WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:04.799 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, 00:00:05.339 --> 00:00:11.960 it was January 25th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:11.960 --> 00:00:15.560 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:15.560 --> 00:00:19.559 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:23.199 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:23.960 --> 00:00:27.800 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:30.420 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:30.420 --> 00:00:34.460 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:39.020 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:06.060 Part of the reason I chose today's document is 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:10.959 because right at the top is this really high 00:01:10.959 --> 00:01:18.420 interest word Inquisitorum. And we're talking 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:23.760 about Inquisition. But it's not the dreaded Spanish 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:29.719 Inquisition of Monty Python. It is instead not 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:34.719 that big of a deal. It is basically just the 00:01:34.719 --> 00:01:39.819 set of officers who are charged with investigating 00:01:39.819 --> 00:01:44.400 any troublemaking that might come up. And yesterday's 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:49.099 document is a good example of the result of an 00:01:49.099 --> 00:01:54.530 inquisition in which the people who had been 00:01:54.530 --> 00:01:59.069 appointed to be in that role of Inquisitor in 00:01:59.069 --> 00:02:03.189 Fraga had determined that it was the Muslims 00:02:03.189 --> 00:02:06.250 who were at fault for the violence that took 00:02:06.250 --> 00:02:11.110 place during or after or in the midst of the 00:02:11.110 --> 00:02:14.389 procession that had been organized to commemorate 00:02:14.389 --> 00:02:18.479 the death of Pere the Ceremonious. In today's 00:02:18.479 --> 00:02:21.659 document, we're looking at something from a register 00:02:21.659 --> 00:02:27.979 that's titled officialium. And this register is 00:02:27.979 --> 00:02:33.759 filled with appointments. So when somebody is 00:02:33.759 --> 00:02:39.280 appointed to an office within the apparatus of 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:42.719 the state, meaning that they're granted authority 00:02:42.719 --> 00:02:48.479 from the Crown of Aragon, government, the authority 00:02:48.479 --> 00:02:51.240 vested in the king or one of the other royal 00:02:51.240 --> 00:02:56.599 family members, and they're usually paid from 00:02:56.599 --> 00:03:03.840 the funds of the crown as opposed to, say, the 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:08.780 revenues that a city might collect from various 00:03:08.780 --> 00:03:13.379 streams of revenue of taxation that is carried 00:03:13.379 --> 00:03:18.400 out by a municipality. So in this document, the 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:25.740 title is Inquisitorum Ciuitatem Gerundem. So this 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:30.780 is Girona, the place where Joan and Violant 00:03:30.780 --> 00:03:35.819 lived until just a couple weeks ago. And there's 00:03:35.819 --> 00:03:40.400 some new inquisitors being appointed. Their names 00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:45.319 are all strung along in the very first two lines 00:03:45.319 --> 00:03:49.259 of the document. And then, as best as I can understand 00:03:49.259 --> 00:03:54.300 it, what we're looking at is a whole long justification 00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:59.680 for why there are inquisitors from a legal standpoint, 00:03:59.919 --> 00:04:04.069 from even a constitutional standpoint. and then 00:04:04.069 --> 00:04:07.889 also just in general that they have to carry 00:04:07.889 --> 00:04:10.990 out their duties according to the expectations 00:04:10.990 --> 00:04:18.569 of