Peter D'Aigueblanche

Seal of Peter D'Aigueblanche as Bishop of Hereford

Peter D'Aigueblanche (also Pierre or Peter de Aqua Blanca ; † November 27, 1268 ) was a Savoy bishop of the English diocese of Hereford . He was one of the numerous foreigners who lived under King Henry III. came to England and became one of the king's chief diplomats.

origin

Aigueblanche's exact ancestry is unknown, but he came from the Briançon family , the lords of Aigueblanche in Savoy. His family lived in the Tarentaise and were a branch line of the Counts of Savoy .

Arrival and early career in England

Aigueblanche is first mentioned in England in 1237 in the wake of William of Savoy , the elected Bishop of Valence and uncle of the English Queen Eleanor . It is possible that he served Wilhelm of Savoy as treasurer. In March 1238 he received from King Heinrich III. a benefice in St Michael's Church at Michael-on-Wyre in Lancashire . After the death of his patron Wilhelm of Savoy in Italy in 1239, Aigueblanche returned to England. The king granted him an annual pension of £ 20 in April 1240 and appointed him administrator of the royal wardrobe in July. In July 1240 he received another benefice in Hereford , where he was elected bishop on August 24th by the influence of the king. Since the diocese of Hereford was a relatively small diocese, the king tried in the same year to have him elected bishop of the rich diocese of Durham , but this failed. Since the office of Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Catholic Church in England, was still vacant after the death of the last Archbishop, Aigueblanche was appointed by Archbishop Walter de Gray of York and Bishop Walter on December 23, 1240 in London's St Paul's Cathedral de Cantilupe of Worcester in the presence of the papal legate Oddone di Tonengo consecrated Bishop of Hereford. The king gave him valuable ordination gifts, including a jeweled miter valued at £ 82, and allowed him to host his episcopal ordination at Lambeth Palace , the Archbishop of Canterbury's London palace. In the next few months, Bishop Peter received further favors from the king, who granted towns and villages in Peter's diocese market rights, rights to logging in the royal forests and other privileges. Although Aigueblanche had given up his office as administrator of the royal wardrobe, he remained at the royal court. In August 1241 he accompanied the court to Shrewsbury , where he was involved in the peace negotiations with the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Llywelyn . In the autumn of 1241 the king tried again to have him elected bishop of a richer diocese, but Aigueblanche's candidacy as bishop of London failed. In 1254, Aigueblanche's candidacy as Bishop of Lincoln failed .

In November 1241, Aigueblanche served as papal judge in the dispute between King and Bishop Jocelin of Bath and Wells over the patronage of Glastonbury Abbey . In March 1242, before the start of the Saintonge War , he was in Poitou on behalf of the king . He then traveled to Provence , where in July 1242 in Tarascon, on behalf of the king, he signed the marriage contract between Richard of Cornwall , the king's younger brother, and Sancha of Provence , a daughter of the Count of Provence and sister of Queen Eleanor, sealed. In August 1242 he was back in Poitou, where he met Henry III. sought out. As a native of the Savoyard, he almost inevitably came into contact with Boniface of Savoy , an uncle of the Queen. Boniface had been elected the new Archbishop of Canterbury in February 1241, but had not yet come to England and been ordained archbishop. Until 1243, Aigueblanche served as agent of Boniface as archbishop, who had still not traveled to England. Easter 1244 he was commissioned to greet Boniface on his arrival in Dover , to hand over the pallium on behalf of the Pope and to accept his oath of allegiance .

