Oldegar

CONCERNING BLESSED OLDEGAR, ARCHBISHOP OF TARRAGONA AND BISHOP OF BARCELONA IN SPAIN.

IN THE YEAR 1137.

Oldegar, Archbishop of Tarragona and Bishop of Barcelona in Spain (Blessed)

[1] Barcelona, the capital of the County of the same name in Hither Spain, venerates with distinguished worship Oldegar, or Ollegar, its former Bishop, and everywhere addresses him with the religious appellation of Saint: Called a Saint, and we find the Roman Pontiff Clement VIII himself (the very one who repressed by a useful constitution the excessive facility of certain persons in usurping the title of Blessed or Saint) using the same appellation in granting a certain Benefice, "established and founded in the chapel of Saint Ollegar built in the church of Barcelona," on February 9, 1604. For the same Pontiff had declared that it was not his intention to innovate anything concerning those who from time immemorial, as they say, are called Saints or Blessed. More indeed about the veneration of this Saint or Blessed would necessarily have to be prefaced by us, if we did not treat of that matter more explicitly in the very text of the Life, which we present as compiled from the public monuments of the city and church of Barcelona: as they are suggested to us by Friar Francisco Diago, in the history of the Counts of Barcelona published in Spanish in 1603, and Friar Jacobo Rebullosa, in the Life of this blessed Bishop, similarly composed in the Spanish language and printed in 1609; both writers of the Order of Preachers. Various authors of the Life. At the same time these were writing, Friar Antonio Domenec, similarly of the Order of Preachers, brought to light the General History of the Saints of Catalonia, namely in the year 1602; and in it he has the Life of the same Blessed man composed by himself; which, with certain things cut out or changed, Don Juan Tamayo Salazar rendered into Latin in his Spanish Martyrology. Philip Ferrari, in the General Catalogue of Saints who are not in the Roman Martyrology, having mentioned this holy man at the sixth day of March, then adds the following in his notes: "Antonio Juan Garcia, Canon of Barcelona, published the Life in 1617, in which innumerable miracles are narrated, and although he is not honored with an Ecclesiastical Office, he is called a Saint and an altar is dedicated to him." We have not yet had the opportunity to see that Life: we believe the more recent miracles are of the kind that we shall see below were collected by public authority in the year 1602 through Miguel Boldo, Canon of the Cathedral Church: concerning which, once duly examined, we think that a Commentary composed to be offered at the Roman Curia for the promotion of Canonization still survives; but neither has it come into our hands, nor the ancient summary of the Life and miracles which a certain anonymous Canon of Girona wrote in Latin about, it seems, nearly four hundred years ago, and which exists, as Diago and Rebullosa attest, in the Archive of the Chapter of Barcelona in an ancient manuscript Legendary, which Domenec also seems to mention.

LIFE

Collected from the Public Monuments of the City and Church of Barcelona.

Oldegar, Archbishop of Tarragona and Bishop of Barcelona in Spain (Blessed)

FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

CHAPTER I.

The Birth of Blessed Oldegar, First a Canon of Barcelona, Then Prior of Saint Adrian.

[1] At the time when Raymond Berenguer, Born in Catalonia, the first of that name as Count of Barcelona, the terror of the Spanish Moors, was illustrating by the glory of his arms those regions which Ptolemy assigned to the Lacetani, Laetani, and Castellani, and which the usage of later centuries distinguished by the name of Catalonia — not from the Goths or Cats and Alans (as Volaterranus and Beatus Rhenanus fabricate) but from the above-mentioned Castellani — a great distinction came to this Province from the birth of Blessed Oldegar, whose Life we give here. His father bore the same name Oldegar, his mother was Guilla, His father was Secretary to the Counts of Barcelona, both of Gothic blood, unless the Gothic form of the names deceives. And that his father was in the secret service of his lords the Counts of Barcelona, and therefore a man of principal authority in the commonwealth, the authors gather from the formula of an oath, inscribed on a very ancient parchment and preserved in the general Archive of the entire Province,^a whose tenor is as follows: "I, Ollegar, son of the woman Guidenel,^b swear to you, my lord Count Raymond, son of the Countess Sancia,^c and to the Lady Countess Almodi,^d your daughter, who was the daughter of Countess Amelia, that from this hour forward^e I will be faithful to you without any trick^f or evil design or deception concerning your life and concerning all the limbs which you hold in your bodies; and concerning that honor which you have today, and which you shall henceforth acquire, God willing; and I will not speak those words^g which you shall say to me and shall command me to conceal, to any man or woman of my knowledge, if you do not release me of your own free will. By the Lord and these holy things."

[2] This formula of swearing, which of the innumerable ones which Diago asserts he saw is the only one containing a promise of keeping secrets — And called Oldegar by his father's own name, if it pertains to the father of the Blessed man (about which he himself and others do not doubt) — not only proves this dignity of his with the title of Chancellor or Secretary; but further proves against Rebullosa that Oldegar is a proper name, not a family name taken from some domain or possession: for who, in rendering the oath of fidelity, would use any name other than his own, or has ever done so? Wherefore we believe that the place in the parish of Santa Eulalia de Provençana in the territory of Barcelona, called Olleguer (which in Catalan means Oldegar), did not give its name to its lord, but received it from him: nor does the name of Bernard Oldegar found elsewhere^h prove anything to the contrary: since from the sole series of the Counts of Barcelona alone it is manifestly clear that the second name is either the father's, or (if the son bore the same name as the father) the grandfather's; and that it was not the custom in those times for it to pass to posterity as a family name. Thus the successor of the above-named Count, the homonymous Raymond, has his surname from his grandfather Berenguer with the addition of "the Younger": but his brother Berenguer, in whom the grandfather's repeated name revived as his own, is simply surnamed Raymond from his father.

[3] Around the year 1061. Diago confesses that the year in which Blessed Oldegar came into this light is nowhere found expressed: but if what he says rests on firm foundations — that he died in the seventy-sixth year of his age, in the year of the Christian Era one thousand one hundred and thirty-seven — it evidently follows that the year one thousand and sixty-one from the birth of Christ was his birth year. Now, since no testimony of any ancient document is cited for this age, I strongly suspect He is offered to the Church of Saint Eulalia as a Canon that this author, following what seemed probable to him, defined it thus after establishing that the fifteenth year had been completed by Oldegar when his parents offered him to God and Saint Eulalia, together with estates, concerning which^i this instrument of the year one thousand and seventy-six exists:

"In the name of Christ, I, Ollegar, and my wife Guilia, are donors to the Lord God and the Canonry of Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, and we donate^k one piece of land with a vineyard situated in the County^l of Ausona, in the territory of the castle of Manresa^m and of Villalonga, in the place called Saint Ermengaud. With a dowry It is bounded moreover

the aforesaid land with the vineyard on the east side at the road; on the south and west side in the allodial land of Guitard Miro and Berengarius Bonifilius; on the north side in the allodial land of Argemundus: whatever these aforesaid boundaries enclose and delimit, we donate to the Lord God and to the aforesaid Canonry firmly and deliberately. This was done on the ninth day before the Kalends of June, in the sixteenth year of the reign of King Philip.

[4] according to the custom of that time: And indeed it is highly probable that these estates, offered to the church together with the boy himself, a church grievously afflicted and in need from a recent Saracen invasion (in the manner that in certain poorer convents of nuns none is admitted without a dowry established by the parents), as is confirmed both by a similar donation instrument drawn up in the twentieth year of Philip the Second ^o, on the fourth day before the Ides of June, by which the parents of Peter de Centellas offered him to the same church, he who after forty-three years of his Canonry in that same Church would become Bishop; and also, as regards the age of the one offered, by that constitution by which at last in the year one thousand three hundred and fifty-four, with the consent of Bishop Peter de Planela and the entire Chapter, it was decreed that no one younger than eighteen years should thenceforth be admitted to the Canonry.

Nevertheless, that he was not so much a boy as not to have entered the years of puberty, and was close to the age that Diagus assigns, is proved by the dignity of Provost, and made Provost with which he was invested in the thirty-fourth year of King Philip ^p, as is clear from the donation of a certain estate ^q on the seventeenth day of July, signed with these words: The mark of Ollegarius the Provost, who received this donation and conveyance from the donor, and at her command wrote and confirmed it, on the day and year stated above. How great this dignity was, and what sort of men it customarily held, is shown by the election of his predecessor Raymond, who in the year one thousand one hundred and seven was raised from Provost to Bishop of Barcelona; so that it seems quite remarkable if St. Oldegarius held that office for scarcely four years past the age of thirty.

[5] He is ordained a Priest. Nor is it less remarkable that he held that rank of honor while not yet a Priest; for this seems to be gathered from another subscription of the following year, ^r in which he describes himself as Priest and Provost; whereas before taking up the Provostship, in the twenty-ninth year ^s of King Philip, he had merely appended: The mark of Ollegarius the Deacon. For in those times it was rare among beneficed clergy for one not to dread the obligation of perpetual continence attached to this grade, or even not to have a wife legitimately taken under certain conditions: thus Diagus judges that Guislabertus, later Bishop of Barcelona, lived in marriage while he was a Canon; and it is certain that his wife Guilia and son Miro were alive even after he had been elevated to the Episcopate, as shown by the establishment of a certain fief ^t constituted with their consent and that of the Chapter. What training Olligarius received from his excellent parents, how attentive a boyhood he passed in the principles of the liberal arts and virtues, what great progress he made in both as a youth enrolled in the College of Canons — it is better to leave to the reader to judge from the holiness of the rest of his life, than to wish to pursue it in one's own words, and those merely general, without any ancient testimony to guide the way. The Canon of Gerona, who long ago briefly wrote his Life in Latin, commends a singular chastity in the young man, from which Rebullosa transcribed the following about him: In his youthful age the holy young man chose the narrow and holy way; under the Rule of Blessed Augustine, the regular habit and life: which seems to have happened on the occasion that I now begin to relate.

[6] Bertrand, Bishop of Barcelona. When Berengarius, Bishop of Barcelona, had departed this life, Bertrand was appointed in his place; the sole or chief reason for summoning him from Saint-Ruf — the foremost monastery of the Canonical Order in Provence — could have been the man's proven virtue, and the zeal of the Counts of Barcelona, who desired to see the vigor of canonical discipline (which in that eleventh century was so happily reflourishing throughout all the provinces of the Christian world, under the particular institute of the Lateran Congregation and the profession of the Augustinian Rule) revived in their own dominions as well through the election of such a Pastor: which election must be placed before the year one thousand and eighty-nine; since in the twenty-ninth year of King Philip, on the Kalends of February, he accepted and signed the donation of his Archdeacon Bernard William, who transferred to the Church of Barcelona the third part of the castle of Montaniola with its tithes ^u; to which our Blessed subscribed his name, claiming for himself only the title of Deacon, as we observed a little above.

Whether Bertrand had been, or from Abbot of Saint-Ruf? before he was appointed to govern the Episcopate, Abbot of Saint-Ruf, our authors say: but if this is true (for they adduce no ancient testimony) he had as successor in the government of that monastery Arberius, to whom (listed among the San-Marthans in volume 4 of Gallia Christiana) as the first in order of known Abbots, there exists a Brief of Urban II, dated at Tricastrum in the year one thousand and ninety-six; by which various privileges are granted to that monastery, pertaining to its immunity and good governance. Moreover, the aforesaid Bertrand did not sluggishly carry out what could be expected of him: for among the Canons of his Church, most of whom he is likely to have found lacking in Sacred Orders, he strove to kindle the love of receiving the Priesthood: and that he might more easily obtain this, he without difficulty led the Provost, who would go before the rest by example, where he wished. He also looked about for a place He institutes Regular Canons in the church of St. Adrian in which to gather those who pursued a more religious life, and to train them in the institutes to which he himself had adhered in Gaul: and he found one suited to his purpose; namely, the most ancient church of St. Adrian, annexed to the possessions of the Cathedral of Barcelona through Bishop Adeodatus together with the first-fruits and tithes already from the year one thousand and thirteen, situated at a distance of two leagues from the city toward the northeast, across the river Besos on the way along the sea coast to Badalona. Into this church, therefore, he introduced Regular Canons; subordinated indeed to the Chapter of Barcelona by reason of the possession received from it, but subject as regards the discipline of the monastic Order to the Abbot of Saint-Ruf: to whom we must say that Blessed Ollegarius quickly joined himself, where Oldegarius served as Prior of whom the ancient author of his Life writes: that he held the Priorate of St. Adrian for very many years: and thence coming to the Church of Saint-Ruf, he was elected Abbot.

[7] Because all authors unanimously place this last event in the year one thousand one hundred and eight, the question is asked how many years he must be left in the Priorate, so that the words of that ancient text retain their truth; Rebullosa considers that ten years are not sufficient, nor scarcely twelve; and he inclines to maintain that in the same year he was consecrated Priest (which was the ninety-sixth of the eleventh century, and the last of Bishop Bertrand's life), by the same hands by which he had been anointed Priest, he was also clothed in the monastic habit; and a short time later, having professed his religious vows, he was placed over the new flock with the title of Prior. Whether all these things can be suitably conceived as having happened before Bertrand's death in that brief period, over some years. the prudent reader will judge: it is nothing new to us to detect in authors nearly contemporary certain slight errors of this kind concerning the early and more obscure period of those Saints whose Lives they write, and to pardon them when detected; and it would seem sufficient if Ollegarius were shown to have been placed over that sacred community in the last years of that century; for this, at a minimum, is established from the drafting of a certain census contract, drawn up in the thirty-ninth year of King Philip ^x on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of December, which reads as follows: The mark of Ollegarius, Priest and servant of St. Adrian: which formula is thereafter seen in many writings of this kind.

^a From document C number 395, says Diagus, who inspected it.

^b It was customary among the Catalan nobility to use the father's name in the second place, or if the father bore the same name, the grandfather's or great-grandfather's; as we shall see below: but from what source the practice arose in public instruments of expressing the mother's name while omitting the father's, we leave for another to divine; an example of this practice may be seen in Diagus book 2, chapter 56, where Berengarius, Bishop of Barcelona, writes himself the son of Countess Isabella.

^c Daughter of Sancho, Count of Castile, and first wife of Count Berengarius, who was afterward joined in a second marriage to Guisla.

^d This was the second wife of Raymond, after Isabella, Countess of Carcassonne, mother of Count William of Toulouse from a prior marriage.

^e This is an idiom for what we say in Latin in posterum henceforth; it corresponds syllable for syllable to the expression still used among the French, d'ors-en-avant.

^f That is, fraud: whence engannar, to deceive.

^g That is, words: parola in Italian, Parole in French, Palabra in Spanish.

^h In the History of the Counts of Barcelona: book 3, chapter 70, folio 134, says Rebullosa in chapter 2: and thus indicates a different work from the one we have under the same title by the author Diago, whose third and last book consists of only 26 chapters, and yet numbers 318 folios.

