WEBVTT 00:00:00.110 --> 00:00:05.429 Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:05.950 --> 00:00:12.669 it was January 26th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:12.669 --> 00:00:15.949 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:15.949 --> 00:00:19.949 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:19.949 --> 00:00:24.269 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:24.949 --> 00:00:29.350 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:29.350 --> 00:00:32.189 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:32.189 --> 00:00:36.210 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:36.210 --> 00:00:40.329 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:40.329 --> 00:01:09.620 document. Today we have a document from Violant. 00:01:09.799 --> 00:01:16.719 It's in Latin. And that is okay. I'm shifting 00:01:16.719 --> 00:01:22.159 my mindset with Latin, where I'm not gonna get 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:25.900 all kind of grumpy when I'm like, oh, it's another 00:01:25.900 --> 00:01:31.599 Latin document. I am going to embrace the Latin 00:01:31.599 --> 00:01:37.560 because it is just a challenging puzzle. I can 00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:40.040 put it that way. I'm going to think of it as 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:42.700 this challenging puzzle that I'm really going 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:46.359 to get better at this year. And in the meantime, 00:01:46.439 --> 00:01:49.180 we're just going to piece things together as 00:01:49.180 --> 00:01:53.799 best we can. That's the new Latin mindset. All 00:01:53.799 --> 00:01:59.200 right. So we start out this letter with Yolanis 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:08.819 Dei Gratia Regina Aragon. Et cetera. So I'm looking 00:02:08.819 --> 00:02:11.039 at this and I'm like, it seems like there should 00:02:11.039 --> 00:02:16.139 be some kind of ending on Aragon in this, but 00:02:16.139 --> 00:02:19.979 maybe they're kind of not always as dedicated 00:02:19.979 --> 00:02:26.419 to the Latin endings. Uh, quite sure. But anyway, 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:32.449 what that translates to is Violant. by the grace 00:02:32.449 --> 00:02:39.710 of God, Queen of Aragon, etc. So what you see 00:02:39.710 --> 00:02:44.650 after Aragon is a little abbreviation for Et, 00:02:45.490 --> 00:02:49.110 which looks sort of like the number two. And 00:02:49.110 --> 00:02:54.430 then following that, you've got the character 00:02:54.430 --> 00:02:58.900 C and then What's happened is that there's been 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:02.419 some repair to the document and it's covering 00:03:02.419 --> 00:03:08.280 up a lot of the abbreviation mark that is over 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:11.639 that C, but enough of it remains visible to know 00:03:11.639 --> 00:03:15.699 that this is the abbreviation for et cetera and 00:03:15.699 --> 00:03:20.060 it also makes sense because there's a lot of 00:03:20.060 --> 00:03:22.520 different regions that are if you're spelling 00:03:22.520 --> 00:03:27.419 out all of the official title of the queen there's 00:03:27.419 --> 00:03:30.439 just going to be a bunch of place names added 00:03:30.439 --> 00:03:35.800 in after Aragon so they do et cetera a lot but 00:03:35.800 --> 00:03:38.590 then other times when they want to be fancy I 00:03:38.590 --> 00:03:41.110 guess when they want to really hit it home. We've 00:03:41.110 --> 00:03:43.930 got a lot of territories they will list them 00:03:43.930 --> 00:03:47.530 all out and we've seen that before. So the first 00:03:47.530 --> 00:03:52.270 phrase is nice and easy to understand and then 00:03:52.270 --> 00:03:58.189 after that we have a pretty common construction 00:03:58.189 --> 00:04:05.180 with the addressee appearing before the phrase 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:16.220 salutem et gratiam and the salutem is like 80 00:04:16.220 --> 00:04:21.279 % maybe 75 % through the second line there's 00:04:21.279 --> 00:04:24.720 like a wormhole and then right next to that there's 00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:30.990 a big S that there's maybe a stray mark made 00:04:30.990 --> 00:04:35.730 by the scribe and that makes it look like it's 00:04:35.730 --> 00:04:38.569 a big p or something like that but it's an s 00:04:38.569 --> 00:04:46.230 and then a l u t that's all very legible and 00:04:46.230 --> 00:04:53.329 then the abbreviation at the end for salutem 00:04:53.329 --> 00:05:00.209 and then at gratium so greetings and salutations 00:05:00.209 --> 00:05:07.949 so on and the phrase that comes before that is 00:05:07.949 --> 00:05:14.589 the addressee and in this case we've got the 00:05:14.589 --> 00:05:22.170 procurators and the officials of a Town. We can 00:05:22.170 --> 00:05:25.910 clearly see the third word in the second line 00:05:25.910 --> 00:05:34.430 is V -I -L -L. So, you know, V -M. I think that 00:05:34.430 --> 00:05:40.850 it's a E -M ending there, but easy to know what 00:05:40.850 --> 00:05:43.889 it means in English. The town of, because then 00:05:43.889 --> 00:05:50.240 we have the letter D for day and then we have 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:55.079 the name of the place. This is where I got stuck 00:05:55.079 --> 00:05:59.399 because I couldn't immediately recognize this 00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:04.459 place name and I had to go find it. So what happens 00:06:04.459 --> 00:06:10.040 in Latin documents very frequently is that the 00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:15.610 place name, which is most commonly known by its 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:21.810 inhabitants according to a Catalan name. If you're 00:06:21.810 --> 00:06:26.569 in that region, the Catalonian region of the 00:06:26.569 --> 00:06:28.529 Crown of Aragon, and of course if you're in some 00:06:28.529 --> 00:06:31.949 other region, like, you know, there's the language 00:06:31.949 --> 00:06:36.629 Aragonese for Aragon itself, and so then there 00:06:36.629 --> 00:06:40.250 might be a slight spelling difference. So the 00:06:40.250 --> 00:06:44.850 inhabitants, they refer to the place by its name 00:06:44.850 --> 00:06:48.430 that's used in the everyday vernacular speech 00:06:48.430 --> 00:06:53.829 of the time. And for most of the places that 00:06:53.829 --> 00:06:56.589 we're looking at in these letters, that would 00:06:56.589 --> 00:07:02.589 be the Catalan name. You know, there's other 00:07:02.589 --> 00:07:07.329 regions of the Mediterranean that are territorially 00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:11.980 owned by the Crown of Aragon, so thinking of 00:07:11.980 --> 00:07:16.620 Sicily in particular, and so you'll definitely 00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:21.939 have other languages as the place name among 00:07:21.939 --> 00:07:25.959 the inhabitants, but then it's very possible 00:07:25.959 --> 00:07:28.040 that the officials of the Crown of Aragon would 00:07:28.040 --> 00:07:33.560 have given those places Catalan names, so then 00:07:33.560 --> 00:07:38.050 if you've got a Latin document about some place 00:07:38.050 --> 00:07:45.029 in Sicily, then it's the Latin name that then 00:07:45.029 --> 00:07:51.550 is being used for what in the minds of the folks 00:07:51.550 --> 00:07:56.329 in Barcelona would be a Catalan place name, but 00:07:56.329 --> 00:07:59.689 then the actual inhabitants in Sicily, it would 00:07:59.689 --> 00:08:05.980 be a name in, like... Goodness, what was the 00:08:05.980 --> 00:08:10.860 local Italian vernacular there? Certainly not 00:08:10.860 --> 00:08:13.620 the Tuscan vernacular of the north of Italy. 