Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was December 29th, 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. Today's document switches things up
a little bit, because first of all, it's not
in the registers of letters. It's a treasury
record. And second of all, the date of the creation
of this record is actually not December 29th.
There was a December 29th letter from Joan that
I could have used, but what's coming up next,
it gets a little bit wild as the succession happens.
And so I've got a bunch of these letters from
Joann, and kind of a silence in Violant's letters,
and I'm going to get back to that in a little
while. But first, I just want to look at today's
document, and then I'm going to talk a little
bit about the succession. So today's document
is actually dated the 11th of January, but within
it, it indicates that there's a payment going
out to a baker named Simon de Fornells, and the
payment is for the baking that he did from the
1st of October 1386 to the 29th of December 1387.
And remember, in our modern calendar that we
use today, that sounds like it's over a year,
but the new year is at this time and place on
December 25th, and so this period for which Simon
de Fornells is being paid is actually the three
-month period from October to the end of December
of what, in our time, in our calendar, we would
consider the same calendar year. So, as a ground
rule, I guess, you could say of the podcast,
I am free to choose records like this that mention
a particular day in the first year of the reign
of Joan and Violant. It doesn't necessarily
have to have been composed on that exact day.
for it to appear in the podcast. And I just want
to have that freedom so that I'm able to switch
things around if I'm ever in a spot where I'm
feeling like it's getting a little unbalanced.
And thus far we've kind of alternated between
Joan and Violant, but coming up there's just
going to be a few episodes where it's documents
from Joan. So I wanted to have another one related
to Violant. This particular document, there's,
of course, as with any document, a lot going
on, even though it seems like a humdrum entry
in a record book and nothing more. Keep in mind
that the fact that we've got these detailed and
itemized records of payments, that is a development.
You cannot count on seeing that all throughout
the history of time. This kind of record keeping
ebbs and flows, and this is an example, what
we're looking at here is an example of the increased
monetization in the Late Middle Ages, where with
the increased abundance of paper, and also the
increased commercialization of the economy, in
the Late Middle Ages, you start to see more and
more detail in financial record keeping. That
just isn't there [earlier]. There were, in the Early Middle
Ages, there were bakers for royal families in
the early Middle Ages, but we don't see the record
keeping at that time. Why? Because there wasn't
as much material to write on and also because
there wasn't as much of a culture of record keeping
for financial matters and so those two factors
make it so that it's highly unusual to see detailed
records like this one in the Early or even High
Middle Ages. So that's something to keep in mind
and also I just want to note that this is a gigantic
register, and there are just thousands of records
of payments that are like this. It's a whole
paragraph long. This is not double -entry bookkeeping.
What's happening here is that there's an authorized
agent that works for the treasury. In this situation,
it is Johan Callos, and the agent appears at
the very beginning. right after the phrase, al
honrat en. And what that means is it's on his
honor. It's not an exact translation there, but
the sense of it is that this is a record that
is tied to this person's trustworthy reputation
as a treasury agent. And it's setting in motion
the apparatus of the financial dealings of the
royal family. Okay, I think that's enough about
this particular document in terms of its summary.
Of course, there's questions. There's always
questions. The top questions in my mind here
are about Simone de Fornells. Was he a chief
baker or was this just one of several bakers
on staff? did this person live in Girona and
that's why the payment is ending on December
29th because maybe like that's right around when
Violant was leaving Girona. More on that in
a moment. Is this a high payment or is this a
low payment? And then also the time period of
the payment, it covers a period of time in which
Violant was a duchess. But it's written at the
time that Violant was queen. And so what in
this document reflects that change, if anything?