^i Book 4 of the Antiquities of the Cathedral of Barcelona: folio 99.

^k That is, a part; in French piece, Italian pezzo, Spanish pedaço.

^l Today Osona, whose capital city is Vich: whence in Latin the Bishops are called Ausonenses, whom Spanish writers at this time commonly call Vicenses.

^m Today called Manresa, in earlier centuries Minoresa, on the river Rubricatum, commonly called Lobrego, a famous city, eighty thousand paces distant from Barcelona, later made illustrious by the beginnings and sacred exercises of our Holy Father Ignatius.

^n Thus they used to call the boundaries of lands, which join front to front as it were; now that word has changed its meaning; and in French Affronter, Spanish Affrontar, Italian Affrontare, means to attack insultingly.

^o Of the common era 1199.

^p Of Christ 1094.

^q In the Parish of St. Peter of Vila-major, made to the Chapter by a certain Trudgard; which donation is found in book 3 of the Antiquities, folio 97.

^r Which was the 35th of King Philip, when on the ninth day before the Ides of July he subscribed to the donation by which the Baron Tudisclus with his wife transferred certain fields of theirs into the rights of the Chapter, in the parish of Badalona: as is found in book 2 of the Antiquities, folio 131.

^s Of Christ 1089, 15 June, in that instrument by which Count Berengarius Raymond pledged to Gerald Alemanni de Cervellon for seven thousand Valentian ducats the castle of Santa Perpetua del Penades, which instrument itself exists in the original in the Archive of the Chapter of Barcelona.

^t Namely, the tower of Miralpex in favor of Arnald Arlumini, as Diagus reports from the Episcopology of Tarrasa, book 2, chapter 36, where he also mentions the donation by which the same Bishop in the year 1058 transferred to his daughter Ermesenda, married to Raymond Renard, half of the Castle of Cabrera, which he saw in the Royal Archive, book 1 of Fiefs, folio 348.

^u Of Christ 1089, and it is found in book 3 of the Antiquities, folio 92, says Diagus.

^x Of Christ 1099; the same testifies that he saw the original itself in the Archive of the Chapter: moreover, that census was established by Raymond, Oldegarius's successor in the Provostship and predecessor in the Episcopate, with the consent of Bishop Folcus and the Chapter.

CHAPTER II.

He becomes Abbot of Saint-Ruf in Gaul, then Bishop of Barcelona.

[8] He increases the monastery's resources The new house of St. Adrian was growing

daily in spiritual growth, since the religious exhortations of their Prior, animated by the example of his life, were readily followed by all: nor was it less enriched by the acquisition of temporal goods; although of that monastery only the Church, now converted into a parish, survives. But the liberality of Count Raymond, the Third of that name, was especially notable, who on the second day before the Nones of August, in the forty-fourth year of King Philip ^a, donated to the Canons of St. Adrian the tithes of all the produce accruing to him from ships of every kind, both greater and lesser.

And we believe that it was through the merits of the holy man's favor that he was promoted to the abbacy of Saint-Ruf: and is elected Abbot of Saint-Ruf, for the reason that Rebullosa fabricates regarding the Council celebrated by Paschal II at Troyes in the year one thousand one hundred and seven, from which he says Apostolic visitors were sent in every direction, and from among whom he would have us believe that St. Ollegarius was one, for the reformation of that Abbey; that reason, I say, lacking all authority, we cannot accept. Raymond, however, then had great authority in Provence; for at that time, Almodi having died — of whose life there is certainty only up to the sixth year of the twelfth century ^b — he had taken a third wife, Dulcia, the daughter and heir of Gilbert, Count of Provence, in whose domain the aforesaid monastery of Saint-Ruf was situated.

[9] Diagus and Rebullosa pretend that this monastery is between Maguelone and Montpellier, commonly called Monspellier, not in Occitania, in the ancient Roman Province or Gallia Narbonensis indeed: but in that part which now, having relinquished the name of Province on this side of the Rhone, is called Languedoc or Occitania: they pretend, I say: for that which existed as a monastery of Saint-Ruf at or near Montpellier was first founded around the middle of the fourteenth century by Angelicus Grimaldi de Brisac, Bishop of Avignon and afterward Cardinal: who gave it this name, and at the same time gave the aforesaid authors an occasion for error, derived from the head of the entire congregation, the most ancient monastery of Saint-Ruf, which in the first beginnings of the reflourishing Canonical Order in the eleventh century, but in Provence near Avignon; from an origin hitherto obscure, suddenly rose to the greatest fame, extending its branches from sea to sea, so that very many monasteries were propagated from it not only through Gaul, but through Spain and Italy as well, to be administered through a Prior subject to the Abbot of Saint-Ruf: of which many perished, like that of St. Adrian mentioned above, while others grew into illustrious Abbeys. Moreover, from a twofold rescript of Urban II it is clear that the mother-house was outside the walls of Avignon, where originally there had been a small and crumbling church of St. Rufus, a disciple of the Apostles, venerable for the sacred relics of his body; and it remained there until the time of the Albigensians; then indeed, destroyed by their fury, it moved to Valencia, in the year 1210; and again demolished by the Huguenots, it migrated from the suburb into the city, in the year 1562.

Whether Bertrand, the one mentioned above as Bishop of Barcelona, was ever Abbot of this monastery, I strongly doubt: if however he came from Provence, I would readily believe he was from the said congregation of Saint-Ruf; and perhaps that very man who, promoted to the Cathedral of Maguelone in the year 1078, was two years later deposed as having been simoniacally intruded, with Godfrey succeeding him: who immediately arranged that his Canons should bind themselves by a vow of religion, whereas before that his predecessor Arnaldus had persuaded them to abstain from incestuous marriages. ^c

[10] successor of Adelbert Now after Alberius, the Abbot of Saint-Ruf mentioned above, and after Adelbert too had departed this life around this time (Lebert is what John Columbi calls him, in his Noctes Blancalandanae, investigating the origins of the Canons of Saint-Ruf), to whom the twofold rescript of Urban II is addressed; or, if that Adelbert or Lebert did not live so long, after the death of his unknown successor, one need not ask what reason the Prior of St. Adrian had for going there: since the house of St. Adrian was immediately subject to the monastery of Saint-Ruf, and therefore had the right of suffrage in conferring the election of the Abbot. Elected canonically then was Blessed Oldegarius, or (as the same name can be written in various ways according to dialectal variation) Aldegerius: whom I think is incorrectly called Adelgerius in volume 4 of Gallia Christiana, for he cannot be a different person from the Oldegarius to whom there exists a diploma of Paschal II, confirming privileges and possessions, and enumerating among them the Churches of St. Peter and St. Mary of Egara, of St. Julian of Terrassa with their possessions, dependents, and churches established through them, which Raymond, Bishop of Barcelona, granted, he arranges for the monastery's goods and privileges to be confirmed at Rome. together with his own former patrimony and other possessions, which, says Paschal, have been bestowed on You and the Clerics living with you, together with the estates and churches of St. Adrian, excepting the demesne lands of the Bishop of Barcelona. We also confirm to you the possession which Raymond of noble memory, the Count, gave you in the region of Tripoli, together with the church of Saint-Ruf, which he built there. These things, written on the fourth day before the Ides of January of the year 1115 (when Oldegarius was without doubt still Abbot of Saint-Ruf) it has pleased us to adduce more fully, so that it might be clear what the connection of the people of Barcelona was with the monastery of Saint-Ruf: and how much it owes to its Ollegarius, through whose authority with the aforesaid Raymond it was undoubtedly brought about that the house of St. Adrian, and within it the monastery of Saint-Ruf itself, was increased with possessions as ample as those reported there. The San-Marthans consider that the Abbot to whom the said bull of Paschal is addressed also in the year 1116 was present at Brignoles in Provence as a witness to the settlement made concerning the castle of Soliers between the monks of Marseilles: Did he subscribe to the treaty of Brignoles? which indeed is quite plausible: but not entirely certain. For if the letter of Paschal to Oldegarius, still Abbot of Saint-Ruf, given in the same year on the twenty-third day of May, was executed that same summer or autumn; one might suspect that the aforesaid settlement was made after Oldegarius had been taken away to Barcelona, and thus pertains to the Abbot newly elected in his place, and if you suppose his name was Adelgerius, there is reason to judge that an occasion was given for that error by which Adelgerius was substituted for Oldegarius in the transcript of that diploma which we have discussed.

[11] Succession of Bishops of Barcelona. Meanwhile, while Ollegarius thus provided for the monasteries of SS. Adrian and Rufus in this manner: when Bishop Bertrand, as we saw, passed to the next world at the beginning of the year one thousand and ninety-six, Folcus was appointed in his place that same year, ^d from a Viscount of Cardona according to some, certainly from a family of Viscounts. Folcus was followed by Berengarius, Abbot of St. Cucuphas, advanced in age, who in the year one thousand one hundred, the second of his Episcopate, obtained from the people of Barcelona the tithes of lands and produce in perpetuity, to relieve the poverty of his Church: when he died in the seventh year of that same Episcopate, the votes of the electors agreed on Raymond Guillen; that very man, namely, upon whom Blessed Ollegarius, about to become a monk, had resigned the dignity of the Provostship, and to whom two years earlier the above-named Pope Paschal, in the second year of his Pontificate, ^e had directed the bull by which he confirmed to the Chapter of Barcelona whatever offerings of Bishops and the faithful of Christ had been made; When Raymond Guillen was killed by the Moors in Majorca, and provided that the Canons should not be multiplied beyond the number of forty. I suspect that this Raymond was the brother of Bernard Guillen, Count of Besalú, led by the coincidence of the paternal name and the time: ^f he was certainly a man of noble birth, who, when Raymond set out against the Moors who held the Balearic Islands, showed himself the author and companion of the sacred war with a great company of Ecclesiastics, having pledged certain goods of his own right for that cause, and in which he also gloriously laid down his life, slain by the Moors, who defended themselves vigorously on the island of Majorca, in the year one thousand one hundred and fourteen. The Bishop's death was followed by the siege of the city of Barcelona: which the Count, returning from the expedition he had undertaken, not only lifted on the third day after it had begun, but also dealt a very great defeat to the Moors: and not content with that victory, and supported by the aid of the Pisans and Genoese, he crossed again the following year to the Balearics, and having taken the city of Majorca, returned with immense booty and glory, having freed innumerable Christians from cruel servitude.

[12] Oldegarius is elected, The military campaign having gone as desired, Raymond also took care to provide for Ecclesiastical affairs through the promotion of Blessed Ollegarius, who happened at that time to be present in Barcelona: when he learned what had been done, being a man of singular humility, he began to think of flight; and soon putting his thought into effect, he boarded a ship at first cock-crow with a few companions, and sailed swiftly to Provence, retreating into his monastery of Saint-Ruf as a most secure refuge. The Clergy and people felt this grievously, as was fitting; and the most pious Count, as is right to believe, felt that flight most gravely of all: and so, moved by zeal for the defense of religion, having crossed to Italy for the purpose of seeking aid, he went to the feet of Pope Paschal II through his legates, and is recalled from flight by Pontifical command. the chief of whom were the Bishops of Nice and Antibes, and was commended by a special Brief from the same Pope for his outstanding zeal for the Christian cause, and received as his legate the Cardinal Boso, to arrange both other matters according to the Count's desire, and also by the authority of the Pontifical mandate to provide for the Church of Barcelona, lest it long lack its desired Pastor. The Pontifical Brief, which we have mentioned, is presented by Diagus and Rebullosa: but in it you will find not a single word about either Boso or Blessed Ollegarius. Therefore, passing over that Brief as having little bearing on our subject, I come to the letter directed to Blessed Ollegarius himself: for it contains a remarkable commendation, both of his virtues and of his past life, and of the election itself, through which he was chosen by the Clergy, by God, for the governance of the Church of Barcelona: and we take it from Tamayo, who first produced it in his Spanish Martyrology, from a very ancient manuscript Codex containing the ancient laws of Catalonia.

[13] Paschal, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to his beloved brother Oldegarius, Abbot of Saint-Ruf, Bishop-elect of Barcelona, Letter of Paschal II greeting and the Apostolic benediction.

Since the care of the Pastoral office demands, and the vigor of equity and the order of reason require, that those things which are sought from us, if they are just and honorable, be brought to their due effect. Therefore know that from the letters of our most dear son Raymond, Count of the people of Barcelona, and from the representations of that Church and people, we have learned that you, who have not buried in the earth with the unprofitable servant the gift of knowledge committed to you by the Master of the house as a talent for trading, but having been assumed to Pastoral solicitude, thus fulfilling the work of a Rector according to the Apostle, have striven to honor your ministry and to preside with Abbatial solicitude; so that, as we believe, you may truly say with the Prophet: Upon the watchtower of the Lord I stand continually by day, His person, and upon my watch I stand all through the nights, showing yourself so faithful over a few things that you deserve to be set over many: which the beloved sons, the Canons of the Church of Barcelona, prudently considering, when after their Bishop of good memory had been taken from this light, they had held a deliberation

about the divine appointment of a Pontiff, at length, by the working of Him who makes both one, with the desires of Clergy and people concurring, they elected you as their Bishop and Pastor by unanimous consent. Isaiah 21:8. When you learned of this, fleeing to your Abbey, you disappointed the expectations of all, so that you seem to resist the Holy Spirit and to refuse to put your hand to the plough. Wherefore they have caused us to be humbly and urgently entreated, that we should deign to compel you by Apostolic exhortation to undertake the burden of this office, through whose watchful circumspection and circumspect watchfulness they believe many advantages will come to their Church.

[14] and approving the election, We therefore, who now know them to be unanimous and concordant in the aforesaid election and petition, inclining to their prayers, have judged their petition should be admitted, and absolving you from the governance of the Monastery of Saint-Ruf, have deemed their election worthy of approval. And therefore we command and direct your fraternity by Apostolic writings, that you receive the call made concerning you, lest you seem to resist the divine disposition, and proceed to the aforesaid Church of Barcelona; striving to bestow upon it such diligent Pastoral care, that its condition, according to its expectation and ours, may be increased both temporally and spiritually through the foresight of your solicitude: so that you, just as from rank to rank, so from virtue to virtue, may be seen to advance. But if, which God forbid, you should refuse to impart obedience to this page of our precept, we command by Apostolic writings our Venerable brother Boso, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church, whom we are sending as Apostolic Legate to the regions of Spain, and commanding obedience: directing him that, after a warning has been given, with appeal set aside, and notwithstanding any letters obtained from the Apostolic See prejudicial to truth and reason, he should not cease to compel you by Ecclesiastical censure, until you obey, to assume the governance of the aforesaid Church of Barcelona, to which we know you to have been elected; according to the form which we have given to him enclosed under our mandate. Commanding the Chapter, Clergy, and people of Barcelona, that they should humbly attend to you as to their Bishop, and show you the obedience and reverence both due and devout. Given at Trastevere, by the hand of John, Cardinal Deacon of the Holy Roman Church and Librarian, on the tenth day before the Kalends of June, the ninth Indiction, of the Incarnation of the Lord 1116. In the seventeenth year of the Pontificate of the Lord Paschal II. I, Paschal, Bishop of the Catholic Church.

