Peter III of Aragon

“ To all except the citizens of the great cities, a king would be acceptable; Peter was chosen with little opposition in a parliament at Palermo, and a struggle of twenty-one years began, of which Charles and Peter saw only the first stage. In fact, after Peter had helped the Sicilians to relieve Messina, he was very little in Sicily; he had to defend his kingdom of Aragon, which Pope Martin had granted to another French Charles. ”

“ JAMES I., the Conqueror (1208–1276) , king of Aragon, son of Peter II., king of Aragon, and of Mary of Montpellier, whose mother was Eudoxia Comnena, daughter of the emperor Manuel, was born at Montpellier on the 2nd of February 1208. His father, a man of immoral life, was with difficulty persuaded to cohabit with his wife. He endeavoured to repudiate her, and she fled to Rome, where she died in April 1213. ”

“ The nobles of Aragon protested against King Peter's submission to the papacy, declared that his surrender of their kingdom was invalid, and prevented the payment of the promised tribute. When John of England procured his Roman overlord's condemnation of Magna Charta, the support of Rome was of no avail to prevent his indignant subjects combining to drive him from the throne, and did not even hinder Louis of France, the son of the papalist Philip II, from accepting their invitation to become English king in his stead. ”

“ He wrote an account of this from Rome to St. Peter, informing him how well pleased his Holiness was with the wisdom and piety of the institute. The religious chose a white habit, to put them continually in mind of innocence: they wear a scapular, which is likewise white: but the king would oblige them, for his sake, to bear the royal arms of Aragon, which are interwoven on their habit upon the breast. Their numbers increasing very fast, the saint petitioned the king for another house; who, on this occasion, built for them, in 1232, a magnificent convent at Barcelona. ”

“ The fleet prepared for Constantinople had to be turned against the rebel islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game of his royal master, refused to mediate; the Sicilians thereupon declared that from St. Peter they would turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown to Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's daughter, Constance, who for some years had welcomed Sicilian refugees at his court and had been ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on Charles' great nephew Charles of Valois, a son of Philip III of France ”

“ Part of his mission was to negotiate a marriage between Peter, the eldest son of the king of Aragon, and the king's sister Eleanor. He still continued to act occasionally as justice, but on 28 June 1331 a commission of oyer and terminer to him had to be confided to Richard de Wylughby, as he was too much occupied with other business of the king to act (ib. p. 138) . ”

“ In turn he made treaties with the kings of Castile and Aragon, who were at war with each other; promising to assist Peter the Cruel to regain his throne, from which he had been driven in 1366 by his half-brother Henry of Trastamara, and then assuring Henry and his ally Peter of Aragon that he would aid them to retain Castile. ”

“ He renewed the ban against Peter the Cruel of Castile, and interfered in vain against Peter IV. of Aragon. He made peace between Venice and Genoa, and in 1360 arranged the treaty of Bretigny between France and England. In the last years of his pontificate he was busied with preparations for a crusade and for the reunion of Christendom, and sent to Constantinople the celebrated Carmelite monk, Peter Thomas, to negotiate with the claimants to the Greek throne. He instituted in 1354 the festival of the Holy Lance. ”

“ Even in his wild gallop into imminent peril at Bordeaux he thought out every part of the enterprise down to the minutest detail. He was invariably well served, and invariably successful. This cannot be ascribed to luck. A king who succeeds in all he undertakes must have rare gifts of head and heart to plan out the details of his undertakings and to secure the sympathy and devotion of those who serve him. Pedro was thus gifted, while his administrative ability ensured the prosperity of his country. Under him Aragon became a great naval Power, and Sicily was freed from a foreign yoke. ”

“ And although Peter the Great is no longer with us, yet his spirit lives in our souls, and we, who had the felicity of being near this monarch, shall die faithful to him, and the ardent love we had for our earthly god will be buried together with us. ”

“ Then Peter went to his father and mother and begged for their blessing that he might travel to the kingdom of Naples to learn there knightly feats, but especially to see the beauty of the King’s daughter Magilene. So they dismissed Prince Peter with great sorrow, exhorting him to make friendship with good men only ”

“ It was his delight to fight the Pope. Pius IX. was no more the successor of S. Peter than he was the successor of the emperor of China. S. Peter was never in Rome to be succeeded by anybody.”
Modern investigation at best has done little to clear up the difficulties connected with the geographical history of the Apostle Peter. That he was at Rome, and suffered martyrdom in that city, is the general belief of the fathers. And it was not until the dawn of the Reformation that the apostle's journey to that city, and his martyrdom there, became even a subject of doubt. ”

“ Tan grande es el yerro como el que yerra. The fault is as great as he that commits it.
Tantas veces va el cántaro á la fuente, que dexa el asa ó la frente. The pitcher goes so often to the well, that it leaves its handle or its mouth.
Tanto es Pedro de Dios, que no le medra Dios. Peter is so godly that God does not improve his condition.
Tanto quiere el diablo á su hijo que le quiebra el ojo. The devil is so fond of his son that he put out his eye.
Tener á alguno en ascuas. To keep one upon hot coals. ”

“ If we resist the Devil, he will flee from us: if we give way to one temptation, we shall be more likely to fall again: so it was with Peter. "When he was gone out into the porch, after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And another maid saw him, and began to say to them that stood by, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. This is one of them." Peter now added to his sin, "for he denied with an oath, I do not know the man,"—thus calling upon God as a witness to the truth of what he was saying. ”

