Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was December 30th, 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. Alright folks, we are now entering
into a different kind of zone in the story here.
Thus far, it's seemingly been a kind of a humdrum,
business -as -usual type feeling. Joan and
Violant, they don't know that Pere is about
to die, that the current king is about to expire.
It's unclear when they really find this out.
Maybe they do have an awareness that he's been
just unconscious for several days. I'm not quite
sure about the information flow getting to Joan
and Violant. Something definitely shifts, though,
on December 30th. And that's because on the day
before, on December 29th, the current queen,
whose name is Sibilla de Fortia, She leaves Barcelona.
She flees. She gathers up a bunch of her stuff.
Her brother is there, and he helps to get a whole
staff of people to pack up a whole bunch of things,
including the jewelry, and they leave. They flee
the bedside of the dying king and travel to a
castle in Catalonia, one of her brother's castles,
and hold up there. Why did she do this? It turns
out that Sibilla had a lot of good reason to
fear what would happen to her after Pere died.
I'm gonna take you back about 12 years before
this moment in 1387. Joan's mother, Queen Elionor,
she dies in 1375. Pere is a widower. About seven
months later, he publicly recognizes a woman
named Sibilla de Fortia as his, well, the technical
term for it is concubine. The person that he
is having a relationship with but he's not married
to. And this is a situation that is not as controversial
as you might think. The status of royal concubines
in Iberia is actually not as scandalous as you
might think. There's a lot of people who actually
prefer concubinage to a new marriage. Those who
are the current power holders, because when you
have a new marriage, you have someone coming
in from the outside, maybe with their own power
base, they can really disturb the order of things.
So specifically with Joan and Marti, they would
be afraid that if pair married somebody else
who had a big international stature, and then
the two of them had a son, that person could
one day make a play for the throne. It's not
an outlandish fear. Why? Because the exact situation
I just described actually happened to Pere himself
in 1336. when his father died. There had been
a second marriage and the young children of that
marriage were used as pretenders in order to
justify a rebellion that then Pére had to suppress
in order to solidify his own authority as king.
So Joan was actually okay with Sibilla. It's
way better than having some powerful outsider
who's part of a dynasty come in and become the
next wife of the king. So even though Sibilla
was of the lower nobility and had been working
on sort of like on staff for the previous Queen
and That seems like it would be a scandalous
thing for Pere to start having an affair with
her, it's actually not the worst case scenario
by far in the opinions of a lot of stakeholders
around the court So things were going okay in
the first couple years, but then in 1377, Pere
decides that he and Sibilla are going to get
married. And that starts to shake things up.
Sibilla herself is completely aware that she
does not have the kind of safety and security
that would come from being the member of a prestigious
family. Not only that, but she doesn't know how
to read or write. She's illiterate. And Pere
hires somebody to help her learn. So basically
she's in a position of real weakness in relation
to a lot of the other power players around and
one of those people becomes Violant. In 1380
is when Joan marries Violante de Bar. Pere
had wanted Joan to marry somebody else and
that's a whole other story and it's really a
bizarre story in my opinion but but we're gonna
save that one for another time. For our purposes
here, Sibylla is threatened by Violant. Pere
is against Violant as even like an idea. He calls
her... you know all kinds of names I mean not
like directly it's all like subtle but it's it's
all just kind of like digging there's all these
little kind of like you know insults that are
kind of traded back and forth and and over time
the dissension and acrimony just grows and grows
and there's a bunch of little incidents where
they're just kind of like digging at each other.
Joan versus Pere, Sibilla versus Violant,
and then kind of crisscrossing also. And I will
I will say too that Pere's daughter, Pere's daughter,
Joanna, she doesn't like Sibilla. And at one point
in a pretty dramatic moment, Joanna comes in
to complain about something Sibilla's doing,
and Pere, in front of the entire court, slaps
her across the face. So the whole family is just
really thrust into dissension with the way that
Pere and Sibilla are acting, and then the reactions
from the kids. So when Pere is about to die in
1387, Sibilla knows that there might be revenge
wrought upon her from Joan and Marti and Joanna,
the three kids. So it's reasonable in that light
that she flees. By December 30th, Joan has found
out about this. And what does he do? That is
our document for today. It's been a long buildup.