[15] When the Count received these letters through the Legate Boso at Pisa (where he had halted for fear of the Emperor Henry IV, rampaging through Italy with arms hostile to the Pontiff, which Oldegarius obeys, and personally hostile to the Count himself, because he was proceeding to possess Provence by marital right without having sought his assent) he departed promptly from Italy with the Legate, and meeting the Abbot of Saint-Ruf, he informed him of the Pontifical will, and arranged for him, who after this dared not resist, to be consecrated Bishop. All more recent authors say this was done at Maguelone: was it because they believed the monastery of Saint-Ruf, he is consecrated. Whether at Maguelone? of which Oldegarius was Abbot, was there? Maguelone is an island and city lying off the Occitan shore in sight of Montpellier, to which Bishop Arnaldus, after restoring the church which had been destroyed by the Saracen occupiers in the eighth century, restored the Cathedral that had been taken away from Sustantion, around the year one thousand and sixty: and the Bishops of Maguelone remained there until the thirty-sixth year of the previous century, when the more convenient and healthier site of Montpellier received them. But whether Maguelone ever belonged to Provence after the Roman period, as Spanish writers presume, we strongly doubt. For Gilbert, Count, who held Provence with a very ample domain, after his death the territory was immediately divided into two parts, and although he also held the western bank of the Rhone, outside the Count's domains? nevertheless he is nowhere recorded as having had dominion over the Occitan coast: but that was the jurisdiction of the Viscounts of Narbonne, of whom Aimeric III then held power. Maguelone however was subject to the Bishop alone in temporal as well as spiritual matters: Montpellier ^g had as its lord William, who later, about to set out against the Moors, having made his testament, ceded the whole of it to the Church, whose ancient allodium it was.

Wherefore, if Oldegarius was found by the Count and the Legate near Maguelone, and there, as stated, was consecrated: I would suspect that the blessed man did not consider himself sufficiently safe in the monastery of Saint-Ruf: and therefore fled to the Canons of Maguelone, who had embraced the same regular institutes, and were situated outside the Count's domain, yet so placed that while hiding among them, he would be separated from his flock of Saint-Ruf by the smallest possible distance. Moreover, from the eighth year of the twelfth century onward, the Bishop of Maguelone was Galterus, and he held the See, as the San-Marthans record, for a full twenty years, and he ceded the Church of St. Brice to Regular Canons: wherefore it would follow from the common opinion that he contributed his ministry to the consecration of Oldegarius.

[16] Now, when Ollegarius arrived at Barcelona, at once he began to administer the Episcopal office that he had so unwillingly undertaken with such vigor and strength He felicitously governs the Church of Barcelona, that when he heard that the Abbot of St. Cucuphas (whose monastery, dedicated to St. Eulalia, he had near the very gate of Barcelona, enriched with the possessions of many churches) was arrogating certain things to himself and his own that were contrary to Episcopal right and religious discipline, he brought suit against him, and when judgment was rendered by Berengarius, Bishop of Gerona, and Raymond, Bishop of Vic, in the cloister of the Church of Gerona before the Cardinal and Apostolic Legate Boso, he was restored to possession of the church of Castellar, and it was decreed that henceforth there should be no baptismal font in the church of St. Cucuphas, nor should the Abbot appoint Clerics in his churches without the consent of the Bishop, nor remove those who had been established with him; and that monks who were living solitarily in the said churches should be recalled to the monastery. ^h The Canon of Gerona, the author of the Life, encompassed the remaining virtues of Blessed Ollegarius in a few words: He was, he says, a guardian and master of perpetual chastity: likewise the Word of the Lord was the key to his mouth: for in the word of the Lord he opened his mouth and closed it.

^a Of Christ 1104; that privilege still exists in the Archive of the monastery of St. Mary of Terrassa, of the same Order, written in Latin, which Diagus presents in Spanish, and from which, naming Raymond's wife Countess Maria Rodriguez, he shows that those who, passing over this first wife, acknowledge only two wives of Raymond, Almodi and Dulcia, are in error: the same can also be established from the marriage contract between Bernard Guillen, Count of Besalú, and the daughter of Raymond and the same Maria Roderick, which Diagus treats in book 2, chapter 87.

^b So says Diagus, chapter 85, from a donation made to her and her future children (of whom she had none) by her husband the Count on 1 November, concerning which Diagus writes in chapter 86: from this, moreover, the Provincial historians are shown to have erred, when without any certain foundation they conjectured that Raymond's third marriage was contracted and celebrated in the year 980, or 90, or more precisely 92.

^c See on these matters Gallia Christiana, Volume 3.

^d As is clear from the consecration of the church of St. Martin de Sorbed, of the diocese of Egara, performed by this Folcus on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of May; on which see Diagus, chapter 81, book 2.

^e 27 January. Diagus treats of it in chapter 83; and greatly errs when he would make the second year of Pope Paschal our Era 1104, which was only 1101, for Pope Paschal II was created in the year 1099, on the twelfth of August.

^f For the Council of Besalú is recorded as having been celebrated in the year 1077; under the favor of the said Bernard and the auspices of Gregory VII, as is found in Diagus, chapter 71, book 2. Moreover, Bernard lived until the year 1111, when dying without any offspring, by force of the pact entered into two years earlier, he left his father-in-law Count Raymond of Barcelona as heir of his County. And note here that among Catalans, Guillen is commonly written for what others write Guilielmus or Guilermus, and we write Wilhelmus. Diagus always uses the name Guillen, but Rebullosa uses Guillerm.

^g This, however, would need to be read, if anywhere, in the partition of the inheritance left by Gilbert: on which see what will be said below at number 34.

^h Diagus affirms that the instrument of the sentence then rendered is preserved in the archive of the Chapter, book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 204.

CHAPTER III.

He is made Archbishop of Tarragona, then Apostolic Legate.

[17] The Archbishopric of Tarragona, Blessed Oldegarius was still in the first year of his newly assumed Episcopate when it happened that Berengarius, the pastor of the Church of Ausona, or as authors commonly call it, Vic, departed from this world. He had held the Metropolitan dignity with the title of Archbishop of Tarragona, already from the times of Pope John and Count Borrell, annexed to the Bishopric of Ausona, in the person of Otto, then Bishop, united to the Bishopric of Ausona, when recovery of the city of Tarragona, long since seized by the Moors, was despaired of: the bull of this union Diagus has ^a in book 2, chapter 19, dated in the month of January, Indiction 14: which since it falls equally in the Pontificate of both John XIII and John XV, it remains uncertain whether it pertains to the year nine hundred and seventy-one, commended to Bernard of Toledo, or to the eighty-sixth, and each position has its own advocates. Nevertheless, Urban II had raised some hope of restoring Tarragona when he ordered Archbishop Bernard of Toledo to desist from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to return to his homeland, imperiled by the incursions of the Moors, his vow being commuted into the restoration of the city and empire of Tarragona ^b: upon which foundation Castilian writers build the lawsuit they bring against the Catalans; as if Bernard had not only attempted to accomplish what had been committed to him, but having actually restored the city, had celebrated a Synod there, as is in the Chronicle of Julian at the year 609.

[18] But as to why we should not be moved at all by the authority of this Julian, whether genuine or spurious, we have given the reason in our Prolegomena to February, chapter 4, and from the documents to be produced presently, it will be clearer than the noonday light that the glory of the restored Tarragona is due entirely to our Ollegarius, and that what Domeneccus and after him Tamayo fabricate under the third day of April has no verisimilitude: namely, that Tarragona, within a few years of its first restoration by Bernard, was again captured and devastated by the Moors. In what year and by what battles, with the Moors driven far away, Count Raymond recovered not the city itself, the city recovered from the Moors, but the city's ruins, no monuments indicate; we suspect, however, that it probably happened after the siege of Barcelona was lifted with an immense slaughter of the barbarians: for animated by that victory he immediately began to think of besieging Tortosa, as Paschal II commemorates in his Brief ^c: but the passage to Tortosa, unless Tarragona, which lies midway between it and Barcelona, were first secured, could in no way be safe. Add that the right of naming the Archbishop could not otherwise belong to the Count, except insofar as the place that could have its own Bishop was already under his jurisdiction: nor could Gelasius, in the bull to be produced below, without injury to the Bishop of Ausona, have transferred the power and primacy of the Church of Tarragona from the successors of the aforesaid Otto to the Bishop of Barcelona, contrary to the express Constitution of John.

By what reasoning, moreover, the Count Raymond transferred the entire right of the city and territory,

civil and ecclesiastical, to Ollegarius and the future Archbishops of Tarragona after him, so that it may be more clearly understood, we shall subjoin the very instrument of the donation, which is lacking in Diagus, from Rebullosa, for the benefit of the reader who is interested in antiquities of this kind. by Count Raymond:

[19] Raymond, by the grace of God, Marquis of Barcelona and the Spains, Count of Besalú and Provence, to his Beloved Venerable Bishop of Barcelona, Oldegarius, and to his successors in perpetuity.

Since the divine clemency has deigned to honor and exalt me according to its good pleasure, to the honor of God himself and the Holy Church and the Prince of the Apostles Peter, I give and by this writing of donation convey to the Church of the See of Tarragona, which was long ago founded in honor of Blessed Thecla the Virgin, ^d and to you, Bishop Oldegarius, and to your successors the Pontiffs who shall govern that same church under obedience to the Apostolic See, Blessed Oldegarius is given the city itself of Tarragona, which for many long years remained in destruction and desolation, without a cultivator or inhabitant. ^e I convey it to you, moreover, with its boundaries and appurtenances, to be restored, held, and freely possessed: so that the aforesaid Church of Tarragona may have and possess its own rulers, and all these things in perpetuity, and without disturbance from any person.

[20] I also give you and your successors the freedom of gathering from wherever you can people, to be possessed with full right; of whatever dignity or middling station, to inhabit that land, and of ruling and judging them to the honor of God and the advantage of that city; and of building and arranging as shall seem best to you: and whoever, of whatever office they may be, shall come there or dwell there by sea or land, let them live freely, and let them have and possess their goods; and let them be judged and compelled, where there is need, according to the laws, customs, and constitutions which you shall have established there. Otherwise let them not be compelled or judged by any person. I reserve for myself a demesne ^f and palace there, according to your counsel and arrangement, and the inhabitants of Tarragona, as opportunity requires without detriment to the city, shall help me to keep my peace, and to wage war ^g; so that I too may help them as my faithful friends.

[21] All these things are bounded on the east side by the boundary of Tamarit ^h and Monte-olivo, and its boundaries are defined. as one descends to the sea, and ascends along the water of Aiano up to the mountains ^i, and it passes on the northern side along the base of the mountains as far as the Engolador de Cabra and reaches as far as the Embocum itself, and ascends along the very summits of the mountains of Carbonaria, just as those waters ^k begin to flow toward the south: and on the western side these boundaries pass through Monte Rubeo and through the hill of Balaguer as far as the sea: on the southern side the boundary is the sea itself, which is common to the inhabitants of that land for use and fishing. Whatever is enclosed by these boundaries, I convey to the Church of Tarragona itself and to you, with all liberty, to be held and possessed, with every increase and improvement which, God granting, you and your successors or anyone under your direction shall have made there. But if any person of whatever sex or condition shall attempt to come against this donation and institution of our liberty, let them in no way prevail: but let them first suffer the loss of all their goods, and segregated from the body of the Church, let them incur the wrath of God, the just judge. These things were done in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand one hundred and seventeen, on the tenth day before the Kalends of February.

[22] Oldegarius having set out for Italy, These things having been duly accomplished, the Blessed man, eager to restore ecclesiastical dignity and not to increase his own, set out on a journey to Rome, and was confirmed as Archbishop by Gelasius II (who in those most turbulent times for the Church had been created Pontiff in the eighteenth year of the twelfth century, in the month of January, to replace Paschal II, who three days earlier, that is, on the twenty-second of January, had been called from this life to the next), and was given the Pallium on the twenty-first day of the month of March, at Gaeta: where the Pope had retreated, fleeing the arms of the Emperor Henry, who had violently entered the city. The Bull of this confirmation exists in the Royal Archive at Barcelona, ^l from which Rebullosa copied it word for word. It reads as follows:

[23] Gelasius II confirms the Archbishopric, Gelasius, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to his Venerable Brother Oldegarius, Bishop of Barcelona, greeting and the Apostolic benediction.

That the Church of the city of Tarragona was once an illustrious Metropolis, both the writings of old and the records of provincial divisions declare; toward whose restoration our predecessors are known to have labored greatly, whence even in our own times the Pallium was given by our predecessor, Pope Urban of holy memory, to Berengarius, Bishop of Ausona. And we therefore, wholly intent on the restoration of the same city, you, most dear Brother Oldegarius, Bishop of Barcelona, we constitute Bishop of that Church, and we concede to you the Pallium itself from the generosity of the Apostolic See; with this provision indeed and confidence, that according to the capacity given you by the Lord, with the diocese of Tortosa added, you should strive in every way to restore that city and Church to the honor and glory of the Lord our God. Indeed, if the divine clemency should restore Tortosa ^m to the Christian people, we grant it as a suburban parish to the metropolis of Tarragona; until, God providing, the Church of Tarragona shall receive the strength of its own standing, whereupon Tortosa itself shall obtain its own pastor. Moreover, the city of Tarragona with its boundaries, just as it was conveyed by the illustrious Count Raymond of Barcelona through your hands to the Church of Tarragona and confirmed by the liberty of his writing, we confirm to you and to your successors, the Metropolitans of that same See, in perpetuity by the page of the present decree. To you, therefore, and to your legitimate successors to be established in that same Cathedral, and through you to the Church of Tarragona, we reaffirm the Province of Tarragona itself; so that in it you should henceforth both ordain suffragan Bishops, and celebrate Councils according to canonical form, and provide all things according to Metropolitan governance with the Lord's bounty; saving in all things the authority and reverence of the Apostolic See.

