Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was December 31, 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 1 is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're
looking at a document from each day of the first
year of the reign of King Joan of Aragon and
Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document.
I had a little bit of trouble finding a large
number of documents for December 31st. Not quite
sure why. I've already talked about how I think
Violant is getting ready to travel. It's too
busy. But I'm not quite sure why there aren't
that many for Joan. So I went with the one that
is listed in his itinerary created by Daniel
Girona y Llagostera. For a little bit of background
about that document, that long itinerary, go
look at the webpage for episode 4, or go ahead
and listen to episode 4. This particular document,
at the top of it, it has a header. And this is
another Latin document, so again, it's a bit
of a struggle. Actually, that's an understatement.
This was a lot of a struggle. I'll tell you why.
Look at the header. it says pro manumissoria,
something like vicomptem de insula, and then
it might be a probata symbol after that, or it
could also be an abbreviation for quibis. It
kind of looks like both of those. So I think
it's the probata symbol, but then there's that
accent mark on the top that kind of throws me
off. So I'm not quite sure what that symbol is.
I went down a completely wrong path with this
document because I thought that it was about
some kind of manumission, like there was a freeing
of. either a captive, like someone had been taken
captive and was then freed, or it was a slave
who was freed because there was slavery at this
time. These weren't a very slavery -focused societies,
though. There were slaves, but they weren't slave
societies, which is an important distinction.
A slave society is when everything about the
society is arranged around the maintenance of
a slave population. And that's not a good way
to characterize, not an accurate way to characterize
the societies in the Crown of Aragon at this
time. So there was slavery, there were slaves,
so I thought, you know, possibly, but it's a
little bit unlikely that Joan would get involved
in the freeing of a particular slave unless there
was something very dramatic. And when I started
looking at this document, trying to figure out
the place names and the people's names in it,
it didn't look to me like there was anything
that dramatic going on. and I gotta tell you,
I had a lot of trouble figuring out the place
names too. So we have in the first line, Infans
Johannes, et cetera, and then we have the addressee,
the recipient, and it's a three lines, actually.
Actually, it goes to the fourth line, and it's
all of these different officials and leaders
within these... regions of Roussillon and Cerdanya,
but I didn't even get that. So Roussillon and
Cerdanya are at the beginning of the second line,
but I didn't quite identify them correctly in
the beginning. I got to it eventually. So I was
really trying to figure out also what was Caneto.
I wasn't even sure if I was spelling that right.
It could have been or even with a C at the end,
because the T's and the C's and the E's can all
look really similar in this handwriting. So I
really did struggle, and so I went to ChatGPT,
and I will tell you that without the AI Chatbot
in this instance, I think I just would have had
the wrong idea about this document and it would
have persisted as the wrong idea, because I found
out a couple things that I had not even thought
to ask about. For example, in the header, the
word insula, that's the Latin word for island,
so I really thought there was some island involved.
I mean, you would think. but actually there's
a region, an inland region, it's kind of near
the coast, but it's on the other side of the
coast from Perpignan, the city of Perpignan,
in what is today southern France, and it's
called Illa, and then there's a town that's on
the coast, and that one's called Canet, and
so there's a viscount who had the title, The
Count of Illa and Canet. And that's who is being
discussed in this letter. I would not have put
that all together. And in addition, it was ChatGPT
that came to the conclusion that this was a different
use of the word that is related to the English
word manumission. In this sense, what we're looking
at in this document, the word manumissoria has
to do with the execution of a last will and testament.
So what this document is actually about is that
somebody had died. The person was Andrew de Fenollet.
