Hello, in the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago.
It was January 17th, 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. Part of what's drawn me
to this project is the sheer abundance of digitized
material from the 14th century Crown of Aragon
that is available on PARES, a website hosted
by the Spanish government. Let's begin today's
document. Well, it's here! Finally, in episode
24, the phrase that is the title of this season
of the Historian's Notebook, Molt Cara Companyona.
These are the first three words of this document
that we're looking at today that Joan wrote to
Violant, updating her about some goings on with
the Barcelona City Council. But Molt Cara Companyona,
which is actually saying it like what it looks
like on today's document, could also be exchanged
with Molt Cara Companyona. And Violant doesn't
say that back to Joan because Cara Companyona
is gendered, so Cara ends with an A because it's
addressing, in today's document, it's addressing
Violant, a woman. And when Joan writes to his
brother and says molt car frare, he's not adding
the A because in Catalan, like many of the Romance
languages, your ending of a adjective will be
changed based on either a masculine, feminine,
or neuter gender for the noun and the person
that you're talking to. It gets a little bit
complicated. Like, you notice that molt is actually
the same. Molt car frare, molt cara companyona.
There's exceptions to the rule and and molt is
one of them Companyona is female companion and
if Joan was Writing to a man Would he use the
term? Companyon. I don't think so because we've
seen instances where Oh, I don't know if we've
had a document about it on the podcast yet, but
I have seen instances where he will say something
like Molt car amigo. I don't know if the word
companion is actually idiomatic, if it's customary
to use it when talking to someone of the masculine
gender. All of this discussion of gendered language,
it is a great segue into one of the things that
has really inspired me to study Joan and Violant,
which is the question of how they related to
each other, how they negotiated the boundaries
of their marriage, and how they negotiated the
boundaries of governance. and how those decisions
were made according to gendered criteria. So
I wanna take a step back for a moment and explain
a little bit about how historians talk about
gender in past societies. There was a period
of time, say in the mid 20th century, like 1950s,
1960s, getting to the 1970s, when talking about
gender in history really mostly meant that historians
would find the women. They would go find the
women of the past and write about them because
women had been excluded from a lot of the historical
conventions of telling history. women were thought
of as less important. And so you could see a
reaction to that patriarchal inheritance in the
field of history just by going and having more
stories about women. But then in 1986, Joan Scott
published an article called Gender, a useful
category of historical analysis. and this really
shifted a whole lot especially in the anglophone
world in the way that historians approached gender
not just as a as a project of finding stories
of women but of thinking about how gender relations
were also relations of power and that being seen
as a woman or being seen as a man by others would
shape what would happen in a particular time
and place according to the rules for what a man
was supposed to be or what a woman was supposed
to be. in different places. And then of course,
there are many historical examples of societies
who have something that is in between a gender
category that does not fit neatly into man or
woman. This is a well -known feature of many
human societies. The field of anthropology has
well documented it. So if we're looking at Western
European societies of the Middle Ages, we're
not really seeing much of a recognized alternative
between man and woman. However, we are seeing
all kinds of examples where women are accused
of acting too manly or being too manly, and we're
also seeing all kinds of examples of men who
are accused of being too womanly. In the realm
of culture, we also see an embrace of gender
blending and gender bending. The scholar Leah
DeVuhn has done some excellent recent work on
this for Western Europe, and the scholar Roland
Betancourt has done some amazing work on this
for Eastern Europe, specifically Byzantine culture.
So I'll put their books into the bibliography
on the web page for today's episode. The major
thing to keep in mind when talking about gender
and past societies, which you've probably already
picked up on, is that the expectations and the
rules and what counts as normal and what counts
as not normal, they change. And a scholar who
wrote a breakthrough book in feminist theory
really has informed the way that historians talk
about gender for both men and women in past societies.
And that scholar is Judith Butler, who wrote
in 1990 the book Gender Trouble. The key insight
from Gender Trouble is that gender is a performance
that is constantly reinforced. It is reinforced
as an individual makes choices about how they
are going to behave or react to situations or
what they're going to do today and how they're
going to do it, how they're going to say the
things that they're going to say, and it's also
reinforced through the responses that they're
getting. from those that they're interacting
with, the messages that they're receiving about,
oh, wait a second, you just did something that
a man is not supposed to do, or you just did
something that a woman is not supposed to do.
And these conversations are constantly playing
out in social interaction on a daily basis. And
also you can see them in the cultural products
that are produced by the artists of particular
society. And over time there can be changes,
but also over time there can be continuities.
