WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:06.419 Hello, in the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago. 00:00:06.860 --> 00:00:13.279 It was January 17th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:17.460 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:17.460 --> 00:00:22.059 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:22.059 --> 00:00:25.600 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:31.190 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:31.190 --> 00:00:33.909 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:33.909 --> 00:00:37.590 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:37.590 --> 00:00:40.710 Queen Violant de Bar. Part of what's drawn me 00:00:40.710 --> 00:00:45.210 to this project is the sheer abundance of digitized 00:00:45.210 --> 00:00:49.090 material from the 14th century Crown of Aragon 00:00:49.090 --> 00:00:53.750 that is available on PARES, a website hosted 00:00:53.750 --> 00:01:09.840 by the Spanish government. Let's begin today's 00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:28.319 document. Well, it's here! Finally, in episode 00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:34.939 24, the phrase that is the title of this season 00:01:34.939 --> 00:01:39.040 of the Historian's Notebook, Molt Cara Companyona. 00:01:39.659 --> 00:01:43.400 These are the first three words of this document 00:01:43.400 --> 00:01:47.560 that we're looking at today that Joan wrote to 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:52.640 Violant, updating her about some goings on with 00:01:52.640 --> 00:01:58.959 the Barcelona City Council. But Molt Cara Companyona, 00:01:59.260 --> 00:02:02.079 which is actually saying it like what it looks 00:02:02.079 --> 00:02:05.140 like on today's document, could also be exchanged 00:02:05.140 --> 00:02:10.659 with Molt Cara Companyona. And Violant doesn't 00:02:10.659 --> 00:02:15.919 say that back to Joan because Cara Companyona 00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:22.300 is gendered, so Cara ends with an A because it's 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:25.099 addressing, in today's document, it's addressing 00:02:25.099 --> 00:02:29.699 Violant, a woman. And when Joan writes to his 00:02:29.699 --> 00:02:35.819 brother and says molt car frare, he's not adding 00:02:35.819 --> 00:02:40.819 the A because in Catalan, like many of the Romance 00:02:40.819 --> 00:02:50.189 languages, your ending of a adjective will be 00:02:50.189 --> 00:02:54.669 changed based on either a masculine, feminine, 00:02:55.229 --> 00:03:03.050 or neuter gender for the noun and the person 00:03:03.050 --> 00:03:06.770 that you're talking to. It gets a little bit 00:03:06.770 --> 00:03:10.610 complicated. Like, you notice that molt is actually 00:03:10.610 --> 00:03:14.629 the same. Molt car frare, molt cara companyona. 00:03:15.319 --> 00:03:18.479 There's exceptions to the rule and and molt is 00:03:18.479 --> 00:03:25.280 one of them Companyona is female companion and 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:32.919 if Joan was Writing to a man Would he use the 00:03:32.919 --> 00:03:36.800 term? Companyon. I don't think so because we've 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:40.840 seen instances where Oh, I don't know if we've 00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:43.060 had a document about it on the podcast yet, but 00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:46.180 I have seen instances where he will say something 00:03:46.180 --> 00:03:52.099 like Molt car amigo. I don't know if the word 00:03:52.099 --> 00:03:57.740 companion is actually idiomatic, if it's customary 00:03:57.740 --> 00:04:03.879 to use it when talking to someone of the masculine 00:04:03.879 --> 00:04:09.870 gender. All of this discussion of gendered language, 00:04:10.669 --> 00:04:14.710 it is a great segue into one of the things that 00:04:14.710 --> 00:04:20.029 has really inspired me to study Joan and Violant, 00:04:20.829 --> 00:04:24.029 which is the question of how they related to 00:04:24.029 --> 00:04:28.069 each other, how they negotiated