[24] and concedes the Pallium: its use Let your Fraternity know that you have obtained the use of the Pallium within the Church only for the sacred solemnities of Masses, on these days, namely: the Nativity of the Lord, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, the Lord's Supper, Holy Saturday, the Resurrection of the Lord, the Ascension, Pentecost; on the solemnities of the Blessed Mother of God, the Virgin Mary; on the birthdays of Blessed John the Baptist and of all the Apostles; on the Feast of Blessed Thecla and of Blessed Fructuosus ^n the Martyr; at the consecrations of churches and of Bishops, or at ordinations of Clerics, and on the anniversary day of your consecration, of which Pallium we wish you in all things to assert the character: for the honor of this vestment is humility and justice. Therefore let your Fraternity make haste to show itself humble toward those near at hand; and its signification. in adversities, when they come, upright with justice; never accepting any person's face against the truth, never putting forward any person's face speaking for the truth, compassionate toward the weak, rejoicing with the well-disposed, accounting the losses of others as your own, piously severe against vices, soothing the souls of hearers in fostering virtues, in anger holding judgment without anger, in tranquility not abandoning the censure of just severity. This, dearest Brother, is the dignity of the Pallium you have received; which if you diligently observe, what you have shown yourself to have received outwardly, you will have inwardly. May the Holy Trinity preserve your Fraternity safe for long times.

I, Gelasius, Bishop of the Catholic Church.

The mark † of my hand ^o (God in his holy place.)

I, Crescentius, ^p Bishop of Sabina, etc.

At Gaeta, by the hand ^q of Chrysogonus, Cardinal of the Roman Church, on the twelfth day before the Kalends of April. Indiction 11, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1118, in the first year of the Pontificate of the Lord Pope Gelasius II.

[25] Returning to his Church, the blessed man did not delay in bringing his well-conceived plans to execution: The Saint is sent to the Lateran Council: but a long stay in Spain was prevented by the summoning of the Lateran Ecumenical Council; whose principal purpose being the defense of the possession of the Holy Land by the common arms of Christian Princes against the Saracens; the Count of Barcelona believed that the authority of Blessed Oldegarius would be of no small value, so that he too, fighting against the same enemies in Spain, might be provided with timely assistance through the Apostolic See; and with how happy a result he accomplished that mission can be seen from the tenor of the following bull. ^r

[26] Calixtus, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God. To all Bishops, he returns with the power of Legate a latere, Kings, Counts, Princes, and other faithful of God, greeting and the Apostolic benediction. The solicitude of the Pastoral office committed to us by God demands that with all vigilance and circumspection we feed the Lord's flock: for by what calamities and by what deaths of the sons of God the Church of the Spains is continually crushed through the oppression of the Pagans, we believe is hidden from none of you. Wherefore, as if God, whose embassy we bear, were exhorting through us, we admonish your devotion, and with the prayers at our disposal we urge you as most dear ones, that you should by no means cease from the defense of the brethren and the liberation of the Churches. For to all who steadfastly serve in this expedition, we graciously grant the same remission of sins which we made to the defenders of the Eastern Church, by Apostolic authority and the power divinely granted to us. But those who have for this cause placed the sign of the Cross on their garments, to preach the Cross against the Moors: if from this Easter to the next they shall not have striven to fulfill their vow, we henceforth exclude from the bosom of holy Church, until they make satisfaction. But since we are unable to visit your army in person, as we would desire, we have taken care to delegate our most dear brother Oldegarius, Archbishop of Tarragona, for this purpose from our Side, especially committing our office to him in this matter, so that by his counsel and arrangement what is to be corrected may be corrected, and what is to be confirmed may, with the Lord's cooperation, be confirmed; and if any doubtful matters shall arise in that same army, they may be resolved by his experience. We therefore commend him more earnestly to your devotion: asking that he may find in you that charity which compels us to commit him to you. May the almighty Lord, by the merits of his blessed Apostles, guard us in his mercy, and grant us to attain a glorious victory over the enemies of Christians and a happy consummation. Given at the Lateran, on the fourth day before the Nones of April.

[27] which Raymond happily subdues. That the propitious prayer of the common parent of all Christians was not in vain, the outcome of the war declared: Tortosa, against which the Count was leading his forces as the Legate was returning, yielded into the hands of the victor: and Lleida soon followed, on the fourteenth day of November, surrendered on those conditions which can be seen in Diagus. ^s All of which is known to have been done in the thirteenth year of Louis the Fat, which was the one thousand one hundred and twentieth of the Christian era: in which same year that the Blessed man was present in Barcelona is evident from a certain pacification concluded by him on the tenth day before the Kalends of September between the Canons of Barcelona and Berengarius William, the original document of which in the archive of the Church Diagus asserts he has seen. It was not enough for the holy man to have visited the threshold of the Apostles twice, Ollegarius sets out for Jerusalem. unless

he also visited the sacred places of Palestine, which had not long before begun to be freed from the tyranny of the Saracens by the arms of Christians; and sought beyond the sea nourishment for his piety and virtue. With what great sense of joy the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Guarimundus, received him, and how great was the joy of Bernard of Antioch, and also of the Bishop of Tripoli, Diagus and Rebullosa recount to us from their own imagination, rather than from any ancient writer's account; to whom Domeneccus is added: who, together with Diago, defers this pilgrimage to after the return from the Council of Clermont. Rebullosa places it a decade earlier, before the year one thousand one hundred and twenty-three: neither has any foundation that would lend any weight of probability to either opinion.

^a From the Royal Archive, says he, from the cabinet inscribed Tarragona, number 134, folio 36.

^b So we have from a letter of Paschal II to the Clergy and laity in the kingdom of Castile, given on the eighth day before the Kalends of April, in which he complains that, disobedient to the commands of the Apostolic See, they were deserting their own regions on the pretext of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. See that letter in Tamayo under April 3.

^c We discussed that Brief above at number 12.

^d Relics of St. Thecla. James II, King of Aragon, in letters sent in the year 1319 to the King of Armenia, requesting some part from the body of the holy Virgin for the metropolitan Church, writes that more than twelve hundred years had elapsed since the Church at Tarragona was founded under the invocation of this illustrious Martyr; in which the translation of the Arm then obtained is solemnly celebrated on the nineteenth day of May, the very day on which Tamayo has those letters.

^e If Tarragona had been restored by Bernard about twenty years earlier, the Count could not have been ignorant of this, or have failed to recall the recent destruction.

^f Since Caligula, having assumed the diadem, wished to be called Lord, and Domitian was fond of that title, the Caesars were called Lords, Demesne lands. and their property began to be called Dominica, as is evident from the Code. Hence the name Dominicaturae remained in the Spains for certain rights which the supreme Lord of the region was accustomed to reserve for himself over lands whose useful ownership he otherwise transferred to others.

^g War. A word common to Spaniards, Guerra, bellum. Italians, and French, introduced by the Goths, Lombards, and Franks, who shared essentially the same language: and the root Wæren (which means to repel force by force) indicates that those nations wished to mitigate the atrocity of the thing by such a name, which would remind those bearing arms that they should be wielded with no other motive than that of just defense. Not so our Teutons: but rather, considering what war really is rather than what it ought to be, from kryghen to seize, to take, they named it krygh.

^h These two villages, of which Tamarit is closest to the sea, about five thousand paces from Tarragona on the nearer bank of the river which flows east past the city, commonly called the Caya; while this water of Ayano perhaps has the first letter lost in Rebullosa.

^i I believe these mountains to be those which are noted in Geographic tables at a distance of about twenty thousand paces from Tarragona; in which, moreover, you will find no trace of the names that follow: of which Engolador and Embocum, according to the etymology of the words, appear to be places distinguished by the mouth of some river.

^k He means those which flow toward the river Ebro; from whose confluence, descending in a straight line southward to the sea, a small district occurs, commonly called Coll de Balaguer, twenty-five thousand paces distant from Tarragona.

^l In the cabinet Tarragona, number 134, folio 39.

^m Commonly Tortosa, in some documents also Tortuosa, on the eastern bank of the river Ebro, sixty thousand paces from Tarragona.

^n He is honored on the twenty-first of January, and was Bishop and illustrious Martyr of Tarragona itself.

^o In Onuphrius Panvinius, who had seen no original diploma of this Pontiff, this sign is absent.

^p Elected by Paschal II, he is found to have subscribed to diplomas until the times of Callixtus II, says Ughelli in Sacra Italia, volume 1; and he is called the Younger in respect of his predecessor; between whom and himself an intermediary Cynthius is commonly placed: but Ughelli justly suspects him to be the same as the younger Crescentius: for now he is found as Crescentius, now as Cynthius, but with the addition: alias Crescentius. Also subscribing to this diploma were: Senno, Archbishop of Capua, who died on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of December of this very year: he attended the Council of Vercelli, as did the aforesaid Cynthius, about whom more can be seen in Ughelli. He writes of himself in a diploma of the year 1113 as Legate of the Apostolic See and the Pope's Vicar in the Principality of Capua. Lambert, Bishop of Ostia, later Pope Honorius II, of Bologna, from the family de Fagnano. Peter, Cardinal Bishop of Porto, the Pope's Vicar in the City: in his time Calixtus II joined the Bishopric of Santa Rufina to the Bishopric of Porto. Hugh, Cardinal Priest of the title of the Apostles, a Pisan Viscount, says Ciacconius, indicating his country and family, where he enumerates him among those who attended the creation of Gelasius. Peter, Cardinal Priest of the title of St. Susanna: he perhaps the one whom Gelasius created Cardinal at Gaeta in his place, surnamed Rufus: as Ciacconius witnesses, but conceals his title.

^q Priest of the title of St. Cyriacus in Thermis, he also subscribed to another Bull of the same Pope given at Avignon in the year 1118, as found in Ciacconius.

^r Diagus says he copied it from the Archive of the Cathedral of Barcelona, book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 22.

^s Book 2, chapter 104.

CHAPTER IV.

He defends the rights of the Church of Barcelona: He appoints a Prince for himself at Tarragona.

[28] He defends the rights of his Church He who at the very beginning of his Episcopate had not hesitated to bring the gravest lawsuit against the Abbot of St. Cucuphas to defend the rights of the Church, made it sufficiently clear that he would respect no person if they had attempted anything against it. This strength of spirit in him is shown by the Acts of the following years, recorded in public instruments. And first indeed Peter Raymond, against Peter Raymond, a man powerful in his diocese and injurious to the Church in many ways, who also had long been holding one of the Canons, a Priest, confined in an unjust prison, he at last so subdued, joining the rigor of justice to his long-suffering patience, that the man, repenting of his deed, not only released the prisoner, but in compensation for the injury added and transferred to the Church the Praetorship (commonly called the Bailiwick) of Mollet, ^a by an instrument drawn up on the matter on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of January in the year one thousand one hundred and twenty-three.

[29] Sacchetus and Humbertus, Likewise Sacchetus and Humbertus, brothers by birth, who unjustly usurped the tithes of the Church of St. John ^b of Senatus, owed to the Chapter of Barcelona, he compelled by Ecclesiastical censures to restore them, on the third day before the Nones of July of the following year. Likewise from the hands of Arnald William, Arnald William, in the twenty-fifth year of the same century, on the seventh day before the Ides of November, he recovered the tithes of the Church of St. Saturninus ^c of Sabadell. Indeed, not fearing at all to attack even more illustrious figures when the matter required it, he kept the Viscount of Cardona, Bernard, excluded from Ecclesiastical communion, the Viscount of Cardona. until he fulfilled the last will of his grandfather, who had bequeathed three churches of his right to the Chapter of Barcelona; as he finally did on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of February of the year 1134. ^d With the same rigor he restrained Arnald Bernard, father of Berengarius of Castel-vell, from continuing to hold certain pastures of the Church ^e by unjust usurpation: Arnald Bernard. and against his son, lest he presume to do the same, the Chapter prevailed on the sixth day before the Nones of July in the year 1160, with Peter, Bishop of Zaragoza, ^f chosen as arbiter and judge of the case. What wonder? When from the Count Raymond himself he had obtained, and Count Raymond himself that he should cease to usurp the tithes from the money coined at Barcelona, and from ships arriving (which King Louis, son of the Emperor Charles the Bald, ^g had given for the use of the church, in favor of Bishop Fridolinus), however honest the pretext of the very great expenses made and to be made in the sacred war against the Moors, as is clear from the instrument drawn up on the seventh day before the Ides of July of the year 1130.

[30] who before death joined the Templars It was assuredly not difficult to persuade the most pious Count of what was fair; who in this very year, seized by a fatal illness, offered himself to the Order of the Templars, along with the town and castle of ^h Grañena, his vows having been solemnly professed into the hands of Hugh Rigaldus, a professed member of that Order. And when he understood he was dying, he wished to be carried to the Hospital of the Holy Cross, to expire there. What faithful service Blessed Ollegarius rendered him in this final act, can be gathered from the sentence which the son and successor of the deceased, Raymond, in the year immediately following his father's death, at Oldegarius's urging he abolishes an unjust tax. rendered on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June against the Vicar Terracinus, in favor of the bakers requesting to be relieved of the tax which Raymond the Third had imposed on grain sold and assigned to that Vicar; whose words are these: ^i It did not seem to him to be just that he should return them (certain measures of grain, ^k that is, or rather the right to exact them) to him: both because his father Raymond Berengarius had recently imposed them by violence on the said Flechans; and in the illness in which he died, under the grave threat which the Archbishop made to him on this account, he repented of this violence, and ordered that this exaction should no longer be made in that city: and also because that Vicar well knew of this violence, when he received them in compensation for that fief of ^l Terrassa.

[31] A strong and constant defender of justice, therefore, Oldegarius showed himself everywhere: The Dean and Chapter are reconciled: yet far more pleasing to him was to compose amicably those disputes which he could not all avoid: which he demonstrated in practice when he settled the controversy, long agitated between the Chapter of Barcelona and its Dean, Arnald Hermengaud, concerning the chaplaincy of St. Mary de la Mar (which the Dean said was his own and annexed to the Deanery, while the Chapter denied it), in such a way that the Dean should possess it during his lifetime, and afterward the Chapter should be free to dispose of it at will. The sentence was signed by Berengarius, Bishop of Gerona, who wrote himself as Bishop in the customary manner: but the Archbishop, obeying his own humility, expressed nothing other than: Ollegarius, unworthy minister of the Church of Tarragona. ^m

[32] An assembly is called And in order that a faithful minister might more effectively provide for the immunity of that Church and the public peace, when the wars being somewhat quieted gave leisure and opportunity to arrange the political order (for the Saracen rulers of the cities ^n of Tortosa, Lleida, Fraga, and Zaragoza had submitted to Count Raymond), he invited the Count to summon an assembly at Barcelona, in which the state of the Republic might be reformed, and the excesses of secular persons against Ecclesiastical rights might be corrected. The Count agreed to the Prelate's proposal, and to the assembly that was convened came Raymond, Bishop of Ausona, and Bernard, Bishop of Gerona, Abbots, Counts, Nobles, in which ecclesiastical immunity is provided for, and Commissioners of the cities of the Principality, over all of whom Oldegarius presided: where after various arguments of contention, on the tenth day of March, in the Year of the Lord 1126, it was concluded: That henceforth no one should presume to violate Churches within a circuit of thirty paces. That no one should in any way harass the persons or goods of Ecclesiastical persons. That the Count and his son, with the consent of the Barons, should freely and without dispute restore to the Archbishop and the Bishops of the Principality all churches with their rights, cemeteries, and possessions. Likewise a form was established by which the Churches might receive tithes without

fraud to them, and without peril to the contributors.

