WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:05.620 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:06.179 --> 00:00:13.300 it was January 19th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.300 --> 00:00:16.980 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:20.739 University of New Mexico. And this is The Historian's 00:00:20.739 --> 00:00:25.219 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:25.899 --> 00:00:30.280 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:30.280 --> 00:00:33.259 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:33.259 --> 00:00:37.619 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:37.619 --> 00:00:42.719 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:08.079 --> 00:01:10.879 Ah, well, it's a little bit of a psych out because 00:01:10.879 --> 00:01:13.900 we're not starting today's document right now, 00:01:13.959 --> 00:01:18.680 right away. We have some matters to discuss about 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:22.620 yesterday's document. But what I found out about 00:01:22.620 --> 00:01:26.939 yesterday's document happened as I was on the 00:01:26.939 --> 00:01:33.299 hunt for today's document. So it's all just mixed 00:01:33.299 --> 00:01:37.019 up together. And that's just how it goes on this 00:01:37.019 --> 00:01:41.340 journey. So let me explain what happened. I was 00:01:41.340 --> 00:01:47.040 all ready to go with a document for January 19th 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:51.219 and I was really excited about it because Joan 00:01:51.219 --> 00:01:55.500 is talking about falcons and he's referring to 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:58.459 something that he's getting from Turkey, the 00:01:58.459 --> 00:02:03.620 country Turkey, and it was looking like a really 00:02:03.620 --> 00:02:06.659 interesting letter so you know I'm looking at 00:02:06.659 --> 00:02:08.539 it and I'm getting ready to think about all right 00:02:08.539 --> 00:02:10.960 here's you know what I could say about it sourcing 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:16.699 and so on and I reread the last line and it is 00:02:16.699 --> 00:02:21.659 the date of the 19th but it's for the month of 00:02:21.659 --> 00:02:27.840 May so this is an instance where in the register 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:32.860 I think it was 1952 there's just this really 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:35.520 interesting chronological interruption that happens 00:02:35.520 --> 00:02:39.180 where I had these January letters and then all 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:41.960 of a sudden boom we've got a letter from May 00:02:41.960 --> 00:02:44.300 there's actually a couple letters from May and 00:02:44.300 --> 00:02:48.699 then we go back to January and February so in 00:02:48.699 --> 00:02:53.419 that moment I thought to myself crud that means 00:02:53.419 --> 00:02:57.259 I'm gonna have to not talk about this document 00:02:57.259 --> 00:03:02.740 with the Falcons I can have it as the May 19th 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:05.300 document. And so that's likely when we're going 00:03:05.300 --> 00:03:08.180 to hear about that one. But now I have to find 00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:11.539 a document from the 19th. And the other thing 00:03:11.539 --> 00:03:14.259 to keep in mind about the hunt for a document 00:03:14.259 --> 00:03:18.319 from January 19th is that this is the day that 00:03:18.319 --> 00:03:23.199 the historians really have consensed on Joan 00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:28.020 and Violant. making their entrance as a couple 00:03:28.020 --> 00:03:30.979 into Barcelona. Now, Violent had already been 00:03:30.979 --> 00:03:34.280 there, laying groundwork. She'd been in Granollers 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:38.159 on the 16th. She was back in Barcelona, but maybe 00:03:38.159 --> 00:03:43.979 she like met Joan as he was approaching the city 00:03:43.979 --> 00:03:47.340 and then they enter together. That's my guess 00:03:47.340 --> 00:03:50.500 as to what happened there. Maybe they had one 00:03:50.500 --> 00:03:54.180 night at some place on the way or in Granollers. 