Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 15th, 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. The Spanish government
financed a major digitization effort of archives
from throughout Spanish history and the archive
of the Crown of Aragon is just so amazingly abundant
in its hundreds actually thousands and thousands
of pages from as early as the 12th century but
in major abundance in the 14th century. So we've
got so many to choose from. that we can do very
easily, one from every day. Let's begin today's
document. Well, I am so excited about today's
document because finally getting away from the
weird hard to comprehend little authorizations
of sales in towns or like petitions or Any of
this kind of like political stuff and I'm getting
into something about the arts and this is something
that drew me to Joan and Violant really kind
of kept my interest going, which is that they
have been celebrated in music history for their
patronage of a lot of the innovative music that
was being produced at this time. So one of the
wonderful things about researching their reign
is that I've been able to learn about some of
the very weird music that was being produced.
It was like very cutting edge. It's like... the
kind of stuff that is in our time considered
experimental music and in fact I read one music
historian who said that the innovations that
were happening in the late 14th century in France
and then also in the crown of Aragon those innovations
in terms of how creative and like out -of -the
-box thinking they were in music those types
of experiments were not really taken on again
until the 20th century. And so there's this level
of creativity that's happening. With music at
this time, Joan and Violant are all about it.
They're constantly trying to get the most famous,
but also just any troubadours to come over to
perform. And Joan is really interested in how
music works and he collects musical instruments,
which is what today's document is about. I just
want to mention two musical styles that if you're
interested in the innovation that I'm talking
about, you can read more about them. One is called
Ars Nova, the new art. It's really a term that
captures the innovation brought about with polyphonic
music. And the composer who is really the exemplar
of this is named Guillaume Machaut. Machaut
has just a tremendous amount of scholarship about
him in music history, and my knowledge of music
and music history is still at the beginning level,
so I can't really do a really decent job of explaining
exactly what about his music is so special. And
I'll add some sources in the bibliography for
today's episode so that you can get into that,
but Guillaume Machaut was very famous in his
day in the late 14th century, and it's very likely
that when Violant was a child, she saw Guillaume
Machaut perform. By the time of the start of
their reign, Guillaume Machaut is no longer alive,
but there's a lot of imitators, and also there's
a lot of books of his musical composition and
poetry that get created during their reign, and
we have a lot of documentation of Violant's
letters being sent to France to contacts like
the Duc de Berry requesting copies of the latest
release or the or the latest manuscript production
of Guillaume Machaut's work. So Guillaume Machaut
was a composer in the Ars Nova style. The second
term that I want to share with you so you can
take next steps in your own research if you're
curious about this is the term ars subtilior
now ars subtilior is the one that's like really
highly experimental it's also very much polyphonic
And when you listen to some Ars subtilior, it's
really like weird. It's I think an acquired taste,
but it is it is very strange. And so it really
wasn't the kind of music that people would like
have parties to at the time. It was more of like
a music theoretician's kind of thing. And Joann
was all about it. He loved it. There was also
like a kind of interesting connection between
the written word and music. with ars subtilior
where the composer would do some kind of crossovers
between written word or like letters in the name
of say their patron and then weave that into
the way the music was constructed so it's all
just very wild and in order to really understand
it you have to know a lot about music and music
theory and so again I am really just not as able
to explain it in better detail but it sounds
cool and the stuff that I love is reading about
how Joan and Violant really just were recruiting
troubadours from all over the place and just
having them as a constant presence in their lives.
In fact, I found out from Benjamin Gampel in
his book on a completely different subject that
at times Joan would attend up to four concerts
per day. So these folks were like really into
music and artistic patronage. They were into
literature too, of course. We'll definitely see
all kinds of literary pursuits from them. But
today's document is the first one in a long series.
that were transcribed and identified in a wonderful
publication, a document collection by the music
historians Josep Trenchs i Odena and Ignasi Baiges
i Jardi. They put together a wonderful collection.
It's got to have something like 400 documents
from the time of Joan and Violant's reign all
related to music. So either particular troubadours
or the purchase of musical instruments or just
anything having to do with music. The document
that we looked at in the beginning of the podcast
Episode 5 was actually on the same page as one
of the documents in this document collection
by Trenchs i Odena and Baiges i Jardi. So I have
another one waiting from Violant and her treasurer,
but today's is from Joan and his treasurer.
His treasurer is listed here as Ramon de Soler,
a name that we keep hearing again and again,
because I think he's the go -to money man for
Joan. And in today's document, it's in Latin,
but Trenchs i Odena and Baiges i Jardi, they transcribed
it fully. So I know. what every letter is and
all the expanded abbreviations. It's such a relief.
