year. For comparison, the acts for 1354 record four deaths and the acts of 1357 identify ten deceased. 48 E.g., Blasco Martínez, Sociología de Una Comunidad Religiosa.

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significant portion of what it would take to maintain them financially, at least in the form of implicit or explicit promises of future family gifts. Just why recruiting remained strong also remains difficult to answer, although we can demonstrate, if it is possible to say little else, that recruiting success was not accidental. We can illustrate recruiters’ efforts by charting changes in the ratio of students assigned to grammar and logic programs. Over the course of the fourteenth century grammar schools opened in steadily increasing numbers to young men not yet ready for higher study.49 Still, the focus of the Order’s education system remained the program in logic, which prepared friars in bible literacy, gave them the rhetorical skills they needed as preachers, and served as a means of measuring the competencies of students who might pursue higher degrees for eventual work as scholar teachers. Logic studies were the productive core of the Order’s ambitions for training its men. In typical years, for the whole period from 1302 to 1378, students assigned to studies in logic, or arts as it was also called, outnumbered, usually by a substantial margin, those sent to the province’s grammar schools.50 One finds only two exceptions to the regular pattern of significantly more logic than grammar students recorded in the assignment lists, one in the year 1321 and the other in the three years from 1351 to 1353.51 The increase in 1321 appears coincident

49 Marian Michèle Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), 86, calls the Order’s grammar schools “prepostulancy schools,” arguing that they were not fully integrated into conventual education programs. While this may have been the case in the thirteenth century, it is clearly not the case for the Province of Aragon in the fourteenth. As Hinnebusch, History I: 283, remarks, I believe more correctly, “the provinces often supplied this training, either before or after a postulant entered the order.” The chapters acts identify every grammarian, explicitly and without exception, a frater. 50 Within a range from forty seven to ninety eight, annual assignments in logic averaged seventy one. Assignments to the grammar schools in the same period ranged from six in 1314 to seventy nine in 1321, averaging forty two. 51 The anomaly of 1321, when administrators assigned seventy-nine friars to grammar but only sixty to logic, appears to be the result of a deliberate effort to expand the province’s grammar school offerings, perhaps after several years spent reconsidering their value, or because of some depression in the number or perceived quality of students preparing for arts training, or in response to increased demand. Three convents, Castelló, Cervera, and Manresa, received grammarians for the first time on record. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 148–151. In the previous year of extant provincial records, 1314, administrators assigned only six grammar students to two convents. Moreover, in the years under his leadership as Master General (1312–1317), Berengar of Landora showed himself to be particularly concerned to correct problems

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with a push to bring more young men into the Order. A later chapter will identify the admonitory items issued in 1321 through which the province’s administrators gave special attention to the management demands of an increased number of students. Taken together, all the factors we have so far identified – the opening of more convents, the provision of grammar training in those convents, increasing numbers of friars assigned to study grammar, and the admonitions issued on the subject of their preparation – suggest the application of a deliberate policy in the Province of Aragon’s first decades. The superabundance of grammarians over arts students from 1351 to 1353 occurred immediately following the sudden and serious mortality of the Black Death.52 At a time of extreme population decrease, provincial prior Nicolau Rossell and the local priors responsible for recruiting responded with immediate efforts to increase the number of friars in their charge, doing so by permitting entrance to a higher than customary number of grammarians. Even as recruitment of grammar students increased, the number of students assigned to logic programs did not decline in these years. Administrators did not fill the obvious deficit in the province’s population merely by drawing an inflated number of recruits to the very bottom of the Order’s educational ladder. The Order continued to attract recruits ready to bypass grammar and enter directly into the province’s logic schools.53 Put another way, recruiting efforts remained focused even as the numbers of grammarians increased in the period of a depressed population. Moreover, the province’s long-term plan for promotion of students to higher studies in philosophy and theology appears not to have changed significantly under the stress of severe population decline.

associated with young friars, suggesting that he was less than pleased with the progress of a growing grammar school program. E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1990), 140– 144; Reichert, “Acta Capitulorum Generalium,” MOPH III, 56–105; Mortier, Histoire des Maitres Généraux, 2: 475–485. Whether he was more concerned about qualitative or quantitative problems is difficult to interpret. 52 In those years, assignments to grammar schools compared to assignment to logic as follows: in 1351: seventy-three grammarians to forty-seven in logic; in 1352: seventy-three to sixty-two; in 1353: seventy seven to seventy three. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 313–316. Comparable figures for 1350: forty-six assigned to grammar and fifty-eight to logic. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV23 (1993), 297–300, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 240–243, 259–262. 53 The average number of assignments to logic in the eight years of extant records from 1302 to 1347 is seventy; the average for the period 1350–1378 is seventy-one.

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What I have presented in these last paragraphs has special value in the context of Dominican historiography. I have attested to the potency of the province’s recruiting efforts because it has long been a matter of consensus that in the years after the Black Death newcomers to the Order were of lesser quality than their predecessors and, further, that few elders survived to offer them guidance in Dominican discipline. In his narrative of decline leading to decay, Hinnebusch saw this as a “problem of insufficient manpower” that had both qualitative and quantitative repercussions. Too few young men joined the Order after mid-century and those who did were too young, too badly chosen, unworthy candidates. In sum, “the acceptance of such youthful postulants contributed to the decline of religious discipline.”54 We move here to a new conclusion, based on a deliberate reconsideration of the evidence. Through the entire period studied here provincial administrators had access to a large pool of recruits, from which they might draw liberally as need arose and as resources permitted. In times of peak mortality they drew more deeply from the reserve pool, perhaps as families in immediate crisis saw it as comparatively more advantageous to give their sons and their financial resources to the Dominicans than to religious orders tied to underproductive lands and dwindling rents.55 The Black Death was an immediate catastrophe, although the province’s managers responded to mitigate the harm done. There existed in the Province of Aragon no insufficiency in the numbers of friars. Within four or five years the province’s schools had trained new recruits, thus correcting any temporary diminution in the numbers of friars ready for service. Very substantial evidence indicates the persistence of what we might call quality control problems, but the next chapter will make it apparent that these had very deep and complicated roots and cannot be blamed on Black Death discontinuity.

54

Hinnebusch, History I: 328–329. For an overview of the economic circumstances of Spanish monasteries during the Late Medieval Crisis, see, Salustiano Moreta Velayos, Rentas monásticos en Castilla. Problemas de método. (Salamanca, 1974). 55

CHAPTER FOUR

BAD-BOY FRIARS AND COMPLICIT LEADERS We have identified an explanatory gap in the telling of Dominican history: efforts to cast the Order’s past as a success story bypass the fourteenth-century because the supposed decadence of that period’s friars puts them outside the broad sweep of the Order’s enduring values. Chapter one marked the limits of the success story, which owes much to simplification, omission, and myth making, magnifying a fabulous “unitary sensibility” while pushing the presence of “some tensions” into a foggy background.1 My purpose in pointing out some of the limitations of the success story was to suggest the possibility of continuities between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, including early and mounting dysfunctions that with the passage of time grew increasingly difficult to resolve. Taming a Brood of Vipers is about those tensions and dysfunctions. Chapters two and three examined important features of the early development of the Province of Aragon, its territorial expansion, the assertion of a provincial identity centered especially on Catalan friars and convents, and then the demographic ups and downs the province witnessed as the potential for growth confronted the realities of the Black Death and other bad years. The present chapter takes the discussion further by presenting a number of piquant examples of an early and lasting tendency to disorder. Rather than a sharp break with the past caused by external events that introduced decline followed by decay, we will see in this and later chapters that many of the Order’s most difficult management problems in the fourteenth century, at least in the Province of Aragon where evidence is richest, had their origins in early systems of internal governance, which became larded up with interpretive excess as each generation of friars expanded its view of acceptable habits and practices. As in other chapters, I will not draw evidence exclusively from

1

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 240: “Aunque cada Casa o Convento conserve su autonomía, es importante señelar la movilidad de los religiosos. Ello permite entrever las áreas de influencias y el sentido unitario que reina en la Provincia, aunque conlleve, a veces, algunas tensiones.”

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the chapter acts and other documents surviving for the Dominican Province of Aragon, although those underutilized sources are essential to advancing the chapter’s two principal goals. First, some of the organization’s deficits in its time of troubles were of internal origin. Second, these stresses upon the Order’s regulative, cognitive, and normative institutions cannot be blamed on a few bad-boy friars since they were often emboldened by the Order’s leaders, whose reluctance to combat the system of privileges from which they profited instigated conflict and eroded unity. Boccaccio, Chaucer and others attest to a broadly-perceived lack of corporate sanctity among the Dominican friars, whom they show to be a worldly, self-regarding lot. We begin briefly with these external criticisms, moving our analysis from outside perceptions of the friars’ faults inward toward an understanding of how the friars themselves imagined their own lives and work. Chaucer left little to the imagination when describing the dress and demeanor of his “merry limiter,” a preaching friar who knows the ladies in his precincts better than a professed religious should, who wears what he pleases and eats what he wants, and who, when hearing confessions, takes pleasure in exchanging easy penance for a fee. This image of the worldly friar was already widespread in his time.2 On the Iberian Peninsula, home-grown writers promulgated their own anti-mendicant criticisms. Juan Ruiz, archpriest of the town of Hita near present-day Madrid, echoed many of the criticisms commonly directed against the friars of his day in his Book of Good Love, written around 1330, signaling in broad terms a weakening of the Dominican values of humility, simplicity and poverty. Deriding one of the friars’ more loathsome habits, the archpriest pictures the friars hovering over the bodies of their dying constituents, eagerly anticipating the distribution of gifts, cloaked in their habits like black crows impatiently waving their wings and cawing over carrion.3 Earlier critics of the Dominicans, including some

2 Carolly Erickson, “The Fourteenth-Century Franciscans and Their Critics,” Franciscan Studies 35 (1975), 107–135; 36 (1976),108–147, and Penn R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, 1986). Countering Szittya’s identification of Chaucer as antifraternal and asserting a gap between poetic license and fourteenth-century reality is G. Geltner, “Faux Semblants: Antifraternalism Reconsidered in Jean de Meun and Chaucer,” Studies in Philology 101 (2004), 357–380. 3 Juan Ruiz, El Libro de Buen Amor, stanzas 505–507. Louise Haywood, Sex, Scandal, and Sermon in Fourteenth-Century Spain: Juan Ruiz’s “Libro de Buen Amor”

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spiritual Franciscans, also found the churlish crow useful as a descriptive image of the trenchantly voracious and avaricious Dominican friar.4 The Majorcan Ramon Llull, like Dante and Petrarch, showed more temperance. He closely associated himself with the Dominicans in his early years, but in some later instances clearly intended to malign the Dominicans, if perhaps to goad them into more effective action on Christendom’s behalf.5 In The Book of the Lover and the Beloved, part of Llull’s great didactic romance The Book of Evast and Blanquerna, at a mid-point in the Beloved’s quest for the Lover, the Beloved calls out to Understanding and Will, imploring them to “bark and awaken the large dogs who are asleep.” Here a delicate metaphor points indirectly but unmistakably to the Dominicans. Understanding and Will represent the religious intelligentsia, schoolmen in general but particularly the leadership of the Dominican friars, for whom study was a central endeavor essential to corporate mission. The sleeping dogs are the friars themselves, the Domini canes, who should have remained alert, on guard against the enemies of the Church, but who instead ignored their duties. Thus the leadership of the Order is implicated in failing to give proper oversight to rank-and-file friars who should be engaged in Christendom’s defense. Llull insinuates here that the friars resort too much to idleness, but he also means to show their lack of attention results from a dishonorable turning away from the values by which they had gained society’s trust: “Remember the dishonor of my beloved at the hands of those so honored.” The preaching friars, he believed, inverted their founder’s objectives; instead of drawing the laity closer to God, “the enmity between the people and my beloved increases.”6 (New York, 2008) sees the archpriest advancing a conservative commentary on the destabilizing effects of sexual desire upon Catholic social order. My own view is that this thesis deprives the Libro of its essential ambiguities and thus also deprives its readers, past and present, of some good dirty fun. On the interpretive possibilities, see John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor (Princeton: University Press, 1994). 4 Robert Lerner, “Ornithological Propaganda; the Fourteenth-Century Denigration of Dominicans,” in Politische Reflexion in der Welt des späten Mittelalters / Political Thought in the Age of Scholaticism, ed. Jurgen Miethke (Leiden, 2004), 171–191. The unflattering depiction of Dominicans as crows began in the thirteenth century, but likely gained new vigor early in the fourteenth century. 5 Anthony Bonner, “Ramon Llull and the Dominicans,” Catalan Review 4 (1990), 377–392. 6 Cited from the translation in Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader, ed. and trans. Anthony Bonner, (Princeton, 1993), 205, n. 44. Perhaps Llull’s critique is more

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Llull’s keen attention to Dominican faults dates to the decades just before 1300, a point worth keeping in mind if we want to put Dominican activities into a context sufficiently complicated that it permits the simultaneity of operational successes and failures. Llull’s complaints are especially intriguing and worth consideration here because, rather than parodying or vilifying the friars, as their critics often did, he treats the Dominican Order as a potential source of Christian good that fails in its promise to achieve worthwhile objectives.7 I have introduced here two very different kinds of complaints coming from outside of the Order. In writers like Chaucer and Juan Ruiz we have evidence of the misbehavior of individual friars, or at least a widespread perception that the Dominican organization harbored some bad boys. The implication for historians has often been that a few bad apples, unworthy candidates for religious life, brought their social ills with them when they entered the Order. Llull’s writings point in another direction, indicating internal organizational failures separate from an aggregation of individual error. He perceives a degree of indifference, pretense, even hypocrisy, running through the core of the Order’s work. It is useful to treat these two distinct notions of indiscipline in turn. In doing so we will find that they signal two aspects of a single late medieval Dominican operational reality. Bad-Boy Friars In the Province of Aragon evidence of bad boy behavior is not hard to find, and not merely the invention of critics, because much of it comes to us from the provincial chapter acts in the very direct form of annual lists of penances meted out to erring friars. The core group of participants in provincial chapters – the provincial prior and the elected diffinitors – gave considerable attention to recording the penances and punishments they accorded to those under their supervision. The penance section of the acts is recorded under a rubric that most often

furtive simply because he produced Blanquerna before it became fashionable to so directly scorn the friars’ abuses (Llull began work on the book in the 1280s), although that does not diminish the usefulness of his work as a description of the fourteenth century problem. 7 John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination. (New York, 2002), 256–274, offers a nuanced treatment of Llull’s negative view of the Dominican conversion campaigns led by Ramon Penyafort and Ramon Martí.

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reads Iste sunt penitentie.8 They heard the most egregious cases as well as cases that had come to the provincial prior and chapter diffinitors on appeal. It is from those penance lists that we draw the examples of mischief and misconduct that follow. An examination of these encounters between rank-and-file friars and the corporate laws guarded by their leaders raises questions of juridical process and jurisdiction, which we should briefly recognize. Collective responsibility, self-help and other informal means of communal justice kept the behavior of most friars within a range that the majority, including the leadership, considered acceptable. When such informal methods of corporate discipline failed, the conventual chapter was the first formal venue for calling a friar to account. A daily affair in the Order’s first years, the “chapter of faults” in each convent became quite intermittent, weekly at best in some convents after 1300. It did not entirely disappear, but operated with less frequency and rigor as a consequence of the diminished potency of the local prior’s power to supervise and correct behavior (more will be said later about the debilities of the local priorate). Beyond conventual jurisdiction was the province. At the provincial chapter two judicial bodies reviewed cases and rendered decisions. A committee of judges constituted the first group. Among the first points of official business at provincial chapter was the selection of judges appointed to hear cases on appeal and cases of local importance that conventual priors were not comfortable handling. Little is known about the work of the group of judges, for example about the nature of the cases it heard as distinguished from those it did not have competency to rule upon. The chapter acts do not record what cases the judges heard nor the decisions they rendered; perhaps they gave much of their effort to reviewing previous years’ cases to determine whether the imposed penances had been adequately performed.9

8 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 280. In what follows, I use the word penance broadly because Dominican leaders, while they certainly knew the given and evolving law on penance, left ambiguities in their records. They recognized penitential discipline as an aspect of the sacrament that included confession, absolution and reconciliation, but Dominican corporate law also held that an act against the Order’s own rule and constitutions did not bind under sin but only under a penalty owed to a human institution. The penances as written do not distinguish sacramental rite from civil punishment. 9 For overviews of the Order’s judicial and disciplinary processes, see Galbraith, Constitution, 41–44; Douais, Acta Capitulorum Provincialium, iii–xxxii.

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The second judicial body was the diffinitorium, the provincial chapter’s chief decision making body that comprised the provincial prior and the elected diffinitors. In all instances in which the group of judges is mentioned in the provincial chapter acts, the diffinitorium merely states that it accepts their decisions (sententias iudicium approbamus), typically appending that statement of accord at the end of the year’s acts separated from the section recording penances.10 The acts record the penalties issued by the provincial and diffinitors in some number of the cases that they heard and sometimes offer details about the circumstances of the case.11 Sometimes the acts indicate procedures or actions to be undertaken in the future for the purpose of determining or effecting justice. Such was the case in 1347 when the provincial prior, Bernat Sescala, called Jaume Pascasi to appear before him within two months in order to defend himself against charges brought by Pere Peyroni. Pascasi was then a very senior friar (he first appears in the chapter acts as a student of logic in 1302). At the provincial chapter in 1350, Nicolau Rossell and his diffinitors, following three hearings on the matter, judged Pascasi guilty of wrongfully incarcerating Peyroni and denied his graces in the Order.12 The numbers of friars punished and the nature of their errors range widely from year to year. In 1314 the penance section is limited to a single sentence, but that single item blames the friars of two convents, Pamplona and Sangüesa, likely well over fifty men, for their failure to elect a socius from each convent to attend the provincial chapter.13 Provincial administrators enjoined the entire membership of both convents to a bread and water fast for six days, the performance of six masses, and receipt of six “disciplines” (strikes with a whip). In 1357, by way of contrast, sixteen items record penances for 20 professed friars and four conversi.14 Most penances recorded in the acts treat three kinds of faults. First are abuses of the electoral system. These range from the failure of a house to elect the representative who would represent its interests at an upcoming provincial chapter meeting to conspiracies that sought to 10

E.g., from 1302, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 253. No penances were recorded in five years of the extant series: 1302, 1304, 1329, 1345 and 1347; the partial record for 1355 also lacks penances. In some years, penances appear in two disparate parts of the record. 12 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 293 and 304. 13 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 137. 14 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 347–350. 11

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prejudice the outcome of an election, for example, by creating a factional voting bloc or by preventing some voting members of the house from having access to the chapter during the voting period. In 1303, for instance, the prior of the convent of Tarragona wrote a letter to the provincial recording an attempted coup in the convent following an election. Valentín de Pace and others met separately and, following their own temerity rang the bells for chapter, gathered together a group of friars, and held a second election in violation of law and custom. The provincial and diffinitors punished Valentín, whom they found guilty of contradicting regular election practices, by denying him his “voice,” that is his right to participate in elections, for a year. They further subjected him to three days on a bread and water diet, the completion of three masses, and receipt of three disciplines, or lashes with a whip. Bernat Scardi received the same punishment, absent the loss of voice, for participating in the first election and later accommodating Valentín in his effort to produce a different outcome in a second election.15 The convent of Urgell wrote in the same year to tell the provincial chapter about four friars, A. de Nalsovello, Bernat Martín, Pere Catene, and G. de Uliano, who similarly attempted to avoid participation in the convent’s deliberations (tractatus). They each received four days on bread and water, four masses, two recitations of the Psalter, and four disciplines as penalty, and were reminded that only a demonstration of

15 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 260–261: Item cum per decretum Prioris Tarrachonensis constet nobis quod ipsa electio fuit rite et canonice celebrata ultima die mensis post Visperam [sic], in quo etiam minime artaverant tempus, cum post Missam potuissent ad electionem procedere, sicut habet consuetudo Ordinis generalis, et frater Valentinus de Pace, qui diem sciebat, et ipsi et aliis predictum fuerat perlatum quod concurrent, nec dictus frater Valentinus convenit sicut alii fratres de Monasterio Sanctarum Crucum, quem Conventum convenerant, ipse frater Valentinus tardans nimis pervenit ad Conventum, cum Conventus iam cenaret, et post cenam autoritate, [sic] imo temeritate propria pulsavit campanam Capituli, non vocato Prelato, nec etiam requisito, et convenientibus aliquibus fratribus, in Capitulum contradixit electioni facte pro se, et pro se electionem fecit contra iura et Ordinis instituta; cum etiam si vere repulsus fuisse, quia non fuit, prima electione non cassata, non debuit procedere ad secundam. Ideo prefatum fratrem Valentinum privamus voce in omni electione usque ad anum, ut in quo deliquit, debite puniatur. Iniungimus etiam eis tres dies in pane et aqua, tres Missas, et tres disciplinas; fratri autem Bernado Scardi, qui prime etiam electioni interfuit, non adversus communem formam per sepedictum fratrem Valentinum, et ego nova vice eligo tecum, et tu mecum eumdem; nos versa vice ordinamus, ut ipse frater Bernardus associet dictum fratrem Valentinum in tribus diebus in pane et aqua, tribus Missas, et tribus disciplinas. Scardi was assigned to Jativa in 1307. The chapter acts of 1310 record de Pace’s death. No further information about these friars is extant.

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grace by provincial authorities prevented the four from losing their voice rights.16 Second are punishments of high-spirited friars whose audacity led them into to fistfights, theft, irreverence, and other malevolence. The penances speak of dissolute behavior and levity, of presumptuousness, irreverence shown to prelates and more. In 1312, for example, A. Perfeyta and Fernan de Sudanelo, found guilty of disruptions and levity in the convent at Valencia, received the typical range of punishments and, in addition, the provincial chapter ordered them moved to another convent.17 The provincial chapter of 1331 imposed a penalty of two years’ removal of voice upon seven friars found guilty of refusing to come when called to chapter to discuss the reception of a novice. An eighth friar, Guillem de Mata, received a harsher sentence of four years without voice because he set the example followed by the others in their display of rebellion, contumacy and pernicious irreverence.18 Here we can include cases such as the one involving friars Jaume March and Bernat de Pinu. Because the extant chapter acts offer complete lists of assignments of friars from one convent to another, lists 16 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 261: Item cum per litteram Conventus Urgellensis constet nobis, quod in die tractatus frater A. de Nalsovello, frater Bernardus Martini, frater Petrus Cat(h)ene, et frater G. de Uliano noluerunt interesse tractatui propter fratrem D. de Espinosa, quem dicebant esse privatum voce, licet ipse contrarium assereret, et Prior ei testimonium perhiberet, quod noluerunt interesse tractatui etiam cum omni protestatione sicut fecerunt alii, licet a pluribus sic inducti, nec voluerunt renunciare voci proprie, ne tractatus ipse fieret isto anno, sed Capitulum cum clamoribus convenerunt temerarie reclamando, iniungimus eis quatuor dies in pane et aqua, quatuor disciplinas, et quatuor Missas, vel duo Psalteria, et facimus eis gratiam quod non privamus eos voce, ut in quo deliquerunt, secundum iustitiam puniantur. 17 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 126–127: Item quia frater A. Perfeyta, et frater Ferdinandus de Sudanelo, et frater Bernardus de Artiga multas disolutiones et levitates fecerunt in Conventu valentino, privamus eos studio, et omni voce, et gratiis Ordinis, et in penam a dicto Conventu etiam illos amovemus. 18 EV 22 (1992), 174: Item, quia fratres Guillermus de Mata, Arnaldus Dominici, Berengarius Iacobi, Francischus Rayoni, Pontius de Mata, Bernardus de Aquanoctibus, Petrus Çaplana, Dominicus Serrati vocati ad Capitulum per campanam ipsius Capituli per Priorem, ipso Priore requisito, et contra voluntatem eius, de ipso Capitulo recesserunt, licet per Reverendum Patrem Fratrem Pontium de Montecluso eis diceretur quod male faciebant, nec propter hoc ab ipso recessu desistere voluerunt, et ipsum Priorem solum cum paucis in Capitulo reliquerunt, ipsos ad duos annos omni voce privamus cum non sit dubium rebellionem, contumaciam, et perniciosam irreverentiam hoc fuisse, sed fratri Guillermo de Mata praedicto ad praedictam poenam addimus unum annum pro eo, quia ipse fuit occasio exempli aliis in culpa praefata, cum primus exiverit dicendo, quod sine eo Prior reciperet novitium quod pro Conventu Castillionensi, et de consensu eiusdem Conventus, recipere proponebat.

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which typically also identify the reason for a transfer, we have opportunity in this instance, as in many others, to obtain an excellent picture of the trajectory of these friars’ careers. In this instance, an examination of the assignment lists opens a window into the events leading to a particularly egregious event. Bernat de Pinu is first recorded in an assignment list of 1352. His provincial supervisors in that year assigned him to the convent in Barcelona to pursue a course in grammar. In the next three years he was reassigned to Majorca, Valencia, and Barcelona, respectively, to study logic. Authorities recorded his assignment in 1357 and 1358 to the program in natural philosophy in the Barcelona convent, and in 1363 we encounter him as a reader (lector) in Majorca. The provincial chapter of 1365 gave him the honor of advanced studies in Florence, and in 1370 he traveled to Paris, to pursue studies at the international center of learning that signaled the very peak in a student’s academic performance in the Dominican Order. Jaume March followed a similar trajectory, up to a point. We first find him assigned to the grammar program in Barcelona in 1353, the year in which Bernat de Pinu began his training in logic. We might take from this that Bernat was March’s senior by a year or two, if not in age then at least along the scholarly path. In 1354, 1355, and 1357, March was assigned to Gerona, Valencia, and Tarragona for studies in logic. If the two had not yet met as they crossed from one convent to another they may have heard of each other.19 By 1358 March had advanced to training in natural philosophy, and his assignment in that year to the convent of Barcelona put him in the same place and in the same course of study with de Pinu. A gap in intervening years permits us only to pick up March’s career in 1365, when the provincial chapter assigned him to Castellon as a sublector assisting the convent’s principal teacher. There follows an unfortunate unfolding of events. In 1366 March was found guilty of attempting to rig an election that would

19 The Order’s statutes required that local priors read the annual acts aloud in conventual chapter, presumably including the assignment lists. As in any closed group of relatively few individuals engaged in a single activity, especially one in which advancement meant competition among the participants, we might expect that the more ambitious among them came to know what they could about their peers. Assignment lists for the years 1354, 1355 and 1377 name in total 166 separate individuals assigned to study logic in the twelve convents offering logic studies. It is abundantly clear in his Chronicon that Pere de Arenys showed great interest in recording the names of the teachers he studied under as well as other leading students.

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have made him a socius at the next provincial chapter meeting. Instead of receiving the honor, social cachet and direct access to the province’s most senior leaders that would have come with attending the provincial chapter, he stayed home, and awaited a judgment in the case of his botched attempt at electoral fraud.20 At the chapter, provincial leaders punished him by denying him his voice in elections for three years and by indicating that he could not be a candidate for the position of socius over the same period. By 1368 it appears that he had made some effort to redeem himself; in that year he was assigned to the studium generale at Montpellier, a position reserved for exemplary students showing promise exceeded only by those destined for the schools at Bologna and Paris. However, the next year’s assignment list puts him in Sant Mateu, the province’s newest, smallest, and most remote friar outpost. His role there is unspecified, which suggests that it was a limited one. Perhaps he showed less than full contrition for his previous behavior, maybe he did not fulfill the academic promise his supervisors saw in him, or maybe he again did something that he should not have done. Both friars had reached the peak of their educational opportunities in the Order. Each had likely followed the academic career of the other, a competitor, for more than a decade. But only one, Bernat, went to Florence and then spent at least two years in Paris. As far as we know, Dominican authorities found no fault with his performance. March studied in Montpellier, a fine school but no Paris, for at most two years, and a couple of bad moves on his part slowed his ascent and diminished his career prospects. When we last encountered him he had been assigned to the province’s lagging frontier convent. This brings us to the main event. On the feast of the Order’s founder, the Blessed Dominic, in 1371, Bernat de Pinu and Jaume March came face to face, probably in the convent at Valencia, where we know Bernat was assigned as lector in the following year. What occurred there may have taken a couple of paths. Perhaps, having gotten the better of his rival over the course of their academic careers, Bernat showed a degree of arrogance that angered Jaume. Or perhaps Jaume, in a moment of anger, jealousy or self-importance, challenged Bernat. One or both may have taken the opportunity to seek vengeance for an earlier slight. In any event, the two met in 1371, face to face, mano a mano

20

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 135.

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so to speak, with the result that Jaume punched Bernat de Pinu in the face.21 Other evidence from penances recorded in the provincial acts indicates that fistfights and physical threats occurred regularly. The provincial chapter of 1321 cited Arnau Perfeyta for being a wanderer (vagosus) and for fighting with his subprior when called to account.22 This was his second recorded offense. In 1312 Romeu de Bruguera and the diffinitors in chapter with him called Arnau to account for his dissolution and levity, punishing him by removing him from his course of studies and moving him to another convent.23 By 1321 he had been in the Order at least fourteen years, so we might think of him as a seasoned elder friar, although perhaps disgruntled at his lack of advancement or too much of a bad boy to bow to the disciplinary exertions of peers and superiors. In 1357, two lay brothers, Francesç Peyroni and Bartomeu Capit, fought, hitting and kicking each other until Peyroni hit Capit so hard with a stone that Capit, for at least a brief time, lost the ability to speak.24 In the same year, Antoni de Manresa and Jon Vilardelli fought in the sacristy, for which they received the comparatively harsh sentence of a three-year deprivation of voice and twenty days bread and water.25 Miquel Sanch showed contumacy and shook a sword at his master, Bartolomeu Gasconi, for which he was punished in 1357 with a sentence of three years loss of voice and twenty days on a bread and water diet.26 Sanch had completed his studies in logic in 1354 at Lerida and began studies in natural philosophy in the same convent in the next year. The harsh penalty appears not to have prevented Nicolau Rossell and his provincial diffinitors from assigning Sanch to important duties. He appears in the next year serving as a priest in

21

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 215. Robles, Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 147. 23 Robles, Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 126. 24 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 348: Item, quia frater Bartholomeus Capitis converssus percussit et manibus et pedibus concilleavit fratrem Franciscum Peyroni converssum, sicut per testes fide digna et iudicaliter probatum, ipsum omnibus penitentiis gravioris culpae sententialiter iudicamus; quia etiam praedictus frater Franciscus Peyroni percussit cum lapide fortiter magno ictu praedictum fratrem Bernadum Capitis in tantum quod perdidit totaliter loquela sicut per duos fratres, qui praesentes erant sufficienter fuit coram Priore Provinciali in praesentia plurimorum fratrum probatum, ipsum fratrem Franciscum Peyroni omnibus poenis gravioris culpae sententialiter iudicamus. 25 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 348–349. 26 Robles, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 347. 22

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the convent of Pamplona and in 1366, again as a priest, we find him at Huesca. He died in 1371. Bartolomeu Gasconi, the prior Miquel Sanch had threatened, was not without his own faults. In 1353 he received a sentence of two years’ loss of voice and two years’ meals without meat because he, with a group of others, had been found consuming meat without permission.27 Gasconi finished his work in logic in that year and began his advanced studies at the studium generale in Barcelona in the next. Over the following two decades he taught as sublector and lector, served as a conventual prior, and received the designation of Preacher General. It appears that he died in 1372. The two brothers in religion were about the same age, and followed the same educational trajectory, which leaves us to think that the supervisory powers Bartolomeu had over Miquel did not count for much between men who in other respects were equals. As in the course of events that brought Bernat de Pinu and Jamue March to blows, we might wonder what longstanding jealousies or grudges, what intemperate use of the force of office after a play of reciprocal recriminations led Miquel to shout at Bartolomeu and threaten him with a sword. The record of these and similar punishments peaked in the late 1350s. One might ask whether changes in the Order caused by the Black Death increased the propensity to belligerence. This is unlikely. The cases mentioned here, it must be remembered, represent only a fraction of punishable incidents. These are examples of the relatively few cases that came before the provincial and diffinitors, cases appealed after decisions in the convents or cases in which friars succeeded in lodging complaints or appeals with provincial authorities rather than at the local level. Some of the cases that came before provincial chapters went to the committees of judges, and most disciplinary incidents were handled locally. Moreover, it must have been true that out of the total of the errors, abuses, crimes and misdemeanors that occurred locally, officials detected only a small percentage, and they successfully prosecuted fewer still. In any event these cases confirm that priors must have found it difficult to quell disquiet and willfulness within their convents, and that these types of disruptions were endemic before and after mid century. Arguments between friars must have been fairly ubiquitous, even when they did not lead to physical threats or outright brawls.

27

Robles, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 266.

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Celeste Douais and Thomas Kaeppeli encountered similar evidence of disquiet and rivalry inside convents attached to the Province of Rome. Individual punishments are rarely recorded in the Roman acts, although there are a few examples. Gabriel of Florence, for instance, appears to have possessed a special disposition for fighting, among his other rabblerousing, for which he garnered a penance in 1317 that included removal from his native convent.28 According to Douais, indications of bellicose behavior constituted “a development unknown in the chapters of the first province of Provence.” He presumed that these signs of conflict resulted from Guelf and Guibelline factionalism or, more generally, from typically Italian family quarrels, which the sons of politically involved families brought into the convents of the Roman province. The high incidence of what Douais declared “odious and enormous crimes and vendettas” required specific admonitions in the Roman acts calling for convents to build and maintain prison cells and to keep chains and manacles ready for use.29 In 1307 the Roman province issued an admonition instructing priors to send bellicose friars to conventual jails along with deceivers, defamers, and criminals.30 The injunction appears again in later years. Douais assessed the Italian situation correctly: the vendettas of local families contributed to animosities between friars. However, adding the wealth of evidence from the Province of Aragon to the few examples from the Province of Rome, it also holds that external family conflicts could not have served as the single cause of internal strife. Many of the friars’ jealousies and animosities, complaints and personal grudges had their sources inside the Order as a result of its own sordid operations. We will soon identify a range of systemic organizational causes of strained interpersonal relations. The stronger explanation of the distribution of penances in the record suggests periods of sharper enforcement, or at least a pretense of enforcement. Nicolau Rossell, like provincials before him, willingly permitted leniency in some cases but, unlike his predecessors, Rossell showed no hesitation about nailing a few bad boys just so that their punishments could serve, as he himself said, as examples for others.

28

Thomas Kaeppeli, ed., “Acta capitulorum provincialium provinciae Romanae (1243–1344),” Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum XX (Rome, 1941), 200. 29 Douais, “Acta Capitulorum Provincialium,” lxviii–lxx. 30 Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 165.

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Into a third broad group of friars’ errors fall punishments for public crimes and misdemeanors. We can note here that the word crime (crimen) is first recorded in the extant acts of the Province of Aragon in 1351, a point that should be recalled when we turn to discuss the creatively cranky dispositions of Bernat Sescala, Nicolau Rossell, Nicolau Eymerich and others who served as provincial priors at a time when the province suffered significant internal distress. Examples include unlicensed excursions by friars outside of their convents, eating meat outside in public settings without license, and liaisons with women. In one of the more colorful examples, we find in 1353 a total of six friars including Marc de Areis, Pere Ponç, Domenech de Soler, and the laybrother (conversus) Bernat de Pinyana, residents of the convent of Cervera, guilty of wandering through the villages around Cervera stealing chickens and then eating them, a course of events that according to their indictment caused grave scandal and manifest opprobrium among the residents of those places. When accused, the chicken thieves conspired to defend each other, thus adding to their faults the rebellion and disobedience they showed to their prior and other prelates. Three received jail sentences of undetermined length and were denied voting rights and the Order’s graces (e.g., permission to study) for five years. The others received lighter sentences. Breaking up their trouble-making clique, Nicolau Rossell ordered each moved to a different convent.31 The three categories of error I have surveyed here – electoral malfeasance, fighting, and public crimes – do not encompass all of the possibilities. One finds scattered examples of unlicensed practice of medicine, of stealing books and hiding money.32 Provincial visitors assigned to scrutinize convents incurred punishments for not carrying out their assigned visitations, and priors and subpriors who showed partiality or who postponed the punishments of others also received penitential discipline.33 In 1366, authorities excommunicated Berenguer de Casis 31 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 267–268: Item, quia fratres Marchus de Areis, Petrus Poncii, Dominicus de Solerio, Bertrandus de Pinyana conversus extra Conventum Cervariensem per loca, per villas, gallos furati sunt, et gallinas, et ipsas gallinas et carnes alias extra comederunt pluries passim, et indiferenter quae fuerunt in locis ipsis apud populum divulgatur in Ordine grave scandalum, et opprobrium manifestum…. 32 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 277; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 115. 33 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 125–126; and two items from 1358, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 370: Item quia frater Anthonius Laver, existens

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because he failed to return money he had stolen.34 Provincial authorities sent Pere de Coponibus to jail in 1357 for stealing and later selling items from the cell of Pere de Colle, then a reader in logic at Jativa.35 In 1369, the provincial and diffinitors found Ramón de Bacheo guilty in absentia of disappearing from his convent so that he could enjoy the company of women. They put out an order that he be found, captured, and locked up.36 Apostasy, as in the case of Bernat Ros, also became a problem in this period.37 In the foregoing we have seen friars alone and in groups suffering the consequences of breaking away from the expectations of their leaders. We might join with Chaucer and the Archpriest in portraying these guys as some very bad boys. We might further take comfort in knowing that provincial authorities punished the perps, doing so according to the Order’s legal processes. But we must be careful to limit any favorable impression of the potency of Dominican justice in its time; we must not confer upon the Order’s systems of command and control a reach that they did not possess. Administrators could make examples of a few, but the gap continued to grow between, on the one side, their conservative view of the proximity of written law to lived norms and, on the other, the operational and normative reality of increasing permissiveness. The means for keeping friars to their vows were not robust. The Order’s leaders did not always try hard to close the disciplinary gap, but even when they exerted themselves they seldom made solid advances for their side. With their rivals securely entrenched,

Subprior Ilerdensis, fecti multas parcialitates in suo regimine atque licentiavit iuvenes, et pueros sine Praedicatore, concessitque cameras aliquibus iuvenibus declinantibus…. And: Item quia frater Petrus de Aran, Prior Cervariensis, multas temeritates fecit, et dixit, quam plures ordinationes Capituli Provincialis fragendo, et penitus postponendo…. 34 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 135. 35 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 349. 36 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 277. 37 1366, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 134–135: Item cum frater Bernardus Ros apostaverit, et de mandato Reverendi Patri Prioris Provincialis, absque penis debitis misericorditer fuerit receptus, et nunc secundo fugerit solus de praedicatione Urgelli contra mandatum expressum Prioris qui mitebit pro eo, intraveritque Provinciam Tholosanam ut praedicitur solus, adiudicamus eum ad easdem penas quibus frater Raymundus de Bancho est iudicatus reliquentes eum in penam in suo nativo Conventu. According to F. Donald Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240–1540 (Cambridge, 1996), 71, accusations of apostasy or actions against alleged apostates peaked in England at about this time. For Franciscan comparisons see Webster, Els menorets, 170–173.

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disciplinarian leaders often deferred to the customs that had developed during a longstanding stalemate. The Dominican Order’s leading thinkers and managers devoted much of their energy to what James Brundage called their “constant preoccupation with sexual sins.” Albert the Great could accept that sex was natural, although his famous disciple Thomas Aquinas and many other leading thirteenth-century Dominicans disagreed, holding that lust and the sexual acts that came of it constituted disorders brought about by the Fall.38 Into the fourteenth century the general consensus of legal theorists, theologians, and philosophers followed friar Thomas; and yet, sexual sins could be a source of terrible scandal for the Dominican organization, so administrators consistently worked to prevent them. Sins of the flesh remained a constant temptation for some friars. No number of admonitions or their enforcement, no tales of human and divine intervention could deter some friars in proclivities which we nowadays find it unnatural not to explore. Peter Linehan has studied a conspicuous example of Dominican sexual exploits in his Ladies of Zamora. In part he tells a story of accusations and counter-accusations made by aristrocratic women in the convent of Zamora who themselves were divided about which side to take in a jurisdictional dispute between the bishop and the local friars. But Linehan also shows the willingness of a group of friars to act out in the most intimate ways their claims to control over women and their bodies. The scandal that occurred in Zamora in the Dominican Province of Spain in the late 1260s and 1270s had longstanding ramifications for the Dominican Order. In 1291 it led Pope Nicholas IV to unceremoniously remove from office the Order’s Master General, Munio of Zamora, who had been a participant in the shenanigans of those earlier years.39 We can also well imagine that the scandal brought to the Province of Spain by Munio’s dismissal contributed to the desire of friars in northeastern Iberia to create their own breakaway province. For evidence of the depth of fear some friars in leadership positions had about the potential for sexual error we can point to an admonition issued in the acts of 1345 from a chapter under the leadership of Bernat Sescala. Sescala’s injunction, which signals an escalating urgency on 38 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), 419–422. 39 Peter Linehan, The Ladies of Zamora (University Park, PA, 1997).

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the part of the Order’s managers to improve the appearance of propriety, comes not from the penance lists but from much lengthier and more exhaustive lists of admonitions drawn up each year by general and provincial chapters. It warned friars not to walk in town with their sisters and mothers. As its rationale it indicated that those who might see friars walking with female family members had no way of telling whether or not the women were relations. Sescala’s warning suggests that those who scrutinized the friars’ activities – critics and observers outside the Order’s ranks as well as concerned insiders – presumed that friars would engage in something less wholesome than familial intimacy, despite admonitions and proscriptions to the contrary.40 And it appears that their concern had warrant. Some friars liked the company of women, and those who did could find any number of excuses to limit their personal liability, from claiming that one was hearing confessions, to making arrangements for a gift to the Order, to stating that he had merely accepted the invitation to walk with a family member. The womanizing problem persisted to the point that by the 1370s provincial chapters had to prohibit friars from creating passages through bedchamber walls by which they might have unlicensed exit.41 These admonitions also indicate that friars and women, as well as men and boys, were too often found in intimate circumstances within convents.42 It came to be a particular concern to rid convents of doors and curtains where they should not be, especially at the entrances to cells or separating beds in dormitories.43 It exacerbated 40

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 267–268. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 278: Item volumus, et mandamus quatenus omnes Priores sequantur communia et jaceant in communi dormitorio prout decet, mandantes etiam quod nullus faciat aperturam in aliqua cella dormitorii per quam persona aliqua transire valeat sine Reverendi Patris Provincialis licentia speciali. 42 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 334; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 269: Item imponimus eis quatinus circulant, et ab exteriore visitent cellas fratres, semel ad minus qualibet septimana, et ammoveant inde velamina, vel cortinas, vel alia quae videri exterioribus prohibent lectum fratris, nec volumus quod si aliquis intret cellam alterius ibi altero existente, et caveant etiam sibi fratres ne pueros seculares, et domos secretas alteras introducant, prohibemus insuper ne frater aliquis teneat in Conventu aliquem puerum secularem educandi titulo, vel docendi, nec volumus quod frater aliquis teneat famulum pro suo servitio in Conventu exceptis Magistris in Theologia de quibus communiter tolantur. Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 221: fratri subtrahimus potestatem introducendi pueros minoris aetatis ad cameras, sive cellas, ut melius ocasionem habeat adiscendi. 43 E.g. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 258: volumus, et ordinamus, quod Praesidentes velamina de portis lectorum et cellarum amoveant, taliter quod interiora possint a quocumque conspici, et videri. 41

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some of these concerns that some friars had private cells, despite years of legislation against it, and had taken on private students and servants.44 Beyond sexual indiscretions, admonitions and injunctions in the acts indicate a wide range of improprieties and bad habits: visiting local baths, gambling, taking goods on deposit, selling a convent’s liturgical items, riding horses and consuming meat, concealing, carrying, displaying and drawing weapons.45 The acts of the Province of Rome, although less full, indicate a similar range of bad behaviors among Italian friars.46 Beyond the individual cases recorded in the penances, the repetition of these admonitions offer strong evidence that Dominican leaders found it very difficult to gain effective and lasting control over those under their watch. The annual sets of admonitions tell a story of considerable administrative weakness. Complicit Leaders The Dominican Order’s internal disabilities went beyond the errors and abuses of a few individual rank-and-file bad-boy friars. The discussion widens now to incorporate evidence of the participation of Dominican leaders in the weakening of their organization’s structural integrity. At this point in the presentation three separate strands of thought and action form a knot that is not easily unwound, and which, in the untying, loses much of the complexity that all friars would have felt as part of their everyday lived reality. First, some of the Order’s misbehaving bad boys came into leadership positions in the Order. Their very human proclivities, such as the ambition to succeed, to excel, to get ahead of others, worked against simplicity and humility and other longstanding tenets of religious life. Second, the institutions that comprised the regulatory and governmental schema of the Order, for example the procedures for electing officers, could be opened to manipulation in ways that made reality deviate significantly from ideal. Third, the decision making processes of Dominican leaders followed 44 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 109; Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 221. 45 For a few of the many examples, see Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 114 and 115; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 267–268; Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 277 and 279. 46 E.g., Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 175.

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long-habituated norms that accommodated variance from stated rules; the point is not that leaders made bad judgments in the context of short-term needs but that they could not easily break away from decision making patterns that led to unwholesome long-term outcomes. These three aspects of leaders’ behavior were driven and compounded by the underlying patterns of long term organizational growth that we have already uncovered. Dominic’s earliest followers expanded the range of their services, although later leaders suffered uncertainty about what direction to take their men when those formerly admired services became for the laity targets of ridicule and anger. The first friars built a number of novel ideas and practices into their operating systems that provided important opportunities for flexibility and incentive, for representative governance, and for the confirmation of a unique corporate identity. Over time, however, tensions emerged that slowly changed the Order’s physiognomy; aging Dominican institutions, taking on new meanings under changing conditions, began to contribute to a situation of operational distress. At all levels of management and governance, administrators contributed to their Order’s difficulties by living and acting in the ways they had learned to live and act. The example leaders offered by following custom and habit encouraged rank-and-file friars to normalize their own bad behavior. If this seems a long and somewhat complicated introduction to what follows, it is as it must be. The reader is warned that in the following paragraphs I want to avoid any tendency to simplify. I hope instead that conceptual ambiguities and whatever questions linger about how the material is organized will be read as a reflection of what managers and managed confronted every day as they nudged their organization toward improvements in their present and future while also acting in accord with inherited compulsions. We recognize the Dominican Order’s founder and its first masters general as saintly figures, not only thoughtful and hardworking men, but also humble, prayerful, generous, and genuinely concerned with the welfare of their corporation, their brother friars, and the laity they served. Dominic, we are told, twice showed compassion and charity to such a degree that he would willing have given up his own freedom to secure the liberty of others. In the first instance, he nearly turned himself over to a life of servitude in exchange for the release of a man beholden to a group of heretics. In the second instance he prepared to give himself over to a group of Saracens so that they would free a

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woman they held captive. In both cases, God, presumably because He had bigger plans, did not permit Dominic to hand himself over.47 Jordan of Saxony, the first prior of the Province of Lombardy and then Dominic’s successor, is regarded as a blessed for his display of enthusiasm for the Dominican mission. It is said that he brought more than one thousand men into the Order by virtue of his preaching. We may also count him as the first of the friar-historians, since he was the first to collect stories about Dominic and the first preachers, which he offered in his Libellus de principiis ordinis praedicatorum from about 1234. Dominican sisters continue to show special devotion to him because of his insistence upon finding a place for women in the Order despite the resistance of many other friars and ecclesiastical authorities. Given ongoing quiet disagreements about the relationship of “First Order” friars to Dominican nuns and sisters, his correspondence with Blessed Diana d’Andalo remains widely read. Jordan died in a shipwreck off the coast of Syria while on a visit to newly founded convents there. Raymond of Penyafort is another who was widely regarded during his lifetime as an important contributor to the Church and his Order. Although ecclesiastical authorities withheld the canonization of Raymond until very late – Pope Clement VIII canonized the Catalan friar in 1601 – the Order early on reserved a place for its third master general near the very top of the pantheon of Dominican holies.48 I have already identified several elements of his legal contributions to the papacy and to his Order as well as his zeal to demonstrate the error of non-believers. He also had better luck in the water than brother Jordan: Among his most oft-told miracles involves a journey he undertook when in a hurry to return to his Barcelona convent from the island of Majorca. Lacking a ship, he spread his cloak before the wind and thus sailed the stormy Mediterranean. Much has been made of the administrative contributions and steady leadership of Humbert of Romans, the Order’s fifth master general, during a crucial period in the organization’s growth. Humbert spearheaded 47

Related in Jordan, Libellus, 35. Francisco Diago took repeated and exhaustive pains to credit Raymond with numerous saintly acts and miracles. His exhuberance is easily explained. He produced his Historia as a fellow member friar of the Province of Aragon, in the same years that Raymond’s canonization was under review. He had parochial interests in bringing attention to a Catalan friar whose historical importance outside the region had waned. 48

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efforts to gather stories about the first friars, which resulted in Gerard of Frachet’s production of the Vitae fratrum ordinis Praedicatorum in 1260. Humbert also undertook to revise the Dominican liturgy into something workable for friars across the breadth of an international Order, he wrote a commentary on the Rule of Augustine, a letter on regular observance, and a treatise on the formation of preachers, all useful in informing his charges about Dominican best practices. These few paragraphs do not substitute for the numerous, readily accessible, and compendious hagiographical accounts of the Dominican Order’s most illustrious men, but I have a purpose in pointing to those whom friar-historians have consistently held up as exemplars. About such model friars as Jordan of Saxony, Humbert of Romans, Raymond of Penyafort, and others who appear to have offered their expertise without seeking advancement or compensatory social status, C.H. Lawrence, expressing a common view, has said that they “opted out of the race for preferment.”49 While the first friars may have let humility govern their behavior so that they sought no further recompense than the spiritual rewards they won, I must assert that Lawrence’s claim hardly holds for later generations of friars and friar leaders. In the fourteenth-century a preacher’s charity or a technocrat’s integrity encouraged a few friars, like Vincent Ferrer, to saintliness. The sanctity of Dalmau Moner was well known in his own time, although, given the difficulties of convent life evinced in these pages, that he spent the last years of his life outside the walls of his convent in Gerona living as a cave hermit seems less a case of saintliness than a desire to avoid the reality of clamor and conflict. The point I wish to stress is that in the chapter acts of the Province of Aragon we have very substantial evidence that many friars, perhaps most, and including friars in leadership positions, found motivation for their actions in less than holy preoccupations. It makes sense to ask whether the flagging discipline we have witnessed among rank-and-file friars in the fourteenth century came as a result of the failings of the Order’s managers. Historians have often assumed that those in leadership through the trials of the fourteenth century showed poor oversight or were too slow in disciplining

49

Lawrence, The Friars, 136.

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their charges. William Hinnebusch claimed that after 1300 “the Order lacked firm leadership at a critical time;” the tensions encountered within “were not solved by men of strong motivation and zeal.” By comparison, he admired the masters general in the fifteenth-century, describing them as “able men.”50 From this perspective, the fourteenthcentury directors of the Dominican Order, in striking contrast to the exemplary leadership of their peers in both earlier and later periods, were archetypes of ineptitude. This view is too harsh and insufficiently nuanced. Friar administrators in the Province of Aragon were not saints, but neither were they inept failures. They typically served in many important capacities for their Order – as teachers, conventual priors, diffinitors to provincial chapters – before taking their province’s highest office. And nearly all of the provincial priors served before or during their provincialates as inquisitors, performing a role that required careful weighing of political and legal conditions. In truth, the problem was not ineptitude. It was that they conformed to rather than confronted what ailed their Order. Inertia is a powerful force in all organizational settings, and with too few incentives to combat it and perhaps too much else on their administrative plates, they can hardly be faulted for sometimes taking the tepid path of least resistance. Certainly the race for preferment, one of the inertial forces I have alluded to, got underway early. We know that ambition entered into the decision making of some of the Order’s earliest potential recruits, as a story in Gerard of Frachet’s Vitae Fratrum attests. Gerard recalled one brother who, when still in pursuit of a vocation, turned first to the Waldensians because they seemed more humble, not high-spirited and arrogant like the Preachers. In context, of course, this was a warning that the pride of learning and opportunities for advancement, unless made subservient to preaching, were a friar’s principal temptation. However, it was also an invitation to those ambitious for study, an indication that they were welcomed despite the temptation to selfindulgence.51 Ambition moved some friars to work themselves into important positions. It has been said that Dominic himself refused three bishoprics and ordered his men to do the same. When one of his disciples, Raymond of Felga, became bishop of Toulouse in 1232, it so disturbed

50 51

Hinnebusch, Short History, 75–85. For discussion, see Van Engen, “Dominic and His Brothers,” 17–18.

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Jordan of Saxony, then Master General, that Jordan thereafter prohibited friars accepting bishoprics without the permission of the pope and the master general. But his edict did not slow the trend, partly because having friars in these positions clearly advanced the Order’s reputation and interests. John Teutonicus, later to become the Order’s fourth master general, left the office of provincial prior of Hungary to accept the bishopric of Bosnia in 1233. Five Dominicans in the realms of the Crown of Aragon held suffragan sees during the reign of King James I. At least five Dominicans accompanied the same king’s crusading army into Valencia, reaping the benefits of conquest for their Order and enhancing their own reputations, and perhaps their personal fortunes, by making some of the first claims to land and the people to work it.52 Warrior friars, would-be mendicants traveling in the company of kings and attending their courts, the ascension of the Order’s members to episcopal rank – all of these activities clearly brought public attention to the Dominican Order as it grew, but they also raised questions about whether such pursuits were commensurate with mendicancy and the sensibilities of a corporation built by humble preachers. By one count, some 450 Dominican friars had become ecclesiastical potentates by 1320, among them two popes and a dozen cardinals.53 In practice, personal and corporate humility had their limits. One result of the Order’s growing reputation as an incubator of learned and able men was the rise of a sense of pride in membership. A statement by Humbert of Romans, fifth Master General of the Order, indicates how insidiously pride worked its way into the language of friars keenly aware of its ill effects. For all of his pious counsels urging his brothers to the keener practice of humility, and despite his certain awareness that the quest for honors could do harm, Humbert could not refuse a momentary boast about his Order’s accomplishments, writing in a 1260 encyclical:

52 Thomas N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon (Oxford, 1986), 73. For a discussion of two thirteenth-century Dominican bishops of Valencia, Berengar de Castellbisbal and Andrés de Albalat, Robert I. Burns, S.J., The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Reconstruction on a Thirteenth-Century Frontier, Vol. I (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 24–26, 204. Vicente Cárcel Ortí, Historia de la Iglesia en Valencia, 2 vols. (Valencia, 1986) offers biographies of these men and Ramón Despont, O.P., bishop of Valencia from 1289–1312. 53 Bennett, The Early Dominicans, 131–132, who provides a summary of counts undertaken by Mortier, Mandonnet, and others.

