Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 2nd, 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. So I have decided not to play the usual
intro music for today's episode because the topic
that we're going to be looking at is a pretty
serious one. Today's document touches on sexual
assault. Alright, at this point I'm going to
proceed on to discuss the document. Alright,
so today's document is a sobering one, not about
a topic that is pleasant at all. So when I first
read Violant's document from the very first episode
of the podcast, I didn't see anything in there
to indicate how serious the trouble was that
the students in Montpellier had gotten into.
It's referred to very vaguely as a case. And
in hindsight, I can identify how my own position
as a man, as a gay man, has really influenced
my set of possibilities for what that crime could
be. I, in my mind, went to, oh, they got into
like a drunken brawl or something like that.
But today's document, which I had not really
worked on until now, reveals that the crime was
actually a sexual assault and the perpetrators
were multiple students so it is very serious
now and what I want to convey about this is that
first of all I didn't know so if you go back
and listen to episode 1 that is all in my own
ignorance of what this situation was. I had looked
ahead and found that Joan had written to the
Duc de Berry and had written about Montpellier,
so I knew that it was about the case, but I hadn't
really worked on understanding what the document
was saying. I jumped ahead and looked at the
date and saw that it would fit in as being the
document for January 2nd. So frankly, I'm pretty
embarrassed that I treated this with levity in
the earlier episode, and I'm keeping it as is.
I'm not re -recording or anything like that because
I think it's a really good demonstration. of
how as a historian is working through what they
see in the archive, they're bringing their own
blind spots to it. They're bringing their own
position to it. I know historians who would have
thought that sexual assault was a likely possibility
when they're presented with the scenario of a
group of young men being accused of a serious
crime and the fact that it wasn't in my mind
as within the set of possibilities it says a
lot about what I bring to the table and so this
experience has been a really good corrective
for me as I'm trying to think about all of the
commonly silenced things that are in the archive.
So today's document is one in which we see Joanne,
who is the Duke of Girona, writing to the Duc
de Berry. The Duc de Berry, at this time, is
the most powerful person in France. And that's
because the current King of France, Charles VI,
is still too young to rule. So this is a regency
period. The Duc de Berry is in charge of France
as Charles VI comes of age. And so now we've
got Joan writing to the most politically powerful
person in France about the situation with these
students in Montpellier. One quick thing about
the relationship between Joan and Violant and
the Duc de Berry. The Duc de Berry is Violant's
uncle. And so... Joan and Violant correspond
with him a whole lot. And I've seen a lot in
the secondary literature regarding their correspondence
on cultural topics. So they're asking to borrow
a particular book or talking about some kind
of musical style or particular troubadours, maybe.
But this is the first time I've seen a document
in which it's not on a cultural topic. and is
instead about something in the realm of the criminal
justice area of rule. So in the first couple
lines of the document today, Joan explains
the situation. He gets to it pretty quickly and
he... in the second line identifies a woman of
a good background. And that means that this particular
woman is not in any way suspect. And that's important
for the men involved here. because, again, we're
operating in a very patriarchal context where
the question arises of whether the woman can
be believed in the situation and her reputation
plays into that. Joan then talks about how this
woman, at night, goes from her house to the house
of her brother because her brother is ill. And
on one of these nights, she was the verb is encontada
she was encountered by certain and then this
phrase is one that I didn't understand and once
I figured it out it really confirmed what was
going on here so she's confronted by what is
written in this letter certs veylets o masips.
And that phrase is one that I did not recognize,
and I had to go back and forth a little bit with
a couple different resources in order to figure
out what it meant. And one of those resources
was ChatGPT, so you can see the transcript. I've
added the transcript into the webpage for today's
document. But what was just as important, though,
was a very low -tech resource, which was a glossary
that I had found in the back of a book titled
Mediaeval Catalan Linguistic Texts. And I wouldn't
have found that if I didn't physically go to
the library at the University of New Mexico and
look on the shelf at their Catalan language and
literature section and just kind of flip through
some things. It was being there physically that
I realized that this book had a very ample glossary
of medieval Catalan terms and the translation
into English. And so I had access to that resource.
