Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 5th, 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. I want to start out the discussion
of today's document by talking about the materiality
of the register itself. So this register 1786
definitely had a serious worm attack, especially
in the pages that are at the very beginning at
the very end. It's actually not too uncommon
in these registers to see that the very first
pages and the very last pages have been eaten
away a whole lot more than the pages that are
in the middle. If you're able to take a look
at the three pages of today's document, what
you'll see is that the texture of them is just
in my opinion, really delightful. You have all
of these kind of, oh, it looks like a coastline
around the edges, especially of the middle page
folio 260R. And then the color is all kind of
interesting as it gets into shades of a darker
beige around the edges. And then you can also
see that there has been someone, at some point,
some archivist has painstakingly repaired the
edges and fortified them with some reinforcing
paper. And this has happened a lot in the registers
as I've looked at the images of them, and it
really just is a moment of pathos for me, where
I just imagine all of that uncredited labor that
has gone into preserving these documents through
the centuries. I also believe that there were
centuries that went by in which nothing happened
to these volumes or the stacks of paper that
later were bound into volumes where they just
sat in boxes sometimes maybe for I mean sometimes
maybe for like as long as three centuries undisturbed
in certain cases just uninterrupted storage through
time and now they're digitized and I can look
at them from the other side of the world. It
is just marvelous. I had to wax poetic about
this. It's one of the reasons that I'm doing
this podcast, which is to really try to share
with people how amazing it is that this information
has survived for over 600 years, and the way
that it has survived, and the contact that is
possible now. for an unlimited audience. It used
to be that you had to go to the Archive of the
Crown of Aragon in order to see these things
at all. And now it's almost like the opposite.
I've heard that if you go to the Archive of the
Crown of Aragon in Barcelona and you try to get
access to look at a register like this one that
I'm looking at now that's been digitized, the
archivist will say you have to come up with a
legitimate reason that you need to look at the
physical object versus the high resolution scanned
images. And if you can't come up with a reason
for why you need to be in contact with the physical
page, then you're not going to be able to access
it. I mean, that's secondhand information. It's
possible that the archivists at the Archive of
the Crown of Aragon are than happy to let people
encounter the historical object. And I've just
heard that in archives around the world it's
becoming more and more common for researchers
to be directed to use the digitized image even
if they're there physically in the archive. So
this is a trend in archives around the world.
Alright, so that was a little bit of nerding
out about archives and the preservation of materials
and the cool coastline formations that you can
see around the edges of the paper. I just love
that. And of course, in the middle of the paper,
we've got the little lacunae created by the worms
at various moments. All right, let's talk about
this document itself. I think one of the reasons
that I went on about the materiality of it for
so long is that this is a long Latin document
and I'm telling you, I'm not doing it. I'm drawing
a line and I'm saying I'm not going to do a faithful
translation of this document. Why? Because it's
clearly just not really of primary interest to
me. in my project, which is to really figure
out a lot more about how Joan and Violant
related to each other, what their marriage was
like, how they negotiated the gender dynamics
between the two of them, and also how they were
seen in terms of their masculinity and femininity.
So this particular document So it does relate
in a kind of indirect way, but it doesn't really
tell me a whole lot about that. Let me explain.
This document is Joan's ruling on a petition.
The petition is related to gender dynamics because
there is some kind of dispute happening between
the wife of somebody who I think has died, and
then the family, two family members. So... The
wife's name is Francesca. Francesca is in some
kind of dispute with a Bernardo and a Pedro,
and it's over money. And at the end, somebody
has to pay somebody else about 600 solidis. And
remember an earlier episode we looked at the
salary for Violant's baker and for three months
of work that was 356 solidis. So, you know, 600
solidis is a fair amount of money, especially
if we're not talking about nobility here. So
it's an impactful ruling, for sure, in the lives
of the individuals involved here. And it does
bring up something that I find really is interesting,
and another scholar has done some amazing work
on this. Marie Kelleher, who sadly passed away
about a year and a half ago, she has done a lot
of work on women and the legal system in the
late medieval Crown of Aragon. And in fact, right
around the time period, that I'm looking at in
this podcast. So I highly, highly recommend her
work and I'll have some citations on the webpage
for this document today. Marie Kelleher has argued
that women could make use of the legal system
in the Crown of Aragon in order in a really interesting
way, to turn patriarchy kind of against itself.