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chapter four We teach people, we teach prelates, we teach the wise and the unwise, religious and seculars, clerics and the laity, nobles and non nobles, the small and the great, we teach laws, we teach counsels, we teach hardships, we teach security, we teach the seeds of perfection, we teach every kind of honest virtue.54

Not much earlier, in 1255, Humbert issued a letter urging his brothers to greater discipline.55 While the letter clearly signals his concern that laxity among some friars had become a threat to the organization’s continued vitality, its author issued his admonitions with gentle, paternal affection. Humbert did not intend to defend friars whose activities did not accord with a rigorous interpretation of the Rule and constitutions, nor did he mean to overlook disciplinary norms; nonetheless, he prodded rather than threatened in part because he had little interest in being more deliberate and little ability to make any show of insistence more penetrating. The powers given to Humbert’s office – an elected office, from which incumbents could be removed – limited any tendency to authoritarian urgency he might have possessed. This in itself is not a sufficient explanation of the contents and tone of the letter. Humbert’s own show of pride in a vital and growing Order was a very real step toward the relaxation of the formerly-cherished values of a small group of modest mendicants. Humbert accepted the evolving norms of a changing organization and thus contributed to a diminution of the Order’s earlier high standards. An observation made by Ralph Bennett about Humbert’s role is worth repeating here: “the general impression gained from his writings is that he is intensely conscious of being at the head of a large organization, with duties and responsibilities and a position to keep up…. If Humbert does seem on occasion to be sapping the foundations upon which his building rests, it is because two ideas meet in him. He and his Order now hold a position of honor, and it ill becomes them not to smooth over the crudeness and almost indecently

54 Benedictus Maria Reichert, ed., Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 53: “Docemus populos, docemus prelatos, docemus sapientes et insipientes, religiosos et seculares, clericos et laycos, nobiles et ignobiles, parvos et magnos, docemus precepta, docemus consilia, docemus ardua, docemus secura, docemus semitas perfectionis, docemus omnimodam honestatem virtutum.” 55 The letter is recorded in Humberti de Romanis, Opera de Vita Regulari, 2 vols. (Epistola De Tribus Votis Substantialibus Religionis), ed. Joachim Joseph Berthier (Turin, 1956) 2: 487–489. Edward Tracy Brett, Humbert of Romans: His Life and Views of Thirteenth-Century Society (Toronto, 1984), 24–26, reviews the contents of the letter and the context in which Humbert wrote it.

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single-minded enthusiasm of the first friars with the polish of courtesy and worldly-wisdom.”56 By 1300, Jordan of Rivalto, like some other Dominicans of rank in his time, could tolerate without obvious misgivings some deviation by individuals friars from the traditionally accepted standards of religious life. Scholars have noted Jordan’s contemplative nature, but Jordan’s own words, from a public sermon, are telling in several respects about his understanding of practical matters. First, they distinguish the dispositions of friars from those of monks, making explicit that different expectations apply. Second, they confirm that behavioral controls were weak even as corporate identity was strong. They also show a high tolerance for indiscipline and for the public disgrace that might sometimes accompany bad-boy behavior. Here is what he had to say: You ought to excuse the friars a little when they sometimes besmirch themselves, since being among the people and seeing the things of the world they can’t help besmirching themselves. They are men of flesh and blood like you, and of a vigorous age. It is rather a great marvel that they can stay so clean while remaining in the city and seeing the things of the world all day. For this city is no place for monks; rather the desert and solitude suit them. But we stay here among you, for our need, it is true, but much more for yours. By ourselves we would get along much better, but how would you fare? You couldn’t exist without us. You would fall into worse errors than the infidels. In fact, it is impossible to estimate the benefits you get from us.57

Much had occurred in the years between Humbert’s nod to corporate pride and Jordan’s rationalization of disciplinary backsliding that permits us to deem normative for its time the view of each man. Humbert’s friars, perhaps too comfortably riding the crest of the Order’s expansionary wave, needed the encouragement of their master general to spur them on to still greater achievements. Jordan of Rivalto, further from the initial sources of the Order’s original zeal, and buffeted by anti-mendicant attacks, acknowledged that his Order remained vital even if it had begun to suffer a public relations crisis due to the actions of some less-than-saintly friars. Administrators in succeeding generations, especially Bernat Sescala, Nicolau Rossell, and Nicolau Eymerich in the Province of Aragon, gave considerable attention to measuring

56

Bennett, Early Dominicans, 155. D. M. Manni and A. M. Biscioni, Prediche del B. Fra Giordano de Rivalto (Florence, 1739), 9, cited and translated in Hinnebusch, History I, 139. 57

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and defending corporate honor while showing themselves to be much less tolerant than either brothers Humbert or Jordan. The Management of Conflicting Dominican Values Most striking about the period around 1300 is the contest that had opened up within the Order between two divergent value systems. Ambition and humility may not have been compatible, but both took their place as part of Dominican operational realities. I will limit myself to two examples to substantiate the difficulty this posed for leaders of the Province of Aragon. The Order’s traditional histories treat Arnau Burguet well, although in doing so they seem to skip over much that we could know about him.58 At the general chapter meeting held in Bologna in 1315 Master Berengar took action to remove Arnau Burguet from the office of provincial prior of the Province of Aragon. Arnau’s career to this point was already both brilliant and rocky. He had been an advanced student at the turn of the fourteenth century, schooled at Bologna and at the studium generale in Barcelona. An assignment roster identifies him as a teaching doctor in 1307, the first year in which we find him in trouble. In that year, Miquel de Estella, then Provincial Prior, harshly rebuked Burguet and Bernat Saltells, both Doctors of Theology, as well as others, for decorating their habits in extravagant colors. Provincial de Estella ordered the prideful brothers to re-dye their clothes immediately in the Order’s traditional drab.59 Burguet, like other friardoctors, wished to wear his reputation on his sleeves; in correcting him, de Estella knew that such status displays, if permitted, would demonstrate too crudely that the Order was no longer a modest egalitarian collective. The record of Burguet’s rebuke by de Estella is especially instructive because it brought him none of the punishments typically meted out to erring friars. Burguet, it seems, suffered only the sting to his honor that came with public censure in the annual chapter acts. In any event, his being reprimanded on such a serious matter in no way limited his 58 For a traditional outline of Burguet’s career, Laureano Robles, Escritores Dominicos de la Corona de Aragon, siglos XIII–XV (Salamanca, 1977), 92–93. 59 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 277–278. The Roman province similarly faced the problem of superfluity in clothing; e.g., Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 205.

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career, and the reason is clearly understood: the Order’s managers invested heavily in their best and brightest and permitted numerous and substantial dispensations from the rules in order to keep the most intellectually able of their charges happy and productive.60 Despite the misdemeanor of 1307 on record, Arnau Burguet went on to become prior of the convent of Majorca in 1310, and in 1312 the friars in the prominent convent of Barcelona elected him as their prior. Later that same year he attended the provincial chapter and was honored there with title of preacher general. These were plum offices, appointments and honors, bestowed upon him within no more than a half-decade of his willful show of conceit. In 1314, Burguet’s peers elected him to the priorate of the Province of Aragon, the highest office in the Order excepting only the master general’s. From this peak in his career, he once again fell, summarily removed, as I have indicated, by Berengar of Landora. Master Berengar’s letter removing Burguet implicates him in an election tampering scheme, of which there are many recorded. The details of Burguet’s fault remain vague, but this much is apparent: Berengar deprived Burguet of his “voice” – his voting rights – for a period of ten years.61 Because evidence indicates that loss of voice for even a year or two was a harsh penalty, reserved for serious offences, we should consider Burguet’s offence and punishment in this instance just as extraordinary as the lack of serious penalty in his earlier misdemeanor.62 Still, even this second confrontation with Dominican justice did not impede his career. He became a noted inquisitor. He likely composed the Vetus vita of his highly esteemed Catalan confrere Raymond of Penyafort. In 1321– that is, before his penance had even run its course – friars in the province re-elected him to the provincial prior’s office once again. This time Burguet served until his death in 1325. We must presume that at some point, perhaps by default at his election, Arnau must have regained the voice he was supposed to have lost until 1324. It is difficult to imagine him ruling the province without exercising his voice vote. 60 For recognition of a “class system” within the Order, see Benedict Ashley, O.P., The Dominicans (Collegeville, MN, 1990), 43. As Eric Posner, Law and Social Norms (Cambridge, 2000), 17, has put it, “certain people (“high status” people) might be in such demand generally that they can cheat more frequently than can other people.” 61 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 144. Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 85. 62 Galbraith, Constitution, 84.

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Despite his limited adherence to traditional Dominican principles, Burguet possessed a strong combination of bold character and enterprise that other friars regarded highly. Generosity and service roused many friars who wished to act in accordance with the idealized humility, discipline, and poverty of Dominic and the first friars, but some friars, including the best and brightest men like Arnau Burguet as well as other friar leaders, acknowledged another reality, one that included avidity, status-seeking, and thirst for competitive gain. The apparent haughtiness of some high-ranking Dominicans like Arnau, coupled with their tendency to cover for their brothers’ failings, as Jordan of Rivalto’s sermon illustrates, motivated a number of criticisms of the friars, such as the curial official’s poke at Arnau and Bernard Gui. The story leading up to the jape, told by Gui’s nephew Pierre, goes something like this: During a visit to Rome to advance the case for canonizing Raymond of Penyafort, Arnau met his confrere, Bernard Gui, who already held a place of high esteem in the Order. Arnau had a hard time sleeping and asked for Bernard’s prayers in reliving his insomnia. Bernard’s intercession worked. Arnau slept soundly thereafter. Arnau then suggested to another friar, who suffered from dysentery, that he also seek intercessory comforts from the famous friar-inquisitor. Bernard Gui, the great doctor of souls, was, we hear, somewhat reluctant to take on the case, but relented, and his second supplication did the trick. The nephew, Pierre, apparently saw these two cases of healing as “signs and prodigies” demonstrating his uncle’s sanctity even during his lifetime. The curial official, Peter Bernard of Bayonne, who witnessed the events, took a different view. To him, Gui’s resolution of a case of insomnia and another of the trots was less than spectacular evidence of holiness. Peter wryly wondered why Burguet wasted time advancing the canonization of a dead preacher when the curia could be busying itself confirming Gui’s lifetime miracles.63 The second example pitting ambition and self-service against a set of predecessor values shows the Master General Berengar of Landora, whom we just saw taking strong action against Arnau Burguet, making accommodations to norms recognizably out of step with Dominican law.

63 Brevis chronica de vita et moribus ac sccriptus et operibus domini episcope Lodovensis, in Léopold Delisle, Notice sur les manuscrits de Bernard Gui, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque national et autres bibliothèques 27 (Paris, 1879), 429–430, cited in Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution, 56–57, who indicates that Pierre’s account failed to effect a strong cult following for Gui.

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In November 1314, representatives of the Province of Aragon gathered for their annual provincial chapter in the large and prosperous Mediterranean port city of Valencia. At the political center of the Kingdom of Valencia, attached by conquest and colonization to the Crown of Aragon, Valencia was ripe with missionary possibilities, which earlier generations of Dominican friars had eagerly exploited.64 We might imagine that the prior and friars of the convent of Valencia welcomed the opportunity to play hosts to their Provincial Prior, Arnau Burguet, and to other prelates of the province, since the chapter meeting provided an occasion for a demonstration of the rigors of the religious life. Circumstances for a favorable review, however, were not ideal. Master General Berengar, having just concluded the Order’s annual general chapter meeting in London, also attended and exercised his prerogative to inspect the life and mores of the friars in the convent at Valencia as well as to personally assess conditions then prevailing in the entire province. Following the chapter meeting Berengar addressed a letter to Burguet and to all the friars of the province in which he noted that their common life fell far below his estimation of the Dominican ideal. The serious lapses and defects in behavior he discerned included excessive excursions outside the convents, leaving candles lit for friars returning late at night, riding horses against constitutional ordinance, and imprudent familiarity with women.65 Against each inappropriate activity he authorized a punishment or a shaming episode to be exacted upon the derelict, ranging from a physical beating (each strike of the whip counting as “one discipline”) to a period of fasting and abstinence from wine, to time spent sitting on the ground, to removal to another convent.66 The seriousness of denying a friar his daily allotment of 64

Burns, Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 12, 22–28. Berengar’s letter was copied into the chapter acts; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 141–144. 66 The following two examples are typical. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 143– 144: Item quod facto primo signo Matutinas de Beata Virgine omnes surgant, et illas cum devotione, et reverentia stando dicant. Quicumque vero non surrexerit, nisi ipsa die de foris venerit, aut intra triduum sue minutionis extiterit, aut gravis passione in sua conscientia asserat subito se preventum, volo, et districte impono, quod pro qualibet vice disciplinam accipiat, et a vino abstineat uno die, et si in hoc frequenter delinquerit, et fuerit viciosus, panis et aqua solummodo pro qualibet vice dentur ei; and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 143: Item si quis circatoribus, seu officium excercentibus, presumpserit facere, vel dicere, irreverentiam, aut tribulationem notabilem eis inferre, vel eis resistere pertinaciter in circatione, pane et aqua, et sessione ad terram pro vice qualibet puniantur. Et si alias sepe in aliquod de premissis laberetur, continuo per Priorem Provincialem alteri Conventui simpliciter assignetur. 65

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wine should not be discounted.67 Berengar had put the province’s friars on notice that they must correct their behavior or suffer consequences. Master Berengar also reiterated the Order’s broad prohibitions against eating meat without license, here reiterating the standard exceptions for the aged and ill.68 But he also permitted a quite revealing relaxation. While plainly contrary to the spirit of his Order’s constitutions as well as the general drift of his letter, Berengar extended a blanket privilege to the province’s lectors – those friars in every convent given responsibility for regular and ongoing teaching of sacred and instructional texts – permitting them to eat meat as a matter of routine. He rationalized the dispensation on two grounds: First, he said, was the difficulty of the lectors’ work and, second, meat eating among lectors had become “a laudable custom in other provinces.”69 Berengar, from all appearances, took the responsibilities of his office very seriously (R. P. Mortier recognized him as a reformer in his Histoire des Maîtres Generaux) but his responsibilities included not only correcting divergence from rules but also the careful weighing of requests to expand privileges. In this instance the Master General willingly bent rule to custom, no doubt under some pressure by the province’s lectors. It is implicit in Berengar’s letter that lectors in the Province of Aragon knew something about the practices of and privileges accorded to lectors in other provinces. Perhaps some of Aragon’s lectors had been diffinitors at recent general chapters and in such capacity took the opportunity to compare their own consumption habits with those of their colleagues.

67 That many scientists and physicians view intoxication as a “fourth drive” following hunger, thirst and sex, having deep evolutionary roots, suggests that many friars recognized forced abstinence as a serious penalty. For discussion of drink in religious contexts, see John Horgan, Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality (New York, 2004), 178. 68 On the constitutional prescription of perpetual abstinence from meat, and the thirteenth-century dispensations, see Hinnebusch, History I, 358–359. On provisioning the sick in Dominican convents, see Angela Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Burlington, VT, 2004), 180–189. 69 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: Item prohibeo, quod carnes fratribus non concedantur, nisi prout exigit ratio, vel infirmitas de consilio medicine, aut notabilis debilitas, aut senectus. Iis autem, et illis magis qui decumbent, volo de omnibus necessariis provideri fratribus, prout necesse fuerit ad eorum obsequia deputatis. Cum lectoribus tamen qui legunt aliquo tempore anni, propter laborem, sicut est consuetum laudabiliter in aliis Provinciis, dispensatur.

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We can imagine their resentment, the sense of entitlement that drove them to undertake a robust lobbying campaign. It is unclear whether the “custom” that had emerged elsewhere resulted from a requested dispensation or from accumulated episodes of ad hoc consumption of meat against constitutional prohibitions. More straightforward is the evidence that this negotiated settlement fit a pattern of performance and decision. First, the malady of meat consumption did not infect merely lower-level rank and file friars. The example here shows that men in the Order’s top teaching positions, men who served as leaders and exemplars to others, wanted rules bent in their favor. Berengar’s agreement to relax, for lectors, the Order’s constitutional prohibition on the consumption of meat took its place in a process that identified lectors as a special class of Dominicans deserving and receiving special privileges, even as others were enjoined against the same activities. The recognition of lectors in this way is one signal of the identity politics that was activated by the market for privileges inside the Order. Preachers General, teaching masters, inquisitors, and others had already gained privileged status deserving of special consideration. Elders, students in advanced studies, and others would gain their special privileges, too. We will develop more examples later. Second, evidence within Berengar’s letter, as elsewhere in his known history, suggests that he may have preferred more belt tightening rather than additional larding up of the smorgasbord of privileges. He specifically demanded, for instance, that conventual priors prevent others in their charge from eating meat. But this is duplicitous. He wanted conventual priors to take actions he himself was unwilling to take, that is, that they should be the chief enforcers of discipline while he, to the contrary, permitted some of the exceptions that made their task more difficult.70 Why would he play it this way? My view is that Berengar 70 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: “Si qui autem inventi fuerint carnes sine licentia comedisse, precipio in virtute sancte obedientie, quod inprimo capitulo in quo fuerint, de excessu huiusmodi se accussent, et pro qualibet vice penitentiam Constitutionum facere integre compellantur, nisi causam sic evidentem, et rationabilem habuerint, quod excusati merito debeant reputari. Si qui autem in hoc inventi fuerint sepius deliquisse, aut ex comestione huiusmodi Ordini grave scandalum generasse, intra Conventum simpliciter teneantur, nec extra modo aliquo egredi permittantur. Si quis de transgressionibus huius precepti ex certa scientia convincatur, Prior Provinciali denuntietur, per quem sic acriter puniantur, quod sit ceteris in exemplum. Inquierant autem Visitatores si Priores, et eorum Vicarii, carnes, nisi in premissis casibus, inventi fuerint sepius concessisse, ac Priori Provinciali referant, per quem in

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lacked the authority he would have needed to make some high-ranking friars heed a call to greater rigor and austerity; he lacked the managerial heft needed to push law against habit. On the other hand, duplicity is not uncommon among administrators and we should not see its appearance here as strange. The higher one ascends a decision-making hierarchy the more he may find reason to delay, defer or delegate the toughest disciplinary tasks. Meat consumption took root early as a disciplinary problem in the Order. Admonitions on the subject occur with regularity in the Order’s general and provincial chapter acts well back into the thirteenth century. Here one of the contradictions in Dominican historiography is most plainly observed. Historians have read the routine appearance of reminders of the Order’s constitutional prohibition across the thirteenth century as evidence that Dominican administrators in that golden age routinely pushed back against individual disciplinary aberrations. To the contrary, fourteenth-century administrators issuing similarly routine notices to their charges to stop over-indulging in meat typically get read as weak and failed correctives buried in an avalanche of indiscipline caused by conditions extrinsic to the Order. A closer examination eliminates the interpretive disparities. It shows the nearconstant push and pull of desire and restraint, a continuing discourse about who should be granted exceptions and on what basis that tended toward a slow but steady expansion of privileges to wider and wider circles of individuals and groups. Precedents for Berengar’s 1314 judgment in favor of lectors can be found in earlier developments in the Province of Aragon. In 1303, for example, provincial prior Miquel de Estella and those in that year’s provincial council found themselves engaged in the discourse, first reminding friars in the customary manner that their constitutions forbade meat consumption, recalling only an exception made for sick and severely debilitated friars. They further instructed conventual priors to avoid easily granting dispensations without cause. Next in their series of admonitions issued in that year was one counseling against friars eating meat outside of convents. It raises three concerns. First, because it prohibited eating meat outside of convents “notwithstanding contrary custom,” it implied that de Estella and the others recognized that penam a suis officiis absolvantur.” Also see the discussion of a similar case in Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine, and the Friars, 92, in which Berengar recognized and tried to limit a conflict of interest around use of the infirmary.

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friars’ habits had already grown beyond the bounds of the general prohibition. Custom no longer accorded with law; instead, it recognized a range of known exceptions. These allowed friars to eat meat when dining in the company of a king, a bishop, their aides, or in the house of other religious.71 Here was an opening to further relaxations that could be filled in any number of ways. By 1372, not only had visitors (visitatores) succeeded in expanding their meat-eating opportunities, but general chapter diffinitors, provincial priors or preachers general, in addition to any friar who traveled by sea, might be granted a portion of meat when visiting convents in which they did not reside.72 Obviously, penalizing a friar or two or more for stealing meat, hiding meat, or eating meat without permission did not prevent an inevitable creep toward bent and broken rules. Some efforts were made, of course, to limit exceptions, but the cheaters prevailed despite the fact that supervisors sometimes imposed harsh penalties. And some penalties were harsh. In 1321 provincial authorities found two friars guilty of eating meat without license and showing irreverence and malice toward their prelate when first confronted about it. As punishment, the provincial at the time, Arnau Burguet, deprived each of study and voice vote for two years and assigned them to the convent of Majorca. While there the two were to serve in the hospice and infirmary every day of the week but one, a day on which they would eat a meal of bread and water from the floor. Maybe Burguet learned from the soft treatment he had received that real correction required an iron hand; in this case, he seemed eager to demonstrate that shame was a powerful corrective.73 In 1353, as mentioned earlier, six brothers from the convent at Cervera received harsh penalties for stealing and eating chickens and then rebelliously lying about what they did. In 1354 Domengues de Tarca’s penalty for eating meat in a village beyond his convent including five years’ abstinence. Several admonitions and recorded penitential notices indicate that, despite repeated prohibitions, Dominican friars often invited others – Franciscans, members of military orders, family and friends and other guests – into their convents for meals that included meat.74 In 1357 Pere de Tarrega and Francesc Monia, to take 71 72 73 74

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 258. Goméz García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 220. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 152. E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 276.

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an example, suffered indictment and penalty for inviting Franciscans to consume meat with them inside their convent at Lerida.75 The malady of meat consumption afflicted rank-and-file friars, as these examples show, although we have seen that highly ranked friars also succumbed. In 1352 Guillem Domenech, at that time vicar of the convent at Valencia, invited friars in his charge to consume meat, apparently because he wished to join them. As a punishment he was stripped of his voice and graces in the Order. The record indicates, interestingly, that eating meat was not his only fault. The citation says that Nicolau Rossell and the chapter diffinitors spared him the penalty for gambling.76 In 1352 Luppi de Bielsa served as visitor to several convents, in which capacity he was to see that the friars there lived according to the rigors of Dominican tradition. As it turned out he was not the law’s most enthusiastic promoter. The next provincial chapter charged him with avoiding the refectories of the convents he visited, because no meat was found there, but instead frequenting the infirmaries because they served meat.77 Some of the tug-o-war over meat consumption reached levels of farce. In 1354, some of the cooks in Dominican kitchens got caught practicing the art of rule bending, no doubt doing so at the prodding of some friars hungry for more meat in their diet. In response, Nicolau Rossell had to make it clear that meatballs in stews (bolos notabiles in potagio) counted as meat, and were thus prohibited outside the four permitted seasons.78 What four permitted seasons? A notice from the year 1353 permitted meat to all friars four times a year, before Lent, after Easter, on the Feast of St. Remigius, and before Advent, for up to eight days in each period. Rossell’s pushback against the meatball rebellion could not quell his friars’ dreams of meaty delights. In time even saintly muscle was applied to the problem. A story developed (we find it in Baltasar Sorió’s De viris Illustribus from around 1520), that the learned and saintly friar Tomás Carnicer rescued two of his colleagues from terrible visions. A demon entered their convent and took the form of an ass, then got itself strangled, so that the men cut up the animal and ate the “occult meats.” Overtaken by their own sinful gluttony and

75 76 77 78

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 347. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 247. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 266. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 275

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not entirely of sound mind, the two began to see human and animal carcasses hanging from the refectory ceiling. At that moment the pious father Carnicer entered the room, calmed their fears, and then exhorted them never to eat meat again… “without license.”79 The seesaw of privileges, pitting administrators against those who pressed for an expansion of the benefits of membership or service, appears generally to have worked to the advantage of those seeking the benefits rather than to the interests of the corporation or to the interests of the leaders who sought to limit them. The examples I have drawn upon for illustration should be enough to suggest something richer than what the decline and reform model permits. The corporate culture of the Order of Preachers was not immutable. Neither was it created whole, then broken, then remade. We have ascertained instead that friars at all levels of rank and office saw the praxis of life in Dominican convents as extremely malleable. Out of a century and more of change a new operational reality slowly emerged, one not entirely healthy for the Order but one that no friar, including the Order’s most reform-minded administrators, could do without or entirely rise above. Disabilities were systemic. Generosity and service motivated many friars who wished to act in accordance with the humility, discipline, and poverty of Dominic and the first friars, but even the Order’s leaders acknowledged another reality of ambition, competition, and status, which they encouraged by turning occasional dispensations into a system of compensatory rewards and special privileges. We might talk about contradictions, except that Dominican culture accepted and encouraged this dichotomy; Dominican administrators and the rankand-file reconciled and rationalized for themselves what may seem dissonant to us. This is not to say that the systemic underpinnings of the slow creep towards laxity went entirely unrecognized. Master Berengar, and the provincial priors Miguel de Estella, Bernat Sescala, Nicolau Rossell and others were smart men who came to their work with considerable experience, capable learners who showed a keeness to discover causes and remedies for the Order’s ills. We might assume that their academic and official backgrounds disposed them to rigorous interpretation of law and a general disposition against laxity. But their work was hard, 79 Baltasar Sorió, De viris illustribus Provinciae Aragoniae Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. José María de Garganta Fábrega (Valencia, 1950), 50–51.

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and perhaps their hard personalities did not help them much. At times the responses of some of these reformers to the conditions they faced makes them look not a little confused, often cranky, and sometimes angry that their righteous attempts at disciplinary improvements so often failed. We will have opportunity to return to the question of cranky reformers and their failed reforms.

PART TWO

EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE IN DOMINICAN CONVENTS

CHAPTER FIVE

FRIAR-YOUTHS AND TROUBLESOME OTHERS Consider two anecdotes, both drawn from the fourteenth century acts of the Dominican Province of Aragon, each of which suggests that administrators and rank-and-file friars recognized the existence of distinct subgroups within their Order. This is a necessary starting point for understanding how stratification of the rank-and-file into subgroups created conflict inside the Order and problems for its managers. First is the case of the five young men brought to our attention earlier as we noticed the record of their censure in the provincial chapter acts of 1307. The five held positions as lectors and doctors. Each, therefore, had distinguished himself by his educational accomplishments and readiness for leadership positions in the Order’s schools. One among them, already introduced, was Arnau Burguet, at this time a newly-made doctor of Majorca. He would later be elected twice to the office of provincial prior. Another, Berenguer de Saltells, distinguished himself in coming decades as an inquisitor of heretical depravity. He also served as provincial prior from 1332–1342, the longest serving prior of the Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century and, unfortunately, the one whose chapter records have been lost. One might assume, given the positions these men held, that each showed a requisite degree of zeal for his Order’s mission, although the circumstances in which we find them calls us to test this assumption. The prior provincial, Miquel de Estella, and the diffinitors working with him, found the five men negligent and intemperate as regarded their attire. The five had adorned their outer robes (cappas) with colors. The precise use of color and design is unknown in this case, although we can easily imagine bands of crimson or some other rich hue rounding the wrists or forming a placket down the front face of the garment. What is clear is that the provincial and the diffinitors with him in chapter saw the five friars engaging in a display of immoderation and prohibited the men from wearing their cappas until they had been re-dyed to conform to the Order’s appropriately dull and honest standard.1 1 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 277–278: Contra nobilitatem autem vestium ordinationem factam in precedenti Capitulo innovamus, et omnes vestes nobiles in

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These friars received no penalty for their infraction, aside from the publicized dressing down that perhaps hurt their pride. The absence of a specified penalty is exceptional. We have seen some difficult penalties, including taking meals on the floor, and loss for several years of the ability to participate in the electoral and other internal business of convents. And the absence of a punishment in this case comes despite the fact that this occurrence was not the first in which friars in the Province of Aragon had added color to their clothing. In protesting against immoderate dress de Estella and his diffinitors made it explicit that they wished to reiterate counsels on the same subject promulgated by earlier provincial chapters. The Order’s leaders had established clear prohibitions against status displays in clothing (nobilitatem vestium) that a handful of learned men, surely aware of the prohibitions, had chosen to contravene. It turned out to be the case, and they probably knew it from the start, that the status of these men offered them some immunity from penalties. And why not? They had, after all, left the ranks of the Order’s students and entered into the ranks of its teaching elite. The second anecdote derives from an admonition issued by Nicolau Rossell in the provincial chapter of 1351 and hints at discrimination by the Order’s administrators against young and inexperienced friars. Rossell announced to the province’s young friars (denunciat… iuvenibus) that they must not avoid or delay their studies. He implored them to put more effort into their work, pursuing it diligently and with effect, in the best interests of their convents. Up to this point the injunction is typical of many others found in general and provincial chapters imploring the brothers to attend diligently to their work. But Rossell went further. He warned that if the youths he addressed showed themselves to be unuseful (inutiles) he would demote them and send them away from their home convents to distant ones, a consequence that, given pretio, vel colores specialiter condempnamus, et districte iniungimus, ac mandamus, quod fratribus de talibus vestibus nobilibus se expediant infra mensem. Alias incontinenti Priores, vel eorum vices gerentes, dictas vestes ipsis fratribus auferant, et in Conventus usum convertant; quod si Priores, vel eorum vices gerentes, in ablatione huiusmodi fuerint negligentes, volumus, et mandamus, ut ieiunent in pane et aqua duobus diebus in qualibet septimana, quousue predictam ordinationem duxerint ad effectum. In presenti vero condemnamus cappas multum nobiles in colore, videlicet fratris A. Burgeti doctoris Maioricensis, fratris Stephani de Huesca, doctoris Oscensis, fratris Martini de Aranda, fratris A. de V., fratris Berengarii de Saltellis, et eis interdicimus, etiam inhibemus, ut non portent cappas illas ulterius, nisi prius inteingantur colore debito, et honesto.

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the social realities of local conventual life, they would find difficult to endure.2 In the context of other admonitions, this threat played its part in a broader effort to remove the Order’s young men from the influence of friends, family and other sources of distraction and mischief. It also offers a glimpse at Rossell’s sometimes prickly disposition.3 The two situations are easily enough imagined. The corporate image of the Order of Preachers required that its members present a lowly appearance. Thus, in the first case, regardless of how common the practice had become among secular university professors, the Order’s administrative leaders could not permit Dominican teaching masters to wear signs of their intellectual achievements and elevated social position on their sleeves. One may argue that the indiscretions of the five friars involved in a nobilitatem vestium controversy merely evince a momentary lapse of judgment or discretion. Miquel de Estella and his advisers in the 1307 chapter called the men incontinent, suggesting they suffered only a temporary loss of their usual resolve to hold firmly to the Order’s high standards. Still, teaching masters sought to demonstrate their special place in their Order’s competitive social hierarchy and, as we will see, they found ways to do so. The desire to show off persisted in some friars; it was not a matter of momentary indiscretion. As regards the younger friars on whom Rossell directed his administrative gaze, since study prepared a friar to do his job as a preacher, idle, lazy or lax students had to be compelled to do better or suffer serious consequences. Perhaps additional training under more rigorous oversight would improve these students’ attention to the rules of the game. But perhaps not: the need to prevent idleness had preoccupied the defenders of religious rules from before the time of St. Benedict. Let us accept that most friars failed at one time or another to take the right course of action as they succumbed to momentary lapses of commitment or attention. For such lapses we may excuse them. A worse alternative is the shameless personality. Ramón Cortici, Arnau de Benages, and Francesc Soler can serve as examples of this 2 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 313: Item, denunciat Prior Provincialis iuvenibus huius Provinciae universis, quod nisi Studio, et honestati totaliter se dederint cum effectu, non est mens eius alicui praedicti postponendi studium, vel gradum, vel etiam bonum conferre Conventum, sed eos tanquam inutiles minoribus et aliarum nationum Conventibus deputabit. 3 To cite an example, in his capacity as cardinal Rossell accused certain secular leaders of lacking utility. Manuel García Miralles, “El opúsculo ‘De processibus paparum contra principes inutiles’,” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 36 (1964), 103–117.

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type. They received punishments in 1357 for running around with bad women (malas mulieres).4 Francesc de Cerviano also comes to mind. The provincial chapter of 1371 charged him in absentia with apostasy, following the company of men at arms, and leading women in faciem ecclesiae. The latter might mean that he served as a marriage broker or performed marriages for some of his mercenary buddies or perhaps that he practiced polygamy by tricking women into marrying him. The chapter ordered conventual priors to find him and put him in jail.5 The traditional model sees the friars as a one-dimensional, unidirectional force, unified in their thirteenth-century successes before it turned volte-face to its fourteenth-century decline (‘weak’ friars in the first period and ‘strong’ ones in the second get treated as outliers). It is a lingering assumption that the simplicity and social coherence of medieval culture bred solidarity and discouraged individuality.6 Likewise, it is a truism of Christian teaching, shared by medieval monks and mendicants and by their modern–day counterparts, that the pursuit of the religious life weakens a self-satisfying will.7 In both the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, however, maintaining order and discipline remained a much richer problem than these perspectives admit. Nicolau Rossell could tell the difference between those who tried hard but failed and those who liked to cheat and steal. The trouble for him, and for all of us, is that between the two extremes lies a sea of ambiguities and alternatives.

4

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 347–348. Goméz García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 215. 6 The common assumption against medieval identities is expressed by Roy F. Baumeister, Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (New York, 1986), 29: “prior to 1800 identity was not generally problematic…. The problems and crises that plague modern identity formation were largely unknown in medieval Europe. Society was much more rigidly structured and inflexible than it is today. As a result, the large institutional structures for the most part formed an individual’s identity. In other words, the individual received his or her identity without much personal struggle.” 7 Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, 5 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1923), I: 1–16. Peter Levi, The Frontiers of Paradise: A Study of Monks and Monasteries (New York, 1987), 15–19. Ludo J. R. Mills, Angelic Monks and Earthly Men: Monasticism and its Meaning to Medieval Society (New York, 1992), 8–16. It remains implicit in the many foundational treatments of monasticism, e.g., Herbert B. Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal from the Earliest Times down to the Coming of the Friars (1962), Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God; a Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrashi (New York, 1961), and C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (New York, 1984). 5

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We need a different model of lived experience inside Dominican convents. It must be a model that permits self-interest and the interests of Dominican subgroups, both of which appear in the examples with which we began this chapter: self-promoting doctors putting their own ambition above their Order’s humble countenance; selfish students inconsiderate of their duties to their corporate religious family. Identity politics is also implied: masters asserting their relatively high status; provincial authorities reminding “youths” of their relatively low place in the pecking order. Only in recent years have historians seriously admitted medieval self-fashioning in the context of religious communities.8 These studies raise useful questions about the shaping of relationships inside convents, their politicization, and the emergence of conflict within and between competing identity and interest groups. To social and organizational theorists this is not news.9 Problems inside organizations may seem to have structural roots, or get blamed on external stresses, but the day-to-day utility of structures, whatever they happen to be at the moment, and the ways that external threats get managed depend on the people on the inside who, no matter the situation, find plenty to disagree about as they seek to know themselves and those they can trust.10

8

E.g., Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Medieval Self-Fashioning: Authorship, Authority, and Autobiography in Seuse’s Exemplar,” in Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans, ed., Kent Emery and Joseph Wawrykow, (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), 430–461. Derek G. Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago, 2008). Cullum, Patricia, Katherine J. Lewis, ed. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages. Cardiff, 2004. 9 For orientation see Robyn Fivush and Janine Buckner, “The Self as Socially Constructed: A Commentary,” in The Conceptual Self in Context, ed., Ulric Neisser and David Jopling (Cambridge, 1997), 176. The entries in Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick, eds., Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (New York, 2002) for “Identity” 183–187, and “Self ” 346–350 are also useful. Identity in organizational contexts is treated by David A. Whetten and Paul C. Godfrey, Identity in Organizations: Building Theory Through Conversations (New York, 1998); Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts, ed., M. Higg and D.J. Terry, (New York, 2001); and K.A. Cerulo, “Identity Construction: New Issues, New Directions,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 385–403. 10 Harrison C. White, Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action (Princeton, 1992) sees identity as continually on the move in part because it is shaped by the fight one puts up against contingencies. Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY, 1986), 108, outlines a procedure for the cognitive change that perpetuates the reshaping of self and that fuels individual and group conflict: “This is how the names get changed and how the people and things get rejigged to fit the new categories. First people are tempted out of their niches by new possibilities of exercising or evading control. Then they make new kinds of institutions, and the institutions make

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The first section of this chapter examines the division of the preachers into distinct subgroups. Stratification fueled the expansion of the Order’s system of dispensations, thus giving rise to disputes that arose within and between groups over access to valuable but limited rewards of membership. I will then turn to attempts by Dominican administrators to distinguish youthful friars as a troublesome cohort. One might cite a number of causal factors in the development of a youth problem, although many that could be discovered, interference by parents and other outsiders for example, are proximate causes. Division of the Order on the basis of merit and status was at the root, in part because it stimulated demand for entrance into the Order by identifying ways to compensate success, and in part because the same compensatory scheme and competitive energies fueled internal divisiveness. Finally, I argue that young friars came to be blamed – unfairly scapegoated – for some of their Order’s ills, in fact, for the very energies that encouraged them to become Dominican friars in the first place. This may have been tactical by the mid-1350s, to the degree that administrators like Nicolau Rossell appear to have used the youth problem to rally support for imposing new standards and procedures upon all friars. The Myth of Unity and the Emergence of a Stratified Order Historians have presented Dominican unity in a number of guises. In his survey of provincial acts, for instance, Douais identified the source of the friars’ unity as their innate love of law, that is, of their rule and constitutions.11 Bennett, who addressed the friars as “storm troops,” and Galbraith, who assumed that lesser administrative units carried out the commands of a “G.H.Q.” [General Headquarters], saw unity as a feature of the friars’ subordination to a hierarchical administrative bureaucracy.12 From this perspective, authoritarianism tempered by new labels, and the label makes new kinds of people.” On the significance of “microdemographic dynamics” for organizational theorists see M. J. Hatch, Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (Oxford, 1997), 200;, and Richard Harrison and Glenn Carroll, “Modeling Culture in Organizations: Formulation and Extension to Ecological Issues,” in Dynamics of Organizations: Computational Modeling and Organization Theories, ed., Alessandro Lomi and Erik R. Larsen (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 37–62. 11 Douais, Acta Provincialium, lix: “C’est par amour de l’ordre et de la règle, un amour inné, si je puis dire, que les frères Prêcheurs ont toujours tendu vers l’unité.” 12 Bennett, The Early Dominicans, 161. Galbraith, Constitutions, 177.

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some democratic practices encouraged and perpetuated among the friars a singularity of thought, purpose and action. Hinnebusch, who gave central place to the practical operation of the Holy Spirit in his appreciation of Dominican unity, littered his writings with references to an efficacious Dominican unity.13 In comparative terms this is a historiography that seeks to distinguish the collegiate Dominicans from the fractious Franciscans.14 Historians brought up in the methodologies of recent decades, while attending to the broader social and economic circumstances that the friars confronted, also confirm that a unifying purpose attracted the first friars to Dominic’s cause.15 For some, the Order’s rule and constitutions “embodied a revolution in the theory and practice of government,” a revolution that confirmed the friars’ solidarity in the context of a new legal apparatus that governed a novel kind of communal life.16 Differences in focus and characterization aside, historians of the Order have generally agreed that operative among the earliest preaching friars was a singularity of purpose. It would be foolhardy to deny that the early friars desired a sense of group coherence, and perhaps they possessed it for a time, but the friars themselves found such unity very difficult to achieve and impossible to sustain. Certainly it fell upon the Order’s leaders to establish structures and encourage processes that sustained high levels of cooperation. The encyclicals and other writings by the first masters general, Jordan of Saxony, Johannes Teutonicus, and Humbert of Romans demonstrate how important it was to promote group solidarity as part of the Dominican corporate image, but also the difficulty of the task. Despite the ample skill with which these and other administrators employed the rhetoric of communal like-mindedness, some friars refused to conform to the unifying vision.17

13 E.g., Hinnebusch, History I, 77: “These last months [the last two years of Dominic’s life] and the final touches of Dominic’s hand shaped its magnificent government, its marvellous unity. The unity has never been broken.” 14 Hinnebusch, History I, 169, is explicit on this point. On the difficulties of maintaining unity within the Franciscan Order after 1300, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans (University Park, PA, 2001), which supercedes in detail John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order (Oxford, 1968), 307–319 and Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order (Rome, 1987), esp. 109–134. 15 E.g., Barbara Rosenwein and Lester Little, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities,” Past and Present 63 (1974), 4–32. 16 Lawrence, The Friars, 82. 17 Reichert, Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 10–14, 21–24; Brett, Humbert of Romans, 12, 22–40.

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Even in the earliest years the friars’ singularity of purpose was tested more than once. John of Navarre’s refusal to travel without expense money has already been cited. The episode occurred in 1217 at the moment when Dominic first sent his men out from Toulouse to take up assignments in other lands and thus expand the missionary reach of his nascent order. When John failed to yield to Dominic, the founder reportedly fell to the ground weeping and praying. One might imagine this as an attempt on Dominic’s part to shame John into compliance but, in the end, Dominic capitulated, ordering that John be given the traveling money he sought. John was not the only dissenter, as one witness at Dominic’s canonization process attested. When Dominic, according to the account, dispersed his comrades “against the will of the count of Montfort, the archbishop of Narbonne, the bishop of Toulouse and several other prelates,” he was so hard put to convince them that he commanded “Do not oppose me; I know quite well what I am doing.”18 The episode may speak to Dominic’s exceptional organizational talents in that he precisely gauged the proper time to initiate the Order’s expansion, but it is not the best evidence of the persuasive abilities of a charismatic leader whose force of will moves others to accept his unifying vision. Evidence of another kind appears from 1220, when Dominic and the friars first met in chapter to consider operational and procedural questions. According to witness testimony Dominic made clear his own plan for the best management of his men, advising the professed friars to turn administrative control of the Order over to its lay members, in order to free up the friars’ time for study and preaching. Dominic’s clerical disciples flatly refused to relinquish decision-making to the lay brothers.19 If we are to believe the event happened as reported, then Dominic failed at this moment in his effort to secure the Order’s humble origins for the long term. Despite his apparent love of poverty and the enshrining of poverty in the constitutions, the professed friars who followed him refused to give up control of even modest resources. Increasingly, they imposed upon lay brothers the responsibility of begging for alms, making them turn over their

18

Hinnebusch, History I, 52. On Dominic’s designs for lay control of the Order’s temporal affairs, see Hinnebusch, History I, 154: “Dominic’s love for poverty was so great that for once his practical sense had been submerged. Rosalind Brooke, The Coming of the Friars, 93–94, compares these events to the rebellion inside the Order of Grandmont during a similar experiment. 19

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receipts to their professed brothers.20 Indeed, the early debate over management of resources offers some of the first evidence of internal stratification into Dominican subgroups. There can be little doubt that from early on every friar possessed an immediate awareness of the status divide between clerical and lay wings of the order. A story related by both Dominican and Franciscan sources recalls a meeting at Rome of Francis, Dominic, and Cardinal Hugolino during which both founders rebuffed the cardinal’s suggestion that their followers would make good bishops. The story may be apocryphal, but it makes plain that Cardinal Hugolino put the needs of the Roman Church ahead of Dominic’s supposed insistence upon the Order’s humility. Nevertheless, after rising to the pontiff ’s chair as Pope Gregory IX, Hugolino had his way by promoting several friars to episcopal sees. In addition to illustrating that Dominic’s vision and leadership failed to persuade on such a crucial matter, the story also suggests divisiveness within Dominican ranks from early in the Order’s history. The power of the pope and the ambitions of some friars were sufficiently strong that they imposed an agenda that contradicted the founder’s intentions. Command of the Order, it should be clear, was not Dominic’s alone and disagreements led quickly to some Dominicans becoming ecclesiastical potentates. These specific examples of disharmony and early layering of the Order’s ranks have implications for the evolution of the Order’s operating structures and constitutional apparatus. From the first, the modus operandi of the traveling preacher – the subject of fiery debate through much of the twelfth century – had to be interpreted and adapted to create a niche for the apostolate of the mendicant orders. Some historians have been eager to point out that it was only a few years between 1217, when Dominic received papal approval for his enterprise, and the general chapter meeting of 1228, after which the order “could boast a completely developed system of government.”21 However, one may note to the contrary that the first eleven years in the fragile life of an organization growing rapidly in an unsteady environment can seem like a very long time to those struggling to make it work out right.22 From this perspective, returning to the very beginning of Dominic’s mission, 20

Hinnebusch, History I, 161. Hinnebusch, History I, 171. 22 On age dependence on organizational survival, see Alessandro Lomi and Erik Reimer Larsen, “Failure as a Structural Concept: A Computational Perspective on 21

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back to the period when his was just another in a long line of experiments in apostolic reform going back more than a century, shows that the development of the Order’s structures and processes matured slowly. Such maturation did not occur without moments of disharmony. Indeed, the constitution building period from the 1220s into the 1240s, and the attempts thereafter to regulate actions by imposing procedural modifications, implies a process of ongoing debate, negotiation, and compromise. The Order’s decision-makers attempted to narrow disagreements in order to carve momentary consensus from alternative and potentially destabilizing viewpoints about Dominican character and operations. If a holistic conception of unbroken unity appears fragile when applied to the early friars, it is impossible to sustain for later generations. Despite some historians’ assertions of Dominican homogeneity, a diversity of interests asserts itself clearly in the record by the 1300s. By this time friars had taken a range of important offices – bishoprics, university regencies, administrative and diplomatic posts for popes, kings, and princes, etc. General chapters and, later, provincial chapters, conferred the title of preacher general upon leading friars, who then gained special rights in recognition of their exemplary character, expertise, or seniority. The preacher general designation became a coveted prize. Ralph Bennett called the preachers general “the first aristocracy of the Order,” which is correct if we discount as other candidates those who had already ascended to episcopal rank.23 One of the first duties of the new Province of Aragon in 1302 was to cap the number of preachers general in the province at thirty. Provincial Peregrí with his provincial chapter apportioned these thirty to the “nations” of Catalonia, Aragon, and Navarre at a ratio of 18:6:6, based on the perceived contribution of each to the work of the whole province.24 Their apportioning in this way reminds us that status operated at a number of conceptual levels – individuals could possess it; some regions, territories or convents within the Province possessed it, too; and, as we explored in an earlier chapter, the Provinces themselves were ranked according to the honor accorded them either because of Dominic’s

Age Dependence in Organizational Mortality Rates,” in Dynamics of Organizations, ed. Lomi and Larsen (Menlo Park, CA, 2001), 270–303. 23 Bennett, The Early Dominicans, 157. 24 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 250–251.

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interest in them or for the early establishment of their convents. The Order similarly granted its inquisitors special rights, including travel to and from Rome without hindrance of the Order’s customary travel restrictions and without the need to seek the usual permission required for access to the Roman curia. The Order’s stratification continued from the top down, with masters of theology and then conventual lectors asserting that distinct privileges accrued to them as a result of their achievements. In this they followed the efforts of schoolmen elsewhere to define and promote their self-identity.25 In noting “certain traces of the snobbery of birth,” Bennett confirmed that the friars remained subject to the influences of the society around them.26 The Complexity of Dominican Subgroup Identities More or less implicit in histories of the Order of Preachers are two models that explain the relationship of students and preachers. Elucidating the models and the ambiguities they overlook will lay some groundwork for exploring the emergence and behavior of subgroups all the way down to the base of the Dominican social pyramid. The first model treats all preachers as students. William Hinnebusch said about John of Navarre that he trained in the “school of sanctity”; that is, he learned to be a preacher under Dominic’s direct tutelage.27 All of the first friars, in this view, were at once both students and preachers, studying together in their convents, learning as they preached, following the advice and example of the skilled preachers around them. In the ideal, according to this view, all friars became students for life just as they also became friars for the specific purpose of preaching.28 Not all studied scholastic or legal methodologies, but all remained students of the gospel, and each read his share of hagiographies and miracle stories, which were eventually brought into preaching compendia, attempting in these efforts to discern the ways and means of effective preaching. 25 For details of this development, see Ian. P. Wei, “The Self-Image of the Masters of Theology at the University of Paris in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 398–431. 26 Bennett, The Early Dominicans, 158. 27 Hinnebusch, History I, 311. 28 Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 133, says of friars who advanced beyond their first year’s noviciate that from that moment they “belonged to the school. And so began a life-long routine.”

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A major limitation of the all-Dominicans-are-students model is that it obfuscates the effects upon conventual life of the expansion and formalization of the Order’s educational program. Humbert of Romans gave written form to several decades of contemplation upon the relationship of study to preaching. Implicit in his treatise on the formation of preachers were several basic questions: How much study was enough, or too much, given that the object of study was to produce a useful preacher? What kind of study and preparation were appropriate to the preacher’s task? In effect, he sought to discern when a student knew enough to become a preacher.29 To better establish the efficacy of both study and preaching, he and others systematized and separated the two tasks. The Order established conventual scola and provincial studia, and began to send students regularly to universities, a process that culminated in set courses of study. The expansion in the numbers of university charters across Europe in the fourteenth century shows that the trend of rising demand for advanced training was not unique to the Dominican Order. As regards preaching, however, Dominican administrators found it difficult to find the proper basis upon which to confer the preaching office. That all friars should preach, even those still studying, remained an ideal, but maturity and competency mattered. Into the fourteenth-century and beyond Dominican administrators struggled to arrive at competency tests that assessed and assured the quality of preaching. The second model suggests that we envision friars first as students and later, after their period of preparation, as preachers. Accordingly, it is implied that the friars followed a two-tiered arrangement in which they first entered into training and, once adequately prepared, pursued their ultimate purpose by applying what they had learned in the schools to their preaching careers. Formalization of the Dominican educational system and a functional split between study and preaching are implicit in the model, which leaves the impression that a friar’s schooling shaped him into a successful preacher. It suggests that the mind of the novice friar, if not a blank slate upon entry into the Order, could be cleared of whatever social and political contents it might possess and then profitably filled with the insights of the Dominican ascetical and scholastic tradition. After being brought up to be like all other

29 Humbert of Romans, On the Formation of Preachers, c. 82–94, excerpts translated in Simon Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 205–208.

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preaching friars, he would become well-prepared to direct his actions toward the fulfillment of his Order’s singular purpose.30 Unfortunately for this model, no homogeneous approach to the Order’s social reproduction existed in the medieval centuries.31 To characterize the friars either as a body of student-preachers or as divided into a student population and a cadre of preachers simplifies a complex organizational reality. The Order of Preachers emerged as a clerical order, giving it a corporate identity that seems simple enough. But it also seems right to follow Cullum in calling the fourteenth-century cleric “a fuzzily defined creature.”32 On occasion the fourteenth-century acts distinguish priests from non-priests in functional terms, although difficulties remain, the most persistent of which include assessing the ratio of priests to non-priests over the period, knowing how or even whether the proportions changed, and understanding the relative decision-making and representative statuses of the various clerical groups. In addition to the functional designations of student and preacher, priest and clerical non-priest, clerical and lay, the provincial chapter acts designated at least two other groups in demographic terms: youth and elders. Many of the Order’s first recruits were skilled clerics or men of obvious talent and inclination for orthodox preaching. Reginald of Orleans, Raymond of Penyafort, and many others were already in mid-career when they joined the Dominicans. By around 1250 the range of ages within the Dominican corporation had expanded considerably. Recruitment, which from early on was directed at students already enrolled at Europe’s leading universities, expanded to include younger individuals whom Dominican recruiters sought as prospective students or whose parents encouraged to enter for the purpose of 30 William Hinnebusch, History I, 322, ends a discussion of vocations by noting an influx of youthful recruits after the initial rush of well-qualified candidates in the Order’s first years. “If the younger men did not bring maturity and a record of achievement with them, they certainly offered such valued assets as flexibility and eagerness and could readily be molded to the Order’s spirit and purpose. Unlike older men, they had less to unlearn.” 31 Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 111–126, notes the near absence of disciplinary manuals through which youths inculcated Dominican habits. A spiritual guide for novices written by an anonymous friar in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, survives in only one copy. 32 On the minor and major orders and the complexities of transition from one to another, see P. H. Cullum, “Boy/Man into Clerk/Priest: The Making of the Late Medieval Clergy,” in Rites of Passage: Cultures of Transition in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Nicola F. McDonald and W.M. Omrod, (York, 2004), 51–66.

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garnering spiritual or secular rewards. As convents gained the capacity to manage and train younger students, and as pressure from benefactors and potential benefactors increased, the Order’s leaders reduced entry barriers, so that by the fourteenth century few novices were mature men, most were young, and some were boys whose parents gave them over to the friars for grammar school training without a promise that they would continue to pursue a life as a Dominican preacher. On the other side of the age spectrum, some friars who entered the Order in their twenties or thirties in the 1220s had grown old by the 1250s. Raymond of Penyafort was in his seventies at that time (when he died in 1274 he had almost reached his 100th birthday). Many of these had been teachers, some preachers general, some bishops. Penyafort was no less a power broker for having refused episcopal office on more than one occasion. Some admonitions served to remind priors that elders deserved special treatment. One from 1352 urged conventual priors not to strike friars of advanced age with the hand.33 In 1368, diffinitors asked the provincial prior to keep an eye on how priors treated their seniors.34 Age and long careers distinguished these seniors (seniores) or elders (antiquores) as men of wisdom, and provincial authorities increasingly called upon them to contribute their wealth of knowledge. By the middle of the fourteenth century elders served on a variety of committees, determining the competency of their younger brothers for public preaching, administering special funds to care for sick friars, dispensing per diem expenses to travelers, and measuring whether friars met standards of dress and habit.35 As will be addressed in greater detail in the next chapter, provincial authorities sometimes put elders into direct competition with elected conventual priors, weakening the administrative potency of the local priorate. By the 1360s a prior could only impose a sentence of excommunication upon a friar in his charge after a committee of four elders had reviewed the case, and

33

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 237. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 357. 35 From 1345, four elders had to give consent when a prior wished to license a friar to go to town during class time: Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 260–261. From 1347, two elders to oversee a trust fund for the sick: Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 280–281. From 1366, two elders to inspect the width and length of clothing, using as a standard what was permitted in “the olden days”: Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 128. 34

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local priors could not make or sign contracts concerning the goods of a convent until they had received the mature counsel of elders.36 In this assessment of internal corporate diversity we need also to account for female members of the Order and the lay brothers (conversi). The first Dominican convent, at Prouille, housed women not men, and thereafter the ‘sisters’ remained a persistent, if not highly visible, presence. No general treatment of the Dominican second order exists, and very little has been written about fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury Dominican women. One reason perhaps is the fact that despite their place in the Order, from an administrative perspective the sisters got very little attention.37 The view drawn from general and provincial chapter acts and from the encyclicals of masters general is that, while some friars had responsibilities for the administration of female houses and the care of their sister’s souls, administrators viewed it as best for the friars to ignore the presence of women among their ranks.38 The provincial chapter acts offer no guidance for women, nor for the prioresses overseeing them. The lists of the year’s deceased members of the Order, those for whom prayers should be offered, include male lay conversi but do not include sisters (although the separate lists of deceased benefactors receiving prayers do include women). The chapter acts in some years name priests, confessors and overseers to women’s convents, but for the most part the only mention of women and women’s houses in the acts is in cautionary reminders that the friars should stay out.39 Although it is difficult to demonstrate, my view of it is that even the tone of these notices, the few that appear, seems begrudging. In the fourteenth-century acts, moreover, women’s houses are routinely called monasteries, not convents, no doubt to indicate that the public role for female Dominicans remained limited.40 The acts of Aragon leave only one impression as regards the way male administrators viewed their sisters: women posed a temptation to the rank-and-file and a burden to male administrators. 36

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 257; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997),

279. 37

C. H. Lawrence, The Friars, 75–79. On the development of a similar disposition among the Franciscans, see Webster, Els Menorets, 220–223. 39 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 110 show particular urgency. 40 For discussion of “the grace of preaching” as it applies to ongoing debates about the preaching role of women in an Order of Preachers, see Jeremy Miller and Simon Tugwell, “What is the Dominican Charism: An Exchange of Views,” Spirituality Today 24 (1982), 244–260. 38

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Beyond the confines of the sisters’ monasteries lived various individual women and concentrations of women, sometimes married and sometimes not, who thought themselves associated in some way with the Dominican friars. Catherine of Siena, influential at the end of our period, is the best known and most studied.41 The institutional affiliations of these women, commonly lumped under the loose headings tertiaries or beguines, or sometimes called ‘third order,’ are not well understood, although it is clear enough that the Church had little patience for finding them a place for religious expression in its institutional arrangements outside of marriage or enclosure.42 The provincial acts leave as an entirely untreated question the relationship of professed friars to third order movements and to the beguines and beguinages of northeastern Iberia. The chapter acts leave the impression of some very clear ambiguities about women: the absence of instructions for female members of the Order, a reticence to treat the problem of beguinage, a general fear of friars coming into close contact with women. It is interesting to note, however, that Tomás Domingo’s sixteenth-century history of the Zaragoza convent shows that in the 1360s and thereafter women, including female “moors, vassals of the convent,” were brought in to help with the cleaning.43 Perhaps, to put it crudely, the friars saw utility in women who were uncomely, of low status, or otherwise too “other” to be considered dangerous. Laymen also sought association with the friars. Most did so through religious confraternities or guilds and other work-related fraternities

41 Heather Webb, “Catherine of Sienna’s Heart,” Speculum 80 (2005), 802–817, F. Thomas Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena (Ithaca, NY, 2006), and Thomas McDermott, Catherine of Siena: Spiritual Development in her Life and Teaching (New York, 2008) are recent contributions. 42 An exemplary study of the lived tensions in late medieval women’s search for institutional footing inside the Church, John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2008) follows in the tradition of Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, and José M. Pou y Martí, Visionarios, beguinos y fraticelos Catalanes, siglos XIII–XIV (Vich, 1930). For comparable relationships among the Franciscans, see Roberta Agnes McKelvie, Angelina of Montegiove: Franciscan, Tertiary, Beguine (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1997). Boniface VIII’s 1298 bull Periculoso being among the most pointed of papal bulls and conciliar canons on the subject, as well as canons of important church councils, warned of the dangers to Christian society brought by women who were neither enclosed nor married. Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Comentators (Washington, D.C., 1997). 43 Blasco Martínez, Sociología de una communidad religiosa, 74–75.

