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The Trinitarian Order and the Ransom of Christian Captives

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09503110.2011.580632

1473-348X

John M. Flannery,

Byzantine Studies and History

Abstract The rule of the Trinitarian Order approved by Pope Innocent III in 1198 specified its principal focus to be the ransom of captives, specifically Christian captives of non-believers, with one-third of all income to be set apart for the work of ransom. The Order quickly experienced a period of rapid expansion, although following the collapse of the Crusader project and the gradual success of the Iberian Reconquista, the increasing numbers of Christian prisoners captured by the pirates and privateers of the north African coast would become the main focus of Trinitarian ransoming activity, including the establishment by the Order of a number of hospitals for the care of prisoners in Algiers and Tunis. While the proportion of captives ransomed was small in comparison to their total number, the ransoming activities of the Order nevertheless continued into the nineteenth century as a remarkable witness to the values of self-giving sacrifice which stand at the very heart of the Christian tradition. Keywords: CaptivityransomsPiracycaptivesTrinitarian OrderInnocent IIIpope Notes 1 See James M. Powell, “Innocent III, the Trinitarians, and the Renewal of the Church”, in La Liberazione dei “Captivi” tra Cristianitá e Islam. Oltre la Crociata e il Gihad: Tolleranza e Servizio umanitario, ed. Giulio Cipollone OSST [Collectanea Archivi Vaticani no. 46] (Città del Vaticano: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000), pp. 245–256. 2 The history of an Order founded over 800 years ago, has, as may be imagined, generated an extensive bibliography, although remarkably little in English. A notable exception is the thesis of James Brodman, “The Trinitarian and Mercedarian Orders: A study of religious redemptionism in the thirteenth century” (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1974). A significant full-length modern study is Anthony O. D’Errico OSST, The Trinitarians: an Overview of their Eight-Hundred Year Service to God and Humanity (Rome, 1999), was published by the Generalate of the Order ad usum privatum, i.e. for use only within the Order. I am grateful to Joseph J. Gross OSST for drawing my attention to this and the following entry and for making a making a typescript available to me. The Polish study of the history by Andrzej Witko, published in Warsaw in 2002, and which appeared in English as The Trinitarian Order, trans. by Ewa S. Lay and Kevin R. Lay (Rome: [s.n.]; Cracow: Wydanicto AA, 2007, 2nd edn 2009) suffers from both serious errors in translation and historical inaccuracies. Paul Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires pour le Rachat des Captifs, volumes I–II (Toulouse: Privat, 1903), is somewhat dated and hagiographical in approach, but of value for the extensive documentation given in volume 2. Three useful introductory studies on the origins and early activities of the Order by Joseph J. Gross OSST: “Inter Arma Caritas: The Early Trinitarian Story”; “Christo in Captivis: Early Trinitarian Ransom Activity”; “Cura Hospitum: Pilgrimage and Hospitality”, may be accessed on the website devoted to Trinitarian history at http://www.trinitarianhistory.org/studies/studies.htm Also of value for a detailed overview is Juan Pujana, art. “Trinitaires” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, volume XV (Paris: Beauchesne, 1937–1995), fasc. XCV, 1990, cols 1259–1287. An invaluable resource is the extensive and detailed bibliography of the Order compiled by Juan Pujana OSST, at http://www.trinitarianhistory.org/bibliography/Trinitarian%20Bibliography/Trinitarian%20Bibliography%20-%20Pujana.htm, usefully supplemented by the Bibliographica Specialis: De Redemptione Captivorum, initially produced in 1982 by Joseph J Gross OSST and since updated, at http://www.trinitarianhistory.org/ransoming/SB%20de%20redemptione.htm 3 On Cerfroid, see Giulio Cipollone, Studi intorno a Cerfroid prima casa dell’ordine Trinitario (1198–1429) (Rome: Ordinis Trinitatis Institutum Historicum, 1978). 4 Reg. Vat. vol. 4, fols 126v–128r, n. 477. 