Hello! Today is January 1st, 2026. In our time,
today is New Year's Day. Happy New Year! In the
Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, it was also January
1st, but it had been the New Year for a few days
already. So it was January 1st, 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 of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. Let's
begin today's document. I'm super excited about
today's document for a bunch of different reasons.
So, one reason is that I know what it means.
It's in Catalan, I'm in my comfort zone. I pretty
much am able to read every word of today's document.
It's a letter from Joan to his brother, Marti.
This letter... I became aware of through an article
by Claire Ponsich and then she directed me to a
resource that I already had used before but it's
a gigantic compendium of transcribed letters
out of the archive for the Crown of Aragon and
Like Daniel Girona y Llagostera, there was another
figure of the Catalan renaissance that contributed
a gigantic amount of work to bringing in the
letters of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
to a broader audience because he transcribed
a whole bunch of them. This person's name is
Antonio Rubio y Lluch. and his collection of transcribed
documents that he published in 1908 focused on
culture. Antonio Rubio y Lluch was really interested
in the beginning of what became known as Catalan
humanism. And Catalan humanism is a concept that
relates, of course, to the broader concept of
humanism in general. And let me just explain
that pretty quickly. I can't go too deeply into
it, but humanism is the shift in cultural outlook
from a religious -centered approach to an approach
that's centered on the human experience that
puts the consciousness of the human being at
the center and seeks to investigate the human
condition as its own thing apart from the theological
questions of what God has created. This is actually
a really gigantic shift, and most scholars put
the beginning of humanism in Italy as part of
what is commonly known as the Renaissance. And
the idea of Catalan humanism complicates that
by noticing how figures that were alive during
Joan's reign, and in fact one of them knew Joan
really well. His name is Bernat Metge. Bernat
Metge is seen as the primary exemplar of a humanist
approach to literature and philosophy in the
Crown of Aragon. in the late 14th century. So
part of the Catalan renaissance in the 19th century
and leading into the beginning of the 20th century
was a bunch of scholars making this argument
that what was going on culturally in the Crown
of Aragon in the late 14th century was humanism
as much as what was happening in the Renaissance
in Italy was humanism. And guess what? Joan
and Violant, they spent a ton of money promoting
troubadours and poets and philosophers. And there
was a real, oh, and musicians, well, troubadours,
musicians too, but there was a real efflorescence
of culture. During their reign and this is one
of the things that that really got me interested
in Joan and Violant even more after I had
really gotten into them based on the portrayal
that I read about in Michael A. Ryan's book A
Kingdom of Stargazers all about the astrology
that was being practiced not just by Joan,
but also by pair and Marti. Okay, that's some
big background there, but Antonio Rubio y Lluch
was one of the people that really got this going,
this idea of Catalan humanism, and also he documented
all of this material from the Archive of the
Crown of Aragon, like today's document. He doesn't
offer a full transcription of the document. He
summarizes it and pulls out notable parts. And
I just want to say that looking at the document
itself is a real bonus because you get to see
certain things like it kind of like softens your
response to what's going on in this letter because
Joan is writing to Marti, who is in Barcelona.
Marti is there at their father's bedside. Sibilla
has fled. Marti will eventually leave and pursue
Sibilla. but at this moment that Joan is writing
to him, he thinks that Marti is still there in
the castle with their dying father. I think Marti
really is still there and does receive this letter,
but it's not exactly clear what happens to the
requests that Joan makes. The requests that
Joan makes in this letter it's one of the reasons
why I was so excited to talk about it because
it's quite funny. Joanne makes a list of precious
objects that are in their father's possession
and says to Marti, can you please secure these
items for me? So when I first saw this mentioned
in the collection by Antonio Rubio y Lluch. I was
like, Oh my gosh, they are total vultures. And
it seemed a little bit heartless. But you know,
there was a lot of strife between the father
and son. And so I guess it kind of fit in with
that. But then I went into the letter and It
is the case, to be fair, that Joan begins the
letter with a lot of kind words about his father's
illness. It's displeasing to him that his father's
illness seems very grave. He hopes that his father
recovers. That's how the whole thing begins.
And maybe that's just niceties and he doesn't
really mean it, but it's important to realize
that he really does say those things, and he
prefaces his request for a bunch of objects by
saying, I really do hope that our father doesn't
die. Let's talk about the objects themselves.
So there's quite a list here, and the list itself
is super interesting. So... The first things
that appear in the list of objects that Joan
wants Marti to secure as their father is dying
are two books. They're both books that are copies
of Roman histories. So one is by Livy and the
other is by Valerius Maximus. And so these are
books that have anecdotes about what happened
in the history of the Roman Empire. So Joan
is really interested in those. And he also lists
a bezoar stone. Bezoar stones were thought to
have magical properties. The bezoar stone is
actually something that gets barfed up from an
animal. Yeah, so the animal is digesting a bunch
of stuff. It's like maybe like the equivalent
of a kidney stone or something, but you barf
it up. And so they were thought to have these
magical properties, I guess because of the way
they look. I'm not quite sure the background
on the Bezoar stone, but anyway, apparently King
Pere has a bezoar stone and Joan says to Marti,
go get that and make sure no one else takes it.