00:03:55.539 --> 00:03:59.099 I don't know. It's really hard to locate documents 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:04.300 about this day of entrance into Barcelona. And 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:08.270 probably that's because they were busy. talking 00:04:08.270 --> 00:04:10.590 with people. You know, they had arrived into 00:04:10.590 --> 00:04:13.509 the city. This is a really big deal. The king 00:04:13.509 --> 00:04:17.329 has arrived to the royal palace for the first 00:04:17.329 --> 00:04:21.810 time. And it's been quite the build up as there's 00:04:21.810 --> 00:04:25.120 been a delay of a couple weeks. And so My guess 00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:28.639 is that they're not really having a whole lot 00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:32.399 of time to write a lot of documents or attend 00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:35.579 to a lot of business. So there's a real lack 00:04:35.579 --> 00:04:40.860 in the registers of documents from January 19th. 00:04:40.860 --> 00:04:43.259 And if there is a document somewhere in these 00:04:43.259 --> 00:04:47.860 registers that commemorates their entrance into 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:52.079 Barcelona on this very special day, well, I have 00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:55.079 yet to find it and none of the historians who've 00:04:55.079 --> 00:05:00.500 written about it have attached that claim to 00:05:00.500 --> 00:05:05.459 a specific register and folio archival reference. 00:05:05.839 --> 00:05:09.759 And so it's pretty clear that they that Joan 00:05:09.759 --> 00:05:13.420 and Violant were both in Barcelona starting 00:05:13.420 --> 00:05:16.899 on January 19th. And so I think maybe the historians 00:05:16.899 --> 00:05:20.740 have made an inference. But it's possible there 00:05:20.740 --> 00:05:24.680 is some Some work out there may be one of the 00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:28.339 Catalan Renaissance historians who located some 00:05:28.339 --> 00:05:30.939 document and everybody has just been working 00:05:30.939 --> 00:05:38.899 from that, including Josep Roca in 1929. So maybe 00:05:38.899 --> 00:05:42.040 that's I just have to do a little bit more digging 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:45.420 back through the secondary literature to find 00:05:45.420 --> 00:05:49.699 that document. But alas, I have run out of time. 00:05:49.759 --> 00:05:54.509 Here I am. on January 19th, and I haven't been 00:05:54.509 --> 00:05:59.110 able to find it. So I started looking for a document 00:05:59.110 --> 00:06:02.810 for January 19th, which was a little bit tough 00:06:02.810 --> 00:06:06.069 for the reason I just explained. Looking through 00:06:06.069 --> 00:06:12.629 various registers, okay, and I open up the Gratiarum 00:06:12.629 --> 00:06:17.709 register for Joan because I knew based on a 00:06:17.709 --> 00:06:21.709 reference from Benjamin Gampel's book, that there 00:06:21.709 --> 00:06:25.709 was going to be a document a little bit a few 00:06:25.709 --> 00:06:28.629 days ahead in that register. And I said, well, 00:06:28.649 --> 00:06:31.490 maybe there's something for the 19th in that 00:06:31.490 --> 00:06:34.889 register. So I open it up and I start at the 00:06:34.889 --> 00:06:39.310 very beginning. It starts in January of 1387. 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:42.879 kind of looking through the first letter, okay, 00:06:42.980 --> 00:06:45.939 something from a different date. Second letter, 00:06:46.100 --> 00:06:49.480 get to the end, and it's January 18th. And I 00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:55.240 think to myself, could this maybe actually be 00:06:55.240 --> 00:06:59.819 the January 18th letter that I spent over two 00:06:59.819 --> 00:07:05.060 hours looking for the day before? And lo and 00:07:05.060 --> 00:07:09.790 behold, my friends, it was right there on the 00:07:09.790 --> 00:07:15.110 second folio of this Gratiarum Register, Register 00:07:15.110 --> 00:07:22.730 1890. That's where the outgoing letter to Pedro 00:07:22.730 --> 00:07:25.009 de Guardia, the safe conduct letter that I was 00:07:25.009 --> 00:07:28.370 talking about yesterday, that's where it was 00:07:28.370 --> 00:07:32.829 in the Gratiarum Register. The Gratiarum Register, 00:07:32.829 --> 00:07:35.970 I think it's named Gratiarum because it's about 00:07:36.189 --> 00:07:40.449 The document that was cited by Benjamin Gample 00:07:40.449 --> 00:07:44.449 from a couple days later in this Gratiarum register, 00:07:45.209 --> 00:07:50.310 it is a letter that certifies the receipt of 00:07:50.310 --> 00:07:57.750 a fine from the Muslim community of... Oh gosh, 00:07:58.649 --> 00:08:03.129 was it Fraga? Yeah, the Muslim community of Fraga. 