having resigned his sovereign rights in a solemn assembly of the Estates of Aragon at Balbastro, in 1137, to this most worthy son in-law, retired once more to the cloister, having contributed not a little, by his modest patriotism, to the advancement of the true interests of his country.1

Ramon and Petronilla reigned happily and successfully for five-and-twenty years. In war and in politics they were equally fortunate. The important cities of Lerida and Fraga were added to the Christian possessions; and when Ramon died, in 1162, on his way to meet the Emperor Frederic and do homage for the County of Provence, the Moslem had no possessions within the limits of Aragon or Catalonia.

The virtuous Petronilla survived her husband eleven years, till 1173, but she gave up her regal title and authority in her own dominions after her husband's death, to her son, who is known in history as Alfonso the Second, of the united kingdom of Aragon 2 and County of Barcelona.

II. Catalonia.

The little County of Barcelona or Catalonia, which came into existence, as we have seen, after the victories of Louis of Aquitaine in the early years of the ninth century, has no history, certain, or worthy of our attention, until the days of Ramon Berenguer I., el viejo (1035-1076), whose victories over the Arabs were even less remarkable than the vigour and success of his domestic policy. The first undisputed master of all Catalonia, he introduced a modified form of the feudal system among the barons and knights, and as a supplement or complement to the old Gothic laws of the Fuero Juzgo3 he formulated the celebrated Usages of Catalonia, which were

1 During the war which Ramon Berenguer waged against Raymond V. of Toulouse, he sought and obtained, in 1153, the alliance of Henry II. of England, who claimed the Duchy of Aquitaine as the inheritance of his wife Eleanor, the repudiated Queen of Louis VII. of France. And Ramon Berenguer dying when his son Alfonso was still of tender years, constituted Henry II. guardian of his kingdom, and of his successor. (Ramon Berenguer modestly called himself Prince -not King-of his wife's realm of Aragon.-H.)

2 His father left by will to his younger brother Peter, Cerdagne, Carcassonne, and Beziers.

The Fuero Juzgo was not, as is sometimes stated, abolished by this early Parliament. Its authority was fully maintained, except in such particulars as it was modified by the newer code.

promulgated at the Council of Gerona, and confirmed, in 1068, by the Cortes of Barcelona, one of the earliest Councils, at which no bishop was present, and which was a true popular and political assembly. This Ramon Berenguer acquired, moreover, by marriage and treaty, considerable possessions beyond the Pyrenees, and, at the instance of Pope Alexander II., he restored or rebuilt the cathedral at Barcelona. The wisdom of Ramon Berenguer the elder was not perpetuated in his children, nor did he himself display it in the disposition of his dominions at his death; for he divided his kingdom between his two sons, Ramon Berenguer II., surnamed cap d'estopa, or the flaxen-headed, and his younger brother, Berenguer Ramon; and the succession was only settled, after five years of domestic strife, by the assassination of the elder of those princes by the younger in 1081. The fratricide found no favour with the Catalans, and after a brief period of sovereignty the new monarch fled to the Holy Land, and was succeeded by his infant nephew, the son of his flaxen-haired brother, who reigned for nearly fifty years as Ramon Berenguer III. (10821131). By his marriage with Douce, Countess of Provence, by treaty, and by inheritance, this prudent sovereign extended his dominions on either side of the Pyrenees, and making head against the Arabs on his southern frontier, he actually carried his victorious arms across the sea to Majorca, which was taken and occupied by the Catalans in 1100.1

This Ramon Berenguer III. is known in history by the honourable title of the Consolidator of the Realm. He reigned over both Barcelona and Aragon with infinite advantage to the Commonwealth; and was succeeded by his son, Ramon Berenguer IV., a still greater consolidator, for whom was reserved the happy honour of uniting the sovereignties of Aragon and Catalonia by his marriage with Petronilla, the daughter of Ramiro the Monk, as has been already related.

With dominions thus extended, and at peace with all his neighbours, Ramon Berenguer was able to offer substantial assistance to his Christian neighbours in their wars against the Moslems. His son, Ramon, who assumed, in 1161, the name of Alfonso-surnamed The Chaste-and who peacefully inherited the double crown of Catalonia and Aragon, was undistinguished in history; and, dying in 1196, was succeeded by his son, Peter, who played a more conspicuous part, not 1 The occupation did not long endure, and the Balearic islands soon afterwards fell again into the hands of the Moslems.

only in Aragon and in southern Spain, but in Languedoc, and even in Italy.

