Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 11th, 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. Before we get into the content of today's
document, I want to focus on some of the sourcing
information in it. And in the last, well, it
starts at the end of the third to last line of
the text block, and then we have the day the
ninth day of January in the year of the nativity
of our lord and then 1387 and then rex and then
Johan okay so the place is listed as near Granollers
And this is a document by Joan. We've just had
a series of documents from Violant. And during
the time of those documents, during the last
few days, Joan really is writing consistently.
There's no particular day, as I've looked at
the register and paged through it, that seems
to have like a dramatic dip. It's just sort of,
you know, a few letters and documents a day.
And so it's really hard for me to see when Joan
gets into the most trouble with his illness.
And Josep Roca... the scholar from the early
20th century is convinced that at a certain point
in January, Joan gets seriously ill to the extent
that he's given last rites. So I'm trying to
figure out exactly when that would be, and part
of what I'm looking at is the location tracking
of Joan. It's clear that he's not well enough
to make a journey in one day to Barcelona. Violant
can do that, and she did. So he's kind of making
his way through the different locations between
Girona and Barcelona, and Granollers is about
halfway between the two. So he really pauses
for a while in Granollers, and the first thought
I had about that was that's where he runs into
real trouble. But then when I've been looking
at the documents from the time that he's in Granollers,
like this one today, They seem to be pretty active.
And on the 16th, we're going to look at a document
that is from the day that he had a big meeting
of his main counselors for his reign. And so
he was certainly up to having a very active day
on the 16th. And then on the 19th of January,
he and Violant enter Barcelona. And I figured
that one out. Violant comes back to Granollers
to be with Joan on the day of that big meeting
on the 16th. So she's there with him the 16th,
the 17th. the 18th, and then the both of them
arrive to Barcelona on the 19th of January, and
then after that they're in Barcelona pretty consistently
for many months. So I'm going to post onto the
web page for today's document images from the
itinerary that Daniel Girona y Llagostera created
for Joan based on several of the registers of
his letters and charters around this time in
these exact days. And, you know, it's kind of
hard for me to figure out, like, where he got
into, like, major trouble. And then also, it's
leading me to think that possibly it was before
January 5th. I mean, it's very hard to understand
why Violant leaves his side if he's so, so sick.
So maybe that's like all the more reason to leave
his side to make sure there's no trouble at the
very start of the reign I don't know. It's really
hard to figure out and I don't want to I don't
want to doubt Josep Roca because he worked so
much on the documents from this time I just wish
he had something better than that April 30th
letter that he quotes at length. So we're going
to see. I'm going to really look at that very
closely in the upcoming weeks. And as we get
to April 30th, hopefully I'll crack it and figure
out exactly what Roca is doing there as he's
making this claim that Joan becomes really deathly
ill in this period that we're looking at right
now. All right, let's talk about the document
itself for today. This is a recommendation letter
that Joan has written for a friar named Miguel
Rossell. And that name is in the middle of the
third line. He's writing to the people who are
in charge of sort of the guests or hospitality
at the monastery of Montserrat. This monastery
is a really big deal. The name means like serrated
mountain. It's a monastery that is situated on
a very high up and sharp, almost cliff -like
location. It's a bit to the northwest of Barcelona,
about 60 kilometers, I think. And this location
was identified as a very spiritually powerful
location even before Christianity. The Romans
had a temple to Venus there, for example, and
as Christianity then became the state religion
of Rome and so on and so forth over the centuries,
it became a Christian holy place. And it actually
is one of the most high -status holy places in
Spain for being a Christian in the kind of list
of Christian devotional sites. And part of it
is the tradition of its kind of long -lasting
location as a spiritual place. There's also a
statue there that has purported to have brought
about miracles. So there's a lot of pilgrimage
that goes to Montserrat, and in fact we're going
to see later on in this very year, Violant herself
makes a pilgrimage to Montserrat. So it's a big
deal, and I was still though trying to figure
out why in these very sensitive, busy early days
of the reign is Joan taking time to recommend
some seemingly random friar to go to Montserrat
and kind of have Joann's letter to give him lodging
and, you know, room and board there. And so I
did a little bit of research And this is an instance
where I think I can model a way to use the AI
chatbots responsibly for historical research.
So I'm going to put up the chat GPT transcript
of my questions to the chatbot about Montserrat
and about Joan in this particular time period.
And what you'll see in that transcript is that
it originally gave me a source that is full of
information, but it's a website that seems to
be primarily for maybe like tourists or people
who just aren't really concerned about authorship
and sourcing of information because none of the
information on that website is attributed to
any person. It's all just kind of here's information
and I can't even figure out exactly who made
this website. So I asked ChatGPT to take the
information it had gathered from that website
and to locate a scholarly article or publication,
like a book maybe, about this topic, about the
Montserrat Monastery and Joan's reign, and indeed
it found an article by a scholar at the University
of Barcelona. Well, it's actually a book chapter
in a book of collected essays, and it's by Prim
Bertran i Roige. And in this article, Bertran
i Roige discusses how in the long context of
the Great Western Schism, where there was a pope
in Avignon and a pope in Rome, there were a lot
of disputes within the Crown of Aragon that were
ripple effects of that big dispute. And you can
sort of imagine this, like everybody kind of
has to pick sides all over Western Christendom
about, well, are you on the side of the Avignon
Pope or are you on the side of the Roman Pope?
And it turns out that Montserrat was apparently
one of the flashpoints for this conflict. And
Joan is aware that there has been some kind
of conflict between two contenders for the office
of Prior of the Monastery of Montserrat. One
is Rigal de Verne and the other one is Vicens
de Ribes. And in a twist that I'm still trying
to get my head around Bertran i Roige says
that Joan, a little bit later in his reign,
ended up supporting the candidate that was the
favored one by Rome, and that would be Vicens
de Ribes, even though Joan is firmly taking
sides with the Avignon pope. So, oh, it's convoluted,
that's for sure. And this letter, I think, is
probably like the initial move that Joan is
making in order to place somebody in the monastery
that might be able to give him information. as
he's going to be weighing in on this dispute
between the two candidates to become prior of
the monastery of Montserrat. That's my reading
of this at the moment. I really cannot say that
definitively. It could just be like, oh, this
person is well connected. Miguel Rossell is well
connected and just wants to have lodging at Montserrat
and maybe just you know, caught Joan at a good
time when he was, you know, not in a fevered
state and could write him a recommendation letter.
I don't know. In my mind, it's like any document
that surfaces from Joan in these days has got
to have kind of earned its place in Joan's attention
when he's fighting off illness or just recovering
from it. But that might not be a good assumption.
It might just be that there's, you know, a big
backlog of stuff that Joan has to take care
of and that this is just next in the list. Hard
to know, but... We'll continue looking at the
documents and try to figure out the little hints,
and that's what this game is all about. All right,
that brings us to the close of this 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've done my job. Remember, the motto of
the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed.
Visit the website jonathanseyfried.net to see
an image of today's document as well as an image
of the Monastery of Montserrat and also the images
of the pages from Daniel Girona i Llagostera's
itinerary for Joan, and then also additional
show notes and bibliographic citations. And listen
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.