00:08:13.899 --> 00:08:17.660 There's just so many different vernaculars. And 00:08:17.660 --> 00:08:20.220 you might think, wow, they really tighten that 00:08:20.220 --> 00:08:23.839 up. And everybody just started speaking the dominant 00:08:23.839 --> 00:08:28.519 vernacular. So the Tuscan vernacular for Italian, 00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:33.789 the Castilian vernacular for Spanish, but it's 00:08:33.789 --> 00:08:36.830 really important to realize that a lot of these 00:08:36.830 --> 00:08:40.850 local, comparatively speaking, local vernaculars, 00:08:40.889 --> 00:08:43.110 they did not disappear, and there are still people 00:08:43.110 --> 00:08:47.789 who are speaking them. So a Sicilian vernacular, 00:08:47.789 --> 00:08:51.289 I think, still exists, but I'm really out of 00:08:51.289 --> 00:08:57.710 my subject area knowledge there. So, all right, 00:08:58.250 --> 00:09:02.269 point is that it's really sometimes very difficult 00:09:02.269 --> 00:09:07.480 to figure out what the place name is and when 00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:12.740 we're talking about place names the scholarly 00:09:12.740 --> 00:09:17.080 term for that is the toponym or the toponym there 00:09:17.080 --> 00:09:21.440 are a lot of resources about toponyms dictionaries 00:09:21.440 --> 00:09:27.320 of toponyms and there's oh gosh it can get really 00:09:27.399 --> 00:09:31.179 big in terms of the amount of research that has 00:09:31.179 --> 00:09:34.559 been done and the lists and the glossaries and 00:09:34.559 --> 00:09:40.039 so on. There's a very widely used Latin toponym 00:09:40.039 --> 00:09:44.700 dictionary called the Orbis Latinus. The Orbis 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:48.679 Latinus has been digitized and you can search 00:09:48.679 --> 00:09:54.940 it and find the vernacular translation for the 00:09:54.940 --> 00:09:59.580 way that the word appears in Latin, the toponym, 00:09:59.779 --> 00:10:03.120 the way the toponym appears in Latin. So I'll 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.460 put a link to that in the webpage for today's 00:10:06.460 --> 00:10:09.799 episode, but even though there are thousands 00:10:09.799 --> 00:10:13.600 of entries in the Orbis Latinus, when you're 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:18.740 getting into some of the more local areas, the 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:22.039 smaller towns, they're not going to be in there. 00:10:22.519 --> 00:10:27.759 The Orbis Latinus covers the larger Mediterranean 00:10:27.759 --> 00:10:33.700 world, and so when I went to consult it for whatever 00:10:33.700 --> 00:10:39.120 place name this is that starts with CUB, I could 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:44.100 not find an entry in there. And so I decided 00:10:44.100 --> 00:10:50.480 to go to a new AI agent, and, oh, I don't even 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:53.840 know if I'm using the word agent correctly, but 00:10:53.840 --> 00:10:58.480 a new AI product is maybe what I should be saying. 00:10:59.019 --> 00:11:01.980 So I went to a new AI product that I haven't 00:11:01.980 --> 00:11:05.240 used for the podcast before, and I've only used 00:11:05.240 --> 00:11:10.340 a couple times. It's called Perplexity. And apparently 00:11:10.340 --> 00:11:14.679 what happens when you go to perplexity .ai is 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:21.399 that it will utilize existing LLMs like Claude 00:11:21.399 --> 00:11:26.200 and ChatGPT and somehow, in consultation with 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:29.240 them, search the internet. I'm not quite sure 00:11:29.240 --> 00:11:33.299 how all of that fits together, but perplexity... 00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:37.480 did a really good job with my query in the sense 00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:40.519 that it provided me with a lot of references 00:11:40.519 --> 00:11:48.460 and gave a well explained case for why I should 00:11:48.460 --> 00:11:55.100 interpret this word as the Latin toponym for 00:11:55.100 --> 00:12:03.080 the town of Cubelles. Cubelles is about 55 kilometers 00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:09.259 down the coast south from Barcelona, and it makes 00:12:09.259 --> 00:12:15.919 sense that this would be of concern to the Crown 