Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 12th, 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.
So this is a short document, only five lines
long, from Joan, but there's a whole lot to
talk about in this one little letter. First of
all, it's in Latin, and actually this time I
was able to work through the Latin pretty confidently.
And I did run it through ChatGPT to see if there
was anything that I might be missing. And in
fact, the sense that I got from it on my own
was pretty close to what ChatGPT came up with.
But both of us agree that there's some urgency
in this letter that we had not seen in other
letters. So one thing about this particular piece
is that it appears on a folio that we have looked
at before. Right above it is the letter that
Joan wrote to Marti about Sibilla and saying,
don't let Sibilla get back into Barcelona unless
you hear from me. don't let her back in the city
and then below it we've got a little latin inscription
that basically says that the duke has become
king and then at the bottom of the folio we've
got a letter dated much later so we're looking
at january 12th and the letter right above it
on the same page was january 4th and this register
I mean, it is all out of order. It's not as dramatic
as some other registers that I've seen, but it
is scattered. Part of me thinks that there is
a decision being made that has to do with the
number of lines. Isn't it just so coincidental
that this little letter at the bottom is a perfect
fit for how much space there was left after the
longer letter to Marti. So I'm kind of toying
with this idea, and I'm going to need to run
it by some people who have more experience with
the registers than I do, but I'm starting to
think that maybe the order of the letters is
determined relatively chronologically, but would
be adjusted according to the space on the page
that each one takes up, and this would be a perfect
example. So there's that. Oh, I also want to
say, just when I said this register isn't as
bad as some of the others, what I can tell you
is that This register has letters from May in
the middle of letters from January. So, I mean,
to say that that's, you know, better than some
is it's really saying something. This letter
is to somebody whose first name is Esperandeu.
And the name Esperandeu is a conglomeration of
the phrase that you can see at the bottom after
dirigiter and then you see speranti in Deu and
then the last name Cardona. So I have a couple
questions in my mind about the name of this person
and whether this person was actually given a
different name at birth, and I'll explain that
by mentioning a couple other pieces of information
about this person. First of all, this person
is Jewish, and also he is later appearing in
documents that put him as one of the top counselor's
advisors to Joan at the end of Joan's reign in
1396. So in 1396, Joan dies in a sudden accident,
and right afterward there is a criminal trial
of his advisors. And the advisors are brought
up on charges of mostly financial misdeeds. I
think there's some specific charges of moral
indecency here and there, but really like the
bulk of this criminal proceeding is about financial
misdeeds. Something that I've already mentioned
about Joan and Violant is that they're big
spenders. And... In our time, we have certain
ideas about financial responsibility that do
not really translate into the medieval context
or to any pre -modern context, and some of them
do. So getting into whether Joan and Violant
were irresponsible with their finances is something
that I'm trying to figure out. But then there's
this other twist on it, which is that Pere was
also really irresponsible with finances in his
own way, and no one really brought up criminal
charges for a lot of the financial mess that
happened during Pere's reign. So I think we're
seeing a bit of a double standard. I'll have
to just kind of leave it at that and come back
to it later and give you more details about all
of that business. Suffice it to say for now that
Esperandeu Cardona is going to be with Joan
from the beginning of his reign until the end
and placed in a very high up position. We know
that he has close connection to the Jewish community.
I'm still trying to find attribution that mentions
him as a Jew. Usually at this time, if someone
is known as a Jew, it'll be in the documents.
They'll be referred to as the Jew so -and -so.
And same thing for Muslims, the Muslim so -and
-so. That's a reflection of the dynamics of the
interfaith context here. There's a lot to talk
about when we're talking about the interaction
between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the
Crown of Aragon. In different times and in different
localities, even within the Crown of Aragon,
the picture could be very different in terms
of how much cooperation there was or how much
separation and conflict there was. It also varies
according to social class. Those in the royal
family were way more likely to have regular interaction
with Jews than everyday folk. The reason for
this is that there were a lot of very learned
Jews that took advantage of the social mobility
available in the burgeoning bureaucracy of the
state in order to work their way up or through
learning to gain access. And part of this has
to do with the management of the finances, but
just as well, there's a lot of scholars. astronomers,
astrologers, even musicians that are Jewish that
are in the royal court on a very regular basis.
Not only that, but I have mentioned this before
on the podcast, the communities of Jews and Muslims.
They were governed as their own municipalities
inside the municipalities of the Crown of Aragon.
And those neighborhoods, their taxation went
directly to the crown instead of going through
the municipality. Now, this is something that
certainly benefited the royal family, but it's
one of the things that caused dissension between
officials of the municipalities and the minority
faith communities in the municipalities. So we're
looking at a very diverse picture of how people
of different faiths interacted with each other.