5 The Latin text of the original Rule, together with that of the revisions of 1217 and 1267, is transcribed in The Trinitarians Rule of Life: Texts of the Six Principal Editions, ed. Joseph J Gross OSST (Rome: Trinitarian Historical Institute, 1983), see pp. 9–16 for the original Rule. I am most grateful to the author, a member of the Historical Institute, for his generosity in providing me with copies of both published and unpublished material, and for his insightful and patient corrections to my original text. An English translation of the original Rule is given at: http://www.trinitarianhistory.org/rule/RT1198%20Eng.htm 6 See Joseph Hernando, “La ‘tertia pars’ en la regla de los Trinitarios para el rescate de cautivos: una forma de inversión económica, de economía evangélica”, in La Liberazione dei “Captivi”, 263–310. 7 Reg. Vat. vol. 4, f. 62v, n. 247. 8 Two letters of Innocent III entitled Operante patre luminum, dated 10 July 1203 (Reg. Vat. vol. 5, f. 76r, n. 118) and 21 June 1209 (Archives Nationales de France, Paris: L. 947, n. 5 = original), list 5 and 13 new foundations respectively. A letter of Honorius III with the same title dated 25 April 1219, which survives only as an eighteenth century copy of the original formerly held in the archives in Malaga (Lorenzo Reynés, Bullarium OSST, volumes I–III (Palma de Mallorca, ca 1770), vol. 1, Innocentius III, n. 4) extends papal protection to a further 22 Trinitarian foundations. 9 A synthesis of the information regarding the principal foundations of the Order and an overview of the geographical and apostolic composition during its first quarter-century is given by Joseph J. Gross, “The Trinitarian Apostolate of the Ransom of Christian Captives and Works of Mercy during the First Centuries of its History…”, in Captivis Libertas [Congresso dell’Apostolato Redentivo-Misericordioso dell’Ordine Trinitario] (Rocca di Papa (Rome): Centro Trinitario, 1983), pp. 51–82, see pp. 57–62. The original version of Gross, Bibliographia Specialis, appears on pp. 187–193. 10 See Sergio Pagano, “Il Testo della RT(1198): redazione, annotazioni diplomatiche, aggiornamenti del secolo XIII”, in La Liberazione dei “Captivi”, 51–118. 11 Jacobus Burgerius, Regula et Statuta Fratrum Ordinis Sanctissimae Trinitatis et Redemptionis captivorum cum formula Reformationis (Douai, 1586), cited in Gross, Bibliographia Specialis, 63, see 111–114. 12 See the analysis in Gross, Bibliographia Specialis, 63–81. 13 See the studies by Giulio Cipollone OSST: La Casa della Santa Trinità di Marsiglia (1202–1547): prima fondazione sul mare dell’Ordine trinitario (Città del Vaticano: Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1981); “Contributi attorno all”attività redentiva dell’Ordine Trinitario svolta nei secoli XIII e XIV presso alcune fondazioni costiere del Mediterraneo occidentale e del Portogallo”, in Captivis Libertas Congresso dell'Apostolato redentivo - misericardiose dell ’ordine Trinitario, Rocca di Papa, 1982, 29-49; “L’Ordre des Trinitaires à Marseille. Son activité de rachat des captifs chrétiens (XIII–XV s.)”, Marseille, 137–138 (1984): 76–83; “Il Portogallo punto strategico dell’opera di riscatto dei Trinitari (XIII–XV s.)”, in Congresso Internacional Bartolomeu Dias e a sua época. Actas, volumes I–V (Porto: Universidade de Porto, 1989), V: 589–603. 14 See e.g. Bartolomé and Lucile Bennasar, Les Chrétiens d’Allah: l’Histoire extraordinaire des Renégats, XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Perrin, 1989). 15 Robert C. Davis, “Counting European slaves on the Barbary coast”, Past and Present, 172 (2001): 87–124, see 118. 16 See Brodman, “The Trinitarian and Mercedarian Orders”, 15–50; idem, “Community, identity and the redemption of captives: Comparative perspectives across the Mediterranean”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 36/1 (2006): 241–252. 17 On the Military Orders in general, see Alan J. Forey, The Military Orders: From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1992); the series of collected studies The Military Orders, volumes I–IV (Aldershot: Variorum (vol. I), Ashgate (vols II–IV)). On the Portuguese Orders, see Francis A. Dutra, Military Orders in the Early Modern Portuguese World, the Orders of Christ, Santiago and Avis (Aldershot: Variorum, 2006); Paula Pinto Costa, “The Military Orders established in Portugal in the Middle Ages: A historiographical overview”, e-Journal of Portuguese History, 2/1 (2004): 1–16. 