Morison, John L., ed. The Book of Faith. Glasgow: Maclehose,
1909.
Secondary Sources
New CBEL 1:665–66, 805.
Brockwell, Charles W., Jr. “Answering the ‘Known Men’: Bishop
Reginald Pecock and Mr. Richard Hooker.” Church History
49 (1980): 133–46.
Patrouch, Joseph E, Jr. Reginald Pecock. New York: Twayne,
1970.
Lara Ruffolo
PEDRO ALFONSO, OR
PETRUS ALFONSI
Moisés Sefardí, a noted Jew from Huesca, adopted
the name Pedro Alfonso when he was baptized on 29
June 1106, with King Alfonso I el Batallador serving
as godfather. Pedro Alfonso probably left the Iberian
Peninsula soon after his baptism; a few years later he
was located in England as a magister of liberal arts,
where he likely contributed to the diffusion of Arabic
science, especially astronomy and calculus, around the
monastery of Malvern. Whether he was the physician
to both Alfonso I and Henry I of England, as is often
claimed, is not certain.
The preserved literary production of Pedro Alfonso
is in Latin, and can be separated into three fi elds of
interest: apologetic, scientifi c, and didactic literature.
As a response to the scandal caused by his conversion,
he wrote Diálogos contra los judíos, in which two char-
acters, Pedro and Moisés, represent the author before
and after his baptism. Throughout the work’s twelve
chapters, Pedro turns to a wide variety of medical, cab-
balistic, and theological arguments to show Moisés the
error of his ways. At the latter’s insistence, in the fi fth
chapter Pedro traces a broad critical panorama of Islam.
If the Diálogos enjoyed especially wide distribution, as
the more than seventy preserved manuscripts dispersed
throughout European libraries prove, the repercussions
of this chapter were even greater.
Very few of Pedro Alfonso’s scientifi c works are pre-
served, and only some incomplete Tablas astronómicas
can be attributed to him with surety. These tablas are
preceded by a curious preliminary text titled “Carta a
los estudiosos franceses”, which seems to have been
motivated by a stay in France, and which becomes an
important document with regard to the author’s position
on the cultural renaissance of the twelfth century. In the
letter, Pedro Alfonso criticizes European intellectuals
for their bookish culture, far removed from the world
of scientifi c practice. He also addresses the traditional
division of the liberal arts, positioning himself among
those partial to the quadrivium, which includes the study
of medicine; in the trivium only the study of dialectics is
saved from the author’s condemnation, but is still only
regarded as a supplementary subject.
Pedro Alfonso’s name has become unquestionably
most associated with the Disciplina clericalis, a com-
bination of exempla (thirty-four total), comparisons,
proverbs, and so on—all focusing on the indoctrina-
tion of students as the title indicates. For the subject’s
organization, the author likely found inspiration in the
books of the Bible, Hebrew religious texts, and mixed
genres of oriental origin. The dialogue between anony-
mous characters (father-son, teacher-disciple) creates a
frame that reaches its maximum development between
examples 9 and 17. The subject matter—knowledge of
self and of neighbor, but always remembering the fear
of God—corresponds to other similar works of oriental
literature. The most popular stories, though, deal with
misogynistic themes, and are closer to the fabliaux in
their narrative scheme. Medieval preachers turned to
the Discliplina clericalis frequently, explaining its wide
diffusion and its importance in the origins of the novel.
Because it was written in Latin, the Disciplina clericalis
became the fi rst pathway through which oriental narra-
tive began to circulate in the West.Further Reading
Alfonso, Pedro. Disciplina clericalis. Intr. M. J. Lacarra, tran. E.
Ducay. Zaragoza, 1980.
Reinhardt, K., and H. Santiago-Otero, Biblioteca bíblica ibérica
medieval Madrid, 1986, 250–58.
María Jesús LacarraPEDRO I THE CRUEL,
KING OF CASTILE (1334–1369)
Born 30 August 1334 in Burgos, Pedro was the only
legitimate child and heir of Alfonso XI of Castile
(1312–1350). His mother was María daughter of King
Afonso IV of Portugal. One of the most controversial
kings of the Castilian Middle Ages, he is the only one
who came to be known by the sobriquet of “the Cruel”
for the many acts of violence associated with the last
stages of his rule. Aside from the personal excesses that
inspired this reputation, Pedro’s reign (1350–1369) is
distinctive for a number of other reasons.
His subjects experienced the full economic and
demographic effects of the fi rst wave of the Black
Death that hit Castile from 1348 to 1350. He led an ag-
gressive war of expansion against Aragón that lasted,
intermittently, from 1357 until the end of the reign. His
policies and alliances contributed to the involvement
of international troops in the peninsular conflict,
making Spain, from 1366 to 1369, the main theater
for the larger military confl ict known as the Hundred
Years’ War. His treatment of the aristocracy and his
poor relations with the Castilian Church and the Avi-
gnon papacy alienated a substantial portion of his mostPECOCK, REGINALD