Literary Expressions of Pastoral Encounters during the Reign of Fernando III

Abstract

The efforts of the Holy See to expand papal control over the western Church across the eleventh century were met with some resistance in the Iberian Peninsula. This was particularly the case in Castile, where the ambitious objective of Pope Gregory vii to bring all regional churches within the orbit of Roman obedience was frustrated by the adherence of the Toledan Church to its Hispanic customs.1 In his letters to Castilian clerics and kings, Gregory demanded that the Hispanic kingdoms adopt the Roman ordo and officium and abandon Toledan superstition – the so-called Mozarabic Rite.2 Some three centuries later however, the picture had shifted substantially. From the early fourteenth century, we find a substantial number of treatises on moral theology that are in line with Roman orthodoxy, and the beginnings of a systematic reception of Roman ecumenical norms within Castilian synods and councils.