Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 7th, 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. We are going to be sticking with Violant
for a few days here. That's because, at this
moment, she's in charge. She's there in Barcelona,
in the capital, in the nerve center, where all
of the important, powerful people are located.
And she is doing the work to establish the reign.
And so she's really busy. She's got a ton of
letters. January 7th has a whole bunch of letters
that Violant has sent out rapid fire a whole
bunch of like these four liners one after the
other to all of these super important people
giving instructions she's also keeping Joan
informed she sent him more than one letter today
and so this is a really interesting moment for
looking at how Violante is negotiating the establishment
of a reign at the same time that she has to contend
with not being the king so violating the gender
rule that the king is in charge and so she's
definitely talking to a bunch of different people
shoring up authority and it all goes okay because
no one is rising up to contest Joan's rule and
he eventually does come in on January 19th he
arrives to Barcelona and the reign is going and
so whatever she's doing it it ends up working
and whatever kinds of networking and messaging
she's putting out there it ends up working. Part
of that I think is visible in today's document.
And I once again am in debt to Claire Ponsich
and her 2008 article that is basically a whole
series of close readings of letters from Violant
and looking at the way that Violant is really
exceeding the boundaries of what's expected in
the gendered performance of a queen or a duchess
or a widow and Claire Ponsich has done amazing
work really establishing that Violant breaks
out of the commonly accepted boundaries in the
way that she employs language in addition to
the choices that she makes about actions that
she takes and so it's not it's an exercise of
power is not just about whether you're leading
an army or taking something. It's also, and I'm
really drawing on an article by Theresa Earenfight
here when I say this, power is also latent power.
It's what happens when you invoke a threat or
whether you may maybe imply a threat and also
just what is assumed the assumptions that go
into the way that you are interacting with somebody
else that basically you're in charge and there's
no push back against it in that moment that is
an exercise of power and we see that in today's
document. Today's document is one in which Violant
is writing to Martí. Martí has not returned to
Barcelona. He's taken care of the flight of Sibilla.
He, at this time, has basically gotten Sibilla
to surrender to his authority. She's come out
of the castle. Her whole crew has basically said,
okay, we give up. We are just going to turn our
fate over to your mercy. And Marti has basically
taken a bunch of them prisoner. Violent finds
out about this development, and she sends this
letter that's dated the 7th of January, one of
the whole slew of January 7th letters, and she's
writing to Marti, and she basically says that
the prisoners, specifically one of them, the
Count of Pallars, they are to be taken to a particular
castle named the Castle of... Well, in English,
it would be like... English. Well, in the common
way of thinking of it, it would be Santa Cruz,
which is not English, it's Spanish, but Sant Creu.
is the way in Catalan it would be said. And so
this castle, I put a link to the tourist website
for this castle onto the webpage for today's
document. it's a really imposing castle it looks
it looks a little a little grim and it dates
from centuries earlier and so Violant tells
Marti to take the Count of Pallars and I think
there's an implication here that there's other
prisoners too and to imprison them in this imposing
castle that is still quite a distance from Barcelona
but she says do not put them in chains. So this
is another letter that Claire Ponsich has flagged
as an indication of Violant's commanding tone,
and that in this instruction to Marti, she is
taking on a supervisory identity. She's directing
him in how these prisoners are going to be handled.
So when Violant does things like this, and I
have a feeling like she's doing these things
all the time, she is laying a record down. She's
establishing a tradition. She is taking the inherited
tradition of Queen Lieutenancy in the Crown of
Aragon, which fitting in with this larger pattern
of these Iberian queenships is just a very expansive
role for the Queen, historically. She's taking
that and she's basically saying, that's not going
to be my ceiling. That's going to be my floor.
And I am in no way going to hesitate about issuing
directives making decisions, and the more that
she does this, the more that she'll have a foundation
later on if this gets challenged. So she is building
her power as she's doing this. It's not just,
oh, I'm making this decision and that decision.
