WEBVTT 00:00:00.560 --> 00:00:06.379 Hello! In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:13.619 it was December 27th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.619 --> 00:00:17.300 Seyfried, I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:21.260 University of New Mexico, and this is The Historian's 00:00:21.260 --> 00:00:25.960 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:31.059 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. we're 00:00:31.059 --> 00:00:34.020 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:34.020 --> 00:00:38.780 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:43.240 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:43.240 --> 00:01:11.519 document. I gotta tell you, as I was looking 00:01:11.519 --> 00:01:17.040 through the registers of the letters of Joan 00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:23.579 and Violant for the beginning of 1387, I didn't 00:01:23.579 --> 00:01:30.760 expect to luck out in the way that I did. And 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:38.049 what I mean is that right away on December 26th 00:01:38.049 --> 00:01:44.189 and December 27th, I found a pairing of letters 00:01:44.189 --> 00:01:49.090 from Joann and Violent on the same subject. And 00:01:49.090 --> 00:01:53.390 maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe they're just 00:01:53.390 --> 00:01:56.390 constantly doing this. What am I talking about? 00:01:56.409 --> 00:02:00.549 I'm talking about how they would work in tandem 00:02:00.549 --> 00:02:06.340 on particular issues Joan would send a letter, 00:02:07.019 --> 00:02:09.860 and then Violant would send a letter to the 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:14.039 same recipient on the same subject. Maybe this 00:02:14.039 --> 00:02:20.639 was standard practice? Maybe other couples did 00:02:20.639 --> 00:02:25.439 this? Elite couples in royal families? I don't 00:02:25.439 --> 00:02:30.419 know, but I will say that I looked very, very 00:02:30.419 --> 00:02:33.659 closely at an instance of this later on in their 00:02:33.659 --> 00:02:39.159 reign, an episode that took place in 1393. And 00:02:39.159 --> 00:02:45.560 it was just very interesting to me in that case, 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:49.180 how Joan and Violant were working together, 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:54.599 advocating on a particular issue. So today's 00:02:54.599 --> 00:02:58.949 document, what we're going to see is that Violante 00:02:58.949 --> 00:03:05.110 is writing a letter to Juan Fernandez de Heredia, 00:03:05.550 --> 00:03:09.490 the master of Rhodes, the same person who was 00:03:09.490 --> 00:03:11.229 the recipient of the letter we were focusing 00:03:11.229 --> 00:03:15.550 on yesterday. And the language of this letter 00:03:15.550 --> 00:03:21.810 is nearly identical to what Joan had written. 00:03:22.949 --> 00:03:29.919 So a day passes. And we have this letter from 00:03:29.919 --> 00:03:36.599 Violante also advocating for Bernardo Maloll to 00:03:36.599 --> 00:03:41.180 get the new job in some monastery somewhere. 00:03:42.919 --> 00:03:48.479 And the descriptors that Violant assigns to 00:03:48.479 --> 00:03:52.539 Maloll are pretty much the same. It's not like 00:03:52.539 --> 00:03:56.199 a word -for -word copy. There's kind of different 00:03:56.199 --> 00:03:59.879 choices made about how to exactly phrase it. 00:04:00.039 --> 00:04:04.259 But the meaning is really identical. And also 00:04:04.259 --> 00:04:07.280 the length of the letter is almost identical 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:11.120 to the one that Joan had written the day before. 