Peter, Count of Ribagorza

Peter was born in 1305 in Barcelona, the eighth child of King James II of Aragon and Blanche of Anjou.

Peter fortified Empúries against Muslim pirate attacks, enlarged the comital palace and the parish church in Castelló and granted privileges to merchants.

[2] Following the death of King Henry II of Cyprus in 1324, Peter was mooted as a possible husband for his widow, Constance, but the requisite papal dispensation was refused.

[4] In 1325, Peter was dispatched on an embassy to negotiate an exemption from the annual census (tax) that James was required to pay the papacy for the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica.

While Alfonso placed the crown on his own head, his brothers—Archbishop John of Toledo, Count Ramon Berenguer of Prades and Peter—adjusted it.

[7] He became one of the young king's most influential counsellors, drawing him away from the influence of Archbishop Pedro López de Luna.

When Peter IV was on the verge of open conflict with his stepmother, Eleanor of Castile, over the rights of his half-brothers, Ferdinand and John, it was the Count of Ribagorza who dissuaded him from invading Castile, where they had taken refuge, and from attacking Pere de Xèrica [ca], Eleanor's ally.

[2] In May 1331, Peter married Joan, daughter of Count Gaston I of Foix, in Castelló in his County of Empúries.

Within his new county, in the place then called Les Fonts del Perelló, he founded the coastal hospital today known as L'Hospitalet de l'Infant on 8 November 1344.

[2] He penned his Revelations, a prophetic tract in a Joachimite vein and influenced by Jean de Roquetaillade, in an effort to end the "Babylonian captivity" of the papacy in Avignon.

Eleanor sought through Peter to gain papal support for the Genoese intervention that would unseat the regent.

[16] During the Western Schism that resulted in 1378, Peter broke with the king of Aragon and openly supported the Roman pope, Urban VI.

The future John I, using secret channels, managed to block Urban from making Peter a cardinal in 1380.

Psalm 44 , from the illuminated manuscript BnF lat. 8846, the Anglo-Catalan Psalter . The miniatures in this manuscript were painted by Ferrer Bassa under the patronage of Peter of Ribagorza between 1346 and 1348. [ 1 ]
The introduction and dedication of Joan de Castellnou's Glossari (1341). The boxed text reads: "to the honor of the most high, powerful lord, my lord the infante Sir Peter, of the most powerful Sir James, of good memory, king of Aragon, son, by the grace of God, count of Ribagorza and of Empúries" [ 6 ]