The document we're looking at today is in Violant's
register, one of Violant's registers. But it's
written by Joan. It's at the very end of a whole
long register of documents that relate to what
Violant owns in terms of properties and rents.
The Duchess and the Queen in the Crown of Aragon,
they have what you could call a portfolio. They
are in charge In a sense, they are the governing
authority for several different polities. And
actually, as a hint of some further things to
come, the Muslim and Jewish communities, they're
separate, municipalities within municipalities,
and those come under the direct authority of
particular royal family members. And so Violant
has a few of the Jewish communities and a bunch
of other territories. And it all adds up to,
I think a great word for it is a portfolio, a
business portfolio, really. And so Sibilla, also
had a business portfolio. Today's document is
Joan authorizing and ordering the transfer of
Sibylla's entire portfolio to Violant. This is
a long document It's in Latin. So my facility
with every single word in it is not so good,
but I know enough to see what's going on here.
And of course I rely on the secondary literature.
So this document, which is fairly long, it's
three folios long. So we go from folio 197 verso.
to folio 198 verso in the register 1808 Violant's
register a document from Joan in her register
and it's the last one in this volume so it's
it's interesting how this kind of closes out
the record of Violant's portfolio as a duchess
and someone wrote in there it had to have been
afterward at the top of the beginning of this,
Regine Iolantis. It's in a different handwriting.
So it's not from the script of the time. Someone
later, maybe in the 19th century, wrote that.
So Iolantis is the Latin for Violant. The document
begins with the recipient, but the recipient
is basically this far and wide audience. So what
I think this is saying here in Latin is Novinter,
universi. Okay, so I think what this is meant
to say is to everyone out there, universal audience.
Not quite sure what the OS stands for afterwards.
It could also be a DS. But then we get into Nos
Infans Yohannes. And this is the authorship
of this official charter. And then in the next...
at the end of the first line we've got the si
and then in the second line bilia for this that's
Sibilla the Queen of Aragon and then we get into
the next right at the beginning of the letter
it's it's all going to Violant and the end of
the letter this is i shouldn't say it's a letter
it's more of a charter the end of this charter
is instead of saying the usual like date in,
made in, we have quod est actum in the city of
Girona, meaning this was enacted. So this is
like an official action. transferring all of
Sibilla's properties to Violant. That is some
drama. So this is like quite the way to start
a succession, taking the current queen's entire
property and saying it's no longer hers, it now
belongs to the next queen who's about to ascend
the throne as soon as the king dies. Okay. This
summary has been just filled with all of these
questions that have been unstated in the background.
There's so much that I don't know. I really want
to know how the information flowed. Like, how
quickly was Joan and Violant... how quickly
were they getting new information? What were
the sources of the information? Who, besides
Marti, was keeping Joan informed? Also, like,
what kinds of worries did Joan and Violant have
about the transition? Did they think that it
was going to be rocky, or did they anticipate
that it would be a pretty smooth transition of
power? I also want to know where were the children
at this time? So, Joan and Violant, they've
got, I think at this point, two living children.
The children thing is a whole other story I'll
get into later. And then another question is,
when does Joan start experiencing the symptoms
of the illness that is going to delay his arrival
to Barcelona? Historians, they differ on when
Joan falls ill and also exactly when he recovers.
But it's a serious illness that happens in January
of 1387. We'll get into that a little bit more
in the upcoming episodes. Before I close out
today's episode, I want to credit a few secondary
sources that have been incredibly, incredibly
helpful as I have been putting together my understanding
of today's document and also the at times very
difficult to figure out chronology and also the
location of this period of the transition of
the succession. So first of all, An article by
Nuria Silleras-Fernandez about Sibilla de Fortia
has been super helpful. There's been a whole
bunch of scholarship done by LIedo Ruiz Domingo
that's been incredibly helpful. And also Zita
Rohr and Claire Ponsich have been helpful in helping
me to figure out what was going on in these particular
days. Go to the web page for this episode on
jonathanseyfried.net in order to see the
full citations for those sources Okay There's
so much more to say But we will save that for
upcoming episodes We are just doing our sweep
through the documents here, even when there's
a juicy interesting one like this 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 once again done my job because
the motto of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction
guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image
of today's document and to look through this
whole bunch of show notes for this one and listen
again tomorrow to hear about the next day in
the first year of the reign of Joan I of Aragon
and Queen Violant de Bar. In the meantime,
take care.