Guala Bicchieri (c. 1150 – 1227) was an Italian diplomat and papal official, and
CardinalA cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually a bishop, of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and making themselves available...
. He was the
papal legateA Papal Legate – from the Latin, authentic Roman title Legatus – is a personal representative of the Pope to Foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic Church. He is empowered on matters of Catholic Faith and for the settlement of ecclesiastical matters....
in England from 1216-1218 and took a prominent role in the politics of England during
King JohnJohn , King of England, reigned from 6 April 1199 until his death. He acceded to the throne as the younger brother of King Richard I, who died without issue...
’s last years and
Henry IIIHenry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for fifty-six years from 1216 to his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...
’s early minority.
Guala Bicchieri arrived in England in the midst of the baronial rebellion, when rebel barons were attempting to force John from the throne and when the suspension and exile of archbishop
Stephen LangtonStephen Cardinal Langton was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228 and was a central figure in the dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III, which ultimately led to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215.-Early life and career:He was born in the hamlet of Friday...
had left the English church without a leader.
Guala Bicchieri (c. 1150 – 1227) was an Italian diplomat and papal official, and
CardinalA cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually a bishop, of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and making themselves available...
. He was the
papal legateA Papal Legate – from the Latin, authentic Roman title Legatus – is a personal representative of the Pope to Foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic Church. He is empowered on matters of Catholic Faith and for the settlement of ecclesiastical matters....
in England from 1216-1218 and took a prominent role in the politics of England during
King JohnJohn , King of England, reigned from 6 April 1199 until his death. He acceded to the throne as the younger brother of King Richard I, who died without issue...
’s last years and
Henry IIIHenry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for fifty-six years from 1216 to his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...
’s early minority.
Guala Bicchieri arrived in England in the midst of the baronial rebellion, when rebel barons were attempting to force John from the throne and when the suspension and exile of archbishop
Stephen LangtonStephen Cardinal Langton was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228 and was a central figure in the dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III, which ultimately led to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215.-Early life and career:He was born in the hamlet of Friday...
had left the English church without a leader. Bicchieri was a supporter of King John in the struggle against the barons and their candidate for the English crown,
Prince Louis of FranceLouis VIII the Lion reigned as King of France from 1223 to 1226. He was a member of the House of Capet. Louis VIII was born in Paris, France, the son of Philip II Augustus and Isabelle of Hainaut...
. As the Pope’s representative, Guala Bicchieri played an important role in stabilizing the English church in the aftermath of this civil war now known as the First Barons’ War. He was instrumental in the reissuing of the Magna Carta.
Guala Bicchieri was from a prominent family in
VercelliVercelli is a city of about 47,000 inhabitants in the Province of Vercelli, Piedmont, northern Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, around the year 600 BC.The city is situated on the river Sesia in the plain of the river Po between...
in northern
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
, in what is now the Italian region of
PiedmontPiedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,399 km
2 and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the so-called Occitan Valleys...
. He was trained for the law but entered the clergy; he is first mentioned in 1187 as a canon in the cathedral of Vercelli. By 1205 he had become a cardinal and had served as a papal legate in northern Italy before being appointed legate to France in 1208. Innocent III named him legate to England in January 1216. His mission was to make peace between the English and the French; the civil war and the threatened invasion by the French—in support of the rebellion—in order to depose John from the English throne, were threatening Innocent’s plan for a
crusadeThe Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between...
. Guala’s position as legate in England was especially influential since the
Archbishop of CanterburyAlso see Leaders of ChristianityThe Archbishop of Canterbury is the chief bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury, the see that churches must be in communion with in order to be...
,
Stephen LangtonStephen Cardinal Langton was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228 and was a central figure in the dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III, which ultimately led to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215.-Early life and career:He was born in the hamlet of Friday...
, was absent from the kingdom from September 1215 to May 1218, during which absence Guala Bicchieri, as papal legate, was practically in charge of the English church. Vincent (below) points out six areas in which Bicchieri made an impact upon England: establishing peace between the monarchy and rebels; overseeing Episcopal elections; supervising monastic houses; punishing and replacing rebel clergy; judicial activity, including the appointment of legatine judges delegate; and implementing the legislation of the Fourth Lateran Council.
Guala’s role is of extreme to students of English history: he supported Prince John and then became the protector of John’s minor successor, Henry III; he punished English clerics who supported the French invader, Louis, and removed many of them from their positions.
Guala Bicchieri returned to Italy in 1219 after the final defeat of the English rebel barons and the
Treaty of LambethThe Treaty of Lambeth, also known as the Treaty of Kingston, was signed on the island called today 'Ravens Ait Island' which is a small Floodplain island inside the river Thames at Kingston-upon-Thames. This significant treaty was signed in 1217 by Prince Louis of France, ending his wars and...
. He founded the
Abbey of St Andrew in Vercelli, his home town. It is named for—and is even architecturally imitative of the Abbey of Saint Andrew in Chesterton, which Bicchieri had been given for his services to the church during the difficult period of the civil war. In 1224, also in Vercelli, he founded Saint Andrew’s hospital.
Of great interest to students of English literature is the fact that the premises of
Vercelli Cathedral Museumhold the famed
Vercelli BookThe Vercelli Book is one of the oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices. It is an anthology of Old English Prose and verse that dates back to the late 10th century...
, one of the few extant manuscripts of early English (
Anglo-SaxonOld English , also called Anglo-Saxon, is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary...
) writings. Although there is still much debate as to how the manuscript wound up in Italy, at least some sources (discussed in Krapp, below) give credence to the theory that Guala Bicchieri brought it back with him when he returned from England. Bicchieri died in 1227 and is entombed in St Andrew's Abbey in Vercelli.