00:04:11.939 --> 00:04:15.300 So why aren't they done at the same time? Why 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:19.459 is one dated a day before the other? Is this 00:04:19.689 --> 00:04:23.930 an intentional thing so that Joan's letter arrives 00:04:23.930 --> 00:04:28.689 first and that, you know, there's a statement 00:04:28.689 --> 00:04:34.069 here about sort of the proper order in which 00:04:34.069 --> 00:04:37.370 the letters should be written. The person with 00:04:37.370 --> 00:04:42.649 more power, the Duke versus the person with presumably 00:04:42.649 --> 00:04:47.870 lesser power, the Duchess. It's possible. I do 00:04:47.870 --> 00:04:51.730 not know enough to answer that question. So 00:04:51.730 --> 00:04:58.910 this really gets into some other questions that 00:04:58.910 --> 00:05:02.569 you might have about the routine of the royal 00:05:02.569 --> 00:05:08.649 chancery. What was going on that produced the 00:05:08.649 --> 00:05:13.120 documents that we have to look at today? You may have gathered 00:05:13.120 --> 00:05:16.620 from my explanation yesterday that this is not 00:05:16.620 --> 00:05:19.199 in their handwriting. What we're looking at is 00:05:19.199 --> 00:05:24.220 not in the handwriting of the sender, for the 00:05:24.220 --> 00:05:27.139 most part. I mean, I think I could probably safely 00:05:27.139 --> 00:05:33.600 say that 99 % of the outgoing letters that we're 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:37.160 looking at in the archive of the Crown of Aragon 00:05:37.160 --> 00:05:40.139 for this time and place, you know, this general 00:05:40.139 --> 00:05:45.509 time and place, you know, their copies, their 00:05:45.509 --> 00:05:49.350 copies of outgoing letters, and I would say that 00:05:49.350 --> 00:05:55.269 really you can count on the idea that the scribes 00:05:55.269 --> 00:05:58.449 were writing down the originals of the outgoing 00:05:58.449 --> 00:06:03.009 letters also as the person was dictating to them 00:06:03.009 --> 00:06:06.949 what should be said. And furthermore, I would 00:06:06.949 --> 00:06:11.269 say that it is definitely possible. I think that 00:06:11.269 --> 00:06:13.910 you really have to get into a close reading to 00:06:13.910 --> 00:06:19.110 know this next thing with any kind of definitive 00:06:19.110 --> 00:06:25.730 measure, but it's possible that the person who's 00:06:25.730 --> 00:06:29.629 responsible for the letter, the powerful person, 00:06:29.810 --> 00:06:33.050 the duke, the duchess, the king, the queen, they're 00:06:33.050 --> 00:06:37.399 telling the scribe the topic. of the letter and 00:06:37.399 --> 00:06:42.100 what they want communicated. And the scribe is 00:06:42.100 --> 00:06:45.519 basically composing the whole thing, bringing 00:06:45.519 --> 00:06:50.360 it to that authority figure and saying, is this 00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:52.860 good? And the authority figure says, yep, that's 00:06:52.860 --> 00:06:58.480 good. And then they send it out. Then. whether 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:01.800 the letter is an original composition in the 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:05.439 person's hand, like in Joan's own handwriting 00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:09.860 or Violant's own handwriting, or whether it's 00:07:09.860 --> 00:07:13.019 something that was originally handwritten by 00:07:13.019 --> 00:07:20.560 the scribe, it then goes to the staff of the 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:27.670 chancery where it gets copied into the sheaf 00:07:27.670 --> 00:07:34.170 of papers probably unbound initially although 00:07:34.170 --> 00:07:39.310 not sure about that and after it gets copied 00:07:39.310 --> 00:07:42.629 down then it gets folded up and maybe there's 00:07:42.629 --> 00:07:46.310 like a seal applied to it and and then it's sent 00:07:46.310 --> 00:07:52.670 off so what we have what we're looking at are 00:07:52.670 --> 00:07:58.660 those copies of the outgoing letters. And that's 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:04.600 why we've got that probata documentation at the 00:08:04.600 --> 00:08:11.300 end, because that particular scribe, that staff 00:08:11.300 --> 00:08:16.079 member of the royal chancery, is saying, on my 00:08:16.079 --> 00:08:20.779 honor, these are the words that were in this 00:08:20.779 --> 00:08:26.560 letter. And they're basically putting their own 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:31.680 name to that. Essentially, it's like a legal 00:08:31.680 --> 00:08:36.240 testimony that that what they have copied is 00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:40.899 true word for word as to what was sent out. I 00:08:40.899 --> 00:08:44.720 mean, you can just imagine the kinds of disasters 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:49.639 that could happen if there's sloppiness happening 00:08:49.639 --> 00:08:54.179 so that the meaning of what you think you sent 00:08:54.179 --> 00:08:57.019 that's in the copy, you consult it later, and 00:08:57.019 --> 00:08:58.799 then what actually got sent out is different. 