18 For relations between Christianity and Islam in the period in which the Trinitarian Order was founded, see the important study by Giulio Cipollone, Cristianità–slam Cattività e Liberazione in Nome di Dio: il Tempo de Innocenzo III dopo “il 1187” [Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae no. 60] (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1992; 2nd edn 1996). 19 While I have followed here the argument of Cipollone, Cristianità–Islam Cattività e Liberazione in Nome di Dio (see esp. pp. 415–425), which effectively presents the Trinitarians as the antithesis of the Crusaders, this view is not universally shared by the Order's historians, as illustrated by the alternative view of the ransom Orders as simply providing a necessary ancillary service in the context of the Crusades, given by Joseph J. Gross in the unpublished paper “Specialized crusading: The ransom of Christian Captives” at the International Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, University of Cardiff, 2 September 1983. 20 Reg. Vat. 4, fol. 148r–v, an. II, n. 9. 21 For detail, see Brodman, “The Trinitarian and Mercedarian Orders”, 260–293. 22 Ibid., 304–309. 23 See Deslandres, L’Ordre des Trinitaires, I: 394–400. 24 Brodman, “The Trinitarian and Mercedarian Orders”, 277), suggests that it was the Mercedarians who, from the mid-thirteenth century, first employed this approach, the root of which possibly lies in the legal relationship between earlier municipal and civil ransomers in Spain and their liberated captives. 25 Inspired by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Trinitarian Order of today has set aside the complex divisions of its history, embracing anew the richness and diversity of the entire tradition, and returning to the values expressed by its founder in the original Rule. While the modern history of the Order is outside the scope of this paper, the renascence of an Order which recognised at the beginning of the twentieth century that the principal goal for which it was founded had ceased to exist is truly remarkable. The process by which this was accomplished is surveyed by Joseph J. Gross OSST in the unpublished paper “The Apostolic orientation and development of the Trinitarian Order during the 20th century”, presented to the International Meeting of the General Secretariat for the Apostolate of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, Baltimore, Maryland, 21–29 August 1991. 26 Figures from Pujana, “Trinitaires”, col. 1277. 27 On two specific Portuguese ransom expeditions, see the studies: Edite Alberto, “Corsários argelinos na costa atlântica- o resgate de cativos de 1618”, Actas do Congresso International “Espaço Atlântico de Antigo Regime: poderes e sociedades”, Lisboa, 2–5 November 2005, available at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/eaar/coloquio/comunicacoes/edite_alberto.pdf and Paulo Drumond Braga, “Os Trinitários e o resgate de cativos. O caso de 1728–1729”, in Missionação Portuguesa e Encontro de Culturas: Actas, volumes I–III (Braga: Universidade Católica/CNCDP, 1993), III: 483–489. 28 Erwan le Fur suggests that external rivalry with the Mercedarians and internal rivalry between the various branches of the Order were responsible for a “redynamisation” of Trinitarian ransoming activity. See idem, “La Renaissance d’un Apostolat: L’Ordre de la Trinité et la Rédemption des captifs dans les années 1630”, Cahiers de la Méditerranée (on-line), 66 (2003), uploaded 21 July 2005, http://cdml.revues.org/index110.html 29 See Domingo de la Asunción, Cervantes y la Orden Trinitaria (Madrid: El Santo Trisagio, 1917); Constancio Rodero Sáez, El gran Libertador de Miguel de Cervantes: Fr. Juan Gil (Ávila: Ayuntamiento de Arévalo, 1988). 30 See Bonifacio Porres Alonso, “Los Hospitales Trinitarios de Argel y Túnez”, Missionalia Hispania Sacra, 48 (1996): 639–717; Ellen G Friedman, “Trinitarian hospitals in Algiers: An early example of health care for prisoners of war”, The Catholic Historical Review, 66/4 (1980): 551–564. 31 Giulio Cipollone, “Missione parola polivalente. I Trinitari in Portogallo: missione como liberazione”, in Missionação Portuguesa, III: 442–453.