And by the way, the glossary is not mentioned
in the online catalog record. So I had to be
physically present in the library in order to
discover this, and the entries in this glossary
under the V and the M sections revealed to me
that these terms were likely terms used for groups
of young men. And my feeling is that the terms
used here have a kind of negative connotation.
Something like how we would say hooligan, maybe?
I'm not sure, but that's just my guess. So already
in the first three lines, we have the necessary
information. There was a woman at night and there
was a group of young men. And so clearly what
happened here was sexual assault. And if it were
anything else, it would not have risen to the
occasion where the students are in such gigantic
trouble. So there's no reason to think, oh, just
a simple robbery or like a little argument. No,
this is this is almost certainly a rape and it's
in my mind, a brutal one. So what's going on
in this letter is something that in our time
in early 2026 and what we've been hearing about
in the news all throughout the second half of
2025 is the Epstein files. We can understand
what's going on here. Powerful men. are protecting
their own. And Joan, and Violant too, was brought
in to fulfill that mission. Someone in this group
of students from Catalonia is high placed high
up in the bureaucracy of the state. someone who
has the title dispenser, which is in some way
related to the treasury. I'm still figuring out
what that exactly is. And so Joan and Violant
have written, I'm sorry, I don't know for sure
if Joan wrote to Montpellier, actually. Violant
has written to the officials of Montpellier to
try to influence them to treat the perpetrators
gently. And now Joan has written to the most
politically powerful person in France so that
he will use his influence to ensure that this
group of rapists are treated with as little consequence
as possible in this situation. When talking about
contextualization, a historian has to be very
careful about making direct comparisons between
what goes on in the present time and what went
on in the distant past. We're talking today about
an event that happened over 600 years ago. And
when I make a comparison about how men, powerful
men, protect perpetrators of sexual assault,
well, immediately, you have to kind of press
on the brake a little bit and say, well, gosh,
600 years of difference, that's got to raise
some concerns about making that comparison. And
indeed, there are concerns. But something to
recognize is that patriarchy has been very ingrained
in Western civilization, and there's a tremendous
amount of continuity, even over the centuries.
There's a few historians who have done some excellent
work on this. For the Middle Ages in particular,
I can recommend Carissa M. Harris's book, Obscene
Pedagogies. It's about rape culture in medieval
England. And then I can also recommend a slightly
older book by Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power
in Early America. And that book, while not about
medieval Europe, is an excellent resource for
understanding the historical continuities and
also the historical changes, the differences
regarding non -consensual sex between our time
and the times and societies of past eras. So
it's a very difficult topic to make proclamations
about, because it's dangerous to say, oh, there's
always been patriarchy. It almost makes it kind
of a naturalized condition. But it's also, I
think, dangerous to put up some kind of barrier
between ourselves and people of the past and
say, oh, what they were doing is different from
what we're doing, and what they condoned is different
from what we condoned. because that I think will
create an illusion that somehow we're doing better
when really, I don't really think we are all
that much when it comes to the upper echelons
of society, the most powerful people and how
they behave. I think there's a lot of big differences
today in how we think about the subjectivity
of the victim of a sexual assault. And indeed
I can point to something that is in this letter
that is in no way exculpating Joann's role in
this, but he does indicate that the woman has
not done anything wrong. And that is actually
better than some of the rhetoric that's out there
in our time about victims of sexual assault.
I think Joann knows that this group of students
is a group of perpetrators that they deserve
to be punished. I think at the same time he's
activating this behavior that is kind of the
first instinct of the powerful to protect their
own. So today's document was a heavy one and
I didn't expect to encounter this subject and
I am glad that it did come up because it reveals
so much about what typically gets silenced in
the archive and indeed what was silenced in the
letter that Violant wrote. I have so much
more to say about all this and there's a lot
that I've added to the webpage for this particular
document. That brings this episode to a close,
and I will say that for this particular episode,
it's not one that I feel very jovial about, so
I'm not going to... play the upbeat music at
the end. And what we'll do is close out this
episode just with the end of my voice, and we'll
pick up again tomorrow and continue with the
next document in the next day of the first year
of the reign of Joan and Violant. In the meantime,
take care.