the boundaries 00:04:28.069 --> 00:04:31.110 of their marriage, and how they negotiated the 00:04:31.110 --> 00:04:37.240 boundaries of governance. and how those decisions 00:04:37.240 --> 00:04:43.819 were made according to gendered criteria. So 00:04:43.819 --> 00:04:46.480 I wanna take a step back for a moment and explain 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:50.360 a little bit about how historians talk about 00:04:50.360 --> 00:04:55.879 gender in past societies. There was a period 00:04:55.879 --> 00:05:02.660 of time, say in the mid 20th century, like 1950s, 00:05:02.680 --> 00:05:08.259 1960s, getting to the 1970s, when talking about 00:05:08.259 --> 00:05:15.540 gender in history really mostly meant that historians 00:05:15.540 --> 00:05:20.300 would find the women. They would go find the 00:05:20.300 --> 00:05:24.100 women of the past and write about them because 00:05:24.100 --> 00:05:29.139 women had been excluded from a lot of the historical 00:05:29.139 --> 00:05:34.389 conventions of telling history. women were thought 00:05:34.389 --> 00:05:36.930 of as less important. And so you could see a 00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:40.990 reaction to that patriarchal inheritance in the 00:05:40.990 --> 00:05:46.170 field of history just by going and having more 00:05:46.170 --> 00:05:53.589 stories about women. But then in 1986, Joan Scott 00:05:53.589 --> 00:05:58.470 published an article called Gender, a useful 00:05:58.470 --> 00:06:03.839 category of historical analysis. and this really 00:06:03.839 --> 00:06:07.019 shifted a whole lot especially in the anglophone 00:06:07.019 --> 00:06:12.339 world in the way that historians approached gender 00:06:12.339 --> 00:06:17.139 not just as a as a project of finding stories 00:06:17.139 --> 00:06:22.600 of women but of thinking about how gender relations 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:28.829 were also relations of power and that being seen 00:06:28.829 --> 00:06:33.769 as a woman or being seen as a man by others would 00:06:33.769 --> 00:06:38.569 shape what would happen in a particular time 00:06:38.569 --> 00:06:45.029 and place according to the rules for what a man 00:06:45.029 --> 00:06:48.370 was supposed to be or what a woman was supposed 00:06:48.370 --> 00:06:52.290 to be. in different places. And then of course, 00:06:52.370 --> 00:06:57.889 there are many historical examples of societies 00:06:57.889 --> 00:07:04.230 who have something that is in between a gender 00:07:04.230 --> 00:07:11.329 category that does not fit neatly into man or 00:07:11.329 --> 00:07:16.899 woman. This is a well -known feature of many 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:20.399 human societies. The field of anthropology has 00:07:20.399 --> 00:07:28.160 well documented it. So if we're looking at Western 00:07:28.160 --> 00:07:34.600 European societies of the Middle Ages, we're 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:40.199 not really seeing much of a recognized alternative 00:07:40.199 --> 00:07:45.220 between man and woman. However, we are seeing 00:07:45.220 --> 00:07:49.439 all kinds of examples where women are accused 00:07:49.439 --> 00:07:55.259 of acting too manly or being too manly, and we're 00:07:55.259 --> 00:07:59.519 also seeing all kinds of examples of men who 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:05.480 are accused of being too womanly. In the realm 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:12.540 of culture, we also see an embrace of gender 00:08:12.540 --> 00:08:17.939 blending and gender bending. The scholar Leah 00:08:17.939 --> 00:08:22.240 DeVuhn has done some excellent recent work on 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:26.939 this for Western Europe, and the scholar Roland 00:08:26.939 --> 00:08:30.839 Betancourt has done some amazing work on this 00:08:30.839 --> 00:08:35.320 for Eastern Europe, specifically Byzantine culture. 