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that maintained institutional independence from the Order.44 Conversi are an exception. These men lived in common with the Order’s clerical friars and received the appellation “frater” in official documents, but as laymen who did not take vows, they remained determinedly subordinate. Dominic had hoped to give ongoing administration over to conversi in order to give friar-clerics more time for study and preaching. But the clerics refused. Instead of a significant management role conversi performed menial tasks, doing the cooking and cleaning and begging alms that facilitated the work of the professed. They sometimes served as traveling companions, socii, for professed friars, but did not participate directly in preaching and missionary activities. Early masters general saw fit to separate the disciplinary chapter of conversi from that of the clerical wing, and from early on, certainly by the 1230s, the laybrothers did not possess the rights others could claim for electing their administrative leaders. The constitutions prohibited them from studying or looking into books. They could not accuse clerical friars of breaches of communal decorum, except through their convent’s master of conversi.45 Teachers and advanced students abandoned begging by the fourteenth century, leaving this increasingly low status occupation to younger friars and conversi.46 To live as a conversus among the learned friars was to recall daily one’s position as unlearned and lowly.47 Provincial chapter participants added deceased conversi to the lists of dead friars for whom they asked the living brothers to pray; however, that the 1378 chapter found it sufficient to add to that year’s list “and another conversus whose name we do not know” – the only time a friar on the death lists is unnamed – evidently indicates that some leaders took little notice of laymen in their convents.48

44 Gilles-Gérard Meersseman, ‘Etudes sur les anciennes confréries dominicaines,’ AFP 20 (1950) 5–113, 21 (1951) 51–196, 22 (1952) 5–176, 23 (1953) 275–308. 45 Galbraith, Constitutions, 6–7, 114–115, 176, 252, and Hinnebusch, History I, 288–290. 46 Various admonitions in the chapter acts of the Province of Aragon testify to these arrangements, for example, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 309. This and other prohibitions against incautas combinationes, aimed to restrict friars from undertaking public work unless at least one was a preacher ex officio of a high standing confirmed by a committee of discrete men. An exception was held out for a youth to go out with a conversus or for conversi to be paired, but in these cases only for the purpose of begging. 47 Mulhern, The Early Dominican Laybrother, 41. 48 Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 32 (2002), 373: et alius Conversus cujus nomine ingnoramus.

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Conversi participated in their share of offenses. One of the most notable occurred in 1357 when the fight between two conversi, already mentioned, resulted in Francesç Peyroni beating up Bartomeu Capit. When caught and convicted, conversi may have been punished more harshly than other friars. In 1354, six friars were convicted of having eaten meat without license outside the confines of their convents. Three received penalties of three-years’ removal from the Order’s graces, including consumption of any meat. Two received a five-year penalty. The penalty imposed upon Joan de Estella, the only laybrother among them, although not otherwise distinguished as more culpable, denied him meat for six years.49 Youth and Student Cohorts Much of the remainder of this chapter treats management difficulties related to the emergence and treatment of what we might call a “youth problem.” The acts of the Province of Aragon vividly demonstrate that the stratification operative at the upper reaches of the Order of Preachers (recognition of special rank and privileges to preachers general, inquisitors, teaching masters, senior priests and preachers) also extended into the population of younger friars, although the lines between student, youth and novice groups remained fuzzily drawn, perhaps purposefully so. Provincial administrators were more than ready to distinguish those students who had a measurable future value to the Order from those with apparently less zeal or capacity for learning. An advisory issued in 1347 on the subject of a rudimentary health insurance policy offers an example of the evolving distinctions. Those at the provincial chapter called upon priors to give over to a pair of elders a tenth of all monies received by the convent to be held to cover the costs of friars’ illnesses. The statement stipulated that only priests, young preachers who had completed their studies, and youths who had a fair chance of advancing to the office of lector should be provided for in full.50 Those young 49

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 284. See, for 1347, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 280–281. Similar provisions are recorded in 1350, in abbreviated form in 1351, and in even less precise language in 1352 and 1353. For these instances see Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 294–295; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 309; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 254. 50

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friars who did not display sufficient maturity or promise could be offered less support in times of ill health. By the fourteenth century the Dominican Order had created a geographically extensive network of schools with a well-established curricular ladder. The Order’s educational offerings, evolving as they had over the course of a century, played their part in the broad trend across Europe toward more schools with more diversified programs. In the Province of Aragon every convent operated a schola in which rankand-file friars, the fratres communes, heard the set readings offered by conventual lectors on the Bible and on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. This provided their essential preparation for pastoral work.51 From here the education ladder went in two directions. At the bottom rung, some convents offered courses in grammar for those friars whose abilities were too rudimentary even for hearing the in-house lessons. Mulchahey has called the grammar schools “pre-postulancy schools,” asserting that they lacked legal integration into the Order’s school system.52 By a number of measures, however, they appear fully integrated in the Province of Aragon from its start. Regardless of how the question is decided about whether the grammarians belonged to the Order or not, the essential point is altogether clear: not all of those who aspired to the Order’s basic program of studies possessed the competence to undertake it, and even fewer could gain the competence needed for higher studies. From this perspective the grammar schools became a drag on the school system as a whole. Not only did they require considerable management effort but they also diminished the value of convent schools when those schools ended up taking in friars who showed little aptitude for the lector’s daily readings. Sometimes young men joined the Order not because they had an apptitude or calling but because the insistence of pushy parents compelled them. At other times they were lured in with promises of education and opportunity by friar-leaders, who faced the double pressure of needing to find more men when convent populations were low and who needed to expand networks that would bring financial security. In 1302 three convents – Valencia, Jativa, and Estella – hosted grammar school for at

51 Leonard E. Boyle, “Notes on the Education of the Fratres Communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century,” in Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200–1400 (London, 1981), 157–179. 52 Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 86; but compare Hinnebusch, History I, 283.

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least 27 students. By 1347, twelve of the eighteen convents received 57 incoming grammar students. In 1350, eight convents, including Castellon, Cervera, and Majorca took in 47 grammarians.53 The number of grammar students shot up to 73 in 1351 and up to 77 in 1353, then began to moderate, reaching a low for the second half of the fourteenth century of 28 in 1365. The opening of local grammar schools probably increased the relative value of the arts program and fueled the expectations of young recruits and their families.54 In the thirteenth century few convents could boast a studium artium or studium logicale, but in the Province of Aragon several convents, in fact the majority, eventually became homes for study of the arts. At least eleven convents in the Province of Aragon hosted a studium logicale in 1347, twelve in 1350, eleven in 1352, twelve in 1353. A studium generale, for the highest level of teacher training available within the order, excepting the premier international universities that prepared doctors in theology and canon law, was located at Barcelona from the late thirteenth century.55 By the mid-fourteenth century, the record of assignments also refers to Lerida as a studium generale and to Majorca as a studium provinciale; Zaragoza, Valencia, Huesca and Gerona operated schools with some of the curricular and demographic features of advanced studia, all offering courses, for example, in natural philosophy. These facts indicate an important trend: in the thirteenth century most convents only served the basic training needs for their Dominican preachers, but into the fourteenth century more and more convents had diversified programs. In addition to the daily reading supervised by the lector, a single convent might also house grammar students, students in arts, and even students in natural philosophy. As a result the demographic make up of the convents became more diverse, and this diversity became problematic. Accounts of the Dominican educational system have assumed that the expansion of the Order’s schools followed an even, centrallyplanned, and unidirectional trajectory.56 Such accounts elaborate the 53 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 242–246; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 823–287 and 297–300. 54 On the subjects treated in the arts course, the length of study, and other details, see Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 238–252. 55 Cándido María Ajo Gonzáles de Rapariegos, Historia de la universidades hispanicas. Orígenes y desarrollo desde su aparición hasta nuestros días, (Madrid, 1957), 308. Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 352–373 on the broader development of the studia generalia. 56 Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 226.

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benefits but give less attention to the costs of change. The expansion of the schools had the advantage of augmenting the intellectual potential of the Order’s personnel, but such a huge investment in human capital produced unexpected anomalies, among them a stratified Order and a fragmented student body. In addition to the creation of various ranked courses, it became true over time that some students advanced more quickly than others. Some had a better inclination to study and better skills for retention, logical thought, synthesis, etc. This differential in academic success may be the reason that Jaume March and Bernat de Pinu came to blows. It is also what sets Pere de Arenys, Vincent Ferrer and others apart from the many whose academic careers we take no interest in knowing. In other cases young friars enjoyed the advantage of patronage. Evidence for this is thin over the course of the Order’s first decades but becomes overwhelming in the fourteenth-century provincial acts. Changes in recruitment patterns no doubt contributed to the growing perception that some newcomers were less than fully capable. After the first wave of enthusiasm led to early recruiting successes, in which the friars could have their pick of the best available aspirants, the mendicant orders fell into competition with the other orders for a limited supply of superior candidates. Recruits grew less uniform in their intellectual competencies over time, with some dragging down and others pushing up the invisible bars measuring the quality of performance and output.57 In the years after 1300, administrators felt compelled to accept “sons of proven men” despite their perceived behavioral and intellectual shortcomings.58 Upward expansion of the curricula, for example the addition of a natural philosophy course – viewed as potentially dangerous by many intellectually conservative members of the Order – resulted, at least in part, from students of the highest intellectual caliber lobbying for more schooling, and we might well imagine that this was partly to distinguish themselves from their less capable peers. Clearly, the motives and abilities of Dominican students were mixed: some sought advanced training in order to fulfill the Order’s historical mission, while others (and perhaps Arnau Burguet falls into this category) saw opportunity for personal gain. Some took satisfaction in receiving

57 Hinnebusch, History, 282–288 and 312–326, treats some of the tensions created by recruiting pressures. 58 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 278.

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the Order’s basic training while others wanted more; some, lacking intellectual fitness, resorted to political assistance to help them ascend the academic ladder. In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Dominican vitae as training tools for young friars, John Van Engen has acknowledged the openness of the Order in its first decades to youthful ambition. Dominic, remembered in vitae and commemorated in the liturgy after his canonization in 1234, was not the only role model available to young friars. Dominican tradition, as Van Engen put it, “was not grounded in a life written to capture the holy radiance of an acclaimed saint but in lifestories written to delineate the origins of a guild of Preachers.”59 The authors of stories about Dominic and the first friars intended to teach those learning to live in the Dominican spirit about the character of Dominic’s followers, above all their simplicity, but they also acknowledged the many temptations of a life of public preaching, even admitting that some friars showed an easy willingness to succumb to what the world offered. I have already offered an example from Gerard of Frachet’s Vitae Fratrum of an admonition that was also an invitation: the Order would not shy away from accepting ambitious recruits. By no means was every young friar ambitious for advancement, although pride, status and gain of one kind or another clearly motivated many even in the early years. A 1233 encyclical written by Jordan of Saxony shows him busy with the need to arrest incipient self-aggrandizement. In the letter he compared the saintly Dominic to those within the Order who “glorify themselves.” “Greedy for their own private reputation,” he complained, “the more grace they receive for their neighbors, the more conceited they become in themselves.” These signs of “cowardice and impetuousness,” as Jordan called them, became salient factors in the development of interest groups within the Order.60 In 1302 Prior Provincial Bernat Peregrí and the chapter under his leadership issued four admonitions attending to the special problems raised by young friars. Taken as a whole these distinguish “youth” and “student” contingents from the body of other friars who had ongoing responsibilities to study. They also illustrate a growing perception that younger friars caused trouble and required the careful consideration of

59

Van Engen, “Dominic and His Brothers,” 11. Translated in Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 122–125. Van Engen, “Dominic and His Brothers,” 17–18. 60

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special rules. These four admonitions provide a skeleton for describing the difficulties of categorization, the problems that gave rise to it, and to some degree the evolution of problems and solutions over time. The first admonition of 1302 reminded all friars that those who failed to attend to their classes, unless they had been legitimately excused, would not receive an allotment of wine on the day of the absence. It confirmed that priors, subpriors, and vicars must attend the daily readings and exercises just like all other brothers, unless they were occupied with the legitimate business of their convent.61 Some readers might imagine it as the intent of the admonition to call everyone in a convent to his studies, but Peregrí showed no immediate interest in confirming the ideal of a homogeneous group of perennial learners. At issue was the nature and number of excuses. The admonition seeks to correct lax friars in a situation in which laxity ranged from top to bottom of the Dominican social ladder. By reiterating that participation in daily readings was a regular requirement of conventual life, the admonition established a condition – absenteeism – by which to judge and punish idleness. This admonition was restated in 1303 with an added provision that moved the onus for implementing its strictures from local priors to the teachers themselves, who were in a better position to note who was absent, to discern reasons for the absence, and to enforce penalties.62 A second admonition from 1302 addressed the failure of some friars to make themselves present at the daily collatio.63 The attendance requirement applied to all friars, according to the text, and again, those who absented themselves would be required to abstain from wine.

61 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 246: Item, ordinamus, quod fratres non euntes ad scolas, nisi sint causa legitima excusati, illa die non bibant vinum sine licentia doctoris actu legentis. Priores, quoque, et Suppriores, seu eorum Vicarii teneantur ire ad scolas, sicut et ceteri fratres, nisi sint occupati legitimis negotiis pro Conventu. 62 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 257: Volumus et ordinamus, quod fratres non euntes ad scolas, illa die non bibant vinum, nisi sint causa legitima excusati iudicio lectoris actu legentis, et in dicta penitentia nullus alius quam doctores valeant dispensare. Ipse vero doctores diligenter attendant qui fratres desunt de scolis, et volumus et mandamus eis, ut transgressores compellant ad dictam penitentiam exequendam. 63 On the monastic collatio and its development and various meanings in the Dominican educational setting, see Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 194–203. That the meaning of collatio as the daily study session, rather than the brief reading at the light meal, known as the collation, served during fast days seems clear enough in context, as the admonition appears among a series of admonitions on schooling. On reading during the collation, also see Hinnebusch, History I, 359.

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While the warning extended to all friars, however, the province’s administrators meant it to apply “especially to youth and students.”64 This characterization of students is very different from that in the admonition that precedes it, the one just reviewed. Whereas the former reminds all friars without distinction to uphold their responsibilities to study unless otherwise legitimately engaged, the latter treats youth and students as a subset of the whole body of friars. The phrase “youth and students” as used here can be taken to signify the large contingent of friars who were neither holders of teaching or preaching offices nor members of the administrative cadre. In medieval usage the term iuventus often identified an adolescent male at the stage of life between childhood and his recognition as an adult that came either with marriage or with admission into a religious order or major secular orders. Although canon law proposed minimum ages for entry into marriage and into the orders, in practice one’s youth could be extended well beyond these minimums by putting off these transitional events. Leonard Boyle has argued that all the fratres communes remained juniors or beginners in just this sense.65 The admonition appears to offer supporting evidence since it suggests that regardless of a friar’s standing as a student it is his lack of moral or behavioral maturity that sets him apart as a youth, but the threshold as posited in this admonition is greyer, making it apparent here as elsewhere that “youth” and “students” are not synonymous. All friars studied, and historians often talk of Dominican friars as students in this way, but the sources were more careful to distinguish students from novices, grammarians, and those who heard lectures as part of their participation in their conventual schola, all of whom had responsibilities to study but, technically, at least according to customary usage, were not called students. The term studens, although the range of its meaning underwent change, denoted only those friars in courses of advanced training, those friars in special studies in or beyond the arts course who were already or soon to become priests.66 64 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 246: Collationes autem fiant per totum annum in omni feria VI, secundum consuetudinem Ordinis approbatum. Et in hoc melius observetur, ordinamus, quod fratres, precipue iuvenes, et studentes, qui non interfuerint dictis Collationibus in Collatione a vino abstineant ipsa die. 65 Leonard Boyle, “The Setting of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas – Revisited,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope, (Washington, DC, 2002), 1–16; 2. 66 According to Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 238. The association of frater studens with the higher levels of coursework was made at the 1259 general chapter. At the time this meant the arts courses at the provincial studia and university

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The conceptual fuzziness is heightened by a third admonition from 1302 which orders priors to see that no “youth assigned to the arts course” should be sent outside his house during lesson times, except at two specified feast seasons.67 We have seen that administrators attempted to distinguish youth and students from others. Here they also sought to distinguish youthful students from more mature ones, although in doing so they have admitted that students could not all be treated equally. One reading of the text is that not all arts students possessed the maturity that would move them beyond identification as youth. An alternative reading is indicated by a similar admonition in the following year, which faulted priors for harming young friars by putting them to preaching, begging, or other outside work to meet the short-term demands of their convent rather than keeping them at their studies.68 The two interpretations are not contradictory: the unready disposition of some young arts students and the eagerness of some priors to meet their own administrative needs at the expense of study compounded a situation in which young friars were not becoming the men the Order’s leaders wanted them to become. Protecting capable arts students from time-wasting demands, protecting undisciplined youth from ill-advised public work, and protecting the Order from the taint of scandal – these motives taken individually or together led to an implied bifurcation of the arts cohort into those students of greater and lesser maturity. There is perhaps another reason why administrators grew so discriminating about the maturity of arts students. It has been said about the Order in the thirteenth century that it wrapped students at the provincial studium artium in a cocoon of privilege. Instructors provided their pupils with private cells and regularly granted dispensations from studies. In the fourteenth century, when arts schools were more common, the technical meaning of studens sometimes applied only to those who had already completed arts training. 67 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 247: Item volumus, et ordinamus, quod fratres iuvenes, Studiis Artium assignati, non mittantur extra tempore lectionum, nisi fore a festo Sancti Thome usque ad Octavam Epiphanie, et a Dominica in Passione usque ad Octavam Pasche. 68 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 278: Ordinamus insuper, quod iuvenes Studiis Artium assignati non mittantur extra tempore lectionum, nisi forte a festo Sancti Thome usque ad Octavam Epiphanie, et a Dominica in Passione usque ad Octavam Pasche. Sed quia predicta ordinatio iam facta in aliis Capitulis ab aliquibus Prioribus non servatur, sed mittunt studentes extra tempore lectionum in gravem ipsorum iuvenum, atque dampnum, adiungimus quod Priores, vel eorum vices gerentes qui ulterius contra antedictam ordinationem rationabilem atque iustam facerint, in Actis Proincialis Capituli pena debita arceantur.

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liturgical and other communal commitments.69 By 1300 arts students were still privileged relative to others, although evidence suggests that the status of arts students was in decline. This does not contradict my earlier statement that those not in the arts course still aspired to it. Instead, it elicits two complementary points. First, the arts course had become an intermediate step in the Order’s academic program rather than its zenith. Second, in economic terms the compensatory privileges accorded to arts students exceeded what the Order could sustain. By the 1330s the Province of Aragon graduated more arts students than it had lectors’ chairs to appoint them to. The Order’s demand for the services of arts students was sated, at which point administrators could afford to praise or scorn with less sensitivity, and those who could not advance to higher levels of training, and reap the benefits accruing thereby, found themselves frustrated and disappointed. The value of the various stages of Dominican schooling did not stay constant, and neither did relationships among the more and more young men who aspired to proportionally fewer advancement opportunities. If this assessment is correct then the discontent of a middling group grew as they witnessed some of their brothers passing them over for promotions. The sources will not disclose how many friars failed to advance and what they felt about it. Still, it remains likely that by the 1330s and 1340s many fratres communes found that convent schools had become places to park more men than the Order could really put to work. Conventual lectors knew it, too. This would go far to explaining the evidence of skipped classes, of lectors showing reluctance to teach without special compensation, of friars turning to parents and others for help, and of administrators finding vagrancy increasingly difficult to prevent. That provincial leaders deemed the behavior of youthful friars suspect, in need of special attention, or at least a ready excuse for imposing restrictions is one of the conclusions drawn from the last in the series of four admonitions from 1302. The broadest subject of the admonition is a prior’s poor judgment in pairing friars for work or other activities outside the convent. This was treated as a problem of inappropriate combinations (inepta combinatione; de combinationibus incautis). In the statement of 1302, Peregrí and his diffinitors posited three requirements: 1) that prelates should not license friars to leave their convents 69

Lawrence, The Friars, 86.

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unless their place and reason for an excursion is identified; 2) that two friar youths should not go together, unless one is a priest and, it is added, a mature one; 3) that the friars should see each other clearly in public places, and take special care that neither is found alone with a woman.70 The assumption here – that youths require special oversight because the proclivities of their life stage lead them into error – underlies many later admonitions. It became one basis for erecting competency tests and other administrative barriers against youth, which helped to reify a youth cohort but did so by stigmatizing the cohort as troublesome. By 1327 earlier admonitions on the subject of class attendance were being reissued or reiterated in abbreviated form under the rubric de sequela scholarum.71 The phrase referred to three specific but related issues. First, it addressed the duty of friars without legitimate excuses to attend class. Second, it formalized the annual calendar that specified when classes were in session. Finally, the admonitory bundles treating sequela scholarum also referred to rules regarding the minimum number of years a student had to spend in each course of studies before advancing to the next.72 Provincial administrators continued to keep the pressure on students to attend to their work, and upon teachers and conventual priors to enforce attendance rules. Several admonitions from the year 1345 demonstrate the point. One noted, for example, that “study in this Province is put off with great detriment to the

70 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 247: Item quia ex inepta fratrum combinatione, multa scandala subsequuntur, mandamus omnibus Prioribus et Prelatis, quod in combinatione fratrum, qui Conventum exeunt, atendant et caveant diligenter. Iterdicimus autem ipsis Prelatis, quod non dent licentiam fratribus, nisi loca et causa exprimant cum voluerint visitare. Interdicimus insuper, quod non vadant simul duo fratres iuvenes, nisi ipsorum aliquis sit sacerdotes, et quod etiam sit maturus. Ordinamus quoque, et mandamus, quod fratres se mutuo videant manifeste cum in Civitate fuerint, aut Villa aliqua, sue Aldea, nec aliquo modo duo soli cum duabus solis mulieribus in loco aliquo se includant. 71 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 138; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 149; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 158; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 165; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 173. 72 These follow, with more or less precision, advisories from several general chapters. Compare, for example, a 1314 provincial admonition produced by Juan Fort and his diffinitors, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 136, and the ordination to which it refers made at the General Chapter at Metz in 1313, Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 63–64; the general chapter order of 1313, in turn, refers to an earlier order issued in 1305, Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 12.

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Order.”73 Another called it “patently absurd” that, while outside scholars came to the Order’s schools to hear lessons, friars attached to the same schools wandered through the towns publicly flaunting their absence. Provincial prior Bernat Sescala and the diffinitors who issued the statement indicated that they were removing from priors and in their place giving to a counsel of four elders the power to license travel into towns while lessons were in session. Additionally, they announced that only diffinitors to the provincial chapter and “principal and general” lectors could dispense from its provisions.74 In spite of increasingly strict pronouncements and clearer ground rules, school attendance continued to require attention. In 1351 provincial administrators promulgated two more edicts on the subject. In the first the provincial and diffinitors ordered teaching masters in the arts programs to meet with their students each day, conferring with them about the day’s assignments, and encouraging students to support each other in their work. It noted again that absentees received no wine.75 In the second, provincial prior Nicolau Rossell personally 73 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 259–260: Item cum studium in ista Porvincia notabiliter postponantur in maximum Ordinis detrimentum, et hoc proveniat tam ex culpa legentium quam etiam auditorum, volumus, et ordinamus, quod omnes secundi Lectores, et omnes legentes Artes usque ad festum Sanctae Mariae Magdalenae suas continuent lectiones. Quicumque autem eorum eas non continuaverit, vel ultra semel in septimana in die legibili sine licentia Praesidentis et Lectoris vacaverint, ipso facto omnibus gratiis sint privati quibus secundi Lectores et Magistri Artium communiter uti solent. Quod si ex hoc indignati, scilicet quia talibus gratiis sunt privati modo praedicto, et non continuant lectiones, tunc ipso facto lectione vel studio noverint se privatos. Si vero Studentes ad Studium Theologiae, vel Artium assignati ultra unam diem in septimana sine licentia Lectoris, et illius qui tunc praesidet in Conventu, de aliqua lectione ultra unam diem, ut dictum est, in septimania aliqua die de Scholis ausi fuerint remanere, ipso facto, et in Tractatu non habeat illo anno, nisi Praesidens eos tunc occupaverit in iis, quae fienda sunt in Conventu. 74 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 260: Et quia valde absurdum est, quod dum scholares ad nostras veniunt, et audiunt lectiones, fratres per Civitatem, vel ad spatia evagentur, substrahimus potestatem omnibus Prioribus, et Vicariis eorundem, quod nullus, qui in Ordine Lector non fuerit principalis aut generalis, vel Provincialis Capituli Diffinitor, possit licentiari tempore quo Lector legit, nisi de consilio, et assensu quatuor antiquorum, quibus in conscientia sua imponimus quod non assentiant quod talis licentia concedatur nisi sit causa ita urgens et necessaria, quod nullo modo debeat expectari quod Lector suas terminaverit lectiones. Quicumque autem illa hora, qui, ut dictum est, Lector non fuerit principalis aut generalis, aut Capituli Provincialis Diffinitor, sine licentia sic et non aliter sibi data exiverit de Conventu, nisi Praesidens ipsum tunc miserit, declaramus ipsum sine omni licentia tunc intrasse, cui ex tunc pro paenitentia imponimus duo Psalteria, quae antequam iterato exeat de Conventu ea habeat dicere integre, et perfecte. Quod si Conventum exiverit tali paenitencia non completa, ipso facto, omni voce unum anum continuum sit privatus. 75 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 312–313.

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warned students not to end up as “unuseful” youths but instead to study honestly for the benefit of their convents.76 The first might seem rather tepid, a repetition of standard procedure, but in the second Provincial Rossell meant his words to sting. Administrative Barriers Against Young Friars in Ministry As a matter of custom, grounded in apostolic precedent, priors sent their men outside the convents in pairs. The textbook example is of two experienced preachers going to town to preach and hear confessions, although other combinations were not uncommon, such as when two conversi went out to beg. An issue of great concern to provincial authorities was whether priors made responsible choices when they chose to pair any two men for some excursion. A prior made an inappropriate combination when, for example, he joined together men who might conspire to gamble or enjoy the company of women or otherwise engage in other illicit activities. The problem of properly pairing friars for work among the order’s constituents had a history going back to the thirteenth century and remained a problem throughout the fourteenth century. The record shows how difficult authorities found it to define and measure the problem of making good matches. The Roman province raised the question of incautious combinations of friars in 1324, indicating that the inclusion of young friars could make them especially troublesome, but it did little to describe what made the combinations problematic nor did it indicate a remedy, aside from commanding priors to choose friars for outside work with greater care.77 A statement from the provincial acts of Aragon in 1327 referred to an item on the subject in the acts of the general chapter of 1327 held at Perpignan, which noted, among its other essentials, that one member of any pair sent out of a convent needed to possess a clean reputation and be of sufficient age. However, neither the general chapter nor the provincial chapter reiteration offered a way to measure the cleanliness of one’s reputation or to determine age sufficiency.78 Similar advisory

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Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 313. Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 231. 78 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 138–139; Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 170. 77

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statements up to mid century offer similarly vague solutions to a recognized problem. In a lengthy 1351 admonition, Nicolau Rosell specifically sought to prevent scandal falling upon the Order through incautious combinations. He prohibited conventual priors or other local prelates from licensing any brother to travel outside the convent unless he was in the company of a preacher or confessor ex officio. The stipulated exceptions are worth noting: a young friar might be sent out with a brother conversus, or two conversi could go out together, but in these cases only in order to beg bread.79 An admonition of 1353 renewed, in abbreviated terms, these stipulations.80 A distinct shift in emphasis is evident after mid century in the language, tone and content of admonitions on the subject of the friars’ outside activities. The admonitions reviewed above put local priors at fault for inappropriately joining friars for work outside the house. It fell to priors to determine who received license to leave a convent and for what purpose, and to decide who would serve as a departing friar’s traveling partner, or socius. Before mid century, legislation and practice aimed to guide priors in making these decisions. Later admonitions shifted the burden, more severely limiting the flexibility and discretion of local managers while also placing fault upon the friars themselves. In a later chapter I will offer a more complete analysis of the numerous admonitions on the problem of friars “running around” (discursus fratrum), admonitions that increase in frequency and intensity after 1350. These statements unquestionably put pressure on individual friars, blaming them for lapses in their public behavior and raising the level of coercive and spiritual pain inflicted upon them in cases of inappropriate excursions. The ability of young friars and student friars to

79 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 309: Item, cum propter incautas combinationes fratrum isto anno grandia in Provincia ista scandala sint secuta, praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, quod nullus Praelatus, vel Praesidens in Provincia ista licentiet fratrem aliquem non Praedicatorem ad Villam, vel extra Villam, nisi cum Praedicatore ex oficio, et confessore, sub eodem praecepto ordinans quod nullus frater aliter vadat, quam ut est dictum, quod si oppositum per quemquam temerario fuerit atemptatum, tam Praesidens licentians, quam frater sic legitime licentiati, voce et omnibus gratiis Ordinis sint privati, ubi vero casus aliquis subitus, vel urgens ad oppositum imineret, volumus, et ordinamus, quod si totus Conventus vel maioris partis in capitulo congregati iudicio, et assensu, talis licentia, et non aliter, concedetur, per hoc autem prohibere non intendimus quin fratres iuvenes cum fratribus conversis, vel conversi ad invicem ad panem, et ad quaevis alia loca libere possint ire. 80 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 257.

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leave their houses got curtailed early, at the leading edge of an administrative attack on discursus. A broader question that provincial and general chapters had been treating since far back into the thirteenth century but that continued to require consideration was whether priors sent their men out to preach before they were sufficiently prepared. Over the course of the fourteenth century administrators addressed this as a problem of the insufficiency of preachers (insufficientia praedicantium). The phrase appears to suggest an insufficiency in the numbers of available preachers, and this is how historians who presumed a decline in the number of recruits sometimes choose to read it.81 This is not, however, what it meant to provincial administrators. They wanted some assurance that friars could effectively do the job of preaching and hearing confessions and that the same friars would keep themselves out of trouble when sent out to do that work. Intellectual preparation and moral/behavioral compatibility for the work needed to be tested and confirmed. In this sense, admonitions treating preaching and preachers had a direct bearing on the youth-student population since provincial administrators treated both insufficient intellectual preparation and insufficient conformity to behavioral standards as reasons for restricting the youth and student cohorts from exercising the grace of preaching. As some of the admonitions discussed above attest, the province’s leaders saw as immature some students in arts programs and students still learning their grammar. One issuing from the provincial chapter of 1312 under the leadership of Romeu de Bruguera confirmed that some arts students did not have the necessary training to be sent out as preachers and confessors. It is one of two admonitions that interpreted a general chapter order of the same year for execution in the province and, as such, it is worthwhile to reproduce here with its provincial chapter counterpart and the general chapter order that instigated both in order to illustrate how provincial chapters deliberated upon and translated into local action the edicts issued to them by general chapters: From the general chapter acts for 1312: Since, from the insufficiency of those preaching and hearing confessions our Order comes into contempt and inclines toward danger to souls, and scandal follows for many prelates, we wish and order that none

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Hinnebusch, History I, 326–330.

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chapter five shall be exposed to undertaking the acts unless he is capable, approved in mores and wisdom, sent out with mature deliberation over this. Those found to have done badly shall be removed by provincial priors.82 From the provincial acts for 1312: Item. Since from the insufficiency of preachers and confessors our Order comes into contempt, which came as a reproach in our General Council and not without great upset, and nonetheless becomes a danger to souls, therefore we absolve all arts friars from the office of preaching and confession, except some who will have ordinarily heard theology and were competently instructed in it. We prohibit the preaching office from being committed henceforth in another manner.83 Item. We desire and order that in every convent of our Province the prior, subprior, lector, and two elders shall diligently examine all the friars in the convent, except those clearly approved in the Order, and inquire equally into their life, wisdom and habits. Those whom they, or a majority of them, find in their judgment to be insufficient or less than fit for executing the aforesaid office should be deprived of the said office by our authority. And we absolve them from it, thereafter preventing them from resuming the said office, until such time as they will have acquired the capability. We wish that the aforesaid five will have completed this examination before the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, putting away all personal affection and partiality, for which we make their consciences responsible before God; and, nonetheless, they shall be gravely punished if they will have been found blameworthy or negligent about this.84

82 MOPH IV, 56: Cum ex insufficientia predicancium et confessiones audiencium ordo noster veniat in contemptum et vergat in periculum animarum, et plerumque sequatur scandalum prelatorum, volumus et ordinamus, quod non exponantur ad actus premissos nisi ad hoc ydonei, moribus et sciencia approbati, matura super hoc deliberacione premissa. Quod si secus actum fuerit et legitime constiterit, per priores provinciales amoveantur omnes. 83 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 124: Item cum ex insufficientia predicatorum et confessorum Ordo noster veniat in contemptum, et hoc ipsum non sive gravi confusione nostra improperatum fuerit in Concilio Generali, et nihilominus cedat in periculum animarum, idcirco omnes fratrs Artistas absolvimus ab officio predicationis et confessionis, nisi alias ordinarie Theologiam audierint, et competenter instructi fuerint in eadem. Inhibemus etiam ne de cetero talibus predicationis officium committatur. 84 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 124: Item volumus, et ordinamus, quod in quolibet Conventu nostre Provincia Prior, et Supprior, lector et duo de antiquoribus, omnes fratres suo Conventui deputatos, preter illos qui manifeste sunt in Ordine approbati, diligenter examinent, et inquirant de eorum vita, scientia, et moribus equitative, Quos autem invenerint suo iudicio, vel plurimum ex ipsis, insufficientes, vel minus idoneos ad predictum officium exquendum, auctoritate nostra privent ipsos dicto officio, et ex tunc nos ipsos absolvimus ab eodem, inhibentes ne ad prefatum officium resumantur, quosquoe pro eis adquisita idoneitas interpollet. Volumus autem ut

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Under pressure from the master general and general chapter, provincial prior Romeu de Bruguera and the diffinitors working with him in 1312 put in place what would seem to be a quite adequate test of the competency of preachers. The order was to be executed swiftly: the provincial chapter was held in the fall with an indication to have the competency test activated by Christmas. There is a show of due diligence here, maybe a real one, although sometimes things that seem unambiguously clear may not be. The provincial and his diffinitors specifically denied the preaching office to arts students – clear enough, except that they held out an exception for students who had heard theology lectures. The exception suggests that the educational grades were still not so rigid as to prevent a young friar from learning some theology before completing his arts foundation. It also shows, in a more general way, that administrators treated with some sensitivity the possibility of pushback against their decisions. According to the provisions laid out, arts students would not qualify for testing, but these provisions if too rigorously applied might slight students who had received some advanced training and who should thus be recognized for their achievements. It is entirely possible that one or more of the diffinitors had a student or two in mind, perhaps one in whom he recognized potential or in whom one had taken a personal interest. It is also made clear that the conventual committee ordered to conduct the competency tests should do so without any show of favoritism, although it is probably favoritism, or diffinitors’ thinking about the difficulty of not advancing their favorites, that permitted the exception in the first place. From the standpoint of the practical interest of the Order in promoting worthy students, as well as from the perspective of those seasoned friars who dispensed patronage to a few favorites, it would have seemed inappropriate not to open this loophole. The problem with loopholes is that they are difficult to close if need arises and it is more often the case that they grow wider to permit events not initially imagined as permissible. It is true that I am on the one hand granting that the Order’s leaders gave significant thought to improving the rigor of their operations

predicti quinque hanc examinationem usque ad festum natalis Domini compleverint se mota omni privata affectione, et parcialitate, super quo coram Deo eorum conscientias oneramus; et nihilominus graviter puniantur, si super hoc culpabiles inventi fuerint, aut etiam neglegentes.

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and at the same time permitted opportunities for that rigor to be thwarted. It should be pointed out that while the general chapter determined the broad need for this particular competency test, provincial authorities devised their own plan for putting it into practice. The processes by which this translation occurred – from general policy to provincial detail to, in principle, local execution – may help the reader to appreciate how need and custom differed from province to province, as indeed they did when, for example, Irish friars petitioned Clement VI for a general dispensation for eating meat, indicating that war and crop failure made it impossible to find sufficient alternatives.85 Masters general and diffinitors to the general chapters spent time comparing notes on these differences and made attempts in some cases to standardize and universalize, as we saw when master general Berengar of Landora permitted a relaxation in the Province of Aragon because it had become standard practice elsewhere. We have been examining the difficulties administrators faced in measuring the capability of friars for preaching, particularly regarding the limitations on preaching put up against students in the arts program. On the subject of committing the preaching office to various individuals, another admonition of 1312 addressed an important technical consideration. It admitted that as a matter of law, only the prior provincial was permitted to confirm friars in the preaching office. But in it he deputed the task to the five-person committee he established in the admonitory item we have already reviewed.86 As a practical matter, deputing the work to a committee was made necessary as a matter of administrative convenience; the provincial could not test the competency of every friar in his province. Nonetheless, it illustrates the facility with which technicalities could be overcome. It was often in such answers to everyday practical conflicts that hierarchic

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Hinnebusch, History I, 327. There is no record that the request was granted. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 124: Item declaramus quod cum secundum Indulta Summi Pontificis solus Prior Provincialis committere possit officia praedicationum et confessionum, idcirco ego frater Romeus Prior Provincialis committo auctoritate Sedis Apostolice predictum officium in quolibet Conventu fratrum nostrarum in nostra Provincia omnibus illis fratribus, quos Prelati, et deputati quinque examinatores, vel plures ex eis ideoneos iudicaverint, vel demiserint in officio memorato, et illos omnes, quos supra diximus manifeste in Ordine approbatos, et volo, quod quilibet eorum quinque, illos presentare valeat Dominis Episcopis secundum formam Privilegii vice mea, et ad hoc ipsos Vicarios instituo per presentes. 86

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and bureaucratic command structures could develop. The provincial, obligated to approve the sufficiency of preparation of those friars permitted to preach, deputed his obligation to committees within each convent, which deputies he held responsible for failure to carry out their charge. Despite the apparent rigor of the rulings of 1312, a consistent resolution to the problem of insufficientia was not easily arrived at. Through the 1320s, and into the 1330s and 1340s, provincial administrators continued to warn conventual priors about the harms of exposing young friars to preach before they were suitably prepared. The admonitions of the 1330s are much too abbreviated to offer any detailed sense of the administrative challenges, priorities, and successes in those years. Emphasis in those years is on creating preachers “according to form”, apparently meaning the form as established in the years around 1312.87 The admonitions presume the existence of a standard established by earlier general and provincial chapters; however, despite the standard, despite both the letter and spirit of established general and provincial orders, priors continued to send young friars out to preach, pretty regularly it would seem if we can take as a guide the near constant repetition of these admonitions in later years as well as by the evidence of friars getting into trouble outside the confines of their convents. In 1345 the provincial administration under the direction of provincial prior Bernat Sescala attempted to reassert his authority over the making of preachers. At issue again was the error of priors who brought the Word of God into contempt by sending out unprepared and immature men. The admonition aimed to punish individuals who preached despite their lack of competency, especially taking note of those “notably insufficient in wisdom as much as in age and lifestyle.” Anyone found to be preaching who had not been made a preacher by proper authority, unless he had received a dispensation from the provincial himself, would be subject to a two-year loss of voice in elections. No mechanism for making preachers is specified. While the committee structure identified in 1312 may still have been operative, this admonition makes reference only to “those able to effect it.”88 It seems 87

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 165; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992),

173. 88 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 261–262: Item, cum ex insufficientia Praedicantium Verbum Dei veniat in contemptum, et Priores et eorum loca tenentes,

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transparent enough in the admonition that Sescala intended to impose the authority of law and show the determination of his own office. The complaint he voiced was that priors still permitted some friars to preach without having been properly scrutinized. Nevertheless, the implicit vagaries of Sescala’s statement continue to show how difficult it was to establish and enforce suitably firm rules. Local priors and the lectors and elders who served with them in committees must have found the standards vague, or at least sufficiently open to their discretion that they opted to put men out to preach even when they knew the men were not ready. Perhaps local leaders wished to offer training opportunities to future preachers, although it is just as likely that they responded to the pressures of parents and others to send friars outside, either to advance their experience or their reputations or merely to permit them some time in the public sphere. A prior’s decision grew more complex when he encountered the stubborn will of local families, that is, of actual or potential benefactors who offered their boys to the Order with the implicit understanding that they would have continued contact. The numerous indications that the influence of outsiders troubled provincial authorities is evidence enough of this reality.89 We can imagine, too, that the pleas of young men anxious to get out of the house rang in the ears of local priors, and committees and competency tests certainly did not always discover whether a young friar’s intention was to learn the craft or to take part in some mischief. In any event, decisions made in the best interest of the corporation sometimes came to an improper end: young men assigned to outside work sometimes took advantage of the opportunity to engage in activities that brought scandal to their Order. Some historians have complained of the general failure of conventual priors charged with recruiting to seek out good candidates, but this ignores the conditions in which priors operated. If priors concerned themselves too little with the quality of recruits into the Order or if they failed to properly measure the competency of young friars for work outside the convents, it is partly because they accepted as one of contra iura in scandalum Ordinis exponant frequenter ad praedicandum insufficientes notabiliter in scientia, aetate pariter et in vita, volumus, et ordinamus, quod quicumque Populo praedicaverit Verbum Dei, nisi sit factus Praedicator per illum qui eum facere potest, vel nisi per Priorem Provincialem cum eo dispensatum fuerit ante, quod propter defectum Praedicatorum possit aliquando Populo praedicare, ipso facto voce privamus per duos annos in omni electione Socii, et Prioris. 89 E.g., from 1347, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 281; with many examples thereafter.

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their responsibilities the need to welcome the favor of local potentates, the “proven men” who offered financial and other rewards to the convents that looked after their sons. Reform-minded local priors probably followed their provincial priors in describing family demands as “interference” and were more keen to count the costs rather than the benefits of meddling by local potentates, but because future costs are always harder to measure than present value it probably seemed more expedient in many cases to take the path of least resistance and bend to the pressure put upon them by important local families.90 Conventual priors were not the only administrative leaders who spent a good amount of time currying favor with elite families in the towns that hosted convents. Provincial priors did too. The financial security of the province, and the immeasurable value of local families in protecting the Order’s privileges and high status, meant that personal relationships and favors could often influence the interpretation and application of rules. Provincial priors, like the local priors they criticized, frequently dispensed from the regulations they themselves issued, and there can be no doubt that in doing so they often yielded to pressure from powerful families. The unusual nature of a pronouncement from the year 1351 offers evidence that at about mid-century, even while a culture of impersonal, bureaucratic administration was taking shape, the administrative culture of personalism was still very much the norm. The diffinitors meeting in that year with Prior Provincial Nicolau Rossell demanded that he immediately stop permitting intrusions by powerful outsiders who “seek the obedience, assignment, promotion, change or removal from office of any friar… against the liberty of the Order.” He promised to comply.91 90 In 1307, when the Order gave special privileges to those who read grammar to “sons of Proven Men,” it happened no doubt because many of these high status sons were slow or reluctant learners. The provincial chapter of 1321 declared that priors should not accept novices into the order who had not already learned grammar. The chapter’s position statement may have been prompted in part by the situation of Pere de Leon de Valentino, a young friar about whom it was noted in a penitentia that he said he never consented to being received into the Order. See Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 278; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 145; and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 147. 91 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 308: Item, notificamus fratribus universis, quod nos omnes Diffinitores omnixe et instanter rogavimus Reverendum Patrem Priorem Provincialem, quod si secularis aliquis, vel persona extra nostri Ordinis constituta, obedientiam, assignationem, promotionem, mutationem, vel officii remansionem pro fratre aliquo petiverit eidem Priori Provinciali conscribendo, quod ut quasi semper expertum est ab ipsis fratribus, et eorum procuratione, et tractatu praecedet, quod eo facto tali fratri talia non conferat, vel concedat, cum haec fieri contra

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Youths often get singled out as perpetrators of violence in late medieval Europe.92 Although the evidence for this assessment is too little developed, the sentiment is widely held. In the present, as in the past, the problems of youth and adolescence seem an unwelcome intrusion upon the lives of those who have already moved past the difficulties of their own pre-adult years, which maybe is why so many cultures give considerable attention to rites of passage into adulthood: erecting ritual barriers between the disciplined adult and the undisciplined child works to tame, or at least corral, the dangerous potency of youthful vigor.93 Blaming youths for their failure to demure and conform can also become a means of shifting responsibility when adults fail to meet the standards they have set for themselves. As one observer has posited the principle, “When … elders screw up big time, expect them to trash the younger generation with a vengeance.”94 I have sought to show how and when officials recognized and treated a youth problem within the Province of Aragon. We have already seen that in response to a very broad general chapter command to limit preaching to those who were prepared for it, the provincial prior Romeu Bruguera in 1312 restricted the activities of arts students and other youthful friars in the Province of Aragon. Thus, the province’s conventual priors were already on notice when Master General Berengar of Landora, writing in 1314, cautioned them not to permit “youths or the dissolute” to engage in the Order’s public work.95 In the decades that followed provincial administrators increasingly characterized the youth cohort as troublesome, as too young or inexperienced, or too untrustworthy, to participate at the fullest levels in the Dominican mission. The Order’s general chapters of 1340 and 1344 railed against

ordinis libertatem, et destructionem totaliter evidentem, quod dictus Pater Reverendus Prior Provincialis hoc esse facturum cum omni firmitate, et eficatia voluit, et promisit. 92 E.g., David Herlihy, “Some Psychological and Social Roots of Violence in the Tuscan Cities,” in Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities, 1200–1500, ed. Lauro Martines (Berkeley, 1972), 140: “The young, the unmarried, the spoiled rich, and the degenerate poor, those too much neglected by their fathers and pampered by their mothers identify as the chief perpetrators of violence and disorder.” 93 Frank Musgrove, Youth and the Social Order (Bloomington, IN, 1964), 10. 94 Mike A. Males, Framing Youth: Ten Myths About the Next Generation (Monroe, ME, 1999), 3. 95 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 141.

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provincials who did not take care to improve the screening of applicants to the Order.96 In all of this we recognize an organization growing large and more complex, more invested in perceptions and form, and one in which officials by necessity delegated many of their responsibilities even when bureaucratic procedures for completing those responsibilities remained weak. In this context the problems of management went well beyond controlling young friars; even so, the Order’s management found the youth problem one of the easiest to attack. During his years as provincial, from 1350 until he was made cardinal in 1356, Nicolau Rossell attacked a wide range of perceived behavioral anomalies, piling them up for castigation in very long admonitions with some extraordinarily venomous language. He cited the friars under his charge for their recalcitrance, disrespect, disobedience, for their willingness to rebel and cause scandal, and because they involved outsiders to a dangerous extent in the Order’s internal affairs. I have made him a protagonist in this book by taking its title from that phrase in which he likened his own friars to the progeny of a viper.97 Surely he wanted to control them, to tame them, and at times he could be brutally frank about it. Some friars were diabolical, he insisted, when they used their tongues to throw darts of defamation and distraction, or when their loose lips constantly bleated out useless information.98 He assailed friars who removed liturgical paraphernalia from their convent, who carried knives and swords through their convents or even in public, who wore scarves and hats or had their habits embroidered with fur and bright colors. Rossell understood that youth were not the only transgressors. Indeed most of his admonitions seeking behavioral improvements did not explicitly target particular Dominican subgroups, presumably because the behavior in question was either widespread enough to include teaching masters and other powerful political blocs within the Order who could not be taken on directly. While many of Rossell’s injunctions do not explicitly identify any particular group of friars as the target of his attack, he often turned his attention to conventual priors, but this seems reasonable in the context of the constitutional responsibility provincials had for direct oversight of priors. What is 96

Reichert, “Acta Capitulorum Generalium,” MOPH IV, 263 and 297. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 306–307. 98 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 306. Compare Reichert “Acta Capitulorum Generalium,” MOPH IV, 296. 97

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more striking, however, is how he treated the Order’s young friars. Earlier provincials, as we have seen, believed they had reason to give special attention to youth, most especially to prevent them from being poor pastoral ministers or, worse, engaging in scandalous behavior when given leave from their convents. But Rossell went quite a bit further by blaming them for the Order’s ills. In 1350, Rossell explicitly linked “the scandals and infamy which arise nowadays,” to the “imprudence of some youth,” and in the next year, he openly declared some young friars “useless.”99 It seems right to see this as scapegoating. If any single item in the provincial acts makes the point most clearly that Rossell scapegoated youths it is one issued in 1350. The goal of the legislation was to improve how friars handled money entrusted to them by seculars and to clarify the part played by friars in reckoning debts in wills (written in the midst of the Black Death, the notice shows that the friars, their services as witnesses, executors, and safeguards all the more in demand, had many opportunities for handling money and estate transactions, and thus opportunities for their purposeful or accidental mishandling). It should be clear to the reader that youth were unlikely to be the principal agents of wrongdoing in this case. The Black Death, as I have shown, did not kill off all of the elders and mid-career friars, men who would surely been available to fulfill the needs of testators. We also know from the penances that some of these friar-survivors, during their own youthful years, participated in some mischief, which is merely to point out that not all of the province’s adult friars could be trusted with other people’s money. I make these comments to point out that Rossell surely knew that young, relatively inexperienced friars were not the only ones mishandling the financial affairs of the Order’s secular clients. Moreover, by this time provincials had already limited the exposure of younger friars to public ministry and had established barriers to easy egress from their convents, so to the degree that young friars escaped the confines of their convents to witness wills and accept money in safekeeping they did so with the permission of priors who according to clear mandates should not have acquiesced. However, despite his sure awareness of all of this as part of the real circumstances with respect to friars’ relations with testators, Rossell blamed young friars. The admonition begins by explicitly calling youths incautious, the culprits whose actions 99

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 1350.2.5 and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 1351.2.27

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in this matter have caused scandal and brought infamy upon the Order. Although the admonition seeks to apply broad measures for handling money and wills, it implies that only young friars did it badly. Rossell surely knew this was a false charge, but also that it was a useful one in that it could bring attention to a problem and seek to correct it without having to confront directly the senior friars who more likely were its cause.100 By 1365, under the sway of Jaume Domenech as provincial prior, the scapegoating of young friars became even clearer, more persistent as a matter of policy, and injunctions against youths appear even more clearly aimed at capturing other friars in a stronger bureaucratic net. The admonitory section of the acts of that year opens with one of the most interesting admonitions in the whole series of provincial acts. It is prefaced by the statement “it is worthless to make laws if they are not executed firmly.”101 The unusual phrase, which rings true to our ears but would have struck a raw nerve in most fourteenth-century friars, is

100 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 295–296: Item, scandalis et infamis, quae iam propter aliquorum iuvenum incautelam suboriri incipiunt, volentes pro viribus obviare, mandamus Prioribus, Subprioribus, et eorum Vicariis, quod fratrem aliquem huius Provinciae qui non sit, ac fuerit Lector principalis, aut Prior in Ordine, Praedicator Generalis, ac Capituli Generalis vel Provincialis non fuerit Diffinitor, et maxime qui non sit ex officio Praedicator, non permittant a secularibus aliquas exigere pecunias, ratione testamentum, vel ratione alicuius obligationis tempore pestilentiae, et mortalitatis eis factae, nisi talis frater personas quibus talia habet solvere Priori, et Lectori Conventus quomodocumque revelet, vel de apoca persolutorum eis fidem faciat pleniorem causam, vel causas talis persolutionis si sunt secrete totaliter et simpliciter occultando; cuicumque autem frater de praedictis contrarium ausus fuerit attemptare, volumus quod eo facto omni voce sit privatus, et nihilominus in poenam cum de hoc convinctus fuerit, vel confessus, alteri Conventui assignetur. Priores autem qui in hoc negligentes inventi fuerint, vel tales fratres compescere negligendo, vel hoc Priori Provinciali scribere postponendo, mox in poenam a suis officio absolvantur. 101 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 106: In primis cum parum valeat leges condere nisi sit qui viriliter exequantur, et facilitas veniae incentivum delinquenti, idcirco praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum concilio, et assensu, omnibus, et singulis huius Provinciae Praesidentibus, quod cum deprehenderint fratrem aliquem esse contumaciter inobedientem, vel transgressionem praecepti manifeste rebellem, et cum Praelato suo proterve intus et foris contendentem, vel furta comittentem, vel arma invasiva indebite tenentem, sive portantem, aliter per aliquam culpam in Capitulo de graviori culpa contentam fuerint delinquentem, omnem talem fratrem infra octo dies cum eis legitime constiterit sententialiter adiudicent, et iudicialiter denuncient in poenam quae in dicto Capitulo de graviori culpa pro talibus culpis est taxata eum incidisse, ad quem Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de dictorum Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, praesenti statuto sententialiter adiudicat, et condemnat omnen huiusmodi transgressorem, per idem praeceptum mandans Praesidenti qui haec reperit quod hanc sententiam continuio exequantur, omnem autem fratrem qui

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worthy of exploration on a number of grounds, including how it was used both to stigmatize youth and to apply the controlling power gained thereby to the broader Dominican population. It is valuable first to note the novelty of the legal sentiment expressed. Nothing in the language of the Order’s admonitions before 1365 approaches this level of introspection about the process of crafting administrative regulations, although legal theorists outside the Order had been exploring such language for a generation or two. Provincial administrators understood that they possessed legislative powers, but these were limited, and I have no doubt that they understood that expressing their regulative authority to this degree, putting it in such a matter-of-fact manner before their brother peers, would be counterproductive, at least until such time as they had begun to turn their brother peers into subordinates in a corporate hierarchy. By midcentury administrators had without question succeeded in subordinating Dominican youths, and some advanced students, and were on their way to getting all friars to submit to the notion of a more vigorous corporate command structure. In the present item Jaume Domenech claimed the authority to impose abstract, fixed laws and see them enforced, not because he wished it but because laws have no utility unless enforced. The formulation creates for the concept of law a self-legitimizing authority, one that operates over and above the lesser power that administrators traditionally possessed to offer moral counsel or to posit admonitions that others might bend to local circumstance. We would be wrong to think that the rank-and-file accepted the implications of this new formulation. The evidence of years following shows how vigorously it could be resisted. While unambiguously true from our contemporary perspective, it lacks grounding in Dominican reality. Indeed, the statement of legal principle floats above and

aliquem sic culpabilem defensaverit, aut auxilium, vel favorem dederit, vel Praesidentem ab huiusmodi executione inpediverit ad poenam gravioris culpae debitam nunc pro tunc sententialiter adiudicamus, et Praesidens huiusmodi executionem supradicto modo faciat, ut dicta executio melius possit fieri praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis praedictus de Diffinotorum concilio, et assensu, Praesidentibus universis pro carcere reparent quantum ad domus, et quantum ad ferrea ligneamenta infra tres menses proximo computandos, quod nisi fecerit reparari in poenam a suis officiis absolvantur, addicientes supradictis quod quicumque frater iuvenis inventus fuerit alicui fratri antiquo irreverentiam irrogasse mox per suum Superiorem poena gravis culpae indespensabiliter puniatur.

