Happy New Year It's December 25th 2025 but in
the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago Well, it was
also December 25th, but it was 1387 the first
day of 1387 in the Crown of Aragon in that time
period people celebrated New Year's Day on Christmas.
The year changed on December 25th. Welcome to
season one of the Historian's Notebook. Jonathan
Seyfried and I am a PhD candidate in history
at the University of New Mexico. The Historian's
Notebook takes you on a journey through the research
process that historians go through when they
create historical narratives from what they read
in the archives. It's part of being a historian
that often becomes invisible by the time the
research gets published in an article or book.
This first season of the Historian's Notebook
is titled Molt Cara Companyona, a phrase that
translates to My Dearest Companion or Most Dear
Companion. King Joan I of the Crown of Aragon
frequently used this phrase in letters to his
wife, Queen Violant de Bar. In this season
of the Historian's Notebook, I'll tell you a
little bit about a document closely connected
to Joan and Violante, who lived in the late 14th
century. The Archive of the Crown of Aragon holds
so many documents that we can look at one for
every day of their reign. Now, let's begin. The
document that I'm talking about today is dated
December 25th, 1387, and as the very beginning
of today's podcast explained, well, this was
New Year's Day. Letters or documents written
on December 24th, they would have had the year
listed as 1386. So, Violante on New Year's Day
wrote a letter to the officials, the most politically
powerful officials in the city of Montpellier.
And this is kind of on the outer edge of the
territory of the Crown of Aragon. Montpellier
was known for having a university that was at
really the top of its class for medical knowledge.
So there are a few cities in the late Middle
Ages that were at the top of the list. Montpellier
was one, Salerno was another. So Violent is writing
this letter to the officials who are in charge
of running Montpellier and and I guess maybe
like have some sway when it comes to criminal
matters because the content of the letter is
about some students that got into trouble some
students that are subjects of the crown of Aragon
probably Aragonese and This information alone
brings up so, so much that needs to be explained
in the background, but I'm gonna pause on talking
about this particular letter for just a moment
in order to give you a little bit of a groundwork
on what the podcast is going to be like. So...
What's going to happen in this podcast is that
some days I will go deep into the document and
spend a whole lot of time with it. I mean, relatively
speaking, these are going to be short, bite sized
episodes. Other times, I'm just going to talk
about the document a little bit, maybe for about
a minute, and then use it as sort of the tip
of an iceberg for a lot of background knowledge
that listeners will find helpful when trying
to understand just you know, what is going on
with the individual document, as well as the
larger story of Joanne and Violant, who began
their reign as King and Queen of the Crown of
Aragon in 1387. So one thing about this document
is that it is signed from the Duchess because
they didn't start their reign Violant didn't
become queen until something like January 6th
or 7th. And there's some question marks about
how the transition of power took place. But in
the very first days of 1387, Violante was the
Duchess of Girona. Joan was the Duke of Girona.
And Joan's father, Père, he dies on, it seems,
January 5th. And so basically what we've got
here in this moment, in these final days of Pair's
reign, is a lot of anticipation because he didn't
die suddenly. The guy had been on the throne
for 50 years. He's old and he had been declining.
He was pretty much on his deathbed for many weeks.
And is Joan there with his father as his father
is on his deathbed? No. Joan and Violant are
in Girona, quite a distance away from Barcelona,
where Pére was laying, dying. So this raises
some questions, and there's some answers to those
questions, which I will get to in due course.
So I want to take a step back and just on day
one of the podcast, explain a little bit about
what is happening here. What's happening here
is that I am taking the listeners through you,
my friend, through something like an initial
sweep through the archive. When historians are
taking on a new project, they'll go to an archive
or, you know, maybe the archive they're not physically
going to, but they're accessing it online, which
is what's happening for me with this season.
And they have some theories about what they might
find. sometimes just very general questions of
curiosity, other times very specific, like I
think that there was an assassination. They're
going in and they're reading through a bunch
of documents in order to try to find the material
that will help them to support an interpretation
or an argument about what happened in the past.
So at this point, in the process of constructing
a historical narrative. The historian is going
through and just kind of identifying what the
documents are and generally what they say. They
can't really take a ton of time to thoroughly
analyze each and every document because there's
only so much time you have at this stage and
you might miss a really important one down the
road if you use up all your time going deep into
every single document you find at the beginning.
