Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 19th, 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.
Ah, well, it's a little bit of a psych out because
we're not starting today's document right now,
right away. We have some matters to discuss about
yesterday's document. But what I found out about
yesterday's document happened as I was on the
hunt for today's document. So it's all just mixed
up together. And that's just how it goes on this
journey. So let me explain what happened. I was
all ready to go with a document for January 19th
and I was really excited about it because Joan
is talking about falcons and he's referring to
something that he's getting from Turkey, the
country Turkey, and it was looking like a really
interesting letter so you know I'm looking at
it and I'm getting ready to think about all right
here's you know what I could say about it sourcing
and so on and I reread the last line and it is
the date of the 19th but it's for the month of
May so this is an instance where in the register
I think it was 1952 there's just this really
interesting chronological interruption that happens
where I had these January letters and then all
of a sudden boom we've got a letter from May
there's actually a couple letters from May and
then we go back to January and February so in
that moment I thought to myself crud that means
I'm gonna have to not talk about this document
with the Falcons I can have it as the May 19th
document. And so that's likely when we're going
to hear about that one. But now I have to find
a document from the 19th. And the other thing
to keep in mind about the hunt for a document
from January 19th is that this is the day that
the historians really have consensed on Joan
and Violant. making their entrance as a couple
into Barcelona. Now, Violent had already been
there, laying groundwork. She'd been in Granollers
on the 16th. She was back in Barcelona, but maybe
she like met Joan as he was approaching the city
and then they enter together. That's my guess
as to what happened there. Maybe they had one
night at some place on the way or in Granollers.
I don't know. It's really hard to locate documents
about this day of entrance into Barcelona. And
probably that's because they were busy. talking
with people. You know, they had arrived into
the city. This is a really big deal. The king
has arrived to the royal palace for the first
time. And it's been quite the build up as there's
been a delay of a couple weeks. And so My guess
is that they're not really having a whole lot
of time to write a lot of documents or attend
to a lot of business. So there's a real lack
in the registers of documents from January 19th.
And if there is a document somewhere in these
registers that commemorates their entrance into
Barcelona on this very special day, well, I have
yet to find it and none of the historians who've
written about it have attached that claim to
a specific register and folio archival reference.
And so it's pretty clear that they that Joan
and Violant were both in Barcelona starting
on January 19th. And so I think maybe the historians
have made an inference. But it's possible there
is some Some work out there may be one of the
Catalan Renaissance historians who located some
document and everybody has just been working
from that, including Josep Roca in 1929. So maybe
that's I just have to do a little bit more digging
back through the secondary literature to find
that document. But alas, I have run out of time.
Here I am. on January 19th, and I haven't been
able to find it. So I started looking for a document
for January 19th, which was a little bit tough
for the reason I just explained. Looking through
various registers, okay, and I open up the Gratiarum
register for Joan because I knew based on a
reference from Benjamin Gampel's book, that there
was going to be a document a little bit a few
days ahead in that register. And I said, well,
maybe there's something for the 19th in that
register. So I open it up and I start at the
very beginning. It starts in January of 1387.
kind of looking through the first letter, okay,
something from a different date. Second letter,
get to the end, and it's January 18th. And I
think to myself, could this maybe actually be
the January 18th letter that I spent over two
hours looking for the day before? And lo and
behold, my friends, it was right there on the
second folio of this Gratiarum Register, Register
1890. That's where the outgoing letter to Pedro
de Guardia, the safe conduct letter that I was
talking about yesterday, that's where it was
in the Gratiarum Register. The Gratiarum Register,
I think it's named Gratiarum because it's about
The document that was cited by Benjamin Gample
from a couple days later in this Gratiarum register,
it is a letter that certifies the receipt of
a fine from the Muslim community of... Oh gosh,
was it Fraga? Yeah, the Muslim community of Fraga.
And they were fined for starting some ruckus
against the Jewish population of Fraga. And I'm
going to get into that a little bit more deeply.
But it has to do on the actual episode coming
up a couple days from now. But it has to do with
a penalty being paid for what was seen as a misbehavior.
So why is a document about providing safe passage
to the chief chaplain for the Archbishop of Zaragoza
in the same register as the certification of
the receipt of a fine for a conflict between
Jews and Muslims It's really confusing To say
the least to try to figure out well Why is this
document in this type of register and hopefully
by the end of this project? I'll have a more
solid idea But right now I'm just throwing my
hands up saying I can't believe that this happened
that I went through a hundred folios of the officialium
and than at the beginning of the Gratiarum is
where I find the document that I was looking
for. So, all right, that's my little gripe about
the organization of the Chancery staff of the
Archive of the Crown of Aragon in the late 14th
century. But let's look at this as also a wonderful
development because for maybe the first time
in 639 years, the outgoing letter, the one for
Pedro de Guardia for the safe passage, and its
copy in the Chancery Register, they are brought
back together in a digital space on the webpage
for yesterday's episode. So That, I think, is
a pretty cool outcome and I am really thrilled
to have done that. It's pretty cool to make that
connection even if it's for some kind of... I
don't know minor occurrence in the grander historical
narrative here it's still just this fun archival
moment that I really like and here we are we're
all the way in to today's episode and I'm talking
mostly about yesterday so I didn't even end up
choosing a document from that register. I mean,
there wasn't one. There was not a January 19th
document in that gratiarum register. And so I
just went back to the itinerary put together
by Daniel Girona y Llagostera, and he had identified
a document from January 19th. And of course,
his main goal was to track Joan's location. And
indeed, at the bottom of the document that he
had identified in his itinerary, which is folio
10R of register 1953, at the bottom we see indeed
that this document is identified as having been
made in Barcelona on January 19th. That's what
the document says. So sometimes we've seen this
a little bit fudged, but I'm pretty sure that
Joan really was in Barcelona on January 19th
and Perplexingly, folks, perplexingly, it's not
some grand document that had to have risen to
his attention on his very first day in Barcelona
because it was so urgent. No, it seems to be
kind of another humdrum business -like letter.