the law and according to the customs of the 00:04:18.569 --> 00:04:22.689 office. And I did not go through and transcribe 00:04:22.689 --> 00:04:27.470 this very long Latin document because I could 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:32.129 tell right away again, that this was just not 00:04:32.129 --> 00:04:36.089 really as germane to my main focus of study, 00:04:36.350 --> 00:04:38.949 even though it still says a bunch of interesting 00:04:38.949 --> 00:04:42.250 things. And I'll point out a couple of those 00:04:42.250 --> 00:04:47.149 interesting things. But really, I just wanted 00:04:47.149 --> 00:04:51.689 to do a document from the officialium so you could 00:04:51.689 --> 00:04:54.829 see what it looks like, and then also to have 00:04:54.829 --> 00:04:59.430 a chance to say that the Inquisition varied over 00:04:59.430 --> 00:05:04.089 time and place, that it wasn't always the kind 00:05:04.089 --> 00:05:08.149 of searching for witches and sorcerers, although 00:05:08.149 --> 00:05:13.930 there could be some less than scientific applications 00:05:13.930 --> 00:05:18.420 of the Inquisition and Inquisitors. at this time, 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:23.920 it wasn't the fearful entity that you might have 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:28.300 had in mind from some of the documents and media 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:32.060 representations that you've come across before. 00:05:32.579 --> 00:05:40.139 The real cruel and outlandish Spanish Inquisition 00:05:40.139 --> 00:05:43.220 doesn't really appear in the 14th century and 00:05:43.220 --> 00:05:45.339 really doesn't appear in the Middle Ages. It's 00:05:45.339 --> 00:05:49.019 more a creation of the early modern period. This 00:05:49.019 --> 00:05:52.339 is something that a lot of medievalists really 00:05:52.339 --> 00:05:56.680 like to emphasize and repeat, which is that a 00:05:56.680 --> 00:06:00.339 lot of the horrible stuff that comes to mind 00:06:00.339 --> 00:06:03.079 when people say things like, I'm gonna get medieval, 00:06:03.980 --> 00:06:08.689 it's actually stuff that happened after 1500, 00:06:08.930 --> 00:06:12.329 which is the general cutoff for the division 00:06:12.329 --> 00:06:15.769 between the Middle Ages and the early modern 00:06:15.769 --> 00:06:19.689 era. All right, let's get back to this document 00:06:19.689 --> 00:06:21.689 here. I just want to point out a couple things. 00:06:22.629 --> 00:06:28.269 In the second line, about 75 to 80 percent of 00:06:28.269 --> 00:06:32.720 the way through, there's a faint slash after 00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:40.279 salut, salutem et graciam. And the phrase begins 00:06:40.279 --> 00:06:45.180 cum iu something, there's an abbreviation, iu 00:06:45.180 --> 00:06:52.420 abbreviation, and then constituciones catalonem. 00:06:53.699 --> 00:06:56.600 I'm not quite sure about the end of that word. 00:06:56.879 --> 00:07:01.110 And then in the next line, generales. and then 00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:06.529 there's another slash. So I was really, really 00:07:06.529 --> 00:07:10.509 wanting to figure out what that i -u word is 00:07:10.509 --> 00:07:17.290 after cum, and so I went through some of my notes 00:07:17.290 --> 00:07:21.009 from the Mediterranean seminar that I took on 00:07:21.009 --> 00:07:24.009 reading archival Latin in the Archive of the 00:07:24.009 --> 00:07:25.829 Crown of Aragon, which had a lot of abbreviations. 