00:08:03.709 --> 00:08:09.990 And they were fined for starting some ruckus 00:08:09.990 --> 00:08:14.370 against the Jewish population of Fraga. And I'm 00:08:14.370 --> 00:08:16.889 going to get into that a little bit more deeply. 00:08:17.810 --> 00:08:21.209 But it has to do on the actual episode coming 00:08:21.209 --> 00:08:25.089 up a couple days from now. But it has to do with 00:08:25.089 --> 00:08:33.169 a penalty being paid for what was seen as a misbehavior. 00:08:33.529 --> 00:08:42.549 So why is a document about providing safe passage 00:08:42.549 --> 00:08:48.789 to the chief chaplain for the Archbishop of Zaragoza 00:08:48.789 --> 00:08:54.450 in the same register as the certification of 00:08:54.450 --> 00:08:59.929 the receipt of a fine for a conflict between 00:08:59.929 --> 00:09:08.230 Jews and Muslims It's really confusing To say 00:09:08.230 --> 00:09:11.409 the least to try to figure out well Why is this 00:09:11.409 --> 00:09:14.570 document in this type of register and hopefully 00:09:14.570 --> 00:09:16.870 by the end of this project? I'll have a more 00:09:16.870 --> 00:09:20.190 solid idea But right now I'm just throwing my 00:09:20.190 --> 00:09:23.049 hands up saying I can't believe that this happened 00:09:23.049 --> 00:09:30.450 that I went through a hundred folios of the officialium 00:09:30.450 --> 00:09:34.620 and than at the beginning of the Gratiarum is 00:09:34.620 --> 00:09:36.899 where I find the document that I was looking 00:09:36.899 --> 00:09:41.960 for. So, all right, that's my little gripe about 00:09:41.960 --> 00:09:46.360 the organization of the Chancery staff of the 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:48.659 Archive of the Crown of Aragon in the late 14th 00:09:48.659 --> 00:09:54.639 century. But let's look at this as also a wonderful 00:09:54.639 --> 00:09:59.240 development because for maybe the first time 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:07.539 in 639 years, the outgoing letter, the one for 00:10:07.539 --> 00:10:12.980 Pedro de Guardia for the safe passage, and its 00:10:12.980 --> 00:10:17.240 copy in the Chancery Register, they are brought 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:21.899 back together in a digital space on the webpage 00:10:21.899 --> 00:10:27.379 for yesterday's episode. So That, I think, is 00:10:27.379 --> 00:10:33.200 a pretty cool outcome and I am really thrilled 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:40.580 to have done that. It's pretty cool to make that 00:10:40.580 --> 00:10:45.379 connection even if it's for some kind of... I 00:10:45.379 --> 00:10:49.679 don't know minor occurrence in the grander historical 00:10:49.679 --> 00:10:53.799 narrative here it's still just this fun archival 00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:56.379 moment that I really like and here we are we're 00:10:56.379 --> 00:11:00.639 all the way in to today's episode and I'm talking 00:11:00.639 --> 00:11:05.269 mostly about yesterday so I didn't even end up 00:11:05.269 --> 00:11:07.269 choosing a document from that register. I mean, 00:11:07.330 --> 00:11:09.909 there wasn't one. There was not a January 19th 00:11:09.909 --> 00:11:13.789 document in that gratiarum register. And so I 00:11:13.789 --> 00:11:17.169 just went back to the itinerary put together 00:11:17.169 --> 00:11:22.129 by Daniel Girona y Llagostera, and he had identified 00:11:22.129 --> 00:11:28.639 a document from January 19th. And of course, 00:11:29.220 --> 00:11:33.220 his main goal was to track Joan's location. And 00:11:33.220 --> 00:11:37.139 indeed, at the bottom of the document that he 00:11:37.139 --> 00:11:42.600 had identified in his itinerary, which is folio 00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:48.519 10R of register 1953, at the bottom we see indeed 00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:53.980 that this document is identified as having been 00:11:53.980 --> 00:11:59.299 made in Barcelona on January 19th. That's what 00:11:59.299 --> 00:12:04.120 the document says. So sometimes we've seen this 00:12:04.120 --> 00:12:07.980 a little bit fudged, but I'm pretty sure that 00:12:07.980 --> 00:12:12.120 Joan really was in Barcelona on January 19th 00:12:12.120 --> 00:12:18.700 and Perplexingly, folks, perplexingly, it's not 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:23.720 some grand document that had to have risen to 00:12:23.720 --> 00:12:27.120 his attention on his very first day in Barcelona 00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:31.799 because it was so urgent. No, it seems to be 00:12:31.799 --> 00:12:35.659 kind of another humdrum business -like letter. 