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separate from the rest of the admonition, that is, without any logical and necessary connection to it. In this early instance its usage appears to have been a tactical experiment. Domenech staked out a position well ahead of what he could bring to effect. Even given its tentative nature, however, this exploration of the toothiness of law was no less a premonition. Minus the unusual declaration with which it opens, the admonition reads like so many others, heaping up accusations against contumacy, disobedience, and the myriad behavioral transgressions that administrators deemed contrary to their desire to gain and keep control over their peers. It follows with lengthy procedural talk of accusation, judgment and penalty, of jails and shackles. It establishes procedures that will protect leaders in the execution of their duty. Through all of this Domenech mentions no specific group of friars until, in the final phase of the long admonition, at the conclusion of a pronouncement that seems intended to have the broadest possible application, “youth” get singled out as a target. Perhaps they were the only group significantly blameworthy to deserve specific attention. One wonders why, then, the assertion that faults them comes at the end as a kind of afterthought. It seems more likely that an attack on youth served well as part of a broader campaign to reshape the cognition and redirect the behaviors of all friars. If, in effect, administrators could assert that any display of indiscipline demonstrated youthful intemperance, then showing maturity would mean displaying a regard for law and a respect for order.

CHAPTER SIX

OFFICE AND OFFICIAL The friars’ experience of communal life gradually grew more complex over the first 150 years of their Order’s history, not so much because of abrupt intrusions by outside forces such as economic instability, war, and plague, but because the demands the men put upon their own corporation’s operative institutions did not remain static. Expectations changed, and the impelling and retardant forces of the institutions, when pressed, opened up to status-seeking and permitted abuses of electoral procedure. In making this argument I have avoided treating internal change as a smooth and linear process obviously apparent to all participants, and I have definitely eschewed pointing only to wholesome outcomes. Another strand in the reticulation of Dominican daily life and its administration involves changes in the relationship of provincials and provincial chapters to the priors who shepherded local convents. In this chapter we will find that conventual priors in the fourteenth-century Province of Aragon, being caught up in the momentum of developments, lost much of the autonomous control that their predecessors formerly exercised over local communities. The argument has several threads, which we can productively, if too simplistically, put in order before they work themselves into a tangle. First and most apparent, able performance of the priors’ office was key to the advancement of the Order’s mission at the local level. Because of this centrality, general and provincial chapters routinely addressed many of their notices and advisories directly to priors, referring to them as the prelates (prelatus) or presidents (presidentes) of their local communities. Until the middle of the fourteenth century provincial chapter acts show little evidence that provincial priors saw conventual priors as subordinates in a modern sense but rather as partners in a subsidiary role, with authority constituted on the basis of the office holder’s intellectual status and moral capabilities, those characteristics that potentially set him apart as a discerning judge and issuer of pious counsels. In time the priorate became a carefully circumscribed office increasingly subordinated to provincial administration. As convents grew in size, with more men and a broader range of educational

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offerings in each, with greater financial needs and the interests of benefactors pressing, the prior’s office grew more difficult. Concurrent with these contributions to the growing difficulty of the priors’ office was the perception shared by provincials and some conventual priors that many rank-and-file friars acted in ways ill-fitting their organization’s definition of proper conduct. The delicts of some friars contributed to the general difficulties of the priorate by increasing the time and energies given over to personnel management. They also increased pressure upon provincials and their provincial chapters to intervene into local affairs. By the 1340s provincials held local priors responsible for the full range of disciplinary problems that local convents witnessed, regardless of the apparent fact that, in the context of the friars’ mobility and the large scale of the organization, the procedural tools available to each prior within his community for personnel management did not suffice. Ultimately, tackling indiscipline inside convents meant redrawing lines of authority, confirming notions of superior-subordinate relations, and reducing the discretionary powers of local decision-makers. I’ll posit this more boldly (putting aside momentarily a number of caveats and exceptions): by the middle of the fourteenth century events and actors conspired to remake the prior’s office into a middle management position in a hierarchical bureaucracy. I begin by reviewing the few notices about priors in previous scholarship, remarking especially upon the limitations of the evidence usually mustered and the fragility of the image thence drawn. I then turn back to the provincial acts, which have much to offer toward a more detailed portrait of office and office holder. Conventual priors held the principal positions of prelacy in Dominican convents, although what prelacy meant and what powers it entailed changed over time. The acts confirm that the pressures upon priors could be intense, that these pressures intensified as the organization matured, and that among the Order’s major offices the priorate was the one least able to resist the redefinition and redistribution of administrative power that occurred in a period of difficult change. The Prior and Priorate Humbert of Romans offered a description of the role of the Dominican prior in his Instructiones de officiis ordinis, written at some point after

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1257 following his election as master general. Humbert identified the prior’s major objectives as first, concern for the spiritual welfare of his charges, and second, encouraging them in their studies.1 In fulfillment of these essential responsibilities, he advised priors to deliver sermons and offer counsel, hear confessions, and lead convents in their liturgical commitments. Already by Humbert’s time, however, many priors headed up large communities that required staffs necessary for their proper functioning. Humbert himself identified and discussed the tasks over twenty-five office-holders ranging from subpriors and lectors to kitchen staff and gardeners. The prior oversaw the many activities of these various offices, and thus the responsibilities of the conventual prior went well beyond spiritual support and scholarly encouragement to include a substantial managerial role. Humbert’s description of the priorate is important since “aside from a few references in the constitutions and the acts, it comprises the total of our knowledge of this office.”2 Despite its certain value, however, the text is problematic. Humbert wrote the Instructiones after the Order had completed an important period of maturation. General chapters had done much of the work of normalizing organizational standards (liturgical, procedural, behavioral, etc.) while, at the same time and at cross purposes, individual friars were showing a propensity to deviate from such standards. The portraits he painted depict men in unperturbed circumstances and in unambiguous relationships without conflict, but given the ongoing struggle to define and contest standards, we must assume that what Humbert left us is not an historically accurate description of the actual situation of priors. He intended to offer guidance toward an ideal, not to record actual practice; importantly, he made it clear that his Instructiones imposed nothing that bound friars in the performance of the various offices he discusses.3 The text can help us identify some of the expectations upon priors in the midthirteenth century, but it cannot serve, as it often has, as a job description applicable to the whole course of the medieval period. Beyond Humbert’s testimony, the rule and constitutions, general and provincial chapters, and scattered other references complete a basic

1

Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita regulari, ed. J. J. Berthier, 2 vols. (Rome, 1888– 1889). I draw much of what follows from Brett, Humbert of Romans, 134–150. 2 Brett, Humbert of Romans, 138. 3 Humbert, Opera 2: 181; Brett, Humbert of Romans, 135.

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framework. The next several paragraphs offer a brief synthesis.4 It should be noted, however, that a dearth of local source materials makes it especially difficult to observe priors employed in the actual performance of their duties, a state of affairs that has left too much space for idealization. Hinnebusch’s ideal prior, for example, administered his community “as leader, exemplar, and, moreover, as servant,” leading to relations within convents that resembled “a family passed under the fatherly guidance of the prior.”5 I’m afraid that this does not tell us much about thirteenth-century priors, and fourteenth-century friars would have found it impossible to apply to the men leading their convents. Calling the prior an “older brother, first in dignity,” also says more about aspirations than realities.6 More helpful are Galbraith’s efforts to track the constitutionally mandated duties of priors and the procedures by which they were elected to and removed from office. The title prior conventualis is first witnessed in the acts of the 1221 general chapter, which makes the establishment of the local priorate simultaneous with the creation of provinces under the direction of provincials and provincial chapters. The same chapter gave the title of master general to Dominic’s successors, created the general chapter structure, and outlined its relationship to the master general. Thus the priorate came into being in a moment of administrative fervor along with the other major offices, some procedures for election of officers, and some of the rules that would govern the relationships between officers. A review of general and provincial acts over the course of the thirteenth century show priors engaged in a range of business for their convents. Certainly they oversaw the timing and conduct of lessons, heard confessions and, in general terms, offered paternal guidance and direction, but their roles encompassed much more. They were responsible for the recruitment and training of newcomers. They judged friars when they erred and disciplined them. They supervised allocations of food and clothing, in which capacity they made choices about who would receive what. They chose men to go out into principal and neighboring towns to preach, hear confessions, and beg. They had their own public commitments, especially as regarded managing a convent’s

4 Following, in particular, Galbraith, Constitutions, 40–53, 112–125, and Hinnebusch, History I, 343–347. 5 Hinnebusch, History I, 343. 6 Antolín González Fuente, El Carisma de la Vida Dominicana, (Salamanca, 1994), 130.

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relationships with local potentates and benefactors, planning and putting into effect building programs, and hiring the building and other support personnel that convent’s relied upon. Particularly important to the conditions this book examines is the fact that the preface to the Order’s constitutions gave to the priors of convents an extraordinary power: they could, as they deemed it fitting, dispense individual friars from obligations expressed in the rule and constitutions: Ad haec tamen in conventu suo prelatus dispensandi cum fratribus habeat potestatem cum sibi alteri videbatur expedire.7 Humbert and other leaders, and presumably Dominic before them, understood the utility of dispensation as a way of easing the liturgical and other burdens on students employed in the work of learning to become expert preachers. In practice over many decades, however, the power to dispense became a normalized system of exceptions from constitutional rigor. We have already seen it became a detrimental system. Holders of all the major officers – masters general, provincial priors, conventual priors, lectors – dispensed. Friars expected dispensations, that is, they expected, as a rule, to be granted exceptions from the rule. Once the costs of this system had become well-understood, provincials and their associates in the diffinitorium began to challenge the dispensatory powers not only of individual priors but of the office of conventual prior. A contest over dispensatory powers is key to what follows. The local power to dispense became a constant source of frustration to provincial administrators, in part because those at the provincial level recognized the difficulties that local priors encountered if they tried to swim against the overwhelming tide of dispensatory inertia. Many diffinitors had been or currently were priors themselves, they knew the difficulties, and wanted to help, but in trying to help their colleagues, they offered painful remedies. By early in the 1220s the friars had begun to devise mechanisms for the election, confirmation and removal of priors and others in office. Masters general and others appear to have fought hard to protect unique aspects of these processes even when they did not fully accord with the conditions of church law. Evidently the space between church requirements and Dominican desires as well as the problems and disagreements that emerged inside the Order kept these processes in an

7 For discussion, Galbraith, Constitutions, 203: Hinnebusch, History I, 84 and Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 22 and 457.

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ambiguous flux. Given the slippery procedural ground on which they occurred, elections caused problems.8 The professed friars of a house (at least those in good-standing who showed up to vote – some purposefully didn’t) elected the man who would head their community as prior. The man they chose did not need to be active resident of the convent at the time of his election, and many convents elected men stationed elsewhere at the time of their election. That friars from outside a convent or region could be elected to lead a convent says something about the candidates as men whose reputations, either for spiritual zeal, intellectual prowess or administrative ability, extended beyond their own base communities. Constitutional changes gave to provincial priors the right to confirm elections of local priors; in theory, a provincial could refuse to confirm or delay confirmation of a newly elected prior, although the consequences of such an action are not entirely clear.9 Each year the provincial prior and those meeting with him in provincial chapter assessed each prior’s activities, basing their assessment upon three sources of information: a letter (tractatus) written by the voting members of a convent and sent with the prior, in the hands of his socius; a letter and perhaps an oral presentation made by a visitor (visitator) designated to take an annual measure of each convent’s activities; and the diffinitors’ own measure of a prior’s reputation as determined by past and present notoriety. If a prior failed in his duties then provincial authorities could remove him from office, an occurrence that was not uncommon, as will be shown below. That our examination of the priorate thus far remains rather static, still an abstraction, is easily explained by taking account of the concepts of political and organizational theory put to use by historians of the Order’s governance. The prevailing desire among twentiethcentury historians writing on Dominican government, at least from Georgina Galbraith right through to William Hinnebusch, was to describe the Order as a progressive, well-ordered bureaucracy with advanced representative institutions.10 Georgina Galbraith, who began 8

Simon Tugwell, “The Evolution of Dominican Structures of Government IV: Election, Confirmation, and ‘Absolution’ of Superiors,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 72 (2002), 26–159, demonstrates the fluidity in the development of procedure and the disputes arising from remaining ambiguities. 9 Tugwell, “Election, Confirmation and ‘Absolution,’ ” 52–54. 10 Max Weber’s influence is perceptible. By Georgina Galbraith’s time the study of bureaucratic organizing was something of a cottage industry, and by the mid-1970s

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her study of the Order’s constitutional framework by calling the Order “surprisingly modern,” insisted that “the Friars Preachers were a centralized Order with a single head…. An army with a G.H.Q.”11 For Ralph Bennett “centralization was a primary aim from the start;” the friars’ purpose as medieval “storm troops” would not be served if they were not “directly subject to one headquarters.”12 We are made to believe from these and other statements that the Order’s constitutions created an autocratic leadership akin to a twentieth-century government, a business corporation, or a military. However, if this was the case then the masters general (or the general chapter) should have been able to quickly correct the supposed disciplinary declines of the fourteenth century by coercing aberrant friars into returning to established standards. As these same historians made clear, however, masters general had no such capability. These same authors also defend the Order’s status as an exemplar of early democratic principles and practices, noting that rank-and-file friars elected both the conventual priors and also the elected diffinitors who attended provincial chapters and who sometimes removed conventual priors from office. Elected diffinitors to provincial chapters also elected provincials, just as general chapter diffinitors sometimes had occasion to elect the master general. Attempts to reconcile the apparent contradictions in Dominican government have tended on occasion toward poetry more than analysis, as for example when Galbraith asserted that “the power exercised by the general chapter in the Order of Preachers, autocratic, universal and without appeal, was not resented because it did not rain on the friars from above, but was drawn up as the dew is from the ground.”13 I have already mentioned Douais’ “innate love of the rule,” and Hinnebusch’s “nice balance.”14 A related aspect of the difficulty of describing Dominican government lies in the tendency, widespread until recently, to conceptualize too rigidly differences between politics and administration. Until the when Hinnebusch was writing, organizational theorists had carved out a place for their work alongside other social science disciplines. See the introductory comments in Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, 1967), 1–4. 11 Galbraith, Constitutions, 1 and 177. 12 Bennett, Early Dominicans, 161. 13 Galbraith, Constitutions, 37; also Bennett, Early Dominicans, 163 and 191, for similar attempts at reconciliation. 14 González Fuente, El Carisma de la Vida Dominicana, 132, offers a more straightforward summary, although he sttruggles to apply the inconsistent terms “communitary,” “democratic,” and “autocratic.”

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last quarter of the twentienth century, theorists of administration connected it to civil service and bureaucratic functionality. Administration was thus determined by rules and functions largely insulated and isolated from politics and politicians. I will spare the reader a review of historiographical trends in this instance, except to point out that such distinctions between administrative functions and political mentalities have recently faded, thus permitting a fresh perspective on the relationship of the aspects of thought and action inside organizations.15 The uncertainty that appears in the foregoing assessments of the Dominican political system confirms at least this much: that Dominic and the early friars bequeathed to their followers a hybrid. They created a structure that encouraged a mixture of political processes that we have been taught to compartmentalize as either autocratic, oligarchic (conciliar), or democratic. It may be, as Eric Posner suggests, that the turn to elective offices and representative leadership indicates the rising costs of earlier means of evaluating priorities.16 It might also be the case that when Aristotle insisted upon distinct governmental types he put theory too far ahead of a messier reality.17 Subsidiarity It seems to me that the principle of subsidiarity is useful in highlighting apparent contradictions in our understanding of Dominican governance, one having to do with governmental type and the other with the relationship of politics to administration. My goal at the moment, rather than to argue in any detailed way for specific alternatives, is to

15

For orientation on the move away from bifurcated politics and administration, see Fabio Rugge, “Administrative Traditions in Western Europe,” in Guy Peters and Jon Pierre, eds. Handbook of Public Administration (Thousand Oaks, CA, 2003), 179. 16 Richard A. Posner, Overcoming Law (Harvard University Press, 1995), 503: “Preference for representative over direct democracy rests in part on the insight that it is cheaper for the voting population to determine the competence and integrity of a politician than to evaluate competing policy proposals.” 17 James M. Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1992) and Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984), 1–11, offer methodological alternatives to the legal and structural reification of their subject communities, permitting instead an exploration of horizontal bonds and collective activities determined more by reciprocity and other communcal custom than by formal regulations or official mediation. Also see Thomas N. Bisson, “Celebration and Persuasion: Reflections on the Cultural Evolution of Medieval Consultation,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 7 (1982), 181–204.

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identify an open question that remains part of the difficulty of understanding the changing role of the conventual prior. Subsidiarity showed its utility to some theorists contemplating the nature of ecclesiastical reforms in the lead up to the Second Vatican Council. It was later applied to the changing structure of the European Union.18 The principle implies conservatism, and its application to contemporary political and administrative discourse is often muted because it tenets are not easily disconnected from the totalitarianism associated with twentieth-century Fascist corporatism.19 Criteria include the following: 1) an idea of the wholeness and unity of persons and their social groups; 2) the idea that the individual and groups making up a whole cannot exist separate from the whole (typically understood in “organological” terms); and 3) the idea that the relationship between parts and whole imparts to the whole its own specific form or structure.20 While subsidiarity is often discussed in terms of its application to the state, the “organism” thus arranged might be the Church, the state, a kingdom, a religious order, a university, or any other authoritative social-ordering construct. The reader will recognize subsidiarity as an explanation of practice, not a description of ideals. Application of the principle would place the conventual prior within a framework of political-administrative roles each dependent upon the proper operation of the others, but without subordination. Indeed, many of the explanations of earlier researchers imply subsidiarity. Galbraith pointed out that while Humbert of Romans recognized that masters general possessed “full and general power” he believed no less that they should defer to other officeholders even in cases that normally lay within the master’s scope. The powers of the general chapter 18

G. A. Bermann, “Taking Subsidiarity Seriously: Federalism in the European Community and the United States,” Columbia Law Review 94 (1994), 331–456, traces the roots of the subsidiarity principle to twentieth-century Catholic philosophy, quoting Pious XI: Just as it is wrong to take away from individuals what they can accomplish by their own ability and effort and entrust it to a community, so it is an injury and at the same time both a serious evil and a disturbance of right order to assign a larger and higher society what can be performed successfully by smaller and lower communities.” Ad Leys, Ecclesiological Impacts of the Principle of Subsidiarity (Kampen: Kok, 1995) acknowledges the contributions of Kant, Hegel, and other earlier theorists to the principle. 19 J. Bryan Hehir, “Religious Ideas and Social Policy: Subsidiarity and Catholic Style of Ministry,” in eds. Mary Jo Bane, Brent Coffin, and Ronald Thiemann, Who Will Provide?: The Changing Role of Religion in American Social Welfare (Boulder, CO, 2000), 97–120. 20 Ad Leys, Ecclesiological Impacts, 11.

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derived from the powers of the lower chapters.21 Hinnebusch could correctly place conventual priors under the “higher jurisdiction” of provincial and universal authorities while admitting that priors administered their communities as chief authority and decision maker.22 Subsidiarity accounts for the specific arenas of administrative responsibility acknowledged in evidence for the master general, provincial prior and conventual prior as well as the various chapters. At the same time it would also have all of these officers and chapters, after local level deliberation and elections, participating in politically-charged, but flexible, deliberative and rule-making processes, with consultation and negotiation leading to the promulgation of constitutional amendments, interpretative statutes, and admonitory statements intended as advices to the other jurisdictional entities.23 The subsidiarity principle provides a good analog to the logic of Dominican administrative relationships only for a short space of time, and then we see it abandoned. It seems most applicable in the several decades after the decisive general chapters of 1220 and 1221, when general chapters defined the major offices and chapter councils, and defined them in relation to each other. The writers of encyclicals and chapter acts remained deferential in this period, expecting that those at other levels of administration would do their part. However, into the fourteenth century, certainly by the 1340s, official relationships had undergone changes that weakened the notions and practices that the Order had grown up on. The institutions that subsidiarity can supply are weak because they require openness to cooperation; they make an art of deference. To complicate matters further, let us surmise that the growing variance between the ideal of Dominican life and its practice let loose a complicating but not contradictory force, which was the development of a consensus, shared by the rank-and-file and their leaders at all levels of government, that conventual priors working with the friars in their convents could not effect necessary changes at the local level without 21

Galbraith, Constitutions, 37. Hinnebusch, History I, 343–347. 23 All of this is in keeping with the Roman maxim adopted by canon lawyers “What concerns all must be discussed and approved by all.” Congar, Yves, ‘Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari et opprobari debet’, Revue Historique de Droit Français et Etranger 36 (1958) 210–259. Also see Dennis E. Showalter, The Business of Salvation: Authority and Representation in the Thirteenth-Century Dominican Order,” Catholic Historical Review 58 (1973), 556–574. 22

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extraordinary support from provincial and general chapters and their chief officers. That Bernat Sescala, Nicolau Rossell and others could advance admonitions calling youths useless, could point to the harm done by “outsiders” and assert that some friars acted like a brood of vipers, that they could insist beyond moral order upon the coercive force of law, implies that many friars in their locales, who participated with provincial priors as provincial chapter diffinitors, wanted more guidance from provincials and welcomed harsher language and more rigorous protocols. The result of these trends was an upward movement in the making of important decisions, away from conventual priors and toward provincial priors; and, later, in the fifteenth century, a further shift of the locus of power up and into the hands of masters general. To put it crudely, admittedly as a thesis for testing: the failure of the Dominican Order’s gentle totalitarianism ushered in a wave of authoritarian extremism, first local and provincial, and finally, with the others’ complicity, universal. Priors in the Provincial Acts Records at the level of universal administration offer too simple a picture of the conventual prior and the priorate. Local records are rare and incomplete. The names and activities of some conventual priors can be gleaned from some sources, but even for the convents at Barcelona and Zaragoza, whence our best sources come, information about fourteenth-century priors remains very limited.24 Recovering the names and tenure dates of all of the men who served as priors in the province’s convents is impossible. Moreover, given the paucity of the sources and recognizing that many men served several terms in more than one convent, arriving at an estimate of the number of men who held the office is equally out of the question.25 Despite the real evidentiary difficulties, 24 Thomas Kaepelli, “Dominicana Barcinonensia. Assignationes librorum. Professiones novitiorum (s. XIII–XV),” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 37 (1967): 47–118. Pere de Arenys, Chronicon; Diago, Historia; Bernard Gui, De fundatione et prioribus …; as well as Domingo, Lamana and later chroniclers offer scattered references to individual named priors. Painstaking culling from wills now housed in episcopal, royal and national archives would reveal a few more priors’ names, especially those operating in the larger convents. 25 The friars of the convent of Barcelona elected Pons de Montclús as prior in 1308, 1314, and 1322; Arnau Burguet served as prior of the convent at Barcelona in 1310 and

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however, there is much we can learn about the changing responsibilities of the priorate, changes in tenure, and the implications of a range of pressures on the office and its incumbents. I begin with a few observations that illustrate the kind of detail that a careful reading of the acts permits. Thereafter, the difficulties of the priorate will emerge as the evidence is explored in support of this chapter’s thesis that priors lost decision-making powers in the middle decades of the fourteenth century. In the first half of the fourteenth century the compilers of the chapter acts disclosed the names of priors in only rare instances, usually instead identifying priors only indirectly by naming their convents. The acts of 1310, for example, issued a penance to the prior of Valencia, unnamed, because he sold the books of a deceased friar and hid the proceeds, and another penance in the same year ordered all priors and vicars who failed to correct liturgical books to endure a bread and water diet for six days and to say six masses and litanies. The item records neither the names of the priors nor the convents they served. In another penitential item from the same year, subpriors who failed in the same respect were to be removed from office.26 In 1312, the priors of Gerona and Tarragona permitted preaching outside their prescribed limits and the prior of Majorca failed to choose a subprior and illicitly constrained a member of his community. The priors in these cases were “spared” removal from office, but received a penalty of 5 days bread and water, 5 masses and 5 litanies.27 In each of the cases cited above, the acts did not identify by name the priors who had been accused and sentenced; nonetheless, we can speculate that any friar in the province who had an interest in knowing who got in trouble and for what could easily have learned who had earned the penalties. It is clear that Dominican justice operated according to its own “culture of publicity.”28 Gossip about such matters traveled with the friars themselves as they were assigned from one convent to another. It is likely that in some cases gossip contributed to the sting of the penance that a prior received, perhaps making its way into the reports about priors that their socii carried to provincial

at Majorca in 1312 before being re-elected to the provincialate in 1320. For these and other examples see Kaeppeli, “Dominicana Barchinonensia.” 26 All found in Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 115. 27 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 126. 28 Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca: 2003) 212–213.

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chapters and into the reports visitors wrote up about their visitations. Provincial authorities may even have used gossip to diminish the reputations of priors they say as lax or confrontational or otherwise problematic. It is also reasonable to assume that using the gossip mill by purposefully leaking accurate or inaccurate information about the conduct of a prior might backfire. These speculations have their analogs in other medieval settings.29 They are also consistent with the penal institutions, the electoral cliques and malfeasance, and the very regular political contests that the acts evince. If before mid-century provincial administrators omitted the names of erring priors, after 1350 they became more deliberate in seeing the names of priors guilty of wrongdoing put to writing. Penances recorded in 1352, for example, expose four priors for being lax in their supervision of meals. Provincial Prior Nicolau Rossell and his diffinitors removed Pere Messeguer, Prior of Urgell, from office, reassigned him to Tarragona, and ordered that he not seek a priorate in any convent for five years. The men in Messeguer’s charge failed to appear for meals: no bell was rung at mealtimes, no blessing said, no readings read.30 For permitting some of his charges to eat outside the refectory, Pere Saplana, Prior of Jativa, was required to subsist for eight days on a bread and water diet and to say eight masses “for the good estate of the Province.”31 The Prior of Lerida, Bernat Falconer, permitted laborers to purchase victuals for his community as it prepared for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. That the brothers of a convent might enjoy the feast of the Assumption with a special meal was noted as “customary;” however, in this year, Falconer permitted something “unusual and unheard of ” when he allowed the laborers to procure meat and consume it together with the friars in their refectory. He was removed from office with the added stipulation that he should not preside in the prior’s office for the next five years.32 Guillem Domenec, Vicar of Valencia, licensed some of his men to eat meat outside the convent. For this discretionary lapse provincial authorities removed him from office, transferred him from

29

Karma Lochrie, Covert Operations: The Medieval Uses of Secrecy (Philadelphia, 1999), 56–92. For broad treatments of the issues, see Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (New York, 1985) and Robert F. Goodman and Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, Good Gossip (Lawrence, KS, 1994). 30 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 246–247. 31 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 247. 32 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 247.

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Valencia to the convent of Tarragona, and ordered him not to seek election as prior for five years.33 Sometimes a notice in the acts indicates whether a friar, when given a new charge or honored with a preaching or disputing title, had held the prior’s office. Thus, when the 1331 chapter chose Eneco de Taxonar to be the socius of the general chapter diffinitor, the acts of that year noted his current role as prior of Estella. Pere Luppi Bielsa was removed from the priorate of Zaragoza in 1358 in order that he take up the position of lector in the same convent.34 The annual obituaries in the acts, because they sometimes offered brief notices of the offices held by a deceased friar, also afford an opportunity to learn the names of individual priors. When Pere Serrani died in the convent at Valencia, in 1358, he was remembered as “Prior and Preacher General.”35 The obituary of Francesç de Casanova, who died at Lerida in 1378, remembered him as “Preacher General and Prior in the same convent.” The Difficulties of the Priorate From a functional perspective there is no doubt that the responsibilities of priors, numerous and wide-ranging even in the Order’s early decades, gained complexity with time. Encouraging study and service; seeing to the maintenance of convent grounds and buildings; overseeing the functions of dormitory, refectory, chapter room, and church; attending to choir, liturgy and chapter; and fulfilling social obligations, all within the context of the financial constraints on an organization of nominal beggars – all of these constituted a weighty burden even under the best of circumstances. The prior had access to a large staff, mostly of his choosing, to help him in the performance of his responsibilities, but the time and energy he gained by their assistance would be lost to the time-consuming and emotionally draining tasks of having to manage and supervise them. Assessing just these routine duties of office

33

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 247. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 364: …assignamus pro Lectore fratrem Petrum Lupi de Belsa ipsum a Prioratus offitio absolvendo. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 177: Diffinitor ad sequens Capitulum Generale est frater Michael Martini, et damus sibi in Socium ad idem capitulum generale fratrem Ennecum de Exonar, Priorem Stellensem. 35 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 372. 34

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under more or less normal conditions, William Hinnebusch was led to remark: “it is no small wonder that many friars tried to escape becoming prior.”36 The acts indicate a broad range of complicating factors that made the working conditions of priors even more difficult, and far from ideal. Fluctuations in local and regional economies certainly imposed pressures on priors that they could not ignore. The Dominican Order emerged in a period of relative prosperity and its leaders probably grew accustomed to levels of financial support they believed justified their expansionary policies, but one wonders whether under less prosperous conditions priors could maintain their draw on local resources. Economic conditions prevailing on the Iberian peninsula in the first half of the century have been variously interpreted, with many observers seeing sustained economic stagnation, with periodic depressions and perhaps localized economic collapse.37 In Catalunya in the fourteenth century the expansion of a charitable sector not directly attached to the Church’s traditional responsibility for widows, the poor, and the sick suggests that gifts to religious institutions became more diversified.38 I demonstrated in an earlier chapter that the Dominican organization, at least in the Province of Aragon, continued to show signs of expansion up to and even beyond the arrival of the Black Death. The relationship after 1300 between the European economy and the financial health of the Dominican Order may even have been an inverse one in which even as the friars’ clients felt the pinch they continued to give generously to the Order. It is possible that the Dominican Order profited from difficult economic conditions but, if so, such profits were likely localized, sporadic, and dependent to a great extent on the

36

Hinnebusch, History I, 347. At worst, severe economic stagnation followed the economic boom of the thirteenth century. At best, it was a period of economic dislocation, with a diminution of productive arable but expansion in other economic sectors, including banking and, on the Iberian peninsula, sheep grazing and production of wool for overseas markets. See Bisson’s review of the historiography of economic decline in Medieval Crown. For a circumscribed discussion of the economics of a Dominican convent in the fourteenth century, see Elida García García, San Juan y San Pablo de Peñafiel: Economia y Sociedad de un Convento Dominico Castellano, 1318–1512 (Valladolid:, 1986). The fourteenthcentury economic data for this convent, like others, is meager, amounting to a few royal privileges that say little about its receipt and use of funds and its overall financial health. 38 James Brodman, Charity and Welfare: Hospitals and the Poor in Medieval Catalonia (Philadelphia, 1998). 37

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fundraising talents of individual conventual priors. We can safely assume that resources always remained below what administrators seeking opportunities for growth would have liked them to be. Provincial chapters regularly reminded priors of their responsibilities to provide clothing for new brethren, food for the sick, and per diem payments to travelers.39 The question of a local convent’s fundraising and financial survival raises the issue of the relationships that conventual priors had to develop and foster with local populations. A priority of the prior’s office was to maintain good relationships with princes, bishops, local potentates such as the leading members of urban commercial families, and even with the leaders of guilds who helped to finance the building of their churches. These political and social leaders helped to secure and maintain the Order’s rights in a locale, offered lands for building campaigns, and provided financial resources for the Order’s local survival and growth. Elites also placed family members with the Order in an implicit exchange for education and opportunities for advancement. Historians have often projected an image of the mendicant convent as a protective zone in which the friars studied and prepared spiritually for their public work, but the reality was that the boundaries between public and private were not easily distinguished, and not easily regulated.40 Nurturing these relationships without permitting them to define or limit his action meant that a prior had to tread carefully. Provincial admonitions from early in the fourteenth century on three important subjects –riding horses, consumption of meat, and the influence of local families in conventual affairs – illustrate very well the difficulty of the prior’s position as the chief administrator of a religious community that constantly breached its own walls. As mendicants, friars were to travel by foot. The Dominican constitutions forbade friars to ride horses. Nonetheless, this was not an area outside the possibility of dispensation, and advice accumulated in general and provincial acts about when and how the prohibition could be abrogated. An admonition of 1302 declared that no friar could ride a horse, except if he rode in the party of a secular prince or a prelate of the church.41 Obvious benefits accrued to the Order when it permitted some of its members 39

E.g. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 280–281. See Hinnebusch, History I, 233–242 for thirteenth-century examples and below for examples from the fourteenth-century acts. 41 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 247: Item admonemus, quod fratres nullo modo equitent per Villas, nisi forte cum Princibus, et Prelatis, et contrarium facientes, 40

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to travel in the retinues of kings and bishops, but negotiations among friars in leadership about how far to extend the privilege did not end there. An admonition issued by the provincial chapter of 1345 confirmed a blanket privilege for riding horses that had been extended to friars following the courts of lords, those sent on ambassadorial missions by the Order, and also friars fulfilling their duties as inquisitors.42 By 1351, an advisory framed in preventive rather than permissive language asserted that no friar was to ride through a town excepting only preachers general, priors, and lectors.43 Some priors might have wished to limit the accumulation of these exceptions, but others appear to have shown little hesitation. Admonitions on the subject of meat consumption occur over thirty times in the extant acts, and we have seen that the expansion of exceptions for consuming meat implicated all friars. They identify for us two areas of potential concern, one on the subject of meat consumed within the friars’ convents and another treating the question of public consumption beyond the confines of the convents. In our other encounters with the issue I pointed to evidence accumulating around mid century, although priors encountered both species of requests for dispensation right from the province’s inception. Bernat Peregrí’s provincial chapter of 1303, already unhappy about the slide into overindulgence, made the attempt to restore rigor, “notwithstanding contrary custom.”44

per Priores suos, vel Visitatores pena pro gravi culpa in Constitutionibus posita puniantur. 42 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 268–269: Item, cum magnae aequitaturae nostram paupertatem videantur plurimum deformare, et ex hoc etiam apud maiores de Regno iam venerimus in gravem iudicium, sive notam, volumus, et ordinamus, quod nullus frater infra Provinciam in mulo, vel mula, rucino, vel equo cum sella audeat aequitare, nisi de Prioris Provincialis licentia speciali, vel eius Vicarii Generalis, exceptis tantummodo Inquisitoribus haereticae pravitatis, et illis, qui sequuntur Curias Dominorum, vel Ambaxiatas per Ordinem non prohibitas, faciunt pro eisdem cum sociis sibi datis…. 43 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 309–310: Item, ordinationibus Capitulo generalis anni prasenti volentes nos in omnibus conformare, praecipit Reverendus Pater Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, quod nullus frater huius Provinciae, qui non sit Praedicator Generalis, aut qui Prior, vel Lector non fuerit, in sollempnioribus Conventibus huius nostrae Provinciae supradictae, equitare super Villam, absque Prioris Provincialis licentia speciali, non possint aut caleant quoque modo, quod si contrarium per quemquam fuerit atemptatum praeter poenam in nostris Constitutionibus praetaxatam voce per tres annos volumus sit privatus. 44 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 258: Admonemus etiam, ac mandamus, ut Constitutio de carnibus non comedendis, que dicit: “Si quis talem infirmitatem habuerit que nec eum multum debilitet,” strictius observetur, nec Priores sint faciles ad

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Priors clearly found it difficult to know what limits to place on the consumption of meat within the convents. The 1303 admonition adhered strictly to the constitutions in only exempting the sick, but in 1314, as we have seen, Master General Berenguer of Landora extended a blanket privilege to lectors, permitting them to eat meat on account of their labor and because it had become the habit in some provinces. Berenguer’s letter implies that lectors in other regions had made it a habit of taking meat despite constitutional prohibitions. It also strongly suggests that lectors in the Province of Aragon undertook a robust lobbying campaign to get the meat that they wanted.45 I have already offered examples of relaxation in this area. It remains only to point to priors as the point men who permitted these relaxations in their locales before they ever came to the notice of provincials or other authorities. Different rules applied to eating meat outside the convents, although parallels exist in the slipperiness of the prior’s role as an interpreter of law. The constitutions specially forbade consumption of meat outside of the Order’s convents, but by 1303 an exception was held out for friars dining with potentates.46 Admonitions in 1307 and 1310 made it clear that consumption of meat in public view deformed the honesty of the order, and that priors should not lightly permit exceptions.47 Thus an admonition of 1314 followed the language of 1310 in urging friars who needed meat when away from their convents on difficult trips, to keep up their health, to do their utmost to make their way to a convent in order to avoid eating meat in public view. Despite these reminders and suggestions, the 1314 advisory also allowed priors and preachers general to seek at chapters a remand (essentially post facto release from penalties) if they ate meat during their travels in order to maintain their

dispensandum sine causa necessaria atque iusta. Provideatur etiam infirmis omnibus per Conventum. And Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 258: Item interdicimus fratribus universis, ac etiam inhibemus, quod in locis in quibus Conventum habemus, nisi cum Regibus, Episcopis, seu Electis, vel in domibus Religiosorum, ut Constitutio nostra dicit, non comedant extra Claustrum, consuetudine contraria alicubi non obstante. 45 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: …cum lectoribus tamen qui legunt aliquo tempore anni, propter laborem, sicut est consuetum laudabiliter in aliis Provinciis, dispensetur. 46 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 258. 47 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 277, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 113.

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good health.48 This is only the beginning of an interesting story of the expansion of rights of consumption. What should be clear from the foregoing is, first, that the rules were constantly open to negotiation and, second, that priors could easily be judged to be in error as they themselves sought to judge the appropriateness of giving license for eating meat or riding horses in various situations. Evidence clearly indicates the difficulty of the prior’s position: if his own men found him either too restrictive or excessively lax they could seek his removal from office on either basis through the annual scrutiny, and regardless of how his own men judged him, provincial leaders might judge his actions differently and remove him from office on opposite grounds. It appears to have become the tendency to assuage the interests of those who elected him, to a point at least, and then do some explaining later at provincial chapter. Evidence in the acts tells us that rank-and-file friars did not remove themselves from the influence of family, friends, and associates in the general population. Indeed, it became a feature of strained relations between provincial and conventual priors that conventual leaders in their locales did not do more to control the permeable boundaries between the interior community and “outsiders.” An ordinance of 1307 is among the first examples in the fourteenth-century acts of the difficulties caused by family interventions into the Order’s affairs. Led at this time by Miguel de Estella, provincial authorities admitted their willingness to cater to socially powerful parents by receiving youths who could not meet customary standards, thus softening earlier restrictive policies. The precise purpose of the notice was to promise special privileges to friars charged with instructing the untrained sons of Proven Men (filii Proborum Virorum). The nature of the complaints and negotiations that led to the policy change is not difficult to uncover. Those charged with teaching the rudiments of Latin grammar to the 48 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 135: Item cum comestio carnium extra domus sit in grave iudicium, et notam, volumus et ordinamus, quod nullus frater iter aliquod arripiat, vel extra Conventum exeat, nisi possit cibaria Ordinis sustinere; quod si alias fratrem extra Conventum sic fuerit infirmatus, quod ipsum carnes comedere oporteat, teneatur quam citius redire ad Conventum; et si qui inventi fuerint de cetero contrarium fecisse, non obstante infirmitate, penitentiam, que debetur per Constitutionem comedentibus canes sine licentia, facere compellantur. Unde iudicamus Priores, et Predicatores Generales, qui sic infirmi, vel debiles fuerint, quod non possint per viam a carnibus sine periculo abstinere, habere causam sufficientem de Capitulo remandi; socios vero tales declaramus legitime impeditos, et fratres posse procedere ad alium socium faciendum.

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sons of social elites found their work burdensome. Balking at such an unrewarding task, one they no doubt believed took them away from work they deemed more personally rewarding or prestigious, and about which they easily could have argued made a greater contribution to the Order’s mission, they clamored for benefits that would compensate them for their troubles. We can be certain that priors felt some pressure to respond, and did so either by privileging these teachers on an ad hoc basis or by carrying complaints to provincial chapters. The benefits provincial representatives ceded to the teachers of unschooled youths from elite families were those traditionally accorded to conventual lectors, including exemption from choir and the offices, recreational time, and special meals in the refectory and infirmary (which after 1314 included consumption of meat). Lectors retained the special privilege, not accorded to these grammar instructors, of a private study and bed chamber.49 As the century progressed, provincial priors charged conventual priors with gaining tighter control over friars’ relationships with family, friends and others whose lives outside of convent walls intersected with those of the men and youths inside. We find, as already noted, provincial authorities calling on priors to prevent friars from playing dice with seculars, from receiving money or goods from them, etc. And we saw the warning, issued in 1345, against friars suspiciously walking in town with women who might or might not be their sisters and mothers. After mid century, family interference in the Order’s regular activities had become so pronounced that officials issued repeated demands that no friar should seek to be assigned, absolved, remanded, moved, or promoted through the interference of any outsider.50 Into the 1360s and 1370s it became common for friars to seek the aid of friends and family to gain or even forge letters granting them special rights and 49

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 278: Ad hec cum recipiamus ad Ordinem filii Proborum Virorum gramatica indigentes, et non instruantur sicut ei et Ordini expediret, et quasi idiote remaneant ex deffectu, et indigentia Magistrorum, propter quod videretur esse melius eos non recipere, nisi eis provideatur, et instruantur secundum fieri oporteret; ei vix inveniantur alias nisi cum multa disciplicentia, qui velit eos instruere, et docere, ne tales iuvenes apti, et idonei ad perfectionem quasi perdantur Ordini, et etiam sibi ipsis, idcirco ordinamus, quod fratres, qui assignantur ad instruendum in gramatica ipsos iuvenes habeant omnes gratias, excepta camera, quas doctores actu legentes consueverunt habere, et hactenus habuerunt, ut quod sint exempti a choro, et ab omnibus officiis, et quod recreationes habeant in infirmitorio et hospicio, in omnibus et per omnia, ut doctores. 50 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239, and repeated often thereafter.

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privileges. Provincial authorities after mid-century saw in these incidents reasons to ratchet up their attention to corporate discipline, which did not work to the long term benefit of priors or their office. The behaviors for which some friars received punishments also help us to understand the difficulties priors faced. In 1310, friar G. Serra remained in the convent at Valencia, defying the reassignment order imposed upon him in the previous year’s acts. Presumably his prior made an attempt to enforce the order, and Serra’s failure to comply brought the case to the attention of provincial authorities, who denied him his voice vote and sent him to Jativa as a punishment.51 In this and other cases we have clear examples of obstructionism and indifference to rules and officials. Such defiance of reassignment orders became widespread in the decade or so before the papal schism that began in 1378.52 It was among the prior’s functions to correct the friars in his charge, but some friars refused discipline, thus putting provincials and their chapters in the position of having to intercede when local authority did not generate due reverence and compliance. We have already seen evidence of “dissolutions and levity,” of the fistfights brought to the attention of provincial chapters, of the petty theft of liturgical items, of men paired up for service outside their convents enjoying the fruits of urban licentiousness. We have seen friars creating holes in convent walls for egress to the outside and covering doors to their cells with curtains. Friars left candles lit for those of their brothers returning after a late night out. Friars carried weapons and threatened obstructive priors with them.53 All of these carryings-on were clearly inappropriate, railed against in repeated admonitions and punished when opportunity arose; nonetheless, they continued to occur. Priors across the province and across the fourteenth century found it difficult to quell disquiet and willfulness within their convents.

51 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 115: Item quia G. Sierra non ivit ad Studium ad quod fuerat assignatus, sed toto anno remansit Valentie contra ordinationem Actorum, privamus voce eum, et studio, et in penam Xativensi Conventui assignamus. 52 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 281; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305–306; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 308; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 238, and then with even greater persistence in later years. 53 It happened in the thirteenth century too that some brothers tried to hit their leaders. Gerard of Frachet’s Vitae Fratrum, from about 1260, records the tale of a brother Tedalto who, unhappy with his lot in the Order, tried to hit the subprior who had persuaded him to join. Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 126.

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Friars often redirected their discord and malice at their priors when the latter tried to intercede. The provincial chapter of 1321 found two friars guilty of showing irreverence and malice toward their prelate; they had eaten meat without license and conducted themselves in a dissolute manner when their prior caught them.54 In 1331, a group of eight friars of Castellon that included Francesç Raucen, one of the culprits in the 1321 case, were judged guilty of showing “rebellion, contumacy and pernicious irreverence” toward their prior and a distinguished elder.55 At the Cervera convent in 1353, a series of events ended with several brothers incurring substantial penalties after stealing townspeoples’ chickens. When accused they conspired to defend each other, showing rebellion and disobedience to their prior and other prelates.56 In several cases a friar refused to be disciplined and either struck or threatened his prelate. I have already cited the examples of Gerau Regis, Arnau Perfeyta, and Miquel Sanch.57 It is clear in these episodes that provincial priors and provincial chapter diffinitors sought to protect and defend local priors from irreverence and malice, but that these same leaders felt frustration at the lack of control priors could muster over their men. One can infer at least two overlapping courses of development leading to these mounting challenges to the authority of priors. First, as the demands upon priors grew, it is likely that they devoted less time to the spiritual training of their men. There may have come a point when the members of a convent lost sight altogether of what had for Humbert been a primary function of a prior – to serve as a spiritual leader and advisor. The father and exemplar about whom Hinnebusch wrote was now too tied up with the work of managing a staff, drawing recruits, and discovering resources. The acts say surprisingly little about the holding of a chapter of faults; when it occurred its performance was perfunctory. Nicolau Rossell had to remind convents to hold them at least once a week, probably because actual practice showed them to be

54

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 146:. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 174. The distinguished friar was Pons de Montclú, former Regent of the Studium of Tarragona (1303–1306), Inquisitor (1311) and on multiple occasions Prior of Barcelona (1308, 1314, 1322). See Kaeppeli, “Dominicana Barcinonensia,” AFP 37 (1967), 69. 56 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 267–268. 57 Robles, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 147; Robles, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 347; Robles, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 135. 55

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even less common.58 Conventual chapters, previously venues for priors to maintain order, became merely the occasions for formally gathering those who needed to take part in an administrative procedure, for example voting approval for a new member or agreeing to construction costs and plans. Priors delegated their responsibilities to masters of novices, masters of students, lectors and committees of elders, who assumed much of the disciplinary control formerly identified as the prior’s responsibility. Provincial acts increasingly and with greater insistence directed their annual advisories directly to these others, telling them, not priors, how and when to instruct and discipline their charges. Second, growth in the size of friar communities and the Order’s habit of moving men from convent to convent must have made it more difficult for priors to serve as spiritual guides for their charges. When the largest convents held twelve men, or twenty or thirty, the prior could get to know them well, and them him. The acts of the provincial chapter of 1314 assigned sixteen friars to the Barcelona convent, while in 1331 twenty-seven friars were assigned there. By 1345 the number of friars newly assigned to the convent at Barcelona had reached forty. If these numbers represent from one-third to one-half of the total number of friars resident in the convent then by mid-century the Barcelona convent housed approximately one hundred men. Such large populations with many friars moving in and out yearly must have exacerbated the difficulty priors had in developing meaningful personal relationships and fostering a climate in which his spiritual leadership mattered. Provincial authorities saw in the cohort of grammar students a recurrent source of disciplinary problems; nonetheless, the province’s grammar schools expanded, contributing to the distance between priors and some of their youngest charges in greatest need of direction. The process of social stratification occurring within the Order, generated in part by larger populations, high levels of mobility between convents, and growth in the number of schools and students, magnified the distance

58

Robles Sierrra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 238: Item, volumus, et ordinamus, atque mandamus praesidentibus universis, quod omni septimana teneant Capitulum de culpis in quo recepta beneficia recitentur, et inprimis observatores de silentio servando, remanentium de Choro, et de officio Beatae Virginis positi per dictos Praesidentes in principio anni, plenarie audiantur, et transgressores a vino, vel pitantia habeant abstinere. And, repeated in later years, e.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 256; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 288.

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between the prior and those he was supposed to guide and serve. To many in his convent, the fourteenth-century prior was likely viewed as an impersonal administrator known only from a distance. Others saw in him a lackluster figurehead, one whose easy dispensations and limited ability to discipline meant that he could be taken advantage of. As we will see next, the rapid turnover of priors in office also created a negative drain on the effectiveness of the priors’ office. Tenure Troubles The convolution of issues confronting local priors also appears in evidence related to their election and retention in office. In principle, the prior’s was a representative office, with the voting members of each convent meeting in chapter to elect their prior.59 Ostensibly, he represented these electors and served their interests as he conducted the convent’s local business and participated ex officio in provincial chapters. Of course, his role included disciplining those who erred in his convent during his tenure. The Order’s constitutions required the provincial prior to confirm newly elected priors and to remove priors at his discretion. That a conventual prior represented the men who elected him but held office at the pleasure of the provincial prior may indicate an attempt by the early friars to achieve a balance of participatory and autocratic decision-making. Its practice, however, offers many examples of how Dominican politics and administration could become a tangled web that each local prior helped to spin even as he found himself caught in its sticky ligatures. Candidates for the priorate needed to meet only a few simple qualifications, although the procedures for the election of priors, like other procedures we have discussed, did not remain fixed as the Dominican Order entered the fourteenth century. Bernat Peregrí’s chapter of 1302 issued a number of important notices about the priorate in 1302, part of the special guidance given to friars in the context of the recent separation of their province from Spain. One indicated that no one could be elected prior who had not served as a lector for at least six years.60 Since the number of lectorates in the province were few it would seem that

59 60

Galbraith, Constitutions, 45 and 111–114; Hinnebusch, History I, 217–218. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 252–253.

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this was a way of limiting the pool of candidates to a very few wellseasoned men. Another confirmed a declaration made at general chapter to the effect that at the death or removal of a prior his vicar would no longer serve as vicar, implying that no friar, even one performing the duties of the position and having experience in it should presume to have any claim to the office outside the constitutional electoral process.61 Another reminded that any friar removed from the office of prior was prohibited from taking up the same office.62 On this point reminders were issued in 1310 and 1312, although it appears that room remained for interpretation. In the acts of 1327 Bernat Puigcercos and his diffinitors posited a similar statement but changed the language to read that a conventual prior removed from his office by the provincial or provincial chapter should not accept re-election in the same year in the same convent, thus leaving open the possibility that the brothers of another convent might elect him as their prior.63 This language appears to have restored the intent of general chapters, which issued statements on the subject as far back as 1272.64 One objective of this series of legislative acts was to prevent local friars from re-electing into the prior’s office the man just removed by the provincial, which suggests of course that friars entertained the practice. Moreover, it points to the likelihood, which we will soon confirm, that powerful factions in some convents had important reasons to vote back into office someone disliked, distrusted, or otherwise unwanted by the provincial. Elections very often caused disturbance. In 1303 Valentín de Paz arrived late to his convent of Tarragona to learn that the election of a new prior had been conducted. The result of the election was not to his liking since, it appears, he wanted to win the office. Valentín rang the chapter bell, calling the friars to assembly in the hopes of conducting a second election. In these actions he secured the support of at least one conspirator, Bernat Scardi.65 This is the only penitential record

61

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 248. E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 253: Volumus et ordinamus quod priores absoluti hoc anno in eisdem conventibus ad eadem officia nullatenus resumantur. 63 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 133. 64 Reichert, “Acta Capitulorm Generalium,” MOPH III, 165. Galbraith, Constitutions, 124. 65 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 260–261: Item cum per decretum Prioris Tarrachonensis constet nobis quod ipsa electio fuit rite et canonice celebrata ultima die mensis post Visperam, in quo etiam minime artaverant tempus, cum post Missam 62

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explicitly related to a dispute in the election of a prior; others do not directly identify the office in dispute or they identify it with the choice of socius to the provincial chapter. The broader language of the admonitory sections of the acts makes clear, however, that the election of a prior often led to disputes, dissent, and factions either holding out or conducting counter-elections. Even when the choice of a prior was not at issue, elections and appointments to other offices could reflect upon the character and quality of the prior, including his willingness and ability to quell dissent, prevent disorder, and protect the Order from the scandal of electoral malfeasance. The election of a prior’s socius, the friar who traveled with the prior to the provincial chapter, often occasioned disagreements. Some friars fought hard to win the position of socius since it was a role that carried few responsibilities but important social benefits. The socius traveled with the prior to the provincial chapter, where he could take advantage of the opportunity to gain the notice of elder and high-ranking friars. It was thus a position that could add momentum to a friar’s career. The socius saw to it that the acts published by the provincial and his diffinitors were copied for use in his house. This was among his minor duties. Of greater significance to the prior, the convent, and the Order was the fact that the socius carried to the provincial assembly a letter produced by the men of his house conveying criticisms and accusations against their prior. This scrutiny (scrutinum) of the conventual prior by those having an active voice vote in his convent (scrutatores) was a highly contentious affair in that it led to the production of a letter (tractatus)

potuissent ad electionem procedere, sicut habet consuetudo Ordinis generalis, et frater Valentinus de Pace, qui diem sciebat, et ipsi et aliis predictum fuerat perlatum quod concurrent, nec dictus frater Valentinus convenit sicut alii fratres de Monasterio Sanctarum Crucum, quem Conventum convenerant, ipse frater Valentinus tardans nimis pervenit ad Conventum, cum Conventus iam cenaret, et post cenam autoritate, imo temeritate propria pulsavit campanam Capituli, non vocato Prelato, nec etiam requisito, et convenientibus aliquibus fratribus, in Capitulum contradixit electioni facte pro se, et pro se electionem fecit contra iura et Ordinis instituta; cum etiam si vere repulsus fuisse, quia non fuit, prima electione non cassata, non debuit procedere ad secundam. Ideo prefatum fratrem Valentinum privamus voce in omni electione usque ad annum, ut in quo deliquit, debite puniatur. Iniungimus etiam eis tres dies in pane et aqua, tres Missas, et tres disciplinas; fratri autem Bernardo Scardi, qui prime etiam electioni interfuit, non minus fratri Valentino adhesit post inceptam electionem, imo adversus communem formam per sepedictum fratrem Valentinum, et ego nova vice eligo tecum, et tu mecum eumdem; nos versa vice ordinamus, ut ipse frater Bernardus associet dictum fratrem Valentinum in tribus diebus in pane et aqua, tribus Missis, et tribus disciplinis.