00:08:58.820 --> 00:09:00.840 I mean, it could cause a really big problem. 00:09:01.279 --> 00:09:03.460 So, you know, there was there was some pressure 00:09:03.460 --> 00:09:07.820 on these scribes to get it right. And at the 00:09:07.820 --> 00:09:12.000 same time, you can really tell that occasionally 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:18.200 they were working at a really furious pace. the 00:09:18.200 --> 00:09:24.179 timing of all this is pretty interesting because 00:09:24.179 --> 00:09:30.039 it's super clear that there were backlogs. So 00:09:30.039 --> 00:09:33.860 in the registers, there's time jumps. Like sometimes 00:09:33.860 --> 00:09:37.580 you'll be reading a letter from one day and then 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:39.600 the next letter is from the next day and it's 00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:43.399 all very orderly. And then suddenly there's something 00:09:43.399 --> 00:09:46.840 from a month prior thrown in there. And then 00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:50.500 it goes back to the, and so you're kind of left 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:52.740 wondering like, oh my gosh, did like this one 00:09:52.740 --> 00:09:55.799 get forgotten somewhere? Like, what is the explanation 00:09:55.799 --> 00:09:59.460 for this? And then other times it's just like, 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:03.179 clear that there were a whole stack of of letters 00:10:03.179 --> 00:10:06.700 from around like a two-week period and the dates 00:10:06.700 --> 00:10:10.399 are all like jumbled and so it's going back and 00:10:10.399 --> 00:10:12.519 then forward and then back and then forward you 00:10:12.519 --> 00:10:15.899 know two days three days and and so you can tell 00:10:15.899 --> 00:10:19.360 that there was a bit of a backlog in the chancery 00:10:19.360 --> 00:10:24.139 at that time so it's i think pretty interesting 00:10:24.139 --> 00:10:27.440 to notice those kinds of things While we're on 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:31.159 the topic of the material object of the register 00:10:31.159 --> 00:10:36.460 itself, I want to point out that there's, well, 00:10:36.539 --> 00:10:38.679 I want to address something that you've probably 00:10:38.679 --> 00:10:41.779 noticed. There's holes. There's holes in these 00:10:41.779 --> 00:10:47.639 papers. Those kind of globs that you see that 00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:52.039 are just kind of looking like damage to the paper. 00:10:53.540 --> 00:10:58.120 Those are wormholes. Those are good old bookworms. 00:10:58.220 --> 00:11:02.200 Some of them might be kind of insects, but from 00:11:02.200 --> 00:11:05.580 what I've heard, those are like literally worms 00:11:05.580 --> 00:11:08.100 that are like burrowing through these things 00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:12.179 as they were in storage and left alone for at 00:11:12.179 --> 00:11:17.100 times, you know, a couple centuries. So some 00:11:17.100 --> 00:11:22.759 of the documents have just a ton. of damage and 00:11:22.759 --> 00:11:26.500 others are relatively minor. What you're looking 00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:30.860 at in today's document I would call, relatively 00:11:30.860 --> 00:11:35.759 speaking, minor damage. So there's a bunch of 00:11:35.759 --> 00:11:39.519 holes, but overall it's pretty minor damage. 