The source of RRR #1610 is the eleventh volume in the Die Register series, an updated critical edition of the registers of Pope Innocent III.[1] The editors intended for the series to supplant the previous edition, Patrologia Latin by Jacques-Paul Migne, who used the edition by Étienne Baluze as a source.[2] Volume 11 contains the transcribed registers of the eleventh year of Pope Innocent III’s pontificate (1198-1216) and includes 271 letters from February 1208 through February 1209.[3] The papal chancery copied about 10-20 percent of letters that they sent in the name of Pope Innocent III, as well as some letters received, in manuscript volumes that now form Innocent’s Regesta in the Vatican Archives.[4] Innocent’s Regesta are the first papal registers to survive in near completeness, other than those of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85).[5]
Written on January 10, 1209 and sent to Acre in the pope’s name, this letter approves several requests of the Prior of St. Thomas the Martyr of Acre and St. George de Xisto (Sisto) and includes papal privileges.[6] The letter involves this prior, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Alexander III. The Order of St. Thomas of Acre was a charitable foundation that would join the Teutonic Order in the 1220s.[7] As a papal letter addressed to a prior, the document is written in Latin, and it begins by confirming the requests of the priory and guaranteeing papal protection over the Order.[8] The letter then specifies the right of the priory to possess the three churches of St. Mary, St. Peter and St. Nicholas de Campo Anglorum and the hospital of St. Thomas in Acre.[9] Finally, the letter reaffirms the privilege granted by Innocent’s predecessor, Pope Alexander III, to the Order to use the ring, pastoral staff and mitre at feasts. In return, the priory would pay the Holy See two besants per year.[10] The letter also implicitly involves Prior Simon of St. George de Sisto, who may have served in the Orthodox Church in Acre. Pope Alexander III had beforehand given the prior Simon of the otherwise opaque church St. George de Sisto the pontificals for the observance of mass.[11] At some point before 1209, the Order of St. Thomas in Acre had incorporated the older foundation of St. George de Sisto as a subsidiary, as shown in a later papal letter from October 1212.[12] In this letter, Pope Innocent III responded to the bishop of Acre, who had challenged the right of the prior of St. Thomas of Acre to use the pontificals of St. George de Sisto.[13] This 1212 letter confirms St. George’s subordinacy to St. Thomas of Acre and their shared administration by the same prior, raising the question of why Pope Alexander had given Prior Simon the privilege of using these pontificals.[14] Denys Pringle has suggested as an answer that St. George’s started as an Orthodox house, “and before 1187 its prior had been acting effectively as bishop to the Orthodox community in the city.”[15] If so, the prior Simon who the letter implicitly references held an important position in the Orthodox community of late twelfth-century Acre. The letter is further relevant to the history of the Latin East because it provides context for the contested origins of the Order of St. Thomas of Acre. Contemporary chroniclers such as Ralph of Diceto, Roger of Wendover, and Matthew Paris asserted that the Order began during the Third Crusade.[16] Tradition holds that Richard himself established the Order, though the true identity of the founder remains disputed.[17] While some “more recent” scholars have attempted to trace the roots of the Order to an earlier period,[18] the 1209 letter’s allusion to the absorption of the older foundation of St. George de Sisto provides the only connection between the Order and any time prior to the Third Crusade.[19] Thus, it seems likely that the Order indeed originated during the siege of Acre in a chapel and cemetery erected outside the city walls and relocated inside the city after it fell to the Latins in 1191.[20] Amidst the chaos, the foundation appears to have obtained several abandoned churches and other properties in Acre.[21] The letter written on January 10, 1209 in the pope’s name was intended to confirm the right of the Order to use these properties.[22] The document therefore corroborates that the Order of St. Thomas of Acre originated during the Third Crusade. Finally, the letter shows how minor religious institutions sought to establish themselves in the Levant and illustrates the reinforced ties between the papacy and the Latin East after the Third Crusade. The Order of St. Thomas of Acre provides an example of a minor religious foundation that focused on charitable works such as helping the poor, burying the dead, and ransoming captives.[23] While funding commonly posed an issue for new religious establishments, those in the Holy Land confronted this obstacle on a magnified scale; they could hope for limited patronage from the comparatively small Frankish society in the Latin East, but also remained relatively unknown in the West.[24] Other than a few potential donations from visitors who witnessed its charitable works in Acre, the Order could only obtain funding by dispatching representatives to the West, as it did in 1207.[25] The subsequent papal confirmation of the Order’s property in Acre demonstrates how minor religious institutions in the Latin East could try to establish themselves through patronage from the West. Funding issues such as these would ultimately constitute a reason for the Order turning into a military establishment.[26] In addition, Pope Innocent III’s attention to the affairs of the Order of St. Thomas of Acre is consistent with the amplified papal focus on the Latin Church in the Levant in the wake of the Third Crusade; in fact, Pope Innocent III engaged with religious matters in the East more than any of his predecessors .[27] The letter therefore enriches our understanding of minor religious institutions in the Latin East and the close papal focus on the Holy Land. Written by Jaclyn Mulé [1] Die Register Innocenz’ III.,11. Band, vol. 11, ed. by Othmar Hageneder and Andrea Sommerlechner with Christoph Egger, Rainer Murauer, Reinhard Seliger and Herwig Weigl (Vienna: Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2010), 337-8. As cited in Die Register Innocenz’ III, the original source can be found in the Vatican Archives: The Vatican, Regesta 7A, f. 84r–84v (Nr. 209). [2] John W. Baldwin, “Review of Die Register Innocenz' III. Pontifikatsjahr, 1207/1208: Texte und Indices,” The Catholic Historical Review 96, no. 1 (2010): 110. [3] Damian J. Smith, “Die Register Innocenz’ III. 11 Band. 11. Pontifikatsjahr 1208/1209: Texte Und Indices,” The Catholic Historical Review 98, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 547. [4] Baldwin, “Review of Die Register,” 110; Smith, “Die Register,” 547-8. [5] Smith, “Die Register,” 547-8. [6] Die Register Innocenz’ III, 337-8. [7] A. J. Forey, “The Military Order of St Thomas of Acre,” The English Historical Review 92, no. 364 (1977): 481. [8] Die Register Innocenz’ III, 337-8. [9] Die Register Innocenz’ III, 338. [10] Die Register Innocenz’ III, 337-8. [11] Die Register Innocenz’ III, 338. [12] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 486; Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 77. [13] Denys Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Acre,” in The Military Orders, vol. 5, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Abingdon: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis group, 2016), 77. [14] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 77-8. [15] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 78. [16] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 75. [17] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 482. [18] Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, ed. William Stubbs (London: Longman Publishing Group, 1864), p. cxii; Eric St. J. Brooks, “Irish Possessions of St. Thomas of Acre,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 58 (1956): 21; Gwynn, Aubrey and Hadcock, R. Neville, Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (London: Longman Publishing Group, 1970), p. 343; Knowles, David and Hadcock, R. Neville, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London: Longman Publishing Group, 1971), p. 372; as cited by Forey on p. 482. [19] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 482, 486. [20] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 75. [21] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 75-7. [22] Pringle, “The Order of St. Thomas,” 77. [23] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 486. [24] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 486. [25] Forey, “St Thomas of Acre,” 486. [26] Forey, “St. Thomas of Acre,” 487. [27] Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, 2nd ed (Abingdon: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), 146, 183.
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