ABSTRACT
Sometime in the first half of 1228 Gregory IX's legate came to Spain. Cardinal John of Abbeville spent barely a year and a half there, but he hit the place like a tornado and decades later fragments of the old order dislodged by him were still floating down to earth. As Jose Mattoso declared in his 1981 edition of Herculano's Historia de Portugal, John of Abbeville deserves a monograph. By contrast with Cardinal Guala's in England, John of Abbeville's retinue appears to have been limited in extent. His nameless scribes apart, only two of its members are known, one of these being his penitentiary, Raymond of Penafort, who was recruited by John during his Spanish legation and owed him his entree to the papal curia. The other was his cleric 'Master P.', to whom he subdelegated the thorny question concerning the clergy of Desojo in the diocese of Calahorra, and then wished upon the church of Cuenca.
