CHAP. VI. INTERDICT ON LEON. 115 of Leon paid no regard to the summons; the King of Castile averted the interdict for a time by declaring his readiness to receive back his daughter. But he had no intention to restore certain castles which he had obtained as her dowry. The Archbishop of Toledo and the Bishop of Palencia on the part of the King of Castile, the Bishop of Zamora on that of the King of Leon, appeared in Rome. They could hardly obtain a hearing from the inexorable Pontiff. But their representations of the effects of the interdict enforced the consideration of the Pope. They urged the danger as to the heretics. When the lips of the pastors of the people were closed, the unrefuted heretics could not be controlled by the power of the King. New heresies spring up in every quarter. How great, too, the danger as to the Saracens! The religious services and the religious sermons alone inflamed the valour of the people to the holy war against the misbelievers; their devotion, now that both prince and people were involved in one interdict, waxed cold. Nor less the danger as to the Catholics, for since the clergy refused their spiritual services, the people refused their temporal payments; offerings, first-fruits, tithes, were cut off; the clergy were reduced to beg, to dig, or, worse reproach, to be the slaves of the Jews. The Pope, with great reluctance, consented to relax the severity of the interdict, to permit the performance of the sacred offices, except the burial of the dead in consecrated ground; this was granted to the clergy alone as a special favour. But the King himself was still under the ban of excommunication; whatever town or village he entered, all divine service ceased; no one was to dare to celebrate an act of holy worship. This mandate was addressed to the Archbishop of Compostella and to all the Bishops of the kingdom of Leon." But his wife had been still further endeared to the King of Leon by the birth of a son; and so regardless were the Leonese clergy of the Papal decree, that the baptism of the child was celebrated publicly with the utmost pomp in the cathedral church of Leon. Innocent had compared together the royal line of the East and of the West. In ⚫ Epist. ii. 75. The son by Teresa had died in infancy. Mariana, loc. cit. A.D. 1199. the East, Isabella, the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem, had contracted two incestuous marriages within the prohibited degrees. God had smitten with death her two husbands, Conrad of Montferrat and Henry of Champagne. He would even inflict worse vengeance on the transgressors of the West, if they persisted in their detestable deed. His vaticination was singularly unfortunate. The son of this unblessed union grew up a king of the most exemplary valour, virtue, and prosperity; and after his death the canonized Ferdinand was admitted into the holy assembly of the Saints. Nor was it till Berengaria had borne five children to Alfonso of Leon that her own religious scruples were awakened, and she retired from the arms of her husband to a peaceful retreat in the dominions of her father. The ban under which the kingdom had laboured for nearly five years was annulled; the five children were declared legitimate and capable of inheriting the crown. The dispute concerning the border castles was arranged by the intervention of the bishops. The King of Navarre had incurred the interdict of Innocent on more intelligible grounds. He had made an impious treaty with the Infidels; he had even undertaken a suspicious visit to the Miramamolin in Africa; he was supposed to be organising a league with the Mohammedans both of Spain and Africa against his enemies the Kings of Arragon and Castile on him and on his realm Brother Rainer was at once to pronounce the ban, and to give lawful power to the King of Arragon to subdue his dominions. Sancho of Navarre, however, averted the subjugation of the realm: he entered into a treaty with the allied Kings of Arragon and Castile. It was stipulated in the terms of the treaty that Pedro of Arragon should wed the sister of Navarre. But again was heard the voice of the Pope, declaring that the marriage, though the pledge and surety of peace, and of Sancho's loyalty to the cause of Christendom, being within the third degree of consanguinity, could not be. The oath which Sancho had taken to fulfil this stipulation was worse than perjury; it was to be broken at all cost and all hazard. A.D. 1204. King of Navarre. Epist. i. 556. Compare Abarca Anales de Aragon, xviii. 7. CHAP. VI. PEDRO OF ARRAGON. D. King of 117 A.D. 1204. But thus inexorable to any breach of the ecclesiastical canons, so entirely had these canons usurped the AP. 1199. place of the higher and immutable laws of Arragon. Christian morals, here, as in the case of John of England, Innocent himself was, if not accommodating, strangely blind to the sin of marriage contracted under more unhallowed auspices. Pedro of Arragon was the model of Spanish chivalry on the throne. He aspired to be the leader of a great crusading league of all the Spanish kings against the Unbelievers. Innocent himself had the prudence to allay for a time the fervour of his zeal. The court of Pedro, like that of his brother, the Count of Provence, was splendid, gay, and dissolute: the troubadour was welcome, with his music and his song, to the joyous prince and the bevy of fair ladies, who were not insensible to the gallant King or to the amorous bards. But Pedro, while he encouraged the gay science of Provence, was inexorable to its religious freedom. He was hitherto severely orthodox, and banished all heresy from his dominions under pain of death. The kingdom flourished under his