00:11:40.580 --> 00:11:43.720 Okay, one other thing that I wanted to mention 00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:49.350 about the format of the letter here. is that 00:11:49.350 --> 00:11:52.889 there's some things that are consistent and other 00:11:52.889 --> 00:11:56.110 things that are not consistent as you look from 00:11:56.110 --> 00:12:00.309 letter to letter in these registers. Here's what's 00:12:00.309 --> 00:12:05.029 consistent. The name of the recipient appears 00:12:05.470 --> 00:12:08.649 at the beginning of the letter, not always right 00:12:08.649 --> 00:12:11.950 away as in the case in this particular letter. 00:12:12.190 --> 00:12:15.110 Sometimes it's within the first couple lines 00:12:15.110 --> 00:12:18.470 because the sender could appear at the very beginning 00:12:18.470 --> 00:12:21.649 of the letter. You'll find it though within, 00:12:21.669 --> 00:12:25.549 you'll find the recipient's name absolutely within 00:12:25.549 --> 00:12:29.029 the first couple lines of the letter. Sometimes 00:12:29.029 --> 00:12:33.789 you luck out and the recipient is at the very 00:12:33.789 --> 00:12:39.379 beginning. like in this case. Okay, in this situation 00:12:39.379 --> 00:12:46.419 we see maestro amigo, master friend, and we know 00:12:46.419 --> 00:12:49.740 that it's again Heredia, the master of roads, 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:53.779 because in the last line, the little short line, 00:12:53.960 --> 00:12:58.940 the bottom left corner, we see in this situation 00:12:58.940 --> 00:13:03.220 it's roads. It's not roadie. like we had in Joan's 00:13:03.220 --> 00:13:06.460 letter, here it's Rhodes with an S. This is, 00:13:06.460 --> 00:13:13.120 I think, scribal preference in how to refer to 00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:15.539 Rhodes, which is interesting. That gets into 00:13:15.539 --> 00:13:20.080 something that's not consistent. But let me just 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:22.879 talk about two other things that are consistent. 00:13:24.340 --> 00:13:29.860 The probata, the notation about the scribe saying 00:13:29.860 --> 00:13:35.549 I here, testify that this is a true copy of what 00:13:35.549 --> 00:13:39.950 got sent out, that is always at the lower right 00:13:39.950 --> 00:13:45.269 below the document. One other thing that's consistent 00:13:45.269 --> 00:13:48.909 in all the documents is that on the last line 00:13:48.909 --> 00:13:53.649 of the block of the document's text is the date. 00:13:54.850 --> 00:13:58.990 And what's kind of fun about this document that 00:13:58.990 --> 00:14:02.190 we're looking at today is that you can clearly 00:14:02.190 --> 00:14:06.250 see that on the last line of the text block there, 00:14:06.870 --> 00:14:15.129 the letters S, E, T. That is set. It's seven. 00:14:15.950 --> 00:14:22.769 And so what we have here is the date of a seven, 00:14:23.009 --> 00:14:29.289 but there it looks like they're missing the 80. 00:14:30.629 --> 00:14:32.070 Oh, no, no, they've got it in there. They've 00:14:32.070 --> 00:14:37.710 got it in there. Sorry. So it's 1387. Okay. And 00:14:37.710 --> 00:14:40.490 we'll talk about, well, at the beginning of the 00:14:40.490 --> 00:14:44.409 line, you can clearly see December there with 00:14:44.409 --> 00:14:50.950 a macron at the end. Okay. So the date is reliably 00:14:50.950 --> 00:14:53.970 at the end of the document. What's not consistent? 00:14:55.300 --> 00:14:59.899 name spellings, as we've seen, and then also 00:14:59.899 --> 00:15:04.279 where the sender is located. So in this situation, 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:09.340 we see La Duquessa de Girona at the bottom left, 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:14.500 like right above where Master of Rhodes is written 00:15:14.500 --> 00:15:18.320 there. And so, you know, in yesterday's document, 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:23.360 we had Primogenit at the top. So that can kind 00:15:23.360 --> 00:15:27.120 of float around. Okay, so there's a couple other 00:15:27.120 --> 00:15:29.059 things I could talk about, consistency or not 00:15:29.059 --> 00:15:32.720 consistency, but oh my