Hello! In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was December 27th, 1387. My name is Jonathan
Seyfried, I'm a PhD candidate in history at the
University of New Mexico, and this is The Historian's
Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made.
Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. we're
looking at a document from each day of the first
year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and
Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's
document. I gotta tell you, as I was looking
through the registers of the letters of Joan
and Violant for the beginning of 1387, I didn't
expect to luck out in the way that I did. And
what I mean is that right away on December 26th
and December 27th, I found a pairing of letters
from Joann and Violent on the same subject. And
maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe they're just
constantly doing this. What am I talking about?
I'm talking about how they would work in tandem
on particular issues Joan would send a letter,
and then Violant would send a letter to the
same recipient on the same subject. Maybe this
was standard practice? Maybe other couples did
this? Elite couples in royal families? I don't
know, but I will say that I looked very, very
closely at an instance of this later on in their
reign, an episode that took place in 1393. And
it was just very interesting to me in that case,
how Joan and Violant were working together,
advocating on a particular issue. So today's
document, what we're going to see is that Violante
is writing a letter to Juan Fernandez de Heredia,
the master of Rhodes, the same person who was
the recipient of the letter we were focusing
on yesterday. And the language of this letter
is nearly identical to what Joan had written.
So a day passes. And we have this letter from
Violante also advocating for Bernardo Maloll to
get the new job in some monastery somewhere.
And the descriptors that Violant assigns to
Maloll are pretty much the same. It's not like
a word -for -word copy. There's kind of different
choices made about how to exactly phrase it.
But the meaning is really identical. And also
the length of the letter is almost identical
to the one that Joan had written the day before.
So why aren't they done at the same time? Why
is one dated a day before the other? Is this
an intentional thing so that Joan's letter arrives
first and that, you know, there's a statement
here about sort of the proper order in which
the letters should be written. The person with
more power, the Duke versus the person with presumably
lesser power, the Duchess. It's possible. I do
not know enough to answer that question. So
this really gets into some other questions that
you might have about the routine of the royal
chancery. What was going on that produced the
documents that we have to look at today? You may have gathered
from my explanation yesterday that this is not
in their handwriting. What we're looking at is
not in the handwriting of the sender, for the
most part. I mean, I think I could probably safely
say that 99 % of the outgoing letters that we're
looking at in the archive of the Crown of Aragon
for this time and place, you know, this general
time and place, you know, their copies, their
copies of outgoing letters, and I would say that
really you can count on the idea that the scribes
were writing down the originals of the outgoing
letters also as the person was dictating to them
what should be said. And furthermore, I would
say that it is definitely possible. I think that
you really have to get into a close reading to
know this next thing with any kind of definitive
measure, but it's possible that the person who's
responsible for the letter, the powerful person,
the duke, the duchess, the king, the queen, they're
telling the scribe the topic. of the letter and
what they want communicated. And the scribe is
basically composing the whole thing, bringing
it to that authority figure and saying, is this
good? And the authority figure says, yep, that's
good. And then they send it out. Then. whether
the letter is an original composition in the
person's hand, like in Joan's own handwriting
or Violant's own handwriting, or whether it's
something that was originally handwritten by
the scribe, it then goes to the staff of the
chancery where it gets copied into the sheaf
of papers probably unbound initially although
not sure about that and after it gets copied
down then it gets folded up and maybe there's
like a seal applied to it and and then it's sent
off so what we have what we're looking at are
those copies of the outgoing letters. And that's
why we've got that probata documentation at the
end, because that particular scribe, that staff
member of the royal chancery, is saying, on my
honor, these are the words that were in this
letter. And they're basically putting their own
name to that. Essentially, it's like a legal
testimony that that what they have copied is
true word for word as to what was sent out. I
mean, you can just imagine the kinds of disasters
that could happen if there's sloppiness happening
so that the meaning of what you think you sent
that's in the copy, you consult it later, and
then what actually got sent out is different.
I mean, it could cause a really big problem.
So, you know, there was there was some pressure
on these scribes to get it right. And at the
same time, you can really tell that occasionally
they were working at a really furious pace. the
timing of all this is pretty interesting because
it's super clear that there were backlogs. So
in the registers, there's time jumps. Like sometimes
you'll be reading a letter from one day and then
the next letter is from the next day and it's
all very orderly. And then suddenly there's something
from a month prior thrown in there. And then
it goes back to the, and so you're kind of left
wondering like, oh my gosh, did like this one
get forgotten somewhere? Like, what is the explanation
for this? And then other times it's just like,
clear that there were a whole stack of of letters
from around like a two-week period and the dates
are all like jumbled and so it's going back and
then forward and then back and then forward you
know two days three days and and so you can tell
that there was a bit of a backlog in the chancery
at that time so it's i think pretty interesting
to notice those kinds of things While we're on
the topic of the material object of the register
itself, I want to point out that there's, well,
I want to address something that you've probably
noticed. There's holes. There's holes in these
papers. Those kind of globs that you see that
are just kind of looking like damage to the paper.