It has to do with Marti and some kind of business
arrangement happening in Mont Blanc, which in
this letter is called by its Latin name Montes
Albi. Albi is actually a name for white and it
is like Blanc, a word to describe the color white.
So Montes Albi, Mont Blanc. White Mountain is
the name of this place. And indeed, it was actually
a significant city in the Middle Ages. It was
the seventh largest city in Catalonia. Joan,
on January 16th, the day that he made his son,
Jaume, three years old, into the Dauphin. of
Girona, he created a dukedom for his brother.
So on that day, Marty became the Duke of Mont
Blanc. And so at the very top of this folio,
we can see the probata symbol and then Domine
Duce Montis Albi, Lord Duke of Mont Blanc. That
is Marti. Now, what is going on in this letter?
It's a nice, long, Latin letter. And so of course
I struggled, and of course I used my chat GPT
AI crutch. And what I came up with was that this
is some kind of business deal. It doesn't sound
dramatically urgent, but maybe it is, because...
on Joan's busy day of showing up to the royal
palace as king for the first time ever, this
is the document that he produced on that day.
And it seems like some kind of a warning. So
there's these business partners in Mont Blanc,
and one of them has a name that was kind of strange
to me because it is looking to me like it's a
form of George, like if it's pronounced with
the hard G, it would be Georgius or Georgius
with the soft G. And that's strange because in
Catalan, the name George is rendered Jordi, J
-O - R -D -I, and there's a lot of people named
Jordi. So that made me wonder if possibly this
Georgius is maybe from someplace else that spells
George differently, or maybe that was just another
way to spell George, and it's not an indication
of anything. but that is a question that came
up for me there's some kind of business problem
happening because the second to the last line
of the letter right before the dating clause
it reads basically means otherwise, the blame
will be rightly imputed to you. The blame. So
Joan is saying, y 'all got to take care of
this. You got to make good on whatever deal you
were doing. Otherwise, the blame is going to
fall on you, Vostrem. Well, who Who is the you?
It's a second person plural, Vostrem, and that
is the way that they refer to each other if they're
members of the royal family. So they don't use
the singular second person. So this could actually
be Joan saying to Marti that... If he doesn't
follow what Joan is laying out here, then the
blame will be rightly imputed to him, to you,
Marti. Second person plural, royal you. And that,
to me, would be a really big surprise that Joan
would talk to Marti like that, unless maybe they're
just kind of, you know... at a level of trust
that when Marti reads that, he reads it as like,
yeah, okay, my bad, it's all right. Or maybe
that message is directed at somebody else and
I'm looking at the lines that come right before
and it's really, it's just, it's not clear because
in Latin, They typically have very long sentences
with multiple clauses that all refer back to
some subject that could be lines and lines and
lines above. And this is one of the reasons why
I am coming to an understanding that there's
way more Latin documents in these registers than
I had gotten the impression of. I had gotten
that impression, I think, because Latin is very,
very time consuming to unpack and translate.
And so when historians are looking through these
registers and making decisions about what they're
going to write about, they have to make a decision.
Am I going to sink a whole half a day into figuring
out what this Latin letter says? Especially if
it seems like something that's just not germane
to their research topic, they're just not going
to do it. And so if they see one in Catalan that
might not be as germane, they might decide to
go ahead and translate it because it's not as
much of a time cost for them. So what happens
over time is this accrual in the secondary literature
of more Catalan letters than Latin. And so if
you're just looking at the secondary literature,
you can come away with the impression, like I
did, that it's like 90 % Catalan and 10 % Latin,
when really, What I'm starting to see is that
it's like maybe a majority Latin. I mean, I wouldn't
flip that ratio, but I would say we're at least
like 50 -50 here. So this is a wake up call for
me that I'm not gonna dodge Latin. Like I was
kind of maybe hoping to. I really, I have to,
I have to kind of spend some time getting, getting
my Latin. kind of up to snuff if I really want
to make the most out of all this. All right,
that brings me to the end of today's installment
of the Historian's Notebook, season one, Molt Cara
Companyona. Thanks for listening, and 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 to see an image of today's
document and additional show notes. Look at yesterday's
document's webpage for that cool reunion. 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.