WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:05.780 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:06.339 --> 00:00:14.000 it was January 27th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.179 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:17.179 --> 00:00:20.879 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:20.879 --> 00:00:24.940 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:29.309 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:29.309 --> 00:00:32.289 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:32.289 --> 00:00:36.450 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:40.250 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:40.250 --> 00:01:08.500 document. Today's document is from Joan and it's 00:01:08.500 --> 00:01:14.280 in a register called the commune register and 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:18.680 this register appears to be one that contains 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:24.719 documents that are not as sensitive and are maybe 00:01:24.719 --> 00:01:32.269 responses to petitions that are I guess like 00:01:32.269 --> 00:01:35.010 regular business in some ways, you could say, 00:01:35.430 --> 00:01:40.170 like not matters of, you know, intrigue or like 00:01:40.170 --> 00:01:44.189 diplomacy necessarily, but but internal business 00:01:44.189 --> 00:01:48.989 like arrangements. Again, these categories, they're 00:01:48.989 --> 00:01:52.129 very difficult to separate out in my mind because, 00:01:52.489 --> 00:01:55.930 you know, what makes this commune register or 00:01:55.930 --> 00:01:59.430 commune register different from the officiallum? 00:02:00.329 --> 00:02:02.650 I mean, I think Officialium is about appointments, 00:02:03.230 --> 00:02:06.930 and this one's about maybe petitions, but then 00:02:06.930 --> 00:02:10.189 there's also other registers that have results 00:02:10.189 --> 00:02:13.289 of petitions or decisions about petitions in 00:02:13.289 --> 00:02:16.229 them. So that's one of the goals of the whole 00:02:16.229 --> 00:02:19.729 podcast, is to, you know, figure that out. Okay, 00:02:20.150 --> 00:02:26.629 so here we've got one from Joan, and the initial 00:02:26.969 --> 00:02:30.370 line for the addressee is a little bit different, 00:02:30.449 --> 00:02:35.250 and I'm not quite sure why. It's in Latin again. 00:02:35.250 --> 00:02:40.689 We are embracing Latin now. And I am just gonna 00:02:40.689 --> 00:02:44.530 take a pass on digging into the very beginning 00:02:44.530 --> 00:02:49.590 of this letter because I think that it's just 00:02:49.590 --> 00:02:54.590 maybe a variation of the kind of opening that 00:02:54.590 --> 00:02:58.419 one sees a lot. I'm going to keep my eye on these 00:02:58.419 --> 00:03:01.759 openings and see if this one comes back again, 00:03:02.199 --> 00:03:09.099 but it starts out with something like Satis Guidem. 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:13.460 I can't quite figure out the expansions of the 00:03:13.460 --> 00:03:16.919 abbreviations here, but then we get to the name 00:03:16.919 --> 00:03:20.919 of the addressee in the second line, Nicolaus 00:03:20.919 --> 00:03:25.400 de Pomerio. And what's nice about this register 00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:28.979 is that the person's name, who's the main addressee, 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:32.919 of the letter appears at the top above the text 00:03:32.919 --> 00:03:36.840 block. So that's nice. And then I eventually 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:41.139 figured out that the place name at the end of 00:03:41.139 --> 00:03:46.800 the second line is in Catalan Ripoll. There's 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:52.030 a very old monastery in Ripoll that gives me the 00:03:52.030 --> 00:03:56.870 chance to mention the name of I think probably 00:03:56.870 --> 00:04:01.430 my favorite person in early Middle Ages Iberian 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:05.469 history. Well, not favorite person, but favorite 00:04:05.469 --> 00:04:11.509 name. Wilfrid the Hairy! Yes, someone has gone 00:04:11.509 --> 00:04:16.879 down in history as Wilfrid the Hairy. Wilfrid 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:23.899 the Hairy was a Visigoth who was fighting against 00:04:23.899 --> 00:04:29.579 Muslims in Iberia and captured the town of Ripoll 00:04:29.579 --> 00:04:34.839 and helped to found a Benedictine monastery there. 