[33] in the year 1125. These and many other things publicly useful were established there through the efforts of Blessed Oldegarius, in the year, as we said, twenty-sixth of the current century: for although in the volume of the Antiquities of Barcelona, which is in the possession of the Chapter, and contains all the above-mentioned matters, ^o the fifteenth year is expressly written: this is nevertheless a copyist's error, omitting one digit, as is clear from the title of Archbishop of Tarragona, not yet conferred on Blessed Oldegarius in that fifteenth year, but expressed in the Acts of the Assembly, as Diagus observed: moreover, the year which the careless scribe, according to the practice of his age of reckoning the year from Easter to Easter in those parts, should have written as the twenty-fifth, now nearly completed, is the twenty-sixth for those wishing to begin the year from the Kalends of January.

[34] Peace established between Alfonso of Toledo and Raymond of Barcelona: How great a contribution these measures made to establishing common tranquility, it is easy for the prudent to estimate: yet I wonder whether the peace established between the Counts Alfonso of Toledo and Raymond of Barcelona through the division of Provence was not of even greater value. Their wives were, the latter Dulcia, the former Faydida, of Gilbert, Count of Provence, if not daughters, at least heirs (that Dulcia was a daughter is proved by many public instruments, which Anthony de Rufi says he has seen, even though he rightly doubts whether she was born of Tiburga: the facts themselves compel us to acknowledge Faydida as co-heir on whatever grounds). When Gilbert died, therefore, around the year of Christ one thousand one hundred and twelve, the aforesaid Counts held the common inheritance jointly for some time; and when disputes arose (as usually happens) over the undivided rights on each side, the matter was heading toward arms and bloody war, had not angels of peace intervened, through whose agency it was agreed that under the name of the County of Provence, Raymond should hold whatever lies from the Alps to the furthest reach of the Rhone, from the river Durance to the Mediterranean Sea, together with half of Avignon and certain other towns beyond the Durance for half shares, while the rest on both banks of the Rhone should remain to the Toledan. The instrument of the agreement is presented by William Catel in his history of the Counts of Toulouse, and subscribing to it in the second place after the Counts is Raymond the Sacristan; whom, because I find him the only Cleric on the part of the Count of Barcelona, I can scarcely doubt represented the person of his Archbishop at that assembly, and that Oldegarius bore a great part of the cares in this business. Certainly in the thirty-fourth year of the same century he himself went to Zaragoza, the dispute over the kingdom of Aragon, on the testimony of Zurita, to settle, if possible, the controversy that had arisen between Alfonso, King of Castile, and Ramiro the Monk over the right of succession to the kingdom of Aragon, after Alfonso, brother of Ramiro, had died without children. But what he was unable immediately to obtain in another's house at home, he had quickly and happily dispatched in his own country in the year one thousand one hundred and twenty-seventh, and the disputes between the Genoese and Raymond settled. having removed the offenses on account of which Raymond had forbidden the Catalans and Provençals all commerce with the Genoese: as is clear from that treaty, the instrument of which is still preserved in the Royal Archive, ^p signed on the eighteenth day of November.

[35] Oldegarius appoints Robert Aquillon Now the holy Prelate had been cherishing for a full ten years the care of restoring Tarragona, and pressing forward (as far as his resources and the public business we have seen permitted) the work that had been begun: but the magnitude of so great an undertaking was proceeding more slowly than the wishes of all, and especially his own, since the barbarians who held the neighboring lands were raiding, and leaving nothing safe in the entire territory of Tarragona. To the Archbishop, surveying everything around him, it seemed most advisable to provide the Church with a Patron and the city with a Lord, who would defend both with arms and strength, and would look after its temporal advantages as his own. Hence he cast his eyes on Robert Aquillon, otherwise called Bordet, a noble and wealthy Knight, with whom he came to an agreement in the following form. ^q

[36] Ollegarius, by God's condescension steward of the metropolitan see of Tarragona, to all the faithful in Christ. We desire to make known to the notice of all; Tarragona, formerly given to him, how the illustrious Count and Marquis of Barcelona and Provence, Raymond, out of love of God, gave and conveyed by the writing of his liberty, to God and to the Church of Tarragona, which is the head of the Churches of all Hither Spain, and to us and our successors, the city of Tarragona, to be restored, and freely held, and possessed, and disposed of at our good pleasure; as can more fully be known from the writing which he made for us. So too the Roman Pontiffs of good memory, Gelasius and Calixtus, by their kindness in granting us the metropolitan dignity, have nevertheless confirmed that same concession of the Count by their own writings. Wherefore we, trusting in the divine clemency, applying ourselves to the restoration of that city, to the honor of God and his Church, with the counsel and favor of the aforesaid Count Raymond, and of the suffragan Bishops and of our Nobles, at the particular urging of the Lord Raymond, Bishop of Ausona, [we] appoint you, Reverend as Prince; man and valiant Knight, faithful by homage and oath to that same Church, most dear Robert, Prince of that city. You, I say, have exposed yourself to all these things, that you may always serve God and his Church there, and exercise your military service in defense of Christendom; wherefore, to the honor of God and of the Church of Tarragona [and] of our and our successors' fidelity, we give and convey to you that city with its territory, as it is delimited in the charter of the aforesaid Count, to be restored, held, and possessed; and for your successors, that you may arrange and rule and judge the people who shall come there, with the fear of God and justice, according to the laws and good customs which we shall have established there by common counsel. We also give you ^r the tolls, levies, and customs which belong to the Prince, both from land and from sea.

[37] But to you and your successors, to whom after you we shall have granted this honor to be held, the supreme right being reserved: there shall be no license to give or alienate these things to any foreign power; nor to anyone who is not as faithful and solid a man of our Church as you are. We retain, moreover, for our portion and our demesne, all Churches and Ecclesiastical rights and Ecclesiastical persons and our households, and those of Clerics or monks, and all who shall inhabit Ecclesiastical estates, and all who shall dwell in Ecclesiastical houses or possessions. So that over all these things no Prince or lay person of lesser rank should presume to judge, exact, or compel, or arrange anything at any time without our command. In all things, also, which we grant to you as Prince, we retain all tithes both from land and from sea, namely of houses and villages, castles and ^s fortifications, which are there or will be, and of other possessions; also tithes of the produce of the land and of animals and of fish, and from booty and ^t cavalcades and from all revenues which shall accrue to you as Prince through our donation of that Principality.

[38] for which Robert swears fealty: On account of all these benefits which your generosity grants me, I also, Robert, your faithful man, covenant with God and the Church of Tarragona and with you, Lord Ollegarius the Archbishop, that from this day forward I shall be your faithful man, without any deceit concerning your person and all the honor which that Church has today, and which you ought to have, and specifically those things which you retain in the gift that you make me; and concerning all Ecclesiastical rights and entitlements which pertain to you or ought to pertain. I also covenant with you that according to my power and judgment I shall strive to restore that city, and to defend it and all your honor; and to ^u wage war against all men who shall try to take away or diminish the rights and privileges of the Church and your own, or those of that city; and to observe justice, as you have established above. If therefore on the morrow any person, Ecclesiastical or secular, shall presume to come against this page of your donation and our agreement, let that person pay the other party, to whom injury was attempted, thirty pounds of gold, and afterward let this page retain its force. This was done in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord one thousand one hundred and twenty-eight, on the day before the Ides of March.

Ollegarius, Archbishop of Tarragona, signed.

The mark † of Robert the Prince, signed.

Raymond, by the grace of God, Bishop of Ausona.

The mark of Arnald, Priest and Dean.

[39] I, Robert, Prince of Tarragona, swear to you, my Lord Ollegarius, Archbishop of that same city, that from this day forward I shall be your faithful ^x and steadfast man, and for you and your Church, and I shall do and fulfill all the agreements which I have covenanted with you, as they are written between me and you, by faith without deceit. And if perchance, which God forbid, I should fail in these through carelessness, within thirty days from the time I shall have been warned, I shall make satisfaction to you. By these four holy Gospels.

Armed with this authority, Robert, and promotes the restoration of the city. says Tamayo from Domeneccus, immediately set about repairing the walls, strengthening the citizens, distributing the fields, repelling the enemy, protecting the boundaries: whose succession extended only to William de Aguillon, his son: because when this man with sacrilegious hand had killed the most holy Hugo de Cervellon, Archbishop of Tarragona, ^y he was excommunicated ^z by Pope Alexander III, and deprived of the Principality of the city, and afterward perished miserably.

^a It is found in the archive of the Cathedral, book 4 of the Antiquities, folio 145. That Praetorship is moreover in the Vallès, fifteen thousand paces from Barcelona toward the north.

^b It appears to be at a distance of five thousand paces to the south of the city.

^c Sabadel in Geographic tables: it is to the north of the city, twenty thousand paces distant.

^d This is established from book 3 of the said Antiquities, folio 46.

^e Given as a gift by Geribert Girald: as is found in book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 200.

^f With the assessors Bernard Marcuz and Peter the Sacristan of Ausona: who in their sentence, scarcely thirteen years after his death, piously address Oldegarius as Blessed.

^g Some ignorantly believe Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, to be the author of these and other privileges; Diagus refutes them in book 2, chapter 10.

^h Situated on a certain hill a few thousand paces from the river Ebro: forty thousand paces from Tortosa toward the northeast: see the instrument of Profession and donation from the Royal Archive in Rebullosa, chapter 23.

^i From book 1 of Fiefs, folio 388, in the Royal Archive.

^k Diagus in book 2, chapter 114, calls the kind of measure imposed on the bakers Megiras.

^l A village in the Vallès, at roughly the halfway point of the journey between Barcelona and Manresa, in maps called Granolles; on the river commonly called Besos, which the ancients called Betulo, and the author of the Life of Scipio ascribed to Plutarch calls Besula; while to Florianus it is Beses, and to Varrarius Besons, says Ortelius in his Thesaurus.

^m These things from Diagus, book 2, chapter 106.

^n All strong cities, today Tortosa, Lleida, Fraga, Zaragoza: of which the first and last are on the river Ebro, the other two on the Segre and Cinca flowing into the Ebro.

^o Book 1, folio 105.

^p In the cabinet inscribed Girona,

folder E, number 390, says Diagus in book 2, chapter 109, where he briefly and clearly explains the course of that controversy and pacification.

^q In Rebullosa, chapter 22, from the Royal Archive. Diagus adds that it is contained in the cabinet Tarragona, number 134, folio 6.

^r Tolls, levies, and customs Rebullosa, rendering this instrument in Spanish, translates: las Calonias, peages y vsages; from which it appears that choloneas in the text is written erroneously: for Calonia is a Catalan word of nearly obsolete usage, as are the others, signifying a certain kind of tax, but what kind I find no one who clearly explains. Peage is said to be a census paid per person, or (to express the propriety of the Spanish word) per breast: for as our heads are counted, so their breasts are counted. Meanwhile in the formula of oath offered by the Toulouse magistrate to St. Peter of Castel-nouo, the first inquisitor of heretical depravity and preacher against the Albigensians, produced for his life under March 5, it has "liberties or customs or usages." In Vossius On Vices of Speech, book 2, chapter 11: Leodes, Lidos, Lidas, men and women subject to the dominion of another. Cholonia moreover, why should it not be that servitude which we call of the glebe, by which farmers, as if affixed to the soil, are reckoned as one thing with the land, otherwise free, except that they cannot migrate elsewhere against the will of their lords?

^s That is, a fortification; today the Spanish say fortalezas, the Italians fortezze, the French forteresses. Fortification, Cavalcade.

^t It seems that the booty acquired through military raids, whether on foot or horseback, was to be tithed. The Spanish, Italians, and French call a Cavalcade the equestrian procession which accompanies Princes or their legates entering some city, or going to a public assembly, as an honor guard.

^u That is, to wage war.

^x We commonly call a Vassal one who is bound by an oath of fidelity to some prince.

^y Aided by his other brothers, says Domeneccus in the Life of this Hugo, whom he says was killed on the twenty-second of April, in the year 1171, after he had governed his Church for eight years, nine months, and twenty days: and Zurita notes that in the same year and for the same reason St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, was killed in England.

^z King Alfonso of Aragon, the son of Raymond Berengarius IV, is said to have undertaken the execution of the sentence, having been requested by the Pope through a legate sent for this purpose.

CHAPTER V.

The zeal of Blessed Oldegarius, his holy death, and the miracles that followed.

[40] Oldegarius, freed from the cares of defending and restoring the city, Returning from the Council of Clermont. was able more conveniently to devote himself to building that magnificent temple which Tarragona still possesses today, dedicated as the principal church to St. Thecla, Proto-Martyr and chief Patroness of the city: in the further embellishment of which to the highest splendor, the efforts and resources of succeeding Bishops would be expended. And since his resources alone were not equal to completing so great a work, having set out in the year one thousand one hundred and thirty for Gaul, to the Council of Clermont summoned by Innocent II, he brought back from there two Bulls directed to all his Suffragans, by which it would be established that, according to the Pontifical will, a certain part of the annual revenues of each Bishopric was to be reserved for that purpose, besides the alms which collectors appointed for that purpose would gather from the entire Province. ^a

[41] Moreover, it is especially worthy of observation that from all he devotes himself to the restoration of the Metropolitan Church, of Spain, besides Oldegarius, no other Bishop was present at the Council of Clermont just mentioned; the summary of which, hitherto unpublished, Diagus testifies he has seen in both archives, the Royal and the Capitular, in book 2, chapter 118. For all of Spain was adhering to the schism of Peter Leonis, under the false name of Anacletus II, and it is easy to believe that Count Raymond favored his party all the more earnestly, the closer the blood relationship by which he was connected to Roger, King of Sicily, created by the Antipope, being a nephew of Robert Guiscard through his brother Roger: of which Robert, Raymond was a grandson through his daughter Mahalta: yet so great was the constancy of the Bishop, and so great was the reverence of the Count for his Bishop, that while the rest remained at home, he alone did not hesitate to cross into Gaul to acknowledge the legitimate Pontiff; nor is the Count found to have shown by any sign that this liberty displeased him.