I can't even tell you after this like banging
my head against the wall with a bunch of Latin
documents thus far to have one that's just already
transcribed. Oh hooray. So it's very clear that
what's happening here is that there is a a harp
maker, an artisan, a maker of musical instruments.
His name is Petro Palau, and Joan has commissioned
Petro Palau to make two musical instruments for
him, two harps. So special kinds of harps have
been constructed for Joan, and in this document
he's instructing his treasurer Ramon de Soler
to release the funds to pay Petro Palau. In fact,
in a different register, on the next day, Joan
has a document that says that he has And this
is kind of a hard phrase to figure out exactly
what it's describing. It says that he has recognized
the receipt of the money from the treasury. This
is interesting, first of all, because it gets
into the different register types. And sometimes
you see a letter and you're like, why is this
not in the secret seal register? And then other
times you see one in the secret seal register.
and you're like, why did this have to be so secret?
It doesn't seem to merit any secrecy at all.
So basically, in the Archive of the Crown of
Aragon, you've got all these different categories.
And a lot of it had to do with when the author
of the document instructed the chancery staff
to put a type of seal on it, or was like, you
know what, this doesn't need to be sealed. There's
nothing sensitive in here. So if The sender of
the letter said this has to be of the utmost
secrecy, put like a really secure seal, wax seal
on this letter. Then it would be recorded in
the register for the secret seal. This letter
in today's document is an example of that. In
the second to the last line, it has the phrase
sub nostro sigalo secreto the secret seal if
the document was not sensitive and honestly I
can't figure out exactly what's so sensitive
about this he's just authorizing the release
of funds for payment to a certain person but
anyway if it was if it was not as secret or private,
then it would go out in another type of register.
It would get recorded in one of the other books.
So the document that we see on January 16th from
Joan is communicating that Joan has received
the coins, I think. The amount of payment here
is 100 Aragonese florins. And so I think that
Joan notes in the other register, not in the
secret seal, but just in the secret register,
that he's gotten the coins and now the coins
are gonna go to Petro Palau. The way that this
is all happening is very confusing to me. Like,
why would Joan need to interact with this again
after this initial letter that we're looking
at today is saying, pay this person for the harps
that they made? Why do we have to have something
again the next day from Joan saying that he
recognizes the receipt? Maybe he's noting down?
that there's been the next stage in the payment
process, it's confusing to me. But oh well, I
think Petro Palau is just really insured of getting
his payment because it's in two different places
in the documentation now. By the way, secret,
like secreto, that word to us means, ooh, you're
hiding something, you have a secret, but Actually,
in medieval usage, that could just mean private.
So it's not necessarily that you're, like, hiding
something. It's just that it's your private business,
and it's not like a public... a public act but
at the same time i see this secreto and sigilo
secreto on all kinds of stuff anyway it's just
like all the time so i'm not even sure that that
has like this this actual higher level of meaning
or if it just became like the standard level
I'm still trying to figure that out. That's one
of the projects that I have for this year is
to get a better sense of why certain documents
wound up in some registers and others wound up
in other registers. Like there's a register called
Diversorum. Like, is that just like miscellaneous?
But there's so many different categories of registers.
Why do you even need a miscellaneous? It's all
just very confusing. And who is to blame for
that? Do you remember? Pere the Ceremonious reorganized
the chancery about 30 years before and he created
all these categories and then the chancery staff
just like were complaining about how they had
no idea what letter to put where anymore because
there were so many different categories. Okay,
before we wrap up today's episode, I just wanted
to come back to the amount of money mentioned
here for the harp maker Petro Palau. The amount
of money being paid out to Petro Palau is 100
florins. That is about 1100 solides. 1100 solides?
is about three times the amount of money that
Violant paid to her bread maker, which we talked
about in episode five, for his services for a
three -month period. So it kind of gives you
the scale of how much these harps cost. They
actually costed three times as much for what
you would pay a baker who's working for you for
a period of three months. So these are expensive
instruments. As fine musical instruments should
be expensive. There's real craftsmanship there.
Not to diminish the craftsmanship of amazing
bakers. Okay, we have made it to the end of this
episode. I am feeling bad that I have somehow
implied that artisan instrument makers should
be paid more than talented bakers. I want to
go on the record and say that I do not believe
that is the case. I believe that highly skilled
bakers should be paid just as much as highly
skilled music instrument makers. These are artisan
skills. All right. 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 and additional show notes
and some really good bibliographic citations
for the history of music at this time. And one
article in particular by Maria del Carmen Gomez
Muntane is amazing for an explanation of Joan's
role in the spread of this music from France
into Iberia, so check that out. It's a really
good article. And listen again tomorrow to hear
more 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.