Lancelot of Navarre

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Lancelot of Navarre (15 April 1386 – 8 January 1420), also called Lanzarot, was the illegitimate son of King Charles III of Navarre. He became the vicar general and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Pamplona and held the ceremonial title of Latin Patriarch of Alexandria.

He was born to Charles III and his mistress Maria Miguel de Esparza. After Charles became king in 1387, Lancelot lived at the royal court with his mother and the king’s other illegitimate children. Queen Eleanor, Charles’s wife, left the court with her daughters in protest. The queen may have feared Lancelot could threaten her daughters’ rights, though illegitimate children could not inherit the throne. The rift was later healed when their eldest daughter Joan was named heir presumptive and Charles promised to treat Eleanor well. Charles placed Lancelot under the care of the royal treasurer García López de Lizásoain.

In 1390 Lancelot’s mother retired to a convent. His religious education was overseen by the abbot García de Ballariaín. In 1394 he helped lay the foundation stone of the Gothic Cathedral of Pamplona. In 1397 he began learning Latin at a Pamplona school with his brother Godfrey, and on 24 January 1403 he left for the University of Toulouse, where the king supplied him with books.

Charles hoped Lancelot would become bishop of Pamplona and wrote about this in his will in June 1403. In November 1403 two archdeacons nominated him as bishop, but the Avignon pope Benedict XIII refused. In 1404 Lancelot was made apostolic notary, archdeacon of Calahorra, and sacristan of Vich. Calahorra was in Castile, and the Castilians agreed to him in 1407. Benedict XIII would not appoint him bishop even after the see became vacant in 1406, and Charles’s embassies led by Lancelot to Avignon failed. Benedict XIII eventually relented when he faced pressure in the schism and allowed Lancelot to govern the see as vicar general and apostolic administrator in 1408, though Lancelot could not be consecrated bishop. In 1418 he received the titular see of Alexandria.

During his time in charge, the chapter chambers were turned into a proper episcopal palace next to the cathedral. He witnessed important royal events, such as the proclamation of his father’s second will in 1412 and the coronation of Ferdinand I of Aragon in 1414. The following year he, with his brother Godefroy, marched to the Viscounty of Béarn to support Count John I of Foix in the Hundred Years’ War. In 1418 Lancelot expanded the Aratzuri Castle with his father’s help. He led a somewhat irregular life for a clergyman, leaving two illegitimate children, Margaret and John, and accumulating large debts. He died in Olite on 8 January 1420 and was buried in the Cathedral of Pamplona.