[42] That the Archbishop, having returned from the Council, put much effort into the restoration not only of the metropolitan church of Tarragona, and of others: but also of various churches throughout the Province which the Moors had partly destroyed and partly profaned, the Spanish writers say: and indeed Domeneccus writes that he has seen and read the public acts concerning the churches of St. Andrew of Palomar, St. Cyprian of Aqualonga, and of Sabadell, consecrated by him. It is certain that so industrious a Prelate of charity was by no means idle whenever the occasion demanded or necessity required: nor could all things either be recorded in the Acts, or if recorded, be preserved for the knowledge of posterity. He provides for the hospital of Barcelona: But what we find decreed by him in the year one thousand one hundred and thirty-three in favor of the public hospital, concerning the household goods of dying Clerics to be transferred for the use of the poor, it is not fair to pass over: thus therefore he decreed: ^b Let it be known to all, that I, Ollegarius, by the grace of God Archbishop of Tarragona and Bishop of Barcelona, together with the entire convent of that same See, give to God and to the Hospital of the poor, which is near the See, all the beds with the linens of deceased Clerics, whoever they may be, excepting silken cloths that may be there: in such manner that neither I nor any person should dare to reclaim this in any way. If anyone should dare to break this gift of our munificence, let them be excommunicated as a killer of the poor. This was done on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, in the twenty-fifth year of King Louis.

[45] He introduces the Order of the Templars: Knowing moreover how great a protection for the Christian cause against the ferocity of the barbarian enemies was placed in the new Order of the Templars; he was not content merely to have stimulated in Raymond the Third so favorable a disposition toward it that he had himself enrolled in it before his death: but he took care to foster a similar affection in the son. So that he would not delay in acquiring a similar protection against the Moors for himself, he immediately applied his mind to founding a monastery for them, for which he requested from the Master ^c of the Order that at least ten Religious be granted him, and in the year one thousand one hundred and thirty-four, on the third day before the Nones of January, he handed over Barberà, ^d a very well-fortified castle on the borders of the barbarians, to Arnald Bedoz and Hugh Rigaldus, with the consent of the chief magnates: whose names Diagus lists. And so that the Archbishop might further promote this matter, so auspiciously begun, he convened leading men of both orders, and in consultation with them on this business, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of May of the same year, he issued an outstanding constitution in favor of those who, enlisted in this sacred militia and possessing nothing of their own, would consecrate their life to the service of God and the defense of the faith; with many censures added against those who would presume to inflict any harm on them: to which constitution ^e he himself subscribed his name in the first place, and then the Count; who also bequeathed all his military equipment after his death from that point on to the Templars, and bound himself to pay them a certain annual sum of money. ^f These were the beginnings from which the greatest expansion of the Order followed through Aragon and Catalonia; after the same Order had ceded to Raymond the kingdom of Aragon, bequeathed to it by Alfonso on his deathbed: on which matters Diagus may be consulted, book 2, chapter 144 and following.

[46] At the November Synod assembled At last it pleased God, the supreme Judge of the contest, to crown the innumerable and continuous labors of the blessed Prelate, borne for the peace of the Christian people and the defense of the faith, with that virtue which, as the Apostle James testifies, has a perfect work: I mean patience, for the exercise of which a most grave and most frequent (so writes the ancient author of the Life) infirmity provided abundant and copious material, by which although his bodily strength was failing, he nevertheless relaxed nothing of his constancy of spirit: but willed that the diocesan Synod, to be held as customary in the month of November, should be convened; in which with a wondrous fervor of spirit throughout the entire three days the Synod lasted, he discoursed on many things concerning the state of the Church, concerning pastoral care, concerning religion, faith, and Christian works, concerning the Priestly office, concerning obedience and the Holy Spirit (in almost these words the Canon of Gerona encompasses the Acts of the Synod), and finally, having steadfastly predicted that this was the last to be held in his presence; he predicts his own death; he begged with tears for the prayers of all who had assembled for the approaching time of his departure: struck by this announcement, they accompanied the Holy Prelate, the Synod being dismissed, as he returned to his palace, with much groaning: where they laid him in his bed and, fortified by his paternal blessing, each returned to their own Churches. James 1:4

[47] From that point the disease grew graver and graver day by day, and gradually brought him to the extremity of life: wherefore disposing of whatever temporal goods might still remain to him, he made to the Chapter of the Church of Barcelona two donations of certain estates; one of which was situated in the parish of Mollet: while ill, he makes certain pious bequests; concerning which an instrument exists ^g drawn up in the twenty-ninth year of King Louis, on the twelfth day of February; to which he subscribed in these words: The mark of Ollegarius the Archbishop, who, detained by a most grievous illness, confirm and approve this gift point by point in the presence of the Canons. The other was in Graniola, and signing the relinquishment of it ^h on the thirteenth of February, he calls that same illness excessive. It had been the custom of the Holy Archbishop to convene a twofold Synod each year from the entire diocese of Barcelona; the first at the beginning of Lent, the second in the month of November: and having held the latter the previous year, in which he had announced what we heard concerning the approaching end of his life, the prediction was fulfilled this year: for those Abbots, Priests, and Clerics who had assembled in the first week of Lent he dies after the Lenten Synod is concluded. held their meetings without their Bishop; and in the presence of these same men, Ollegarius, after he had been duly prepared by the last Sacraments of the Church for the appointed combat, and had imparted his blessing to all, amid the tears and sighs of his children, rendered his blessed spirit to God, on the day before the Nones of March, the sun setting together with his temporal life.

[48] in the year 1137 Diagus asserts that the year when these things occurred was the thirty-seventh of the twelfth century, and the instruments signed by the Saint in his final illness attest to this: nonetheless Rebullosa challenges Diago and confidently pronounces that the year was only the thirty-sixth: asserting that Diago erroneously counted the years of King Louis: but deceived himself by an erroneous calculation, he also led Tamayo into error: which would not have happened to either of them if they had paid attention to the first week of Lent, in which both place the death of the Blessed. For in the thirty-seventh year, when Easter fell on the eleventh day of April, Ash Wednesday falls on the twenty-fourth of February: and thus the sixth of March coincides with the Saturday of the first week of Lent; whereas in the preceding Leap Year, 6 March when Easter consecrated the twenty-second day of March, the Ashes were to be blessed on the fifth day of February, and therefore the sixth day of March fell on the Friday after the fourth Sunday of the Lenten fast. Concerning the years of King Louis it is likewise established that they are to be reckoned from the exequies of his father Philip, celebrated on the first of August, in the eighth year of the twelfth century,

from which the twenty-ninth is the one in the 29th year of King Louis. which we call the thirty-seventh. Nor do I see what Rebullosa could have been considering when he calculated the years of this King; unless perhaps he happened upon certain diplomas drawn up between the beginning of January and Easter (from which the French, and the Catalans following the French, began their years), and consequently combining the twenty-ninth year of Louis, for example, with the year one thousand one hundred and thirty-six of the Christian era.

[49] But I return to Blessed Oldegarius, whose body, deceased from this mortal life, and is buried near the Chapter room; while his spirit enters into possession of heavenly glory, was honorably placed in a tomb, in the cloister of Barcelona (these are the words of the ancient author) and buried with the deepest feeling of the Clergy and people: buried, I say (lest anyone suspect a marble chest less suited to a decaying body), for the most ancient manuscript concerning matters pertaining to the Church of Barcelona, discovered around the beginning of this seventeenth century by the Bishop of Barcelona, John Dima Lorisius, expressly asserts this, as Diagus writes. The same is made most plausible by the custom of those times, in which even those bodies which by the wish of the dying were to be placed in monuments magnificently constructed during their lifetimes, were first buried in the earth until, the flesh having decomposed, bare bones remained: as Diagus says he has found from the originals of many old testaments, and begins to shine with miracles, and also from the small dimensions of such chests, by no means proportionate to receiving an intact body.

[50] Not long did the most benign God, who abundantly glorifies those who glorify him, delay in manifesting the glory of his Saint to men: but immediately after the obsequies had been solemnly performed, he began to work very many miracles through the intercession of his merits: of which as many as I have found in authentic codices and writings, I shall enumerate here, says Domeneccus. Speech restored to a mute woman, A woman deprived of the use of her tongue was present when the holy Bishop was being buried: standing before his tomb, with groaning of heart and tears of eyes, she began to entreat him that this faculty might be restored to her: others standing about likewise petitioned on her behalf, and so great was the efficacy of their prayers that she immediately broke forth into words, the first of which were: St. Ollegarius, pray for me.

[51] A certain warship of Barcelona, having reached the maritime parts of the Spanish Moors, and a Barcelonese warship, had inflicted grave damage on them, plundering their houses, killing many, and carrying not a few into slavery; and already laden with spoils it was sailing home in triumph. Roused by the report of this great calamity, ^i the pirates of Almería, ^k Dénia, and Valencia fitted out a numerous fleet, by which pursuing with the greatest speed those who were departing, they ceased not to follow them day or night. At length, late one evening, weary with toil and forced by want of fresh water, they put into the nearest port, ^l and having posted watches at bow and stern, fell asleep, unaware of the danger from the enemy that threatened; who indeed was about to be borne into that same port a short while later, to overwhelm them unawares. But the faithful Patron of the people of Barcelona was present, and appearing to the ship's captain in his sleep, he commanded them to depart from there at once; the Moorish ships were not far away. He, waking and seeing no one, thought it a vain dream, and fell asleep again. freed from the enemy. Therefore, when the barbarians were already close at hand, Ollegarius appeared again, and carried swiftly from prow to stern, where the captain lay, he roused all from sleep: Flee, he cried out, depart immediately: behold the Moors rushing upon you. And not only did the captain hear him giving such warnings; but he saw him clothed in a white rochet, holding a staff in his hand, as had been his custom. All arose, cut the anchor cables, and retracing their course, found the mouth of that port blocked by hostile vessels. It remained for them to implore the aid of God and of Blessed Ollegarius: they implored it, and found their strength for rowing increasing, while the enemy's strength was failing: and the Moors, astonished by such swift flight rather than course, returned empty-handed to their own, and told far and wide (as was afterward heard from Christian captives) that the Barcelonese had escaped safely by the help of God and of Blessed Oldegarius, whom they had invoked; and they, having returned to their homeland with their spoils safe and sound, hung a wax ship as a votive offering at the sepulcher of their liberator.

[52] Three Christians from the region called Panadés ^m, Three captives freed from their chains: taken captive to Valencia by the Moors, were being afflicted in a dire prison with various sufferings, and especially with hunger: one of them was a Priest ordained by Blessed Oldegarius himself, at whose urging, when they had all commended themselves to the merits of the Holy Prelate, they saw him present before them, breaking the chains by which they were bound: and without delay, going forth from the dungeon under his guidance, they took the path of flight shown to them by him as he disappeared, and soon boarding a ship found on the shore which was sailing for Barcelona, they completed the journey and hung at the monument of the Blessed the very shackles which they had brought, miraculously loosened from them in prison.

[53] A noble Matron from the same territory, ill for many years, a sick woman cured: after much money fruitlessly spent on physicians and medicines, invoked the patronage of Blessed Oldegarius: and she who had gone to bed ill the night before, rose the next day healthy, to the astonishment of all, and in the company of her sons and many knights visited the sepulcher of the Saint, giving thanks to God and his servant, and bringing a precious tapestry to be spread over his sacred Relics.

[54] two blind men given sight: A certain poor man, and moreover paralyzed in the lower part of his body, lay entirely deprived of the use of his feet: when he kept vigil in that cloister, in which we said the body of the Blessed was buried, before the doors of the Chapter room he caught sight of a venerable old man, clothed in white and equipped with a rather long staff; who called out to him to rise, once and twice. And he indeed said he could not: yet within half an hour he arose healthy, and perceiving that he was walking with firm steps, joyfully recounted to the wondering people the vision that had been offered to him, and the grace that had followed it. On the same day another blind man: Wretched me, he said, who for so long a time, hoping for consolation through Oldegarius's intercession, have hitherto obtained none — by what sin of mine have I deserved this? A certain one of the Clerics heard him lamenting: Why do you not rather, he said, trust in God, and cleanse your soul with a sincere confession? The blind man obeyed, and received his sight the following night.

[55] a dead woman restored to life: Another woman from the district of Panadés was tormented by so intense a pain of the bowels that she had given up all hope of life; indeed, having lost the power of speech, life itself had ceased to be felt in the dying woman by the pulse of the throbbing artery. And so, when she was considered dead by all: Why, said someone, do we not pray to God and Blessed Oldegarius, to restore her power of speech so that she may confess her sins? Others replied that it was now too late; that she was completely lifeless: they did, nevertheless, what was urged, and the next morning, with many standing by the bed of the woman they considered dead, and expecting nothing less than what happened, speech was restored to the sick woman. They, collecting their wits from their astonishment, asked what had happened to her, what she had seen: then she herself narrated how, having been led to a most pleasant place, she had beheld St. Oldegarius, prostrate on his knees before a most beautiful man, beseeching him to deign to call her back to life, for whom so many were praying: and when that man had graciously assented to his petitions, she had returned to life, as they could see. And straightway, to the amazement of all, the woman recovered, and came to Barcelona to give thanks for so remarkable a benefit received.

A certain Knight ^n from the Vallès had come to Barcelona to visit the tomb of Blessed Ollegarius, as the very history of the blessed man relates: a runaway slave brought back: while he was absorbed in prayer, his household slave, thinking the master's absence his own liberty, took to flight: the holy Prelate appeared to the fugitive, and commanding him in vain to return home, he took away his sight when the man persisted in his once-adopted intention: the wretch promised to return, if he would receive his sight: he received it and returned. But shortly afterward, repenting of what he had done, he fled again, and again was brought back in like manner. Meanwhile the master arrived from the city, and was turning over in his mind which way to order his fugitive sought: but the slave soon appeared, loaded with a bundle of firewood, and reported in order what had happened to him the second time.

[56] another similar case. Near Barcelona there was a poor widow, who somehow sustained the life of herself and her children by the labor of the single slave she possessed, who earned wages: while she was pouring forth her prayers near the sepulcher of the Blessed, the aforesaid slave stole away. The woman returned, found her slave absent, and could not find him despite diligent searching. Therefore, at a loss for what to do, she returned to the place from which she had come; and falling asleep there from grief of heart, she beheld the Blessed himself standing by her, advising her that the fugitive was to be sought in the Count's bakery. She went, searched, and found him hidden among piles of wood with another companion in flight; and gave thanks to God and his Saint for finding the sole support of her fortunes.

[57] A certain poor man, also paralyzed in the lower part of his body, A paralytic, lay entirely deprived of the use of his feet: when he was keeping vigil in that cloister, in which we said the body of the Blessed was buried, before the doors of the Chapter room he caught sight of a venerable old man, clothed in white, equipped with a rather long staff; who called out to him to rise, once and twice. And he indeed said he could not: yet within half an hour he arose healthy, and perceiving that he was walking with firm steps, joyfully recounted to the wondering people the vision offered to him, and the grace that had followed it. A certain blind man also, brought by his parents to the same place, after much insistence in prayer, and a blind man, healed by the Saint. rejoiced that the faculty of sight had been restored to him through the merits of St. Oldegarius. When Rebullosa had set forth these things more fully, he concludes chapter 42 thus: The Canon of Gerona alone left us these accounts in his writing for our memory; he professes, however, that there are many other things besides, which it is known God wonderfully wrought through the intercession of this his servant: Indeed many, he says (as is found in Diagus), and other signs God did through the merit of St. Oldegarius.

