Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 22nd, 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. Join me on this journey
through the thousands of digitized pages available
on Pares, a website produced by Spain's Ministry
of Culture and Sport. Let's begin today's document.
On register 1819 folio 75 V for Verso, I had
two documents from January 22nd and I decided
to go with the longer one and also because it
had some interesting stuff. It had some crossouts
and some inter -linear additions, and then at
the end it had a bunch of addressees basically
saying that this one letter was copied a bunch
of times and sent out to many destinations. So
there was a lot of interesting stuff going on
with this longer letter at the It's the second
one on this on this folio. This is from Violant's
register. It's from her secret seal, which again
is not necessarily like the same as a top secret
designation we might think of today, but still
an elevated level of security. And Violant is
sending out the same message to a great many
communities that are now in her portfolio. I'm
pretty sure that most of the communities listed
are not ones that Violant had in her portfolio
as the Duchess of Girona, the title that she
had before the ascension to the throne on January
5th or 6th, depending on how exactly you want
to slice that. And so here we've got a message
that is being transmitted to all of these communities.
I would guess that in many cases this is the
first they're hearing from the new member of
the royal family that is in charge of their affairs.
The monarchy in the Crown of Aragon in the 14th
century was very much a corporate monarchy, meaning
that the division of labor for running the government
was very much a group project. It was a division
of labor in which entire regions and also little
sections within regions were parceled out to
different members of the royal family. The assignments
could correspond to levels of prestige, but you
can't really depend on that. Sometimes the Queen
would have jurisdiction over a particular community
that... you would expect the king to have had
jurisdiction over because of its importance or
the amount of money flowing into the coffers.
So there's some variation here. I think that
the king probably did have the lion's share of
the jurisdictions, but it wasn't exactly playing
out in terms of a ranking matched to this particular
member of the royal family or that. A really
good example is in this letter here where there's
one destination that really stuck out as I was
looking at the list of recipients that begins
on folio 75 v and then continues on to folio
76 r in fact the last destination the last recipient
listed which is in line six of folio 76 r reads
alia similis iudeis valenciam so the jews of
valencia this brings up a structure in the governance
of the crown of aragon that i have mentioned
before but i really want to explain it fully
right now so the aljama or the Aliama, is the
name of a neighborhood for a religious minority
within a city and that particular sub -municipality
would report directly to the monarchy and its
tax revenues would go directly to the monarchy.
The way that this came about is that there was
such an insistence on the separation of neighborhoods
according to the borderlines of faith membership
that the Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods within
cities all across the Crown of Aragon, they were
seen as separate entities, and those who were
in charge of the city were so intent on keeping
the borderlines very solid, essentially building
walls. between these neighborhoods and then where
the Christian population lived and did business.
They were so intent on this separation that even
their governance was structured differently.
Another piece of this is that the tradition arose
as the centuries went on of religious minorities
having all kinds of different rules for how to
conduct their affairs, whether it's the clothes
that they wore, or the hours that they could
be certain places, or the amount of noise that
they could make in their religious commemorations,
and also the way that they paid their taxes.
And the royal authorities the officials who were
employed by the monarchy, they became the ones
that would enforce this throughout the realm
and certainly the municipal authorities would
participate in that enforcement, but in terms
of managing the conflicts that could arise, whether
just lawsuits or actual violence, whatever kinds
of conflicts that might arise would be handled
in the courts and judgment structures of the
monarchy. What we're seeing in this letter is
a little microcosm of that, because in addition
to all these other villages that are listed here
as recipients of this letter, we also see that
the Jews of Valencia are recipients of this letter,
not the entire city of Valencia itself. So all
of these cities listed here and the Jewish neighborhood
in Valencia, they're all in the portfolio of
Violant. It's a very strange thing to try to
get your head around in terms of the way that
governance occurred, but it's really the result
of just traditions growing upon themselves over
time. Now, what is this letter communicating
to all of these municipalities? This letter is
telling them that they're going to have to pay
some money. And The letter is a little bit amusing
to me because it starts out the first line referencing
all of the necessary expenses and then also takes
very, very much care to say that in times past.
So , the word is en aquest temps passat.
In the times past, there were additional financial
obligations and burdens and deeds that had been
accrued. And so what Violant is saying here
is it was Sibilla. It was the previous queen.
I have inherited her portfolio. She did all this
spending. And now all of the costs that have
arisen as we're establishing our reign have required
you to contribute some additional funds. And
she also couched this in terms of, you're very
loyal and we love you, and now you're going to
pay. And she names a couple people in this letter,
one of whom is a certain Mr. Jacme. And
then another person is Antonio Rosar. And in
the, let's see. sixth line you can see that the
word dispenser was crossed out and now tresoreria
is written in the interline and so this person
I think was promoted to be the treasurer and
the name of the person is really hard to read
it's repeated further down in the letter and
I couldn't quite figure out that the first name
was Antonio the last name it's pretty clear that
that's Rosar and when I got to the very end of
the document on the next page Antonio is spelled
out very nicely and also he's labeled as of the
treasury. So this Mossen Jacme, this Mr. Jacme
and Antonio Rosar, they're going to be collecting
money from everybody and this is something that,
you know, I'm gonna see a lot of. The revenues
from the Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods were
a very significant source of income for the monarchy
and the different kings and queens of the crown
of Aragon they are very protective of those neighborhoods
as a result and we see this in a lot of moments
when there is violence between the different
faith groups. And in fact, in tomorrow's document,
we're going to see an example of that. But it
really blows up in 1391 when there's just a conflagration
of Christian violence against the Jewish neighborhoods,
and it's the members of the royal family that
are really trying to put a stop to it, although
their efforts are not as forceful as they could
be, but they're the ones that are going to be
most impacted in terms of their revenues and
so they're incentivized to help out and then
also I think we do see that there are moments
when members of the royal family are coming to
the defense of Jews on principle and also Muslims
on principle that they are very critical of fellow
Christians who take advantage of circumstances
in order to pillage the neighborhoods of the
Muslims and the Jews. And, you know, I did mention
that Joann's personal history with Jews is highly
problematic. By the time he ascends to the throne,
however, we start to see that there's been a
major shift. And he is pretty consistently coming
to the defense of Jewish communities. Benjamin
Gampel does an amazing job analyzing this in
his book on the anti -Jewish riots of 1391 and
the ambivalence and the lack of commitment that
sometimes comes through. on the part of members
of the royal family and their protection of Jewish
communities in 1391. It's in that book analyzed
very very adroitly so I highly recommend that
book if you're interested in this topic. Okay
one last thing I wanted to point out about this
letter is at the very bottom there's a statement
that indicates that this letter has been expedited
so the I guess you could say line 7 on folio
76r has this line that I'm not quite sure if
I'm transcribing all the abbreviations correctly
but I read it as And the meaning of this, as
far as I've been able to figure out, is basically
saying that these were all expedited without
any superfluous or additional things. supra scriptis.
Not quite sure what's being referred to there.
Like, what would usually delay? What is it that
would be added on that could delay these letters
that in this case was skipped in order to expedite
them? I would really like to know that. And so
maybe after I've looked at a bunch more of these,
I'll have a better idea of what that means. Thanks
for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, Mol 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. If you ever read anything that purports
to be history and you come away feeling like
you now know everything that happened, you've
read some bad history. Good history will always
leave you with more questions, will always leave
you dissatisfied. And that's why I like to guarantee
that. Visit the website, jonathanseyfried.net,
to see an image of today's document and some
additional show notes. 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.