Or does the language of the document actually
completely elide over that change? That's something
that I would really need to look at a lot more
of these records from, say other queens or later
on in Violant's queenship, in order to know. But
those are the kind of questions that come to
mind. All right, now I'm going to pull back from
today's document and discuss some of what was
going on. In part because tomorrow's document,
oh, it's. It's it's quite a thing. I'm not going
to spoil it, but oh my goodness. Tomorrow's document
is dramatic. And it's actually not about the
death of of the king. It's something else. But
what I will give you is a little bit of background
information that is some of of my conjecture,
because what becomes clear as you're looking
at the registries of letters from Joan and Violant,
as we move from the end of December into the
first days of January, they are no longer in
the same place. Joan stays a little bit longer
in Girona and then journeys toward Barcelona.
It takes him many days to get there. Violante
is in Barcelona ahead of Joan by many days. So
she goes ahead of him. That alone raises a flurry
of questions in my mind. Why are they journeying
separately? I do not know. I'm going to try to
figure that out. I'm not sure that it's possible
to find something definitive about that. I've
got a couple ideas that I'll share over the next
couple days. I think that as of around December
28th, Joan and Violant get word that the king
really is about to die. and they make some decisions.
And one of the decisions is that Violante is
gonna go to Barcelona first. So she is packing
up her stuff, organizing herself for the trip
to go from Girona to Barcelona. And those are
very active days that she's doing that. I'm not
quite sure when she leaves because [in a] moment that
reflects the patriarchal mindset of those 19th
century and early 20th century historians, we
do not have an itinerary for any of the queens.
They only made daily itineraries for the men.
So we don't know exactly where Violent was. And
it's possible that there aren't enough documents
for us to know for sure. I'm kind of getting
that impression. There's a silence in Violant's
Registry of Letters from around December 28th
until about January 6th. So exactly what was
going on with Violante? I'm not quite sure. She
was traveling, I think. I think she was just
busy getting ready to travel and then traveling
to get to Barcelona. The reason that Joan and
Violant are traveling to Barcelona separately
has a lot to do with the familial dynamics, the
familial strife that's going on in the royal
family. Because, hey, you might have already
had this pop into your mind. A lot of sons would
go to be at the bedside of their father, you
know, on their father's deathbed. But Joan is
not doing this. Why? Because Joan and his father,
the King, they were estranged. They were fighting
with each other. In fact, about six months earlier,
Joan attempted to visit his father in order to
try to resolve some of their differences. And
his father was so mad at him that he forbid him
entry into the city of Barcelona. During the
months of June and July of 1386, Joan was just
hanging out in Martorell, like a village on the
outskirts of Barcelona waiting to see if his
father would let him in. And after like two months
of doing this, he gave up. He just went back
to Girona. And his father basically just decided
to hold that grudge until his dying day. So...
for dealing with a person that was um some scholars
use the adjective uh um choleric he, Pere, was
quite uh the temperamental person and his anger
was uh something that shows up in the historical
record quite a lot well what was the cause of
this difficulty between father and son. Turns
out it was about a step -parent. King Pere had
gotten married to a woman named Sibilla de Fortia,
and Sibylla's background was one that was very
irksome to a lot of people because she came from
a lower rung of nobility. So she was seen as
lower class, even though she was still a member
of the nobility. She also had a very rascal type
of a brother who was causing trouble a lot. So
basically there's dissension in the royal family
because of this marriage. A marriage that seems
very much inspired by love on the part of King
Pere. And so that's the basic behind it, the
basic information behind it. I highly recommend
a wonderful book chapter by the scholar Nuria
Silleras Fernandez. I'll put it in the bibliography
of the webpage for this episode. It's a great
read because there are so many dramatic twists
and turns when it comes to Sibilla de Fortia,
and some of those twists and turns we will look
at for tomorrow's document. 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've
done my job. Remember, the motto of the Historian's
Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. That
is dissatisfaction. Hopefully there's also some
satisfaction sometimes, but the only thing I'm
promising is dissatisfaction. Okay, visit the
website to see an image of today's document and
additional show notes, and listen again tomorrow
to hear more about the first year of the reign
of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen Violant
de Bar. In the meantime, take care.