00:12:36.019 --> 00:12:41.179 It has to do with Marti and some kind of business 00:12:41.179 --> 00:12:46.700 arrangement happening in Mont Blanc, which in 00:12:46.700 --> 00:12:50.460 this letter is called by its Latin name Montes 00:12:50.460 --> 00:13:00.059 Albi. Albi is actually a name for white and it 00:13:00.059 --> 00:13:05.480 is like Blanc, a word to describe the color white. 00:13:05.980 --> 00:13:12.529 So Montes Albi, Mont Blanc. White Mountain is 00:13:12.529 --> 00:13:16.110 the name of this place. And indeed, it was actually 00:13:16.110 --> 00:13:19.309 a significant city in the Middle Ages. It was 00:13:19.309 --> 00:13:25.470 the seventh largest city in Catalonia. Joan, 00:13:26.330 --> 00:13:31.409 on January 16th, the day that he made his son, 00:13:31.750 --> 00:13:37.220 Jaume, three years old, into the Dauphin. of 00:13:37.220 --> 00:13:41.820 Girona, he created a dukedom for his brother. 00:13:42.259 --> 00:13:47.259 So on that day, Marty became the Duke of Mont 00:13:47.259 --> 00:13:51.340 Blanc. And so at the very top of this folio, 00:13:51.779 --> 00:13:56.440 we can see the probata symbol and then Domine 00:13:56.440 --> 00:14:04.200 Duce Montis Albi, Lord Duke of Mont Blanc. That 00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:08.240 is Marti. Now, what is going on in this letter? 00:14:08.299 --> 00:14:12.320 It's a nice, long, Latin letter. And so of course 00:14:12.320 --> 00:14:16.779 I struggled, and of course I used my chat GPT 00:14:16.779 --> 00:14:21.679 AI crutch. And what I came up with was that this 00:14:21.679 --> 00:14:24.700 is some kind of business deal. It doesn't sound 00:14:24.700 --> 00:14:29.399 dramatically urgent, but maybe it is, because... 00:14:29.289 --> 00:14:32.750 on Joan's busy day of showing up to the royal 00:14:32.750 --> 00:14:36.250 palace as king for the first time ever, this 00:14:36.250 --> 00:14:40.450 is the document that he produced on that day. 00:14:40.909 --> 00:14:44.289 And it seems like some kind of a warning. So 00:14:44.289 --> 00:14:48.309 there's these business partners in Mont Blanc, 00:14:48.509 --> 00:14:54.590 and one of them has a name that was kind of strange 00:14:54.590 --> 00:15:00.169 to me because it is looking to me like it's a 00:15:00.169 --> 00:15:04.610 form of George, like if it's pronounced with 00:15:04.610 --> 00:15:11.429 the hard G, it would be Georgius or Georgius 00:15:11.429 --> 00:15:16.269 with the soft G. And that's strange because in 00:15:16.269 --> 00:15:22.990 Catalan, the name George is rendered Jordi, J 00:15:22.990 --> 00:15:28.710 -O - R -D -I, and there's a lot of people named 00:15:28.710 --> 00:15:35.169 Jordi. So that made me wonder if possibly this 00:15:35.169 --> 00:15:42.169 Georgius is maybe from someplace else that spells 00:15:42.169 --> 00:15:45.809 George differently, or maybe that was just another 00:15:45.809 --> 00:15:49.950 way to spell George, and it's not an indication 00:15:49.950 --> 00:15:53.279 of anything. but that is a question that came 00:15:53.279 --> 00:15:57.080 up for me there's some kind of business problem 00:15:57.080 --> 00:16:01.039 happening because the second to the last line 00:16:01.039 --> 00:16:05.620 of the letter right before the dating clause 00:16:05.620 --> 00:16:26.250 it reads basically means otherwise, the blame 00:16:26.250 --> 00:16:34.950 will be rightly imputed to you. The blame. So 00:16:34.950 --> 00:16:38.049 Joan is saying, y 'all got to take care of 00:16:38.049 --> 00:16:41.490 this. You got to make good on whatever deal you 00:16:41.490 --> 00:16:44.850 were doing. Otherwise, the blame is going to 00:16:44.850 --> 00:16:50.539 fall on you, Vostrem. Well, who Who is the you? 00:16:51.639 --> 00:16:56.799 It's a second person plural, Vostrem, and that 00:16:56.799 --> 00:17:02.419 is the way that they refer to each other if they're 00:17:02.419 --> 00:17:06.299 members of the royal family. So they don't use 00:17:06.299 --> 00:17:10.859 the singular second person. So this could actually 00:17:10.859 --> 00:17:16.609 be Joan saying to Marti that... If he doesn't 00:17:16.609 --> 00:17:20.630 follow what Joan is laying out here, then the 00:17:20.630 --> 00:17:25.289 blame will be rightly imputed to him, to you, 00:17:25.549 --> 00:17:31.490 Marti. Second person plural, royal