One thing to make really clear is that multiculturalism
and diversity were not a value in the Middle
Ages. So today we see if there's people from
different backgrounds getting along very well,
we assign very positive value to that. this was
not something that came naturally to people in
the medieval era. Certainly if there's like a
lack of violence and people are you know doing
business with each other and they're helping
each other to make money and everybody's growing
rich and times are good people will see that
as okay yeah it's good stuff but just in and
of itself multiculturalism was not seen as a
positive goal, or even like on the spectrum of
like what your goals would be. So the idea that
you have like a kind of greater than the sum
of its parts cultural situation is just not something
that would have been consciously pursued. It
could have been happening in certain places,
and that's, I'm alluding to the convivencia metanarrative
of a kind of historiography of Iberian history.
But you really, you know, couldn't count on it
as being seen as a positive goal just in and
of itself. more frequently it was something that
felt very comfortable and natural to people in
the Middle Ages to see those of other faiths
as others and to try to distinguish them both
in terms of where they lived but also in terms
of even how they looked. So there were different
customs in terms of dress. So people of different
faiths would wear different clothes, and there
were also customs according to different religious
holidays where certain neighborhoods or streets
would be off limits. There were certain procedures
in the markets that would be different based
on the faith group of the merchant or the customer.
So there's a whole set of customs and traditions
and practices that reinforce the separation between
the faith groups even as they're interacting
with each other. So it's this constant kind of
push and pull tension and we can see that in
the character of the royal family itself and
the individuals making it up. Joan is a really
good example of this. So if you're kind of building
this tendency to see Joan and Violant as heroes
of the story, you need to be very careful. These
are not heroic people. I think they're interesting.
I think, especially with Joan, there's some
major problems with just automatically being
a cheerleader for Joan. And one of the major
problems is his treatment of Jews, especially
before he began his reign. It does change after
he becomes king, where he is not as cruel to
particular Jews. But before, during the 1380s,
Joan famously pursued Jews that were suspected
of stealing the host, the bread wafers from Christian
churches. This was something that's like really
hard for us to imagine as an issue, but it was
like a really big deal in Christendom during
the Middle Ages. This kind of intense fear that
the body of Christ was being taken and misappropriated
by, you know, the enemy within. And so it really,
it's a lot like the kind of conspiracy theory
mentalities that we can see in our society where
basically, the more you kind of think about this
conspiracy theory the more you kind of start
to get into confirmation bias and you just it
just kind of snowballs on itself and then it
gets like a following and soon it becomes like
almost like a conventional wisdom level kind
of thing like with the john f kennedy assassination
for example so all of this is to say that it
is a common trope around different parts of Western
Europe to have these fears that Jews took the
communion wafer and used them for like, you know,
with the intent to desecrate them. So Joan
pursues some kind of wild accusations in different
cities around. There's one really heinous example
in the city of Lleda. and he really orders the
torture of particular Jewish people in that town
all in an effort to figure out who stole the
communion wafers when it's likely that nobody
did and that someone just lost them or something.
So, Joan is not a hero. He did horrendous things
based on religious animus toward Jews, and is
part of a long context of anti -Judaism that
is just so prominent in Western Europe, and I
think also in Eastern Europe, but I know Western
Europe the most during the Middle Ages and beyond.
So, Joan... is somebody that has seen Jews as
the enemy and has hurt them. And yet, here he
is writing this letter to someone who is very
closely connected to the Jewish community, if
not a Jew himself, than a recent convert to Christianity.
So he has kind of like a a sort of ethnic connection
to the Jewish community still, although the term
ethnic is a little complicated to use. And he's
saying to Esperandeu Cardona, we need you. The
first line says in part, vos summe necessarium
habemus, which is basically saying that you are
of the highest need and we have the highest need
for you and then in the third line Joan says
get here immediately and says that if you delay
it's like dangerous the word periculum is there
at the end of the fourth line Joan really needs
Esperandeu Cardona to make it to Granollers to
attend this meeting that's going to be taking
place on January 16th, the big assembly of his
governing council. And so we can see how highly
valued Esperandeu Cardona was. There's so much
more to say about Jewish history in the crown
of Aragon in the 14th century and the Middle
Ages. There's also so much more to say about
the finances of the crown and how to understand
them. I'm going to put in two sources into the
bibliography on the webpage for today's document.
The first one is in Catalan and Latin, so there's
a little bit of a language demand to access it,
but it's basically a transcript of the criminal
proceedings against Esperandeu de Cardona and a
bunch of others who are high up in Joan's government.
That article, it's got also a little commentary
too, it's by Marina Mitja. And then the second
book is an English language book that I have
found to be one of the most insightful works
about Joan and Violant and Marti and everything
about them. And it's focused, though, on the
experience of the Jews during a pogrom, basically,
an uprising of violence against the Jewish communities
that spread from Castile into the Crown of Aragon
during Joan's reign in 1391. That book is by
Benjamin Gampel. It's a really, really great
read and incredibly well -sourced. 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 about the interfaith encounters of the Middle
Ages, especially Well, I've done my job, and
don't worry, we will be coming back to this topic
many, many times. But no more for today. Because
remember, the motto of the Historian's Notebook
is dissatisfaction guaranteed. visit the website
jonathanseyfried.net 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.