To kind of use the tools that were created for
very patriarchal reasons in order to win cases.
And the ways that that happens sometimes pretty
counterintuitive, but women learned how to be
very successful at it in this general time. place.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Francesca was the
winner in this petition, because there's a lot
of records of women winning when they appeal
to the particular authority figure for their
region. And in this case, the person that was
petitioned to is Joan in his capacity as the
Duke of Girona. If we look at the last line
of this document, well, first of all, it's a
little confusing. What is the last line? Because
it seems like the document is over at the bottom
of folio 260 R. But then if you look at the next
page, folio 260 V, there's content in there that
clearly relates to what was going on. It's the
same people that are being described. There's
Francesca. There's Bernardo. There's Pedro. So
and then Francesca is the wife of Guillaume and
Guillaume is mentioned a whole bunch in there
too. So basically the end of folio 260r. It looks
like the end of a document but there's no dating
there and so I think that the ruling on the petition
is what concludes on 260 are and then maybe after
the ruling is a an additional message saying
and then here's what the penalty is going to
be or here, here is who has to pay who and then
that is the overall conclusion all right the
date on this is January 5th. It's really clear,
January 5th. Remember yesterday, Joann wrote
a letter to Marti on January 4th, and he said
that he was at the Hostal de Belladona. Now look
at this. It's January 5th, and the location is
Gerona. That's a direct contradiction. So what
is going on here? I have a theory. My theory
is that the letter to Marti reflects Joan's
actual location on January 4th, and that he was
not in Girona on January 5th. I think what happened
is that Joan verbally ruled on this petition
in Girona. And then the Chancery staff either
they were like staying behind in Girona for a
little while or they like gathered up everything
and and went along with Joan and were also in
Belladona. But in any event they had to write it
up after Joan had verbally issued his decision.
And so they're writing it up at a later time,
but the actual ruling had taken place earlier.
And so I don't know why they're not backdating
it. They clearly don't have a problem with having
the dates out of order and having in the register
one letter from one day going out of order in
the next day. But I think what they're trying
to do is they're trying to... kind of be faithful
to two different things, to the time and the
place. So Joan made the ruling, this is my guess,
made the ruling verbally in Girona, but then
they're dating it accurately according to when
they finished writing it up. So that's my guess
is what's happening here. There might be some...
other explanation, there's just simply no way
that Joan went back to Girona and was there
on January 5th. Because the next place that he's
at, according to other documents, a huge number
of documents in the register, is actually further
on the way toward Barcelona. His next place is
in Hostalrich or near Hostalrich. So basically
what we're seeing in this last line is just not
possibly reflecting reality in terms of the matching
up of the date and the location. So, you know,
those chancery scribes giving us a curveball.
But I think they might have accounted for this
and apologized for it because if you look at
the bottom of the middle page of folio 260r there's
some very faint handwriting and it's interrupted
by the worms and the jagged or curvy coastline
at the bottom there and I think they might be
writing something about how the location and
date are wonky for this particular letter, but
I didn't really have the time myself or honestly
the fortitude or motivation to try to really
dig into that that little passage. Someone who
really wants to take on as a project a real kind
of like micro history of these 30 days I think
this is a great place for them to start if they
if they really want to just zoom in only on the
period from say you know January 1st to January
19th and like really get into that I think this
document is is a really helpful one for that
project. But for the purposes of my project we
are done with this document. Thank you 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, then
I have done my job. Even if I didn't do my job
by figuring out exactly what is happening in
this document. Remember, the motto of The Historian's
Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. Visit
the website to see an image of today's document
and additional show notes. Also check out some
of those publications by Marie Kelleher. They're
really good, really good reads. 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.