Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 10th, 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 Multi 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. Today's document is weird. If you look
at the image of this document, it's like a mess
because it's so basically it's on the inside
cover of the back cover of the register. And
as you're looking at the picture that the Archive
of the Crown of Aragon has produced for this,
you can see a lot of the preservation practices
from earlier eras. Like in other documents we've
seen how archivists from long ago had used reinforcing
paper. underneath and around the edges of a document
that had been attacked by worms. maybe like reinforcing
paper might be cut with like sort of this curvy
edge in order to include some of the writing
if it kind of went into the margin a little bit
and so the reinforcement paper will kind of,
you know, have this like little peninsula cut
out of it in order to accommodate where there
was some additional writing. We see a similar
tearing out happening here where it's clear that
there was like a knife taken to this reinforcement
paper in order to make sure that we could read
this Latin inscription. And by the way, I just
said reinforcement paper, but as I'm looking
at it and noticing the texture of this kind of
top surface reinforcement material here. It looks
like it could be parchment. It looks like it
could be a little bit thicker than paper and
it has kind of a texture to it that reminds me
of parchment. So it's very possible that at some
point the archival reinforcement work that was
done here utilized parchment because parchment
is sturdier than paper when we're talking about
the long term of this material. One other thing
I want to point out about this material is that
you can see all of the holes on the right side
of the image here. Those holes are part of the
original binding. of these papers into some kind
of unit and the the string would have gone through
those holes as a way of connecting all of the
different pieces of of the the paper together
and so you can see how it was very thick right
this very thick volume because of the number
of holes that we can observe there and and so
that everything you see in the whole part of
it that's how you know that that's the side of
this like if it's a book and it's laying on it
on a table like that part is going to be vertical
where those holes are and then the cover is folded
over so That is a really interesting glimpse
into some of the history of the material format
of these record books, and I'm really not clear
about, you know, which kind of bindings were
used originally when they were bound originally
and then when they were taken out of their bindings
and given new bindings there is literature on
that but I have not for all of my love of the
archive of the crown of aragon i haven't really
gotten into the details of of those questions
so now we're looking at the back cover of a volume
in the treasury records. So we're not in the
Cancelaria Real. We're not in the Royal Chancery
Records. We're instead in the Patrimonio Real,
which is the treasury records. And we've looked
at a treasury record once before. It was actually
way back toward the beginning of the podcast
in episode five. But today instead of a payment
record we're looking at this notice that essentially
just kind of closes out this record book because
it is the Treasury record book of King Pere the
ceremonious who has died So they're not gonna
let him spend any money anymore because once
you're dead you don't get to do that anymore
so this notice in the back is like literally
closing the book on the reign of king pair the
ceremonious the long reign over 50 years of king
Pere the ceremonious it's in latin and actually
this latin is very accessible to me so the first
the first A few words here are actually pretty
standard words that commemorate someone's death.
The first words here are migrauit ab hoc seculo.
And what that translates to is he departed from
this earthly world. so migrauit you can sort
of detect in there an english word that we have
that derives from this migration right moving
so in this sense though he's departing he's moving
with kind of like a one -way ticket and then
we have ab hoc from this and then the word seculo
seculo is basically it's a name for a world
it's a word for world in latin but it's got a
real kind of earthly world kind of meaning to
it because there's other words that if you want
to use world you can you can use besides seculo
so this is really to emphasize that he has left
the earthly world he's gone on into the heavenly
world and then after that phrase we've got uh
the illustrious and magnificent prince and lord
of all of these dominions and then there's the
list of all of the dominions where you know it
starts with aragon and then valencia and then
you've got sardinia in there and so a long list
of all these different territories and then in
the fourth line in the middle you have the the
date the number five Quinta and then D I E
a day fifth day of January and then you've got
the year in the next line right below the word
die you can see septimo very clearly that's the
seven in 1387 so here we've got another corroboration
of the date of Pere's death and then what comes
after that is a statement about when he was interred,
like when he was buried. And that is listed as
the tenth day so right below septimo there's
another die and before that is an x that folks
is an x oh my gosh that used to drive me crazy
when i was starting out with the paleography
to see that in the middle of a word in a letter
and to remember that that is how the letter x
is written Oh, it took me so much getting used
to, but now it feels like very obvious when I
see that that is an X. So the 10th day of the
month in that year mentioned before. So remember
how Violant in a document we looked at a little
while ago said we're burying Pear on Tuesday?