His first public step of interest or importance was a journey to Rome in 1203, undertaken at the instance of Innocent III., that he might receive his crown at the hands of the Pope, and submit to the issue of a Papal Rescript constituting Aragon a Fief of the Holy See, and the "perpetual property" of the successors of St. Peter; and he at the same time undertook for himself and all future kings of Aragon, to pay tribute, as well as to do homage, to the Pope, for his dominions. This wholesale political surrender was, however, a more practical admission of the supreme power of the Vicar of Christ on earth than was agreeable to the Aragonese; and while it raised the indignation of the king's subjects at Barcelona and Saragossa, it does not seem to have procured for him any special favour, spiritual or temporal, at Rome. An assembly of the States' Council at Saragossa, in 1205, protested against the king's action as derogatory to the honour of the nation, and pronounced his surrender null and of no effect. Nor was the stipulated tribute ever paid."

But a greater figure than that of Peter the Catholic of Aragon was now looming darkly on the northern frontiers of Spain.

1 Zurita, Anales de Aragon, t. i., f. 91. The king was gratified with the title of The Catholic, for having placed his kingdom under the patronage of the Holy See. Menendez Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles (1880), tom. i., p. 421.

2 Lafuente, v. 191.

219

CHAPTER XXI.

DOMINIC.

(1170-1221.)

DOMINIC DE GUZMAN was born at Calaroga,1 near Osma, in Old Castile, in 1170. His birth and childhood were attended with the usual miraculous portents common to all mediæval saints, and at the age of fifteen he proceeded to the University or High School of Palencia, an institution which afterwards attained so great a reputation in the more famous city of Salamanca. After an uneventful academic career of nearly ten years, Dominic returned to Osma, where he enjoyed the protection of the bishop of the diocese; and, having entered into religion under the rule of St. Augustine, he was soon raised to the dignity of sub-prior.

At length, after ten years more of earnest work at Osma, Dominic was introduced to the great world beyond the frontiers of Spain, having been chosen by his patron the bishop to accompany him as his secretary on a diplomatic mission to Limoges, to negotiate the marriage of Alfonso VIII. of Castile with a princess of the House of Hugues de Lusignan, Count de la Marche. And it was on his way through Languedoc, struck, it is said, by the very scant respect that was paid to the clergy, compared with the homage to which he was accustomed in Castile, that the young ecclesiastic found his true mission, which

1 Not at Calahorra, in Aragon, as is sometimes said. Calaroga was only a village, some sixty miles due north of Madrid, in an out of the way part of Castile. Calahorra, the Roman Calagurris, the birth-place of Quintilian and Prudentius, has always been a busy and important little town.

2 It is sometimes said, but on very doubtful authority, that this mission was to Copenhagen. It would have been hard to have accomplished the three journeys which the envoys undertook, had their road extended from Castile to Denmark, in less than a year. Pêre Jean de Rechaac, Baillet, Fleury, Touron, and Miss Drane, are all in favour of the more manageable journey to Limoges, in the Marches of the Limousin. The double or doubtful signification of the word Marches has no doubt puzzled the chroniclers,

was not that of negotiating foreign marriages, but of preaching to foreign heretics.

Up to the time of the election of Innocent III., in 1198, the suppression and persecution of ecclesiastical heresy had occupied but a small share of the attention of the leaders of the Catholic world. For as yet ecclesiastical heresy can hardly be said to have existed. A Council, indeed, had been convoked at Lerida, in 1194, by Cardinal Gregory of Saint Angelo, as legate of Pope Celestine III.; and Alfonso II. of Aragon, yielding to the solicitations of the ecclesiastics, had given orders for the banishment of heretics from his kingdom, for the confiscation of their goods, and the infliction of severe penalties upon all who should shelter them. Three years later Peter II., at the Council of Gerona, confirmed and reiterated the decrees of Lerida; yet no serious steps seem to have been taken to put them into execution in Spain.

But with the accession of Innocent, the policy and temper of the Papacy became aggressive and uncompromising in the highest degree; and the commission that was granted by this most vigorous of Pontiffs on the 29th of May, 1204, to Arnold of Citeaux, with Pierre and Raoul de Castelnau, is generally considered to be the origin of the Inquisition in Europe. These apostolic legates were to take measures for the restoration of heretics to the Catholic faith. They were to hand over to the secular power-after preliminary excommunication-those who failed to submit themselves; and they were to enter into possession of all the worldly goods of such obstinate heretics, in the name of the Church. Their authority was made independent of the local bishops. They were to take their instructions direct from Rome. The King of France, moreover, and all the princes and barons of the realm were ordered to render active assistance to the three legates or Inquisitors of the Faith, whenever and howsoever it should be demanded.2

But in spite of these tremendous powers, the legates met with but little success. The heretics were obstinate. The bishops were unfriendly. The princes were indifferent. Yet one stranger was found to attach himself devotedly to the cause of the disappointed Abbot of Citeaux. The young enthusiast from Osma became at once his disciple and his critic, his friend, his champion and his supercessor. Aroused, not

1 Llorente, Hist. de la Inquisition, etc., i., ch. ii.

2 Manrique, Annales de Citeaux (1204), liv. ii., No. 6, and (1205, chaps. i., ii.).