00:12:15.919 --> 00:12:20.559 of Aragon. It's close to the big city of Barcelona, 00:12:20.860 --> 00:12:25.580 relatively speaking, and so to have a document 00:12:25.580 --> 00:12:29.320 about it makes sense versus some of the other 00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:33.159 possibilities that perplexity provided for this 00:12:33.159 --> 00:12:36.019 place name. So, you know, it was it was okay, 00:12:36.019 --> 00:12:39.879 but there's still a problem with the AI generated 00:12:39.879 --> 00:12:44.460 responses, which is that you are getting references 00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:48.799 associated with claims that the chat bot is making. 00:12:48.799 --> 00:12:52.720 And then when you go to those references, it's 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:56.779 not actually supporting the claim. And in this 00:12:56.779 --> 00:13:03.299 situation, the AI generated response said that 00:13:03.299 --> 00:13:06.620 Thomas Bisson's book, A Short History of the 00:13:06.620 --> 00:13:10.340 Crown of Aragon, would have information in it 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:15.019 that supports this being interpreted as the town 00:13:15.019 --> 00:13:19.889 of Cubelles. and it didn't. Like, I was able to 00:13:19.889 --> 00:13:23.590 do just a keyword search in that text, and this 00:13:23.590 --> 00:13:28.970 town is not in there. So, you know, maybe I need 00:13:28.970 --> 00:13:32.250 to search more carefully through Bisson's book, 00:13:32.289 --> 00:13:37.549 but it shouldn't be that hard to track back a 00:13:37.549 --> 00:13:41.009 reference that the AI -generated response is 00:13:41.009 --> 00:13:44.899 providing you, especially if it's only one reference, 00:13:45.299 --> 00:13:48.620 which for this section of the AI -generated response, 00:13:48.679 --> 00:13:51.500 it was the only reference that would substantiate 00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:55.980 the claim. So even though that reference was, 00:13:55.980 --> 00:14:00.320 I would say, a failure on the part of the chatbot, 00:14:01.379 --> 00:14:05.019 the overall conclusion I think makes a lot of 00:14:05.019 --> 00:14:07.419 sense, and I'm going to go with it until I see 00:14:07.419 --> 00:14:11.139 something else that would make a better argument 00:14:11.139 --> 00:14:15.250 for what this place name is. which I need to 00:14:15.250 --> 00:14:19.929 not abandon in my mind as a possibility because 00:14:19.929 --> 00:14:25.750 you've got to use the AI chatbots provisionally 00:14:25.750 --> 00:14:30.929 and not as your final step. So anything that 00:14:30.929 --> 00:14:36.169 I arrive to with the help of the AI chatbot always 00:14:36.169 --> 00:14:40.509 needs to be subject to revision and not treated 00:14:40.509 --> 00:14:46.909 as the you know, conclusive end of the investigation 00:14:46.909 --> 00:14:50.850 for whatever question I might be using the chat 00:14:50.850 --> 00:14:58.330 bot for. Alright, so wanted to get into the topic 00:14:58.330 --> 00:15:04.450 of toponyms, and that covered pretty well. What 00:15:04.450 --> 00:15:09.289 is this letter about? This letter is about the 00:15:09.289 --> 00:15:14.539 ownership of this town, I think in terms of its 00:15:14.539 --> 00:15:19.820 governance and also probably some of the revenue 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:22.519 that's coming from whatever kind of taxation 00:15:22.519 --> 00:15:26.759 will go on. And I'm gathering this from just 00:15:26.759 --> 00:15:29.299 understanding a few of the words in the document. 