At the Edge of Reformation ― Iberia Before the Black Death

At the Edge of Reformation springs from Peter Linehan's continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal, on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatisation of the church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West.

In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected archival material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, Linehan makes use of the also unpublished so-called 'secret' registers of the popes of the period. The issues this volume raises ought to be of interest not only to students of Spanish and Portuguese society but also to those interested in the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe as well as of the activity in that period of the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law as God's vice-gerent in his.

Peter Linehan, Fellow, St John's College Cambridge; British Academy

Peter Linehan has been a fellow of St John's College Cambridge since 1966, and was senior proctor at the University of Cambridge in 1976 and 1977. He has been a corresponding member of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid since 1996 and a Fellow of the British Academy since 2002. He edited the Journal of Ecclesiastical History from 1979 to 1991. Linehan is married, with three children.