WEBVTT 00:00:00.170 --> 00:00:05.330 Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:05.929 --> 00:00:12.990 it was January 2nd, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:12.990 --> 00:00:16.890 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:16.890 --> 00:00:20.609 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:20.609 --> 00:00:24.809 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:25.649 --> 00:00:29.539 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:29.539 --> 00:00:32.460 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:37.100 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:37.100 --> 00:00:40.740 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:48.500 document. So I have decided not to play the usual 00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:52.740 intro music for today's episode because the topic 00:00:52.740 --> 00:00:55.600 that we're going to be looking at is a pretty 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:59.979 serious one. Today's document touches on sexual 00:00:59.979 --> 00:01:04.840 assault. Alright, at this point I'm going to 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:12.569 proceed on to discuss the document. Alright, 00:01:12.709 --> 00:01:18.769 so today's document is a sobering one, not about 00:01:18.769 --> 00:01:27.269 a topic that is pleasant at all. So when I first 00:01:27.269 --> 00:01:32.590 read Violant's document from the very first episode 00:01:32.590 --> 00:01:39.269 of the podcast, I didn't see anything in there 00:01:39.269 --> 00:01:45.680 to indicate how serious the trouble was that 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:50.480 the students in Montpellier had gotten into. 00:01:51.519 --> 00:01:57.459 It's referred to very vaguely as a case. And 00:01:57.459 --> 00:02:04.379 in hindsight, I can identify how my own position 00:02:04.379 --> 00:02:13.590 as a man, as a gay man, has really influenced 00:02:13.590 --> 00:02:19.409 my set of possibilities for what that crime could 00:02:19.409 --> 00:02:24.909 be. I, in my mind, went to, oh, they got into 00:02:24.909 --> 00:02:28.050 like a drunken brawl or something like that. 00:02:28.849 --> 00:02:33.409 But today's document, which I had not really 00:02:33.409 --> 00:02:39.659 worked on until now, reveals that the crime was 00:02:39.659 --> 00:02:45.340 actually a sexual assault and the perpetrators 00:02:45.340 --> 00:02:51.819 were multiple students so it is very serious 00:02:51.819 --> 00:02:58.199 now and what I want to convey about this is that 00:02:58.199 --> 00:03:03.080 first of all I didn't know so if you go back 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:08.050 and listen to episode 1 that is all in my own 00:03:08.050 --> 00:03:12.770 ignorance of what this situation was. I had looked 00:03:12.770 --> 00:03:17.370 ahead and found that Joan had written to the 00:03:17.370 --> 00:03:21.889 Duc de Berry and had written about Montpellier, 00:03:22.490 --> 00:03:26.189 so I knew that it was about the case, but I hadn't 00:03:26.189 --> 00:03:29.030 really worked on understanding what the document 00:03:29.030 --> 00:03:32.939 was saying. I jumped ahead and looked at the 00:03:32.939 --> 00:03:37.659 date and saw that it would fit in as being the 00:03:37.659 --> 00:03:43.759 document for January 2nd. So frankly, I'm pretty 00:03:43.759 --> 00:03:47.520 embarrassed that I treated this with levity in 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:52.180 the earlier episode, and I'm keeping it as is. 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:54.659 I'm not re -recording or anything like that because 00:03:54.659 --> 00:03:57.830 I think it's a really good demonstration. of 00:03:57.830 --> 00:04:01.810 how as a historian is working through what they 00:04:01.810 --> 00:04:05.289 see in the archive, they're bringing their own 00:04:05.289 --> 00:04:08.370 blind spots to it. They're bringing their own 00:04:08.370 --> 00:04:16.430 position to it. I know historians who would have 00:04:16.430 --> 00:04:21.540 thought that sexual assault was a likely possibility 00:04:21.540 --> 00:04:26.279 when they're presented with the scenario of a 00:04:26.279 --> 00:04:29.459 group of young men being accused of a serious 00:04:29.459 --> 00:04:34.480 crime and the fact that it wasn't in my mind 00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:37.560 as within the set of possibilities it says a 00:04:37.560 --> 00:04:40.939 lot about what I bring to the table and so this 00:04:40.939 --> 00:04:43.759 experience has been a really good corrective 00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:49.730 for me as I'm trying to think about all of the 00:04:49.730 --> 00:04:54.949 commonly silenced things that are in the archive. 