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that might change the balance of affairs inside the convent by seeing its leader put out of office. Successive general chapters had, by 1288, made the scrutiny a fixed requirement of all convents.66 Despite the longstanding order, in some years friars had to be reminded that the scrutiny was obligatory, and notices were issued indicating the window of time preceding provincial chapters in which it must conducted.67 Priors also needed reminding that a scrutiny of their subprior was required of them.68 Scrutinies remained inherently risky undertakings for friars who had something to win or lose by their outcomes. Minimizing the risks meant rallying support in advance. A range of tactics could be employed by individuals and electoral factions to achieve their ends. Some friars could make themselves absent at the times appointed for convening a chapter to elect a socius or to scrutinize a prior or subprior. Others conspired to call for a vote when the available quorum favored their faction’s candidate. Bernat Peregrí and his diffinitors punished four friars of Urgell in 1303 for failing to appear at a tractatus session as a means of preventing another friar from having his vote counted.69 This was in the same year that Valentín de Paz and Bernat Scardi conspired to see each other elected. In 1307, the provincial chapter led by Miquel de Estella punished some of the friars in the convent at Jativa for failing to call other friars to participate in a tractatus who legitimately should have taken part.70

66

Galbraith, Constitutions, 113. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 150, issued in 1327, reminded friars of their obligation to scrutinize priors who were confirmed and installed in office. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 114, cautioned friars in 1310 to meet for the tractatus in the period within four to six weeks before the provincial chapter. 68 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 165. 69 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 261: Item cum per litteram Conventus Urgellensis constet nobis, quod in die tractatus frater A. de Nalsovello, frater Bernardus Martini, frater Petrus Cathene, et frater G. de Uliano noluerunt interesse tractatui propter fratrem D. de Spinosa, quem dicebant esse pivatum voce, licet ipse contrarium assereret, et Prior ei testimonium perhiberet, quod noluerunt interesse tractatui etiam cum omni protestatione sicut fecerunt alii, licet a pluribus sic inducti, nec voluerunt renunciare voci proprie, ne tractatus ipse fieret isto anno, sed Capitulum sum clamoribus convenerunt temerarie reclamando, iniungimus eis quatuor dies in pane et aqua, quatuor disciplinas, et quatuor Missas, vel duo Psalteria, et facimus eis gratiam non privamus eos voce, ut in quo deliquerunt, secundum iustitiam puniantur. 70 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 280–281: Fratribus de Conventu Xativensi, qui fecerunt tractatum non vocatis fratre Petro Aragonensi, et fratre Egidio de Tarrasia, qui cum essent Valentie poterant commode interesse, et ideo debuerant convocari, iniungimus tres dies in pane et aqua, tres Missas, et tres disciplinas. Fratri vero Bonanato Mazo tunc Vicario in Conventu, qui cum recedere de Valentia et iret Xativam 67

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The friars at Zaragoza in the same year similarly received a penance for their failure to call legitimate electors to a tractatus.71 In 1308 the brothers of the two convents in the Roman province received penalties for holding contentious elections of socii. The subprior of one of the convents, probably as a result of the same set of events, was removed from office and punished for improperly jailing a brother. It would not have been unusual if he did so to prevent the other’s participation in an election.72 In 1352 the voting friars of Jativa did not want to gather to elect a socius.73 Three men sought to have one of their party made socius in 1366, securing their conspiracy with an oath; when their effort failed they produced such a commotion that their plot was discovered.74 In broad terms we may read these occurrences as evidence that factions in support of and against the elected prior vied for control of the process that produced and delivered the report on the prior’s conduct in office. Controlling the tractatus and the convent’s choice of socius meant controlling what information about the local prior arrived at the provincial chapter to be heard by the provincial and his associates. A provincial chapter headed by Romeu de Bruguera in 1312 cautioned priors not to deprive friars of their voice vote at election time without sufficient cause.75 Similar cautions get repeated later. Despite the warning, there are clear cases in which priors or vicars took advantage of their disciplinary powers to create conditions for fraudulent elections. In the case from 1307 cited above, Bonanato Mazo, the vicar of the convent of Jativa, was among those charged and penanced for interfering in the conduct of a tractatus, in his case for having denied ad faciendum tractatum non vocavit, nec etiam verbum fecit predictis duobus fratribus de tractatu, et ut videtur cum magisterio et in fraudem, iniungimus quinque dies in pane et aqua, quinque Missas, quinque disciplinas, et in penam amovemus eum de Conventu Xativensi, et assignamus eum Conventui Tarrachonensi. 71 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 281. 72 Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 171. 73 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 248. 74 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 135: Item quia fratres Iacobus Marcii, Nicholaus Iulii, Anthonius Rigolela convenerint ad invicem, et promiserint medio etiam iuramento se facturos socium, Lectorem, quem cum post ea non fecerunt quantum convinationi huiusmodi sunt illicitae et periuria potius evitanda, ipsos, et quemlibet eorum voce privamus, et quod non possint de tribus annis fieri Socii in quocumque Conventu. 75 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 125: Item paci fratrum intendentes, inhibemus ne de cetero Prelati fratrem aliquem voce privent, nisi sit talis excessus, qui merito hoc requirat, et tunc de maiorum consilio discretorum; alias talem privationem dicimus irritam et inanem. The implications of this vague statement are not hard to seek.

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some friars their voice vote. We can imagine that he attempted to discipline errant friars who sought revenge at election time or, alternatively, he may have represented one side in a factional dispute inside the convent; in either case, he felt the need to prevent some friars from voting because they held views contrary to his and planned to vote against his interests. An admonition issued in the 1363 chapter under the leadership of Jaume Domenech confirms that priors sometimes manipulated elections in ways favorable to their interests by, among other means, excommunicating friars or depriving them of their voice as elections or scrutinies neared.76 These are among the most transparent of many recorded examples of attempts to prevent, contravene or fix the results of meetings at which priors were scrutinized and priors or socii elected. In addition to these and others recorded in the acts there were undoubtedly other cases of election malfeasance and fraud that either occurred without discovery or were handled in ways not evinced in the acts. In 1330 the friars at Huesca lost their voice vote because they failed to elect a socius.77 Diffinitors at the provincial chapter of 1331 removed from the friars of the convent of Balaguer their voice vote in the election of a socius in the coming year because of their failure to perform the function in the present year. They asked the provincial not to dispense the Balaguer friars from their punishment because doing so might permit one of them to gain election.78 When the same chapter punished Rodericum de Ador, Martinum de Aspes, Guillermum de Alagone, and Dominicum de Arbanies for sending letters to the provincial prior outside of proper procedure, they were probably trying to quell the factional backbiting that led to mishandled elections.79 The sending of such letters for the purpose of criticizing or accusing, 76

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 95: Item quia multa inconvenientia, et dubia in Capitulo, et in Conventibus sunt exorta pro eo quod Priores, ac Vicarii eorundem indistricte, et de facili excommunicationis sententias promulgarunt, ac praecepta multiplicarunt, et quandoque iminente electione vel tractatu eorum, quae mitenda sunt ad Capitulum Provinciale in fraudem electionum ipsarum, seu tractatum, idcirco praecipit Reverendus pater Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, quatenus Praesidentes quicumque non ponant praecepta, nec sententias dent nisi pro casu multum necessario et urgente, et tunc de fratrum consilio antiquorum, addicientes supradictis quod Socii Priorum sue tractatus non fiant ante mensem praecedentem inmediate diem assignatum pro Provinciali Capitulo celebrando, si qui vero in pradictis defecerint, noverint se per Priorem Provincialem, vel Capitulum Provinciale acriter puniendos. 77 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 166. 78 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 174. 79 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1994), 173–174.

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sometimes secretly or without the writers identifying themselves, became part of the degeneration of electoral practices after midcentury.80 We can well imagine the tension in relations between priors and their socii as they walked or rode together toward the provincial chapter. The prior knew that the other held a letter that could lead to his removal from office and perhaps even result in his accusation, condemnation, and receipt of a substantial penance. The potential for the socius being coerced by his prior into revealing the contents of the letter, or of collusion between the two persons, should not be discounted. Tenures were short even in the thirteenth century when, for instance, Humbert of Romans acknowledged Hugh of St. Cher’s fear that frequent turnover might be a cause of instability.81 Studying the evidence from the Province of Provence, Georgina Galbraith found that in the years between 1266 and 1286, one prior held his office for fifteen years, another for seven years, four served four-year terms, and four others served terms of three years, while two others held office for only two years. She found this variability of tenure “not surprising” given the range of reasons a prior might be removed.82 On average, tenures in the Province of Aragon in the fourteenth century were even shorter. In the period 1302 to 1331, with gaps in the data totaling seventeen years, the record shows at one extreme only two changes of prior in the convents of Calatayud, Valencia, Sangüesa, and Pamplona. At the other extreme, in the same period and with the same gaps in the record, the priorate changed hands at least seven times at

80 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 164–165. Or, with greater precision, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 279: Item, cum occulte informantes Praelatos, seu Iudices, de defectibus aliorum per litteras tacitis nominibus informantium potius videatur velle diffamare, quam accusando, seu denunciando delicta corrigere, praecipit idem Reverendus P. Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, sub poena privationis vocis quam incurrant ipso facto, quod nullus frater mitat litteras sine clara subscriptione mittentis Priori Provinciali, et Diffinitoribus Capituli Provincialis. Denunciat insuper idem Reverendus P. Prior Provincialis fratribus universis, quod talibus litteris non habentibus subscriptionem mittentis, nullam fidem paenitus adhibebit, nec curabit aliquam inquisitionem, vel discussionem facere super excesibus in talibus litteris expressatis. 81 Bennett, Early Dominicans, 171 reports Humbert’s awareness of Hugh of St. Cher’s criticism of frequent mutation as unstable. 82 Galbraith, Constitutions, 123. Priors sometimes moved on to other offices and appointments, including inquisitorial appointments, but we have also seen that criticisms of a prior’s performance could come from many directions.

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Tarragona, six times each at Lerida and Gerona, and five times each at Majorca, Barcelona, and Huesca.83 In the five years between 1327 and 1331, years for which we possess a complete series of chapter acts, Bernat Puigcercos and the diffinitors working with him removed 26 priors from their elected offices. For the 17 convents then in operation this equates to an average of slightly more than 1.5 changes of local leadership in each convent over the five-year period (a new prior in each convent, on average, every three years). The evidence beginning in 1345 is more abundant and transparent. The record of removals of priors for the period from 1350 to 1355 is complete, and thus serves to illustrate. In that six-year period, Lerida, Estella and Manresa each changed leadership no less than four times. On the other hand, Cervera and Pamplona recorded no change of prior. The average for all convents is about two changes over the six-year course, indicating that, on average, few priors served longer than three years. A similar analysis of the periods 1368 to 1373 and 1376 to 1379, both periods with complete records, shows similar results. In these ten years, three priors vacated their offices in each of three convents: Gerona, Valencia and Manresa. In Valencia priors left office in 1368, 1369 and 1370, after experiencing vacancies in the priorate in 1363 and 1366. The Gerona convent lost its prior in 1365 and then again in 1368, 1369, and 1371. We can say with assurance that priors after mid-century were removed from office frequently, with the average tenure being three years or less. An important documentary change occurred in the provincial acts just before mid-century. It had been common practice earlier for local priors to name vicars for their convents when they planned to be absent for extended periods. In most cases we might assume that the subprior served as vicar in most cases. Provincials, likewise, occasionally named vicars to replace priors they had removed from office as a temporary measure until the local friars elected a successor. Before 1347 the annual acts did not record the imposition of vicars in convents by provincials,

83

Removals of priors sometimes occurred in consecutive years, suggesting that provincials did not like the choices made by local electors. Of the seven removals occurring in Tarragona in the period, four occurred in 1302 and 1303, 1328 and 1329. Similarly, three of the five changes in the priorate of the Barcelona convent occurred in 1327, 1328, and again in 1330; in Gerona, provincials removed priors from their elected offices in 1328 and again in 1329; turnover is witnessed in Urgell in 1329 and in 1330; in Manresa in 1330 and 1331.

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but beginning in that year the acts regularly list the names of vicars chosen by the provincial to replace outgoing priors. I do not believe that this is a case of previously established procedure ultimately finding its formal place in the annual acts. The number of occasions in which provincials filled empty priories with vicars rose from the time the record begins in 1347 into the 1370s. This trajectory corresponds to the rapid rise in the number and prolixity of admonitory statements, to the heightened attention to competency requirements, oversight committees and other procedural changes we have been uncovering. My impression, based upon the following evidence, is that provincials deliberately sidestepped customary electoral practices in order to impose their own men on local friars. Provincial Prior Bernat Sescala relieved seven priors of their office in 1347. He immediately filled three of those vacancies with vicars. In 1350, Nicolau Rosell filled six of eight vacancies with vicars, and in 1351, he named a vicar to each of the seven offices vacated by his removal of priors in that year. The momentum of removals and replacements increased until, in 1376, of the eleven offices made vacant, ten were filled immediately by a vicar named by the provincial chapter. Provincial priors increasingly filled the vacancies with men of their own choosing. Perhaps Bernat Sescala intended to impose vicars as a temporary measure, to fill vacancies until local friars held an election for a replacement. Within a few years, however, Nicolau Rossell, Jaume Domenech, Bernat Ermengol and the other provincials learned that they could impose men of their choosing for longer stays in office. In several instances, provincials removed constitutionally-elected priors in successive years and in those years repeatedly named the same single individual as vicar. Nicolau Rosell, for example, placed Esteve Burdi as vicar in the convent of Tarragona in 1351. Over the course of the year the voting friars of the convent did not elect Burdi as their prior, with the result that in the following year Rossell removed the man elected locally, who remains unnamed in the acts, and again imposed Burdi as vicar. A similar series of events occurred in Lerida and Urgell in 1351 and 1352, in Estella in 1353 and 1354, at both Calatayud and Sant Mateu in 1369 and 1370, and in Tarragona in 1378 and 1379. In each of the two years the provincial removed an elected prior with the single individual of his choosing. If by his first efforts in this direction Sescala conducted a test of his exceptional powers to impose his choice of prior against electoral procedure, his successors appeared determined to confirm those powers as regular practice.

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Some individuals served as vicar on numerous occasions, usually in a single convent, over more than a decade. The convent of Valencia in the years between 1352 and 1368 offers an example. In three of four recorded transfers of local management from a removed elected prior to an imposed vicar, the provincial’s choice of vicar was Berenguer Comitis. Felip Mathey filled vacancies in Manresa in 1350, 1351, 1354 and 1366. Guillem Lupet served as vicar of Majorca, imposed by the provincial chapter, in 1350 and 1363, and he held the same post in Manresa in 1373. The available acts offer 139 instances from 1347 to 1378 of provincials choosing vicars to replace priors elected by locals but removed by provincials. Ninety individuals filled these 139 vacancies. Provincials did not have to be heavy-handed in every instance: among the ninety individuals whose names appear as vicars, many had earlier served as elected priors and several, following their naming as vicars by provincial authority, were elected by the men of the houses upon which provincials imposed them. In many cases however, it seems best to read these repeated impositions of vicars as a concerted effort on the part of provincials to thwart the corporate will of local electors. One step in the process was to create the vacancies, which provincials did frequently after 1347, and, after creating the power vacuum in a locale, they then filled it with men from their own cadre, sometimes repeatedly, until local electors agreed to confirm their choices. By this course of action provincials superseded the customary and constitutionally mandated procedure for electing priors. It is interesting to note that earlier, in 1262, a general chapter tried to advance a similar strategy but encountered too much resistance.84 The trend toward shorter tenures went to extremes in the fifteenth century, at least if we can apply Blasco Martínez’s findings for the Zaragoza convent to other convents. In an incomplete record she counted no less than fifteen changes in tenure from 1350 to 1399. From 1400 to 1482 the priorate of Zaragoza changed hands, if we include the service of vicars, about forty times.85 Martín de San Angel came in and out of the office five times in those years. During the same period

84 Hinnebusch, History I, 218: “An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1262, significantly at a chapter of provincials, to take away a priory’s right to elect its prior when a chapter had removed the previous incumbent. Right of appointment would have been lodged in the absolving body. This radical proposal was too far from the spirit of Dominican law to find further approval.” Cf. MOPH III, 115 and Douais, Acta, 95. 85 Blasco Martínez, Sociologia de una Comunidad Religiosa, 13–20

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the new office of procurator, instituted to relieve priors of their banking role, also had a revolving door. Blasco Martínez has argued that the extremely short tenures up to 1482 – several per year – demonstrate the instability of the administration of the procurator’s office until changes in 1482 improved stability.86 In the years just after 1500 popes Alexander VI and Julius II attempted to fix in law tenures of three and then two years; but the friars balked. Only in the twentieth century did the Order adopt a three-year term with the possibility of a second triennium.87 The fact that removals were frequent and tenures short makes it difficult to imagine local leadership as very effective. Friars in their convents, taking on a new prior on average every three years, and often by mid century one imposed upon them, lacked the steadiness of leadership that might have helped them through tough times. The problem of tenure runs deeper: those in the priorate, except for the few who had longer tenures or served repeatedly in several convents, lacked institutional memory and the administrative competence that they otherwise might have gained. We should add that they probably also lacked confidence. Overall, Dominican systems did not do well in locating those attributes of good management. Indeed, it appears, especially after mid-century, that when priors did assert themselves the friars in their convents rebelled or provincials reacted jealously. Priors, provincials, and the other senior friars who took part in provincial chapters shared a recognition of the increasing difficulties of the priorate and all knew that something needed to be done to correct the conditions created by weak local leadership. In times of great need provincial chapters took special care to acknowledge the confirmation of a consensus upon which to act.88 It should not be assumed, however, that all parties agreed on a single reform agenda.

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Blasco Martínez, Sociologia de un Comunidad Religiosa, 32–34. González Fuente, El Carisma de la Vida Dominicana, 129–130. 88 For instance, a prefatory note to the assignments of 1366, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 129, begins: Et in primis notificamus fratribus universis quod de unanime consilio Diffinitorum Capituli Provincialis, et omnium Magistrorum in Theologia, necnon et plurium Priorum, et Praedicatorem Generalium maiorum, et meliorum de Provincia…. Because such explicit acknowledgment of consensus was rare we should see it as a signal of significant cooperation in an attempt to improve a bad situation. In this case, the province was still reeling from the contested provincial election of 1363, which resulted in large groups of friars across the province refusing to accept orders to move to other convents. More will be said about this in the closing chapter. 87

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Provincial Directives that Weakened Local Authority The extant fourteenth-century acts up to 1378 offer over one hundred carefully targeted edicts criticizing the performance of priors or making increasingly precise changes to the priorate. The effectiveness of any single admonition is difficult to measure, but the compounding effects point to substantial weakening of the authority of priors over local affairs. In the opening years of the century, a few statements in the acts reminded priors about the range and scope of their duties. Priors, provincial authorities recalled, should not easily grant dispensations for eating meat; they should provide adequate clothing to newcomers; they must see that chapter acts be read and observed and liturgical responsibilities met; they must hold their charges accountable to periods of fasting. The statutes on these matters got posited in rather simple terms, with weak procedural mechanisms and few provisions for enforcement. Admonitions directed at the responsibilities of priors became much more rigorous by the 1340s, often directly putting priors in the role of the provincial’s enforcement agent and making more explicit than before the mechanisms for punishing priors who failed to adequately perform according to that new relationship. One of the ways that provincial authorities gained control over local operations was by imposing individuals and committees as intermediaries to make decisions formerly under the control of the prior. Many of these treated financial matters. In 1345, for example, Bernat Sescala and the provincial chapter diffinitorium ordered that no one should hold the goods of outsiders or give over his own goods to an outsider without his prior’s permission. The permission of another prelate was not to substitute. This would seem to have strengthened the authority of the prior, except that the admonition further required that the friar seeking permission must hand his written request to his prior in the presence of three or four elders, leaving the implication that not all priors could be trusted.89 It was clearly the charge of these oversight committees to look over the shoulders of priors as they did their work, to advise them about the conduct of their duties, and to report back to provincial authorities if perceived wrongs were not righted. In 1352

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Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 262.

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Nicolau Rosell accused priors of incurring notable expenses while traveling to provincial chapters, ruling that a prior and his socius might receive a per diem of up to seven solidi to cover legitimate expenses but only after a committee of eight elders established for the purpose in each convent judged the legitimacy of the charges.90 An order confirmed in 1352 and 1353 mandated that no prior should begin any demolition or building construction projects costing more than 500 solidi unless approved by a committee of eight elders.91 Similar advisories put committee oversight upon a prior’s ability to enter into contracts for the sale of his convent’s goods. A statute of 1365, during Jaume Domenech’s tenure, specified that a prior had to receive the permission of the whole convent and then apply for a special license from the prior provincial if he wanted to sell some part of his convent’s goods.92 The order was reissued in 1366.93 It is not clear what was meant by the phrase “the whole convent.” Perhaps the intention was to seek concurrence of the major part of the professed friars voting on the matter in a conventual chapter, although arguments in favor of the sanior pars or a committee of elders can also be made. In 1370 a provincial chapter under Bernat Ermengol’s leadership attempted to clear up any ambiguity: a committee of elders had to give approval for a sale to be executed.94 One purpose of committees of elders was to test, impose and confirm uniform observance of supposed universal norms, and thus to limit local, perhaps arbitrary, variation. In 1353 Nicolau Rossell instructed local prelates to confer with two discrete elders at any time that secondhand evidence of defamation or criminality came to their attention, and that the elders should make an inquiry.95 The provincial

90 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 235–236. Here, incidentally, is an indication that a number of “elders” survived the plague years. One wonders, however, whether these elder friars, having grown up in the relatively lax environment of the 1340s, offered the best support to Rossell’s reform designs. 91 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 254. 92 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 111–112. 93 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 127. 94 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 279. 95 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 252.

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chapter led by Jaume Domenech in 1366 sought specifically to return friars’ outward appearance to a modest and respectable form. Priors were instructed to choose two elders to inspect each and every piece of clothing of each brother to see that it conformed to a standard that specified certain requirements of width and length, although it otherwise relied vaguely upon the elders’ collective imaginings about attire “in the olden days.” Interestingly, the notice specifically brought attention to each prior’s “promise of obedience.”96 Provincial chapters established similar committees to examine the competency of postulants coming into the Order, and to judge the fitness of friars to serve as priests, preachers and confessors. These committees, like the others mentioned, met the dual objective of applying consistent standards and of limiting the discretionary powers of priors. There were many of these oversight committees, not all identical in the number of elders and the structure of their procedures, which leaves us to imagine elders in late medieval Dominican convents considerably weighed down by committee service. By 1363 the priorate had been so weakened that even those priors who intended to discipline their charges were compelled to seek committee approval. An admonition of that year prevents priors from imposing sentences of excommunication unless elders have issued their approval. It is stated clearly enough as the reason for the statute that some priors used excommunication as a means of disenfranchising

96 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 128: Item cum Religiosorum honestitas ex habitu exteriori ab hominibus iudiciis solis efficacius iudicetur, praecipit in virtute sanctae, ac promissae Obedientiae Reverendus pater Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, Prioribus et Praesidentibus huius Provincia universis, quod infra mensem a notitia praesentium adhibitis secum duobus fratribus antiquioribus de Conventu, omnes et singulas vestes fratrum, seu Conventus diligenter circunspiciant, examinent, corrigant, et emendent, taliter quod omnes praedictae vestes remaneant in latitudine, longitudine et alias in forma honesta, et debita secundum quod in provincia ita fuit antiquitus observatum, sic quod vestes mediae ultra genu plusquam quinque digitos prolongentur, quicumque autem frater ultra mensem nodulos in manciis sic poraverint aparenter quod clare exterius cognoscatur, vel alias vestes habuerit notabiliter deficientes et in stictura manicarum seu alias a forma praedicta honesta et debita deviantes, sciat se privatum talibus vestibus, et quod non possit Villam ingredi quousque totaliter conrexerint, et perfecte, quam sententiam quantum ad vestium privationem, et ingressum Villae nunc pro tunc ferimus contra talem fratrem sic deferentem habitum inhonestum, addentes praedictam penam de ingressu Villae incurrat Prior, vel Praesidens qui negligens fuerit in corrigendo vestes praedictas quousque fuerit corrigi, ut mandatur, et etiam quicumque fratres hoc facientes si priori, vel Praesidenti scienter infra triduum neglexerit intimare.

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friars ahead of elections. Even the most diligent and careful priors found themselves hampered by committees and procedures, as in this case by the inability to impose meaningful penalties personally and directly upon wrongdoers.97 The chapter of 1368 renewed the advice. In addition to committees of elders, other individuals gained increased powers to scrutinize priors in the conduct of their duties. The management of a convent’s finances was a regular cause for concern. An admonition of 1352 confirmed an earlier ruling informing priors that they should not hold money belonging to the convent longer than two days, and that they must compute the convent’s financial accounts every month, or no less than every two months.98 The first mention in the provincial acts of a procurator to oversee the prior’s handling of accounts dates to 1353. Those meeting in chapter that year prohibited priors from holding money intended for conventual use for more than ten days, ordered them not to delay in computing accounts for longer than two months, and further indicated that they must make the computation with the aid of a procurator.99 More specificity is gained in 1363 when the chapter ordered that an elder and the procurator should have control of the two keys to the lock on the moneybox.100 Jaume Domenech’s chapter of 1366 asserted that no prior should handle money for the convent, that procurators would compute expenses and that the money box, with a book of accounts, would be locked with two keys, one held by the prior and the other by the procurator.101 Another notice in the same year posited that when a prior left office or moved to another convent he had to make an accounting before presidents and

97 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 95: Item quia multa inconvenientia, et dubia in Capitulo, et in Conventibus sunt exorta pro eo quod Priores, ac Vicarii eorundem indistricte, et de facili excommunicationis sententias promulgarunt ac praecepta multiplicarunt, et quandoque iminente electione, vel tractatu eorum, quae mitenda sunt ad Capitulum Provinciale in fraudem electionum ipsarum, seu tractatuum, idcirco praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de Difinitorum consilio, et assensu, quatenus Praesidentes quicumque non ponant praecepta nec sententias dent nisi pro casu multum necessario et urgente, et tunc de fratrum consilio antiquorum, addicientes supradictis quod Socii Priorum seu tractatus non fiant ante menssem praecedentem inmediate diem assignatum pro Provinciali Capitulo celebrando, si qui vero in praedictis defecerint, noverint se per Priorem Provincialem, vel Capitulum Provinciale acriter puniendos. 98 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239. 99 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 254. 100 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 95. 101 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 126.

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elders and restore any missing funds.102 Whether priors ought to handle a convent’s funds was a question that successive provincial regimes answered in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. In general terms, this series of admonitions on the subject of the convent’s moneybox and registers of accounts underscores the inconsistent treatment of even the most regular activities and demonstrates how fluid the search for solutions to problems could be. It also shows how solutions created new problems: whether a prior held funds for two days or ten was of little consequence in comparison to the more serious issue of how to adequately account for a convent’s resources; an order that priors not hold funds outside of the conventual moneybox had little effect in convents where the prior held the box’s only key, and so provincial chapters slowly devised a system of double locks and dual key-holders. Trust was in short supply even if money was not. The combined influences of committees of elders, groups of examiners, procurators and others worked to limit the powers of local priors. In earlier periods priors were encouraged to seek the council of the elder and wiser brothers when decisions of great importance arose concerning the health of the convents. But that earlier conciliar practice lost its appeal. By the mid fourteenth century provincials and diffinitors redefined conciliar occasions as regularized bureaucratic functions, making it the routine duty of a class of functionaries to serve as intermediaries working at the local level on behalf of provincial authorities. These bureaucratic layers helped to effect the demotion of conventual priors. Provincials also directly employed, as they gained the advantage to do so, their own augmented powers of command. A statement made in 1352 by Nicolau Rosell and his diffinitors is telling. It cites the negligence and laziness of prelates and presidents as the cause of “vast transgressions and the notable collapse” of discipline and honesty in the Order. It seeks the aid of lectors, elders and other men of conscience, asking them to be zealous to inform the provincial prior when in their view their local prior is remiss in giving correction to those who deserve it or if he participates, even passively, in the weakening of observance. In effect this statute created an ongoing, secret scrutiny of priors in addition to the annual tractatus, which along with the profusion of oversight committees already proved debilitating enough to any prior’s

102

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 126.

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authority as the local disciplinarian. Rossell put every senior friar inside every convent to the task of spying on his local leader. The provincial promised to use the information to remove negligent priors from office.103 The next chapter discusses provincials’ increased use of precepts to strengthen the concept and practice of obedience and thus to secure compliance to their dictates. We will see that even those admonitions aimed at strengthening the position of priors by, for example, identifying them as “superiors” (a word only rarely and awkwardly employed in the Order’s first century), had the effect of binding priors to hierarchical and bureaucratic concepts that reduced their autonomy as decision makers. By the 1350s the phrase “we expressly subtract the power from presidents” had made its way into the Dominican administrative lexicon in a way that relieved local priors of their basic responsibilities by imposing upon them new rules and procedures. The extent of this effort to deny priors their historic prerogatives is seen in 1353, when the diffinitorium attempted to take away what had been a constitutional right for more than a century: priors were from that time prohibited from granting dispensations from orders made by general and provincial councils. It might seem certain at this point that priors got caught in a bureaucratic cage, but they did not readily accept the terms offered them, just as rank-and-file friars confronted the bureaucratic attention given them. Conventual priors fought back. But to make it absolutely clear where he drew the battle lines Nicolau Rossell asserted in the 1353 admonition that priors who continued to dispense would be removed

103 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239: Item, cum invenerimus isto anno Provinciam secundum magnam partem in religione, et honestate, et generaliter in temporalibus, et spiritualibus, propter Praelatorum, vel Praesidentium remissionem, negligentiam, et inverecundiam transgressionem vastatam notabiliter, et collapsam, imponimus Lectoribus, et antiquis fratribus universis, et eorum conscientias honeramus, quod cum viderint Conventuum Praesidentes in correctionibus remissos, in procurando pigros, in observantiis regularibus praevaricatores, bonorum temporalium delapidatores, de se ipsis nimis compassivos, et nutritores, cum omnia, vel aliqua viderint supradicta, mox Priori Provinciali cum omni diligentia studeant intimare, ne nostris temporibus ordo sic pereat in ista Provincia, vel veniat in contemptum.

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from office and, in addition, would suffer penalties sufficiently harsh to serve “as a terror and example to others.”104

104 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 253. Item, cum in Actis Capituli Generalis nunc proxime celebrati nobis expresse fuerit impositum instanter, quod per modos in noster capitulo Provinciali exquirendos faceremus omnes dicti Generalis Capituli statuta, et ordinationes per omnes fratres tam subditos quam Praelatos firmiter observatos, idcirco praedicta, et facta impositione, et nostra etiam auctoritate, mandamus in virtute Sanctae Obdientiae et Spiritus Sancti Praesidentibus huius Provinciae universis, quod quociens fratrem aliquem audiverint, vel statuerint praeceptum aliquod obedientiae per quemvis positum ingragasse, de hiis protinus diligenter inquirat quatuor de antiquioribus fratribus Conventus sui ad hoc sibi adiunctis idoneis, sive assumptis, et tunc huius transgressionem fieri, quis confesatus fuerit, aut convinctus, dummodo ei constaret de huius impositione praecepti, ipsum de eorum quotuor antiquorum consilio mox poenae subiiciat graviori, nec in hoc quis Prior Provincialis inferior valeat dispensare in casu quod in huius praecepti transgressionem aliquem fratrem modo deprehenderint antedicto, qui sit vel fuerit Lector, vel Prior, aut Generalis vel Provincialis Capituli Difinitor, vel etiam Praedicator Generalis huius diferant imponere poenam quousque Praesidentes ipsi Priori Provinciali hoc nuncierint quod infra sex dies natalium notitia habeant totaliter intimare, ut in hiis providere prout fuerit equitatis, addicientes praedictis quod ex certa scientia et expresse substrahimus potestatem Praesidentibus huius Provinciae universis dispensandi in aliqua ordinatione, vel paenitentia, vel poena quemcumque in Actis Capituli Generalis, vel Provincialis, vel in ordinationibus dicti Prioris Provincialis ubicumque factis insertis, vel etiam institutis, quod si per quemcumque contrarium temerarie, et proterve, et de facto, set non de iure fuerit intemptatum, praeter hoc quod Prior Provincialis, huius Praesidentes protinus absolvit ab omni oficio prout sibi iniungitur in Actis Capituli Generalis, inponet etiam eisdem paenitentes duriores, taliter quam erit terrorem caeteris, et exemplum.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHALLENGED VOWS Bernat Sescala and those meeting with him issued a carefully worded enjoinder in 1345 that read in part “obedience is a principal foundation of all religion… and nothing of religion remains where obedience is not served.”1 The statement seems indisputable to those who hold obedience to be “the essential monastic virtue,” central to the governance of religious communities and thus impervious to change in the medieval centuries.2 Sescala’s friars, however, operated in a corporate culture cagey about obedience – they were not monks and their obedience was not monkish. It is in that context that Sescala aimed to posit a fiction, with conviction, convincingly, and thus to make it real: if the friars could be made to accept it as traditional but lost, a new conception of obedience might be the antidote to the disorder that plagued his province. The premise that obedience had a weak hold on the imaginations of medieval Dominicans will prick some readers’ sensibilities. The sting should lead us at the outset to admit that talk about obedience is contentious. Not only does it remain central to debates about the governance of religious communities, but it pervades broader arguments about how human societies, religious and secular, confirm loyalties and control dissent.3 Partisans for strong and weak obedience assert rival 1 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 259: “Cum obedientia omnis religionis sit praecipuum fundamentum, quae etiam praefatur victimis quibuscumque, et nichil religionis remaneat ubi obedientia non servatur…” The full text appears later in this chapter. 2 David Knowles, From Pachomius to Ignatius: A Study in the Constitutional History of the Religious Orders (Oxford, 1966), 72. Despite Knowles assertions, epochal changes in the long course of monastic history suggest that the meaning and practice of obedience underwent change. On the story of monastic virtues as “extraordinarily tidy,” see Barbara Rosenwein, “Perennial Prayer at Agaune,” in Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts, Sharon Farmer and Barbara Rosenwein, eds. (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 37–56, at 38. Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, OH, 1977), 32, offers as an example of the malleability of monastic obedience in the reforms at Cîteaux, whose monks sought to free themselves from “blind devotion.” 3 For an introduction to an immense literature see Dennis Wrong, The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society (New York, 1994) and Austin Dacey, The Secular Conscience (New York, 2008), 19 and 59–83. Thomas Blass, “The Milgram

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claims to the sanctity and salubrity of their views, and leave little room for a middle ground.4 We know disobedience when we see it, although it is equally true that obedience is relational, constructed in relationships that do not always meet expectations. In the case of monastic and mendicant orders the problem may perhaps be simplified in this way: two laudable goals – the perfectibility of the individual and the smooth operation of religious communities – remain difficult to reconcile. This was especially true for the fourteenth-century Dominicans, whose organization had a history of overlooking the first part of the equation in order to focus on the friar’s job, as Simon Tugwell has pointed out.5 The presentation that follows is chronological, although it is not central to the argument to reify the boundaries of the three periods I explore. I begin by looking at obedience as the first generations of friars treated it during their Order’s developmental period, from the first decades of the thirteenth century into the 1260s. Much of the evidence presented here is well known, although I have taken it beyond broad discussions of Dominican governing systems to apply it directly to the question of obedience. This section also reviews the relevant scholarship on Dominican obedience since it is the adoption of obedience by the early friars that scholars have examined most closely, having relegated questions of obedience among the fourteenth-century friars to the story of decline that is, at best, a placeholder awaiting a more thorough explanation. The second section follows Dominican obedience into the period when the initial blush of the friars’ popularity began to turn a little grey. In the decades on either side of 1300 the Order of Preachers began to suffer from the same range of serious stresses that Paradigm after 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know about Obedience to Authority,” in Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, ed. Thomas Blass (Mahwah, NJ: 2000), 35–60, reviews the infamous Milgram “obedience experiments” and some of their important implications. For an example of how relationships in a religious context focused principally on obedience can turn to deviance and criminality, see Winston Davis, “Heaven’s Gate: A Study of Religious Obedience,” Nova Religio 2 (2000), 241–267. On medieval and early modern “social discipline,” Paolo Prodi, ed., Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna, 1994). 4 Compare Marie Louise Uhr, “Obedience, a Questionable Virtue,” St. Mark’s Review 173 (1998), 3–9 and Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, The Service and Authority of Obedience (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2008), the Vatican’s recently published summary of Church doctrine on obedience, 5 Simon Tugwell, “The Dominicans,” in The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright and Edward Yarnold, S.J., (Oxford, 1986), 296–300; 297: “Dominican life is defined essentially by the Order’s job, not by the spiritual needs or desires of its members.”

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destabilized the entire Church, although my concern is to explore one of the cracks in the Order’s own foundations, recognizing obedience in the developmental period as one of those areas of “creative tension” that by 1300 was beginning to show its destructive tendencies. Even some of the Order’s leaders, unsure about the tenacity of obedience, treated it gingerly or diluted it in ambiguous explanations. The discussion in these first two sections will be brief, since my main concern is the treatment of obedience in the fourteenth century. In the decades after 1300 administrators had begun to recognize that issuing repetitive advisories from annual chapter meetings did little to correct core functional weakness in the operation of their communities. By the middle of the century, just before the introduction of the plague, strengthening obedience had become a priority recognizable in the record. To succeed at the sensitive task of rehabilitating obedience Sescala and others had to shift its core meaning, making the question of whether and when to obey less a matter to be decided by each friar as a matter of conscience and more a matter of the administrative will of managerial superiors. This was a rhetorical exercise, as it needed to be if administrators were to have any hope of its taking hold. In the short term the effort to strengthen obedience failed: evidence of friars refusing to comply with provincial directives seems fuller around 1370 than it did a decade earlier. From the later vantage point, however, we might consider efforts to strengthen obedience in the fourteenthcentury Province of Aragon as precursors to the fifteenth-century “return” to observance. Obedience in Early Dominican Government The first friars made a promise obedience, although they took a variety of approaches to professing allegiance to Dominic and his enterprise. The customs first approved for the Order by Honorius III identified obedience as a professed vow, but even then members of the Order of Preachers drew only informally, impartially, and intermittently on the form of profession it prescribed.6 As a revised statement of profession

6 Simon Tugwell, “Dominican Profession in the Thirteenth Century,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 53 (1983), 5–52. Hinnebusch, History, I: 285 and 295–298.

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was formalized in the 1230s, after Dominic’s death, the friars promised obedience in the following form: I profess and promise obedience to God and to blessed Mary and to you, Master of the Order of Preachers and to your successors, according to the Rule of blessed Augustine and the constitutions of the friars of the Order of Preachers, that I will be obedient to you and to your successors until death.7

The medieval Dominicans mouthed the word obedience, that is not disputed, but historians have disagreed about how the early friars put it into thought and action. The founding of the mendicant orders early in the thirteenth century raised interpretive difficulties for the noted historian of western Christian religious orders, David Knowles, frustrating his search for continuity in the development of the doctrine of obedience. The organizations founded by Francis and Dominic appeared to him to take two paths. Francis was the wayward one, with a “strikingly original” view; although, subsequent leaders of the Friars Minor steered their order back onto a traditional path. Dominic’s approach, to the contrary, was “wholly traditional.” As a matter of expediency, so that they could get on with the business of preaching, Dominic and his men merely transferred to their situation already established patterns of superior-subordinate relations.8 William Hinnebusch similarly emphasized the traditional, essentially monastic character of Dominican obedience, noting in his survey that “the Order of Preachers shares the basic character of its religious life with all other Institutes.” In Hinnebusch’s estimation obedience is “the queen of the three vows,” “the cornerstone of the religious life.” He further saw his Order as the completion of monasticism, “the most perfect of the monastic organizations produced during the middle ages.”9 While Knowles strenuously disputed this last point, he and Hinnebusch remained in broad agreement about the traditionality of Dominican obedience. Some recent studies continue to posit a wholesale transfer of obedience in monastic guise into the early Dominican Order.10 7 A. H. Thomas, De Oudste Constituties van de Dominicanen (Louvain, 1965) I: 16, cited and translated in Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 23. 8 Knowles, From Pachomius to Ignatius, 72–85. 9 Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols. (New York, 1965/1975), I: 122–123, 129–133, and 169. 10 The traditional view finds its echo in C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism, 82–84: “the internal observance of the Dominican friaries was firmly anchored in the monastic tradition.”

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Consensus, however, even among friar-historians, is shifting away from this assertion of a traditional monastic-Dominican obedience. Hinnebusch drew support for much of his defense of obedience from the writings of Stephen of Salagnac who said that Dominic was a professed canon who could also be counted among monks for the diligence he showed in following what the Rule of Benedict set out regarding fasts, abstinence, silence and other observances and signs of austerity.11 From Stephen’s assessment one might gather that Dominic engaged in a broad borrowing of monastic virtues and practices, including obedience, which is certainly how Hinnebusch sought to portray it.12 As Simon Tugwell has shown, however, despite his appreciation of the Benedictine pedigree Stephen meant to limit his endorsement of monasticism.13 As a second-generation Dominican friar Stephen played his part in a polemic, writing late in the 1270s at a time when the Franciscans and Dominicans, having become the titans of corporate mendicancy, remained engaged in an ongoing battle against secular clergy, monastic leaders, and university officials. Stephen saw the utility in diffusing tensions by accepting monks, especially the most powerful among them, the Cistercians, as spiritual kin. Nonetheless, despite his recognition of monastic precedent, he was quick to promote his own Dominican Order as a distinct improvement, even to the point of accusing the Cistercians of hypocrisy.14 Stephen reported that Dominic called them “Pharisees” because they emphasized perfect observance of their law while departing from the caritas they claimed to espouse.15 Dominic’s followers had reason to believe that by adopting obedience in its traditional monastic form they might perpetuate within their ranks an uncharitable worldview. Indeed, Stephen omitted obedience from his list of the founder’s monastic habits.

11 Stephen of Salagnac, De Quatuor in quibus Deus Praedicatorum ordinem insignivit, ed. Thomas Kaeppeli, MOPH XXII (Rome, 1949), 8–9. 12 Hinnebusch, History, I:121. 13 This paragraph follows Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 19–24. 14 Andrew Jotiscky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and the Past in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002), 115–118, and Frances Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge, 1999), 252, explore Stephen’s treatment of other orders. 15 Van Engen, “Dominic and the Brothers, 11, shows Jordan of Saxony engaged in a similar discourse with monastic tradition, even lifting verbatim a story from Bernard of Clairvaux’s vita to illustrate Dominic’s prophetic birth. Martha G. Newman The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform: 1098–1180 (Stanford, 1996), 193, notes that the Cistercians did not see preaching and care of souls as their business, despite notable exceptions.

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Dominic offered practical examples of the priority of charity over authoritative commands in two stories already recited in the first chapter. In the first, John of Navarre initially refused when Dominic asked him to go to Paris without money, a response to the founder’s wishes that Jordan of Saxony and Stephen of Salagnac both recognized as disobedience. Dominic fell weeping and prayed at John’s feet, then gave him the money. Dominic’s tears and prayers could be interpreted as an effort to humiliate John or otherwise get him to reconsider his defiance; nonetheless, Dominic’s response was not that of a superior expecting obedience, as the Rule of Benedict puts it, “without delay.”16 Hinnebusch, eager to explain why Dominic did not respond more vigorously, asserted a technicality that appears not to hold.17 In the other story Blessed Cecilia recounted the transfer of the convent of St. Mary in Tempulo to Dominic’s authority in 1220, recalling about those events that the nuns refused to obey the Pope and Blessed Dominic. When asked by Innocent III to adopt a recognized rule, Dominic chose the Rule of Augustine, which most observers agree was likely chosen for no greater reason than that it was close at hand, permitted the exercise of pastoral duties, and was flexible enough to meet the evolving needs of new order.18 It was suitably “vague.”19 When Honorius approved the Rule for the Order’s use in late 1216 and early 1217, he also approved customs drawn in large part from the customary of Prémontré, which Dominic and his men went immediately to work amending.20 The early Dominicans immediately began to depart in

16

The Rule of Benedict, Ch. 5. Hinnebusch, History, I: 52 asserts that Dominic did not simply order John because Bishop Fulk’s foundation charter, the effective regulative instrument at the moment indicating that the friars would travel in poverty, had no application outside Fulk’s diocese. John of Navarre made profession into Dominic’s hands on August 8, 1215, in Toulouse, just before Dominic and Bishop Fulk left for Rome. See Tugwell, “Schéma Chronologique de la Vie de Saint Dominique (Spoleto, 2005) 1–24, at 11. 18 Marie-Humbert Vicaire, “Saint Dominique chanoine d’Osma,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 63 (1993), 5–41. Hinnebusch, History, I: 44. 19 Galbraith, Constitution of the Dominican Order, 16 and 34. 20 The prologue has been a battleground for historians. Hinnebusch, History, I: 45, claimed that Dominic adopted the Premonstratensian prologue “verbatim” in order to preserve and adopt for his own order its monastic sensibility. If at all accurate, this could only have been true prior to the general chapter of 1220. Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 455, asserts that in the years after 1220 the friars rid their constitutions of the Premonstratensian customary’s “fuzzy details” and piled on new provisions for the purpose of making a uniquely Dominican administrative document. 17

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fundamental ways from a monastic reading of these texts, doing so to a degree that John Van Engen has called “revolutionary.”21 As regards obedience, the constitutional changes are especially significant on two critical points: the vow professed by friars and the power given to priors to dispense friars from obligations under their rules. The non-monastic character of the profession statement as it was modified in the Order’s first years is striking from the start. Friars pledged obedience to the master general, the only Dominican official named, who was quickly becoming a distant leader to most friars. He sat at the head of the annual general chapter, he wrote infrequent encyclicals and even less often made visitations to far-flung convents across expansive provinces, by which methods he exercised limited moral or administrative control over the individual friars who pledged obedience to him. Friars did not promise obedience, not even indirectly, to any of their more immediate supervisors, i.e., provincial priors, conventual priors, or teaching masters. Some observers have asserted that the declaration of obedience to the master of the Order implicitly subordinated friars to these other officers, but this requires a combination of centralizing, bureaucratic or hierarchical arrangements that are absent from the earliest sources and that, as I am arguing here, would not be fully developed even after significant efforts in the fourteenth century.22 Simon Tugwell insists that the profession statement implied no strong top-down authority subordinating rank-and-file friars. Instead, where it was a purpose of monastic rules to make obedience to religious leaders a measure of obedience to God the Dominicans restored God’s authority as a distinct value explicitly put ahead of human dictates. The Dominican vow thus confirmed what must have seemed obvious to the preaching friars: that the recognition and pursuit of a God-given “grace of preaching” mattered more than the mitigation of self-will under the protective assurance of obedience to human authority.23 Among the earliest changes to the Order’s foundational texts, dated to 1220, was an addition to the prologue to the constitutions that granted liberal dispensation powers to conventual priors. Monastic regimes allowed dispensations from some observances in exceptional circumstances, but the newly-written prologue allowed Dominicans to 21 22 23

Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” 261–295. Vicaire, Saint Dominic and His Times, 211–213; Hinnebusch, History, I:130–131. Tugwell, “Early Dominicans,” 23–24.

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apply dispensations broadly.24 Dominican leaders made regular use of their dispensing powers, in the first instance by relieving friars of the burdens of fasting and rounds of prayer that might weaken their appetite for study. Soon, however, the use of dispensations went well beyond permitting more time for essential study and preaching, to the point that prelates could even relieve friars from the so-called “immutable laws” – prohibitions against eating meat, riding horses, and carrying money.25 Some historians have suggested that dispensations helped to weigh common purpose against each friar’s individual gifts, but theorists in other disciplines understand how this opens the way to freeriders.26 To the degree that the broad dispensation powers granted in the prologue became, as John Van Engen has put it, “a giant escape clause,” they were powers intimately tied to an escape from traditional obedience.27 An additional constitutional counterweight to obedience, a clause in the constitutions dating to 1236, stated that the Rule and constitutions constitute human law and, as such, infractions against them “do not bind under sin.”28 Whereas monastic regimes asserted the divine origin and authority of their rules and constitutions, implying that a breach of their rules contravened God’s will, the Dominicans, to the contrary, specifically distinguished the “interior forum,” the individual’s personal relationship with God, from laws established by men for the purpose of regulating their temporal relationships. In this context the normative understanding of Dominican law held disobedience to a human superior to be of much less consequence than it would have

24 Mandonnet, St. Dominic and His Work, 36. For strikingly different interpretations of the meaning and value of dispensation see Hinnebusch, History, I: 127, and Tugwell, “Early Dominicans,” 22–23. 25 For early examples of dispensation, see Douais, Acta Capitulorum Provincialium, 72. On “immutable laws,” Hinnebusch, History I: 83–84 and 130–131, clearly troubled by the apparent mutability. 26 Compare M. Michèle Mulchahey, “Societas Studii: Dominic’s conception of pastoral care as collaborative study and teaching,” in Domenico di Caleguega e la Nascita dell’Ordine dei Fratri Predicatori (Spoleto 2005), 441–466, at 455, and Patrick McNamara and David Trumbull, An Evolutionary Psychology of Leader-Follower Relations (New York, 2007), 11. 27 John Van Engen, “From Canons to Preachers,” 290–291. 28 Constitutiones ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum secundum redactionem sancti raimundi de Penafort, ed. R. Creytens in “Les constitutions des frères Prêcheurs dans la redaction de s. Raymond de Peñafort,” AFP XVIII (1948), 5–68 at 29. G. Meersseman, “La loi purement pénale d’après les statutes des confréries médievales,” in Mélanges Joseph de Ghellinck (Gembloux, 1951), 975–983.

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possessed in a monastic setting. A friar might incur a temporal penalty, even a harsh one, for breaking the rules that coordinated communal activities, but his illegal action was not necessarily a sinful one.29 A friar was not bound to obedience under pain of sin in matters touching upon his relationship with and responsibilities to his religious community, except in special instances, to be discussed below, in which pain of sin was specifically invoked by imposing an order by precept. The friars’ God-given job, his “grace of preaching,” trumped the traditional obligation of monks in monastic communities to follow the commands of paternalistic and authoritarian leaders. To the rich evidence already surveyed we could add evidence in official titles, in the lack of traditional displays of hierarchy, and in the Order’s representative institutions, all of which indicate that Dominican operations in the first decades were not built on a strong adherence to obedience.30 The first friars adopted corporate values and instituted practices that showed they were not monks, and that their organization was not monastic. In this context, Bernat Sescala’s call to obedience as foundational to the Dominican enterprise appears anomalous, and so we seek further explanation. Obedience in a Period of Reconsideration, 1260s into the 1330s It has been said that the friars preachers “opted out of the race for preferment,” but if charity and occupational integrity motivated the earliest friars, less-than-saintly ambition seems an equally strong motive in the cases of some successors.31 The Order of Preachers saw its most robust growth in the decades after Dominic’s death, leading as early as the 1230s and 1240s to some friars accepting prominent posts in secular and ecclesiastical government. Although many took office with the intention of broadening the reach of the preachers’ pastoral care, such office-holding contributed to a conversion of the Order’s collectivist corporate culture to a meritocratic one that offered rewards to those who demonstrated superior talent, displayed high degrees of effort, or drew on political connections. The transformation heightened the Order’s public reputation as a political force, but the results of the

29 30 31

Tugwell, “Early Dominicans,” 22. Van Engen, “Dominic and his Brothers, 9. See the discussion in Galbraith, Constitution, 178. C. H. Lawrence, The Friars, 136.

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Order’s increasing political prowess were not entirely positive, as they led the friars to adopt a problematic bravado that carried them, as we have already witnessed, into turf battles with other clerics, sexual misconduct, and pecuniary indulgence. While in their outlines these developments are well known, other less appreciated evidence also illustrates how the Order’s success was sufficiently costly that it would eventually make the recovery of obedience an imperative. Humbert of Romans, fifth Master General of the Order, urged his brothers to the keener practice of obedience and humility, although in ways that had extremely limited potential for correcting erring friars. Humbert devoted much of his letter on the three vows to exhorting friars to obedience. Obedience, he insisted, ought to be prompt, simple and active, but also voluntary. Service to God was to be the single focus and end of obedience. In other writings Humbert identified eight conditions under which obedience need not be shown to a prelate, and similarly circumscribed the use of precepts.32 While sagacious, these letters would have left those friars managing provinces and convents hard pressed to find any practical tools against disobedience. Meanwhile, the gap between his words and his brothers’ deeds continued to grow. Indeed, the gap appears as a contradiction in his own writings since, as I have demonstrated, despite his pious counsels and his certain awareness that the quest for honors could do his Order harm, he on occasion boasted to the friars about their Order’s accomplishments. Humbert rightly assessed his Order’s importance – we now take it for granted that in his time, and in no small part as a result of his efforts, the Order rose to a position of supremacy among the mendicant corporations. It remains equally true, nonetheless, that Humbert’s conceit departs from the humility his predecessors sought to promote in their writings. One result of the Order’s growing reputation as an incubator of learned and able men was the rise of a sense of corporate pride in accomplishment, for God, of the craft of preaching. We have collected evidence of the range of ways that workaday friars erred, and we have seen John of Rivalto’s effort around 1300 to excuse them. Much had occurred in the years between Humbert’s susceptibility to corporate pride and John’s effort to excuse disciplinary

32 Humberti de Romanis, Opera de Vita Regulari, ed. Joachim Joseph Berthier, 2 vols. (Marietti, 1956), 1: 2–10; 1: 531–532 and 2: 53.

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backsliding that shows the views of both men participating in a rising tide of ambiguities about obedience. Humbert’s friars, riding the crest of the Order’s expansionary wave, needed the encouragement of their master general to spur them on to still greater achievements. In introducing a logic of corporate pride Humbert had begun to give shape to an emerging awareness of his Order’s corporate honor. John of Rivalto, further from the sources of the Order’s original zeal, and buffeted by anti-mendicant attacks, sought to acknowledge that his Order remained vital even if it had begun to suffer a public relations crisis. Administrators in succeeding generations gave considerable attention to measuring, restoring and defending corporate honor while showing themselves to be much less tolerant than John. When they began to surmise that their corporate institutions, including obedience, were too flexible, they took action to strengthen them. A striking feature of the period in the decades approaching 1300, one in which we see the Order opening up to the philosophical and theological influences exerted upon it from outside, is the debate about the nature of the will, and more directly connected to our subject, the relationship of obedience to the virtuous exercise of the will.33 The position taken by the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas on these matters reiterates and compounds the complexities thus far explored in the thoughts and actions of his predecessors. Writing as a Dominican and writing for Dominican audiences, in Questions 104, 105, and 186 of the Summa Theologiae as well as elsewhere in the Summa and his other writings, Aquinas treated obedience with considerable circumspection. He insisted, unsurprisingly, that the divine will must be obeyed. He went on to insist, however, that absolute obedience to any human agent is a contradiction of divine will. Obedience must be directed toward God; it can neither be promised to nor imposed by human agents, except to the degree that it confirms with divine law.34 This would seem fully in keeping with Simon Tugwell’s interpretation of the Dominican statement of profession in which obedience is shown 33 Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, 1995), 156, cites Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.86. a1. And see the discussion of Chaucer’s narrative counterattack on conservative interpretations of obedience to authority in M.C. Bodden, “Chaucer’s Clerk’s tale: Interrogating ‘Virtue’ Through Violence,” in Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk, eds. ‘A Great Effusion of Blood’? Interpreting Medieval Violence (Toronto, 2004), 216–240, esp. 217–219. 34 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.104.4 and 104.5

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foremost to God, just as it badly fits the assertions of others that various of the Order’s officers are worthy substitutes. Obedience to God is a temporal institution that needs its expression in human affairs. However, even as regards this necessary aspect of obedience, Aquinas put strict limits, saying that obedience can only be expressed through and measured against the particular rules to which one binds himself for the perfection of his soul and the containment of his will. Accordingly, in the context of religious communities, obedience is a measure of the binding nature of each order’s rule, and no superior can bind anyone to anything foreign to the rule which establishes the parameters of authority and subordination.35 While this seems sensible with respect to the monastic orders, it remains problematic when applied to Aquinas’s own Order of Preachers since, as we have seen, the Dominicans safeguarded in the prologue to their constitutions the possibility of release from enforcement of any tenet of the rule. Even the so-called immutable laws, while undergoing no formal abrogation, could be annulled in practice. Treating this conundrum Aquinas posits that, in the final analysis, the one who issues an order and the one to whom it is directed are both moved by a “certain necessity of justice.” Whether to impose obedience and whether to obey are acts of discernment, and sometimes, as we have seen in the sources, these are rival acts.36 The interpretive maze built up by Aquinas, on obedience as on other matters, posed considerable challenges to Dominican policymakers. In the years after his death in 1274 the Order’s teaching masters and administrators gave considerable effort to defending his integration of received Catholic wisdom with the reclaimed Aristotelian corpus. Nonetheless, protracted fights ensued within Dominican ranks about how much teachers should adhere to his doctrine.37 For example, in 1308 an admonition issued by the Province of Rome insisted that the Summa not be read in place of the Lombard’s Sentences, while the General Chapter of 1309, perhaps intending to correct Roman practice, strictly ordered that all lectors and sublectors read and determine 35

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.104.5 and 186.2 Cf. Humbert of Romans, De Vita Regulari, 15. 36 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.104.5 37 For a treatment of rival perspectives within the fourteenth-century Dominican Order on Aquinas’s authority, see Elizabeth Lowe, The Contested Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas: The Controversies between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourçain (New York, 2003).

