Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 9th, 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 1 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'm really excited to talk about today's document
because it's the first time that I'm talking
about a document where there's a woman writing
a letter to another woman. All of the previous
documents thus far have been involving men in
some way as either the writer or the recipient.
And so today's letter is a welcome change. Violant
is writing to Maria de Luna. I might have mentioned
Maria de Luna in passing earlier on the episode.
Maria de Luna is a big deal. First of all, she
is Marti's wife. So basically this is the second...
most powerful woman in the Crown of Aragon at
this time. But Maria de Luna has a background.
She is from the, well, if not the wealthiest
family in the Crown of Aragon, one of like the
top five wealthiest families. The de Luna family
is incredibly powerful and wealthy. And in fact,
Maria de Luna's uncle becomes pope a few years
down the road. Well, talking about the Avignon
Papacy, so history actually remembers Pedro de
Luna, who is Pope Benedict. Oh gosh, what number.
Benedict the something something. He's remembered
as the anti -pope. So this is a very prestigious
powerful family with so much established network
connection to other families and political powerhouses
in the Crown of Aragon. So Maria de Luna is very
well connected and has deep roots in the Crown
of Aragon. I say all that in order to bring out
a contrast. Violant, remember, she grew up in
France, and Joan set out to have a French wife.
Like, the way that he got together with Violant
is that he sent, like, a group of emissaries
into France and asked them to basically compile,
like, a dossier of marriageable high -up French
ladies, and so and actually should, you know,
specify that the age difference was quite significant
and very hard for us in the modern age to wrap
our heads around. So the age that Violant leaves
France and moves to the Crown of Aragon to marry
Joan, she's 15 years old. And so that is not
what we would say in our time as a lady or woman.
We would say that is a 15 year old girl. And
so trying to figure out how to get our minds
around what was considered a normal marriageable
age in the Middle Ages, in the medieval era,
it's very difficult for us and not easy at all
to support or defend can only say that the notions
that we have about childhood and adolescence
are very much modern creations. And not to make
excuses, but just observe that anthropologically
there is variation across humanity and over time
in regard to questions of when childhood ends.
In our modern time, though, we don't have these
questions. We are very clear on having a society
that will not accept a child marriage as okay.
So, all right. Maria de Luna is from a very well
-connected, wealthy family, and she, by all accounts,
is a very competent and responsible leader. Nuria
Silleras Fernandez has written a fantastic book
about Maria de Luna, and it's a wonderful parallel
to thinking about Violant, because after Joan
dies in 1396, Marti is off in Sicily and it takes
him a really long time to get back to Barcelona
to inherit the throne. And this is to say that
there were no surviving male heirs at the time
that Joan died. And so Martí takes several months
to get to Barcelona, and in an interesting parallel
to what we're looking at right now with the beginning
of the reign of Joan and Violant. Just as
Violante is stepping up and running things while
waiting for Joan to arrive, Maria di Luna does
that in 1396 and has to really get way deeper
into governance because it takes so much longer
for Marti to arrive from Sicily and also because
that transition of power in 1396 is way more
of a crisis. And the reason for that, without
getting too digressive here, is that the circumstances
surrounding Joan's death in May of 1396 are
problematic. I would use the word suspicious.
Other historians have not. definitely sudden.
So Maria de Luna is a really interesting figure,
and the portrait that Nuria Silleras Fernandez
paints of Maria de Luna is one of just very responsible,
very organized, very stable personality. And
Violant, by contrast, has gone down in history
as more aggressive, more hot -tempered, but I
think the question that historians of Violant
de Bar, such as Dawn Bratsch Prince, who started
out a whole new revision of Violant de Bar
in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, and now
Claire Ponsich, who's currently writing about Violant
de Bar, historians that look at Violant, they're
starting to question a lot of the characterization
of Violant as ill -tempered or hot -headed,
and to notice how a lot of that has to do with
the animus against her for being an outsider,
for being somebody who had come in from France,
and also maybe how Violant was pushing the
boundaries in a way that made people angry. because
of what Joan was doing too, and that there's
a dynamic here that upset a lot of people that
has to do with the way that Joan and Violant
were working together. That last little twist
is my own theory of this case. In any event,
what we have in this letter, dated January 9th,
1387, is Violant informing Maria de Luna that
Pere has died, which to me is a bit of a mystery
because I would be super surprised if Maria de
Luna had not already been informed that Pere
had died. I mean, that's pretty hot news. So
maybe Violant is starting this out by just as
a matter of courtesy saying Hey, I'm going to
share this important news with you that the king
is dead, and long live the new king, and I'm
queen. She starts out the letter with a molt cara.