She was writing that to Marti. Well, the 10th
was not the next Tuesday. It's Thursday. And
so why is the plan changed? Maybe they were waiting
for Marti. They weren't waiting for Joan, because
I think Joan is pretty sick at this point,
but you know, Joan, I think, had written off
his father at this point and was like, you can
just put the dude in the ground and don't wait
for me. I don't know, maybe Joan was a little
torn up that he couldn't be there for his father's
funeral. You know, speaking of this, I don't
know if you had the chance to see the HBO TV
show Succession, but whenever I think of Pere
the Ceremonious, and part of it is that I was
watching that show as I was first learning about
Pere . He's such a Logan Roy type of person. Logan
Roy in the TV show succession is like this, you
know, the patriarch who's kind of at the end
of his life, but he's still trying to like do
power plays and like mess with the heads of his
kids. And it's all ego driven and total like
sort of narcissist and womanizer whole kind of
deal. So I really see a lot of similarity between
the character of Logan Roy in the HBO series
Succession and Pere the Ceremonious. And I just
want to say you know, maybe I can give a little
eulogy about the eulogy scene, the funeral scene
in succession. That's what I was also trying
to talk about, which is that that whole funeral
scene is really like how I imagine a lot of the
way that this funeral must have gone for Pere
because he just made so many people angry at
the very end. But, you know, he he he had his
cultured moments like, you know, he when he wanted
to tell Joan not to marry Violant, what did
he do? He wrote a poem. And he did have some
cultural interests and did patronize the arts.
And there were some, he was a multi -dimensional
person. But, you know, I cannot let Pere go without
relating to you my favorite anecdote that to
me really encapsulates all that Pere the Ceremonious
was capable of. Because remember, This guy, he
was forged in fire. When he started his reign,
he was super young and he had a rebellion right
away from those pretenders that his stepmother
had kind of used as a way to try to contest Pere's
reign at the very beginning and then after that
he had some of the cities rise up against him
and try to break off from the crown of aragon
so this rebellion that i'm talking about now
is called the the union rebellion and so there's
this moment at the end of it when Pere has crushed
the union uprising and the city of Valencia had
been really like the the most rebellious of all
the cities and part of what they did well at
one point they had captured Pere and like humiliated
him like paraded him through the town and like
made him dance at one point it was like really
like you know brutal humiliation tactics. So
at the end, Pere is so incensed with the rebels
of Valencia that he comes up with his own very
special way of executing them when they're defeated.
Leaders, the rebel leaders of Valencia had used
the town's bell tower as a way to organize themselves
and rally themselves for military conflict against
Pere's forces. So the bells were like very much
associated with the rebellion. And so what Pere
did is he took those bells, he had them taken
out of the tower and melted down and then he
rounded up all of the defeated rebel leaders
that he had captured and he had the molten iron
from those bells poured down their throats. Just
really like Game of Thrones level kind of execution
method here. So, you know, that's my eulogy for
Pere the Ceremonious. Oh, but I do have to say
the man loved his archive. He really did. There's
these stories of the scribes just like losing
their minds because Pere is ordering them to
reorganize the way that they're doing all the
record keeping, developing all these additional
categories of, okay, everything about Sardinia
is going to go into this and everything about
Majorca is going to go into this. Oh, but if
it has to do with this person, it's going to
go here and like all these different so they're
going crazy trying to figure out like, oh my
gosh, which register should I write down this
letter in because the number of types of registers
completely ballooned because Pere. He had ideas
about organizational behavior and record -keeping
and that was one of his passions. That's one
of the reasons why his cognomen is Pere the ceremonious.
So okay I gave you maybe like a little bit of
a backhanded uh positive spin on Pere there oh
Pere the ceremonious I think there are people
that really consider his reign very successful
a lot of military historians in particular so
here we've got a guy who was I think, very much
the kind of traditional masculine type of medieval
king. And just keep all this in mind as we move
forward and look at how Joan is going to be
very different and how Violent is going to be
involved in creating that difference. All right,
I think that does it for today's episode. Thanks
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, 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 and additional show notes,
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.