Folia Theologica 3. (1992)

Charles Duggan: Decretal letters to Hungary

DECRETAL LETTERS

13

IV. Concerning the archbishop of Esztergom

Si velis, Gravat nos and Totiens iám Alexander III on the recalcitrance of archbishop Lucas of

Esztergom

Three decretals of Alexander III, relating to a crisis at the highest political and ecclesiastical levels in Hungary, are found exclusively in a manuscript in the cathedral library at Tortosa. They are addressed respectively to archbishop Lucas of Esztergom, the king of Hungary, and the suffragans of Esztergom and Kalocsa, together with the prelates, nobles, and all the clergy and people throughout the Hungarian kingdom. Their immediate context was the archbishop’s failure to obey papal instructions to lift the sentences of excommunication which Lucas had imposed on archbishop Andreas of Kalocsa. The provenance of the completed collection is certainly Spanish, but its archetypal material is closely parallel with that in two Cistercian manuscripts, from Alcobaça and Eberbach, now in Lisbon and the British Library respectively.14 No item in the Tortosa collection has been dated later than 1179, which is also the date of these three decretals.

The Hungarian background is clear from Alexander’s letter to Lucas, Si velis, a long and sharp rebuke to the archbishop for failing to obey his orders to lift the sentence which Lucas had laid on Andreas. The pope recalled a series of comparable problems involving Lucas, reaching back as far as a blessing of king Stephen and his mother, the election of Andreas to Győr, the blessing of king Béla, and a dispute over the provostship of Albensis regalis — the royal chapel at Székesfehérvár. If Lucas now persists in rejecting his authority, the pope will treat him as excommunicate, and release his subjects from obedience to him. In Gravat nos, to the king of Hungary, the pope records that Andreas has reported his loss of royal favour through falsehoods and jealousy; he has claimed in the pope’s presence — „in nostra presentia constitutus” — that he has intentionally offended the king in nothing.15 The pope urges the king to accept this

14 I Ale. and Eber.

15 Andreas was the only Hungarian prelate present at the Third Lateran Council in 1179 (where he is recorded last in the list: cf. appendix to 1 Viet., fol. 266V2, „De ungaria. andreas bahasisensis archiepiscopus"). He presumably secured these letters at that time.