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:39.220 So I'll put their books into the bibliography 00:08:39.220 --> 00:08:44.879 on the web page for today's episode. The major 00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:50.220 thing to keep in mind when talking about gender 00:08:50.220 --> 00:08:52.720 and past societies, which you've probably already 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:56.440 picked up on, is that the expectations and the 00:08:56.440 --> 00:08:59.240 rules and what counts as normal and what counts 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:05.820 as not normal, they change. And a scholar who 00:09:05.820 --> 00:09:09.639 wrote a breakthrough book in feminist theory 00:09:11.149 --> 00:09:14.730 really has informed the way that historians talk 00:09:14.730 --> 00:09:19.210 about gender for both men and women in past societies. 00:09:19.990 --> 00:09:24.309 And that scholar is Judith Butler, who wrote 00:09:24.309 --> 00:09:29.490 in 1990 the book Gender Trouble. The key insight 00:09:29.490 --> 00:09:35.210 from Gender Trouble is that gender is a performance 00:09:35.210 --> 00:09:41.269 that is constantly reinforced. It is reinforced 00:09:41.269 --> 00:09:44.509 as an individual makes choices about how they 00:09:44.509 --> 00:09:46.889 are going to behave or react to situations or 00:09:46.889 --> 00:09:48.269 what they're going to do today and how they're 00:09:48.269 --> 00:09:50.009 going to do it, how they're going to say the 00:09:50.009 --> 00:09:52.429 things that they're going to say, and it's also 00:09:52.429 --> 00:09:54.610 reinforced through the responses that they're 00:09:54.610 --> 00:09:57.179 getting. from those that they're interacting 00:09:57.179 --> 00:09:59.500 with, the messages that they're receiving about, 00:09:59.700 --> 00:10:02.259 oh, wait a second, you just did something that 00:10:02.259 --> 00:10:05.100 a man is not supposed to do, or you just did 00:10:05.100 --> 00:10:07.279 something that a woman is not supposed to do. 00:10:07.460 --> 00:10:11.100 And these conversations are constantly playing 00:10:11.100 --> 00:10:16.679 out in social interaction on a daily basis. And 00:10:16.679 --> 00:10:20.500 also you can see them in the cultural products 00:10:20.500 --> 00:10:26.190 that are produced by the artists of particular 00:10:26.190 --> 00:10:30.870 society. And over time there can be changes, 00:10:31.269 --> 00:10:35.610 but also over time there can be continuities. 00:10:37.090 --> 00:10:41.909 So tracing out What is different in the set of 00:10:41.909 --> 00:10:45.129 expectations for manliness in different times 00:10:45.129 --> 00:10:49.370 and different places? And also, even in the same 00:10:49.370 --> 00:10:52.190 general area at the same time, you can have some 00:10:52.190 --> 00:10:56.870 shifts. My favorite example of this for Joan 00:10:56.870 --> 00:11:02.309 is his hunting. One of his favorite activities 00:11:02.309 --> 00:11:05.639 is hunting. And when I first found out about 00:11:05.639 --> 00:11:10.240 this, I was a little bit confused because I also 00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:14.539 knew from Michael A. Ryan's book that Joan 00:11:14.539 --> 00:11:18.919 was frequently accused of being too womanly. 00:11:19.559 --> 00:11:23.080 And those accusations were based on his interests 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:29.879 in the arts and music and astrology. getting 00:11:29.879 --> 00:11:35.179 too deep into astrology was seen as womanly and 00:11:35.179 --> 00:11:39.960 so when I realized that his cognomen the way 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:45.200 that he's referred to in history is the hunter 00:11:45.200 --> 00:11:51.419 joan the hunter like Pere the Ceremonious was 00:11:51.419 --> 00:11:56.620 his father and and he and joan is joan el cazador 00:11:56.620 --> 00:12:01.480 the hunter I was really confused. Like, how does 00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:04.139 this fit together? Like, what's going on here? 00:12:04.519 --> 00:12:08.940 So I started to research hunting among elites 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:13.340 in the Middle Ages. And you really cannot think 00:12:13.340 --> 00:12:17.100 about hunting in the way that our society does 00:12:17.100 --> 00:12:21.039 today, especially in some of the militarized 00:12:21.039 --> 00:12:25.799 hunting culture in 21st century United States. 