00:04:35.379 --> 00:04:40.779 And I just am very tickled by the name Wilfrid 00:04:40.779 --> 00:04:45.269 the Hairy. That's just really funny. But okay, 00:04:45.370 --> 00:04:48.189 so we have an appearance from Wilfred the Hairy, 00:04:48.269 --> 00:04:52.670 finally, and the subject matter of this letter 00:04:52.670 --> 00:04:58.910 has nothing to do with Wilfred and his apparent 00:04:58.910 --> 00:05:03.529 hairiness, but instead we are looking at something 00:05:03.529 --> 00:05:06.990 that came up in yesterday's document from Violant, 00:05:07.430 --> 00:05:12.939 which is the dispersal or rearrangement of the 00:05:12.939 --> 00:05:18.420 properties and authorities of the Da Fortias. 00:05:19.079 --> 00:05:24.639 So yesterday we saw Violant rearranging some 00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:28.759 kind of authority arrangement that had previously 00:05:28.759 --> 00:05:33.500 been in the portfolio of Bernat Da Fortia, and 00:05:33.500 --> 00:05:37.579 today we've got something like that going on 00:05:37.579 --> 00:05:45.819 with a office or authority that had been in Sibilla 00:05:45.819 --> 00:05:50.959 de Fortia's portfolio. So for those of you that 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:54.000 have not listened to any earlier episodes about 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:59.439 Sibilla, this is a major figure at this point 00:05:59.439 --> 00:06:04.079 in the story of Joan and Violant. Sibilla 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:10.170 de Fortia was the queen before Violant. And 00:06:10.170 --> 00:06:15.550 here, in this line of this letter, she's not 00:06:15.550 --> 00:06:22.110 referred to as Queen. What she's referred to 00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:30.470 is something like, servicemi Domini Petri Regis. 00:06:31.269 --> 00:06:37.750 Felicis. And what that phrase means is something 00:06:37.750 --> 00:06:49.129 like, most servant -like of the Lord -King -Peter 00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:55.069 pair. So already we're seeing rhetorically show 00:06:55.069 --> 00:07:00.569 on downgrading Sibilla, and the two words that 00:07:00.569 --> 00:07:08.589 come before Sibilla's name are fabulosam suggestionem. 00:07:08.699 --> 00:07:14.959 And I consulted with ChatGPT on the Latin here 00:07:14.959 --> 00:07:19.540 and then confirmed the way that it interpreted 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:26.319 fabulosum as something like slander, slanderous. 00:07:26.759 --> 00:07:30.879 And it's more like, I think it could be slanderous. 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:33.899 I looked at two different Latin dictionaries 00:07:33.899 --> 00:07:38.709 and Gossipy is the way that it seems to be coming 00:07:38.709 --> 00:07:41.910 through in the dictionaries, but certainly these 00:07:41.910 --> 00:07:44.829 words can have a change of valence in different 00:07:44.829 --> 00:07:49.290 times and places. So there's something happening 00:07:49.290 --> 00:07:55.629 here where there was a some kind of slanderous 00:07:55.629 --> 00:07:59.949 statement or bad statement from Sibilla, and 00:07:59.949 --> 00:08:06.949 now Joan is getting involved at the behest of 00:08:06.949 --> 00:08:14.230 this Nicolas de Pomerio in regard to an issue 00:08:14.230 --> 00:08:18.790 in Ripoll in the monastery. There's another name 00:08:18.790 --> 00:08:23.230 that appears further down in this. letter Guillermo 00:08:23.230 --> 00:08:27.829 de Bardo can't quite figure out what's going 00:08:27.829 --> 00:08:33.190 on with him. But then in line 13, there's the 00:08:33.190 --> 00:08:40.549 phrase sub pena millem florem auri, which means 00:08:40.549 --> 00:08:45.809 under the punishment of a thousand gold florins. 