But of course there's a balance because maybe
at the beginning you find something incredibly
amazing. So it's that tension that you'll kind
of see me working with as we go through the course
of the year. So what's happening at this moment
is going through and just taking some notes on
each document every single day of that first
year of Joan and Violant's reign. And as we
know, starting technically before they became
king and queen. So really going from December
25th 1387 to December 24th, 1387. That sounds
weird, but that is a total of 365 days. So what's
going to happen in the podcast is a variation.
Sometimes the whole 15 minute episode will be
about that one document really going into a close
reading. Other times it'll be all context. But
something that is going to happen probably every
single episode is that there's just gonna be
a ton of questions. There's no way when you're
looking at a document for the first time that
you can definitively reach conclusions about
all the things you're wondering. At this stage,
historians are gathering their engaging their
curiosity, and they're keeping in mind a concept
that Sam Wineburg calls the specification of
ignorance. They're keeping in mind all the things
that they do not know, both about the content
of the letter and also about the larger context.
So for this letter by Violant on December 25th,
Let me just list to you some questions that I
came up with after reading it. What did the students
do? Was it criminal? It seems so, but she doesn't
say it. She refers to the situation as the case
or a case. Does Violant have Montpellier in
her portfolio or have particular jurisdiction
over it? Or is this a region that Joan would
also have equal authority over? How unusual was
it for the Duke and Duchess of Girona to intercede
on behalf of students who got into trouble in
Montpellier and other places? Were the students
connected to elite figures or friends of Joan
and Violant? This is actually previewing something
that is going to come up on January 2nd. Joan
wrote a letter about these students, too. What
does the precipitating incident say about student
identity or the student lifestyle in university
towns in the late 14th century? How many Crown
of Aragon subjects went to distant lands for
university training? Were there physician training
universities in Iberia at this time? It's something
I don't know. Montpellier might be the closest
one to the Crown of Aragon. How does Violant's
imminent ascension to the throne shape the way
that she writes this letter, the content or the
tone of it? And did Joan intercede before Violant
did? Did he intercede after? I don't know. It's
part of the challenge of the way that the documents
in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon are organized
and make things a little bit difficult to find.
More on that in the coming episodes. So that's
a set of questions and it's by no means the end
of my list of questions when it comes to just
working with this one document. but it models
for you what's going on as a historian encounters
a document even at this stage of the initial
sweep. At this point, you might be curious to
take a look at the document that I'm talking
about. Well, on my website, jonathanseyfried.net,
I am going to post every single document that
I discuss. in this season of the Historian's
Notebook. So head on over there and click on
the Historian's Notebook link and you'll be able
to find not only an image of this letter but
also some notes on it and a few links especially
if I cite a source I'll put in a bibliography
for that day's episode. So there's a lot to look
at and a lot to think about as we dive into this
sort of right in the middle. There's so many
questions that I want to answer for you, and
I could do like a four -hour lecture about everything
I know about Joan and Violant, but I don't
know. I think it's going to be a little bit more
fun to just dive right in into the middle of
things and sort of... as you go on, get more
comfortable with this time and place and the
people and their personalities. One last thing
before I conclude today's episode. I wanted to
address something that we started out with. New
Year's Day! Because you might have thought, oh,
well, that's kind of weird that... New Year's
Day was also Christmas, but you know, Christianity
was really big deal in that society at that time.
That kind of makes sense. But I want to share
with you that in different places at this time
in these centuries, the late Middle Ages, kind
of talking about maybe generally 1200 to 1500s,
the convention for the New Year was so weird
because it varied. There were a lot of places
in Western Europe that started the new year in
March, specifically on Annunciation Day, March
25th. Annunciation Day was the day that the angel
Gabriel came down to Mary and said, you're going
to have a baby. So March 25th was New Year's
Day in a lot of places and I'm just really happy
that at least in The Crown of Aragon, at this
time in 1387, New Year's Day was at least like
somewhat close to New Year's that we have today,
on January 1st, because otherwise it gets really
confusing about like... when you're trying to
read a document knowing sort of which year it
was and what came before and what came after.
So chronology is tough when you start when you're
reading something and the new year starts on
March 25th as is the case in a lot of places.
All right, well that was a little funky fun fact
for you about the Middle Ages. So many more of
those on the way. Thanks for listening to this
episode of The Historian's Notebook, the inaugural
episode. This season, season one, Molt Cara Companyona.
If you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, I have done my job. Remember, the
motto of The Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction
guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image
of today's document and additional show notes,
and listen again tomorrow to hear about the next
day in the first year of the reign of King Joan
I of Aragon and Queen Violante de Bar. In the
meantime, take care.