00:07:25.829 --> 00:07:29.389 I couldn't find this one in there. I went to 00:07:29.389 --> 00:07:35.110 an online resource that has taken a lot of the 00:07:35.110 --> 00:07:39.149 work from the Capelli text of Latin abbreviations 00:07:39.149 --> 00:07:42.550 and put it in a searchable online database, tried 00:07:42.550 --> 00:07:47.250 to find it there, could not find it. And so I 00:07:47.250 --> 00:07:49.610 was about to throw my hands up and then I remembered, 00:07:49.709 --> 00:07:55.870 oh my gosh. Trenchs Odena and Baiges i Jardi, 00:07:56.350 --> 00:08:00.449 a lot of their documents about minstrels and 00:08:00.449 --> 00:08:04.490 troubadours have Latin transcriptions, and I 00:08:04.490 --> 00:08:07.209 just was looking at that the other day, and so 00:08:07.209 --> 00:08:12.509 I brought it up, and I did a little find search 00:08:12.509 --> 00:08:18.050 in the PDF for just IU, and I guessed it was 00:08:18.050 --> 00:08:21.699 R, because I... was pretty sure that I had seen 00:08:21.699 --> 00:08:26.240 the macron with that looks like a U with like 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:28.899 a long line after the end of the U. I'm pretty 00:08:28.899 --> 00:08:31.860 sure I'd seen that used for an R. So I thought 00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:35.220 it was probably an IUR and I looked at a couple 00:08:35.220 --> 00:08:37.799 documents and went to registers from different 00:08:37.799 --> 00:08:43.179 years and tried to and struck out and then I 00:08:43.179 --> 00:08:46.600 was about to give up and I said just one more 00:08:46.600 --> 00:08:56.820 and yes! Bonanza! I found this exact abbreviation 00:08:56.820 --> 00:09:05.340 in a register from 1389, and I found out that 00:09:05.340 --> 00:09:10.179 actually I was wrong, because it's just a coincidence 00:09:10.179 --> 00:09:14.720 that the IUR was from a different word in that 00:09:14.720 --> 00:09:18.090 same little document. about 10 lines long. And 00:09:18.090 --> 00:09:20.950 then further down, I was just kind of scanning 00:09:20.950 --> 00:09:23.509 it just kind of looking. And I saw that this 00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:26.450 was here. And I look at the transcription and 00:09:26.450 --> 00:09:30.590 what is it for? Iuxta. So if you're familiar 00:09:30.590 --> 00:09:35.289 with the English word juxtapose, well, the first 00:09:35.289 --> 00:09:40.590 part of that, of that word is juxta, which comes 00:09:40.590 --> 00:09:45.600 from the Latin iuxta, which means next to And 00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:51.360 so here we have figured out that this is an abbreviation 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:56.320 for iuxta. So the phrase that happens in this 00:09:56.320 --> 00:10:01.940 document after salutam et graciam is cum uxta 00:10:01.940 --> 00:10:06.399 constitutionis and then the Catalonian generalis. 00:10:06.919 --> 00:10:12.139 So basically what's being said here is according 00:10:12.139 --> 00:10:16.559 to the constitution it's so having this with 00:10:16.559 --> 00:10:21.399 next these two words meaning or when next putting 00:10:21.399 --> 00:10:25.179 them together idiomatically will give you a translation 00:10:25.179 --> 00:10:30.379 like according to according to the constitutions 00:10:30.379 --> 00:10:38.710 of the catalonian general assemblies so on Then 00:10:38.710 --> 00:10:42.610 what follows is the justification legally and 00:10:42.610 --> 00:10:47.129 the explanation of the role of Inquisitor that 00:10:47.129 --> 00:10:51.610 these fellows are being appointed to. And then 00:10:51.610 --> 00:10:56.429 so on and so forth. We've got all the different 00:10:56.429 --> 00:11:01.769 expectations, duties, restrictions, and so on 00:11:01.769 --> 00:11:10.299 spelled out in full. And that is my Latin abbreviation 00:11:10.299 --> 00:11:14.659 Mystery Solved. And let me tell you, it is so 00:11:14.659 --> 00:11:17.720 nice when you get to a solution for one of those, 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:19.779 when you've been looking through your notes and 00:11:19.779 --> 00:11:22.820 you're like, oh, it looks like it could be Eorum. 