Smaragd also exercised his metropolitan rights; when Oliver, Bishop of Syrmia intended to resign from his position and join the Franciscans due to his severe illness in 1262, he sent his two canons to the Roman Curia to request Pope Urban IV to resign from his office. The pope wrote a letter to Smaragd in December 1262, and asked him to investigate the circumstances and if he sees fit, accept the resignation of Oliver, absolve him from the obligation to govern the diocese and allow him to join the Franciscan monks. After previous failed initiatives, Ponsa, Bishop of Bosnia again asked the Holy See in 1264 to put his bishopric under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Kalocsa instead of the Diocese of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). Ponsa argued, Smaragd and his predecessors were committed to fight "with great sacrifice and cost" against the Bosnian Church, which was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. However, the official replacement did not happen until the beginning of the 14th century. When Pope Urban aimed to restore the Latin Empire by military recruitment, which proved to be a failed attempt, at the turn of 1263 and 1264, among others he requested also the Archdiocese of Kalocsa to contribute to the cost of the crusade, but Smaragd successfully petitioned to the Roman Curia for exemption from payment, referring to the continuous raids of Mongol marauders at the border. The archbishop also referred to that his archdiocese still had not recovered from the large-scale Mongol invasion two decades ago. Smaragd was involved in an ecclesiastical controversy in 1263. Upon Pope Urban's order, he appointed Irenaeus, a canon of Győr as provost of Sopron, but the bishop, Amadeus Pok prevented his subordinate from taking possession of the benefice. As a result, Smaragd excommunicated Amadeus Pok and Irenaeus filed a lawsuit against his superior. The pope commissioned the Hungarian cardinal Stephen I Báncsa to investigate the dispute.