00:08:47.009 --> 00:08:52.029 So basically something's happening. That Joan 00:08:52.029 --> 00:08:55.669 is saying stop doing that or you're gonna be 00:08:55.669 --> 00:09:02.769 fined a whole lot of money and Exactly What is 00:09:02.769 --> 00:09:07.350 the subject of this fine? What is it that Joan 00:09:07.350 --> 00:09:12.470 is trying to put a stop to? How is it a change 00:09:12.470 --> 00:09:17.529 from what was going on when? This was all being 00:09:17.529 --> 00:09:23.120 run by Sibylla All these questions are ones that 00:09:23.120 --> 00:09:31.500 will be unlocked if I can learn Latin to a higher 00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:38.080 degree than is my Latin ability now. This letter, 00:09:38.100 --> 00:09:41.919 I think I'm going to come back to. And yesterday, 00:09:42.519 --> 00:09:45.120 when I was looking at the letter from Violant, 00:09:45.460 --> 00:09:47.720 I thought to myself, I'm probably not going to 00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:51.450 come back to this. But actually, now that I've 00:09:51.450 --> 00:09:56.509 got a pairing between Violant's letter having 00:09:56.509 --> 00:10:02.429 to do with a property of Bernat de Fortia, and 00:10:02.429 --> 00:10:06.830 now I've got the next day a document from Joan 00:10:06.830 --> 00:10:09.990 that has to do with something Sibilla de Fortia 00:10:09.990 --> 00:10:13.590 had been in charge of. Now I've got an interesting 00:10:13.590 --> 00:10:16.610 pairing that could help me get at the question 00:10:16.610 --> 00:10:21.580 of how Joan and Violant were working as a team, 00:10:21.919 --> 00:10:25.399 which is one of my big questions that I'm trying 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:28.159 to figure out as I look through all these documents. 00:10:28.860 --> 00:10:35.299 And so now I'm curious and at a later stage, 00:10:35.700 --> 00:10:40.220 after I've had... more Latin practice, which 00:10:40.220 --> 00:10:43.879 is something I am embracing and going to be doing 00:10:43.879 --> 00:10:47.000 in the coming months. I'll come back to this 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:50.980 one, and I think I'll be able to unlock its meaning 00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:54.879 a little bit more. And then also, I'll be able 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:59.679 to figure out maybe some hints regarding that 00:10:59.679 --> 00:11:05.600 big question of how Joan and Violant worked 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:10.450 together. One last thing I want to mention is 00:11:10.450 --> 00:11:18.110 that I did a search using ChatGPT for Nicolas 00:11:18.110 --> 00:11:25.529 de Pomerio and his involvement with the Ripoll 00:11:25.529 --> 00:11:31.029 Monastery and ChatGPT did seem to return some 00:11:31.029 --> 00:11:36.070 dependable references for that association and 00:11:36.070 --> 00:11:41.289 so That helped me actually to decide on the place 00:11:41.289 --> 00:11:43.870 name at the end of the line, because I didn't 00:11:43.870 --> 00:11:47.190 mention this before, but I was really having 00:11:47.190 --> 00:11:50.929 a hard time getting from what I'm looking at 00:11:50.929 --> 00:11:57.850 on the page to RIPOL, which is spelled R -I -P 00:11:57.850 --> 00:12:03.870 -O -L -L. And the first letter of the place name 00:12:03.870 --> 00:12:11.779 there at the end of line two, it's an R but it 00:12:11.779 --> 00:12:18.539 at first glance looks like a B but these Rs the 00:12:18.539 --> 00:12:22.039 scribes would really go all out with capital 00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:28.000 R like all kinds of additional curls loops and 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:33.200 fanciness so if you're looking at something that 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:39.120 is capital letter and it's got a lot of flourish, 00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:44.419 you should really think of it as a likely R. 00:12:46.019 --> 00:12:50.879 And be skeptical about the other possibilities, 00:12:51.519 --> 00:12:55.580 especially if you've got something where the 00:12:55.580 --> 00:12:58.720 most bold parts of it, like in this situation, 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:01.919 if you take out the lighter strokes and just 00:13:01.919 --> 00:13:05.769 look at the heavier strokes of that letter, then 00:13:05.769 --> 00:13:09.730 you've got something that looks like an R. But 00:13:09.730 --> 00:13:14.490 then, look at how many strokes of the pen there 00:13:14.490 --> 00:13:20.090 are between the capital letter and the letter 00:13:20.090 --> 00:13:26.509 P. There's so many. And in the Catalan spelling, 00:13:26.750 --> 00:13:31.470 it's just R -I -P, but here we've got something 00:13:31.470 --> 00:13:38.480 like another R and maybe