ith him to the council, and the cardinal legate was so
charmed with his talents and virtue, that he associated him in his
legation, and gave him a commission to preach the holy war against the
Moors. The servant of God acquitted himself of that function with so
much prudence, zeal, and charity, that he sowed the seeds of the total
overthrow of those infidels in Spain. His labors were no less successful
in the reformation of the manners of the Christians detained in
servitude under the Moors, which were extremely corrupted by their long
slavery or commerce with these infidels. Raymund showed them, by words
full of heavenly unction and fire, that, to triumph over their bodily,
they must first conquer their spiritual enemies, and subdue sin in
themselves, which made God their enemy. Inculcating these and the like
spiritual lessons, he ran over Catalonia, Aragon, Castile, and other
countries. So general a change was wrought hereby in the manners of the
people, as seemed incredible to all but those who were witnesses of it.
By their conversion the anger of God was appeased, and the arms of the
faithful became terrible to their enemies. The kings of Castile and Leon
freed many places from the Moorish yoke. Don James, king of Aragon,
drove them out of the islands of Majorca and Minorca, and soon after, in
1237, out of the whole kingdom of Valentia. Pope Gregory IX. having
called St. Raymund to Rome in 1230, nominated him his chaplain, (which
was the title of the Auditor of the causes of the apostolic palace,) as
also grand penitentiary. He made him likewise his own confessarius, and
in difficult affairs came to no decision but by his advice. The saint
still reserved himself for the poor, and was so solicitous for them that
his Holiness called him their father. He enjoined the pope, for a
penance, to receive, hear, and expedite immediately all petitions
presented by them. The pope, who was well versed in the canon law,
ordered the saint to gather into one body all the scattered decree, of
popes and councils, since the collection made by Gratian in 1150.
Raymund compiled this work in three years, in five books, commonly
called the Decretals, which the same pope Gregory confirmed in 1234. It
is looked upon as the best finished part of the body of the canon law;
on which account the canonists have usually chosen it for the texts of
their comments. In 1235, the pope named St. Raymund to the archbishopric
of Tarragon, the capital of A