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:32.159 So that too is provisional. I mean, everything 00:15:32.159 --> 00:15:35.460 is provisional in this stage of the research, 00:15:35.480 --> 00:15:41.080 but After the salutem e gratiam, in the second 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:44.159 line we have the name Petrus and then in the 00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:48.720 third line De Mari. So there's a Petrus De Mari 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:54.179 that has reached out to Violant and made some 00:15:54.179 --> 00:15:58.159 kind of request about being able to be in charge 00:15:58.159 --> 00:16:03.139 of this town in some way? And who was the previous 00:16:03.139 --> 00:16:06.740 person that was in charge of it? Well, that is 00:16:06.740 --> 00:16:12.379 in the end of line five. We've got Bernardi De, 00:16:12.379 --> 00:16:18.960 and then on the next line, Fortiano. So that 00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:25.809 is Sibilla's brother, Bernat de Fortia, the rascal 00:16:25.809 --> 00:16:30.830 type brother that has kind of been a source of 00:16:30.830 --> 00:16:35.570 embarrassment for Sibilla and so he is being 00:16:35.570 --> 00:16:41.570 dispossessed in this document and the ownership 00:16:41.570 --> 00:16:45.190 of this town I'm using the word ownership very 00:16:45.190 --> 00:16:48.389 like lightly here the authority over this town 00:16:48.389 --> 00:16:55.669 is being transferred to Petrus de Mari and there's 00:16:55.669 --> 00:16:59.929 something that's pretty weird in the probata 00:16:59.929 --> 00:17:05.069 for this document so on the next folio at the 00:17:05.069 --> 00:17:11.430 bottom you have three lines in the right side 00:17:11.430 --> 00:17:17.029 of the page there that are usually where it just 00:17:17.029 --> 00:17:21.930 says I am the scribe and this was dictated to 00:17:21.930 --> 00:17:27.309 me or given to me by the person that is being 00:17:27.309 --> 00:17:33.029 attributed as the sender. But in this case, we've 00:17:33.029 --> 00:17:36.750 got Bernard de Fortia at the very beginning of 00:17:36.750 --> 00:17:40.369 the probata. So what I'm thinking is that this 00:17:40.369 --> 00:17:45.910 is fulfilling a function of removing the authority 00:17:45.910 --> 00:17:53.130 of Bernard de Fortia. as well as being testified 00:17:53.130 --> 00:17:57.910 to as a faithful copy of the document that's 00:17:57.910 --> 00:18:01.509 going out. So it's interesting that Bernat de 00:18:01.509 --> 00:18:06.309 Fortia appears again. There is an outside possibility 00:18:06.309 --> 00:18:11.089 that Bernat de Fortia was somehow there. I don't 00:18:11.089 --> 00:18:13.890 know his exact whereabouts at this point in the 00:18:13.890 --> 00:18:18.539 story. I know that everyone is being kept track 00:18:18.539 --> 00:18:24.500 of all of Sibilla's people are being watched 00:18:24.500 --> 00:18:27.960 over, and some of them are indeed imprisoned. 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:32.640 I don't think that someone as high status as 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:37.119 Bernat de Fortia is imprisoned, but it could 00:18:37.119 --> 00:18:40.079 be a some kind of house arrest situation, but 00:18:40.079 --> 00:18:42.359 I doubt he's in Barcelona, although he might 00:18:42.359 --> 00:18:45.720 be. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:49.900 with Bernat de Fortia's name in the probata statement 00:18:49.900 --> 00:18:55.319 there. So I will try to look out for another 00:18:55.319 --> 00:18:59.730 instance of that in an upcoming document. For 00:18:59.730 --> 00:19:03.910 now, though, we've arrived to the end of this 00:19:03.910 --> 00:19:08.150 episode, and thanks for listening to this latest 00:19:08.150 --> 00:19:11.210 installment of the Historian's Notebook, Season 00:19:11.210 --> 00:19:15.549 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving with 00:19:15.549 --> 00:19:18.349 more questions than you arrived with, I've done 00:19:18.349 --> 00:19:21.670 my job. Remember, the motto of the Historian's 00:19:21.670 --> 00:19:25.890 Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. Visit 00:19:25.890 --> 00:19:29.269 the website to see an image of today's document 00:19:29.269 --> 00:19:33.130 and additional show notes. And listen again tomorrow 00:19:33.130 --> 00:19:35.789 to hear about the next day in the first year 00:19:35.789 --> 00:19:40.150 of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen 00:19:40.150 --> 00:19:43.769 Violant de Bar. In the meantime, take care.