You know, we always love that. That's nice and
tender. So this one starts out molt cara sor.
And then the second sentence in the letter also
reiterates moltkara sor. Most dear sister. So,
Violant is addressing Maria de Luna in the same
way that she addresses Marti. And that led me
on my initial read of this letter to say, okay,
this kind of tone here is just nice and, you
know, friendly. And the content of the letter
is basically saying, hey, come to Barcelona,
please. But... I just was kind of curious what
would happen if I fed this into ChatGPT and the
kind of analysis that I might get. Was there
anything hidden in this letter that maybe ChatGPT
might find and could kind of spark some additional
questions in my mind? And that's exactly what
happened. So ChatGPT has an interesting interpretation
of this letter and the AI has made an interpretation
that this letter is actually not all that polite,
but is instead a more assertive and commanding
summons, that Violant is summoning Maria de
Luna to Barcelona. It's an interesting angle
on this, and I would have to have way deeper
familiarity with the tone of the language of
letters like this than I do now. I'm still a
relative beginner at looking at these documents,
and so maybe if I come back to this about six
months from now, it'll seem obvious to me. that
this is a summons, that there's really kind of
like a power play happening here where Violant
is asserting that she has the power to demand
the presence of Maria de Luna, like as a subordinate.
Or maybe that's not what's going on here at all.
Maybe it is a request. The key phrase that ChatGPT
pulled out that is, I think, the one that we're
really trying to figure out in a close read,
whether it's demanding or not, is in the second
-to -the -last full line where basically Violant
is saying, oh, sorry, it's the third -to -the
-last line, kind of in the center. Al pus breu.
So basically saying, you know, move it. It should
be fast the way you get here. I'm not sure that
that's necessarily the tone that is being conveyed
in this letter. Maybe, you know, it's not going
to come across to Maria de Luna as uh sort of
edging on rudeness level of summons, but you
know maybe it is. And you know I asked a series
of questions the other day about Marti and how
Marti reacts to being issued directives from
Violante, and the same thing can be asked about
Maria. Is Maria de Luna at this point in full
support of Violant, or is she... feeling a certain
kind of annoyance at a level of presumption from
this foreigner, this French lady who is now going
to become the Queen of the Crown of Aragon. So
a lot of questions about the operation and exercise
of power are at work here. And I talked about
this quite a bit in previous episodes. But I
go in deeper on this question of the exercise
of power in some of the show notes on the webpage
for this document on the website. So do check
that out. There's a lot of really interesting
bibliographic citations. If you're wanting to
learn more about how scholars today discuss the
exercise of power. by medieval women. And I can
highly recommend some of the works that I had
mentioned yesterday, but also I want to mention
two more. First, an article by Marie Kelleher
titled, What Do We Mean by Women and Power? That's
from 2016. And then a really great contrast to
the book by Nuria Silleras Fernandez about Maria
de Luna is one by Elizabeth Casteen about Johanna
of Naples. It's titled From She -Wolf to Martyr,
the Reign and Disputed Reputation of Johanna
the First of Naples, and it's also about the
14th century and about a woman who pushed the
boundaries of power and a way more violent fate
awaited Joanna of Naples versus that experienced
by Violant and Maria de Luna, and also Sibilla
de Fortia, who the three of them in the Crown
of Aragon, they had a lot of ups and downs and
excitement, but their physical safety was never
in super risk. I'm sure Sibilla is pretty frightened
at this moment, but she ends up being okay and
lives a long life after this, long enough to
see Violante go down after Joan's death in
1396. Alright, so a lot of really interesting
stuff being written about powerful women in the
Middle Ages. Oh, but one last thing to mention
about this letter before I bring this episode
to a close, which is that Violant mentions the
Infanta Joanna is there with her. And this is
a really interesting moment because I had not
understood that there were any of the children
around. But this is actually Violant's stepdaughter,
a daughter that Joan had with his previous
wife, Matha of Armagnac. And by all accounts,
Violant and Joanna got along very, very well.
But I think that... mentioning Joanna in this
moment helps to maybe imply a little bit to Maria
that the women are going to be a force together,
working together on team next gen for this upcoming
reign. So I think that's a really interesting
moment that I wanted to make sure I didn't forget
to talk about that that Violant mentions that that
the Princess Joanna is there with her in this
moment. Thanks for listening to this episode
of the Historian's Notebook, Season 1, Mult Cara
Companyona. If you are leaving with more questions
than you arrived with, then this episode has
succeeded according to the criteria, dissatisfaction
guaranteed, which is the motto of this podcast.
Visit the website to see an image of today's
document and additional show notes. And listen
again tomorrow to hear more about the first year
of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen
Violant de Bar. Take care.