Something else that he wants are the astrolabes
and the quadrants, some of the navigation instruments.
he's interested in, which I think is kind of
cool. And on the web page for this episode, I
found two pictures of museum objects that are
similar to probably what Joan was thinking
of because they're an astrolabe and a quadrant
of Iberian origin around this time. So you can
take a look at that. The last two items are pretty
funny. So I was saying objects, but also Joan
is interested in animals. Joan was really into
hunting, and that's a complicated thing because
hunting is not the same as we think of hunting
in our modern time. So the two other items in
Joan's list are related to hunting. One is a
dog named Cordero. And doesn't really he doesn't
say anything else like does he have a connection
to this dog or maybe I mean certain hunting dogs
were super famous like people, elites, would like
write to each other being like I've got this
great hunting dog so awesome his name is da da
da and and other people like oh well see if you
can mate that dog and I want the offspring and
I'll trade you my you know so basically there
was a whole thing about hunting dogs and they
were famous among elites they wrote to each other
about their cool hunting dogs and so maybe that's
how Joan heard about this dog or maybe Joan
actually like knew this dog from before he and
Pere stopped talking to each other so it's really
I don't know, I think an intriguing set of questions
about Joan's desire for this one particular
dog. And then the other, it's a group of animals,
a bunch of falcons. So falconry was a really
big deal in this time among the elite class.
falconry was a much -enjoyed sport and there
were falconers on staff and it was like a whole
production. But the falcons that Joan identifies
in this letter are those belonging to Bernat
de Fortia. That is Sibilla's brother. So basically
Joan is saying go get Sibilla's brother's falcons
and make sure that I have them when I arrive
to Barcelona. So that's the content of the letter
and this document is doing so much. This document
is transmitting information about what was most
valuable to Joan. It's not like a bunch of jewels.
It's not like a stash of money. It's these cultural
items that are at the top of his concern. It's
communicating. This document is communicating
things about the family dynamic. This document
is really cementing this level of trust between
Joan and Marti. Like Joan knows that he can
ask Marti to grab a bunch of items and Marti
will not judge him for it and say, oh, you're
a bad son. You should really just be consumed
with grief over your father's death. No, they
are on the same page. when it comes to the emotional
dynamic here as their father is dying after all
of the strife and estrangement and Joan trusts
Marti to carry this out that says so much it's
a very emotionally full letter And another aspect
of that, if you kind of get into some close reading
of it, is that he, Joan, is calling his brother
Molt car frere. Molt car frere, most dear brother.
Well, that's an echo of the title of this season
of the podcast, in which I've lifted out a phrase
that Joan uses for Violant, Molt Cara Companyona.
So it actually... made me stop a little bit when
I looked at this letter in its archival format
and made me think, oh, maybe Molt cara companyona
was not exactly like the best name for the season,
because maybe it doesn't have this added emotional
power that I thought it did. But then again,
maybe it does. Maybe the fact that he's using
a similar formula for his brother is speaking
to something that actually makes that emotional
impact of Molt cara companyona all the more justifiable
in my interpretation. So I feel pretty good still,
but when I saw that and I saw it repeated Molt car
frere a bunch of times in this letter, I was
like, oh my gosh, that's also what he does with
Violant. But maybe it's a sign of the intense
affection. and maybe it's formulaic. I'm going
to have to look at more documents in order to
corroborate that. So this document is super fun.
It's a real joy to talk about. It just gets into
all these different topics that connect to what
interests me so much about Joan and Violant.
All right, that brings us to the close of this
episode. I didn't go through all these questions
that I have about this document. I'll just kind
of leave those up on the web page for you to
take a look. And if you haven't made it over
to the website yet, yeah, see if you can get
over there, jonathanseyfried.net, because I
really am trying to put a lot of interesting
stuff. up on the web page for each episode. Stuff
that really just won't fit in the show notes
format in the podcast apps. So give it a try.
And also I'm tracking the way that I'm using
AI. I do want to just really quickly say that
AI is not ethically unproblematic. There are
ethical problems with using AI. but in certain
instances, it's been a super helpful thing. And
for me in this research, but I'm using it very
carefully and cautiously. All right, better wrap
up the episode there. Thanks for listening to
this episode of the Historian's Notebook, season
one, Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving
with more questions than you arrived with, I
have done my job. The motto of the Historian's
Notebook is, dissatisfaction guaranteed. In the
sense that you never have all your questions
answered. But hopefully you're enjoying it a
little bit. Alright, visit the website, like
I said before, to see an image of today's document
and to see some of the bibliographical references
that I mentioned in today's episode. 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.