So tracing out What is different in the set of
expectations for manliness in different times
and different places? And also, even in the same
general area at the same time, you can have some
shifts. My favorite example of this for Joan
is his hunting. One of his favorite activities
is hunting. And when I first found out about
this, I was a little bit confused because I also
knew from Michael A. Ryan's book that Joan
was frequently accused of being too womanly.
And those accusations were based on his interests
in the arts and music and astrology. getting
too deep into astrology was seen as womanly and
so when I realized that his cognomen the way
that he's referred to in history is the hunter
joan the hunter like Pere the Ceremonious was
his father and and he and joan is joan el cazador
the hunter I was really confused. Like, how does
this fit together? Like, what's going on here?
So I started to research hunting among elites
in the Middle Ages. And you really cannot think
about hunting in the way that our society does
today, especially in some of the militarized
hunting culture in 21st century United States.
hunting culture, because that really interacts
with the activity of hunting in a way that is
simulating the hyper -masculine culture of the
military. But although hunting was seen as like
a rehearsal for battle in a lot of contexts in
the pre -modern European societies that kind
of over the centuries kind of have reinforced
that idea. When we get to the Middle Ages, hunting
is actually something that could be feminine.
There's a really interesting depiction of Maria
Magdalene that I was made aware of from an article
by the scholar of European pre -modern sexuality
Ruth Mazo Karras. This depiction of Mary Magdalene,
who was seen as a very fallen woman, a very bad
woman, until she met Jesus and then she reformed
her ways. So this image is all about her, you
know, error erroneous ways all the things she
was doing bad and there's all these different
little scenes in this in this picture and one
of them is she's out hunting and that really
encapsulated this whole issue for me which is
that according to the gender rules of the middle
ages if you were engaged in the luxurious aristocratic
style of hunting and you did that too much and
you leaned into some of the luxury of that experience,
you would be seen as too womanly if you were
doing that as a man. And if you were a woman
going out hunting, you could be seen as too manly.
So it was really like, you know, a fine line.
So I started to look at a bunch of cases where
hunting was seen as masculine and hunting was
seen as feminine. You can see these cases in
the same time period in very proximate localities.
So Joanne's hunting was too luxurious and so
it was seen as a feminine activity. fitting right
into an overall profile that his contemporary
critics fashioned for him as a problem, not being
manly enough. So this example is a short one,
and there's way more details to work in here
about hunting and all the different cases that
illustrate what I'm talking about. But in this
In this moment here, suffice it to say that when
we're looking at Joan and Violant, we can
see the misbehavior. We can see the pushing of
the boundaries against what a proper man should
be doing, what a proper woman should be doing.
Where did Violant get criticized for not being
a proper woman? It was her, as the critics saw
it, outsized role. in politics, in governance.
And so what's really interesting to me is to
look at Joan and Violant to see how they operated
as a team to support each other in the pushing
up against the rules for what a man should be
doing and what a woman should be doing. And so
that's one of the things I'm looking for. But
at the same time, I'm looking for how their emotional
history with each other took place and how it
wove into the way that they set up the relationship
of the way that they related to each other as
king and as queen. and Molt Cara Companyona, Most
Dear Companion, that to me is a really good encapsulation
of part of that emotional history. We see Violant
referring to Joanne as Molt Car Senyor, Most Dear
Lord, and I'm going to be looking out to see
if I can find Violant using address such as
Molt car Companyon. That would be interesting.
I'm not sure if that happens, but we'll see.
So what's this letter about today? I'm not sure
it's terribly important for that larger purpose,
the focus that I bring. There's some kind of
dispute about the selection of councilors to
the Barcelona City Council. Later on down the
road, Joan and the Barcelona City Council really
do not get along. There's a dramatic moment a
few years down the road, I think it's 1394, where
Joan wants the city of Barcelona to pay for his
next iteration of a fantastic troubadour competition
that he's imported from Toulouse. And the city
council says, no, we're not paying for that.
There's no money for your big troubadour party.
And Joan is very mad at them. Very mad. So that's
the kind of tension that happens later, but I'm
not sure if I'm noticing in this letter today
any evidence that there's problems brewing between
Joan and the councilors. for Barcelona. All right,
that brings this episode to a close. Thanks for
listening to this installment of the Historian's
Notebook, season one, 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,
including a whole bunch of articles connected
to history of gender and gender history. 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.