gosh, we're already really 00:15:32.720 --> 00:15:37.120 at like 15 minutes here. So I just want to mention 00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.659 something about the content of the document, 00:15:39.799 --> 00:15:43.019 that what we're looking at here is an example 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:47.259 of influence, that the secular authorities are 00:15:47.259 --> 00:15:51.789 influencing or attempting to influence ecclesiastical 00:15:51.789 --> 00:15:54.049 appointments in the Crown of Aragon. That's really 00:15:54.049 --> 00:15:58.330 what this document is doing. So questions that 00:15:58.330 --> 00:16:01.710 come up. Goodness, I've already mentioned a few. 00:16:02.110 --> 00:16:04.549 We can really repeat a lot of the questions that 00:16:04.549 --> 00:16:08.769 I thought of yesterday with the letter from Joanne. 00:16:09.049 --> 00:16:14.509 I think my major question here is how is this 00:16:14.509 --> 00:16:18.720 letter an example or an illustration of the way 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:20.740 that the two of them were working in tandem. 00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:27.700 And how unusual was that compared to other elite 00:16:27.700 --> 00:16:33.159 couples? I'm also really wondering still about 00:16:33.159 --> 00:16:39.379 whether this was a composition from Violant 00:16:39.379 --> 00:16:43.809 herself or whether the scribe basically composed 00:16:43.809 --> 00:16:47.990 it because she told him to, and she just kind 00:16:47.990 --> 00:16:52.769 of signed off on it. That's really the major 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:57.529 mystery that I would love to know about this. 00:17:00.090 --> 00:17:04.789 Last but not least, I want to know the gender 00:17:04.789 --> 00:17:08.630 dynamics that we see in this letter. What is 00:17:08.630 --> 00:17:13.049 it an illustrative example of in terms of Violant's 00:17:13.049 --> 00:17:18.869 authority as a duchess. Also the way that she 00:17:18.869 --> 00:17:22.750 has more clout in particular situations because 00:17:22.750 --> 00:17:27.890 of her connections to French nobility and French 00:17:27.890 --> 00:17:32.509 royalty. I really want to know about how this 00:17:32.509 --> 00:17:35.329 is kind of like a situation where she might have 00:17:35.329 --> 00:17:40.390 more power overall than Joanne because she has 00:17:40.390 --> 00:17:45.289 more connections in France and this pope is French 00:17:45.289 --> 00:17:51.309 so that's really one of the largest questions 00:17:51.309 --> 00:17:54.609 that that I have one of the most burning questions 00:17:54.609 --> 00:17:58.650 because in this podcast you're one of the main 00:17:58.650 --> 00:18:04.450 goals is for me to figure out some information 00:18:04.450 --> 00:18:08.680 about what was going on in terms of gender between 00:18:08.680 --> 00:18:11.420 Joan and Violant and how they related to 00:18:11.420 --> 00:18:16.579 the outside world and how it affected their political 00:18:16.579 --> 00:18:22.839 authority. Alright, that does it for today. Thanks 00:18:22.839 --> 00:18:26.380 for listening to this episode of the Historian's 00:18:26.380 --> 00:18:30.980 Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you 00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:33.319 are leaving with more questions than you arrived 00:18:33.319 --> 00:18:37.519 with, I have done my job. Remember, the motto 00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:41.740 of the Historian's Notebook is, dissatisfaction 00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:46.980 guaranteed. Visit the website, jonathanseyfried.net 00:18:46.980 --> 00:18:50.420 to see an image of today's document with 00:18:50.420 --> 00:18:55.039 those wormholes and additional show notes. And 00:18:55.039 --> 00:18:57.619 listen again tomorrow to hear about the next 00:18:57.619 --> 00:19:01.200 day. in the first year of the reign of King Joan 00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:06.759 of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the meantime, 00:19:07.460 --> 00:19:08.019 take care.