Servant of the king and archbishop

During this time, Aigueblanche was also frequently commissioned by Pope Innocent IV to hand over gifts from the Pope and to serve as the Pope's spokesman for the king. Thereby he was in the protracted dispute between the Pope and Henry III. involved, which was caused by the rejection of William Raleigh as Bishop of Winchester by the king. In the spring of 1244 at Reading and later again at Westminster , Aigueblanche severely exhorted the king to be reconciled with Raleigh. If the conflict continued, he threatened to impose an interdict on the royal private band. In the summer of 1245 Aigueblanche took part in the council in Lyon , and at the beginning of 1246 he was on behalf of the king in Savoy, where he was able to convince Count Amadeus to pay homage to the English king for several dominions and passes in the Alpine region. He then returned to England to collect the income from vacant pastoral positions on behalf of the Pope, which should benefit the financially troubled Archbishop Boniface. This new tax raised large parts of the clergy against both Aigueblanche and Archbishop Boniface. Until Boniface returned to England in 1249, Aigueblanche continued to serve as the Archbishop's deputy, overseeing the administration of the lands of the Archdiocese of Canterbury.

In 1246 Aigueblanche spent a lot of time administering his diocese, where he reclaimed numerous goods and churches that had been given away or misused by his predecessors. In addition, he collected funds for the planned crusade of Heinrich III. and issued a number of statutes for the cathedral chapter. In it he also wanted to force the owners of spiritual benefices to live in the place of their benefices. In September 1247 and again in November 1249 he traveled to France again. In 1249 he traveled on to the Pope, where he negotiated the planned crusade as the king's representative. Around this time, probably early 1250, Aigueblanche himself took a vow of crusade. Presumably he stayed abroad for the next two years, especially at the papal court, but also in France, where an investigation into the legality of Henry III's marriage was carried out in Sens in 1251 . and Eleanor of Provence took place. It should be checked whether the marriage of the king with Eleonore would be invalid, since before 1236 a marriage between Heinrich III. and Johanna von Dammartin , heiress of the County of Ponthieu , had been negotiated. However, the negotiations had not been completed and Johanna later married King Ferdinand III. of Castile.

Aigueblanche had given various offices and benefices in his diocese to clerics from Savoy or France, several of whom were related to him. During his frequent absence from England, he entrusted representatives with the administration of his diocese, including Bernard from France, who was believed to have previously been Prior of Bugey . This preference for foreigners aroused further resentment among the English clergy. There was also a protracted dispute between the bishop and the Hereford cathedral chapter about their respective temporalities . In the summer of 1252, therefore, violent riots broke out in Herefordshire, in which Aigueblanche himself was in mortal danger. Barns were set on fire on his estates and, eventually, Prior Bernard was murdered in front of the high altar of Hereford Cathedral . This act of violence outraged the king, who then promised Aigueblanche in February 1253 refuge in the royal castle of Hereford . In 1253 Aigueblanche was one of the bishops and magnates who solemnly swore to observe the Magna Carta . At that time he tried in vain to get the English clergy to make a voluntary donation for the financially troubled king.

The Sicilian Adventure

In June 1253 Aigueblanche accompanied the king to Gascony . Probably at the hearings on the alleged marriage between Johanna von Dammartin and Heinrich III. he had met their stepson, King Alfonso X of Castile . This presumably led to the plan to marry the English heir to the throne, Lord Edward, to a sister of the king. Aigueblanche traveled from Gascony to Toledo several times between 1253 and the spring of 1254 before the wedding of Edward and Eleanor of Castile took place in 1254 . In November 1253 the king sent him to the papal court. Aigueblanche probably stayed with the new Pope Alexander IV until the spring of 1255 , with whom he negotiated an infamous agreement that led to the so-called Sicilian adventure . The content of the agreement had been prepared by Pope Innocent IV . Thereafter, the Pope handed over the crown of the Kingdom of Sicily , which had previously belonged to the Hohenstaufen but was hostile to the Pope, to King Henry III, who handed it over to his younger son Edmund . The difficulty with this plan was not only that the English first had to conquer Sicily, which was ruled by the Hohenstaufen king Manfred , but that they should also reimburse the Pope for the costs already incurred for his war against the Hohenstaufen. These costs were put at the enormous sum of around 135,000 marks .

