Church life, church–state relations, and popular piety in Frederick's Sicily took place amid intense and opposing pressures: local churches fueled by parochial rivalries, a distant and disdained papacy intent on asserting its spiritual authority and restoring ecclesiastical discipline, a king eager to promote his allies and broaden the base of his political strength while furthering his evangelical scheme for purifying the realm, and an illiterate populace torn between its ardent piety, its confusion over widespread heterodoxy, and its growing hostility to clerical authority. The clergy, especially the higher prelates, stood to gain the most from a return to peace. They had traditionally exerted a pervasive influence on everyday Sicilian life. Collectively they represented one of the largest landholders in the realm, with fewer yet larger estates in Val di Mazara, where a bound peasantry could still be found in places, and with more numerous but smaller holdings in the two eastern valli. With their extensive privileges the churches also held prominent positions in trade and commerce, enjoying a number of lucrative monopolies on such things as tunny fishing in Cefalù harbor. These assets had suffered greatly at Angevin hands prior to 1282 and at baronial hands afterwards, which caused the church to view itself as the maligned and battered bulwark of stable society. Thus, when the higher prelates gave their approval to the Catalan dynasty, and especially to Frederick's disputed succession to James, they assumed – in their own minds at least – the aura of national saviors.