00:04:56.110 --> 00:05:01.970 So today's document is one in which we see Joanne, 00:05:02.009 --> 00:05:06.870 who is the Duke of Girona, writing to the Duc 00:05:06.870 --> 00:05:12.470 de Berry. The Duc de Berry, at this time, is 00:05:12.470 --> 00:05:16.250 the most powerful person in France. And that's 00:05:16.250 --> 00:05:19.550 because the current King of France, Charles VI, 00:05:20.149 --> 00:05:26.189 is still too young to rule. So this is a regency 00:05:26.189 --> 00:05:31.449 period. The Duc de Berry is in charge of France 00:05:31.449 --> 00:05:37.329 as Charles VI comes of age. And so now we've 00:05:37.329 --> 00:05:41.709 got Joan writing to the most politically powerful 00:05:41.709 --> 00:05:46.689 person in France about the situation with these 00:05:46.689 --> 00:05:52.129 students in Montpellier. One quick thing about 00:05:52.129 --> 00:05:55.829 the relationship between Joan and Violant and 00:05:55.829 --> 00:06:00.730 the Duc de Berry. The Duc de Berry is Violant's 00:06:00.730 --> 00:06:07.350 uncle. And so... Joan and Violant correspond 00:06:07.350 --> 00:06:11.149 with him a whole lot. And I've seen a lot in 00:06:11.149 --> 00:06:14.990 the secondary literature regarding their correspondence 00:06:14.990 --> 00:06:20.329 on cultural topics. So they're asking to borrow 00:06:20.329 --> 00:06:24.149 a particular book or talking about some kind 00:06:24.149 --> 00:06:28.170 of musical style or particular troubadours, maybe. 00:06:28.589 --> 00:06:30.850 But this is the first time I've seen a document 00:06:30.850 --> 00:06:34.209 in which it's not on a cultural topic. and is 00:06:34.209 --> 00:06:39.350 instead about something in the realm of the criminal 00:06:39.350 --> 00:06:47.430 justice area of rule. So in the first couple 00:06:47.430 --> 00:06:54.589 lines of the document today, Joan explains 00:06:54.589 --> 00:06:59.990 the situation. He gets to it pretty quickly and 00:06:59.990 --> 00:07:08.810 he... in the second line identifies a woman of 00:07:08.810 --> 00:07:18.649 a good background. And that means that this particular 00:07:18.649 --> 00:07:26.050 woman is not in any way suspect. And that's important 00:07:26.050 --> 00:07:31.269 for the men involved here. because, again, we're 00:07:31.269 --> 00:07:34.829 operating in a very patriarchal context where 00:07:34.829 --> 00:07:37.350 the question arises of whether the woman can 00:07:37.350 --> 00:07:41.069 be believed in the situation and her reputation 00:07:41.069 --> 00:07:45.329 plays into that. Joan then talks about how this 00:07:45.329 --> 00:07:49.670 woman, at night, goes from her house to the house 00:07:49.670 --> 00:07:54.170 of her brother because her brother is ill. And 00:07:54.170 --> 00:08:01.879 on one of these nights, she was the verb is encontada 00:08:01.879 --> 00:08:06.819 she was encountered by certain and then this 00:08:06.819 --> 00:08:10.000 phrase is one that I didn't understand and once 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:14.980 I figured it out it really confirmed what was 00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:22.379 going on here so she's confronted by what is 00:08:22.379 --> 00:08:29.269 written in this letter certs veylets o masips. 00:08:31.670 --> 00:08:37.110 And that phrase is one that I did not recognize, 00:08:37.190 --> 00:08:40.090 and I had to go back and forth a little bit with 00:08:40.090 --> 00:08:42.250 a couple different resources in order to figure 00:08:42.250 --> 00:08:46.870 out what it meant. And one of those resources 00:08:46.870 --> 00:08:50.330 was ChatGPT, so you can see the transcript. I've 00:08:50.330 --> 00:08:54.169 added the transcript into the webpage for today's 00:08:54.169 --> 00:08:58.399 document. But what was just as important, though, 00:08:58.600 --> 00:09:02.919 was a very low -tech resource, which was a glossary 00:09:02.919 --> 00:09:07.120 that I had found in the back of a book titled 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:13.220 Mediaeval Catalan Linguistic Texts. And I wouldn't 00:09:13.220 --> 00:09:17.419 have found that if I didn't physically go to 00:09:17.419 --> 00:09:20.360 the library at the University of New Mexico and 00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:24.559 look on the shelf at their Catalan language and 00:09:24.559 --> 00:09:27.299 literature section and just kind of flip through 00:09:27.299 --> 00:09:30.440 some things. It was being there physically that 00:09:30.440 --> 00:09:34.200 I realized that this book had a very ample glossary 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:38.340 of medieval Catalan terms and the translation 00:09:38.340 --> 00:09:43.080 into English. And so I had access to that resource. 