Raymond of Peñafort

Spanish religious scholar

• Born: c. 1175
• Birthplace: Peñafort, near Villafranca del Panadés, Catalonia (now in Spain)
• Died: January 6, 1275
• Place of death: Barcelona, Catalonia (now in Spain)

Raymond of Peñafort compiled the decretals (the official code of Church law) promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234 and wrote a penitential handbook for priests, Summa de casibus poenitentiae, used throughout the Middle Ages.

Early Life

Raymond was born into the Spanish noble family of Peñafort (payn-yah-FOHRT), whose castle was on a high rock above the village of Villafranca del Panadés, not far from Barcelona. It is probable that he was educated in the school of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Barcelona, the city to which he kept returning and in which he spent the last part of his life. He was evidently a brilliant student, for he is said to have begun teaching philosophy in Barcelona at the age of twenty (which might have been as early as 1195). Both here and later, in Bologna, Raymond shared his learning out of love and charged nothing for his services as a teacher.

Around the year 1210, Raymond joined with a canon of the cathedral at Barcelona, Peter the Red, and journeyed to Bologna to study canon law. After six to eight years of study there, he was recognized as a master of canon law, and from 1218 to 1221, he taught in Bologna. Again refusing payment from his students, he was given a salary by grateful citizens of Bologna. During this period he wrote his first treatise in canon law, Summa juris canonici (1218-1221; a summation of canon law), only part of which is preserved in a unique manuscript.

Life’s Work

The turning point in Raymond’s life came when he was persuaded by the bishop of Barcelona to return to Barcelona to help in the founding of a convent of the newly established Dominican order (also known as the Order of Preachers) by being the teacher for the friars in Barcelona. Raymond was earnest in his service to God and to the Church, and within a short time, he had been made canon and then provost of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Yet he was not content to be merely on the periphery of the Dominican order, and on Good Friday, 1222, Raymond became a Dominican friar, and for the rest of his life he was associated with the convent of Saint Catherine in Barcelona.

From 1222 to 1229, Raymond concerned himself with various activities having to do with counteracting the presence of the Moors and the Islamic religion in Spain. In about 1223, he helped found (with Peter Nolasco) the Order of Our Lady of Ransom (the Mercedarians), an organization dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of Christians held prisoner by the Muslims. From 1227 to 1229, he was the chief assistant to John of Abbeville, papal legate, who was in charge of restoring ecclesiastical discipline in Spain according to the principles laid down at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. It was Raymond’s task to go into towns before the legate and prepare them for his message. Raymond also joined with the legate in preaching a crusade against the Moors, and in 1229, he was appointed directly by Gregory IX to enlist warriors for the Crusade in the towns of Narbonne and Arles. Also in this year, Raymond had his first direct involvement with James I the Conqueror, a champion of the Crusade; Raymond was ecclesiastical judge in an investigation concerning the king’s marriage and the legitimacy of the rights of succession of his eldest son. Raymond’s relationship with the king, although sometimes stormy, was to endure for the rest of his life.

Notwithstanding all these activities, Raymond found time during this period to write the most popular of his treatises, Summa de casibus poenitentiae (1222-1229; summary of cases of penitence). It was a handbook for priests that went beyond the usual matching of sins with appropriate penances; it provided a systematic discussion of problems of Christian conscience and (in accordance with Raymond’s expertise in canon law) also dealt with appropriate Church practices in regard to particular sins. The first three books treated, respectively, sins against God, sins against other people, and miscellaneous questions of Church discipline and canon law. The fourth book, on marriage (added in 1235), was largely a redaction of the Summa de matrimonio (c. 1214; summary of matrimony) by Tancred. Raymond’s work was circulated both in its entirety and in condensed form throughout the later Middle Ages. One of the best-known restatements of it was in portions of “The Parson’s Tale,” actually a sermon on penitence (c. 1395) in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400).

When Raymond’s assignment with the papal legate in Spain was completed, Gregory IX, greatly impressed with Raymond’s abilities, called him to Rome in 1230 and appointed him his personal confessor; quickly added to this honor were the offices of chaplain and penitentiary, the latter function giving Raymond the opportunity to render decisions on canon law on behalf of the pope. As the pope’s confessor, Raymond is said to have imposed penances on Gregory that required him to give special attention to the petitions of the poor. Raymond was often addressed by Pope Gregory as Father of the Poor, and he was styled by a contemporary as Promoter of the Petitions of the Poor. There was, however, a severe side to Raymond, shown perhaps most obviously in his work while in the papal court to establish the Inquisition in the region of Aragon in Spain, using his influence with James I.

