Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 31, 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. Let's begin today's
document. So I've been pretty consistent with
sticking to one document today, one that was
written on that day in 1387, and today it's going
to get a little bit weird because, well, I couldn't
resist looking at another document that's on
the same folio as the one that I'm calling January
31st's document. But also today's document, its
date, is just weird. So it's very clear to me
that the scribe in the last line of this letter
wrote XXX. And then three short strokes. So we've
got a problem with minimums again, because this
could be. V I possibly or it could be three I's.
And so the the descender on the last of the three
minimums makes it so that it cannot be. IV. So
we've got two choices three I's or VI. Three
I's would make it 33. The three X's plus the
three I's 33. The VI would make it 36. And while
the people of the crown of Aragon in 1387 were
shifting New Year's Day to December. I mean,
we have shifted it to January for everyone's
shifting New Year's Day in medieval Europe. That's
just something everybody does. So they've chosen
to put New Year's Day as December 25th. And so
there seems to be some kind of comfort with wiggle
room when it comes to dates, this is a bridge
too far. They would never have added additional
days to January. They would not have had a January
33rd or a January 36th. So my guess is that what's
really going on here is that the scribe has meant
for that third X to be a V and the actual intended
date of this letter is January 28th. But I'm
going to use this for January 31st because it's
a really interesting letter with a lot going
on and the same folio has another letter all
the way back from January 6th that I really want
to talk about. I just couldn't resist. So we
are breaking from the usual rules. They're not
like hard and fast rules. I've already had a
moment where I've done a little bit of massaging
of the process. But today we're going to really
massage the process and we're just going to say
this is our document for January 31st. There
aren't a ton of January 31st documents to choose
from, and so it's not like I'm. skipping one
that would be really revelatory so hopefully
you can just roll with me here and because the
scribe went all kinds of weird on the date of
this I think it's some kind of signal from the
archive universe the kind of I don't know cross
-temporal spirit of the archive telling me that
I should be free to talk about this letter on
January 31st. You gotta also keep in mind that,
you know, all this stuff is overlapping, and
so when I'm talking about a letter that's dated
on a certain day, it really could have been...
composed or worked on or thought about in the
days leading up to it. So occasionally it's very
important to associate what happened on a particular
day with a document's date, and in other times
there is wiggle room. So I don't want to give
the wrong impression that it's all just loosey
-goosey, because occasionally, and we'll actually
see this in one of the episodes coming up, there's
a reference back to what happened on a certain
day. And so they did dedicate themselves to being
accurate with the date and to... placing the
record in line with what was actually happening
and signed off on on a particular day. At the
same time, you see some weird stuff sometimes,
like this is clearly a character, the third in
the date. looks like an X. And there's just no
way that any scribe in the chancery at the time
would look at that and say, oh, yeah, that's
a V. So it's just weird. This is just weird.
Another thing I want to mention while I'm talking
about my process of doing a document today is
that it's got some flaws and it's got some benefits
in terms of trying to get an accurate picture
of what was going on. The number one flaw is
that there could have been a day, well in fact
I know there have been a few days, where there
are multiple letters that are revelatory and
important for understanding my big question of
how Joan and Violant related to each other.
So I really could have set up this podcast as
really only looking at the month of January.
And we could have gone through and looked at
every single letter written in these registers
for the month of January. I think that would
have filled quite a long period of time, maybe
not. 365 days, but it would have it would have
been a lot. My speculation is that there's probably
150 to 300 letters that were written in January
that are in the archive of the Crown of Aragon.
So that was an option, but then I would have
missed a lot of interesting stuff like One of
the letters that Violant writes in April, which
has been cited by a bunch of historians, is about
the illness that Joan went through in January.
So there's a little bit of this overlap in terms
of how the letters from one part of the year
can inform a different part of the year, but
then there's also other events later on in the
year that would be really interesting to look
at regarding my main question of how Joan and
Violant related to each other as they established
their reign. So with the limit of time that the
historian has, you're a little bit stuck. You
have to make these really tough choices where
you know that if you go one direction with how
you spend your time with the documents, you're
going to get an interesting result that helps
you answer your question. And then if you go
in another direction with how you spend your
time, you're going to get a different view. So
this is part of why it's really important to
think of the work of historians as a cooperative
knowledge building process. You might have heard
Shadow in the background there agreeing with
my emphasis on the writing of history as a cooperative
knowledge building process. So what I'm trying
to really emphasize here is that I rely on the
expertise of other historians from the last 100
years, and I can't go to the archive and just
use my own time to establish some kind of truth
claim. I have to... weave together what I'm seeing
with the information that has come from others'
expertise and then in the future people will
do the same for what I have contributed. So we're
in this mission that is absolutely one that is
impossible because not only do we have the challenge
of trying to interpret the words on the page
that we encounter from this record that's over
600 years old, we also have the limitations of
just what a single person is able to do in terms
of their own time. So with all that said, I'm
already massively into the time of this episode,
but I thought it was really good to return to
my process. And let's talk about the document
that is dated some kind of wonky date. It is
written by Violant. It is addressed to the So
this is the Queen of Navarre. The Queen of Navarre
is Eleanor of Castile. We haven't really talked
too much about the relationship between Castile
and the Crown of Aragon. It is at times very
fraught and violent. So Pere the ceremonious
at one point fought a war against the king of
Castile who was known as Pedro the Cruel and
that war is known as the War of the Two Pedros.
So there's been wars And there's also been some
cooperation, but there's kind of like this rough
border between the Crown of Aragon and Castile.