Those are wormholes. Those are good old bookworms.
Some of them might be kind of insects, but from
what I've heard, those are like literally worms
that are like burrowing through these things
as they were in storage and left alone for at
times, you know, a couple centuries. So some
of the documents have just a ton. of damage and
others are relatively minor. What you're looking
at in today's document I would call, relatively
speaking, minor damage. So there's a bunch of
holes, but overall it's pretty minor damage.
Okay, one other thing that I wanted to mention
about the format of the letter here. is that
there's some things that are consistent and other
things that are not consistent as you look from
letter to letter in these registers. Here's what's
consistent. The name of the recipient appears
at the beginning of the letter, not always right
away as in the case in this particular letter.
Sometimes it's within the first couple lines
because the sender could appear at the very beginning
of the letter. You'll find it though within,
you'll find the recipient's name absolutely within
the first couple lines of the letter. Sometimes
you luck out and the recipient is at the very
beginning. like in this case. Okay, in this situation
we see maestro amigo, master friend, and we know
that it's again Heredia, the master of roads,
because in the last line, the little short line,
the bottom left corner, we see in this situation
it's roads. It's not roadie. like we had in Joan's
letter, here it's Rhodes with an S. This is,
I think, scribal preference in how to refer to
Rhodes, which is interesting. That gets into
something that's not consistent. But let me just
talk about two other things that are consistent.
The probata, the notation about the scribe saying
I here, testify that this is a true copy of what
got sent out, that is always at the lower right
below the document. One other thing that's consistent
in all the documents is that on the last line
of the block of the document's text is the date.
And what's kind of fun about this document that
we're looking at today is that you can clearly
see that on the last line of the text block there,
the letters S, E, T. That is set. It's seven.
And so what we have here is the date of a seven,
but there it looks like they're missing the 80.
Oh, no, no, they've got it in there. They've
got it in there. Sorry. So it's 1387. Okay. And
we'll talk about, well, at the beginning of the
line, you can clearly see December there with
a macron at the end. Okay. So the date is reliably
at the end of the document. What's not consistent?
name spellings, as we've seen, and then also
where the sender is located. So in this situation,
we see La Duquessa de Girona at the bottom left,
like right above where Master of Rhodes is written
there. And so, you know, in yesterday's document,
we had Primogenit at the top. So that can kind
of float around. Okay, so there's a couple other
things I could talk about, consistency or not
consistency, but oh my gosh, we're already really
at like 15 minutes here. So I just want to mention
something about the content of the document,
that what we're looking at here is an example
of influence, that the secular authorities are
influencing or attempting to influence ecclesiastical
appointments in the Crown of Aragon. That's really
what this document is doing. So questions that
come up. Goodness, I've already mentioned a few.
We can really repeat a lot of the questions that
I thought of yesterday with the letter from Joanne.
I think my major question here is how is this
letter an example or an illustration of the way
that the two of them were working in tandem.
And how unusual was that compared to other elite
couples? I'm also really wondering still about
whether this was a composition from Violant
herself or whether the scribe basically composed
it because she told him to, and she just kind
of signed off on it. That's really the major
mystery that I would love to know about this.
Last but not least, I want to know the gender
dynamics that we see in this letter. What is
it an illustrative example of in terms of Violant's
authority as a duchess. Also the way that she
has more clout in particular situations because
of her connections to French nobility and French
royalty. I really want to know about how this
is kind of like a situation where she might have
more power overall than Joanne because she has
more connections in France and this pope is French
so that's really one of the largest questions
that that I have one of the most burning questions
because in this podcast you're one of the main
goals is for me to figure out some information
about what was going on in terms of gender between
Joan and Violant and how they related to
the outside world and how it affected their political
authority. Alright, that does it for today. Thanks
for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, 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, jonathanseyfried.net
to see an image of today's document with
those wormholes and additional show notes. And
listen again tomorrow to hear about the next
day. in the first year of the reign of King Joan
of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the meantime,
take care.