you. And that, 00:17:31.569 --> 00:17:35.130 to me, would be a really big surprise that Joan 00:17:35.130 --> 00:17:41.630 would talk to Marti like that, unless maybe they're 00:17:41.630 --> 00:17:46.720 just kind of, you know... at a level of trust 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:49.980 that when Marti reads that, he reads it as like, 00:17:50.079 --> 00:17:54.720 yeah, okay, my bad, it's all right. Or maybe 00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:58.460 that message is directed at somebody else and 00:17:58.460 --> 00:18:01.299 I'm looking at the lines that come right before 00:18:01.299 --> 00:18:06.759 and it's really, it's just, it's not clear because 00:18:06.759 --> 00:18:12.039 in Latin, They typically have very long sentences 00:18:12.039 --> 00:18:14.660 with multiple clauses that all refer back to 00:18:14.660 --> 00:18:16.920 some subject that could be lines and lines and 00:18:16.920 --> 00:18:20.880 lines above. And this is one of the reasons why 00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:26.720 I am coming to an understanding that there's 00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:30.359 way more Latin documents in these registers than 00:18:30.359 --> 00:18:33.460 I had gotten the impression of. I had gotten 00:18:33.460 --> 00:18:38.509 that impression, I think, because Latin is very, 00:18:38.509 --> 00:18:43.329 very time consuming to unpack and translate. 00:18:43.930 --> 00:18:48.329 And so when historians are looking through these 00:18:48.329 --> 00:18:53.049 registers and making decisions about what they're 00:18:53.049 --> 00:18:56.170 going to write about, they have to make a decision. 00:18:56.289 --> 00:18:59.789 Am I going to sink a whole half a day into figuring 00:18:59.789 --> 00:19:04.450 out what this Latin letter says? Especially if 00:19:04.450 --> 00:19:07.650 it seems like something that's just not germane 00:19:07.650 --> 00:19:11.630 to their research topic, they're just not going 00:19:11.630 --> 00:19:15.750 to do it. And so if they see one in Catalan that 00:19:15.750 --> 00:19:19.670 might not be as germane, they might decide to 00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:21.789 go ahead and translate it because it's not as 00:19:21.789 --> 00:19:25.960 much of a time cost for them. So what happens 00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:29.039 over time is this accrual in the secondary literature 00:19:29.039 --> 00:19:33.740 of more Catalan letters than Latin. And so if 00:19:33.740 --> 00:19:35.759 you're just looking at the secondary literature, 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:38.619 you can come away with the impression, like I 00:19:38.619 --> 00:19:43.420 did, that it's like 90 % Catalan and 10 % Latin, 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:47.549 when really, What I'm starting to see is that 00:19:47.549 --> 00:19:51.869 it's like maybe a majority Latin. I mean, I wouldn't 00:19:51.869 --> 00:19:54.789 flip that ratio, but I would say we're at least 00:19:54.789 --> 00:20:00.289 like 50 -50 here. So this is a wake up call for 00:20:00.289 --> 00:20:06.910 me that I'm not gonna dodge Latin. Like I was 00:20:06.910 --> 00:20:10.410 kind of maybe hoping to. I really, I have to, 00:20:10.410 --> 00:20:13.769 I have to kind of spend some time getting, getting 00:20:13.769 --> 00:20:18.490 my Latin. kind of up to snuff if I really want 00:20:18.490 --> 00:20:21.890 to make the most out of all this. All right, 00:20:22.109 --> 00:20:26.549 that brings me to the end of today's installment 00:20:26.549 --> 00:20:31.529 of the Historian's Notebook, season one, Molt Cara 00:20:31.529 --> 00:20:35.309 Companyona. Thanks for listening, and if you 00:20:35.309 --> 00:20:38.170 are leaving with more questions than you arrived 00:20:38.170 --> 00:20:42.619 with, I've done my job. Remember, the motto of 00:20:42.619 --> 00:20:46.960 the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. 00:20:47.980 --> 00:20:50.180 Visit the website to see an image of today's 00:20:50.180 --> 00:20:55.220 document and additional show notes. Look at yesterday's 00:20:55.220 --> 00:21:01.279 document's webpage for that cool reunion. and 00:21:01.279 --> 00:21:04.359 listen again tomorrow to hear about the next 00:21:04.359 --> 00:21:08.059 day in the first year of the reign of King Joan 00:21:08.059 --> 00:21:12.559 I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the 00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:14.220 meantime, take care.