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according to the doctrine of the venerable doctor Thomas.38 By the time of his canonization in 1323 a small group of advocates had succeeded in having his scholastic synthesis of theology and philosophy adopted as the standard for use in Dominican schools.39 Nonetheless, despite the acceptance in principle of the canonical status of Aquinas’s writings, questions of interpretation and application nagged. General and provincial chapters repeatedly asserted the primacy of those texts, but such assertions remained unanimously vague.40 Dominican leaders could not impose Aquinas’s doctrine upon all of the Order’s members, at least in part because Dominican scholastic tradition encouraged later friars to find logical gaps in his choice of questions and authorities, arguments and categories.41 By the 1330s, as William Courtenay and others have pointed out, the number of Aquinas’s faithful disciples had diminished, and by the last third of the fourteenth century the Order’s leaders had come to admit that Aquinas’ teaching was not sufficiently persuasive as a complete exposition of the Dominican corporate mind.42 The voices of “other holy doctors” could also be heard.43 38 Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 85; Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae, MOPH XX, 169. 39 Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study–”, 141, illustrates how Aquinas’s novel exposition of Christian doctrine presented the Order with the difficulty of straying from its longstanding conservatism in matters of education. 40 Into the 1340s and beyond general chapters reminded friar-intellectuals that they might err even to ask questions that probed too deeply the problems of the Thomistic synthesis, but these reminders underscore the persistence of dissent and the failure of attempts to reach consensus. See, for example, admonitions issued by the general chapters held at Bologna in 1347 and at Besançon in 1353; Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 313, and 350–351. In 1347, administrators of the Province of Aragon, following in principle the edict issued by the general chapter of that year, confirmed an even more rigorous adherence to Thomistic doctrine. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 329–342, at 329. 41 The costs to the Order of more effective censorship of rival teachings were higher than could be paid. For analogous limitations on censorship in later periods, see Annabel Paterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, WI, 1984), and the discussion in Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice, 7–9. 42 William J. Courtenay, Changing Approaches to Fourteenth-Century Thought (Toronto, 2007), 14, and earlier Heiko Oberman, “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” Speculum 53 (1978), 80–93, especially 82–84, which exposes the “myth of the Thomist phalanx.” 43 E.g., in 1378 the provincial and diffinitors of the Province of Aragon meeting in provincial chapter issued a vague reminder that those who teach and study should follow the teachings of Thomas and “other holy doctors.” Goméz García, “Actas,” EV 32 (2002), 366. It is well documented that in the same period political theorists were extending, reshaping and eliding Thomas’s treatment of government and the authority of rulers to suit their own interests and contexts. James M. Blyth, Ideal Government

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Dominican friar-historians continue to disagree about what Aquinas meant to communicate about obedience.44 William Hinnebusch, holding the view that obedience was as strong an institution in Dominican governance as it was in earlier monastic systems, cited as a proof what he called Aquinas’ three claims for obedience.45 To the contrary, Simon Tugwell has emphasized Aquinas’ insistence that obedience must be a free, deliberate and rational act, one that has less bearing on corporate demands than on personal perfection (although perfection in this usage is defined largely by a friar’s betterment of his capabilities as a preacher).46 It is especially telling for Tugwell that Aquinas made obedience analogous to the relationship between a teacher and his disciple. That a good teacher assists the aspirant in his striving for perfection implies reciprocity: neither should the disciple seek to relieve himself of responsibility for his own thoughts and actions by thoughtlessly following the dictates of his master nor should the master coerce or bind the disciple to act against conscience.47 Regardless of the direction one’s disposition bends in this debate, it should be clear that, despite his recognition of the primacy of obedience, Aquinas underscored its limits. Moreover, at the nexus of human and divine law, he appears never to have completely resolved for himself the ambiguities and complexities that confronted him with respect to precept, contempt, and coercive force. The collateral concerns of precept and contempt require attention from us here. Dominican administrators sometimes demanded compliance with their wishes, but the Order’s constitutions and norms strictly limited their capacity to do so. Throughout the thirteenth

and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) demonstrates, for example, how Giles of Rome, who favored monarchy, and the Dominican Ptolemy of Lucca, who abhorred it, both saw themselves as confirming, albeit while also recasting, Thomas’s validation of mixed constitutions. 44 The debate on Thomas’s view of obedience is also taken up by non-friars. See J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge, 1998) and a rebuttal by Sandra Jane Fairbanks, “Aquinas and Obedience to Authority,” Providence: Studies in Western Civilization 6 (2001), 50–56. Schneewind sees Thomas as supporting obedience to authority over against the potential for self-governance. For Fairbanks, Thomas’s conception of reason and free will confirms every individual’s possession of moral and political competencies that limits efforts by others to impose authoritative injunctions. 45 Hinnebusch, History I:129. 46 Tugwell, “The Dominicans,” 296–300; at 297. 47 Tugwell, Early Dominicans, 23.

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century the encyclicals of masters general and the admonitions promulgated annually by general and provincial chapters offered counsels, pious reminders, sage advice and moral example.48 Tone and word choice could transmit the relative weight of a message and the determinedness of its promulgators, but friars expected admonitions not to ring too loudly in their ears. Most admonitory statements promulgated by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century provincial chapters begin with words such as admonemus, mandamus, and volumus, relatively soft words of request that by the first decades of the fourteenth century likely failed to provoke in many friars a high degree of attentiveness.49 By issuing precepts Dominican leaders shifted their weight from moral advice to what we might call statutory moral authority. The early Dominicans understood their constitutions and subsequent legislation to be statements of human law, which did not bind the friars under cost of sin. The same constitutions posited two exceptions to this constitutional understanding of human law as not binding in conscience: cases in which friars showed contempt and cases in which orders were imposed by formal precept. Thus, a friar who showed contempt, for instance by willfully disrespecting an office holder, sinned by doing so.50 In addition, an administrator could demand compliance by formally issuing a precept, an order made compelling by its explicit issuance as binding on pain of sin. Aquinas followed the disposition of his Order in distinguishing counsels from precepts in this way. It is a distinction still recognized in canon law.51 These two exceptions, contempt and precept, might appear broad enough to cover nearly any eventuality in which a superior wanted to see his demands fulfilled; however, through the Order’s first century a corporate culture suspicious of arbitrary authority provided a normative check on accusations of contempt and on the application of precept. Masters general in their encyclicals as well as general and provincial chapter acts regularly cautioned office holders against inappropriate use and overuse of precepts.52 Priors were removed from 48

What Salimbene in the Franciscan context called “pious aspirations;” Webster, Els Menorets, 195. 49 Douais, Acta Provincialium, xxvi–xxvii, offers a limited discussion. 50 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.105.1 51 P. Balkan, “Precept,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Detroit, 2003), 11: 636–637. 52 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae.105.1.3 likewise warns superiors against laying down precepts that are too numerous or burdensome.

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office for imposing precepts too eagerly.53 Importantly, as we will see, early in the fourteenth century the interpretative consensus began to shift: even as general chapters continued to issue orders against overusing precepts, administrators in the provinces of Rome and Aragon acted to normalize the hitherto extraordinary language. Another striking feature of the period around 1300 is the contest that had opened up within the Order between two divergent value systems. Ambition and humility may seem to us incompatible, but both took their place as Dominican operational realities. I have already posited evidence, including reflections on the career of Arnau Burguet, who wore his reputation on his sleeve, cheated in at least one election, and, despite these infractions, finished his days as inquisitor and provincial prior. Burguet possessed a combination of character and skills that other friars regarded highly regardless of his demonstrably limited adherence to well-established constitutional processes and proscriptions. Of course, that ambition, although difficult to control, could be an important and welcomed characteristic in some friars. It was already an old story in Burguet’s time, as I indicated in my earlier reflection on Gerard of Frachet’s didactic account of a brother who initially turned away from the preaching friars because of their arrogance, but who later joined the Order. What appears different in Burguet’s time is that he was among a growing number of friars who ignored altogether the cautionary lessons offered by Gerard and others. We have also seen occasional dispensations turned into a system of compensatory rewards and special privileges, even while those conventual priors, provincial priors, and masters general who offered dispensations recognized the difficulty they were putting themselves and their Order in by doing so. Recall, for instance, the situation that Master General Berengar of Landora faced when making accommodation to lectors in the Province of Aragon. The practices he permitted he recognized as being out of step with Dominican law, although he permitted them because they had become customary. And he did this in almost the same breath that he urgently demanded greater rigor. What I did not mention when I brought his example forward earlier was that

53 Hinnebusch, History I:132 offers a discussion and lists examples. When general chapters published prohibitions by precept, which happened only rarely, it was often either to prevent unlicensed access to papal courts or to see that provincials and conventual priors were diligent in correcting the books that recorded constitutional amendments.

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Berengar held the provincialate of Provence before his election to the Master General’s chair in 1312. If he was not before, that office no doubt made him aware of the range of problems occurring in the provinces, among them the ambitions of students looking for advancement and the confrontations within convents when factions contested the elections of a prior or socius or engaged in politically motivated disputes about the scrutiny of a prior. In fact, the record of Berengar’s reformism is tempered by signs of his own ambitions. His election to the generalate caused dissention, according to Galvano of Fiamma, because those who voted against Berengar saw him as baratarius, a political cheater, who buys and sells offices and takes bribes. Berengar remained as Master General for less than five years, becoming thereafter the archbishop of Compostela. In the instance of his acceptance of that post his humility is also suspect.54 The examples of Arnau Burguet and Master Berengar are important to the story of Dominican obedience. Masters general and provincial priors, and no doubt many other officers and the common brothers, did what they could to draw the Order they loved back to the modesty and humility that characterized the first friars. The acts and letters promulgated after annual chapter meetings recalled, confirmed, and reiterated over and over again constitutional prohibitions. Still, some friars, even some among the most senior and highly placed like Arnau and Berengar, participated in a culture of ambition and dispensation mongering. Given its weak place in the fabric of Dominican institutions, obedience could not compete with the rival tendency to expand the benefits of membership. To summarize: In its first century the Order of Preachers did not entirely abandon obedience – its constitutions echoed monastic sentiments and practice, although friars pledged obedience to God, then Mary, then their master general rather than to a nearby or hands-on human shepherd and father. Humbert of Romans insisted that friars should desire to obey, although he hardly expressed how or to whom, and Thomas Aquinas devoted three chapters of his Summa and more to the subject, where he intensified rather than diminished the ambiguities. These expressions of the value of obedience perhaps had some utility for those friars who turned the ear of their hearts to such things,

54 Galvano Fiamma, Cronica Ordinis Praedicatorum ab ano 1170 usque ad 1333, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, MOPH II (1987), 108 & 109.

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but we know that many had more immediate temporal interests. For workaday friars obedience appears to have played neither a significant role as an aid to personal perfection nor as a useful mechanism for administrative command and control. In its first decades other factors, such as humble and deferential camaraderie in a much-needed preaching mission, stabilized operations and put a normative cap on indiscipline. Later, however, a new set of competing corporate values evolved that opened the Order up to a serious operational crisis. Adherence to strong sense of obedience, had it been in operation, might have contradicted these developments, but because it was absent, mischief and malfeasance created their own self-sustaining breeding ground for Nicolau Rossell’s brood of vipers. An Attempted Reinvigoration of Obedience Evidence of disorder and indiscipline litters the extant annual chapter acts of the Dominican Order in the fourteenth century. We have seen many examples. But we must take care to recognize that as general and provincial chapters sought to sharpen observance in the decades after 1300, the chapter acts begin to show that indiscipline had taken at least two distinct forms. I must now be more careful than I have been heretofore to distinguish these two sorts of behaviors. Each threatened institutional coherence, but only one required the strengthening of obedience. One was a fairly narrow range of clearly aberrant behaviors well outside the friars’ normative understanding of what was permissible. Administrators in the Province of Rome in the year 1301 identified five friars they called incorrigibles, infected and infective (incorrigibiles, infectos et infectivos); these friars they jailed, bound or otherwise constrained until they could be ejected from the Order.55 In 1307, leaders of the same province instructed priors to send bellicose friars to conventual jails along with deceivers, defamers and criminals.56 Fistfights are among the most common examples of this first sort of wrongdoing, as we know. The provinces, like general chapters, treated apostasy with similar immediacy and rigor. Evidence of theft is also common, as in the case of the six chicken thieves in the convent at Cervera. Sins of the 55 56

Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 140. Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 165.

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flesh were a constant temptation for some friars and a cause of scandal that administrators consistently worked to prevent. Late in the 1350s the Provincial Prior of Aragon had to make it clear that friars should not break holes through bedchambers for unlicensed entry and exit. Once outside the confines of their community, whether in the day or at night, a friar might meet with women, visit the local baths, gamble, even sell the convent’s liturgical items.57 These instances of error and abuse illustrate a real gap between the Order’s espoused aims and the dispositions of some friars. These examples of laxity, misdemeanor, and criminality often seem so extreme that we may want to consider them outliers, unrepresentative of the character of the average friar. Moreover, as a matter of routine the Order’s provincial and conventual managers treated such incidents as beyond the bounds of permissible behavior and subjected wrongdoers to severe penalties. One might deduce that administrators could ably confront such activities without a strengthened obedience and that specialist interpretations of the reach of obedience, like those advanced by Thomas Aquinas, were not needed in such cases of the outright abuse of religion. We could almost adopt this as an acceptable view, except that administrators themselves saw these behaviors as infectious, believing that they had deleterious effects on the whole body of the Order’s friars. To the degree that these kinds of behaviors increased over time, they came to represent a dissent into infectious disorder that a stronger conception and practice of obedience might have remedied. Still, provincial authorities believed that the systems of command and control available to them remained sufficient for confronting these kinds of activities, at least to the degree that by their efforts to bolster obedience they could diminish the second broad range of problems and thereby leave even less space for hardened detractors. Such irregular behavior is thus to be distinguished from a second kind of error, quite varied in its manifestations but rooted in or exacerbated by weaknesses in Dominican operative institutions. The course of deliberative assemblies within convents serves as an example, since the conduct of elections and the constitutionally-required scrutinies of officers’ work, while formally regulated as to procedure and timing, appear very regularly in administrative acts as principal sources of

57 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 115. Goméz-García, “Acta,” EV 27 (1997), 279; Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 175.

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conflict. The previous chapter showed that on this subject the provincial chapter acts leave a rich record of rivalry, tumult, and disruption. Individual friars and friar factions worked to disturb, overturn, or recall elections. Priors and subpriors participated when they prevented access to elections and scrutinies, thus bringing the Order’s leadership into disrepute in ways that provincial chapters deemed unquestionably fraudulent (in fraudem electionum ipsarum seu tractatum).58 Electors sometimes claimed to have voted under duress or to have refused to vote in an election rigged against a candidate of their choice. The previous chapter offered several examples of provincial chapter’s ruling on cases that occurred in the convents; although, to be clear, such activities occurred not only within convents but also in the elections in which priors, provincials and masters general participated.59 Berengar of Landora removed Arnau Burguet from the provincialate in 1315, as we have seen, after Burguet and his diffinitors conspired in the previous year to remove conventual priors from office so that they could control the choosing of preachers general. Bernat Puigcercos, to briefly develop a contingent example, served as a provincial diffinitor alongside Arnau Burguet in 1314, and when Berengar of Landora removed Burguet he also removed the diffinitors, including Puigcercos, and they also suffered penalties. When Burguet died in 1325, after his re-election to the provincialate in 1321, friars in the Province of Aragon chose Puigcercos as their new provincial, a post he filled from 1325 to 1332. He thereafter returned to duties that included serving as diffinitor to the provincial chapter of 1342, a chapter charged with electing a new provincial. Puigcercos looked after his own interests, even if not always with complete success. In the provincial election of 1342 that brought Bernat Sescala into the provincialate, Puigcercos attempted to force his views on his co-electors, doing so beyond a point that they could bear, with the result that they brought the disputed election to the attention of the master general, Peter of Palma, himself a new incumbent, who confirmed the election of Sescala and called Puigcercos to appear at the next year’s general chapter to account for his actions.60 Despite constitutions and early records that presumed elections would 58

Robles Sierra, “Acta,” EV 26 (1996), 95. Galvano Fiamma, Cronica Ordinis, 105–108, offers several examples of contentious elections including the one that brought Berengar of Landora to the generalate. 60 Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 85 and 290. 59

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be conducted concordanter et unanimiter, by the end of our period this kind of disruption and discord in elections had become “the normal situation.”61 In total, the increase of these instances of electoral breakdown after mid-century become a portent of the electoral dysfunction that produced the papal schism of 1378 that tore the whole Church in two. Electoral malfunction is matched by other signs of deep institutional distress. Perhaps even more serious than election malfeasance, because it threatened greater public scandal and tarnished corporate honor, was the propensity of friars to seek aid from persons outside the Order on matters related to the Dominicans’ internal business. The involvement of family and friends, business associates and legal advisers “outside the obedience of our Order” grew to enormous proportions over the course of the fourteenth century, reflected in the most numerous and prolix of all admonitions in the extant chapter acts.62 The clearest examples of interference took the form of outsiders securing promotions or privileges for friars. The efforts of outsiders to assist their sons and friends inside the Order exacerbated factionalism within convents walls, fed the friars’ desires for more privileges and dispensations, and led many friars to make judgments independent of their leaders about how best to manage their multiple loyalties.63 Friars revealed the Order’s secrets to outsiders.64 The worst of the interference came to include the production and proliferation of falsified written privileges, which led to impossible attempts by general and provincial chapters to revoke all privileges in an effort to start from scratch.65 Some friars looked to their 61 As José Hinojosa Montalvo describes it in the introduction to Petrus de Arenys, Chronicon, 9. 62 For early examples, see Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX,146 and 161. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 308. Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 63. 63 The problem of mixed loyalties is addressed with considerable subtlety by Bernard Guenée, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1991; originally published Entre l’Eglise et l’Etat, 1987), 23–26. To his treatment of obedience in the context of church and state hierarchies, each increasingly eager to command loyalties, we can add the real demands of family and other local allegiances. 64 E.g., “Acta Romanae,” 226. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 242: quod fratres aliqua fratrum crimina, accusationes, declarationes, correctiones, et alia Ordinis secreta revelent secularibus, et aliis personis extra obedientiam nostri Ordinis constitutis, 65 E.g., Reichert, “Acta capitulorum generalium,” MOPH IV, 40, 41 and 48. In 1363, Jaume Domenech and his diffinitors ordered all priors in the province’s convents to draw up lists of the privileges conceded to friars in their houses. See Robles Sierra,

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brothers inside the Order who, as priests willing to offer absolution on easy terms, simply pardoned their cronies’ errors and absolved them of the penalties imposed by their appointed supervisors. The worst of it came when friars, normalizing their increasing indifference to the disciplinary authority of their elected officials, began to inform each other that they need not adhere to the dictates of the Order’s prelates. It was this kind of disturbed normality, the everyday contortion and distortion of the Order’s historic institutions and processes, that Bernat Sescala felt the need to correct by recalling the foundational value of obedience. By declaring obedience to be foundational, Sescala and his advisors pushed hard to extend the administrative changes that he and others before him had advanced. He also laid groundwork for his successors. In full the admonition with which we began this chapter reads: Since obedience is a principal foundation of all religion, which is to be preferred to any sacrifices, and nothing of religion remains where obedience is not served, we order by precept in virtue of holy obedience that no one shall be audacious enough to teach, either publicly or in secret, or to tell any friars that they need not be obedient to any prelate of the Order, since it is he who holds legitimate confirmation until it happens that he is removed from a prelacy by his superiors. Anyone who disseminates such pestiferous teachings in any way, publicly or in secret, when legitimately convicted of it, will be handed over to the custody of the jailers.66

Sescala wished to treat a specific problem – some friars were telling others to ignore the dictates of their prelates. What is interesting for

“Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 94. In 1365, all graces were revoked and annulled, excepting those issued to masters, inquisitors, and lectors engaged in leading courses; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 109. As one might expect, these admonitions did not end the issuing of new privileges, nor did they prevent claims, real and counterfeit, of privileges granted by higher authorities. Master General Elias Raymond directed a letter to all provincial and conventual priors in 1368 ordering the nullifcation of existing privileges and an overhaul of the system by which privileges were proffered; Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 253–254, cf. 251. 66 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 259: Cum obedientia omnis Religionis sit praecipuum fundamentum, quae etiam praefertur victimis quibuscumque, et nichil religionis remaneat ubi obedientia non servatur, praecipimus in virtute sanctae obedientiae, quod nullus audeat dogmatizare publice vel occulte, nec fratres alios informare quod cuicumque Praelato Ordinis non sit obediendum, ex quod est per illum ad quem spectat legitime confirmatum, quousque constet quod ab officio talis Praelaciae a suis Superioribus sit amotus. Quicumque autem tam pestiferum dogma amodo seminaverit publice seu occulte, cum de hoc legitime convinctus fuerit, carcereriis custodiae mancipetur.

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our purpose is that he approached the problem in an unusual way, bringing together a variety of elements, inferences, and implications that make his position striking and that suggest a new and more forceful direction.67 The first is the level of frustration the wording seems to expose. This is difficult to demonstrate in isolation from admonitory statements produced in earlier years, but its emphasis on tradition, on sacrifice, on the audacity of those whose words are pestiferous, and on the need to resort to jails sets it apart. The admonition leaves the impression of real pain, even shock, that the urgency of the problem had come to require such a tactless response. One of the most novel aspects of the admonition is the way that it equates obedience with precept, making a call to obedience something that must be performed at the cost of sin. No friar, it declares, should be audacious enough to say otherwise. By implication this limits conscience as a moderating element. Despite Aquinas’s clear objection, that “prelates are not to be obeyed in all things” since blind obedience may put a friar’s soul in jeopardy, Sescala insisted that all friars must obey the orders of prelates, and he made it an offense punishable by incarceration for friars to suggest otherwise. In effect, the statement seeks to put individual friars in the position of complying with the dictates of administrative officers regardless of whenever and however those dictates are issued. Refusal to comply rises to a level of disobedience we can call insubordination, and, indeed, the pronouncement is one of the first registered in Dominican records in which a strong enough sense of superior-subordinate relations exists to make it meaningful to consider insubordination as an emerging concept. With this statement obedience moved beyond anything witnessed in earlier Dominican sources, far beyond claims made for it in the Order’s constitutions, in Humbert’s notes on the Rule, or in Thomas Aquinas’s exploration of implications, beyond what general chapters attest and well beyond what many workaday friars in the previous

67 The comparisons may in due course be drawn out in detail, but for the moment it is worth indicating that the Province of Rome issued precepts in 1309 against friars looking to outsiders for aid; in 1323, against friars encouraging others to participate in criminal activities; again, in 1323, against friars revealing the Order’s secrets to outsiders, etc. In 1339 a new section appeared in the published acts headed by the rubric “These are the precepts” (Ista sunt precepta). These indications suggest that the Roman province was ahead of the Province of Aragon in the effort to strengthen obedience. This is not, however, to deny Sescala’s substantive contribution. Kaeppeli, “Acta provinciae Romanae,” MOPH XX, 173, 226, 230.

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century would have considered a fair understanding of their vows, their Rule, and their Order’s constitutions.68 We can also posit with some confidence that the provincial chapter that Sescala led in 1345 imposed this novel conception of obedience not only to regain respect for local prelates – the immediate stated purpose of the admonition – but also to bind friars to a hierarchy of conventual, provincial and universal administrative authorities. Bernat Sescala had crafted a rhetorical sword that later provincials showed no fear in sharpening and drawing in their turn. Their attempts to improve discipline and strengthen bureaucratic administration in the Province of Aragon can be measured to some extent numerically. One measure is an increase in the number and word length of admonitory statements published in the annual chapter acts. Admonitions issued by the province’s annual chapters increased steadily in number from twelve in 1302 to forty-one by 1353. General Chapter admonitions and those from other provinces show a similar propensity. The word count for each body of annual admonitions in the province also rose dramatically, from an average of about five hundred words in the years from 1302 to 1331, to 3,800 in 1345, and to over 4,000 in 1357, before settling back to an average of around 1,500 words by the 1360s. When plotted, the data forms a handsome bell curve with the long and numerous admonitions issued during Nicolau Rossell’s administration at the top. The increased verbiage clearly indicates more than a tendency to redundancy or wordiness: even as the admonitions grew in number and word length, the provincial chapter participants who drew up the chapter acts showed concern for reducing their own prolixity.69 The quantitative measures of an expanded annual output of admonitions signal attempts at substantive operational change, including the rehabilitation of obedience. Into Sescala’s time and thereafter not only did provincials and their provincial chapters in the Province of Aragon issue more admonitions, with more words per admonition, but they also made more admonitions binding as formal precepts. To take one measure, the verb

68 One can also usefully compare it to the encyclical issued by the master general, Peter of Palma, immediately upon his reception of office in 1343. Frühwirth, Litterae Encyclicae, MOPH V (1900), 275–276, which invites all friars to have true obedience, putting their own wills in accord with God and returning to the father through the way of obedience. Unlike the precision of Sescala’s statement, Peter’s injunction seems rather timid. 69 E.g., Robles, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 297.

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precipere, which appears only six times in the thirteen years of extant records of the province from 1302 to 1331, we see fifty-four times in the ten years of available records from 1345 to 1358. Use of the phrase “in virtute sancta obedientia,” an explicit call to obedience and thus an alternative formulation of an order by precept similarly increased into and beyond the 1340s.70 After what could fairly be called a policy of pushing this new conception of obedience for three decades, the provincial chapter of 1375 had the bravado to assert a “precept of obedience” (sub praecepto obedientiae), although perhaps as a last-ditch effort against friars who still seemed disinclined to hear the call.71 Bernat Sescala and later provincials occasionally imposed precepts upon common friars, as in the example I have been giving attention to here, but more often they laid the heavy weight of binding precept upon conventual priors.72 I indicated earlier that extant chapter acts from the Province of Aragon up to the year 1378 record well over 100 admonitory items that question the performance of priors and address changes to the priorate. The effectiveness of any single admonition is difficult to measure, but their compounding effects, produced in part by increased resort to precept, led to a serious weakening of the authority of priors over local affairs. This is not as paradoxical as it may seem. The weakening of the local priorate implied strategic gains for provincials since, by diminishing the place of elected leaders of local convents, provincial priors concentrated in their own office decision-making powers and disciplinary authority. By the 1350s the phrase “we expressly subtract the power from presidents” had made its way into the administrative lexicon in a way that confirms the imposition of new administrative rules and procedures upon priors, lectors, and others carrying out official duties in local convents. In the extant annual chapter acts of the Province of Aragon, such subtraction of powers occurs only twice prior to 1345, in the years 1312 and 1328.73 For the period from 1345 to 1378, however, I count fifteen instances of use of the language.74 70 The phrase can be found, although infrequently, in thirteenth-century encyclicals and chapter acts. Cf. Douais, Acta Provincialium, xxvii. Douais conflates it with other words and phrases in the rhetorical arsenal that that did not bind on pain of sin. 71 Goméz García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 233. 72 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 128. 73 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 125, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 149. 74 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 260; Robles Sierra,” Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 261; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 263; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 278; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 294.

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Finally, a corollary to the imposition of this new conception of obedience is Sescala’s use of the word “superior.” Like other of the words and phrases examined here, this one appeared only occasionally in the Dominican lexicon prior to 1300, although historians often assume its early and regular presence.75 Terms more often employed, such as “prelate,” better fit the implicit understanding of the friars’ relationships with their leaders as administrators and mentors, even supervisors, but not superiors. In the extant acts of the Province of Aragon, the term “superior” appears only once prior to 1345, in an admonition issued in 1310, apparently as a means of protecting the authority of conventual priors against dissenters within their convents.76 After 1345 provincials and diffinitors used the word more regularly – at least eight times from 1345 to 1378 – with a use that was certainly intended, as Sescala’s admonition makes explicit, to sharpen lines of reporting and reify positions in an administrative hierarchy.77 The word meaning disobedient (inobediens) made its first appearance in the extant acts in 1351.78 Conclusion The success of these attempts to change patterns of obedientiary thought and action must be considered over the short and long terms, and remains, to a certain extent, an outstanding question. First to the short term. The changes mentioned above in the number and quality of words appearing in the acts were rhetorical ploys intended first to redirect friars’ thoughts as a way of changing their behaviors. While changes to

75 Gómez-García, “La provincial en el primer siglo de su historia,” in La Provincia Dominicana de Aragón, 42, indicates that Berengar of Landora’s letter to the Province of Aragon in 1314 directs attention to the activities of “los superiores.” Berengar, however, does not use the word “superior.” Recent conceptions can infiltrate our reading of the past and then color what we see. I posit this as an example. 76 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 125: Item prohibemus, in virtute sancte obedientie, et Spiritu Sancti, quod nullus absolvat aliquem fratrem a transgressione precepti superioris, et quantum ad hoc potestatem absolvendi substrahimus a quocumque, volentes talem absolutionem sicut non valet, penitus non valere. 77 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 276; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305–306; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 313; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 237; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 106; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 122; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 267. 78 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 307.

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the reception and application of obedience might conceivably have been propagated by example, the Dominican Order in the midfourteenth century lacked a sufficient number of exemplary friars whereby a disciplinary overhaul by example could reach, we might say, a tipping point. The cave-dwelling extreme asceticism of Sant Dalmau Moner (d. 1341), while it would become a sign of holiness for friars in later generations, remained too far outside the norm in his own time to be much followed. Vincent Ferrer, equally aberrant, arrives later. He became a noteworthy friar only after the Papal Schism that began in 1378, and perhaps in response to that event, which it is said brought him near to death. His sanctity was in reality a fifteenth-century phenomenon.79 Absent contemporary examples of better behavior, the strengthening of obedience required the employ of powerful rhetoric. We should recognize, however, that to move forward a more potent language of obedience was a dangerous gambit for Dominican leaders. The new, tougher, and more numerous assertions of obedience explored here, all aimed at improving administrative control over lax habits and weak systems, had as their target audience a group of men well trained in deciphering the multiple meanings of words and deconstructing the logic of arguments. Our learned friars could see through the dust kicked up by their leaders. Efforts in the Province of Aragon to subordinate and discipline friars – under a newly substantiated obedience, a hierarchical arrangement of officers and a logic of superior-subordinate relations, and a more legalistic reading of annual regulative acts – appear to have reached their apogee in the work of Bernat Sescala’s successor. In the half decade of Nicolau Rossell’s provincialate in the years just after the Black Death, when he was also a powerful inquisitor gaining the recognition that would lead him to the eminence of the cardinalate, he and 79

Nicolau Eymerich composed Moner’s first vita, perhaps as a way of emphasizing, as José Coll put it, “la tendencia contemplativa and austeridad integérrima” at a time when that tendency was in very short supply. Baltasar Sorió, De viris illustribus Provinciae Aragoniae Ordinis, ed. José María de Garganta Fábrega (Valencia, 1950), 54–56, was only the second writer to take up Moner’s case, doing so sometime after 1517. Francisco Diago, in his Historia of 1599, brought more attention to Moner. Moner’s cult did not receive papal confirmation until 1721. See José M. Coll, “El Beato Dalmacio Moner, O.P. Ensayo cronológico de su vida, sus estudios y enseñanzas en la Orden dominicana,” Anales del Instituo de Estudios Gerundenses 2 (1947), 229–243, and Lorenzo Galmés, “Catalogo Hagiographico de la Provincia de Aragón de la Orden de Predicadores,” EV 10 (1980), 183–214 at 202–203. Moner and Vincent Ferrer are the only fourteenth-century figures mentioned in the catalogo of Galmés.

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his chapters made a number of decisive and change-bearing statements with unusual confidence. He and his chapters declared the province’s youth “inutile” in almost the same breath that they called all his brothers “a brood of vipers” and blamed priors and other local officers for “vast transgressions and the notable collapse” of discipline and honesty in the order. An admonition from the chapter acts of 1352 charges priors with imposing the obedience Sescala demanded.80 Rossell’s was a vitriolic, although one can imagine sincerely felt, homiletic attack on the conscience of every friar in his province, aimed at reshaping their thinking and correcting their actions.81 That his sharp words were published at all is an indication that he found some support among some conventual priors and others in leadership positions. We must assume that his reform efforts met with some success. Some of the barbs stuck. Nonetheless, after Rossell left to take up his new office in the papal court at Avignon, the reform efforts in his province rapidly broke down, as I will describe in this book’s epilogue. Structural reform, for the time being, had run its course. Over the longer term obedience continued to undergo a semantic shift, both within and outside the Dominican Order, although not entirely, it must be said, in the direction that Sescala and Rossell would

80 It seeks the aid of lectors, elders and other men of conscience, who are asked to be zealous to inform the provincial prior if they think their local prelate is remiss in giving correction or participates, even in a passive way, in the weakening of observance. This statute thus provides for an ongoing, secret scrutiny of priors in addition to the annual tractatus. The provincial promises to remove negligent priors from office. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239: Item, cum invenerimus isto anno Provinciam secundum magnam partem in religione, et honestate, et generaliter in temporalibus, et spiritualibus, propter Praelatorum, vel Praesidentium remissionem, negligentiam, et inverecundiam transgressionem vastatam notabiliter, et collapsam, imponimus Lectoribus, et antiquis fratribus universis, et eorum conscientias honeramus, quod cum viderint Conventuum Praesidentes in correctionibus remissos, in procurando pigros, in observantiis regularibus praevaricatores, bonorum temporalium delapidatores, de se ipsis nimis compassivos, et nutritores, cum omnia, vel aliqua viderint supradicta, mox Priori Provinciali cum omni diligentia studeant intimare, ne nostris temporibus ordo sic pereat in ista Provincia, vel veniat in contemptum. 81 Ultimately, the provincial’s assertion of the foundational quality of obedience is best understood as an attempt to impose systemic institutional change through a revisionist language of continuity and tradition. The phrase “camouflaged texts” as used by Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1996), 4, captures the sense of this. Also see Stephen Greenblat, “Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V,” in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Ithaca, NY, 1985) 18–47.

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have wanted. While the place of obedience in the Observant Movement, launched by Conrad of Prussia and later spearheaded by Raymond of Capua, the Venetian Giovanni Dominici and others after 1390, needs more study, we understand that those reformers converted some convents to stricter observance, following principles that observers have interpreted as monastic in their orientation and purpose.82 Among the reformers, obedience moved back in the direction of its monastic roots. Still, reform efforts were largely regional and local, and their effectiveness remained partial and incomplete well into the sixteenth century. Rival understandings of the depth and commitment to early Dominican observance persisted, even among reformers.83 The Papal Schism after 1378 also fixed alternative conceptions of obedience in the minds of the friars, among them the notion of multiple, competing “obediences” that encouraged individual friars, convents of friars, and Dominican provinces to follow the lead of their kings and nations in showing loyalty to one pope over another. Efforts by Dominican leaders including Leonardi Dati, Juan de Torquemada, Cajetan and others to repair a divided Church took as their principal aim the restoration of universal allegiance to a single pope, especially in contradiction to efforts to advance the authority of church councils. These leaders sought stronger obedience inside their own Order, although their attempts to address reforms within the Dominican Order were confounded by cries for broader reforms in the Church. The assertion of papal plenitudo potestatis rose to the top of the Dominican corporate agenda, in part because the Order’s strength

82 Hinnebusch, Short History, 99–109; Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, O.P., Historia de la Reforma de la Provincia de España (1450–1550), (Rome, 1939). José María de Garganta, “Los Dominicos de la Provincia de Aragon en la Historia de la Espiritualidad, Siglos XIV–XVII,” Teología Espiritual 1 (1957), 89–112 at 106–107. On “la reforma monástica dominicana,” see De Garganta, “Los Dominicos de la Provincia de Aragon,” Teologia Espiritual 1, 106. Ashley, The Dominicans, 61, admits that “Raymond’s reform, though it saved the Order, also had some unhappy consequences. ‘Monastic observance’ came to overshadow St. Dominic’s single-minded goal of an Order of Preachers.” 83 Michael Tavuzzi, Renaissance Inquisitors: Dominican Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Districts in Northern Italy, 1474–1527, (Leiden, 2007), offers discussion and examples of the continuing friction between observant and conventual Dominican friars in Italy well into the sixteenth century. Two recent studies, James D. Mixson, Poverty’s Proprietors: Ownership and Mortal Sin at the Origins of the Observant Movement (Leiden, 2009) and Michael D. Bailey, “Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages,” Church History 72 (2003), 457–483, also reconsider the timing and nature of Dominican reform.

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derived from controversial privileges granted to it by a papacy, which, if divided, might not continue to give the support the Order needed from it.84 The need to defend the papacy, however, meant that muchneeded change within the Dominican Order had to be treated with care.85 In the middle of the fourteenth century Dominican leaders saw an opportunity to steer friars toward a conception of obedience that would serve to legitimate new claims for hierarchical and authoritative decision making. However, the broad sweep of later events led obedience to develop in ways that disturbed reform efforts. Inside and outside the Dominican Order obedience came more and more to be synonymous with loyalty or allegiance, and drawn more clearly into view for the friars were the very real multiple loyalties, mixed allegiances and rival obediences of family, church and state.86

84 On the symbiotic relationship between Dominican support for the papacy and papal defense of Dominican privileges, and how the relationship worked to limit the order’s interior reform, Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Council of Ferrara-Florence and Dominican Papalism,” in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/39– 1989, ed. Guiseppe Alberigo (Leuven, 1991), 429–443. 85 In his conciliar sermons, for example, Leonardo Dati displayed a willingness to admit a need for moral improvement of individual friars but showed no interest in giving the councils occasion for structural reform. Thomas M. Izbicki, “Reform and obedience in four conciliar sermons by Leonardo Dati, O.P.,” in T.M. Izbicki and C.M. Bellitto, eds., Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, (Leiden, 2000), 174–192. On the symbiotic relationship between Dominican support for the papacy and papal defense of Dominican privileges, and how the relationship worked to limit the order’s interior reform, Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Council of Ferrara-Florence and Dominican Papalilsm,” in Christian Unity: The Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438/39–1989, ed. Guiseppe Alberigo (Leuven, 1991), 429–443. Thomas M. Izbicki, “Reform and obedience in four conciliar sermons by Leonardo Dati, O.P.,” in T.M. Izbicki and C.M. Bellitto, eds., Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, (Leiden, 2000), 174–192. 86 Guenée, Between Church and State, 23–26. Thomas M. Izbicki, “Cajetan’s Attack on Parallels between Church and State,” in Cristianismo nella storia 20 (1999), 81–89. Jean Buridan among others also illustrates the strained relationship between obedience in religion and obedience to the state. For competition between Dominicans and Franciscans in Marseilles in the context of mixed loyalties, see Holly Grieco, “Franciscan inquisition and mendicant rivalry in mid-thirteenth-century Marseilles,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), 275–290.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IN DEFENSE OF CORPORATE HONOR We can properly count the medieval Dominicans among the public relations specialists of their day. It was one of the friars’ principal tasks to enhance the reputation of the universal church, especially by diminishing the allure of heterodoxy.1 Their specialized didactic texts and careful training in the use of those texts as preachers helped them achieve their goal. However, despite the unquestioned early accomplishments of its masters of rhetoric and persuasion, the Order of Preachers before the end of its first century began to suffer from what PR specialists today call a “legitimacy gap,” so that by the middle of the fourteenth century the need to regain, strengthen, and defend the Order’s corporate honor had become a concern of paramount importance.2 In the Province of Aragon, rectifying the crisis of honor meant above all limiting the access of preachers to their activities beyond convent walls. This came to apply not just to troublesome friars but to all friars. Putting restrictions on discursions beyond convent walls served many purposes, becoming for the province’s leaders a means of strengthening the Order’s weak institutions, firming up their command procedures, and restoring corporate dignity. Changes in the conception and practice of friars’ outside work and travel evidently took hold very

1

Personal and family honor in pre-modern Europe has gained scholarly attention. Donald Weinstein, The Captain’s Concubine: Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany (Baltimore, MD, 2000) and Elaine Wertheimer, Honor, Love and Religion in the theatre before Lope de Vega (Newark, DE, 2003) supply useful bibliographies. The relationship between personal reputation, public memory, and the law is explored in Thelma Fenster and Dan Smail, ed., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY, 2003). However, the study of reputation management in medieval organizations is still in its infancy. Corporate honor is left mostly as an implicit reality. 2 Suresh P. Sethi, “Dimensions of Corporate Social Performance: An Analytic Framework,” California Management Review 17 (2005), 58–64; Janet A. Bridges, “Corporate Issues Campaigns: Six Theoretical Approaches,” Communication Theory 14 (2005), 51–77; Dale Neef, Managing Corporate Reputation and Risk (Boston, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003); Joyce Nelson, Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media (Monroe, ME, 1992), 15–17, offers a colorful study of legitimacy gaps.

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slowly, with many setbacks for those in the vanguard of reform. In truth the evidence does not permit an accurate measure of immediate success. Over a longer frame of reference, however, it is clearer that tighter rules of enclosure shifted the balance between active and contemplative elements of in Dominican conventual life, between the active work of preachers outside convents and the prayer, study, and work performed on the inside. By the first decades of the fifteenth century, this shift in the balance of external and interior functions played an important part in reorienting at least a few Dominican friars “back” to monastic observance. Reputation Management A witness at Dominic’s canonization proceedings testified that he had never seen anyone as humble as Dominic, nor anyone who so hated the glory of the world and all the things that brought worldly honor.3 Such sentiments have led many readers to imagine that saints lacked interest in their own reputations. But this oversimplifies. Late medieval social conventions permitted the display of virtuous disposition and behavior as a measure of one’s fama; virtue was in this sense a social tool.4 It is well understood that some saints, Dominic’s contemporary Francis of Assisi among them, applied these conventions to the presentation of their own activities in the public sphere. Certainly, reputation management was not the preserve of saints, but since good works and good intentions mattered when people talked about others, even saints took an interest in managing their own reputations with performances

3 Acta canonizationis sancti Dominici, ed. A. Walz, MOPH XVI (Rome: 1935), 183; as cited in Hinnebusch, History I, 28. 4 The fourteenth-century Florentine Paolo da Certaldo reported: “You can gain good fama in this world by using the virtues and by leaving and driving away from you the vices.” Cited in Thomas Kuehn, “Fama as a Legal Status,” in Fenster and Smail, Fama, 32. James I of Aragon, The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon, a Translation of the Medieval Catalan “Llibre dels Feyts”, trans. and ed. Damian J. Smith and Helena Buffery (Aldershot, 2003), shows us a king who took the question of his own reputation very seriously and who thus busied himself with the task of shaping perceptions about his exemplary character and good deeds. See On the king’s self-fashioning, see Robert I. Burns, S. J., “The Spiritual Life of James the Conqueror King of Arago-Catalonia, 1208–1276: Portrait and Self-Portrait,” Catholic Historical Review, (1976), 1–35, and Donald J. Kagay, “The Line between Memoir and History: James I of Aragon and the Llibre dels Feyts,” Mediterranean Historical Review (1996), 165–176.

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meant to elicit admiration, even if they did so not to reap personal rewards but to model good behavior that others might emulate.5 The founder of the Order of Preachers, a man routinely credited with possessing the highest degree of business acumen, was no exception. Beyond the sources that tell us about the development of Dominic’s personal reputation, substantial evidence shows him shaping the corporate image he wished his group of preachers to possess. Dominic took great care to see that he and his friars manifested in their dress, demeanor and service a unique blend of traditional elements and new aspirations. Only in this way could the preaching friars attract attention away from alternatives that were drawing people into heresy.6 Dominic’s successors likewise gave considerable effort to shaping, and then protecting, the reputation of the Order of Preachers. This image-making process got framed early on in at least three ways. First, the friars had to define themselves as a cadre of men showing sufficient discipline and sacrifice to meet the legal threshold for “stricter” religious associations.7 They must be humble in appearance, willing to renounce possessions, and unified in their pursuit of learned orthodox preaching. Second, they needed to show that they could renounce competition for offices, official honors, and the displays of authority typical of others in the ecclesiastical establishment.8 In both of these arenas the friars renewed ancient rigors but did not create anything new. The third element was the novel one (or, at least, this is how the friars presented their novelty and how their constituents accepted it): Dominic’s followers put themselves in the world, devoting themselves to pastoral care in the public sphere. In truth, as the friars well knew, some monks had always participated in pastoral care, but the friars called attention to their own role in tightening the distinctions between contemplation and service. These aspects of public performance, along with a novel approach to internal operations and a good bit of help from papal potentates and others, helped to make the Order of Preachers, as R. I. Burns put it, 5 E.g., Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in the Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: 1992), who sees reputation management as central function of hagiography. 6 See Vicaire, Dominic and His Times, 187 and Hinnebusch, History I, 120–125. The traditional source for the understanding of Dominic’s willingness and ability to combine new and old elements is Stephen of Salagnac, cited by both authors. 7 Hinnebusch, History I, 91. 8 Lawrence, The Friars, 221.

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“a sociological force of incalculable importance.”9 But an expanding and positive reputation is the highly sensitive result of many factors that the leaders of an organization cannot completely control. After Dominic’s death the Order grew rapidly, but we have seen that much changed in its relationships, its obligations, and the competitive environment in which it operated. Elemental bits of a reputation accumulated, although not only in a single positive direction. Over time, images and attitudes about the Order’s efforts and outcomes, both good and bad, begin to pile up in the minds of observers. Unevenly and unsystematically, the same corporate honor that grew with a seemingly limitless supply of good will became an exhaustible resource. Even as the social and political power of the Dominican friars continued to rise, their Order’s reputation gained complexity and lost its luster. Bernat Sescala, Nicolau Rossell and other Dominican leaders in the middle of the fourteenth century gleaned or intuited this, and so they undertook structural reforms to see that the Order’s corporate reputation would not be wasted. Mission Trouble This section explores the likelihood of two distinct but related exigencies: first, that the Dominican Order over-reached in its capacity to carry out its many diverse missions and, second, that the world of fourteenth-century Europe was moving away from what the friars had to offer. Put another way, in addition to the internal structural deficits encumbered by an aging organization, including the reputational costs brought by the misbehavior of friar-misfits, a widening gap between what the Order offered and what its potential constituents wanted from it weakened Dominican corporate honor. This effected not only the friars’ public reputation but also capped their corporate self-pride, limiting their own sense of who they were. Ramon Llull’s relationship with the Dominicans is worth exploring in a bit more detail at this point since it shows how an outsider, one especially sensitive to the Order’s goals and methods, read the waxing and waning of the Order’s corporate reputation. Llull admired the friars in his youth, although he later took his place among those who cast 9 R. I. Burns, “The Friars of the Sack in Valencia,” Speculum 36 (1961), 435–438, at 435.

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aspersions. His change of mind seems to me to illustrate in microcosm a shift in the public perception of the Order, most especially because Llull linked the Order’s insufficiencies to the poor execution of what he saw as one of its primary missions. The reader may also find that the signal Llull sends about the Order’s mission trouble also gives an indication of what the mutability of the friars’ corporate fama may have felt like on the inside.10 The birth of Ramon Llull to a wealthy noble family in the 1230s on the island of Majorca came soon after the conquest of the Balearics by King James I of Aragon in 1229. The young Llull’s political and religious maturation thus occurred in the context of the consolidation of minority Christian rule over a Muslim majority, a consolidation in which the Dominicans participated and for which they garnered great esteem. Michael Fabra and Berenguer de Castellbisbal, already prominent within the Dominican Order at the time of the conquest, participated alongside James I, not merely by hearing confessions and saying masses before battles but also by participating in offensive and defensive combat actions against their Muslim foes. As compensation for the services of these fighting friars, King James granted the Order a site for a convent in 1231. Despite suggestions by some observers that the Dominicans found it difficult to recruit and establish a foothold on the island, a number of large gifts followed within a few years, some contingent on the friars continuing the work they had begun on a convent-stronghold at the center of the city of Palma. The first surviving act we have by Raymond de Torrelles, the first bishop of Majorca chosen by a papal commission led by the Dominicans Pere de Abalat and Raymond Penyafort, is a gift to the Order of Preachers of a tenth of his revenues generated from the wealthy neighborhood of Almudayna.11 A few years later, shortly after the fall of the Muslim city of Valencia in 1239 to the forces of King James, a council presided over by the archbishop of Tarragona, attended by his suffragan bishops “with the Franciscans and the Dominicans” met to elect the conquered region’s first bishop. In announcing to King James their choice, the Dominican Berengar of Castellbisbal, the attendees called him “the most honored among your

10 11

My argument here follows Bonner, “Llull and the Dominicans.” Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 66 and 71–72.

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eminent personages.”12 Here are early indications that the Order had opened itself up to a richer conception of its corporate honor. Its reputation was changing, as it had to do once the friars began to lay claim to bishoprics and to the rights and privileges granted by popes and kings over university teaching posts, preaching territories, service as confessors, bequest and burial incomes, etc. By the 1240s the Order could count a rapidly growing number of ecclesiastical princes among its members.13 Llull may have sought to join the preachers as a young man, although evidence in his own biographical writings makes the matter uncertain. There is more support for his becoming a Franciscan tertiary late in life. In any event he certainly recognized the social clout of the Dominicans and their role in the organization of Christian power on the island of his birth. His interest in the preaching friars had in great part to do with their dream of converting Jews and Muslims to Christianity. But they would disappoint him. At issue for us is whether the Dominican Order constructed a conversion policy, how effective that policy turned out to be, and what Llull did in response to his reading of Dominican proselytizing efforts. Robin Vose has recently argued that there existed no consistent Dominican policy of conversion but only on-and-off-again attempts to proselytize. The Dominicans wanted to convert non-Christians, but found it very difficult to do so, and so what might be called a policy remained inchoate, in such a situation of flux that it could not be codified and promulgated for broad application.14 Whatever might have counted toward the creation of an operationalized plan for an ongoing conversion campaign, the most significant contributions appear to have come largely as a result of the interests of individual friars. For instance, Ramon Penyafort, one of the Dominican Order’s greatest canonists and its third master general, saw it as part of the corporate project of the Church and of his Order to convert Jews and Muslims, at least under some circumstances, from false belief to Christian truth. In his Summa de matrimonio, part of his larger Summa de poenitentia produced around 1225, he insisted that mixed marriages could occur only when the non-Christian party converted, that the children of such

12 13 14

Burns, Crusader Kingdom, 22 and 40–42. Lawrence, The Friars, 222. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews.

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marriages were to remain Christian if the marriages ended, that Christians could not serve in Jewish households or, if they did, they were to remain free to practice their faith without compulsion to convert. Christians, he said, had an obligation to proselytize among the Jewish or Muslim slaves or servants in their custody. Over the course of his very long life, he became increasingly desirous to separate Jews and Christians, to isolate and demarcate Jews, especially Jewish leaders, to destroy Talmudic books and limit the public exercise of Jewish belief and practice. His leadership of other Dominican friars in campaigns to convert the Jews of Barcelona, especially through the Disputation of 1263, is legendary.15 Despite the individual ambitions of Penyafort and his followers, and of others with similar interests, attempts by Dominicans to convert Jews and Muslims found little success. There were, as Robert Burns pointed out, “ups and downs.” Studying Dominican efforts in North Africa, Burns concluded that the dream of conversion “waxed strongest in the middle of the thirteenth century and again at century’s end; then it waned and forever died.”16 In the Dominican Province of Aragon, there were a few hits, but more misses, and Burns’ conclusion applies there, too, at least until the period of forced conversions and exiles that came in the fifteenth century. The lack of quick success in Dominican conversion efforts led some of the Order’s leaders to waffle about what direction to take. Already in the middle of the thirteenth century, Humbert of Romans, the fifth Master General of the Dominicans, who was initially supportive of conversion campaigns, “failed to maintain his initial interest and ultimately chose to side with crusade proponents against the idealism of his more optimistic confreres.”17 Aquinas developed a rationale, already signaled by earlier writers, to explain the failure of attempts to successfully proselytize: as a covenant revealed by God to man through Christ, Christian truth could not be proved, only accepted as the infallible alternative to the errors shown to exist in the books of false believers. Despite the efforts of his confreres to develop rational strategies for

15 E.g., Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: the Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath (Berkeley, 1992). 16 Robert I. Burns, “Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: The ThirteenthCentury Dream of Conversion,” American Historical Review 76 (1971), 1386–1434, at 1387 and 1391. 17 Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 43–50; 44.