00:11:23.659 --> 00:11:28.080 I will point out here that when you usually see 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:34.070 the abbreviation for Orum, the descender, the 00:11:34.070 --> 00:11:37.370 part that goes below the line. It's usually not 00:11:37.370 --> 00:11:43.190 diagonal like this one is. And if I can maybe 00:11:43.190 --> 00:11:47.850 find another instance that's close in this document, 00:11:47.889 --> 00:11:52.590 it would help to explain that a little bit. But 00:11:52.590 --> 00:11:55.870 oh yeah, actually just one, two, three lines 00:11:55.870 --> 00:12:03.639 down from Cum. is Eorum, Ab Eorum. And so 00:12:03.639 --> 00:12:08.440 you can see that it's not as diagonal of a straight 00:12:08.440 --> 00:12:15.179 line as a descender there. And so this is the 00:12:15.179 --> 00:12:20.799 X. This is an X. So basically it looks like how 00:12:20.799 --> 00:12:26.440 we would write the letter P, but it's an X. And 00:12:26.440 --> 00:12:31.340 if you compare it to the way that the scribes 00:12:31.340 --> 00:12:34.340 write the Roman numerals for the dates, which 00:12:34.340 --> 00:12:37.620 always has some Xs in it, you'll see that this 00:12:37.620 --> 00:12:42.559 is an X. And so I was wrong about it being the 00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:45.899 letter R indicated in the abbreviation here. 00:12:46.759 --> 00:12:54.419 There's no R. The letters are I, U, X, and then 00:12:54.559 --> 00:12:58.840 what comes above the word stands for a T -A in 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:03.460 this situation. So there you had a really in 00:13:03.460 --> 00:13:10.179 -depth experience with some paleography and some 00:13:10.179 --> 00:13:14.200 Latin abbreviation. The scribes just they loved 00:13:14.200 --> 00:13:18.909 their abbreviations and This is one that I have 00:13:18.909 --> 00:13:21.809 seen before since I started the podcast, and 00:13:21.809 --> 00:13:24.629 it was really bugging me today. And so I finally 00:13:24.629 --> 00:13:28.250 got to scratch that itch and find out that this 00:13:28.250 --> 00:13:30.970 was iuxta, and now I will remember it forever. 00:13:32.220 --> 00:13:36.019 Okay, what does this say about the way that Joan 00:13:36.019 --> 00:13:40.159 and Violant were establishing their reign? Well, 00:13:40.299 --> 00:13:42.259 in a general sense, they're appointing people 00:13:42.259 --> 00:13:44.059 left and right, doing a lot of appointments. 00:13:44.220 --> 00:13:46.860 There's always people getting appointed to things 00:13:46.860 --> 00:13:52.159 and needs for taking care of turnover in these 00:13:52.159 --> 00:13:55.679 positions. So... I can't really say that anything 00:13:55.679 --> 00:13:58.159 jumps out at me in this document as strange or 00:13:58.159 --> 00:14:01.480 weird. It's more of just giving everybody, including 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:06.080 myself, an idea of just what a normal officialium 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:08.940 appointment looks like. So if there is something 00:14:08.940 --> 00:14:12.059 really weird later on, I can understand that. 00:14:13.340 --> 00:14:16.279 All right, that brings us to the end of this 00:14:16.279 --> 00:14:19.279 episode of the Historian's Notebook, Season One, 00:14:19.559 --> 00:14:22.460 Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving with 00:14:22.460 --> 00:14:24.899 more questions than you arrived with, I've done 00:14:24.899 --> 00:14:28.879 my job. Remember, the motto of the Historian's 00:14:28.879 --> 00:14:32.759 Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. Does 00:14:32.759 --> 00:14:35.299 that mean that we're never going to hear about 00:14:35.299 --> 00:14:41.100 any weird or colorful Inquisition moments? No, 00:14:41.820 --> 00:14:44.960 there will be some, I promise, before this year 00:14:44.960 --> 00:14:49.000 is done. But for now, you're probably dissatisfied. 00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:55.139 Promise fulfilled. Visit the website to see an 00:14:55.139 --> 00:14:57.559 image of today's document and additional show 00:14:57.559 --> 00:15:00.360 notes. And listen again tomorrow to hear about 00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:03.639 the next day in the first year of the reign of 00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:07.240 King Joan I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. 00:15:07.980 --> 00:15:10.019 In the meantime, take care.