There was a lot of crossing of that border in
terms of cultural diffusion, a little bit of
migration, you could say, but in terms of whether
we can really consider these two units as cooperative
at the level of, say, how the Crown of Aragon
cooperated with Navarre, we can't. So the Crown
of Aragon was way closer to Navarre and had much
better relations than it did with Castile. So
we have this interesting moment where Violant,
who's coming from France and doesn't really care
too much about past animosities between the Crown
of Aragon and Castile, is writing to her cousin,
the Queen of Navarre. And remember, this is the
person who's married to her buddy, Charles III,
who she danced with too hard right back in the
day. Well, that was like a year ago, a year prior,
about a year prior. So in this letter, Violant
is informing the Queen of Navarre that Pere has
died, and she's also offering condolences for
the loss of Charles II of Navarre, which happened
pretty close to the same time as when Pere died,
early January. And so she also makes a note in
this letter of saying, hey, we kind of have this
thing in common. We each had our father -in -law
die you know just you know at the beginning of
this month and that's you know this interesting
moment of an attempt to bond and to solidify
that commonality you kind of get the sense that
she's not as affectionate toward the queen of
navarre as she is toward the king I don't quite
see as much of the personal touch here. Like
she doesn't mention Jaume like she did in the
letter to Charles. Another thing that's happening
here is that this is way late. Like she wrote
to Charles on January 20th. like at least eight
days before about the death of Pere and she had
to have known that Charles would have probably
told his wife about that and and so she's kind
of just in as a formality sending this information
so that she's on record as caring to inform the
Queen of Navarre of these events, but the fact
that she's doing it at least eight days later,
and I say eight because possibly the actual date
of this letter is the 28th, that she's doing
it later and at a time when the recipient of
this letter likely already knows the information,
it just kind of comes across to me like, almost
like a CYA note. Like, uh -oh, I think I might
have forgotten to include you in the whole series
of letters that I sent out with this new information,
and so I'd better write one to you too so that
you don't feel like I was ignoring you and leaving
you out of this moment of informing all of my
important people of what's going on. That's maybe
what's going on here. I don't know that there's
any kind of, you know, problem that was being
solved by this letter or if it was just routine.
So once again, we just have an open question.
Let's move on to the letter that appears above
this on the folio. And again, I have to massage
the rules of my process here. Because I want
to go back in time to look at what this letter
says. It's on the same page, but it is from January
6th. So January 6th is the day that everybody.
Has found out that the King has died. We know
there's a lot of documentation that Pere's death
occurred on January 5th. When did Violant find
out about that? What time of day did the death
happen? We don't know. The only thing we can
be sure of is that by the 6th, Violant is basically,
at this point, day one of being queen. And of
course, Joan is day one of being king. This
letter is really there's a lot going on, so I'm
going to try to, you know, just highlight some
of the really cool stuff in it. And then I used
chat GPT to help me make sure that I was understanding
certain things about it correctly, especially
the name of the cloth that's mentioned in this
letter that's used for a particular purpose.
So, you can go onto the webpage for this episode,
and you'll see that I transcribed, I think, everything
in this letter, and had ChatGPT give its interpretation,
and then I asked some follow -up questions. But,
I'm just going to highlight a couple things.
First, the last word on the first line is ANELLS.
That is... What's being discussed here right
away in this letter is the rings of the king,
Los Anells del Señor Rey. And then later on in
the letter, we see reference to the seals of
the lordship. and the ring is connected. There's
a ring that's connected to the seal. So what
is pretty clear to me is that this letter is
accompanying a delivery from Violant to Joan.
Because, let's take a step back and talk about
just the basic sourcing of this letter, Violent
is writing to Joan. And she says that enclosed
in this particular kind of cloth called canamaç
are the rings of the king. And at least one of
those rings has the seal, or a seal. Not sure
if it's the same. kind of seal in terms of its
design and its iconography as the secret seal
that we see mentioned in all of the registers
that are in that category. But there is some
kind of ring that is related to the seal, and
what Violent has done is wrapped them in this
linen and sent them to Joan. So this is a really
great moment where we can see material culture,
the rings, symbolically representing the transfer
of power from the dead king to the new king,
and they're being delivered by somebody. It doesn't
say who in this letter. So that is a really cool
moment that I just could not resist talking about
in today's episode because, oh my gosh, like
I wish I could get some kind of picture of these
rings. I wish they existed in some museum somewhere.
One other thing that I want to mention about
this letter is that we have the return format
of Molt Cara Companyona. So Joan addresses Violant
as Molt Cara Companyona, Most Dear Companion.
It's the name of this season of the podcast.
In the first line of this letter from January
6th, we have Violant returning this sentiment,
and the way she phrases it is, Lord husband.
And we can read into that in one way and say,
oh, she's using this word Lord, and that's underlining
a kind of subordination or subservience. I'm
not quite sure. I don't I don't think that it
quite has that valence. If in today's time we
heard a wife addressing her husband as Lord,
we would say, whoa, something is really going
on there with a statement of subordination. That
particular woman is saying something that reinforces
a subordinate role for her. But at this time,
I think it didn't quite have that valence, that
it was just kind of natural to say señor, and
it wasn't as much of a reinforcement of subordination
as it was just, you know, what you call your
husband, just what you call your husband if you're
wanting to be tender. So... the way that Joan
uses the word companyona, I think that Violant
uses the word señor. I'm not going to argue that
to, you know, the nth degree, but I just want
to raise it as my working hypothesis. That's
kind of where I lean when I'm trying to interpret
the choice of that word. All right. That does
it for today's episode. You got two for the price
of one! You got two letters today, and neither
of them, I think, were actually from January
31st. Woohoo! It's just, you know, going wild
here on the Historian's Notebook. 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. 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.
In the meantime, take care.