00:09:43.580 --> 00:09:46.580 And by the way, the glossary is not mentioned 00:09:46.580 --> 00:09:51.350 in the online catalog record. So I had to be 00:09:51.350 --> 00:09:56.529 physically present in the library in order to 00:09:56.529 --> 00:10:01.049 discover this, and the entries in this glossary 00:10:01.049 --> 00:10:07.970 under the V and the M sections revealed to me 00:10:07.970 --> 00:10:14.070 that these terms were likely terms used for groups 00:10:14.070 --> 00:10:18.740 of young men. And my feeling is that the terms 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:23.039 used here have a kind of negative connotation. 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:27.460 Something like how we would say hooligan, maybe? 00:10:28.460 --> 00:10:33.860 I'm not sure, but that's just my guess. So already 00:10:33.860 --> 00:10:38.720 in the first three lines, we have the necessary 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:43.399 information. There was a woman at night and there 00:10:43.399 --> 00:10:47.639 was a group of young men. And so clearly what 00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:53.679 happened here was sexual assault. And if it were 00:10:53.679 --> 00:10:56.440 anything else, it would not have risen to the 00:10:56.440 --> 00:10:58.840 occasion where the students are in such gigantic 00:10:58.840 --> 00:11:02.779 trouble. So there's no reason to think, oh, just 00:11:02.779 --> 00:11:05.700 a simple robbery or like a little argument. No, 00:11:06.279 --> 00:11:12.299 this is this is almost certainly a rape and it's 00:11:12.909 --> 00:11:18.929 in my mind, a brutal one. So what's going on 00:11:18.929 --> 00:11:24.009 in this letter is something that in our time 00:11:24.009 --> 00:11:29.049 in early 2026 and what we've been hearing about 00:11:29.049 --> 00:11:32.610 in the news all throughout the second half of 00:11:32.610 --> 00:11:36.490 2025 is the Epstein files. We can understand 00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:42.120 what's going on here. Powerful men. are protecting 00:11:42.120 --> 00:11:50.440 their own. And Joan, and Violant too, was brought 00:11:50.440 --> 00:11:57.039 in to fulfill that mission. Someone in this group 00:11:57.039 --> 00:12:03.519 of students from Catalonia is high placed high 00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:08.870 up in the bureaucracy of the state. someone who 00:12:08.870 --> 00:12:12.809 has the title dispenser, which is in some way 00:12:12.809 --> 00:12:14.990 related to the treasury. I'm still figuring out 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:19.509 what that exactly is. And so Joan and Violant 00:12:19.509 --> 00:12:22.309 have written, I'm sorry, I don't know for sure 00:12:22.309 --> 00:12:25.549 if Joan wrote to Montpellier, actually. Violant 00:12:25.549 --> 00:12:31.129 has written to the officials of Montpellier to 00:12:31.129 --> 00:12:35.629 try to influence them to treat the perpetrators 00:12:35.629 --> 00:12:41.919 gently. And now Joan has written to the most 00:12:41.919 --> 00:12:45.259 politically powerful person in France so that 00:12:45.259 --> 00:12:50.320 he will use his influence to ensure that this 00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:58.659 group of rapists are treated with as little consequence 00:12:58.659 --> 00:13:05.289 as possible in this situation. When talking about 00:13:05.289 --> 00:13:10.850 contextualization, a historian has to be very 00:13:10.850 --> 00:13:14.570 careful about making direct comparisons between 00:13:14.570 --> 00:13:17.570 what goes on in the present time and what went 00:13:17.570 --> 00:13:22.429 on in the distant past. We're talking today about 00:13:22.429 --> 00:13:27.870 an event that happened over 600 years ago. And 00:13:27.870 --> 00:13:31.590 when I make a comparison about how men, powerful 00:13:31.590 --> 00:13:35.169 men, protect perpetrators of sexual assault, 00:13:36.289 --> 00:13:41.850 well, immediately, you have to kind of press 00:13:41.850 --> 00:13:44.490 on the brake a little bit and say, well, gosh, 00:13:44.990 --> 00:13:49.169 600 years of difference, that's got to raise 00:13:49.169 --> 00:13:52.330 some concerns about making that comparison. And 00:13:52.330 --> 00:13:55.840 indeed, there are concerns. But something to 00:13:55.840 --> 00:14:01.100 recognize is that patriarchy has been very ingrained 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:04.240 in Western civilization, and there's a tremendous 00:14:04.240 --> 00:14:08.879 amount of continuity, even over the centuries. 