The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216-1218 ed. by Nicholas Vincent (review)

Abstract

The Letters and Charters of Cardinal G1,tala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216-1218. Edited by Nicholas Vincent. [The Canterbury and York Society, Volume LXXXIII.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 1996. Pp. xcvi, 193, $45.00.) The thirty-month-long legatine mission to England of Guala Bicchieri certainly coincided with political events of considerable consequence: the deepening of baronial revolt against King John, foreign invasion by the rebels' ally (Louis of France, the future Louis VIII), John's death and his son Henry's disputed succession, the creation of a viable minority government for the new child-king, royalist victory in the ensuing civil war, and the pacification of the country. Historians have long known that Guala's activities to assist the royalist cause-for such was the job assigned him by his superiors, Popes Innocent III and Honorius III-had been considerable. Now Nicholas Vincent of Christ Church College, Canterbury, has exhaustively quarried the letters and other written notices regarding this legation, thereby contributing considerably to our understanding of the politics and diplomacy of the time as well as the relationship between the papacy and English church. The volume comprises two large parts: a sixty-four-page-long introductory essay, which reviews Guala's biography and the history of his English legation, and the ctca (letters to and from Guala. contemporary written references about him by others) relating to his mission (including appendices one and two), In the former part Vincent ranges through a comprehensive variety of topics: the nature of papal legation during the early thirteenth century, Guala's peacemaking activities in England, the legate's relations and interactions with the local episcopate and religious houses, his legitimate-albeit controversiallevying of taxes. (procurations) on individual English churches and prelates to finance his mission, his harsh punishment of those English clergy who rebelled against John and young Henry, Guala's contribution to the later practice of papal provision, the legate's judicial activities, his role as a propagator of ecclesiastical reform, his entourage and their activities. and the form and style of the epistolary documents that Guala and his clerks produced. A Lombard from Vercelli, Guala made his first recorded appearance in 1187 as cathedral canon in that city. Although he was later styled in iure civili peritissimus by all English chronicler, we know practically nothing regarding his education. Vincent suggests that Guala's subsequently attested judicial expertise and his ownership of many theological books might indicate some formal training in both law and theology Innocent III named him cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Porticu in 1205, and Guala spent the next years in a variety of curial activities, including two legatine missions (to northern Italy in 1206 and to France in 1208-09), Sometime in 1210-11 lie was promoted to cardinal-priest of S. Martino in Montibus. Guala was among the participants at Innocent's great Lateran Council, where most probably he received the pope's appointment to his English legation. In the aftermath of the extorted issue of Magna Carta and the deterioration of the political situation,John had requested that Innocent send a legate. For his part the pope urgently desired peace in England and between the French and English kings in order to rally crusading support for embattled Latin Outremer Innocent was also mindful of his role as John's feudal overlord. When the pope died in July 1216, his successor, Honorius III, maintained his predecessor's policy and reappointed Guala. The legate departed from Rome in late February, 1216; after a fruitless attempt to enlist the French King Philip II's support in restraining his son Louis from military support for rebellious English barons, Guala finally arrived in England on May 20. As the civil war intensified and Louis invaded the kingdom with a French army, the legate acted forcefully as the leading clerical supporter of the royalist cause. …