2854

. February 6. Perugia. Pope Innocent IV writes to [cardinal-]bishop of Tusculum (Frascati) and papal legate [Eudes de Châteauroux], relating that the knight Guglielmo Tosetti (Tossitum), citizen of Genoa and relative and familiar of the pope, explained in the pope’s presence that, in answer to the pope’s prayers, King [Henry I] of Cyprus knighted and enfeoffed him, as befits the knight of such an excellent king and the honour of royal knighthood. Then after the death of Guglielmo’s wife, whom he had married on the orders of the same king, the king less fittingly despoiled him of the aforesaid fief and other things that the knight held in the kingdom, although he had done nothing to merit the loss of the royal benefice. Therefore the pope orders the legate to intercede on the knight’s behalf and warn and induce the king, out of reverence for the pope and the Apostolic See, to restore to the knight the fief and other things that the king is known to have taken and otherwise to treat him with affection as his knight. If the legate’s warning does not work, since the pope cannot and must not leave the knight without justice, however much the pope wants to defer to the king’s honour, the legate is to have justice shown to the knight concerning the fief and other things.