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opposing Jewish and Muslim error with Christian truth, Aquinas finally assented to the troubling fact that the positive results of conversion efforts were meager. The Christian faith could not be proved by rational arguments even when its leading dogmatists grounded those arguments in their knowledge of the apparent deficiencies of nonChristian texts.18 The full weight of the Order of Preachers seemed unable to prevail at what was becoming to Llull a most essential task. Having grown aware of the deficits of the Dominican approach, he became increasingly critical, frustrated even, about what he saw as a failing effort, one that might bring lasting harm to the long term prospects for proselytizing among non-believers. Dominicans might try to disprove the tenets of non-Christian beliefs, but they possessed nothing in their arsenal with which to convince non-Christians of the special inheritance of Christianity.19 Llull began to develop his own very different ideas about the conversion of non-Christians. What emerged from his reflection upon the problem was his Ars Magna, an approach to proving general truths that incorporated Dominican rational demonstration with Franciscan mysticism in a way he believed was the surest method to see transfers of religious allegiance. Ultimately, Llull found no more success than the friars he criticized; although, in the last decades of his life, Llull’s confidence in his own formula for bringing non-believers to the faith increased in proportion to what he perceived as the Dominican Order’s organizational torpor, and his criticisms of the Order of Preachers grew sharper as a consequence. He nearly died a martyr’s death in Tunis, failing, just like the Dominican Ramón Martí before him, to make a convincing argument before a Muslim king. In the end, the “two divergent apologetics” of Martí and Lull both failed.20As John Tolan has concluded, “Ramon Llull was right in his critique of [Dominican] ineffectiveness, though Llull’s own method proved even less fruitful.”21

18

Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 51–59; Jeremy Cohen, Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY: 1982). 19 John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the European Imagination (New York, 2002), 256. 20 Eusebi Colomer i Pous, El pensament als països catalans durant l’Edat Mitjana i el Renaixement i Movimientos de renovación: Humanismo y Renacimiento (Barcelona, 1997), 181–238; “dues apologètiques divergents” at 181. 21 Tolan, Saracens, 254

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It appears that by the first decades of the fourteenth century, after several decades of failed attempts to forge an effective strategy toward the conversion of non-Christians, Dominican leaders grew anxious and began to make some hazardous choices. Already, at the time of the Disputations of 1263, King James I had to put limits on the friars’ efforts to burn Talmudic books or to force Jews to hear their sermons. Later kings also acted to protect their Jews, as royal treasure, from attacks. To offer one example from within the Province of Aragon, in February of 1323 the Dominican inquisitor Bernat Puigcercos, along with the bishop of Tarragona, condemned 21 named Jews for crimes touching depraved heresy. Their judgment ordered the Jews’ goods confiscated. A document issued by James II on March 1 of the same year, confirms that these individuals were justly condemned and that their properties should be confiscated, but it also settled the case by absolving the condemned based upon “humble supplications made to us.” Beyond restoring their confiscated properties, King James also agreed to pay to them the hefty sum of 15,000 Barcelona sueldos.22 The Dominicans did not always do the bidding of kings, even when they intended the benefit of universal Christendom. Likewise, although kings very often called into action on their behalf the Order’s corps of well-trained, aggressive defenders of Christendom, the fulfillment of royal objectives sometimes made it necessary to frustrate the efforts of the Church, the Order, and its friars. Mounting frustrations, perhaps even a growing sense of failure, as well as royal and other interventions against the Order’s conversion efforts became likely factors in some egregious cases of dissimulation. Alfonso Buenhombre, a Dominican well-schooled in Arabic and Hebrew who traveled extensively into Saracen lands, became bishop of Marrakesh in 1343. While there, Alfonso claimed to have found an Arabic text, which he translated into Latin. This Disputation of the Saracen Abû Tâlib and the Jew Samuel, purported to be a series of letters in which a Muslim and a Jew, comparing their scriptures to discern the superiority of one over the other, ultimately abandon both and turn to Christianity. The Disputation, we now know, was a pious fraud, most likely produced by Buenhombre as an antidote to his Order’s infirm proselytizing efforts. He also produced an anti-Jewish text that he

22 Moshe A. Shaltiel-Gracian, The Shaltiel Manuscripts: Catalunya 1061–1481 (Lincoln, NE, 2004), esp. 126–129.

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claimed was written by a Jewish rabbi in Morocco. “Alfonso Buenhombre’s hoax,” as John Tolan assesses it, “epitomizes the failure of the Dominican ambition to convert the Jewish and Muslim worlds to Christianity through disputation.”23 The difficulty of properly discerning and managing mission integrity encompassed more than the conversion of non-Christians. The inquisitorial role, which for many leading Dominican friars served as an essential tangent to the Order’s principal mission of preaching and the care of souls, grew more difficult as the thirteenth century moved into the fourteenth. In early confrontations between Dominican inquisitors and the depraved enemies of Christendom, the Dominicans appear most often to have been on the side of the Christian body politic, by which I mean that political elites and the broad majority of interested laity supported the friars’ attacks upon those who most flagrantly resisted the Christian social order. A few of the more zealous early friars found martyrdom in their confrontations with heretical Cathars and others, after which the Order’s propagandists found some success at spinning the deaths of inquisitor saints to their corporate advantage.24 Later, however, positive feelings about the friars’ inquisitorial methods became more difficult to generate. Friar inquisitors and their brothers in the Order had to bear angry jeers and noxious effigies among the other signs of dissent that would-be targets and their supporters could generate. The inquisitorial role of Dominicans in the Province of Aragon is beyond the scope of this book, although a few comments will help to confirm what a growing body of recent research has shown, which is that as inquisitors faced increasing popular resistance to their work, the inquisitorial role itself had the potential to diminish Dominican corporate honor. In our period at least half of the provincial priors of the Province of Aragon had experience as inquisitors either immediately before, during, or after taking up the provincialate. That is, from the province’s inception in 1301 until the start of the papal schism, at least eight of sixteen men held both offices.25 The record of their

23 Tolan, Saracens, 254–255. Ramón Hernandez, “El Arabista Medieval Alfonso Buenhombre,” Anámnesis: revista semestral de investigación teológica 11 (2001), 105–136. 24 Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution, esp. 59. 25 Diago, Historia, in the unpaginated index of the Order’s illustrious personages that begins his account and elsewhere, identifies six men as inquisitors general of

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activities suggests that the Dominicans who held the office of inquisitor of depraved heresy and those who held positions of management over Dominican internal operations shared similar intellectual backgrounds and administrative experience. Popes, bishops and princes named friars to the inquisitorial office in part because they knew that these men possessed leadership experience within their own Dominican communities. Similarly, whether the medieval populace saw inquisitors as friends or foes, they knew them to be part of an extended Dominican family.26 While the provincial acts and many other of the Order’s own records leave inquisitorial business mostly outside their purview, it would be wrong to consider the inquisitors’ role entirely separate from the administrative life of the Order, just as inquisitorial injustices, whether infrequent or not, redounded negatively to the Order’s honor. The best known Dominican inquisitor and administrator operative in the fourteenth-century Province of Aragon was Nicolau Eymeric, writer of the Directorium Inquisitorum, a standard reference for inquisitors into the seventeenth century. He entered the Dominican Order’s convent of Gerona in 1334, at the age of fourteen, where he studied under Dalmacio Moner before the saintly Moner retreated to a cave hermitage. Eymerich continued his studies in Toulouse and Paris, and then replaced Moner as teacher of theology in Gerona. Eymerich held many important posts thereafter, despite what appears to have been a penchant for finding himself at the center of controversy. In 1357, Eymerich replaced Nicolau Rossell as Inquisitor General of Aragon after Rossell, who had held simultaneously the post of provincial prior, became cardinal of the Church. As inquisitor, Eymerich earned the animosity of King Peter IV of Aragon, who eventually sought to have him removed from office because of what the king probably rightly perceived to be an overzealous attack upon the Franciscan Nicolas of Calabria. In 1362 Eymerich became vicar general of the

Aragon: Bernat Peregrí, Arnau Burguet, Bernat de Puigcercos, Nicolau Rossell, Juan Gomir, Bernat Ermengaud, and Nicolau Eymerich. He lists Jaune Domenech as an inquisidor particular. 26 We have as testimony many examples of attacks on entire Dominican communities that came in response to the decisions of inquisitors. Alan Friedlander, Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle Against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society; Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution; and Petersen, “The Politics of Sanctity,” offer colorful examples.

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Province of Aragon and within months gained election to the provincialate, although questions about the legitimacy of the election caused such disturbance inside the Order that Urban VI intervened to nullify his election and confirmed Jaume Domenech as provincial.27 By the late 1360s, Eymerich had turned his attention to the writings of Ramon Llull and had begun to investigate a number of Llull’s followers, Llullists, who turned to the king for protection. King Peter ordered Eymerich not to preach against the Llullists in Barcelona, which Eymerich could not bear to do, and when Eymerich persisted and fought back to the point of supporting a revolt against the king, Peter drove Eymerich into exile 1376. In 1381 Eymerich returned to Aragon, at which time his continued attacks on Llullists so angered Peter IV that the king threatened to see him drowned. During the reign of Peter’s son John, Eymeric caused considerable violence in Valencia by threatening to bring charges of heresy against the entire town. John, while initially supportive of Eymerich’s anti-Llullist campaign, tired of Eymerich’s methods, wrote a letter to Clement VII in which he called the inquisitor a diabolicus fratrem, and forced him into another exile in Avignon. Surviving the threats and reprisals of both kings, Eymerich died in 1396.28 The myth and reality of Eymerich’s inquisitorial rabidity give him a unique place among Dominican inquisitors.29 All the same, what we find discomforting about his work history are principles, tactics, and, we might add, a degree of paranoia, that others in his Order shared. Like Alfonso Buenhombre, Eymeric was not above falsifying documents when need arose, thus lending credence to the accusation, a common one by his time, that Dominican inquisitors abusively manipulated their records.30 We have seen that Eymerich, like Bernat 27

This episode will be treated in more detail in the Epilogue. Josep Brugada i Gutiérrez-Ravé, Nicolau Eimeric (1320–1399) i la polèmica inquisitorial (Barcelona, 1998) and Jaume de Puig i Oliver, “Nicolás Eymerich, un inquisidor discutido,” in Praedicatores Inquisitores I: The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition. Acts of the First International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition (Rome, 2004), 545–593, offer the fullest treatments. 29 His legendary nastiness has even become the subject of an adventure game spun from a series of recent novels by Valerio Evangelisti. Nicholas Eymerich, Inquisitor: The Plague, by Koala Games (2010), pits the “cruel man” against a populace made crazy by a plague and demon possession. 30 Jaume de Puig i Oliver, “Notes Sobre l’Actualizacío Inquisitorial de Nicolau Eimeric,” Revista Catalana de Teología 28 (2003), 223–230, cites examples of Eymerich falsifying Llullist texts, identifying them as an example of the broad corruption of theological thinking of inquisitors in the fourteenth century. 28

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Puigcercos before him, did not always garner the support of his king even when he sought to serve what he believed were his king’s interest. Eymerich’s legacy includes works authored by his critics and enemies, discourses and diatribes which as Laureano Robles notes are “copious and abundant.”31 Bernat Puigcercos and, before him, the inquisitor Martin de Atheca, similarly became targets of anti-inquisitorial treatises. The title of Arnau of Vilanova’s disquisition against Martin, Antidotum contra venenum effusam per fratrem Martinum de Atheca predicatorem, is ironic as a signal from outside the Order of the venomous atmosphere that Nicolau Rossell saw in action inside Dominican convents.32 Indeed, the “arnaldistas” appear to have found an antidote. Despite more than a century of efforts to destroy them, Dominican inquisitors were still trying and failing to attack them after 1400. Into the eighteenth century Villanova and his followers as well as Llull and the Llulists continued to fascinate members of the Dominican Order, perhaps for the very reason that the friars seemed unable to complete the task they had set for themselves.33 Much of the activity deemed heretical by the friars and that they worked so hard to combat had to do with atypical forms of communal association – beghards and beguines, for example – and with attempts by members of those communities to preach to other members for their edification. The number and types of these communities increased rather than decreased even as the friars, as preachers and legislators, sought to limit them. The prevalence of lay preaching, reading, and other activities seen by the friars and other ecclesiastical leaders as potentially dangerous also continued despite the friars best efforts to abated the practices. An analysis of the decreasing reception of the friars’ message can be taken further, but the point should be clear even

31 Laureano Robles, Escritores dominicos de la Corona de Aragon, Siglox XIII–XV (Salamanca, 1972), 167. 32 Joaquin Carreras Artua, “La polémica gerundense sobre el Anticristo entre Arnau de Vilanova y los Dominicos,” Anales del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses 5 (1950), 5–58, offers evidence against Bernat Puigcercos from Arnau of Vilanova’s Denuntiationes Gerundenses contra Bernardum de Podiocercoso,o.p. On Arnau’s tract against Martin de Atheca see Robles, Escritores dominicos, 96. On the relationship between Puigcercos and Vilanova, see José María Coll, “El Beato Dalmacio de Moner, O.P. y los hombres de su tiempo,” 23–24. 33 José María Coll, “Fr. Felipe Puigserver, O.P. Solicita del Convento Dominicano de Gerona. El ‘Fascinatio Lullistarum’de Eymerich,” Annals de Institut d’Estudis Geronins 9 (1954), 163–170.

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from these few lines that the friars had fewer and fewer reasons as time passed to celebrate their monopolization of preaching.34 The Dominican Lexicon of Scandal and Honor As the friars gained a reputation and social capital accrued to the Order a vocabulary of reputation management, in particular a concern for limiting internal threats to corporate honor, infiltrated internal administrative documents. The provincial acts of the Province of Provence issued at Toulouse in the year 1239, for instance, cautioned friars to offer letters of support or affiliation only to persons of sound reputation.35 An admonition of 1244 from the same province sought to restrict brothers from entering into business that might defame the Order.36 One of the earliest extant mentions of scandal is found in an admonition from the year 1254.37 The practice had developed of celebrating the feast days of Dominic and Peter of Verona with meals to which the friars invited benefactors. Provincial leaders accepted that friars in their locales wished to honor the accomplishments of their founder and a legendary Dominican martyr with special anniversary meals, and they no doubt recognized that the feast afforded an opportunity to show hospitality and thanksgiving to supporters. But celebrations can generate excess, and in this case two possible concerns were likely at the root of the injunction. First, if lay guests acted inappropriately within the confines of Dominican convents, then the Order might be held to account for its permissiveness. Alternatively, to the degree that the Order’s benefactors held the friars to a high standard of personal and communal poverty, including very modest meals, the perception of excess generated by a convent’s celebrations might incur negative publicity, however modest the feast might actually be. Authorities in Provence determined that they could not suffer the risk; perceptions

34 Carolyn Muessig, “Sermon, Preacher, and Society in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002), 73–91, addresses some of these developments. 35 Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 9: Item, littere testimoniales seu familiaritatis non dentur nisi personis que fuerint bone fame. 36 Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 27: Item, quod inquisitores non sustineant quod aliquid detur fratribus de negotio, quia possemus infamari.” 37 Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 59: Item, caveant fratres de cetero diligenter ne seculares invitent in festo beati Dominici vel beati Petri propter scandala que contingere possunt.

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about the Order’s sense of propriety had to be defended, even at the cost of refusing to show hospitality. In an encyclical of 1255 Master General Humbert of Romans asserted that Francis, Dominic and other early friars brought honor upon themselves through the example of mutual charity that they showed each other. This was part of Humbert’s broader campaign to engage the Dominicans and Franciscans in collusion against the secular clergy and university masters who were fast becoming the enemies of both orders.38 In the same letter Humbert invoked the word scandal to indicate that it was the very thing that the two founders worked diligently and prudently to avoid.39 The attention we gave in earlier chapters to ambition and pride showed Humbert praising the friars for their corporate accomplishments in an encyclical of 1260, in which he reminded his charges to beware of haughtiness even as he seemed more than willing to boast about the friars’ corporate achievements. On the one hand he knew that the Dominicans had many adversaries, and that friars who showed pride in themselves gave advantage to the Order’s enemies, fueling their complaints and opening the Order up to scandal.40 On the other hand, as one of the first friars on record to explicitly treat Dominican corporate honor, he regarded the Order’s reputation highly. Perhaps the best-documented scandal that threatened to diminish the reputation of the Order in the thirteenth century began in the 1260s and rocked the Order in the century’s closing decades. At the heart of the scandal, the bishop of Zamora accused local Dominican friars and the nuns of a local convent at least partially affiliated with the Order of “rustic intimacy,” as Peter Linehan put it with polite sarcasm.41 Munio of Zamora, one of the accused, was later elected to the office of Master General of the Dominican Order; that was in 1285, after the Dominicans 38

Brett, Humbert of Romans, 22–28. Reichert, Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 27: O quantum exemplum mutue caritatis et pacis reliquerunt nobis patres nostri beatus Franciscus et beatus Dominicus ceterique fratres nostri primitivi… honore se ipsos proveniendo, profectui mutuo congaudendo, alternis se preconiis extellendo, utilitates mutuas promovendo fideliter, a scandalis et turbacionibus alterutris caendo cum summa diligencia et prudencia. 40 Reichert, Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 53: Habemus, sicut experiemento novistis, adversaries multos, paratos ad persequendam, paratos ad obloquendum; and Reichert, Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 59: Adhuc multi fratres insolenciis multis ordinem scandalizare non cessant. 41 Peter Linehan, The Ladies of Zamora, 1. 39

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had appeared to have bested the bishop in what seemed a clear attempt on his part to smear the Order’s reputation. In 1292, however, Pope Nicholas IV deposed Munio. Perhaps Munio’s attempts to coverup unraveled, or perhaps, as William Hinnebusch and earlier friarhistorians have taken pains to suggest, the pope had his own unwholesome motives for removing the Dominican master general.42 In any event, the depositions taken from the ladies of the convent at Zamora are littered with accusations of slanderous and shocking language, of the singing of lewd songs, and of not-so-secret sex. One word appears repeatedly as the sum and consequence of all that transpired: scandal.43 The prominence of the Zamora affair and, ultimately the deposition of Munio from the generalate of the Dominican Order, may have helped to legitimize arguments for the division of the Order’s Spanish Province. It should be remembered that the first talk of division began in 1268 and that the split creating the Province of Aragon finally occurred in 1301. Even if the Castilian Munio was deposed unjustly, not because of his scandalous affairs but because his management policies angered a vengeful pope, his removal would likely have caused members of the province to feel the sting to their Order’s reputation in their locales. To the friars of the “nations” of Catalonia, Aragon, and Navarre, this might have served as useful ammunition with which to win the internal political battle they had been fighting for decades to attain a separate juridical and territorial identity. The word scandal appears only rarely in the acts and encyclicals of the thirteenth century. It is nearly absent from the extant acts of the Province of Aragon before the year 1345, appearing in fact only two times, once in 1302 and again in 1304, and a third time in the letter Berengar of Landora sent to the province in 1314, which was subsequently copied into the recorded acts. I will review these instances before turning to the acts of 1345 and later in which the language of scandal and honor becomes very prevalent. The admonition in the acts of 1302 ordered priors and prelates in their convents to take better care when pairing friars together for work beyond convent walls. From the earliest days the Order customarily sent out friars in pairs. The pairing of friars followed accepted notions about the preaching activities of Jesus’ disciples, but it also served a

42 43

Hinnebusch, History I, 225–228. Linehan, Ladies of Zamora, 163–174.

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disciplinary function in that each could serve as a check on the other’s behavior. However, as Bernat Peregrí and his diffinitors who produced the admonition well knew, sometimes pairs of friars conspired in some mischief. An injunction issued by the chapter of the Province of Spain meeting in Barcelona in 1299 noted the possibility of wrongdoing and asked paired brothers to remain together, within eyeshot of one another.44 Peregrí clearly believed that the earlier position statement had not gone far enough, since his 1302 warning began by noting that scandal still followed from these combinations. He called upon prelates to learn from any friar wishing to go out the place and reason of any planned excursion. He further prohibited prelates from sending out together two young friars, unless one of the them was a priest who showed maturity, and he required of each friar that he be in sight of the other at all times, and especially never to permit to the other opportunities for privacy with women. As is typical of many admonitions recorded in the opening decades of the fourteenth century, no specific course of punitive action against offenders is specified45 In 1304, administrators reminded friars of the ordinations of general chapters specifying that monies and goods received in deposit by friars from persons outside the order must be kept in the common deposit.46 The admonition stated that failure to abide by this rule could lead to sin and scandal, presumably because inadequate accounting or other mismanagement could at the very least embarrass the friar and the Order and at worst result in charges of fraud when the depositor failed in his efforts to reclaim the valuables. 44 E.g. Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 648 (from the 1299 chapter of the Province of Spain held at Barcelona): Item, cum ex separatione fratrum mala et scandala plurima oriantur, volumus et districte iniungimus, ut fratres, qui fuerint in domibus secularium, semper mutuo se videant, et contrarium facientes per priores suos acriter puniantur. 45 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 247: Item quia ex inepta fratrum combinatione, multa scandala subsequuntur, mandamus omnibus Prioribus et Prelatis, quod in combinatione fratrum, qui Conventum exeunt, atendant et caveant diligenter. Iterdicimus autem ipsis Prelatis, quod non dent licentiam fratribus, nisi loca et causa exprimant cum voluerint visitare. Interdicimus insuper, quod non vadant simul duo fratres iuvenes, nisi ipsorum aliquis sit sacerdos, et quod etiam sit maturus. Ordinamus quoque, et mandamus, quod fratres se mutuo videant manifeste cum in Civitate fuerint, aut Villa aliqua, sue Aldea, nec aliquo modo duo soli cum duabus solis mulieribus in loco aliquo se includant. 46 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 268: Item cum ex depositis incaute receptis, et contra formam Ordinis conservatis, interdum scandala et pericula sint exorta, districte precipimus fratribus universis, ne aliquis depositum recipiat et conservet, nisi in communi fratrum deposito, secundum ordinationem Capituli Generalis.

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The letter that Master General Berengar of Landora addressed to the friars of the province of Aragon in 1314 counseled, among other matters, that brothers who ate meat in public view generated grave scandal for the Order.47 In the same letter he warned that a friar who did not avoid familiarity with women “aimlessly exposes himself to the danger of blame and the scandal of infamy,” and in doing so put the Order’s honor in danger.48 In addition to explicit reference to scandal, other words and phrases also suggested the Dominican leadership’s ongoing efforts to protect corporate honor. Thus, the chapter acts described a range of activities as inept, incautious, suspect, as a reprehensible vice, or as criminal. In protecting its corporate image, the Order’s directors insisted that friars guard their reputation and act in right and honest ways, so as not to deform the Order’s honesty.49 The number, prolixity and rigor of admonitions after 1344 indicate a dramatic change over the comparatively thin and weak statutes dating from the period from the 1220s to 1332. The vocabulary of scandal and honor increases at this time, raising the question whether the absent years of acts held evidence of a gradual increase in the application of a language of scandal and honor or whether a significant change of policy occurred during Bernat Sescala’s tenure as provincial prior. In any event, by the mid-1340s efforts were well underway to give very regular and careful consideration to the Order’s reputation. From at least 1345 until the beginning of the Schism, provincial leaders increasingly pressured friars to stop engaging in activities that could cause dishonor, writing regularly in annual admonitions of activities that “expose the Order to scandal” and of the kind of action that “gives rise to scandal.” It was becoming a rhetorical commonplace that through the inappropriate actions of some friars “grave scandals have been procured for the Order.”50 Provincial chapters initiated administrative changes to 47 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: Item prohibeo, quod carnes fratribus non concedantur…Si qui autem in hoc inventi fuerint sepius deliquisse, aut ex comestione huiusmodi Ordini grave scandalum generasse…. 48 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: qui suspectum non vitat consortium, culpe periculo, aut saltem infamie scandalo improvide se exponit…. 49 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 268: incaute; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 278: debito et honesto; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 113: deformet nostri ordinis honestatem; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 140–144: suspectum; reprehensibile vicium; criminoso; reputationem. 50 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 261–262: in scandalum Ordinis exponant; 264–265: scandalum oriatur; 265–266: multi gravia scandala ordini procurerentur.

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correct “notable defects…as seems expedient to us for the honor and utility of the Order.”51 Infamy by this time was also coterminous with scandal, with admonitions noting the “scandal of infamy,” and identifying behaviors that led to “scandals and infamies.” Provincial authorities decried what they posited as the present state of the “infamy of the Order.”52 Displays of contempt, whether of activities that brought contempt upon the Order or some friars’ contemptuous disregard for the injunctions of prelates, also appeared frequently in this period in the context of the activities that generated scandal.53 Likewise, admonitions linking “murmur, scandal and suspicion” sought to limit the negative publicity the friars could generate by talking to outsiders about the Order’s internal matters.54 Misconduct as a Public Relations Problem The misbehaviors that concerned the Order’s administrators may have increased in kind and frequency after the middle of the fourteenth century, although no accurate measure can be taken. Eating meat and riding horses, sleeping in beds, inappropriate dress, familiarity with women, possessing weapons, secreting goods on deposit – provincial and other records report complaints against these activities in the thirteenth century as well as in the fourteenth century. Moreover, it is certain that defense of corporate honor was often at the heart of administrators corrective response in that earlier time. William Hinnebusch preserved a letter from a German provincial to a local prior in 1288, which I repeat here because it so explicitly links an individual friar’s

51

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 292: Item, significamus fratribus universis quod Difinitores Capituli Generalis iniungerunt nobis quod de Catalonia ponamus lectores in Nationibus Aragoniae et Navarrae, et alios fratres oportunos pro supplendo notabili deffectum eorum honori et utilitati Ordinis nobis videbitur expedire. 52 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 142: infamie scandolo; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 295: scandalis et infamis; and Robles Sierra; 306–307: infamiam Ordinis. 53 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 123: Ordo noster veniat in contemptum…; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 278: Cum ex ineptis receptoribus Ordo noster veniat in contemptum et ex hoc ab euis ingresu personae honorabiles retrahantur, vel quod non ponant suos filios in eodem; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 240: ne nostris temporibus ordo sic pereat in ista Provincia, vel veniat in contemptum. 54 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 267: apud seculares murmur, scandalum, vel suspitio oriantur.

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wrongdoing with the problem of defending the Order’s public reputation: I want the friar I have sent to stay for a while as a member of your priory to be kept from preaching and from hearing confessions. For these duties have been till now somewhat carelessly permitted to him, or rather, after he had been restricted, brazenly arrogated to him. On two visits to Wurzburg I heard a number of unbecoming reports about him. Desiring to gain my brother I corrected him privately, but a heart for contrition, a voice for confession, and a feeling for satisfaction were completely lacking, and he brushed off his crimes as if he were unconscious of any wrongdoing. Later, as I traveled about elsewhere, I heard again about his excesses. I listened to the shouting and complaining of a good many people. Consequently, since I am obliged according to the Constitutions because of his imprudent friendships to protect the good name of the Order, and transfers from one place to another have done him no good at all, from now on by staying at home let him appease God through prayer. Let him study, let him live in subjection, let him labor at keeping silent and quiet. But if shameful news regarding him should reach your ears from the places where he has lived, wash your hands of this hardened and corrupt man, giving him permission to look for another order where he may keep his status without coming into contact with our Order. Whatever steps therefore you deem it necessary to take, let them be guided by the advice of prudent brothers.55

What did change was the verbal intensity of administrators’ complaints and the heightened care given to precisely identifying and rectifying disciplinary problems. Thus, whereas bedchambers and bedding had previously been subjects of scrutiny in admonitions that answered whether or not friars might dress their beds with linen or blanket them with fur, by the 1360s prohibitions attended to such details as youths paying improper visits to the cells of other friars and holes broken through bedchamber walls permitting friars to exit their convents at will.56 Admonitions addressing weapons possession expanded after

55 Hinnebusch, History I, 137–139, where he also treats early statutes on the range of indiscretions I have mentioned here. 56 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 334: Item, ex causis rationalibus, atque iustis, praecipit idem Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de Difinitorum consilio, et assensu, omnibus et singulis fratribus praesidentibus, et futuris, in virtute Sacntae Obedientiae et sub pena carceris, quod nullus frater intret cellam, vel lectum alterius ipso ibi praesentialiter existente, nec puerum quemcumque secularem nisi germanum, vel nepotem secum introducat, sine expressa licentia Praesidentis, quam sine magna causa et rationabili non concedat, nisi in casu subito et arduo, in quo non esset recurssus faciliter ad Praelatum, sub eodem tenore praecepti, cum hoc eis legitime

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mid century to include warnings against carrying arms outside the house and, by 1357, drawing knives, presumably in situations in which they might be put to use in ways other than display or self-defense.57 Similarly, injunctions against handling money expanded until they had encompassed gaming and gambling, acting as a bookie for gamblers, loan sharking, pawn brokering, and secreting goods on deposit.58 Talk of scandal, infamy and contempt increasingly focused on the potential harm done to the Order through the friars’ inattention to regulatory details, and administrators drew upon the lexicon of scandal and honor more frequently as their recorded chapter acts became more carefully targeted and gained regulatory precision. Administrators intensified their attention upon a range of illicit associations. The friars encountered Muslims on a regular basis, especially in the southern reaches of the Province of Aragon. In letters of masters general and general chapter acts we see the possibility of a studium Arabicum emerging as early as 1250, and for a short time, such a school operated in Murcia and then at Jativa. The schools did not operate past 1312, as best we can tell, perhaps because of difficulty recruiting friars or perhaps because of changed impressions about the likelihood of achieving conversions at a pace suitable to justify the costs of the program.59 Interestingly, the chapter acts of the Province of Aragon, which we might expect to address the friars’ interactions with Muslims, have almost nothing to say, although the friars lived in contact with sizeable Muslim populations in Valencia and elsewhere.60

constiterit, penam imponant praecepti violatoribus debitam de consilio discretorum, et quod nullus frater in loco suo, vel cella teneat velamen, vel obstaculum, set vult quod causa lectus, quam etiam frater possit videri clare et patenter.Goméz-García, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 279: Item volumus, et mandamus quatenus omnes Priores sequantur communia et jaceant in communi dormitorio prout decet, mandantes etiam quod nullus faciat aperturam in aliqua cella dormitorii per quam persona aliqua transire valeat sine Reverendi Patris Provincialis licentia speciali. 57 Compare, for examples, two of many admonitions on the subject, one from 1329, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 158, and another from 1357, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 335. 58 Compare two examples from 1304, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 268, and Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 268, with a later equivalent from 1358, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 360–361. Admonitions against gambling are recorded in 1345, 1347, and 1352. 59 Giménez Reíllo, “El Árabe como lengua extranjera en el s. XIII,” reviews relevant scholarship on the evolution and decline of the schools. 60 E.g., Brian A. Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge, 2004), 217–218.

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We find only one indirect reference to the Muslim world in the extant administrative notices in the form of a request made to priors in 1302 that they look for able men to move to Jativa to undertake language studies.61 The equally complex relationship of the friars to Jews in the Province of Aragon is no better documented in the acts. By the mid1340s administrators had defined Jews as “perfidious,” showing contumacy to Christ and His Most Holy Mother. In order to avoid scandal, the acts ordered friars to refuse all association with Jews, neither entering the Jewish Call or a home or meeting place unless a very careful protocol was observed.62 The prohibition was not entirely effective, of course.63 The friars built their early reputation by supporting the interests of women as participants in the new religious movement, but by the fourteenth century administrators had grown reluctant to pursue the Order’s traditional role as caregivers to women. The first houses Dominic opened were women’s houses, and in the Order’s first decades 61 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 20 (1990), 248: Item volumus, quod Priores in suis Conventibus denuncient, et inducant fratres ad Studium Linguarum, et si qui inveniantur voluntarii significetur Priori Provinciali, ut eis de Studio provideat et assignet Conventui Xativensi. 62 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 264–265: Item cum perfidorum familiaritas Iudaeorum, qui omnia quae possunt faciunt in contumeliam Iesu Christi, et Sanctissimae Matris suae, sit omnibus Christi fidelibus fugienda, quae secundum iura, illam retributionem exhibet Christianis, quae mus in pera, serpens in gremio, et ignis in sinu suis consuevit hospitibus exhibere, singulariter videtur viris Religiosis, qui propter Crucifixum omnia relinquerunt, et praecipuis illis, qui Crucifixum praedicant, detestanda, praesertim cum ex tali familiaritate, quam cum praedictis infidelibus habent aliqui fratres nostri gravis nota apud diversas personas et magnas, seculares et regulares, et scandalum oriatur, propter quod in virtute sanctae obedientiae praecipit Reverendus P.Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, quod nullus frater intret domum cuiuscumque Iudaei, nec Callum, sive clausuram infra quam communiter includuntur, nisi de speciali licentia Praesidentis, quae solum si sit urgens, et inevitabilis necessitas, hoc modo, et forma, et nullo alio, possit dari, scilicet quod toto Conventu ad sonum campanae, ut moris est, ad Capitulum congregare, ille qui tunc Capitulum tenebit proponat causam quare talis frater domum, vel Callum Iudaeorum debeat introire, et si maiori parti Conventus, videatur, et non aliter, pro uno semel tantummodo licentia sibi detur. Quod si iterato dicta loca indigeat introire, iterato modo consimili fratres ad Capitulum convocantur, et si maiori parti Conventus similiter visum fuerit, et non aliter, licentia concedatur. Et totiens opoteat Conventum interrogari, quotiens fratres domos, vel callum Iudaeorum opportuerit introire. Quicumque autem aliter, nisi licentia praedicto modo obtenta, callum vel domum Iudeorum intraverit, ipso facto, omni voce per triennium sit privatus. 63 Hinnebusch, History I, 137 recalls the story of a friar who converted to Judaism after becoming enamoured of a Jewess with whom he came in contact as a result of an extended preaching campaign among the Jews. As with relations with Muslims, ignoring the possibility of scandalous relations did not make the problem go away.

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the service of the friars as confessors appears to have gained prominence especially among women. Familiarity with women was a recurring subject of attention even in the thirteenth century, but largely as a problem of the potential for moral lapses on the part of individual friars whose lack of resolve put them in harm’s way when they entered into public work. Over the course of the Order’s first one hundred years, even while administrators cautioned against inappropriate associations with women, individual friars maintained contact with female family members, continued to serve women in Dominican convents, and provided for the spiritual wellbeing of their female constituents. By the 1340s, administrators resolved to further restrict associations with women. We have seen that they had to extend their statutes to prevent friars from walking in town with any woman, even mothers or sisters, following the simple logic that because the nature of the relationship was not apparent the activity might be a source of “murmur, gossip and scandal among seculars.”64 Many orders in the middle decades of the fourteenth century suffered the problem of apostasy, that is, of friars attempting to leave conventual life or otherwise temporarily or permanently hiding from the jurisdiction of their Order’s officers.65 Dominican sources show that by 1345 the Order’s leaders had begun to treat friars shunned as apostates and criminals as a public relations problem.66 It appears that friars

64 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 267–268: Item, cum ex hoc quod Religiosi vadant per viam cum mulieribus, statim apud seculares murmur, scandalum, vel suspitio oriantur, quae debent a viris Evangelicis quantum est eis possibile evitari, cum inter illos quibus praedicant, habere debeant claram famam, volumus, et ordinamus, quod nullus frater vadat cum quibuscumque mulieribus, sive ad peregrinationem, sive per quamcumque aliam viam, etiam posito quod sor fratris ibi fuerit, sive mater, cum illi qui eos vident per viam possint talem amicitiam faciliter ignorare, nec omnes communiter sint matres, vel sorores fratrum, quae eorumdem matres associant, seu sorores. 65 According to F. Donald Logan, Runaway Religious in Medieval England, c. 1240–1540 (Cambridge, 1996), 71, actions against alleged apostates peaked in England at about this time. For Franciscan comparisons, see Webster, Els Menorets, 170–173. 66 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 266: Item, cum Religiosi fugitivi, et apostatae, sint infames, propter quod est utrorumque consortium, ac familiaritas fugienda maxime a viris honestis, et quos esse expedit clarae famae, nec eisdem debeat aliquis dare, vel procurare aliquos subsidium, favorem, vel auxilium temporale, ut saltem sit necessitate compulsi, redire ad statum salutis, et ad obedientiam Ordinis compellantur, praecipit Reverendus P. Prior Provincialis in virtute sanctae obedientiae de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, quod nullus frater cuicumque nostri Ordinis apostatae, vel etiam fugitivo impendat subsidium, favorem, vel quodcumque auxilium temporale, praeterquam in solo articulo necessitatis ultimae, in quo sine peccato mortali

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inside convents gave aid to runaways, causing much distress to provincial leaders who feared loss to the Order’s reputation. Priors repeatedly received warnings from provincial chapters to search for, catch and jail apostates. A few chapter acts named fugitives from the Order so that local priors could be on the lookout for the province’s most wanted. If women, apostates and regularly troublesome brothers topped the list of persons who posed a potential threat to corporate honor, and perhaps less explicitly those friars who associated with Muslims and Jews, that list appears to have grown by the mid-fourteenth century to include almost any friar. Men who associated with Jews, or who met too freely and indiscriminately with women, or who conspired with apostates and engaged in criminal acts were probably small in number, although clearly even a few of these could pose a serious threat to the Order’s public fama. But administrators came to view even the body of workaday friars as potential troublemakers, apparently to the point that it became more important to watch, criticize, and control them rather than trust them to do their work. When viewed over the long term, it appears that the leaders of the Province of Aragon made it their choice to trust none of their charges. Nicolau Rossell, as we have already seen, blamed young friars for a general lack of discipline and for acting without utility. He made his concern for the Order’s reputation apparent in prefatory clauses such as the one we have already seen linking “the scandals and infamy that begin to rise up nowadays” to the imprudence of the province’s youth, which he felt then need to resist “for the benefit of the men.”67 But he and others also kept “the men” in their regulative sights, for instance by punishing or threatening with punishment groups of men who formed factions that interrupted the integrity of elections. Provincial leaders even deemed it useful to blame members of their own administrative cadre, attacking the “remissness, negligence and laziness of prelates non posset etiam infideli tale auxilium denegari, et ubi contingerit talis casus, sub eodem praecepto, et poenis quae statim inferius exprimuntur obligat illum, vel illos, qui eis dederint tale consilium, auxilium, vel favorem, qoud per iuramentum, et aliis modis licitis inducant tales diligenter, fideliter, ac omni fraude exclusa per quam possent in statu tam damnabili remanere, quod statim ad obedientiam Ordinis revertantur. Quicumque autem talibis apostatis, vel fugitivis aliter dederit aliquid, procuraverit, vel fecerit procurari, ipso facto, voce, et omnibus gratiis Ordinis sit privatus, et ex vi praesentis statuti, excommunicationis sententia sit ligatus, cuius absolutionem praedictus Provincialis retinet sibi soli cum eadem poena, auctoritas facientes, et consentientes censeat esse dignos. 67 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 295–296.

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and presidents.”68 We might say that anxiety about corporate honor had created its own disorder, rising perhaps to the level of a paranoia shared by the Order’s managers. Reputation Management and the Control of Inappropriate Public Speech Many admonitions in the acts of the Province of Aragon give shape to a subject that clearly irked administrators: the potential for scandal deriving from a lack of discretion by some friars in their public discourse. The trend is no different here than it has been in so many other areas of our inquiry: legislation about scandalous public discourse shows intensification in the years just before mid-century and reached a peak around 1370. The first significant statement recorded by administrators in the Province of Aragon that aimed to put specific limits on public speech dates to 1328. In that year Bernat Puigcercos and his diffinitors declared their intention to punish friars who “loosen their tongues among seculars against other friars.”69 Employing rumor and gossip in order to enhance and advertise status is a matter of instinct in humans; granted then, withdrawing from such behavior would have been as difficult for most friars as avoiding sex.70 Eliminating gossip, however, was not the central concern of Puigcercos and those who helped him draft the admonition. They conceded that some friars had engaged in rumor mongering at the cost of their good judgment, thus doing personal harm to their own souls, but they showed a greater interest in gossip as a problem of corporate reputation management. Loose talk about the

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Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 239. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 149–150: Item cum nobis certitudinaliter constet ex declarationibus diversorum, quod aliqui fratres, non absque magna iactura, et dispendio conscientiae suae, laxant linguas suas apud saeculares contra alios fratres, quos forte non bene portant, sua malicia et invidia agitati, et eis oppositionem, et reputationem bonam quam cuncti de ipsis habent ex interno detrahuntur, et auferre nituntur, idcirco volentes reprimere tam dampnosum Ordini, et periculosum ac reprehensible vicium, volumus, et ordinamus, quod quicumque, de hoc convinctus fuerit, subiaceat poenae debitae criminoso, prout iam in diversis Capitulis extitit ordinatum, et nihilominus statim ipso facto cum in hoc deliquerint, substrahimus quantum possumus huius detractoribus, et oblocutoribus licentiam confitendi, et confessionibus audiendi, quousque de sua iniqua oblocutione scienter, et ex proposito facta iudicialiter suis Prioribus sint confessi. 70 Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, 175–191. 69

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Order’s internal activities, perhaps especially about its management, diminished the good reputation of the Order and its members. Administrators found the problem of talking to outsiders about the activities of insiders so damning to the Order that they instructed conventual priors that those guilty of causing such offense to corporate honor should face criminal penalties and, moreover, ought to be denied the customary rights of friars to defend themselves against accusers. Being a member of the Order, being on the inside, came with an implicit obligation to uphold the honor of the corporation and its members. Puigcercos and his diffinitors made perfectly clear how they saw it: every friar had a responsibility to defend corporate fama. In the wake of this legislation came additional statutes that sought to prevent friars from using defamatory or scandalous talk within earshot of seculars. These examples also lead to the conclusion that what concerned legislators most was not the social status or spiritual perfection of individual friars but, instead, the Order’s reputation. Among the most notable of the many examples is the admonition already mentioned as central to the rehabilitation of obedience. In 1345 Bernat Sescala and his diffinitors named obedience as a fundamental precept of the religious life. More vigorous obedience was an end in itself, potentially useful for limiting indiscipline in all of its manifestations, but Sescala and his council had as the broader purpose of their advisory discouraging friars from talking about the wrongdoing, irreverence, and disobedience of other friars. More specifically, they sought to prevent friars from discussing and thus learning from occasions in which their brothers had disobeyed men with prelatial responsibilities over them.71 Gossiping with other friars or with persons outside the Order about those who derided or were dismissive towards their leaders undermined the authority of the entire leadership cadre, invited more disobedience, and diminished the reputation of the whole corporation.

71 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 259: Cum obedientia omnis Religionis sit praecipuum fundamentum, quae etiam praefertur victimis quibuscumque, et nichil religionis remaneat ubi obedientia non servatur, praecipimus in virtute sanctae obedientiae, quod nullus audeat dogmatizare publice vel occulte, nec fratres alios informare quod cuicumque Praelato Ordinis non sit obediendum, ex quod est per illum ad quem spectat legitime confirmatum, quousque constet quod ab officio talis Praelaciae a suis Superioribus sit amotus. Quicumque autem tam pestiferum dogma amodo seminaverit publice seu occulte, cum de hoc legitime convinctus fuerit, carcereriis custodiae mancipetur.

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Nicolau Rossell’s provincial chapters raised the question of scandal in a number of admonitory items. The less enigmatic of these relate directly or indirectly to the friars having recourse to friends and supporters and even to formal judicial venues in actions against other friars. One admonition repeated the longstanding prohibition against friars accusing each other of criminal activities without adequate cause or proof. In the context of other admonitions issued in the same year (1351), it implies that quarrels waged between friars resulted in some of them propagating spurious accusations about their brothers in religion among friends outside convent walls.72 One of these contextualizing admonitions begins with that prefatory comment that compares the friars to a “brood of vipers,” a disordered and scandalous clutch of divisive rebels whose words and actions encourage the public to have contempt for the Order. The admonition, one of the longest in the entire record, issues three commands: that no brother reveal the Order’s business to outsiders; that no friar attempt to procure a promotion, assignment, or office from someone outside the Order; and, that no friar should hear or accept complaints against another friar except his appropriate superior.73 In many later admonitions provincial leaders

72 E.g. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305: Item, cum inter caetera diabolicae servitiae iacula crudelissimum iaculum sit lingua hominis in aliienae et praecipuae fraternae famaelionem, sive iaculis infamationibus, sive tela spinae detractionis, delationis, seu informationis vagitibus resoluta, cupientes omnium tela nequisimi extinguere in Ordine ista facto sub poena tali sedulius inhibemus, ne frater quicumque de alio fratre crimen dicat, aut ressitet cuicumque quacumque ex causa seu motivo, nisi illud possit probare, et in lucem decere, quod proponit, et ut melius, et firmius obvieretur, volumus, et ordinamus, quod Priores Conventuales, et alii Praesidentes, nisi excessum tam temperandum mox ad ipsum notitia pervenerit, puniret indilictis, a suis oficiis totaliter absolutionis premissis, addicientes quod si quis frater poenam, seu punitiones inventus fuerit fratri alicui obiecisse puniantur graviter, ac si culpam propter quam talis poena punitur comisisset. 73 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305–305: Item, cum evidenter cernamur in Provincia nostra multiplicantur fratres discolos, deordinatos, scandalosos, pro dolor, et rebelles, qui maternae suae sanctae religionis latera velut viperiam progenies disrumpentes fratrum aliorum sibi multipliciter proximorum crimina, punitiones, correctiones, delationes, divisiones, et Ordinis et Capitulorum sacrata propter quae Ordo noster venit apud alios in conceptum secularibus, et aliis a nostra obedientia alienis revelant crudeliter, impie, et maligne, idcirco praecipit Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis in virtute sanctae obedientiae, et Spiritus Sancti, de Diffinitorum consilio et assensu, fratribus huius Provinciae universis, quod nullus frater cuius cumque sit conditionis, aut gradus, praedicta omnia, et singula, de certa scientia, in et propter infamiam Ordinis, vel fratris alicui personae extra nostris Ordinis obedientiam constitutae modo alico audeat revelare, sub eodem includens praecepto, quod nullus frater per manum secularium, vel aliarum personarum quae ab Ordinis obedientia sunt

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sought to limit outside interference in internal affairs, with two clear goals: to maintain the integrity of the Order’s procedures and to prevent talk and activities that diminished corporate honor. Admonitions addressing the involvement of outsiders in the Order’s business, the ease with which friars sought aid from those outside the Order, and leaders’ fears that rank-and-file friars were spreading misinformation, bad news, and untruths about the Order and its agents, very definitely increased in number and scope through to the end of our period.74 And the language grew especially intense, with increased talk of conspiracies and defamation, and with friars described as “sowers of discord,” whose tongues throw “thorny darts of distraction.”75 Provincial chapters increasingly compared those who revealed the Order’s secrets to detractors, defamers, rebels, and criminals. Limiting Discursus Thus far this chapter has identified a crisis of corporate honor caused by mission troubles, by mounting levels of indiscipline and abuses against the Order’s processes, and by the difficulty of managing friars’ participation in public discourse. Corporate reputation mattered, and paenitus alienae sui ipsius, vel alterius fratris assignationem, amotionem, remisionem, promotionem, depositionem, mutationem a Conventibus, vel officiis, vel gradibus infra ordinem audeant procurare, et per diem praeceptum omnes et singulos fratres huius Provinciae astringit, quod nullus, nisi Praelatus ad quem spectat, depositionem vel scripturam aliquam contra fratrem teneat, nec recipiat huiusmodi depositiones a quocumque, nisi ad dandum, et portandum Superiori Praelato, et si quis frater huiusmodi depositiones secum habet per idem praeceptum mandat praedictus Prior Provincialis, quod infra octo dies a praesentis noticia, cum sigillo, vel sigillis clausas mitat Priori Provinciali praedicto, sit opportunum habeat portitorem; alias qoud in deposito Conventus reponat, dicto Priori Provinciali reservandas; si autem quod absit, oppositum quis suae salutis inmemor infra dictum tempus ausus fuerit atemptare, excommunicationis sententiam se noverit incurisse, quam Prior Provincialis praedictus contra tales in Diffinitorio de Diffinitorum consilio, et assensu, in praesentia eorumdem tulit iurice, et in scriptis, cuius sententiae absolutionem sibi soli voluit reservare. Per hoc autem non intendimus prohibere quin frater defectus, vel errorem Praelatorum, vel Subditorum in Conventibus deliquentium possint apud se notare, vel Praelato maiori congruo tempore publicent, et revelent, quas notas ut scripturas Priori Provinciali, vel Vicario, aut Visitatori, quando ibidem prasentes fuerint, tradere habeat vel donare. 74 E.g., from 1352, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 238; from 1353, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 254; from 1357, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 334; from 1358, Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 360 and 362. 75 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 256 and 272; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305; Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 335.

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because it did, administrators in the Province of Aragon took the offensive, discerning and then trying to put into effect a proactive means of limiting scandal. For a religious institution founded upon public service, the options were few, and we will see a bitter irony in the choices made by the Order’s managers. In order to defend the Dominican reputation, administrators in the Province of Aragon had to turn against something that had been at the heart of the Dominican enterprise from the beginning: discursus. It was part of the design of the Order of Preachers that its friars should be seen at work in public spaces. Dominic and his successors made conspicuity – the fact that their audience could see them preaching in town squares and on the road traveling to and from their convents – central to their reputation as a group dedicated to reconciling the new enthusiasm for apostolic service with older monastic and episcopal regimes. We have seen, however, that concerns arose over time about the friars’ public presence, to the point that by the middle of the fourteenth century provincial administrators frequently associated discursus with scandal, producing nearly forty admonitions in the extant acts from 1310 to 1378 to treat the relationship. No single admonition offers a succinct definition of the term discursus, although it is clear that Dominican sources generally apply the term to describe those occasions when friars left their convents to engage in outside activities, beyond the confines of convent walls and far from the direct supervision of conventual administrators. Some of these activities, preaching, for example, or travel from one convent to another as a result of scholarly reassignments or to participate in the Order’s business, fell explicitly within the Dominican mandate. On other occasions, however, discursus implied unapproved vagabondage or wandering. Thus a preaching tour, a visit to family or friends, or a trip into town for a shave, a bath or more fall equally within the connotations of the term discursus as evinced in the acts.76 The Order of Preachers distinguished itself by the mobility of its friars outside its convents, for which reason discursus became a subject of administrative attention early on. A 1246 encyclical by Joannes Teutonicus, the fourth master general of the Order broached the subject 76 Discursus is used in a positive sense only once in the extant acts of the Province of Aragon when, in 1352, provincial priors, inquisitors, diffinitors to a general chapter, and preachers general are excepted from a general prohibition from riding saddled horses when engaged in their work. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 234–235.

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in a phrase that reads “Procul sit a vobis discursus inutilis.”77 This reminder by the master general that the friars should beware of useless travel was part of a long pastoral letter full of polite reminders. The gentleness of the master general’s language in addressing discursus inutilis suggests that, while he had taken notice of it, the issue had not as yet risen to a level of major concern. It also implies that discursus – traveling from town to town or from place to place within a town – while essential to the Dominican apostolate, might not always be beneficial and therefore was something that required increased administrative attention. Several encyclicals issued by Humbert of Romans, as well as general chapter edicts issued during his generalate, similarly criticized vagabondage and potential abuses of mendicant mobilitas.78 In 1252, the acts of the Province of Provence record an admonition that reads simply “Item, quod discursus villarum refrenatur,” asking priors to limit excursions into the towns.79 Like most extant provincial admonitions from the thirteenth century, this is a cryptic notice that neither indicates what prompted it nor specifies what it really aimed to ameliorate. Nonetheless, this admonition, like earlier announcements, illuminated a tension at the essence of the Order’s mission. On the one hand it acknowledged that it was part of the everyday business of friars to traverse the towns either as part of their public preaching ministry or to conduct administrative work for the order. Even so, on the other hand it recognized that a friar’s exposure to the secular sphere could tempt him into conduct harmful to himself, and to others, and potentially damaging to the Order’s fama. Dominicans in leadership posited other admonitions on the subject in the latter half of the thirteenth century, although few of these have survived.80 Admonitions treating discursus in the fourteenth-century acts of the Province of Aragon are numerous, becoming increasingly robust and explicit. Two such admonitions appear in 1310. The first aims to limit the time spent by students of arts and theology outside their convents. It asks that the name of any student found roaming too freely in or out of towns should be made known to the provincial prior so that he

77 Reichert, ed., Litterae Encyclicae Magistrorum Generalium, MOPH V, 9: Cella placeat, qua venitur ad celum. Procul sit a vobis discursus inutilis, nec discat aliquis movere indebite pedes suos…. 78 Brett, Humbert of Romans, 109–111. 79 Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 48. 80 E.g., Douais, Acta capitulorum provincialium, 721 and 810.

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might consider relieving that student of privileges.81 The second enjoins priors and their vicars to observe earlier general and provincial chapter orders, including those seeking to put checks on discursus.82 It would appear that discursus was becoming more problematic, the signal being that students were not as committed to their studies as administrators would have liked and instead were taking advantage of opportunities, authorized and unauthorized, to leave their convents to engage in activities unrelated to their duties as religious. An admonition from the year 1312 also refers to earlier legislation, specifically citing an attempt to prohibit illicit wandering.83 The phrase used in this instance, de cohibendo discursum fratrum, occurs frequently after 1312 as a shorthand description of the growing range of problems related to discursus. An injunction issued in the acts of 1314, noting in the strongest terms that unapproved discursus “badly deforms the honesty of our Order,” is the first explicit extant attempt within the Province of Aragon to link discursus and scandal.84 It asks priors and their vicars

81 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 114: Item volumus, et ordinamus, quod si quis studens assignatus ad Artes, vel Theologiam, inventus fuerit bignarius, vel etiam vagabundus, vel discurrens per Civitatem, vel extra, visitationes notabiles, vel incautas faciendo, Prior, vel eius Vicarius, de consilio discretorum, interim negando sibi omnes gratias studentium, confestim teneatur Priori Provinciali nuntiare, et rogant Diffinitores Priorem Provincialem ut talem privet studio, et a Conventu amoveat, et in penam debeat alteri Conventui assignare. 82 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 114: Item volumus, et districte iniungimus Prioribus et eorum Vicariis, ut ea que ordinata sunt in Generali, vel Provinciali Capitulo observent, et faciant cum diligentia ab omnibus observari. Quod autem de hospitibus, et litteris testimonialibus ad refrenandum discursus extitit ordinatum, in nullo valeant immutare, vel cum aliquo dispensare. Fratres autem qui sunt aliis Conventibus assignati, post octo dies hospites reputentur, et sub illa lege hospitis habeantur. 83 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 125: Item volumus, et districte mandamus, omnibus Prelatis, ut ordinationem de cohibendo discursum fratrum, et de non licentiando extra suam predicationem, nisi ex iustis causis et cum littera testimoniali, et tempore pretaxato, diligentius debeant observari; statuentes quod amodo pena taxata eisdem trangressoribus sine remedio infligatur. Volumus nihilominus, et ordinamus, quod frater qui in alieno Conventu steterit ultra decem dies, vel quindecem, sit omni voce privatus, nisi infirmitate, aut impedimento legitimo, sit detentus, iudicio discretorum, super quo litteram habeat ab eisdem. 84 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 136: Item cum discursus fratrum multum deformet nostri Ordinis honestatem, volumus, et districte iniungimus, ut Constitutio de non equitando sine necessitate, et licentia, cum exacta diligentia observetur, imponentes Prioribus, ac eorum Vicariis, ut non sint faciles ad tales licentias concedendas, et graviter puniant transgressores. Volumus in super, et ordinamus, ut Priores et Socii, qui veniunt ad Capitula, vel redeunt, equitando, nihil a suis Conventibus recipiant

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to diligently observe earlier legislation, especially as regards friars traveling on horseback, and to see that they severely punish transgressors. Informing that year’s provincial chapter was the encyclical written by Master General Berengar of Landora, which among other issues also addressed the need to restrict discursus. Berengar attempted to define discursus and its limits: discursus is excessive if too many friars are licensed to go out on the same day; priors should limit the number of friars exiting the convent to something reasonable, and anyone who goes out on any one day should not be permitted out of his convent for the next two days.85 No admonitions explicitly treating discursus were published in 1321, or in the years 1327 to 1330. By 1331, when troublesome discursus appears again in need of a remedy, it appears in an admonition that treats with considerable precision how written license for travel should be prepared and carried by the traveler.86 As with so much else we have studied, it is just before mid century that we see efforts to define and delimit discursus gaining greater depth and precision. In 1345 Bernat Sescala and his diffinitors issued a statement that began by noting that discursus impeded study and detracted

pro expensis. Quam ordinationem volumus hoc anno observari, et imponimus eis, ut si quid reciperint ad Conventus, restituere teneantur, nisi causam legitimam habuerint, propter quam Reverendus Pater Magister Ordinis eos habuerit excusatos. 85 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 21 (1991), 141: Item, ut excessivus discursus fratrum ingredientium Villam compescatur, volo quod Priores certum numerum fratrum, qui in die Villam ingredi valeant, eligant, temperantes secundum maiorem vel minorem numerum existentium in Conventu, nec ultra aliquem alium licentient illa die. Qui autem in die semel intraverit, de duobus sequentibus ingredi non valeat, nisi evidens causa apareat, iudicio duorum antiquorum, quare debet super hoc dispensari. Prior tamen, vel eius Vicarius, pro Conventus utilitate, et similiter ad personarum infirmarum visitationem, poterit fratres maturos, et ad hoc idoneos, mittere, prout viderit expedire. 86 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 22 (1992), 173: Cum in proximo praecedenti Capitulo Generali ordinatum fuerit, quod quicumque fratres contra suorum Praelatum voluntates praesumant extra suos Conventus, et extra suas Provincias, vagandi discurrere, vel in habitu nostro extra loca nostri Ordinis sine licentia commorari, ipso facto omni voce sint paenitus privati, et cum redierint poena gravioris culpae puniantur, vel in eadem ordinatione latius continetur; idcirco nos volentes pericula fratrum, et dubia quae possent contingere paenitus evitare, volumus et ordinamus, quod quandocumque fratres exeunt extra loca uni Conventum habemus, de suorum Praelatorum licentia litteram secum portent, in qua loca ultra quae exire non debeant, et in qua certum tempus ultra quam non remaneant exprimantur, alias tales litteras non portantes, vel contrarium facientes, declaramus ipsos poenis in dicta ordinatione positis subiacere, ni[si] propter magnam utilitatem, et evidentem necessitatem eis contingeret ultra tempus eis taxatam per dies aliquos remanere, vel ad duas, vel ad tres leucas ultra loca sibi assignata forsitan assignari, quae tamen suis Praelatis, cum redierint exponere teneantur.