a U and then an I. What 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:41.019 you have maybe noticed if you've been looking 00:13:41.019 --> 00:13:43.539 at some of these documents is that sometimes 00:13:43.539 --> 00:13:48.639 the initial letter is doubled when you've got 00:13:48.639 --> 00:13:52.860 a proper noun. You see this a lot. We will see 00:13:52.860 --> 00:13:57.000 this all the time next month when we start looking 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:01.990 at letters and documents from February. because 00:14:01.990 --> 00:14:06.250 pretty much all the time. Well, a lot of the 00:14:06.250 --> 00:14:12.629 time, February is spelled with two F's. So that's 00:14:12.629 --> 00:14:15.309 something I look forward to, but let's pull back 00:14:15.309 --> 00:14:19.289 for a moment from the very close attention to 00:14:19.289 --> 00:14:22.389 that one specific word, and I just want to reiterate 00:14:22.389 --> 00:14:28.330 that there are a lot of. questions about the 00:14:28.330 --> 00:14:31.470 context of this document as well as yesterday's. 00:14:31.649 --> 00:14:34.470 I am just really curious about how much work 00:14:34.470 --> 00:14:41.830 it was to bring in the new regime because on 00:14:41.830 --> 00:14:46.230 one level things probably have a certain inertia 00:14:46.230 --> 00:14:52.259 to them where when one monarch takes over from 00:14:52.259 --> 00:14:55.279 the previous, you can just kind of things just 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:57.259 kind of keep going like everybody wants to keep 00:14:57.259 --> 00:15:01.220 getting paid every so on and so forth. But then 00:15:01.220 --> 00:15:04.179 there's going to be certain things where there's 00:15:04.179 --> 00:15:08.600 just urgent attention required in order to undo 00:15:08.600 --> 00:15:13.340 some of the arrangements that are problematic 00:15:13.340 --> 00:15:18.159 for the way you want to run things. And specifically, 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:21.279 I think there's a kind of slicing and dicing 00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:26.539 of a lot of the portfolio that was from the former 00:15:26.539 --> 00:15:30.980 queen, the former queen's brother, and these 00:15:30.980 --> 00:15:35.360 are going to get rearranged and certain people 00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:38.220 who might have been well known for being quite 00:15:38.220 --> 00:15:45.720 loyal to the previous person, they're going to 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:53.679 be replaced by others who perhaps have more trust 00:15:53.679 --> 00:15:57.139 on the part of Joan and Violant. Are we seeing 00:15:57.139 --> 00:16:02.519 that here? Is that a lot of work? Is it something 00:16:02.519 --> 00:16:07.000 that is an easy process, or is it going to take 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:09.360 some follow -ups to make sure things are happening 00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:12.659 the way they want them to? So how rough, how 00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:17.059 smooth is the transition? That's the larger question 00:16:17.059 --> 00:16:21.419 that I have. And also how much work falls on 00:16:21.419 --> 00:16:25.019 the monarchs themselves versus officials that 00:16:25.019 --> 00:16:27.399 are in the know about all these different places. 00:16:29.100 --> 00:16:32.500 So those are just some of the questions. Many, 00:16:32.500 --> 00:16:35.600 many questions always come up with each and every 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:40.360 document, which is why The motto of the podcast 00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:45.700 is, of course, dissatisfaction guaranteed. Thanks 00:16:45.700 --> 00:16:48.320 for listening to this episode of the Historian's 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:53.080 Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. Visit 00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:56.259 the website to see an image of today's document 00:16:56.259 --> 00:17:01.100 and additional show notes. and listen again tomorrow 00:17:01.100 --> 00:17:03.940 to hear about the next day in the first year 00:17:03.940 --> 00:17:08.960 of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:12.680 Violant de Bar. In the meantime, take care!