00:12:26.799 --> 00:12:31.679 hunting culture, because that really interacts 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:36.799 with the activity of hunting in a way that is 00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:42.860 simulating the hyper -masculine culture of the 00:12:42.860 --> 00:12:49.919 military. But although hunting was seen as like 00:12:49.919 --> 00:12:54.440 a rehearsal for battle in a lot of contexts in 00:12:54.440 --> 00:12:59.080 the pre -modern European societies that kind 00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:02.860 of over the centuries kind of have reinforced 00:13:02.860 --> 00:13:11.019 that idea. When we get to the Middle Ages, hunting 00:13:11.019 --> 00:13:14.440 is actually something that could be feminine. 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:20.220 There's a really interesting depiction of Maria 00:13:20.220 --> 00:13:25.269 Magdalene that I was made aware of from an article 00:13:25.269 --> 00:13:30.049 by the scholar of European pre -modern sexuality 00:13:30.049 --> 00:13:36.970 Ruth Mazo Karras. This depiction of Mary Magdalene, 00:13:37.070 --> 00:13:44.129 who was seen as a very fallen woman, a very bad 00:13:44.129 --> 00:13:48.429 woman, until she met Jesus and then she reformed 00:13:48.429 --> 00:13:52.710 her ways. So this image is all about her, you 00:13:52.710 --> 00:13:55.759 know, error erroneous ways all the things she 00:13:55.759 --> 00:13:57.240 was doing bad and there's all these different 00:13:57.240 --> 00:14:00.279 little scenes in this in this picture and one 00:14:00.279 --> 00:14:05.379 of them is she's out hunting and that really 00:14:05.379 --> 00:14:09.440 encapsulated this whole issue for me which is 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:13.000 that according to the gender rules of the middle 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:19.399 ages if you were engaged in the luxurious aristocratic 00:14:19.399 --> 00:14:25.009 style of hunting and you did that too much and 00:14:25.009 --> 00:14:29.230 you leaned into some of the luxury of that experience, 00:14:30.009 --> 00:14:35.129 you would be seen as too womanly if you were 00:14:35.129 --> 00:14:37.789 doing that as a man. And if you were a woman 00:14:37.789 --> 00:14:40.389 going out hunting, you could be seen as too manly. 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:44.399 So it was really like, you know, a fine line. 00:14:44.860 --> 00:14:48.679 So I started to look at a bunch of cases where 00:14:48.679 --> 00:14:51.580 hunting was seen as masculine and hunting was 00:14:51.580 --> 00:14:55.580 seen as feminine. You can see these cases in 00:14:55.580 --> 00:14:59.960 the same time period in very proximate localities. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:05.399 So Joanne's hunting was too luxurious and so 00:15:05.399 --> 00:15:09.860 it was seen as a feminine activity. fitting right 00:15:09.860 --> 00:15:13.779 into an overall profile that his contemporary 00:15:13.779 --> 00:15:20.360 critics fashioned for him as a problem, not being 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:27.240 manly enough. So this example is a short one, 00:15:27.240 --> 00:15:30.000 and there's way more details to work in here 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.240 about hunting and all the different cases that 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:37.840 illustrate what I'm talking about. But in this 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:44.879 In this moment here, suffice it to say that when 00:15:44.879 --> 00:15:48.039 we're looking at Joan and Violant, we can 00:15:48.039 --> 00:15:52.200 see the misbehavior. We can see the pushing of 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:55.340 the boundaries against what a proper man should 00:15:55.340 --> 00:15:57.659 be doing, what a proper woman should be doing. 00:15:58.340 --> 00:16:01.259 Where did Violant get criticized for not being 00:16:01.259 --> 00:16:05.279 a proper woman? It was her, as the critics saw 00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:11.110 it, outsized role. in politics, in governance. 