Andrew de Fenollet. Sorry, I actually had to
cut out a little bit of the podcast there, because
I had never said that name aloud before, and
I wanted to maybe do the double L as a Y sound,
so fenoyay or something like that, but I think
it's fenolette. I think it's an English L. double
L there, but I'm actually not sure. There's a
lot that I'm not sure about, and hey, this document
was a great way for me to learn some geography
about the area of what is today southwestern
France, and also the area around there was part
of France. It was within a region of France that
was, I think, not exactly under the jurisdiction
of the French king in Paris at this time, but
I'm really hazy on it. It used to be a part of
the Crown of Aragon, for sure, until in the middle
of the 14th century when there's some conflict
that's going on and there's the king of Majorca
fighting against the Crown of Aragon, the the
region of Roussillon gets kind of caught up in
that. So basically, it seems like at this moment,
Joan at least has jurisdiction over the place
that is ruled over by the Viscount of Illa and
Canet, or maybe that's pronounced Can-ay. Goodness,
there's just a lot, a lot in here that I'm learning
for the first time. I don't think that this document
is going to really be a lot of use for me in
a direct sense. So I kind of looked at this because
it was on this day. But I don't know. The major
questions that I have about it have to do with
what is it doing here in the middle of a massive
moment for Joan? Maybe there was an urgent need
in some ways. Maybe someone was like bothering
Joan. Like you just got to get this done. You
got to put your seal of approval on the Last
Will and Testament. of this person in this region
that you're in charge of that's in your portfolio
and you just got to get it done it's like okay
fine i'll get it done but i'm really worried
about what's going on with the succession that
I'm involved in, not this like lower level succession
that's happening in this other region, but it's
an interesting kind of parallel that maybe Joan
is thinking about, that here he is signing off
on what looks to be like an orderly transition
of power in this little region, and he's about
to engage in a transition of power and he's not
sure how orderly it's going to be. So that's
today's document, and I wanted to take a moment
to step back from the document and to just explain
a little bit more about the backstory of what's
going on with Joan and Violant and the Crown
of Aragon in the bigger picture. The Crown of
Aragon at this time was a very powerful polity.
It had territorial possessions all over the Mediterranean,
as far away as Greece, and it was extremely wealthy.
There were Catalan merchants doing business all
over the Mediterranean, and they really were
at a level in terms of their presence and force
that could compete with places that you've definitely
heard of, like Genoa and Pisa. And so, at this,
and Venice, Venice too, at this time, the Crown
of Aragon is, I think you could kind of say like
at its height of its power, as a Mediterranean
force. It's kind of downhill from here and a
lot of the secondary literature pretty much puts
Joan as like the beginning of the decline and
We'll talk about reasons for that as we move
forward but The Crown of Aragon is a big deal
It's a power player And that is why Violant
is there, married to Joan. A little bit of
background about Violant. She was the niece
of the King of France. So her grandparents were
the King and Queen of France. So keep that in
mind, she is a solid member of the royal family.
She spent a lot of her time in her childhood
in Paris at the palace. If you know anything
about late 14th century Paris, you might be thinking
to yourself, wait a second, there was someone
else who was there at that time who got... to
be very, very prominent and went down in history
in a big way. That was Christine de Pizan. I
haven't found any information about whether Violant
and Christine de Pizan knew each other, but their
childhoods overlapped and they were both there
at the court of the King of France around the
same time. So it's really interesting. Violant
was a choice that Joan made, and he sought
a French, a prominent French woman to be his
wife. This was actually his third go of marriage,
and I'll explain more about that in a future
episode, but for now, it's important to understand
that in the moment that Joan married Violant,
Joan overrode his father's objections. Pere had
wanted him to marry somebody from Sicily so that
the Crown of Aragon could solidify its rule over
Sicily, which was a little bit shaky at the time.
Just so happens though that the person that Pere
wanted his son to marry was his granddaughter,
which is like really creepy and weird, but Joan,
I think, was like, no way, I'm not doing that.
And furthermore, I love French culture. Joan
was a huge fan of the music and literature coming
out of France. And so he wanted a French wife
and... This is one of the major feuds that erupt
between Joan and Père in the decade and a half
leading up to the moment that we're examining
now. Père was so against Violante that he wrote
Joan a weird little poem about how bad of
a person Violant was. And in the poem, he writes
about how Joan was being tempted by the devil,
like alluding to Violante being a creature of
Satan. And so it gets really melodramatic and
also very heated between Joan and Pere. So you
can get a little bit more of a sense from that
little bit of background about the family dynamics
that are happening as this moment of transition
takes place. 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. Visit the website to see an image
of today's document, as well as the transcript
from ChatGPT that helped me to figure out a lot
of the stuff that was really I had no idea about
with this document, as well as that little poem
by Pere about Violant. 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
Violant de Bar. In the meantime, take care.