Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was January 30th, 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 Comanyona. 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.
When I'm trying to do the initial sourcing for
a document, I'm looking at the very beginning
to figure out who it's addressed to, and also
the very end to figure out who, when was it sent,
and right off the bat with this document I got
stuck because it begins with a word that I actually
have not seen before in my work with these documents
even the latin ones and this one is a latin one
so the first word the letters are clear H E N
D U M and then there's the macron, the abbreviation
mark over the first half of the word, that horizontal
line that indicates there is at least one letter
that is omitted in order to save space, make
the writing faster. And when I see that horizontal
line, I think that it's most likely an M. Most
of the time it's the letter M or the letter N,
although occasionally it's used for a combination
of letters like IS. But all of those possibilities
just didn't seem to fit with this word, and I
was stumped. So I went to chat GPT. And, indeed,
it immediately got it, because I also put in
the following three words, which are pretty clear.
Gubernandum et defens... ooh, what is it? Defendendum.
Defendendum. So, this turns out to be a phrase
that is actually quite frequently used in...
chancery records, and it basically means to have,
to govern, and to defend. And it seems like this
is in the gerundive, so it would be the ing ending
for translating into English, something like
having, governing, and defending. But this doesn't
exactly make sense in terms of figuring out,
well, what then would be the subject of the sentence?
Is that the subject of the sentence? Where does
the sentence end? I don't know. But I can cobble
together a general sense of what's going on in
this document. is a receipt of a sale, and I
think that the money has been received by Violant's
treasurer, someone by the name of Alatzario Golluff.
And this, so taking a step back, where is this
document? This is in one of Violant's registers.
It's in a register labeled Varia, which means
that there's actually some different seal levels
here within the same register. I think this particular
folio has two letters on it. They're both in
the public level, the less restricted level of
SEAL. It's the SIGILO ASSUETO or ASSUECO. Gosh,
I'm still figuring out which one of those that
is. All right, so we've got some kind of sale
happening. It's very clear that money is being
transferred. in the fourth line we've got three
words that clearly indicate there's some kind
of sale going on there's venditionibus alienationibus
and at the very end of the line apocham which
is the word for a receipt of a sale and then
the third line from the bottom there's the word
So this is Violant's treasurer who has received
some money. She's sending a letter, I think,
to indicate that the funds have been received.
that's mentioned in the second line and I can
tell it's a place name because that M is capitalized.
So here's another instance where the paleography
was a challenge for me. The word that I thought
I was reading at my first glance was maresina
and we have a situation where it's difficult
to interpret the minims the minims minim is a
term in paleography for when there's short vertical
strokes and a lot of times there can just be
a whole row of short vertical strokes and you
have to figure out oh goodness is this a u or
is it an n followed by an i or is it an m or
are there two n's it's stressful and now we have
one of my cats here who is vocalizing a little
bit of the stress of interpreting minims so i
thought this said Maresina and i did a little
researching trying to find a place called Maresina
i could not and so again ai Helped it really
did No, it was it was helpful. I know we grumble
when we admit that the AI really is useful but
it was and so I Found out as soon as I as soon
as I just plugged it into chat GPT said I'm looking
at a place name looks like Maresina it returned
with a likely interpretation of Maresme. So in
Catalan, the last letter is E, and the Latin
rendering of it in this document has the last
letter as A, and what comes before the A is the
letter M, which I had interpreted as an IN. Maresme
is actually a province... something like a region,
a small region, that's to the northeast of Barcelona
along the coast. Some kind of land sale happened
in this region, and the funds have been received
by Violant's treasurer. I think that's the meaning
of this document. And it could be that there's
something else going on here, but I think that
there's some phrases such as libre gubernare,
like, like to be free to govern. So I think what's
happened here is that people in Maresme, they
have decided to govern, to pay to govern themselves.
And what this indicates, I think, is that there's
the selling of some royal land. So this is something
that Joan and Violant took a lot of heat
for, both from their contemporaries and also
for later historians, for modern historians.
Because when you sell off royal land, you're
also selling off the income that comes from the
rent of those lands. So you're getting a short
term gain at a long term loss. So this could
be a document that fits within that pattern.
I don't know that they started off doing that
so soon, but by the end of their reign, they're
doing it a lot because they're big spenders.
and they are more interested in funding their
current projects, all of the troubadours and
poetry contests and all kinds of things that
they get going on in the later part of their
reign especially. But yesterday's document was
all about Joan trying to get famous minstrels
to come to the Crown of Aragon and to his court
in particular. And so I think they're already
looking at the financial aspect of the culture
that they want to patronize, and they're starting
to think about, all right, well, where are we
going to get money right away to pay for all
of this exciting stuff now that we have access
to the royal coffers? I did a little bit of research
on Maresme, and tried to find some articles or
publications that might have looked at this moment
in 1387 when it appears that a group of people
in this region paid money in order to take back
the governance of the land. And I couldn't find
anything about this, even though there is a monograph
by Montserrat Richou y Llimona. And I'll put a
link to that monograph in the bibliography for
today's episode. So a bit of a mystery. Also,
one last thing to discuss is the existence of
a financial transaction in the registers of letters.
So what I have seen in some couple other examples
is the letter getting sent to the person involved
in the financial transaction confirming that
payment was made. We actually saw that in an
earlier episode with, I think, show on and sending
like confirming that that the money had been
received yeah by the treasurer and and so there's
the letter in the register that gets sent saying
okay got the money or sending the money and then
there's also the record in the books of the treasury,
the Patrimonio Real, in which there's an authorization
to disperse the funds. And we've looked at a
couple of those records. An early episode, we
looked at a payment to a baker. in Violant's household,
and then more recently we looked at a payment
to the husband and wife minstrel team, the Portalberts
So there's a number of places where
you can find records of money moving. and the
function of the document can be very different.
So in the treasury records, it's initiating the
payment process. It's releasing the money. There's
going to be coins that are taken out of the treasury.
and given to somebody, or if it's a larger amount,
it could simply be a paper transaction, because
there definitely was money of account at this
time, meaning that the accounts would be reconciled
and handled through payment intermediaries like
banks. or notes of credit would simply be passed
along, and so there's large financial transactions
that happen quite frequently where there's no
coinage at this time. So in that sense the economy
is very financialized. So keep in mind as we're
looking at documents like these that there's
probably a related entry in a patrimonio real
account book for the receipt of the money from
whoever there's no names of the people of maresme
in this document at least that i could locate
i tried to find names other than uh at the end
Violant's treasurer So it's interesting. There's
definitely mysteries here, and I have a feeling
that it's related to raising money for spending
on troubadours and other cool stuff that Joan
and Violant are excited to get going as they
start their reign. Thanks for listening to this
episode of the Historian's Notebook, Season 1,
Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving with
more questions than you arrived with, I have
done my job. Because 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. And listen
again tomorrow to hear more about the next day
in the first year of the reign of King Joan
I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. And
who knows, maybe you'll get more cat noises in
the background. It's been a little frustrating
today. Alright, in the meantime, take care.