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from devotion, and that in convents into which friars came as guests it led to the dissipation of religion. The advisory made careful provision for creating a council of four elders in each convent whose purpose was to diligently examine the cause of any friar who wanted to go outside his convent. It likewise gave ample attention to the nature of the letter of permission the council of elders might recommend granting, specifically that it should record when and where a friar would travel, the nature of his business, and for how long he had permission to leave his convent. Moreover, it required the agent who granted the license, in most cases the conventual prior, to notify the provincial prior not only of the contents of any letter granted but also of the composition of the group of elders who recommended it. The provincial prior could, thereby, test the letter’s efficacy.87 As is the case with all of the admonitions issued in 1345 on a range of topics, the edict of that year on the subject of discursus went far beyond what provincial chapters had issued in the extant acts of previous years. The lengthy statement, quite rigorous in the procedures it sought to impose, became a template for later provincial chapters up to 1357, which, except for the year 1350, reissued it with only minor modifications. In 1350, the chapter diffinitors under Nicolau Rosell’s

87 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 260–261: Item, cum multum impediatur studium ex discursu, et devotioni multum detrahatur, et in Conventibus ad quos fratres hospites veniunt Religio dissipetur, volumus, et ordinamus, quod quicumque frater non Prior, et eius vices gerens, venerit ad alium Conventum sine Prioris Provincialis licentia speciali, nisi ille alius Conventus sit in recta via ad Conventum ad quem est noviter assignatus, si a Prior Provinciali ante talis licentia possit peti, ipso facto in Tractatu per unum annum voce volumus non habere. Si autem aliquis casus subitus occurreret, qui dilationem nullatenus pateretur et ex hoc non posset mitti ad Priorem Provincialem pro licentia obtinenda, tunc Prior, vel eius locum tenens, de consilio quatuor antiquorum tunc praesidentium in Conventu causam quare talis frater vult ire et ad talem Conventum examinent diligenter, et si omnibus, aut pluribus ad consilium sic vocatis, causa sufficiens videatur, tunc cum littera licentia sibi detur, in qua causa licentiae exprimitur, et terminus ad reditum praefigatur in qua etiam praedicti consiliarii subscribere teneantur. Nichilominus ille, qui talem licentiam dedit, scribat statim Priori Provinciali transumptum talis litterae licentiam continentis, et nomina illorum de quorum consilio eam dedit, ut sic ipse Prior Provincialis examinet utrum fuerit causa sufficiens, quod talis licentia dari debuerit sic petenti. Et puniat tam licentiantem, quam consiliarios consentientes, si in refranando discursus fratrum negligentes fuerint, vel remissi. Quicumque vero Prior omnia praedicta in dando talem licentiam non servaverit, ipso facto per quidenam a Prioratus officio sit suspensus. Quicumque autem alius Praesidens per unum annum voce careat in tractatu. Per hoc autem non intendimus prohibere Praesidentes, quin pro factis utilibus Conventuum suorum, ad alios Conventus, de consilio discretorum, possint mittere duos fratres.

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leadership, reeling from many challenges brought to their work in the wake of the plague, deemed the length of the admonition problematic and reissued it in an abbreviated fashion, remarking: “we wish not to recite the whole statute on account of prolixity.”88 Successive generations of administrators increased the attention given to the problem of discursus. Some admonitions treating discursus aimed to keep students at their studies. Others aimed to remind friars that wearing a Dominican habit was a manifestation of their obligations to uphold Dominican values and that illicit discursus and inappropriate behavior outside the convents brought ill-repute upon the habit’s wearer and upon his Order. Still other edicts sought to prevent needless travel between convents, in some cases for the explicit purpose of relieving convents of the costs suffered when non-resident friars arrived as guests seeking hospitality.89 These admonitions may appear to have done little more than apply new and tighter procedures to rectifying an ongoing and unchanging problem; but the changes introduced over time did much more, as the meaning of discursus underwent a redefinition. The early sources show that the movement of friars beyond the confines of their convents was an activity central to the Dominican mission, however much we see it fraught in practice with potential for abuse. From the mid-thirteenth century through the 1330s administrators emphasized the need to limit abuses; however, by the mid-fourteenth century, the order’s managers were not only invested in attacking the misuse of discursus but had launched an attack upon discursus as an institution, attempting to make travel outside the convent the exception rather than the rule. From a use of the term that connoted travel outside of a convent for the purpose of work, the meaning changed, first growing fuller and more

88 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 296: Item, innovamus, confirmamus, et approbamus ordinationem factam in praecedenti Capitulo Provinciali Barcinonae celebrato, quod fratres sine licentia Prioris Provincialis de Conventu ad Conventum discurrere non possint cum omnibus poenis et conditionibus appositis in eadem; dictam autem ordinationem in toto et in omnibus partibus et clausulis eiusdem per praesentes totaliter et simpliciter statuendo, quam quidem propter prolixitatem hic nolumus recitare. Only ten admonitions were issued in 1350, compared to 24 in 1345, 14 in 1347, and 29 in 1351. The few admonitions were aimed at responding to the present post-plague crisis. The subjects of the ten admonitions include: attracting able recruits; providing for sick friars; ensuring the efficacy of preaching and the hearing of confessions; receiving for safeguard money and goods intended for a convent; witnessing and executing bequests. 89 E.g., Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 234.

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ambiguous, and later taking on meanings clearly associating the term with illicit vagrancy. By 1351, for example, Nicolau Rossell and his chapter had associated discursus with a decline in study and devotion, arguing that from the friars’ wanderings (discursu fratrum) “scandal frequently follows, as experience always manifestly teaches.”90 This change of meaning had consequences. Over time the negative stigma attached to discursus meant the enclosure of many friars within their convents. Administrators actively confronted the major problem of wandering friars, although in doing so they initiated, apparently without being fully aware that they were doing so, a move within the Order toward enclosure. Founded on the conspicuous availability of its preacher and confessor members to urban constituencies, the Order of Preachers, at least in northeastern Iberia, had taken a turn toward monasticization. Several admonitions illustrate this monastic turn. In 1354 the provincial and his team relieved local prelates from the power to offer general licenses to any friars for travel into towns.91 The chapter of 1355 reissued the statute.92 When reissued in 1357 an additional phrase prohibited priors from letting friars out of their convents more than one day per week unless they were specifically engaged in seeking resources for their convents.93 In 1358 further changes to the admonition prescribed even more carefully the times when a friar might take a once-weekly leave of his convent. The statute of that year expressly prohibited entry into towns before the first meal and after the last. It also ordered friars to remain inside their convents on town festival days unless specifically released to hear confessions or to engage in their convent’s business, in which case prelates should permit no delay or loitering. The admonition expressly permitted travel “according to the customary mode in the Order,” a sufficiently ambiguous phrase that it helped to redefine the limits of travel to fewer friars, on fewer days, and for a narrow range of purposes.94 90 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 23 (1993), 305–306: Cum studium notabiliter impediatur ex fratrum discursu, et devotioni plurimum detrahatur scandala ut frequentius consequantur, ut experientia semper docuit evidenter, idcirco ordinat Reverendus Pater Prior Provincialis de Diffinitorum concilio, et assensu, quod nullus frater discurrat…. 91 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 274. 92 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 24 (1994), 288–289. 93 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 332. 94 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 355: Item, discursus fratrum inmoderatos cupientes pro viribus sufformare ordinationem in praecedenti Capitulo Provinciali apud Ilerdam celebrato, et in aliis diversis Capitulis, videlicet quod nullus frater

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Provincial chapters in 1371, 1372, and 1373 enacted a range of restrictions “so that the discursus of friars is better avoided,” a phrasing which we should notice completes the semantic shift from discursus as essential to discursus as essentially troublesome.95 Each of these notices prohibited travel from convent to convent, especially travel from outlying convents to the convents of Barcelona and Valencia, clearly now the province’s regional educational and political hubs. Friars may have expected to locate the prior provincial at one of these locations and hoped to travel there in order to have him hear a cause or settle a complaint. These admonitions specifically prohibited travel for the purpose of finding the prior provincial, except in the cases of those men who had first received license from him. Of course, it also seems likely that wandering friars found the locations of these two big-city convents favorite destinations for their recreation. Later chapters continued to identify discursus as a serious threat because of its tendency to dissipate religion. These chapters confirmed discurrat de Conventu ad Conventum, nec extra terminos qui proprii Conventus sine expressa licentia Prioris Provincialis, vel eius Vicarii Generalis sub pena privationis vocis, et omnium gratiarum Ordinis, sicut in praedicta ordinatione expressius continetur, quantum ad omnes, et singulas clausulas innovamus, et simpliciter confirmamus, volentes ut praedicta ordinatio tota prolixe legatur cum aliis semel in mense in Capitulo, vel in mensa fratribus omnibus congregatis. Substrahimus autem potestatem Prioribus, et Praesidentibus universis dandi licentiam generalem cuicumque fratri intrandi Villam, vel alias discurrendi, aut in hospitio, vel infirmitorio comedendi, set secundum modum in Ordine consuetum quotiens indiguerint, aut in Villam intrare voluerint, Praelato se subiiciant prout decet. Nolumus autem quod illi fratres per quorum procurationem Conventus non sustentantur, licentientur ad Villam nisi semel in septimana. Declaramus insuper quod intrantes Villam de mane licentiantur usque ad horas, et post prandium ad Vesperas, nisi [per]Pralatum in dando licentiam fuerit aliter ordinatum. Interdicimus autem totaliter, et expresse, ne ante mensam, aut post cenam, nec etiam in diebus praecipuis, ac festivis, aliquis licentietur ad Villam, nisi pro facto Confessionis, vel factis Conventus necessariis, et generibus, quae pro tunc dilationem nullatenus patiantur. 95 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 206–207: Item ut discursis fratrum melius evitetur, praecipimus in virtute sanctae obedientiae, quatenus nullus frater nisi sit Magister in Theologia, vel Praedicator generalis, vel prior actu audeat ire de Conventu ad Conventum, praecipue ad Conventum Barchinonae, et Valentiae, nec etiam venire ad Priorem Provincialem, nisi habeat licentiam ab ipso Priore Provinciali vel in ejus absentia a Provintia ab ejus Vicario generali, de qua licentia habeat facere fidem per literam in qua de dicta ordinatione mentio habeatur, in casu vero necessitatis inevitabilis Prior vel Praesidens poterit dare licentiam de consilio quatuor Antiquorum Conventus, et Lectoris, et quod ponatur causa in littera quare talem licentiam concesserunt sub eodem praecepto exceptis praedictis prohibemus ne aliquis vadat ad aliquod Monasterium Dominarum nisi de licentia Provincialis, vel Prioris habentis dare licentiam cum consilio supradicto. Also Goméz-García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 219; and Goméz-García, “Actas,” EV 31 (2001), 231–232.

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that friars who left their houses without permission were fugitives subject to denial of all graces of study and voice vote as well as punishments accorded for the gravest faults, including excommunication and incarceration.96 It is crucial to point out that the word used here to describe the friars’ place of abode is not the customary word convent (conventus) but cloister (claustrum). While examples are few, evidence indicates that provincial authorities began to introduce into the language of the chapter acts the words ‘cloister’ and ‘monastery’ that carried specific monastic meanings, connotations that remained unusual in the context of the Order of Preachers except when describing houses for Dominican women.97 Whether they did so with purpose or whether unconscious predilections for a return to older monastic models had begun to creep in, the use of these words by Dominican administrators also signals their desire to move toward stricter enclosure. Taken in total and read for the changes they introduce over a long term, these admonitions surely mark a dramatic change. To any observer, the Order of Preachers in its first decades was characterized by the pronounced visibility of its members in public spaces. The Order’s leaders recognized the potential dangers of conspicuity even then, but they worked to limit the potential for misuse of the new mendicant precedent even as they praised it as a characteristic that differentiated their preachers from enclosed monks, who, at least in the ideal if not in actual practice, hid from the world in their cells. By the third quarter of the fourteenth century, Dominican leaders, having slowly but surely put sturdier limits on travel and work outside the Order’s convents, applied conceptual and procedural pressure on discursus in order to move their charges toward more rigorous enclosure. However, like so much else about their work, administrators’ efforts to restrict discursus encountered resistance. Those friars who chose to resist showed that they could meet the challenge.

96 Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 32 (2002), 356: Item cum frater exiens claustrum, vel Provinciam sine licentia manifeste sit fugitivus, omnem fratrem exeuntem de Provincia sine licentia Reverendis Patris Magistri Ordinis, vel Prioris Provincialis, vel vicariorum generalium eorundem omnibus penis gravioris culpe adjudicamus, et submittimus per praesentes, privamus eum omnibus graciis ordinis, atque vocis. 97 E.g., Robles Sierra, EV 22 (1992), 139; Robles Sierra, EV 25 (1995), 335, both clearly addressing concerns in male houses.

EPILOGUE Histories of the Dominican Order blame big events in bad times for the friars’ troubles, but the evidence presented in this book tells a different story. Whether wishing to accomplish daily routines or aspiring to the achievement of grand objectives, the Order’s friars had to work with each other and with their institutions to get things done and to get through the day. That individuals must conspire with each other and with the rules and procedures of the organizations they inhabit is something that religious leaders have well understood, which is why they turn their vocabulary to making ‘religious life’ and ‘order’ nearly synonymous. But there is always a gap between what communities practice and what they preach – the ideal order is never fully realized, and the gap sometimes appears to grow very large, as in the case studied here. On the other hand, it seems equally true about the friars that, to the degree that longstanding custom mediated between quotidian practice and perennial ideal, what appeared to later friar-historians as a chasm between the real and the imagined community in the fourteenth century may not have seemed at all abnormal to many of the friars living and working in Dominican convents at that time. It is not enough to look for the causes of the Order’s breakdown in external circumstances. That Dominican friars in a time of plague, international war and economic dislocation did not rise to the standard of their thirteenth-century counterparts is better explained not by those big events but by understanding the relationships among the friars and between the Dominicans and their institutions. In good times and bad we try our best, or at least we want to believe that we do. The friars in the Province of Aragon were no different from us in this respect. Sometimes they achieved more than they expected, although maybe more often they just got by, finishing a day happy enough to have the opportunity to try to do better tomorrow. Evidently, more than a few of our friars muddled through, or lost their way, or realized too late that they misfit the religious life. We have not assumed that all friars aspired equally to a single Dominican ideal. Indeed, much of the evidence surveyed here suggests alternative aspirations: for honors and advancement; to maintain intimate connections with family and friends; associating with other friars for the purpose of getting along or

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getting by; to relieve claustrophobia with some external escapades. In the meantime, what religious life meant did not remain static. Dominican institutions – electoral procedures, dispensation and obedience, among others, although they did not think and feel, live and die like their human inventors, were similarly fragile and fickle, changeable even as they showed resistance to change. They took shape and came to have meaning and effectiveness each in their own time and manner, but as foundations upon which to build an organization they exhibited fissures under the weight brought by the new demands of successive generations of friars. In all of the foregoing what replaces a decline paradigm is an openness to the vicissitudes of conventual life that captures the friars’ lived reality better than a story of a Dominican ideal discovered and then lost. Let me end the present study by summarizing two persistent but opposing trends that point forward to continued discomfort for friars in the Province of Aragon and for the Order of Preachers into the fifteenth century and beyond. The first is the work undertaken by the leaders of the Province of Aragon to build up their Order and brighten its reputation. Provincial priors and the diffinitors meeting with them in annual chapters put themselves to the perennial task of adjusting operations and correcting behaviors in ways that they believed would strengthen their organization and advance its interests. This part of our summary points to four general features of the restructuring of their organization that they undertook. The second broad trend is the continued refusal on the part of workaday friars to conform to their leaders’ designs. First, administrators made unmistakably deliberate attempts at strengthening command and control. In the thirteenth century, as is well known, general and provincial chapter acts show administrators measuring the aptitudes and adequacy of postulants, students and preachers. Into the fourteenth century, admonitions addressing questions of the friars’ competencies appeared with even greater frequency, treated a broader range of concerns, and became considerably more sharply focused. Even a cursory reading of general and provincial chapter acts reveals the imposition of a range of competency tests and oversight committees. Some of these sought to prevent wayward friars from covertly exiting their convents. Others established minimum standards intended to keep lectors at their teaching tasks and students engaged in their studies. Others kept ill-prepared friars from

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representing the Order in public ministry. Provincial administrators deliberately reworked general chapter advisories to give them teeth at the local level. In each case the admonitions admit very serious problems of management and discipline, but when viewed from beyond a decline paradigm they show development from year to year, becoming more carefully targeted and increasingly better-crafted with time, and especially so under the provincial administrations of Bernat Sescala and Nicolau Rossell. Administrators created and directed change; they did not just respond to events around them. The second general feature of fourteenth-century organizational change is that it redrew lines of authority. In the Province of Aragon provincials sought to gain greater control over decisions previously left to priors of local convents. The restriction of the decision-making authorities of conventual priors is especially well expressed in the establishment of conventual committees of elders, which came to take charge, at the provincials’ urgings, of important decisions, including when a friar might leave his convent to preach; when and how per diem expenses were paid to traveling friars; whether a prior had appropriately granted a dispensation from the rule and constitutions or wisely expended a convent’s funds. With these changes came a concomitant strengthening of notions of superior-subordinate relations. One indicator is the rhetorical shift that came in 1345 when Bernat Sescala drew upon the language of traditional monastic obedience for the explicit purpose of confirming a chain of command. We took a broad measure by counting the increased usage of the word “superior,” which came to replace the word “prelate” in contexts deliberately meant to construct hierarchies. Paradoxically, as conventual priors became nominal superiors in their locales, their substantive authority diminished. Provincial priors, meanwhile, augmented their own superior powers to decide, supervise, and correct. A third feature is the strengthening of a managerial logic, which is to say that elected leaders grew less interested in traditional means of moral persuasion bound to eternal rewards and punishments than in strengthening corporate command and control here and now. This appears in evidence as a matter of increased rhetorical precision and as an outcome of the repetition and intensification of a battery of administrative dictates. One objective measure of this institutional elaboration is an increase in both the number of admonitory statements and their word length. Annual admonitory items in the Province of Aragon

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averaged approximately 600 words in the first decade of the fourteenth century and climbed to a high of 4200 words by the mid-1350s. The tendency to prolixity was not accidental, as the chapter acts themselves made clear, but rather purposefully bludgeoned and battered the minds of friars with words meant to impel them toward improvements of their corporate systems. The inflated number and length of recorded admonitions put forward more instructions more precisely. Some sharp rhetoric played its part in efforts to achieve regulative precision and a change of norms. Nicolau Rossell’s pronouncement that “laws are useless unless observed,” arriving as it does in the context of his assertion that obstructionist brothers constituted a “brood of vipers,” is a demonstration of this rhetoric reaching its apex in the decade after 1350. Finally, a fourth feature of corporate reorganization directed by the province’s managers is the concern for defending corporate honor. The first friars built up for their organization a solid corporate reputation, but with time the Order’s perceived corporate limitations and the friars’ lack of self-restraint began to weigh on that reputation, becoming the source of what theorists call a “legitimacy gap.” Well before 1350 a number of injunctions indicated that friars must do more to avoid activities that “deform the honesty of our Order,” or that “generate grave scandal for the Order.” Friar subgroups, most especially young friars and local priors, became the targets of enforcement, and general and provincial chapters made it part of their routine to call friars incautious and suspect and their behaviors criminal and reprehensible. Much of the talk about the defense of corporate honor came in the context of rectifying the problem of intrusive outsiders, mostly parents, friends, and patrons, who looked after the interests of individual friars by limiting the capabilities of the Order’s legitimate decision-makers to assign, move, promote or demote. The second broad trend is the countervailing force of the very strong resistance to full-scale implementation of administrative objectives. Over the whole period we have studied, adverse forces – ambition for offices and honors, an unquenchable thirst for privileges and dispensations, resorting to the aid of parents and other outsiders, refusal to show reverence for leaders – foiled administrators’ attempts to improve procedures and correct discipline. The cross currents whipped up a number of little dust devils until, when the contest intensified into the 1360s, these multiple and opposing forces created a destructive and ominous tempest in the Province of Aragon.

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In 1345 advantage appeared to be with the reformers. Bernat Sescala, following upon the work of others, had introduced procedural changes that redefined as aberrant what some friars in earlier decades perceived as normative. Dissenters were becoming isolated. By 1351, Nicolau Rossell and his diffinitors demanded that a circator be named in each convent. To this friar was given the responsibility of checking the windows and doors at night to make sure they were securely locked. In 1368 the acts charged a local functionary, probably this same circator, with checking private cells to see that there were no holes in the walls or other points of egress. This emphasis on physical enclosure serves as a metaphor for the broader effort to circumscribe, delineate and demarcate. Closed doors complimented closed legal loopholes. Nonetheless, the evidence shows substantial disregard for these impositions. Even at the height of the administrative attack on discursus friars still escaped the confines of their convents. Moreover, an increase in evidence of contested elections, apostasy and more demonstrates that many friars resented and challenged the changes that their leaders wished to impose. Administrators effectively cut off most means of unauthorized exit, restricted the winners of elections to candidates of their choice, increased the severity of punishments applied to wrongdoers. They advanced a new corporate culture that valued attachment to a bureaucratic regime over personal participation in an apostolic mission. But, still, resistance to administrative corrections did not abate. After Nicolau Rossell left the office of provincial prior in 1356 to become Cardinal of San Sisto any semblance of unity in the province began to break down rapidly. In the previous decade Bernat Sescala’s aspiration to reinvent obedience worked only a tenuous and temporary cognitive shift, and Rossell’s enterprising attempt to draw priors into a tighter bureaucratic hierarchy did little to correct the province’s deep disciplinary problems. These efforts exacerbated tensions between supporters of provincial authority and those who fought to keep the prevailing system of local autonomy in support of friars’ privileges. Given the antagonisms, we can imagine Rossell holding the province together by the force of his own will, evidence for which we see in the verbal attacks made upon him by some friars when he left the provincialate to join the papal court at Avignon. The chapter acts of 1358 include an item that in its brevity shows the depth of ill-feeling some friars had towards him: it indicates that any friar who spoke badly of the new Cardinal either to another friar or to someone outside the Order might

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find himself in jail.1 Francisco Diago, writing two hundred years later, insisted upon Rossell’s humildad, which is difficult to translate as a humility akin to meekness or diffidence when its various meanings so easily attach to the zeal spun from administrative ambition and inquisitorial arrogance.2 On the other hand, because Rossell was only forty-one years old when he became Aragon’s first cardinal, relatively young and yet sufficiently well-connected to attract the attention of his king and the pope, the recriminations against him likely spouted from the jealousies of disgruntled friars whose careers had not advanced or had not gained similarly ample patronage. In any event, grousing about Rossell’s appointment had become open enough and so potentially damaging that Juan Gomir and his diffinitors had to take a stand against it. A full ten years before the papal schism relations inside the province had fallen to the point of factional war. These events begin with Rossell’s transfer to Avignon in 1357, at which time Nicolau Eymerich was made vicar of the province. At the time of the next election the province’s electors chose Joan Gomir instead of Eymerich, and Gomir then served a term as provincial that lasted until 1362. In that year the Master General, Simon of Langres, removed Provincial Prior Joan Gomir, choosing Nicolau Eymerich again as vicar of the province until an election could be held. What followed convulsed the province. A faction led by Gomir held a provincial chapter in September in Valencia, which first chose Guillem Conill as provincial vicar and then pursued, at Conill’s direction, an election that resulted in naming the inquisitor Bernat Ermengol as the new provincial. In November of the same year Eymerich held a competing provincial chapter. We note here that Eymerich’s biographers have called the assertion of his own will in sensitive political matters “fanatical,” describing a pushiness that is of consequence in this instance when we observe that the diffinitors at that second chapter elected him to the provincialate.3 Thus the year 1362 ended with two competing provincial chapters with rival sets of diffinitors electing their own candidates, Bernat Ermengol and Nicolau 1

Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 25 (1995), 360: Praecipimus autem in virtute Sanctae Obedientiae fratribus huius Provincia universis, ac sub pena carceris iniungimus per praesentes, ut de persona, et negotiis Reverendissimi in Christo Patris, ac Domini Domini Nicholay Aragoniae Cardinalis loquantur cum omni reverentia, et honore, tam cum fratribus, quam cum secularibus, prout decet. 2 Diago, Historia, 43–46. 3 Brugada i Gutiérrez-Rave, Nicolau Eimeric, 41.

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Eymerich, to serve rival interests at the head of the province.4 In the following year Pope Urban V, forced to intercede on account of the divisiveness (magnam divisionem provinciae) caused by these events, nullified the elections and chose a third man, Jaume Domenech, as the province’s new leader.5 Robles Sierra referred to the incident as the province’s “first institutional conflict,” although we have already counted many earlier conflicts all institutional at their roots and in their ramifications.6 Pere de Arenys, who took the corporate pulse of the friars as a witness to the events, reiterated in his Chronicon pope Urban’s sentiment that the events of the 1362 chapter created an awful division in the province.7 The disappointment Pere felt must have been widely shared since from its first days the independence of the Order’s electoral processes had been, as Tugwell says, “jealously guarded.” If something could be found that nearly all friars would have agreed upon in that moment of destructive disagreements it would be the deep sense of frustration, and anger, stemming from the fact the pope had to intervene.8 Worst of all, Urban’s intervention resulted in the office being filled, for the first time in the history of the province, by an outsider, Jaume Domenech, a friar brought up in the Province of Provence and who served as that province’s provincial. His interests, arguably, would not be those of the locals. The election of two provincial priors shattered the semblance of unity in the province and had terrible results. A great number of friars flatly refused to move to the convents to which the competing chapters assigned them. It then became an annual occurrence of individual friars to refuse their reassignment orders. Under these conditions of breakdown in conventual life friars looked even more to their friends and parents for support, securing benefices and assignments with

4 Diago, Historia, 47, two centuries after the fact, tried to make light of the controversy but, frankly, did not do very well. Ermengol and Eymerich, he indicates, remained amicable even if they continued to disagree about procedures leading to the two elections. It is more likely that their few points of agreement included the shared disappointment of being ruled by Domenech. On another contest between Eymerich and Ermengol, here involving the extent of Ramón Llull’s heterodoxy, see Puig i Oliver, “Nicolás Eymerich, un inquisidor discutido.” 5 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 96–97, records the letter from Avignon installing Domenech. 6 Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 92. 7 Petrus de Arenys, Chronicon,16. 8 Tugwell, “Election, confirmation and absolution of superiors,” 26.

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privileges that were sometimes falsified, and although looking for aid from outsiders was not new in the 1360s, it reached such proportions that it led to one of the most bitter fights we have encountered. In 1363, Jaume Domenech and his diffinitors ordered all priors in the province’s convents to draw up lists of all of the privileges conceded to friars in their houses.9 In 1365 Domenech, presumably after studying the lists, revoked all of these privileges and graces, excepting those issued to masters, inquisitors, and lectors engaged in leading courses.10 In 1368, again to illustrate that these issues did not merely impact the Province of Aragon, the Master General, Elias Raymond, directed a letter to all provincial and conventual priors across the Order in which he similarly ordered a complete nullification of existing privileges and an overhaul of the system by which prelates proffered privileges and dispensations.11 These prohibitions did not end the issuing of new privileges, nor did they prevent friars from claiming, on the basis of real or counterfeit documents, that they possessed privileges granted by higher external authorities. For the most part friars fought back by refusing to budge; that is, they continued to act according to custom. Old cliques could not be broken; old habits remained unshaken. As a remedy, local priors excommunicated more of their men. In response, the excommunicated took their cases to provincial and general chapters, which chapters responded by insisting that local priors refrain from using jails and excommunication arbitrarily. Pere de Arenys recorded in his Chronicon that the general chapter of 1377 was “the last united general chapter.” It was a wincing recognition of a reality far beyond his control and beyond the efforts of his Order’s leaders, perhaps even beyond the power of prayer. In 1378, as is well known, the election of two Roman pontiffs tore the threadbare cloth of universal Christendom in two. The papal schism split the Dominican Order, too, with the various provinces declaring for one or the other pope and thus falling into rival “obediences.” In the following year, 1379, King Peter IV, wrote a letter to the Province’s leaders and all friars and sisters pertaining to the province, indicating to them all that he was withholding judgment about which pontiff to follow and advising them to do the same. He instructed them to show obedience to Raymond Elias, the master general elected before the split, and to 9 10 11

See Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 94. Robles Sierra, “Actas,” EV 26 (1996), 109. Gómez García, “Actas,” EV 27 (1997), 253–254, cf. 251.

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Bernat Ermengol, their provincial prior. Historians have seen Peter’s neutrality as either good or bad depending upon their own persuasions, but more important for our purposes is what prospect his letter held for the friars. The letter quite intentionally brought attention to the question of obedience, making plain that the friars’ first loyalty was to him, second to the leaders of their own Order, and third, at some later date when the issue should be decided, to one or the other of the popes. The provincial chapter receiving the letter also commented in its acts that it wished the friars to avoid dangerous schism among the Dominicans, pointing to King Peter’s instructions as the means of doing so. But internal schism proved impossible to avoid. The botched election of 1362 had already done its work, and the election that brought Ermengol into office was also hotly contested. In his reflections on the year 1379, Pere de Arenys, already disturbed by the events of previous years, admitted that the year’s provincial chapter was the last united chapter in the province. Thereafter, he said, the Aragonese and Navarese separated themselves from the Catalans.12 This is the way it would remain for decades, perhaps for well over a century. Ramón Hernandez, following the general formula in the historiography of an Observant Reform, identified the forty-fifth session of the Council of Constance in 1418 as a turning point for positive change when he declared that the same session that resolved the unity of the western Church also “reestablished the Dominican Order in its perfect unity.”13 Given our findings, such a presumption of perfect unity far overstates the reality. The convent of Zaragoza is probably not anomalous and can serve as an example of the slow pace of change from the situation of internal factional stalemate. There, in late 1493 or early 1494, a group of eighteen friars, including the convent’s prior and many elders and teachers, signed a petition in which they sought the reform of the said convent so that they could fulfill and live by the rule and institutes of the Order of Preachers. Within a decade, as the efforts of this reformers’ bloc seemed to have some inertia on their side, a rival group hired notaries and legal experts, receiving money from the convent’s procurator for their defense against the would-be reformers. By 1516, no positive outcome of reform had been realized, and Blasco

12

Petrus de Arenys, Chronicon, 20–21. Hernández, “La Reforma dominicana entre los concilios de Constanza y Basilea,” 9. 13

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Martínez, who studied these activities in the Zaragoza convent, indicates that no real change can be demonstrated until at least 1533.14 Francisco Diago, contemplating the disturbances caused by the double election of 1362, remarked that “peace is a union of wills.”15 Perhaps he was right. Dominican unity clearly went missing early, as soon as the Order became something to fight for and its resources became something to fight over. Thereafter, a unified and harmonious Order of Preachers existed only as something roughly sketched out in the imaginations of a few leaders. In the 1590s Diago began his Historia de la Provincia de Aragón by calling his province the “garden of the Order.”16 It seems now that he could only have done so by overlooking much of what he read in his province’s chapter acts. If we agree with Diago that where unity went peace followed, then what the early friars and their institutions bequeathed to later generations was an absence of peace. Given its absence, friar-historians like Diago had need to invent a story for and about their Order in which they could make an ongoing and difficult struggle – the constant effort to build an organization against the drag of its own fragile personalities and weak institutions – look like a peaceful project.

14 Blasco Martínez, Sociología de una communidad religiosa, 57–59. By the middle of the sixteenth century, a similar contest was opening up in the New World. Reformers eager to impose observance under a conception that personal sanctification above apostolic preaching conducted a campaign that Daniel Ulloa, Dominicos Divididos, 154, called “casi inquisitorial,” almost inquisitorial. 15 Diago, Historia, 48v. 16 Diago, Historia, 1r.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscripts Acta Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae Aragoniae. Universidad de Zaragoza, Biblioteca Universitaria MS 185. Acta Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae Aragoniae. Biblioteca Universitaria de Barcelona MS 241/458. Camprubí, F. Lumen Domus o Annals del convent de Santa Catarina de Barcelona. Biblioteca Universitaria de Barcelona MS 1005. Domingo, Tomás. Historia del convento de Predicadores de Zaragoza. Universidad de Zaragoza, Biblioteca Universitaria MSs 30, 31 y 32. Fluxá, P. Libro de la Excellencias del convento de Santo Domingo de Mallorca de la Orden de Predicadores. Biblioteca del Monasterio de Montserrat MS 79. Lamana, José. Lumen Domus. Universidad de Zaragoza, Biblioteca Universitaria MS 190.

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INDEX A. de Nalsovello election fraud 131 administration 24–26, 60, 81, 179, 199, 207, 213–216, 230, 272 administrative heritage 23 agency 43–44 Albert the Great on sex 140 Alfonso Buenhombre pious fraud 287 Andrea di Bonaiuto image of Dominic supporting the Church 70 Andrew de Abalat (Dominican bishop) 79 Antoni de Manresa fighting 135 Antoni Domenech plague survivor 112 apostasy 139, 166, 266, 301, 321 Aragon 92 Arnau Burguet (Fourth and Seventh Provincial Prior, 1313–1314 and 1320–1325) 150–154, 157, 163, 183, 217, 264–265, 268, 289 Arnau de Benages with women 165 Arnau of Vilanova 291 Arnau Perfeyta disruptions and levity 132, 135, 228 assignments 29, 85, 106–114, 323; post-plague decline and recovery 113–114 avoidance of failure 23, 48, 66 Bailey, Michael on reformers’ generational differences 20 Balaguer (convent) 103, 235 Barcelona (city) 13, 15, 80, 93, 285, 290; urban growth 75; Mercedarian Order in 21 Barcelona (convent) 74, 87, 88, 91, 93, 133, 144, 151, 217, 229, 237, 295, 314; first foundation efforts 74–76, 78; host to general and provincial chapters 93; studium generale 93, 136, 150, 182 Bartolomeu Gasconi 104, 135; consuming meat 136 Bartomeu Capit fighting 135, 180 Bartomeu Tarragó 116 beds and bedding 141, 226, 227, 297–298 Bennet, Ralph 168, 172, 173

Berengar of Landora (Dominican Master General) 89, 122–123, 152–156, 196, 200, 204, 264, 268, 274, 294, 296, 310 Berenguer Comitis vicar 239 Berenguer de Casis theft and excommunication 138–139 Berenguer de Castelbisbal (Dominican bishop) 79, 283 Berenguer de Saltells (Ninth Provincial Prior, 1332–1342) punished 150, 163 Bernard Gueneé 25 Bernard Gui Practica heretice pravitatis 2; between church and state 25; on first provinces 77; intercessory prayer 152 Bernat de Mur (Dominican bishop) 79 Bernat de Pinu dispute with Jaume March 132–135, 183 Bernat de Pinyana stole chickens 138 Bernat Ermengol (Fifteenth Provincial Prior, 1369–1379) 238, 242, 325; in contested election 322 Bernat Falconer plague survivor 112; as prior of Lerida, removed from office 219 Bernat Martín election fraud 131 Bernat Peregrí (First Provincial Prior, 1301–1305) 88, 95, 106 Bernat Puigcercos (Eighth Provincial Prior, 1325–1332) on wealth and usury 53, 103; on removal of conventual priors 231, 237; penalized 268; as inquisitor 287, 291; against rumor and gossip 303; defending corporate reputation 304 Bernat Ros apostate 139 Bernat Scardi election fraud 131, 231 Bernat Sescala (Tenth Provincial Prior, 1342–1350) 130, 140–141, 159, 217, 241, 268, 275, 282; as reformer 22, 319, 321; on corporate honor 149, 296; on license to travel 190; on naming preachers 197; removing priors 238; on obedience 249–251, 257, 270–274, 276, 304; on discursus 310

344

index

Black Death 3, 13, 99, 106, 110, 136; population change in province 118– 120; post-plague recruiting 121–124 Black Legend 14 Blasco Martínez, Rosa María 93, 239–240, 325–326 Blessed Cecilia on refusal to obey 58, 254 Bologna 59, 60, 73, 76, 78, 134, 150 Bonanato Mazo vicar of Jativa, interfering with tractatus 234 boys intimacy with 141; 176, 198 bread and water fast (penitential) 130, 131, 135, 153, 218, 219 building projects 59 Burgos 74, 75 Cagliari (convent) 104 Calatayud (convent) 13, 79, 102, 116, 236, 238 caritas 61 Castellon (convent) 102, 133, 182, 228 Cathar (Albigensian) heresy 7, 41, 51 Catherine of Siena 46, 178 cells (bed and study chambers) 45, 59–60, 141–142, 298 Cervera (convent) 102–103, 138, 157, 182, 237 chapter of faults 129, 228 Chaucer on friars’ worldliness 126 Clement V (Pope) transfer to Avignon 13 clothing 45, 150–151, 163–164, 176 collusion and competition 68–71 command and control efforts to improve 3; as evidence of modern democracy 24; versus admonish and counsel 26 communal justice 129 competency tests 174, 176, 189, 195–198, 238, 243, 318 complexity as organizational reality 23, 38, 142; of law 27; of subgroup identities 173–180; of conventual administration 220; and reputation 282 Compostela (convent) 74, 75, 76 Conrad of Prussia 46 conscience 44, 64, 194, 245, 251, 262, 263, 271, 276 continuity and discontinuity 33, 38, 124, 252 contumacy 132, 135, 205, 228, 263, 300

conventions in Dominican historiography success 6–11; decline 11–16; reform 16–22; metahistorical assumptions 9, 19, 21 convents (Dominican) in early histories 40; first foundations in Iberia 76, 79; See individual locations conventual prior 29, 30, 32, 64, 65, 77, 115, 129, 131, 136, 137, 138, 146, 155, 166, 176, 177, 180, 185, 187–194, 197–203, 207–247, 255, 263–268, 273, 276, 294, 302, 304, 308–313, 319–320, 324 conversi (lay brothers) 58–59, 130, 135, 138, 177–180, 191, 192 convivencia 14 Cordoba (convent) 85 corporate honor 24, 127, 147–150, 224, 259, 269; and reputation management 280–282, 297–303; and mission 282–292; in the Dominican lexicon 292–297; and control of speech 303–306; and discursus 306–315 corporation corporate history, 2; organological view 37; as person in law 37; as head and members 38; corporate survival 47–49; inertia in 48; as experiment 49 Council of Lyons 69 Courtenay, William 261 crisis (in Dominican historiography) 44–45, 99 crow as image of Dominican friars 126–127 Crown of Aragon fourteenth-century dynamism 15; geopolitical composite 91–95 culture of publicity 157, 201, 218–219, 280, 292, 297, 301, 303, 304 Dalmau Moner 145 Dante Alighieri 5 database 30, 102, 114–118 David Knowles 252 de combinationes incautis 188–192, 295 de Garganta, José-María on plague deaths 111 de sequela scholarum 189 deaths 107–108; during Black Death 111–112 decadence/decline as a historiographical convention 6–11

index democratic elements (in Dominican Order) 24, 169, 213, 214 desamortización (dissolution) 41 Diago, Francisco 40, 103, 322; on plague deaths 111–112; garden of the Order 326 Diamond, Jared 48 Diego of Osma (bishop) 41, 49 diffinitors (diffinitorium) approves sentences of judges 130 disciplines (penitential) 130, 131, 153 discursus 153, 192–193, 306–315 disobedience 58, 138, 274, 304 dispensation giant escape clause 64; appetite for 65 Domenech Sobrini 116 Domenech Soler stole chickens 138 Domingues de Tarca unlicensed meat eating 157 Dominic of Calaruega as founder 6; as anti-heretical preacher, 7; canonization 39; good organizer 41; early experiment 49–53; decade of obscurity 54–55; difficulty achieving recognition 56; dissent of followers 57–58, 170; temporary impediment to building plans 59–60; abdicates leadership 60, 63; in Iberia 74; giving up freedom 143 Dominic of Segovia 73 Dominican Order confirmation 7; international presence 7; corporate perfection in 9; flexibility of 42, 45; Observants Reform 47; collusion and competition with Franciscans 68–71; range of services 71; record keeping 101; unity myth 168–173 Dominicum de Arbanies punished 235 Douais, Celeste love of rule 61, 213; rivalries in Province of Rome 137 Douglas, Mary on social system contradictions 5 Durandus of Huesca (and Poor Catholics) 51 elders (seniores, antiquores) 124, 135, 155, 175–177, 180, 190, 194, 198, 200, 202, 229, 232, 241–245, 276, 311, 319, 325 elections abuses of 130–134, 142, 151, 212, 231, 234, 235, 268; discord as ‘normal’ 269

345

Eneco de Taxonar prior of Estella and socius to general chapter 220 enumeration of favorable circumstance 9 Estella (convent) 79, 91, 102, 181, 220, 237, 238 excommunication 138 externalities assumed threat to corporate viability 22 Felip Mathey vicar 239 Fernan de Sudanelo disruptions and levity 132 fighting 132–137, 227–228 Florence 133 fourteenth century application of decline theories 12; in Iberian historiography, 12–15; in religious history 10–12, 15–16 Francesç Cineris plague survivor 112 Francesç de Casanova preacher general and prior 220 Francesç de Cerviano apostasy 166 Francesç Eiximinis on usury 53 Francesç Monia eating meat with Franciscans 158 Francesç Peyroni fighting 135, 180 Francesç Provincialis 104 Francesç Raucen penalized 228 Francesç Soler with women 165 Francis of Assisi 50, 55, 70, 171, 280, 293 Franciscans (Order of Friars Minor) early divisions 19; institutional cross-fertilization 68; collusion and competition 68–71 Fulk (Bishop of Toulouse) authorizes Dominic’s preaching 54–56 G. de Uliano avoided tractatus 131 G. Serra refused reassignment, penalized 227 Gabriel of Florence fighting 137 Galvano Fiamma 39 general chapter of 1220 60; voting inequities 78; division of provinces 83–84 generational disabilities 23 Georgina Galbraith 168 Gerald of Frachet 145, 146, 184 Gerau Regis 228 Gerona (convent) 79, 93, 102, 112, 133, 145, 182, 218, 237, 289

346

index

Giotto di Bondone image of Francis supporting the Church 69–70 Giovanni Dominici 3, 46 governance (in Dominican Order) democratic elements 24–25; autocratic elements 25; regulative versus normative aspects 27; chapters acts 27–30; reorganization, 1220s-1250s 60–63; provinces instituted 77; representative but not egalitarian 78 grammar studies 91, 103, 108, 115, 122–123, 133, 176, 181–182, 186, 193, 225–226, 229 Gregory IX (Pope) 66, 68, 171 Grundmann, Herbert 49–51 Guillem Arnau plague survivor 112 Guillem de Barberan (Dominican bishop) 79 Guillem de Mata rebellion and contumacy 132 Guillem Domenech unlicensed meat eating 158; as vicar of Valencia permitted meat 219 Guillem Gerau 116 Guillem Lupet plague survivor 112; vicar 239 Guillem Zamaza 116 Guillermum de Alagone punished 235 Henry Suso 46 heresy/heretics 7, 41, 43, 49, 52, 143, 287, 288, 291 Hernandez, Ramón perfect unity reestablished 325 Hinnebusch, William on worldshaking events 8; the Order confronting crises 44–45, 99; nice balance 62, 213; administrative factors in division of provinces 80; plague’s blow to leadership 112; leadership lacking 146; on unity 169; three claims for obedience 262 Honorius III (Pope) confirmation of Order of Preachers 7, 51; promotes Order despite opposition 66 horses (riding) 45, 153, 222 Huesca (convent) 79, 92, 102, 115, 136, 182, 235, 237 Humbert of Romans (Fifth Dominican Master General) 43, 144, 147–148, 169; on wealth 53; collusion with Franciscans 68; on obedience 258; on conversion campaigns 285

Iberia abnormal history 13–14 ideals versus actualities 4; inhibitory 23; chapter acts move beyond 29 identity subgroups 173–183; politics 5 inertia in organizations 5 Innocent III (Pope) 41, 55, 66; preconditions 63; dream 69–70 Innocent IV (Pope) public workhorse 7, backpedaling 67; death a result of friars’ prayers 67 inquisition/inquisitor 2, 7, 14, 20, 25, 53, 71, 80, 81, 82, 88, 92, 110, 146, 151, 152, 155, 163, 173, 180, 233, 264, 275, 287, 288–291, 322, 324 interpersonal dynamics as catalyst for corporate change 22; as dark side of corporations 23 irreverence 132, 157, 228, 304 Jaca (town) 75 jails 3, 137, 138, 205 James I, King of Aragon, Count of Barcelona no early support 76; five Dominican bishops 147; 283, 287 Jativa (convent) 79, 94, 102, 116, 139, 181, 219, 227, 233, 234, 299, 300 Jaume Aleman (Sixth Provincial Prior, 1315–1320) 82, 103 Jaume Domenech (Thirteenth Provincial Prior, 1363–1367) on plague deaths 110–112; on youth 203–205; on priors 235, 238, 242, 244, 269; contested election 290, 323; on privileges 324 Jaume March dispute with Bernat de Pinu 132–135, 183 Jaume Pascasi wrongly incarcerates another friar 130 Jaume Tomàs 116 Jews conversion of 43, 283–288, 300 John of Navarre disobedience 58; school of sanctity 173 John of Parma, Franciscan Minister General 58 John of Rivalto 3 John of Vercelli (Sixth Dominican Master General) 80 John Teutonicus (Fourth Dominican Master General) 147, 169, 307 Jon Vilardelli fought in sacristy 135 Jordan of Pisa an order of bishops? 56 Jordan of Rivalto 149

index Jordan of Saxony (Second Dominican Master General) 39, 43, 78, 144, 145, 169, 184 Juan Antonio Llorente 81–82 Juan Fort (Fifth Provincial Prior, 1314–1315) 189 Juan Gomir (Twelfth Provincial Prior, 1362) 95, 289, 322 Juan Ruiz impatient crows 126 judges (provincial committee) 129 Kaepelli, Thomas rivalries in Province of Rome 137 Knights Templar 76 knives and swords 135 Knowles, David on Dominican excesses 10 Ladner, Gerhard on reform 17 Languedoc 41–42, 82 Lawrence, C.H. 67, 145 lectors 133; permitted meat 153 LeGoff, Jacques urbanity of friars 52 Leonardo Dati 46 Lerida (convent) 79, 88, 102, 135, 158, 182, 219, 220, 237, 238 Linehan, Peter 140, 293 Little, Lester on religious corporations 2; urbanity of friars 52 liturgy 43, 48, 145 logic (arts) studies 103, 115, 122–123, 182, 186–190, 193–196, 200, 308; in a cocoon of privilege 187 Lucius III (Pope) Ad abolendam 50 Madrid (convent) 76, 87 Majorca (convent) 79, 91, 92, 102, 133, 144, 151, 157, 163, 182, 218, 237, 239 Majorca (island and principal town) 78–80, 88–91 Mandonnet, Pierre dualism 62 Manresa (convent) 102, 237, 239 Marc de Areis stole chickens 138 Martin de Atheca 291 Martinum de Aspes punished 235 masses (penitential) 130, 131, 218, 219 meat 45, 136, 154–159, 222, 224; stealing 138; occult meats 158–159 mendicant organizational type 49; ecological niche 69 Mercedarian Order instability of reform efforts 21 Michael Fabra 283

347

Michael of Ucero 73 Miquel de Estella (Second Provincial Prior, 1305–1309) 89 Miquel Sanch contumacy and sword play 135, 228 miracles and saintly stories 39, 70–71, 144, 152, 158–159 Mixson, James on property and reform 19 money for travel 58, 170, 176; hiding 138; and excommunication 138–139 Montpellier 41 Mulchahey, M. Michèle prepostulancy schools 122 Munio of Zamora (Seventh Dominican Master General) deposed 140, 294 Murcia (convent) 85; ceded to Province of Spain 88; 102, 299 muslims 14, 43, 71, 92, 94, 143–144, 178, 283–288, 299–302 nations 90–91; distribution of preachers general 95, 172 natural philosophy (course of studies) 123, 133, 135, 182, 183, 261 Nicolas IV (Pope) 140 Nicolas of Calabria 289 Nicolau Eymeric (Vicar of Province, 1362) 138, 149, 275, 278, 289–291, 322–323 Nicolau Rossell (Eleventh Provincial Prior, 1350–1356) 92, 130, 135, 137, 138, 158–159, 219, 272, 319–320, 321–322; “brood of vipers” 3, 201, 305; as a reformer 22, 201, 228, 319; on youth 32, 164–168, 190–191, 201–203; career 92; plague recovery 113, 123; on corporate honor 150, 282, 302, 305; on outsiders 199; on priors 238, 242, 245–246; on obedience 275–276; on discursus 313 Nietzsche, Friedrich on moral acts 5 Nieva Campo, Guillermo reforms among Castilian Dominicans 20 O’Malley, John revolutionary implications for reform dialectic 18 Oakley, Francis on structural deficits 16 obediences during Papal Schism, 13 Oberman, Heiko on decline oversimplified 12

348

index

organization ecology 67 Ortega y Gasset, José on disposition and action 4 outsiders 5, 225 Palencia (convent) 76 Pamplona (convent) 79, 91, 102, 136, 236–237; convent penalized 130 Pamplona (town) 75 Papal Schism 2, 46; rival obediences in 13; as leadership crisis 19 Paris 58, 133–134; university delegation against friars 67; recruiting 76 partiality 138 passages in walls 141 penances/penalties rules not binding under sin 64 Pennington, Kenneth on Innocent III’s legal challenge 56; dangers of approving Order 66 Pere Catene avoided a tractatus 131 Pere Correger, Provincial Prior 104 Pere de Abalat 283 Pere de Arenys Chronicon 39, 183, 323, 324 Pere de Centelles (Dominican bishop) 79 Pere de Colle theft from cell 139 Pere de Coponibus theft and sale of goods 139 Pere de Ischo 115 Pere de Tarrega eating meat with Franciscans 158 Pere Luppi de Bielsa 115; prior and lector at Zaragoza 220 Pere Messeguer removed from priorate of Urgell 219 Pere Peyroni wrongly incarcerated 130 Pere Ponç stole chickens 138 Pere Saplana penalized as prior of Jativa 219 Pere Serrani prior and preacher general 220 Peter IV of Aragon ritual savaging of Unión at Zaragoza convent 92; 289, 324 Peter of Madrid 74 Peter of Verona 292 Peter Waldez (and Waldensians) 49–51 pious fictions 9 Ponç Hugo, Count of Ampurias 103 Poor Men of Lyons 49–51

population benchmarks 114–121 Posner, Eric 214 preacher general 94, 136; the first aristocracy 172 preaching 45; insufficientia praedicantium 193–197 precept 263–264, 272–273 prolixity of provincial admonitions 272 property and reform 19, 59 Prouille 54 providentialism (sacred history) 9, 18, 39–40, 46–47; alternatives to 37; mixed with rational history 41 Province of Aragon first convents 73–77; desire for separation from Spain 80–87; fifteenth place in general chapter seating 88; separation effected 88–89; as composite 89–97 Province of Rome 137, 142, 260 Province of Spain first convents 73–77; among first established 77; pride of place in chapter seating 78; division 80–89 provinces voting inequities in general chapters 78; fuzzily defined 78; vicariates as prelude to division 85–86 provincial chapters purposes and results 29–30 provincial prior office first instituted 77 Psalter recitation (penitential) 131 public relations/propaganda 24 Puigcerda (convent) 79 Ramon Cortici with women 165 Ramon de Bacheo with women 139 Ramon Llull sleeping dogs 127; beloved dishonored 127; on Dominican corporate honor 127, 282–286 Ramon Martí 286 rank and status 5, 167, 172–173, 178, 183; of lay and clerical brothers 59; in ranking of provinces 78 Raymond de Torrelles, Bishop of Majorca 283 Raymond Elias (Dominican Master General) 324 Raymond of Capua (Twenty-third Dominican Master General) agent of reform 8, 46 Raymond of Felga (Dominican Bishop of Toulouse) 146

index Raymond of Penyafort (Third Dominican Master General) 2, 43, 94, 128, 144–145, 151, 175–176, 283–285 rebellion 132, 138 Reconquista 14, 75 recruitment 103; sons of proven men 103; increases before Black Death 106; post-plague 122–124 reform as agent-centered change 4; as a theoretical problem 4, 17–19; Observants Reform 19; generational differences 20; sixteenth-century difficulties 20 Reginald of Orleans 78, 175 Reilly, Bernard on exaggerations of decline in Iberian history 14 resistance to Dominican leaders 5; to Dominic’s designs 170 Robles Sierra, Adolfo on plague deaths 111–12; first institutional conflict 323 Rodericum de Ador punished 235 Romeu de Bruguera (Third Provincial Prior, 1309–1313) 135 Rosenwein, Barbara on tidy monastic histories 15; urbanity of friars 52 Sangüesa (convent) 102, 236; convent penalized 130 Sant Mateu (convent) 104, 134, 238 scandal 138; women and 139; to Province of Spain 140, 294 scrutiny 225, 232, 233, 245, 265 Segovia 74, 76, 87 Sicily 83–84; Sicilian Vespers 84 Simon of Langres (Dominican Master General 322 Smail, Daniel on disposition and action 4 socius 95, 115, 130, 134, 179, 192, 212, 218, 220, 232–236, 241, 265 solidarity privilege as factor in 6 Spain’s Golden Age 14 Spanish Inquisition 14 Stephen of Salagnac 39, 253–254 students 76, 81, 89, 115, 123, 142, 155, 164, 165, 173–176, 180, 183–199, 204, 211, 265, 309, 312, 318 studium generale at Barcelona 93, 136, 150, 182; at Montpellier 134; at Lerida 182 studium provincial 174, 182, 186 subsidiarity 214–217

349

success as historiographical convention 6–11; as avoidance of failure 66 Suero Gomez 74; first provincial of Spain 77 Tarragona (convent) 79, 91, 93, 102, 131, 133, 218, 219, 220, 231, 237, 238, 283 Tavuzzi, Michael difficulties of sixteenth-century Dominican reforms 20 theft 132, 138–139; of chickens 29; of books 138; of money 139 Thomas Aquinas 2; on wealth 53; on sex 140; on obedience 250–262 Tolan, John Dominican ineffectiveness 286, 288 Toledo (convent) 85 Tomás Carnicer 158 Tortosa cathedral school 104 tractatus 131, 212, 232–235, 245 Traslosheros, Jorge conflict among New World Dominicans 20 Tugwell, Simon 253, 323; monastic obligations relativized 61 Ulloa, Daniel conflicts among New World Dominicans 20 unity in guilds and confraternities 38; Dominican and Franciscan partnership 68; national identities as threat 91; unitary sensibility not without tensions 125; brought by Rule and constitutions 168; in subordination to authority 168 Urban V (Pope) 323 Urban VI (Pope) 46 Urgell (convent) 79, 102, 116, 131, 219, 233, 238 Valencia (convent) 79, 80, 86, 94, 96, 102, 132, 133, 134, 153, 158, 181, 182, 218, 219, 220, 227, 236, 237, 239, 314, 322 Valencia (Kingdom and city) 12, 15, 79, 92, 94, 104, 147, 153, 283, 290, 299 Valentín de Pace election fraud 131, 231 Van Engen, John on creative tensions 10, 63–64, 184; on operational changes in 1220 chapter 60; revolutionary transformation 62

350

index

Vicaire, M.-H. on dating convent foundations 75 Vincent Ferrer 3, 46, 94, 145, 183, 275 visitors (visitatores) 90, 138, 157, 212, 219 vita apostolica 7 voice (voting rights), penitential denial of 131, 135, 136, 138 Vose, Robin Spain as backwater 74–77, 102; on patronage 106 wealth 49–50, 53 Weber, Max on legitimation 26 wine 153 women 29, 139–142, 153, 165–166, 300; at Prouille convent 54;

at Madrid convent 57; at St. Mary in Tempulo 58; mothers and sisters 141 youth 124, 167–168, 217, 225–226; inutile 12, 164; fuzzily defined group 186–187; ministry restricted 191–193; scapegoated 200–205 Zamora (convent) 76, 140 Zaragoza (convent) first foundation efforts 74–76, 78, 87, 91, 93, 102, 104, 178, 217, 220, 234, 239, 325, 326; ritual savaging of Unión 92 Zaragoza (town) 74–75