Raymond’s most significant accomplishment in the service of Gregory was to draw up a condensation of canon law from the time of Gratian (whose Decretum of 1150 had formed the core of canon law for the last eighty years), up to and including the first part of Gregory’s papacy. Gregory’s purpose was for Raymond to edit, condense, and catalog these laws to produce a comprehensive, indexed digest of the accepted rules for Church governance. The completed work of Raymond was authorized and promulgated in 1234 under the papal bull Rex pacificus; this landmark codification of canon law came to be known as the Decretals of Gregory IX> of Gregory IX and remained a key part of canon law in the Roman Catholic Church until the modern overall revision in 1917.

Pope Gregory wished to install Raymond as bishop of Tarragona in 1235, but Raymond begged to be released from this appointment, and, indeed, he became ill at the prospect. He was allowed to return to Spain in 1236, after complying with Gregory’s insistence that he at least nominate someone else to fill the vacant bishopric. He was not allowed to rest for long in his beloved Barcelona; in 1238, he was elected the third master general of the Dominican order. Although he served in this post for only two years (once again managing to get himself relieved of it), his talents for codifying and reorganization were once more exercised in revising the rules of the order. Testifying to the effectiveness of his revision was the longevity of the Raymundian Code for the Dominicans, which was not superseded until 1924.

After Raymond resigned his post, he returned to Barcelona, and there is no record of his leaving Spain again, although he might have done so in order to found a Dominican convent among the Moors in Tunis in northern Africa. He also founded a Dominican house in the midst of Moors in Murcia, in southeastern Spain. The last thirty-five years of his life were dedicated to the conversion of Moors and Jews in Spain . To this end, he established the teaching of Arabic and Hebrew in several Dominican convents, continued his work to rescue Christian prisoners through the Mercedarians, and encouraged Thomas Aquinas to write a treatise directed at persuading pagans of the truth of the doctrines of Christianity. It seems that Raymond was also instrumental during this period of his life in establishing the Inquisition in Catalonia. His name is associated with a guidebook for inquisitors drawn up under Esparrago, bishop of Tarragona, in 1241.

Significance

Raymond is surprisingly little known for one who lived so long and was continually active. Even his two most influential writings (the Decretals of Gregory IX and the Summa de casibus poenitentiae) did not bring him fame. Raymond was evidently self-effacing and preferred to work behind the scenes. These qualities of character are seen in his refusal to take fees for his teaching, his faithful service to his superiors, and his eagerness to avoid appointment to prominent offices. Yet in spite of his relative anonymity, his life had a tremendous influence: His revisions and compilations of canon law for Gregory IX and for the Dominican order lived into the twentieth century; his writings on penitence were widely circulated and were used by Chaucer; his efforts toward the conversion of the Jews and Moors in Spain were a catalyst for the study of Hebrew and Arabic by Dominicans; and he was the instigator of one of the important writings of Thomas Aquinas. The continuing respect in which he was held by his contemporaries was evidenced by his being visited in his last illness by two kings, James I and Alfonso of Castile. Raymond’s holiness of life, as well as his service to the Church, was recognized in his canonization in 1601.

Bibliography

Jasper, Detlev, and Horst Fuhrmann. Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages: History of Medieval Canon Law. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001. Collection includes two separate sections, Jasper’s “The Beginnings of the Decretal Tradition” and Fuhrmann’s “The Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries,” on papal law (decretals) during the time of Raymond and Pope Gregory. Includes a bibliography and indexes of papal letters and manuscripts.

Kuttner, Stephan. “The Barcelona Edition of St. Raymond’s First Treatise on Canon Law.” Seminar 8(1950): 52-67. A review by an authority on Raymond’s works of a printed edition of the unique fragmentary manuscript of the Summa juris canonici. Gives a brief summary of Raymond’s other important writings.

Kuttner, Stephan. “Raymond of Peñafort as Editor: The ’Decretales’ and ’Constitutiones’ of Gregory IX.” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law 12 (1982): 65-80. Examines the method by which Raymond revised and edited the materials at his disposal for his major canonical work. Shows the extent to which Raymond exercised his own judgment and drew on uncirculated letters from Gregory in his final compendium.

Pennington, Kenneth. “Summae on Raymond de Pennafort’s ’Summa de Casibus’ in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.” Traditio 27 (1971): 471-480. A survey of thirteenth and fourteenth century adaptations and summaries of Raymond’s work on penitential principles. Shows the popularity of this work.

Richardson, H. G. “Tancred, Raymond, and Bracton.” English Historical Review 59 (1944): 376-384. Treats the interrelationship of the writings of the three authors. Little specifically about Raymond.

Schwertner, Thomas M. Saint Raymond of Pennafort. Edited by C. M. Antony. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce, 1935. A complete English-language biography of Raymond. The author is a Dominican, and some of his material comes from miracles of Raymond attested in the document of canonization. His other major source is the Latin Raymundiana, a collection of early accounts of Raymond’s life.

Somerville, Robert, and Bruce C. Brasington, trans. and comps. Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity: Selected Translations, 500-1245. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. A collection of prefaces from Christian canon law books, including Raymond’s preface to the decretals of Gregory IX.