00:16:12.230 --> 00:16:15.450 And so what's really interesting to me is to 00:16:15.450 --> 00:16:20.470 look at Joan and Violant to see how they operated 00:16:20.470 --> 00:16:25.730 as a team to support each other in the pushing 00:16:25.730 --> 00:16:31.129 up against the rules for what a man should be 00:16:31.129 --> 00:16:36.169 doing and what a woman should be doing. And so 00:16:36.169 --> 00:16:38.789 that's one of the things I'm looking for. But 00:16:38.789 --> 00:16:43.929 at the same time, I'm looking for how their emotional 00:16:43.929 --> 00:16:49.490 history with each other took place and how it 00:16:49.490 --> 00:16:55.629 wove into the way that they set up the relationship 00:16:55.629 --> 00:17:00.090 of the way that they related to each other as 00:17:00.090 --> 00:17:05.170 king and as queen. and Molt Cara Companyona, Most 00:17:05.170 --> 00:17:09.690 Dear Companion, that to me is a really good encapsulation 00:17:09.690 --> 00:17:13.829 of part of that emotional history. We see Violant 00:17:13.829 --> 00:17:21.009 referring to Joanne as Molt Car Senyor, Most Dear 00:17:21.009 --> 00:17:26.390 Lord, and I'm going to be looking out to see 00:17:26.390 --> 00:17:31.950 if I can find Violant using address such as 00:17:31.950 --> 00:17:34.950 Molt car Companyon. That would be interesting. 00:17:35.049 --> 00:17:37.829 I'm not sure if that happens, but we'll see. 00:17:39.150 --> 00:17:43.630 So what's this letter about today? I'm not sure 00:17:43.630 --> 00:17:47.650 it's terribly important for that larger purpose, 00:17:47.670 --> 00:17:51.029 the focus that I bring. There's some kind of 00:17:51.029 --> 00:17:55.670 dispute about the selection of councilors to 00:17:55.670 --> 00:17:59.180 the Barcelona City Council. Later on down the 00:17:59.180 --> 00:18:01.920 road, Joan and the Barcelona City Council really 00:18:01.920 --> 00:18:06.339 do not get along. There's a dramatic moment a 00:18:06.339 --> 00:18:11.640 few years down the road, I think it's 1394, where 00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:16.180 Joan wants the city of Barcelona to pay for his 00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:20.799 next iteration of a fantastic troubadour competition 00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:25.809 that he's imported from Toulouse. And the city 00:18:25.809 --> 00:18:27.890 council says, no, we're not paying for that. 00:18:28.210 --> 00:18:30.589 There's no money for your big troubadour party. 00:18:31.670 --> 00:18:38.549 And Joan is very mad at them. Very mad. So that's 00:18:38.549 --> 00:18:41.589 the kind of tension that happens later, but I'm 00:18:41.589 --> 00:18:44.490 not sure if I'm noticing in this letter today 00:18:44.490 --> 00:18:48.569 any evidence that there's problems brewing between 00:18:48.569 --> 00:18:57.160 Joan and the councilors. for Barcelona. All right, 00:18:57.339 --> 00:19:01.680 that brings this episode to a close. Thanks for 00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:05.500 listening to this installment of the Historian's 00:19:05.500 --> 00:19:08.440 Notebook, season one, Molt Cara Companyona. 00:19:09.339 --> 00:19:11.740 If you are leaving with more questions than you 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:16.059 arrived with, I have done my job. Remember, the 00:19:16.059 --> 00:19:19.700 motto of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction 00:19:19.700 --> 00:19:23.079 guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image 00:19:23.079 --> 00:19:26.400 of today's document and additional show notes, 00:19:26.859 --> 00:19:29.420 including a whole bunch of articles connected 00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:35.460 to history of gender and gender history. And 00:19:35.460 --> 00:19:38.619 listen again tomorrow to hear about the next 00:19:38.619 --> 00:19:42.099 day in the first year of the reign of King Joan 00:19:42.099 --> 00:19:46.539 I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the 00:19:46.539 --> 00:19:48.240 meantime, take care.