Aeci

Aeci (or Aetius) (died 1010), Bishop of Barcelona from 995, was a warrior-prelate in the age of the Peace and Truce of God. Besides military endeavours, mainly reconquista (the re-conquest of Islamic territory), his episcopate was taken up with the repopulation of the Penedès in the south of the diocese, on the frontier with al-Andalus.

In 997 Aeci, as bishop, received a conditional gift from one Sendred Donús of land at La Boadella and a garden in the burgus (suburbs) of Barcelona. Among Sendred's several stipulations for the bishop was that the sacriscrinius (churchwarden) Bonfill and his successors should not be removed from that post. In the church's cartulary, the Libri antiquitatum, the scribe has called this document a conveniencia (agreement), the earliest use of that spelling, which has persisted in modern Catalan.

Between 1000 and 1002, and again in 1003, the Muslims destroyed the fortified tower (turris) of La Granada, a possession of the see of Barcelona. Twice, in 1005 and 1009, Aeci sold or exchanged ecclesiastical estates in an effort to raise the funds to rebuild it. An earlier piece of property which had been donated "to the cathedral, the poor, and pilgrims" by Bishop Vives was devastated by the sack of Barcelona by Almanzor in 985, but in 1009 Aeci donated an estate of his own for the same purpose ("to feed the canons and the poor") and gave it to the restored canonry. There was at that time no "clear distinction between voluntary and involuntary poverty".