^a So says Rebullosa, chapter 24. But he nowhere indicates where those bulls can be found: Diagus makes no mention of them at all, wherefore I suspect they do not survive.

^b From book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 285.

^c Robert was a Burgundian by birth.

^d On maps, Mas de Barberans, at an equal distance of ten thousand paces from Tortosa and from the river Cenia, which divides the kingdom of Valencia from Catalonia. The same castle had been handed over to the same Order two years earlier for his own part by Ermengaud, Count of Urgell, with the consent of those magnates whom the same Diagus lists.

^e It is found in the Royal Archive in the book of the Templars, folio 88.

^f Twenty Morabetins each year, says Diagus. A small sum indeed in the present time, since thirty-four Maravedís (as they are called) of Spain constitute only five French asses or sous, that is, one Spanish real.

^g In book 2 of the Antiquities, folio 196.

^h In book 3 of the Antiquities, folio 37; Graniola is moreover a town six thousand paces farther from Barcelona than the village of Mollet, mentioned above, called Granolles on maps; on the river commonly called Besos, which the ancients called Betulo, the author of the Life of Scipio ascribed to Plutarch calls Besula; while to Florianus it is Beses, and to Varrarius Besons, says Ortelius in his Thesaurus.

^i Almería, called Portus Magnus by Ptolemy, the first port to the east of Hispania Baetica near the promontory of Charidemus, commonly called Cabo de Gata, in the kingdom of Granada.

^k Dénia, formerly: it has now given its name to the promontory which the ancients call Dianium or Artemisium, and some also call Ferraria; but the inhabitants of these times call it Cabo Martín, in the kingdom of Valencia; whose capital Valencia is on the western bank of the river Duria, today called Guadalaviar. Dénia, moreover, was known already before Ptolemy, and assigned to the Contestani in Hispania Tarraconensis.

^l I do not know from where Tamayo, rendering the text of Domeneccus into Latin not in the best faith, indeed substituting a narrative different in many places, dreams of Ancona here, which we know of none on this coast of Spain; but in Italy, of course, a most famous one.

^m This is a district of the diocese of Barcelona beyond the river Llobregat.

^n The Vallès is another portion of the same diocese, looking toward the north.

CHAPTER VI.

Various translations of the body, and the efforts of the people of Barcelona for the Canonization of Blessed Oldegarius.

[58] The veneration of the Clergy and people of Barcelona toward the Blessed, increased by such prodigies, The body is raised from the earth: could not long tolerate that his venerable body should lie hidden in a common burial with the multitude: it was therefore decreed that the sacred Relics should be taken from the earth, and to this end a marble chest was made, the same one that is seen to this day, though not sealed with the same cover; which, together with the holy corpse, entirely free from all corruption (whence there arose in the people no small admiration mixed with joy), was placed near the Chapter room, as we believe; and immediately a designation was made for a chapel to be built in his honor: a chapel is designated: toward the construction of which, as citizens and Clergy competed with generous alms, the liberality of one Bertrand de Castellet, a leading knight, who gave as a gift two Moorish slaves that had come to him from the plunder of Tortosa, ^a has come to our knowledge: because it was included in the legitimate terms of his own testament, which that man had drawn up in the seventh year of Louis the Younger ^b on the eighth day before the Kalends of May.

[59] As the zeal for honoring Blessed Oldegarius continued to grow with ever new increases, in the nineteenth ^c and twentieth years of the same Louis VII, King of France, perpetual revenues were established for maintaining a revenue is established for the lamp. the lamps that burned at the tomb of the Saint; and for that purpose, from the generosity of the Bishop of Barcelona, Lord William de Torroja, ^d with the Chapter's consent, half of the tithes customarily received from a certain estate situated along the road called Mulnera ^e was designated: and Peter de Sentmenat added the fourth part of the tithes of the same estate, which he possessed by his own right. At the same time, Berengarius de Llobregat bequeathed by testament a hundred-weight of oil to be expended in honor of the blessed Pontiff. Custody of the chapel assigned to whom: And indeed that chapel dedicated to him already had a warden specially assigned to its custody, and he was one of the Beneficiaries or Canons, until the year one thousand two hundred and forty-one, when that care was transferred to the Hebdomadaries or Domeros, with whom it remained for one hundred and seven years. For in the forty-eighth year of the fourteenth century the matter was brought to litigation, and both Vicars General of Lord Michael de Riçoma, then Bishop, ^f William Turrella ^g and Raymond Romeus transferred the administration of that sacristy with the title of Procurator to a certain Canon. Thus that office devolved upon Peter de Bramona, who died in the eighty-first year of the aforesaid century. Then Bishop Lord Peter de Planella, ^h and all the Canons assembled at the sound of the bell in the Episcopal palace, as had been the old custom, judged it more fitting that those who had charge of the minor sacristy of that church should also preside over this same shrine: which has been observed to this day.

[60] Translation of the year 1180: In the year immediately preceding, namely one thousand one hundred and eighty, the second translation of the sacred body had been made to a new chapel of the Cathedral Church, on the third day before the Nones of November, falling on a Sunday: as the Notary and Chief Clerk of the Court of Barcelona, Michael Paul Faldellus, left written in the Diary of that same Court: it was done, as he says, with a solemn procession, which, going out through the square of the bridlemakers, proceeded through the square then called after the apothecaries or spicers, now after the booksellers, and the square of St. James, and turned its way along the new baths; and thus through the square which the common people call the new one, returned to the place from which it had set out, with an immense throng of wax tapers giving light.

[61] Not a few years flowed by after this until the third translation, made on the occasion of another, by which the body of St. Severus, ^i Bishop and Martyr, was translated through King Martin and Bishop Lord John Hermengaud from the church of St. Cucuphas in the Vallès to the Cathedral of Barcelona, another, in the year 1405: on the third day before the Nones of August of the year one thousand four hundred and five. For then people began again to think about a new translation of Blessed Oldegarius; and this plan was promoted the following year to the point that a stone of the purest marble was fashioned with a rare and remarkable art, displaying the sculpted image of the Saint: with which stone the marble chest is still covered today, concerning whose renovation I find nothing done: nor indeed was there need, since it was considered at that time, and still is, sufficiently beautiful. Which renovation, I find, cost fifty florins ^k (says Diagus, from whom we transcribe this entire chapter) in the account books of income and expenditure of the lesser sacristy: in which same book it is recorded that a green tapestry from King Martin, adornment of the tomb: and another black one from the city of Barcelona, were donated to grace this translation: and moreover it is recorded therein what the installation of the small bell cost, by which the signal is given for the morning sacrifice to be celebrated in honor of the Saint, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August, in the year 1406.

[62] By this last translation, in which the Sacred Body was not brought outside the church, it was carried to the chapel nearest to that of St. Severus, where to this day above his tomb is seen the image of a crucifix; the miracle of the incorrupt body. occupying the place of another panel which displayed the image of St. Onuphrius, Hermit and Confessor. The tomb, moreover, is elevated above the altar, set back a small space from the wall; which space is occupied by a small enclosure, within which are admitted those who, led by pious curiosity, desire to enjoy the sight of the body, to this day perfectly intact, except that the flesh has slightly fallen away from the face: which, that I might write more certainly and from personal examination, says the same Diagus who writes the rest; I was granted the privilege of inspecting and touching the very flesh without any intervening veil or grating, and touching one of the thighs, I found it no less pliable than that of a recent corpse; marveling moreover that all his parts from head to feet continue so firmly connected to one another, that when one part is moved, the whole body follows: which also in the year preceding the one in which I write, namely the second of the seventeenth century, Bishop Lord Alfonso Coloma ^l discovered by his own experiment, when he dressed the venerable relic in new and more precious vestments, not having stripped it of the former ones (in which not the least trace of corruption appears to this day): for when he raised the holy head to place the Pontifical miter upon it, he felt the rest of the cadaver move in like manner.

[63] One hundred and forty-four years had elapsed from the death of the most blessed Bishop, during which the Church of Barcelona, content to honor its most holy Father with private, In the year 1281. as I may say, veneration, had thought nothing of that more august recognition which is wont to be accorded to Saints who, after their cause has been duly and rigorously examined, are enrolled by the Roman Pontiff in the catalogue of Saints, and are thereby rendered publicly honorable to the entire Christian world. But when, for obtaining the Canonization of Blessed Raymond de Peñafort, in the fourth year after his happy passing, such great efforts had been made that the King of Aragon, Peter the Third of that name, had arranged for a Provincial Council to be celebrated at Tarragona; a just religious scruple and fear entered the minds of all, lest they seem ungrateful toward their Archbishop, who had been translated to heavenly glory one hundred and thirty-eight years before Raymond, and had been declaring the efficacy of his intercession by so many prodigies and benefits after death, just as he had heaped great and various benefits upon his diocese while living. And so the same King Peter directed a double letter to Pope Martin, Peter, King of Aragon, indicating his immense zeal with which he embraced this business: of which the first reads as follows. ^m

[64] To the Most Holy Father and Lord, reverend above all others, Martin, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman Church, from Pope Martin Peter, by the same grace King of Aragon, recommendation and reverence due and devout.

If we did not certify your holy Paternity of the exhibition of graces and the largesse of benefits conferred upon Us and Our People, we fear that the Lord Jesus Christ (from whom all good things proceed) would repel Us, as those unmindful of his benefits, from his holy and pious memory, as ingrates. Wherefore we wish Your Holiness not to be unaware that there was a certain Man, named Oldegarius, a native of the land subject to our jurisdiction, ^n who formerly presided as Bishop over the city of Barcelona, and as Metropolitan over the Church of Tarragona, who so devoutly lived among those subject to him in both capacities, and so ruled and taught them, that we firmly believe the Lord Jesus Christ, according as it appears through manifest signs, asks for the Canonization of Blessed Oldegarius. has mercifully placed him on high among his Saints according to his worthy merits. For at his invocation and the devout proclamation of the people, those sick with various and diverse infirmities are wholly freed, as appears through various kinds of miracles, attested by witnesses confirmed by public Notaries according to the order of law. We therefore humbly and devoutly beseech Your Holiness, that of your accustomed benign clemency you may deign to place on earth the said Blessed Oldegarius in the number of the Saints, since it is our firm faith, as we have said, that the Lord Jesus Christ has ordained him in the heavenly throne among the ranks of the Saints. For these and other matters to be proposed on our behalf, we send to the feet of Your Holiness our beloved Bernard de Olorda, Doctor of Decrees, who will explain verbally to Your Holiness many things relevant to this business on Our behalf. Given at Barcelona, on the Kalends of March, in the Year of the Lord 1280. not 1280. Lest this year be suspected of error by one who considers that Pope Martin, the second of this name, was not placed on the Chair of St. Peter until the year 1281, on the twenty-second of February; it is necessary to recall what I remember teaching above, that for the French and Catalans of that time the beginning of the year was customarily reckoned not from the Kalends of January but from Easter, which, in the year in which Martin was consecrated, fell on the very Ides of April; and the preceding Kalends of March, by that reckoning, still belonged to the eightieth year of the thirteenth century: so that the following letter was given in the same year as the first, with only an interval of nine and a half months.

Among the cares which we bear for the commonwealth, it has been close to Our heart always to increase with due devotion the worship of divine things: especially in those matters which accumulate the glory of God, the honor of the Kingdom, and for Us the joys of Our subjects. Indeed the matter of the Reverend Father of happy memory, Blessed Oldegarius, provides a more abundant day of praise and thanksgiving ^o that increases in heaven, and on earth Mother Church, whose nursling, fed ^p and nourished at her breasts, most grateful and most devoted spouse, translated by a glorious assumption from her bosom to the Father of all, the true God, the more happily, the more joyfully she glories. Oldegarius's merits, For this Venerable Man, presiding over the Churches of Tarragona and Barcelona at one and the same time, by Apostolic mandate, as a son of obedience, governing them among barbarous nations from of old, with wonderfully useful discretion; carrying about the arms of light more devoutly, and shining with a wondrous splendor of virtues, with faith leading, justice attending, and perseverance following, fighting in the battle line of Christ, relying more on his leadership and grace, dedicating himself entirely to the divine service, he illumined them to the very dissolution of his body, leaving them in a prosperous state: through whose merits, the Lord, wonderful in holiness on high, and the worker of wonders on earth, has deigned to glorify his Saint with immense prodigies of signs and to display his virtues more brilliantly to all. and miracles set forth. For how many images of human persons, of feet and hands and other parts of the human body, with likenesses expressed in wax, are daily placed by the faithful before his venerable sepulcher; and how greatly his privileged holiness avails with God for those who are detained by grave and diverse infirmities and perils and other necessities both on land and sea; and how great and of what kind are the miracles wrought through him — if we are bound to explain them one by one, truly we are overwhelmed: since the abundance of laudable things exceeds and surpasses the copious flow of narration, as the evidence of the facts attests. We moreover exult all the more abundantly in the merits of so great a Patron, and we congratulate the rejoicing Roman ^q Church, that the places subject to us are pre-eminent with so great a Patron, by whose pious intervening suffrage, prosperity may follow in temporal affairs, and the promised joys come in heavenly ones. Taught therefore by such proofs of faith, and moved by such examples of virtues (an inquiry into life and miracles having been first conducted), we have thought it right to beseech Your Blessedness, that toward the sacred canonization of this Saint, long desired by an innumerable multitude of Clergy and People (if it please you), the Apostolic authority may deign to proceed as fervently as efficaciously, enrolling him in the catalogue of Saints; so that the faithful may commonly honor and venerate on earth this true zealot of the faith, whom the Lord, full of virtues, endowed with grace, renowned for miracles, has displayed as notable and worthy of imitation to all. Given at Xàtiva, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of January, in the Year of the Lord 1281.