It's that you're laying this tradition of your
own queenship. And I think that that's super
exciting to see. I've got a whole bunch of questions,
though. I'm really wondering about Marti's response
to this. Is he seeing it as, like, cool? Is he
receiving directives from Violant and thinking
to himself, who is this woman to be acting toward
me like I'm her subordinate? Or is he, like,
cool with this? I mean, he certainly had enough
time, you know, like, about, like, seven years
to get to know Violant and what she's like and
the dynamic between Joan and Violant. And
Marti, I mean, by all accounts, is just, like,
100 % loyal to Joan. And so... Maybe he's like,
yeah, this is going to be the dynamic. I knew
this going in and we are a team. We are like,
you know, team. Next Gen here, and we're gonna
rock it when we get to be in charge after having
this, you know, like long, long reign of Pere
the Ceremonious finally come to an end. And at
last we're in charge and Team Next Gen is going
to basically now have a chance to govern and
we've already set out since we had so long to
figure it out because, goodness, Pere just kept
lingering on for a very long time. He was so
old that it was kind of like an Elizabeth II
situation where Prince Charles had no shortage
of years to figure out what he would like to
do when he became king. So it's a similar situation
where they've had plenty of time to get to know
each other, to establish expectations, and maybe
that's what's happening here, and Marti is totally
cool with this. So that's my guess, but of course
I don't know. And it's also possible that Marti
is like gritting his teeth, being... not supportive
of Violant and her pushing on these gendered
boundaries. And maybe also Marti is wondering,
where is my brother in all this? And why is he
not in Barcelona? I think that Marti is aware
of Joan's delay because Joan had written to him
as we looked at before. But how much info does
Marti have? I have a feeling he's in the loop,
but don't know for sure. So basically, this document
is one that reveals so much about the operation
of power when it comes to elite women in this
time and place. So it's super interesting for
that reason. And again, I just want to say that
I'm grateful to Claire Ponsich for doing a really
awesome analysis of the letter that we looked
at yesterday as well as today's. All right. At
this point, let's talk about something in the
bigger background. A couple minutes ago, I brought
up this tradition of Iberian queenship, granting,
establishing, legitimizing these very expansive
roles for queens throughout Iberia. So Crown
of Aragon, Castile, Portugal. The queens in these
polities, they have just... this portfolio that
is really not typical of the roles that queens
had in other regions of Western Europe in the
late Middle Ages. The reasons for this are that
essentially a lot of the and I'm drawing on Teresa
Earenfight here. in her article, which is, I think,
she titles it Absent Kings. So basically there's
a tradition of the kings having to visit a lot
of different places within their realms in order
to maintain their authority because basically
there's a lot of confederation type political
entities where the kings, they just don't have
the kind of centralized power that are in other
places and the the authority that they have is
based on a lot of deal making and agreements
and they have to go visit these different realms
very frequently they have to travel it's like
a road job they have to travel a lot in order
to handle things and be a presence so that they
keep their realms from from the centrifugal force
that, you know, is pushing to have all these
different polities go off on their own. So with
the King out and about, the Queen steps in as
just one of the team to help bolster the authority
of the regime. and so this is something that
just kind of builds on itself over time and what
you end up with in Iberia is something a bit
different than what's happening in other parts
of Europe in that the queen starts to have a
portfolio so I've you know used that term a whole
bunch on the podcast now at the same time in
the last several years scholars have scholars
of queenship have highlighted how there's this
tendency there had been this tendency to characterize
powerful women as exceptional and now they're
kind of looking at this and saying wait a second
If we're having one exceptional case after the
other, and we're just keep discovering all of
these exceptions, are we really seeing exceptions
at all? Or are we actually noticing how once
you look at the historical record as it is, powerful
women are not exceptional? And so there was an
edited volume by Heather Tanner. that had the
subtitle moving beyond the exceptionalism debate.
So there was this whole kind of moment where
queenship studies moves beyond exceptionalism.
And now what does that mean? It means that to
look at queens and other powerful elite women
in the Middle Ages is to look at routine and
frequent uses and exercises of power that basically
what we can see in a lot of regions around the
the Western European countries and probably beyond
that is that it was normal for women to exercise
power Tomorrow's document is going to really
hit on this more directly. So we'll leave it
there for today and bring this episode to a close.
Thanks for listening to the Historian's Notebook,
Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving
with more questions than you arrived with, I
have 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 bibliographic citations
for a bunch of the works that I just mentioned.
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!