Aigueblanche took out loans from merchants in Florence and Siena in order to cover the expenses for his mission in Italy and as a deposit for the enormous sum that the English king now owed the Pope . As security, he pledged the future income from the tithe , which the English king was allowed to raise from the Church of England since 1252. To do this, he arbitrarily converted a number of blank customers, which he was to use for his mission to the Pope and which had already been sealed by the English bishops, into promissory notes. Aigueblanche spent 10,000 marks alone in April 1255 for the acquisition of the Sicilian crown jewels pledged by Emperor Friedrich II from a merchant from Siena.

Enemy of the bishops and the barons

The cost of the planned Sicilian adventure ruined King Henry III, who was already in financial difficulties. completely. Even for the costs of Aigueblanche's trip to the Pope, the king had to take out a loan from merchants in Florence, for which he had pledged the proceeds of the tithe from the dioceses of Hereford and Worcester. When Aigueblanche returned to England in 1255 and the King presented the Sicilian Adventure to Parliament in October, the plan met with unanimous rejection. As the diplomat in charge, Aigueblanche was exposed to the hatred of the barons as well as the other bishops. When it became known that Aigueblanche had already pledged the receipts from the tithe and had issued promissory notes without agreement with the signatories, a storm of indignation arose among the English clergy. The misuse of the funds for such a controversial and utopian adventure as the conquest of Sicily from England made Aigueblanche the most hated foreign bishop in England. Widespread and passionate opposition arose against the attempts by him and the papal envoy Rostand to raise tithing for the Sicilian adventure from the clergy. As the king's envoy, Aigueblanche traveled back to the Pope in November 1255 and to the King in Gascony in September 1256. There the king instructed him in April 1257 to negotiate with the French about violations of the armistice. When Amanieu de La Mothe , the archbishop of Bordeaux, fell seriously ill, Aigueblanche hoped to succeed him, but the archbishop did not yet die. Aigueblanche traveled from south-west France to Montpellier in 1257 , where a well-known medical school was located at that time and where he had the polyps removed.

When the barons rebelled against the king in the summer of 1258, followers of John II Fitzalan of Clun attacked Lydbury, an estate of Aigueblanche in Shropshire . The barons excluded Aigueblanche from the Privy Council as the main person responsible for the Sicilian adventure and thus for the financial crisis of the empire. For this they invited him to the parliament , where he was to give an account of the income of the papal tax. Aigueblanche was excused for illness and initially stayed in France before returning to England before June 1259. That month and November 1259, he was among the negotiators negotiating a peace treaty with the Welsh. However, when the king had regained power in the meantime, Aigueblanche served in November 1261 as one of three representatives of the king who should decide on the further implementation of the reform proposals of the barons. Together with Leonardo, a cantor from Messina, he was commissioned by the Pope in 1262 to collect the outstanding funds for the Sicilian adventure.

As the rebellion against the king escalated into civil war, Aigueblanche became increasingly the target of attacks. Even before February 1262, other possessions were attacked and plundered by him, so that he retired to the seat of his diocese, the fortified city of Hereford. He told the king that he was unable to repel attacks by the Welsh people. In February 1263 he was to hand over Hereford Castle to a new royal constable . On June 7, 1263 he was forcibly seized by Roger of Leybourne , Roger de Clifford , John Giffard and other Marcher Lords in Hereford Cathedral and imprisoned together with several of his canons in Eardisley Castle , a castle owned by Walter de Baskerville . This date was later considered the start of the barons open war . Then the barons plundered the temporalities of the diocese. After these attacks were brought before Parliament in September 1263, Aigueblanche was released again, but Archbishop Boniface previously absolved the barons of all responsibility for the attacks on the Bishop of Hereford.

