Councils and synods in thirteenth-century Castile and Aragon

Abstract

In 1228 Gregory IX dispatched as his legate to the Spanish Peninsula the Paris theologian and Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, John of Abbeville: the first legate sent there since before the Fourth Lateran Council and the last to come during the entire thirteenth century in the cause of ecclesiastical reform. During his stay, which lasted for some fifteen months, he held at least three councils, but of only one of these—the Lérida Council of March 1229—have the statutes come down to us intact. Though he visited Portugal as well as Castile and Aragon, this brief communication is concerned only with John’s impact on the Castilian and Aragonese Churches during the central years of the century, and with a summary consideration of the quite different reception which John’s reform programme received in each place.