[66] Hence an immense expectation of a near Canonization, Following these petitions of Peter to Martin, the canonization of St. Oldegarius was doubtless expected soon by the people of Barcelona, which was the reason that the faithful of that city commonly provided in their last wills for Chapels to be built, Anniversaries to be established, and Ecclesiastical Offices to be designated, specifically decreed for the time of canonization. Preeminent among these was the final piety of James of St. Eugenia, a Canon of Barcelona and Sacristan of Majorca; who in his testament, which he drew up through the hand of Nicolaus de Samares, public Notary, on the day before the Ides of July, in the year 1282, after instituting a perpetual chaplaincy in the Cathedral church, in which a Priest would continually offer the sacrifice of the Mass for his own soul and those of his parents, and would assist at the Canonical Hours to be chanted in that church, Sacred anniversaries decreed for him. he expressly provided thus: I will and command that, if ever it shall happen that an altar is erected to Blessed Oldegarius in the Cathedral of Barcelona, the said Priest shall perpetually offer sacrifice at it: but in the meantime, while that is being done, let him do so at some other altar, according to the command of the Bishop and Chapter of Barcelona. Then he adds: I further institute four anniversaries to be celebrated perpetually in the said church, of which one shall be in honor of Blessed Oldegarius, on the very day of his happy death: but if any altar shall be consecrated to him, let the said anniversary be transferred to his feast day: and on the same day let there be distributed to each Canon and beneficed Cleric four coins by reason of that festivity. ^r From which it is manifestly clear how certainly the people of Barcelona expected his Canonization to be near at hand. Meanwhile Peter is excommunicated on account of Sicily; But these things, so well begun, were not completely overturned, but at least turned minds elsewhere, by the grave stirrings of wrath between the King and the Pontiff, so that there was leisure and opportunity to attend to warlike cares rather than sacred ordinances. For the King of Aragon, in the year 1282, after the French throughout the entire island had been slain by the Sicilian conspiracy, having entered the same with a fleet, and having been saluted as the legitimate heir of the kingdom on account of Constance, daughter of Manfred, his wife, had incurred the most grave indignation of Pope Martin; who, being a Frenchman by nation, ardently favored Charles, brother of St. Louis, King of France, whom his predecessors Urban IV and Clement, likewise IV, had established as King of both Sicilies, and entirely wished to see him restored. ^s

[67] And so, since Peter was held bound by the bond of excommunication from him, But the veneration of Blessed Oldegarius is in no way diminished. the promotion of the business of Canonization indeed ceased, but not the veneration and invocation of the blessed Bishop, which I gather increased together with the miracles, from the account books of the sacristy of Barcelona for the years one thousand three hundred and eighty-seven, eighty-eight, and eighty-nine: in which mention is made of four beams purchased for the purpose of supporting, by means of one hundred and fifty decorated pegs fixed into them, the hanging votive offerings of wax or other material, signifying benefits sought or received. Indeed from time immemorial the immense veneration of the people of Barcelona toward this their Bishop is proved by two other arguments as well: first, that not only is he commonly called Saint by everyone in whatever discourse, but is also invoked in litanies of prayer as a Saint: St. Oldegarius, pray for us, as can be seen in ancient forms of the Litany, both handwritten on parchment and printed on paper: second, that on those feasts which the Church celebrates with a double rite, the Priest, after incensing the main altar, on which the Venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist is kept hidden, proceeds to the chapel and sepulcher of the holy Prelate, to venerate that also with the smoke of burning incense.

^a In the year 1149, 31 December, Raymond Berengarius the Fourth of that name, Count of Barcelona, and also King of Aragon through the cession of the Templars, had brought Tortosa into his power.

^b Of Christ 1143.

^c Of the common era 1156 and 1157.

^d He was elected in the year 1144; then in the year 1161, promoted to the Archbishopric of Tarragona, vacant by the death of Hugo de Cervellon; he received as successor in the See of Barcelona Bernard de Berga.

^e So we have from book 1 of the Antiquities, folio 199, in Diagus.

^f Appointed two years earlier from the Cathedral of Ausona, died in the year 1361.

^g He is said to have later become the successor of the aforesaid Michael, according to Diago, from Provost of Barcelona and Bishop of Huesca, appointed by Innocent VI: and in the year 1369, transferred to the See of Tortosa, his successor at Barcelona was Berengarius de Eril.

^h Successor of Berengarius, who died after two years of the Episcopate; he died in the year 1385.

^i The first Bishop of Barcelona: he is honored on the sixth of November. Diagus treats of this translation in book 3, chapter 20.

^k An immense sum of money in those times.

^l Designated by Philip II, King of Spain, in the year 1599.

^m From the Royal Archive, the register of this King and year 1281, folio 102.

^n Hence is refuted the author of the catalogue of Bishops of Tarragona prefixed to the collection of Councils of Tarragona published in the year 1593: where it is written that Oldegarius was a Frenchman by nation.

^o That is, it increases.

^p That is, increased, or nourished: perhaps augmentatum should be read.

^q That is, we signify with joy.

^r That testament is contained in the Archive of the Chapter, in place 10 of testaments, number 22, and in the book of Endowments of the Cathedral Church, folio 199.

^s Diagus erred, and Tamayo rashly following him, when he wrote that Charles was invested with the kingdom of Sicily by Martin: and that this was the cause of the disputes with Peter: for Urban offered the kingdom of both Sicilies to Charles against the tyrant Manfred in the year 1263, and Clement delivered it at Rome in the Lateran church in 1265, on the fourth day before the Kalends of July.

CHAPTER VII.

The business of Canonization is resumed, and more recent miracles are collected.

[68] Meanwhile the care for the once-set-aside business had lain completely dormant, and had fallen as it were from all minds in oblivion; Again the Canonization is considered, until at last, at the happy beginning of this seventeenth century, through the solemn enrollment of St. Raymond de Peñafort among the Blessed; ^a the spirits of the people of Barcelona once more grew ardent for pressing the same cause: so that the sepulcher was visited by an unusual number of those flocking to it, and candles and votive offerings were multiplied in the chapel, which called down new benefits from heaven. And so in the second year of the present century, on the third day before the Ides of January: and by a decree of the Chapter, Considering that the Lords of the Chapter and Canons (these are the very words of the decree as found in Rebullosa, chapter 47) that the body of Blessed Ollegarius, Archbishop of the Holy Church of Tarragona, and also Bishop of the present Church of Barcelona, remains guarded and preserved, sincere and whole, with great reverence and propriety, in a certain tomb of marble stone made with wonderful art, within the said present church, and in a chapel built under his invocation: to which chapel indeed a very great number of the faithful of Christ, of both the male and the female sex, has recourse, on account of the great miracles and prodigies which day by day, through the prayers and devotion of the faithful of Christ, who in their labors, necessities, and infirmities have recourse to him, by the working of divine clemency come forth and appear in the light: and what is remarkable, the devotion to him grows and increases day by day, not only among the citizens and inhabitants of the present city of Barcelona, but also among very many others, whether outsiders or those dwelling beyond the said present city of Barcelona. A procurator is appointed; Desiring therefore that the said Lords of the Chapter and Canons should not allow so great a treasure to remain hidden, and that the said miracles and such prodigious things should be established, and that a true inquiry concerning them should be taken, so that all the aforesaid things may be commended to eternal memory; and thus the Canonization of the same may be urged upon the Holy Apostolic See with greater devotion, fervor, and affection, and may attain its due and desired end and effect: which Canonization indeed both the citizens and inhabitants of the said present city and many other faithful of Christ desire with great devotion and ardor of spirit to be accomplished. Wherefore and otherwise the said Lords of the Chapter and Canons, of certain knowledge and freely, have constituted and appointed as their procurator, syndic, and agent, or rather that of

the said Most Reverend and Distinguished Chapter, the Reverend Lord Michael John Boldo, their Canon, etc.

[69] who collects more recent miracles: Michael undertook the office thus imposed with great alacrity of spirit, and within a few days presented a petition to the Bishop comprising twenty-four articles; around which he requested that lawful proceedings be conducted: and immediately Peter Pla, the same Bishop's Vicar General and Official and Doctor of both Laws, a Canon of the aforesaid Church, was deputed by the Bishop for the summoning and hearing of witnesses and the due examination of each: and thus on the fourth day of the beginning of February, the informative process was begun, and the recent miracles of Blessed Oldegarius, which were contained in the aforesaid twenty-four articles, were lawfully examined: of which Rebullosa reports a few, in the order in which they were proved, and we render them from him in Latin.

[70] In the year 1601, Paul Julià, a little boy of two years, among these, a dead infant raised to life; while playfully chasing a household servant, fell through a certain window through which light was transmitted from an upper room to a lower one, by an unhappy accident; and those who had run up at the sound of the falling child believed him to be completely dead, or at least near death without hope of life. The father and mother of the infant rushed to the scene: the mother received the pitiable corpse in her lap; the father, whose name was Anthony Julià, and who had a great devotion toward St. Oldegarius, being accustomed to visit his sepulcher more frequently, raised his eyes and hands to heaven, and said: O St. Ollegarius, be present in so pressing a need; and soon, as if secure of the benefit obtained, with the fullest faith he approached his son, and called him by name once, again, and a third time. At the first call the boy lay motionless, at the second, sighing, he turned his neck toward the one calling him; at the third, finally, leaping from his mother's arms, he ran on his own feet to embrace his father, aided by no one. Those present then carefully examined the boy, and found in him absolutely no sign of injury. All therefore having given themselves over to praises of God and acts of thanksgiving, the parents took care that a painting witnessing the miracle should be affixed in the chapel of the blessed man, together with a set number of sacrifices to be celebrated there.

[71] That these things were so was established by sworn witnesses in the year 1602, on the ninth day of February: and at the same time it was discovered by similar witnesses as certain, how the aforesaid Anthony, the same man's father miraculously aided, on the very night that had followed the miraculous rescue of his son, had felt himself overwhelmed by so vehement a faintness of spirit and pressure of the constricted chest, that despairing of human remedies, he believed that to be his last hour, unless the same Ollegarius who had come to the son's aid should come to his from heaven: wherefore he commands his wife, as best he can, to order the household servants to be roused from their beds, to come, and kneeling down to invoke St. Oldegarius. She obeys, and so do they: and soon the revered Saint appeared to the sick man in pontifical attire, equipped with miter and staff: at whose presence the deadly anguish was driven away; and sweat breaking forth from his entire body left the man restored to his former health, and so vigorous that the very next morning he flew to the tomb, to give thanks for the double benefit.

[72] There was at that time no more frequent conversation in Barcelona than about the miracles of Blessed Oldegarius, a dying infant girl restored to health, whence on the day before the Nones of October confidence was born in the physicians, who were despairing of the life of Anna Maria Lopez, a girl of two years seized by a pestilential fever, to encourage the parents to implore divine aid for their daughter through the merits of St. Ollegarius: they obeyed those who counseled useful things, and made a vow to present their daughter, as if raised from the dead, at the monument of the blessed Prelate in a funeral winding-sheet, which they would leave affixed to the wall of the chapel with a commemorative tablet: and so great a change in health followed the vow thus made, that within very few days complete health compelled them to discharge their obligation; as was confirmed on the eleventh day of February of the year following the miraculous cure, which was the second of the century, by the testimony of many witnesses.

[73] Still more wonderful is what was presented and received on the thirteenth day of the said month and year; an old man fallen from a ladder into a well having been wrought in the similarly preceding year, on the nineteenth day of the month of October. John Branes, a merchant and citizen of Barcelona, an octogenarian, had gone out into his garden to take the evening air after supper; and intending to pick pomegranates from a taller tree, he had set up a ladder twelve palms high, and placed it directly beside the mouth of a well that was there, firmly set, as he thought. He was already holding the topmost rungs: when a rather sturdy branch, which he was striving to pull toward him for plucking the fruit, overturned the ladder and dislodged the unsteady old man from his footing, and hurled him headlong: his head was first driven violently into an earthenware jug which happened to be standing on the rim of the well, so that shattering it, his head itself was wounded with a serious injury; and then the rest of his body was dragged into water more than thirteen palms deep. At the very moment when the ladder was overturning, the thought occurred to him to invoke the now universally known aid of St. Oldegarius. Wondrous to tell, from the very bottom of the well he was presently raised to its surface, freed from drowning; where he found a rope of esparto grass in his hand, and with it sustained himself for a while, until to his cries for the Virgin Mary and Blessed Oldegarius and his neighbors — if any might chance to hear — the latter were present with bodily assistance, though not before three quarters of an hour had elapsed, by invisible help: surveying everything around them, nothing more expedient occurred to them than to lower into the water the very ladder from which he had fallen: standing upon which, he undertook to pass a rope that was handed down to him around himself under his armpits, so as to be extracted from the well: when this had been done as desired, everyone marveled at how an octogenarian's strength had sufficed for so long and difficult an effort: drawn out, he was sound in the rest of his body, and was shortly cured of the head wound by the customary arts of the physicians; and he prescribed that certain votive sacrifices be offered in the chapel of the Blessed, with an added painting that would present the course of events to the eyes of the beholders.

[74] a difficult childbirth eased Antiga Viñadera, wearied for many days by the pains of a difficult labor, had reached on the twenty-fifth day of the month of November the very last extremity both of her strength and of her life, but having conceived great confidence in the Saint, with equal insistence of petition she begged those present to bring her some dust from the sepulcher of the Blessed: what was brought she immediately mixed into a drink, and from that draught she felt herself so relieved that, soon delivered of her child without difficulty, she congratulated herself on being freed from all danger. With equal ease the newly born female infant, who in the judgment of all was destined to be a victim of death, after the name of Oldegarius began to be invoked for her also, within a quarter of an hour appeared so healthy and vigorous, as if she had suffered no adversity: and so this event too was recorded among the other prodigious ones on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of March of the same year as the rest.

[75] seven cancerous sores suddenly healed. Maria Lampisia, a married woman living in the vicinity of the city of Barcelona, had seven foul cancerous sores that so afflicted her ulcerated shin that she could by no means move from her place without the aid of another: a certain friend who had come on a visit heard her complaining in womanly fashion about her pains, for which the physicians could find no remedy; and he advised her to have recourse to heavenly medicine, if earthly medicine failed. She heeded him: and from that day she began to invoke the Saint, to supply at least as much strength as would be necessary for her to reach his tomb in whatever way possible: when she had prolonged these prayers for four full days, on the eighth day of December at last, carried rather than led there in the arms of her people, when she had completed certain of her prayers, she suddenly began to use her legs with strength, and returned to the far end of the Cathedral Church so strong that she henceforth needed no assistance to complete the vow she had made of visiting the sepulcher with daily devotion for the space of an entire year.

[76] A new decree of the Chapter. And these things, until others see the light, concerning what was accomplished in this very century in which we live regarding the wonders of St. Oldegarius, will suffice for the present: for the collection of which, since the greatest diligence was being employed, and caution in examining the process, in the year 1606 the college of Canons, convened again, commanded Michael John Boldo, John Casont, and Raphael Riera, Canons selected from their number, to consider together with the Bishop by what means the pious wishes of the entire city and territory for their Prelate might be brought to maturity. But whether anything further was done I have found nowhere: for the Life which we mentioned at the beginning, printed at Barcelona in the year one thousand six hundred and seventeen, is not at hand.

^a This was done by Clement VIII, concerning which see what is said under the seventh of January, on which day he is honored.