Funerary memorial for Aigueblanche in Hereford Cathedral

Passive stance during the war of the barons and death

In September 1263 Aigueblanche accompanied Heinrich III. to the French Amiens , where the king with the French King Louis IX. Looking for support against the rebellious barons. In January 1264, in the Mise of Amiens, the French king declared the Provisions of Oxford and thus the barons' reform program null and void. During the subsequent fighting between the king and the rebels, Aigueblanche remained in France. His lands remained occupied by the barons and in June 1265 he received a sharp request from the government of the barons to return to his diocese, otherwise he would be expropriated. In August 1265, however, the king's supporters were able to decisively defeat the barons in the Battle of Evesham , whereupon the king assured him and his canons safe conduct and the reimbursement of the lost income from his estates. Aigueblanche returned to England, but some of its estates, such as Bishops Castle and Lydbury North, remained in the hands of John Fitzalan, a partisan of the king, while other estates had fallen into the hands of the insurgent Welsh. At the beginning of 1267 Aigueblanche traveled to Savoy, where he was in Aiguebelle in April . Where he spent the last months of his life is unclear, but on November 26, 1268 he signed his will in Sugwas near Hereford. Against his last will, he was not buried in his Savoyard homeland in Aiguebelle, but in Hereford Cathedral, where a magnificent funerary monument was erected for him. Nevertheless, a grave was later erected for him in Aiguebelle, but it remained empty and his bronze figure, created in the 15th century, was destroyed during the French Revolution. His body in Hereford was exhumed in 1925.

Aftermath

In his will he bequeathed the majority of his possessions to the collegiate monastery in Aiguebelle, which he had donated in the 1250s. On April 21, 1267 he had confirmed its rules, which were modeled on the cathedral chapter of Hereford. His will also revealed the extent of his possessions in France. Until 1254 he owned the small Cluniac priory of Innimont in the diocese of Belley , probably thanks to the influence of Archbishop Bonifatius . 1254 exchanged Aigueblanche Innimont for the priory of Sainte-Hélène-du-Lac in his home Tarentaise, which Boniface expanded in September 1255 with the transfer of the castle and rule of Ste Hélène-des-Millères. In 1267 he bequeathed his secular rights to his nephew and namesake Peter, Lord of Briançon. In addition, Aigueblanche bequeathed possessions and funds to monasteries in Lyon and Paris as well as to various hospitals and monasteries in the Tarentaise. His magnificent Bible was sold for the benefit of the poor, while memorial services were held for him as far as Genoa.

With his origins and family connections, Aigueblanche was a suitable diplomat for the king, whom he commissioned with missions in France, Italy and Spain. As a result, he spent more than half of his tenure as a bishop outside of England and presumably never learned the English language. As a diplomat, Aigueblanche is primarily held responsible for the catastrophic Sicilian adventure. Even if he had acted on behalf of the king, he was at least partially responsible for the terms of the agreement with the pope. The plan to conquer Sicily from England, along with the issuing of promissory notes and the pledging of future tax revenues, were at best foolhardy even by medieval standards. The attempt to implement the agreement was one of the triggers for the barons' rebellion and the civil war that followed. As a bishop, he favored foreigners and relatives in the allocation of offices and benefices, he filled a total of 20 canon positions in Hereford with Savoyards. There was a noticeable faction of Savoyards in Hereford until the 1290s. On the other hand, he was a conscientious bishop who protected and increased the property of his diocese and issued the oldest known statutes for the cathedral chapter. Under him, the north transept of Hereford Cathedral was rebuilt, which was completed in 1268.

Web links

• Nicholas Vincent: Aigueblanche, Peter d '(d. 1268). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Janet E. Burton: Thirteenth century England. 13: proceedings of the Paris Conference, 2009 . Boydell, Woodbridge 2011. ISBN 978-1-84383-618-6 , p. 33
2. ↑ GE Aylmer, John Eric Tiller: Hereford Cathedral. A history . London, Hambledon, 2000. ISBN 1-85285-194-5 , p. 43
3. ↑ GE Aylmer, John Eric Tiller: Hereford Cathedral. A history . London, Hambledon, 2000. ISBN 1-85285-194-5 , p. 213

predecessor	Office	successor
Ralph of Maidstone	Bishop of Hereford 1240–1268	John le Breton