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:13.840 There's a few historians who have done some excellent 00:14:13.840 --> 00:14:17.440 work on this. For the Middle Ages in particular, 00:14:17.759 --> 00:14:21.620 I can recommend Carissa M. Harris's book, Obscene 00:14:21.620 --> 00:14:27.480 Pedagogies. It's about rape culture in medieval 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:32.360 England. And then I can also recommend a slightly 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:38.340 older book by Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power 00:14:38.340 --> 00:14:43.419 in Early America. And that book, while not about 00:14:43.419 --> 00:14:47.279 medieval Europe, is an excellent resource for 00:14:47.279 --> 00:14:51.840 understanding the historical continuities and 00:14:51.840 --> 00:14:54.960 also the historical changes, the differences 00:14:54.960 --> 00:15:03.220 regarding non -consensual sex between our time 00:15:03.220 --> 00:15:12.659 and the times and societies of past eras. So 00:15:12.659 --> 00:15:21.389 it's a very difficult topic to make proclamations 00:15:21.389 --> 00:15:25.549 about, because it's dangerous to say, oh, there's 00:15:25.549 --> 00:15:28.789 always been patriarchy. It almost makes it kind 00:15:28.789 --> 00:15:34.529 of a naturalized condition. But it's also, I 00:15:34.529 --> 00:15:37.750 think, dangerous to put up some kind of barrier 00:15:37.750 --> 00:15:40.590 between ourselves and people of the past and 00:15:40.590 --> 00:15:42.710 say, oh, what they were doing is different from 00:15:42.710 --> 00:15:45.690 what we're doing, and what they condoned is different 00:15:45.690 --> 00:15:51.720 from what we condoned. because that I think will 00:15:51.720 --> 00:15:56.299 create an illusion that somehow we're doing better 00:15:56.299 --> 00:16:00.860 when really, I don't really think we are all 00:16:00.860 --> 00:16:04.240 that much when it comes to the upper echelons 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:07.559 of society, the most powerful people and how 00:16:07.559 --> 00:16:10.639 they behave. I think there's a lot of big differences 00:16:10.639 --> 00:16:15.899 today in how we think about the subjectivity 00:16:15.899 --> 00:16:21.870 of the victim of a sexual assault. And indeed 00:16:21.870 --> 00:16:25.470 I can point to something that is in this letter 00:16:25.470 --> 00:16:30.850 that is in no way exculpating Joann's role in 00:16:30.850 --> 00:16:39.110 this, but he does indicate that the woman has 00:16:39.110 --> 00:16:44.990 not done anything wrong. And that is actually 00:16:45.820 --> 00:16:49.159 better than some of the rhetoric that's out there 00:16:49.159 --> 00:16:53.340 in our time about victims of sexual assault. 00:16:54.759 --> 00:16:59.840 I think Joann knows that this group of students 00:16:59.840 --> 00:17:04.500 is a group of perpetrators that they deserve 00:17:04.500 --> 00:17:09.160 to be punished. I think at the same time he's 00:17:09.160 --> 00:17:12.380 activating this behavior that is kind of the 00:17:12.380 --> 00:17:15.019 first instinct of the powerful to protect their 00:17:15.019 --> 00:17:21.990 own. So today's document was a heavy one and 00:17:21.990 --> 00:17:26.950 I didn't expect to encounter this subject and 00:17:26.950 --> 00:17:30.410 I am glad that it did come up because it reveals 00:17:30.410 --> 00:17:35.049 so much about what typically gets silenced in 00:17:35.049 --> 00:17:38.569 the archive and indeed what was silenced in the 00:17:38.569 --> 00:17:40.869 letter that Violant wrote. I have so much 00:17:40.869 --> 00:17:44.549 more to say about all this and there's a lot 00:17:44.549 --> 00:17:47.589 that I've added to the webpage for this particular 00:17:47.589 --> 00:17:53.170 document. That brings this episode to a close, 00:17:53.509 --> 00:17:58.309 and I will say that for this particular episode, 00:17:58.789 --> 00:18:02.349 it's not one that I feel very jovial about, so 00:18:02.349 --> 00:18:05.019 I'm not going to... play the upbeat music at 00:18:05.019 --> 00:18:09.299 the end. And what we'll do is close out this 00:18:09.299 --> 00:18:14.039 episode just with the end of my voice, and we'll 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:18.140 pick up again tomorrow and continue with the 00:18:18.140 --> 00:18:23.339 next document in the next day of the first year 00:18:23.339 --> 00:18:28.440 of the reign of Joan and Violant. In the meantime, 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:29.880 take care.