“ The prince met him at Cap Breton, and rode with him to Bordeaux. Many of his lords, both English and Gascon, were unwilling that he should espouse Peter's cause, but he declared that it was not fitting that a bastard should inherit a kingdom, or drive out his lawfully born brother, and that no king or king's son ought to suffer such a despite to royalty; nor could any turn him from his determmation to restore the king. Peter won friends by declaring that he would make Edward's son king of Galicia, and would divide his riches among those who helped him. ”

“ Peter sits on an undisputed spiritual throne upon which a new world will be based in the West, against which the Khalifs of a false religion will exert all their rage in the East and South, and strengthen the rule which they parody. A new power, which utterly denies the Christian faith, which destroys hundreds of its episcopal sees and severs whole countries from its sway, will dash with all its violence against the Rock of Peter, and finally will have the effect of making the bishop who is there enthroned more than ever the symbol, the seat, and the champion of the Kingdom of the Cross. ”

“ Pietro pretended to consent, and began, to utter, by way of preface, the word "benedicite." The young Greek lost consciousness at its second syllable; and awoke to find himself alone, and with a first instalment of Peter's secret in his mind. "Good is product of evil, and to be effected through it." Acting upon this doctrine, he traded on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures wherever the opportunity occurred; and attained by this means, first, wealth; next temporal, and then spiritual, power; rising finally to the dignity of Pope. ”

“ Nothing could be more natural than for Peter the Hermit, with his mind full of the mission he was about to undertake, to dream that the Being in whose cause he believed himself engaged appeared to encourage him, and to hasten his enterprise; and it is easy to conceive that, with full confidence in this manifestation of heavenly favour, he should set forth upon his journey with enthusiastic zeal.
Bearing the letter of the patriarch, Peter now returned in haste to Italy, and sought out the pope, to declare the miseries of the church in the Holy Land, and to propose the means of its deliverance. ”

“ After this Jesus said to Peter, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me." About thirty years after this time, in the reign of the Emperor Nero, Peter was crucified at Rome by the heathens, because he tried to make them Christians ”

“ Yet Peter acts not like one out of a number, and occasions of contention are not wanting, strong prepossessions and keen feelings. [82] He is everywhere; his pre-eminence and his control are universal: he can act with severity, and there are some impatient even of a just control. When Ananias and Sapphira fell dead at his feet, none murmured. When he exclaimed, in full council, "now, therefore, why tempt you God?" the whole multitude was silent. When he explained the reception of the Gentiles, those who had murmured "held their peace, and glorified God." ”

“ His banquets were orgies, his pastimes convulsions. He lived and he loved like one of the giants of old. There are deeds of his which make humanity shudder, and no man equally great has ever descended to such depths of cruelty and treachery. Yet it may generally be allowed that a strain of nobility, of which we occasionally catch illuminating glimpses, extorts from time to time an all-forgiving admiration. Strange, too, as it may sound, Peter the Great was at heart profoundly religious. ”

“ Peter had never been at any pains to conceal his indifference or contempt for the national church; but it was not until that culminating point in his history at which we are now arrived that he ventured to accomplish his design of abolishing the office of patriarch. He had left it unfilled for one-and-twenty years, and he formally suppressed it after the conclusion of the Peace of Nystad; when heaven had declared in his favour, as it seemed to the multitude, who always believe the Deity to be on the strongest side. ”

“ Peter, unless, perhaps, that unfortunate man who is unwilling to bear the yoke of the Lord and subjects himself to the burden of the devil, refusing to be among the number of Christ's sheep? It will help him little to his wretched liberty, indeed, that he shake from his proud neck the divinely granted power of Peter. For the more any one, through pride, refuses to bear it, the more heavily shall it press upon him unto damnation at the judgment. ”

“ Petrus andwyrde, "Untwylice þu lihst þæt þu God sy, nu ðu nast manna geðohtas." When Nero saw that, he imagined that he was the Son of God. Peter said that he was God's adversary, and guilty of false magic, and said that he was certainly the devil in human substance. Simon said, "It is not fitting that thou, king, shouldst listen to the words of a false fisher; but I will no longer bear this contumely: I will now command my angels to avenge me on this fisher." Peter said, "I fear not thy accursed spirits, but they will become terrified through the faith of my Lord." ”

“ Peter, king of Castile, stigmatized by his contemporaries and by posterity with the epithet of Cruel, had filled with blood and murder his kingdom and his own family; and having incurred the universal hatred of his subjects, he kept from present terror alone, an anxious and precarious possession of the throne. His nobles fell every day the victims of his severity: he put to death several of his natural brothers, from groundless jealousy: each murder, by multiplying his enemies, became the occasion of fresh barbarities ”

“ Peter the Great was regretted by all those whom he had formed, and the descendants of those who had been sticklers for the ancient customs soon began to look on him as their father: foreign nations, who have beheld the duration of his establishments, have always expressed the highest admiration for his memory, acknowledging that he was actuated by a more than common prudence and wisdom, and not by a vain desire of doing extraordinary things. All Europe knows that though he was fond of fame, he coveted it only for noble principles ”

“ It is the darkest chapter in the history of Peter the Great, a monarch whose achievements as a civil administrator, reformer, and general entitle him to a high rank among the really great rulers of Europe; but these achievements should not be made a cloak or excuse for a crime from which not only modern civilization, but human nature itself, shrinks back in horror. ”