powerful rule: the King's peace was proclaimed for the protection of widows and orphans, roads and markets, oxen at the plough and all agricultural implements, olive-trees, and dovecotes. The husbandman found a protector, his harvests security, under the King's rule.b The Kings of Arragon had never been crowned on their accession; they received only the honour of knighthood. From Counts of Barcelona, owing allegiance to the descendants of Charlemagne, they had gradually risen to the dignity of Kings of Arragon. But the last sign of kingship was wanting, and Pedro determined to purchase that honour from the hand which assumed the power of dispensing crowns: he would receive the crown at Rome from the Pope himself, and as the price of this condescension hesitated not to declare the kingdom of Arragon feudatory to the See of Rome, and to covenant for an annual tribute to St. Peter. On his journey to Rome he visited his brother at his court in Provence. The h Hurter. p. 598. beauty and the rich inheritance of Maria, the only daughter of the Count of Montpellier, whose mother was Eudoxia, the daughter of the Emperor of the East, attracted the gallant and ambitious Pedro. There was an impediment to the marriage, it might have been supposed, more insuperable than the ties of consanguinity. She was already married, and had borne two children, to the Count of Comminges; she afterwards, indeed, asserted the nullity of this marriage, on the plea that the Count of Comminges had two wives living at the time of his union with her. But the easy Provençal clergy raised no remonstrance. Innocent, if rumours reached him (he could hardly be ignorant), closed his ears to that which was not brought before him by regular appeal. The espousals took place at Montpellier, and Pedro set forth again for Rome. He sailed from Marseilles to Genoa, from Genoa to Nov. 8, 1204. Ostia. He was received with great state: two hundred horsemen welcomed him to the shore; the Senator of Rome, the Cardinals, went out to meet him; he was received by the Pope himself in St. Peter's; his lodging was with the Canons of that church. k Three days after took place the coronation of the new feudatory king (thus was an example set to the King of England) in the Church of San Pancrazio beyond the Tiber, in the presence of all the civilians, ecclesiastical dignitaries of Rome, and of the Roman people." He was anointed by the Bishop of Porto, and invested in all the insignia of royalty the robe, the mantle, the sceptre, the golden apple, the crown, and the mitre. He swore this oath of allegiance :-" I, Pedro, King of Arragon, profess and declare that I will be true and loyal to my lord the Pope Innocent, and to his Catholic successors in the See of Rome; that I will maintain my realm in fidelity i "Si bien Doña Maria di Mompeller fue en santitad y valor ornamento de el estado de Reynas, y traia en dote tan ricos y oportunos pueblos." Abarca, indeed, says, "Ella ni era hermosa ni doncella." He adds that she had been forced to this marriage, neither legitimate nor public, with the Count of Comminges; see also on her two daugh ters, and the count's two wives-i. p. 225. He soon repented of his ill-sorted marriage. Abarca says he set off" para salir el bien de ellos (desvios de el Rey con la Reyna); y alexarse mas de ella,' and hoped to get a divorce from the Pope. m St. Martin's day. Gesta, c. 120. CHAP. VI. FEUDAL SURRENDER OF ARRAGON. 119 and obedience to him, defend the Catholic faith, and prosecute all heretical pravity; protect the liberties and rights of the Church; and in all the territories under my dominion maintain peace and justice. So help me God and his Holy Gospel." The King, in his royal attire, proceeded to the Church of St. Peter. There he cast aside his crown and sceptre, surrendered his kingdom into the hands of the Pope, and received again the investiture by the sword, presented to the Pope. He laid on the altar a parchment, in which he placed his realm under the protection of St. Peter; and bound himself and his successors to the annual tribute of two hundred gold pieces." So was Arragon a fief of the Roman See; but it was not without much sullen protest of the high-minded Arragonese. They complained of it as a base surrender of their liberties; as affording an opening to the Pope to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom with measures more perilous to their honour and liberty. Their discontent was aggravated by heavy burthens laid upon them by the King. They complained that in his private person he was prodigal, and rapacious as a ruler. When these proceedings were proclaimed at Huesca, they were met with an outburst of reprobation, not only from the people, but from all the nobles and hidalgos of the kingdom.o Pedro of Arragon will again appear as Count of Montpellier, in right of his wife, if not on the side of those against whom the Pope had sanctioned a crusade on account of their heretical pravity; yet as the mortal foe, as falling in battle before the arms of the leader of that crusade, Simon de Montfort. The lesser kingdoms of Europe, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland those on the Baltic-were not beyond the sphere of Innocent's all-embracing watchfulness, more especially Bohemia, on account of its close relation to the March 1, Empire. The Duke of Bohemia had dared to 1201. receive the royal crown from the excommunicated Philip." They bore the Moorish name of feliz y triste para los Aragoneses.". Massimute, from the King Jussuf Ma- Abarca. King Pedro did not succeed semut; each was worth six solidi. "Solo Mariana, lib. xi. p. 362. alegre para los Romanos; y despues in in getting rid of his wife. |