Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was February 2nd, 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 1 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.
Is everybody ready for more fun with Latin toponyms?
Because we've got a Latin toponym for you today.
The document of the day has at the top of it
a header. It's Episcopi Dertusen. Maybe der
tu sens this sensei der tu sen see I can't
quite figure out what the macron stands for over
der tu sen and it took a little doing and the
help of the AI chatbot and I found out that
Dertusen is the Latin toponym for Tortosa Oh my
goodness. Yeah, I mean, if you say Dertus and
Tortosa, you're kind of making similar noises,
but it is not as intuitive as some of the other
Latin toponyms out there. So it goes to show
that Sometimes there's a dramatic difference
between the name of a place in Latin and the
name of the place in the vernacular, Catalan
Tortosa. Tortosa is about halfway between Barcelona
and Valencia, not really on the coast of the
Mediterranean, but sort of within, I think, 60
kilometers. So if you're journeying along the
coast from Barcelona to southward to, or I guess
I should say southwestward to Valencia, once
you hit that halfway point, you're kind of around
where Tortosa is located. So today's document
is about Tortosa. It is located in a register
titled Diversorum, like diverse stuff, which
I love because there's another register that's
called Varia, for various. So I ask you, which
kinds of documents would go into diverse things?
and which kinds of documents would go into various
things. I'm hoping to figure that out, but I
will also say that as I was researching the Archive
of the Crown of Aragon and the history of the
Archive of the Crown of Aragon, I came across
a historian named Udina i Martorell who wrote
about the development of the archive under Pere
the Ceremonious and the ballooning of categories
that Pere wanted to have in the archive, and he
said that the scribes and the chancery staff
were sometimes just given tremendous headaches
by trying to figure out which register a document
should go into. So sometimes they're just as
lost as the rest of us as to whether a document
should go into one place or another. And that's
not even talking about a document that might
cover more than one thing. So there were registers
dedicated to documents about Sardinia or documents
about, say, another region. And so... So basically
they had to figure out well if it overlaps if
a document is about more than one region which
one should it go into and I think that they had
some difficulties on a regular basis well we
have what we have they made these decisions one
way or another and today's document is I think
a pretty straightforward Commission for the.
The let's see some kind of. Staff person in the.
Bishop the bishops office. I think I don't think
it's for the bishop himself. So. The person's
name is on the first line, so that makes things
pretty easy to figure out. Arnaldo Toreles. Pretty
easy to read on that first line. And then we
get some other information about another fellow
named Raimundo Barbera. And it's really hard
to understand what's going on. because I identify
this as something that's not really connected
directly to my focus of study, and I'm not gonna
take the entire afternoon to go through and transcribe
and translate this Latin document. But I will
just note a couple things, and if something resonates
later on in the research process, I'll come back.
and give this one more attention. One thing that
I notice right away is that in the fourth line
after the Salutem et Gratiam, there's a sentence
that begins at the end of that line and goes
on to the next, in which basically Joan here
is referring back to an earlier document dated
the 13th of January. So yesterday's podcast we
had an update to a document in another register
and in that situation the scribes felt that it
merited squeezing the message in. to the space
that's typically empty space between the different
entries of letters in that register and here
we've got a reference to the earlier document
and I don't think they went back and squeezed
in anything in the January 13th entry because
those are really they're they're quite noticeable
when the scribe does that, and I'm not saying
I flip through every page of every register,
but I don't know. This is just another way of
connecting across time that we can see happening
in the registers. Maybe they did squish it in
somewhere and I just missed it, but suffice it
to say we've got a reference to an earlier document
in this letter. And then further down something
else that stuck out to me toward the bottom of
the first page of this document, seven lines
from the bottom, we have a sentence about this
Raymundo Barbera, and it seems like he might
have to pay a really hefty fine for something.
So we've got at the beginning of that line, Continuing
from above. So I think that this Raymundo Barbera
might be a problem some kind of way that he's
causing some trouble. Or it could be that if
someone gets in the way of Raymundo Barbera doing
what he is supposed to be doing, then they are
going to have to pay the 1 ,000 gold Florins.
So there's some heft behind this document, that's
for sure, because that is a whole lot of money.
That's what I know about this document. There
were not a lot of documents written on February
2nd, I will confess. February 2nd in 1387 was
a Saturday, and I'm trying to figure out if I
can notice patterns of when it's hard to find
documents on a particular day or easy. and associating
that with the day of the week, and I'm not quite
there yet. I haven't quite noticed any patterns,
like I think there was a Saturday where there
were tons of documents written, and likewise
for Sunday, so I'll see what emerges as we get
further into this project. I do know that we
have at least one document from each day of the
year from Joan, because Daniel Girona y Llagostera
wrote the itinerary for Joan and has linked
a document to every single day. And that's where
I got today's document from. I was flipping through
some of the usual registers that have the more
interesting letters, and there didn't seem to
be anything for February 2nd, so I used my backup
plan of that itinerary, and this is what was
listed there. So that's where today's document
comes from. Something else that I want to touch
on is that right below the end of this document
that we looked at today on Folio20R, there's
a header that intrigued me. Domina Regina Sicilie,
the Queen of Sicily. So the story of Sicily is
one that has a lot of threads to it. And I will
summarize a couple salient things about Sicily
here. This letter is actually for February 3rd,
so we could do it tomorrow. But now I'm in the
opposite problem where I've got two interesting
letters, and I'm going to actually choose the
other one. So we're going back to Violant tomorrow.
Now let's talk about Sicily. Sicily at this time
had kicked out the authorities from the Crown
of Aragon. Sicily at this exact moment is ruled
by it seems like a oligarchy. Maybe I think it
was four lords who kind of maybe split up and
power shared Sicily. Sicily had been conquered
well okay wait hold on step back. Sicily was
not conquered by the crown of Aragon. There was
a rebellion in Sicily against Angevin rulership
and the Crown of Aragon was invited in in order
to replace the hated Angevins. And so what happened
was that Sicily became a part of the Crown of
Aragon, but at times it was really pushing back.
The leadership in Sicily was growing uncomfortable
with the arrangement, and by the time we get
to 1381, the authorities from the Crown of Aragon
are essentially kicked out. The Queen of Sicily,
referred to in this letter, is named Maria, and
she is the granddaughter of Pere the Ceremonious.
from Pere the Ceremonious's first wife. So this
is not Joan's sister that we're talking about
here, but half sister. The woman that Père married
before, he married Joan's mother. They had
a daughter named Constance. Constance married
the... King of Sicily, if I've got that correctly.
And then their daughter was Maria, who in 1387
is the crown of Aragon's choice to be called
the Queen of Sicily. As an interesting twist,
I've talked about this once before on the podcast.
When Joan in 1380 was, and actually leading
into 1380, 1379 -1380, looking for who he was
going to marry after his first wife, Mata d 'Armagnac,
had died. And he eventually chose Violant de
Bar. Père's father wanted him to marry this
same Maria, who is about the same age as Violant,
actually. But it's Père's granddaughter. So Pere
the Ceremonious wanted his son from one marriage
to marry his granddaughter from another marriage,
which Joan did not want to do, but we would
like to think that Joan's objection was consanguinity,
like marrying a close relative. but it was more
that he wanted a French wife. So it seems like,
you know, a kind of double problem here from
Joan's point of view. First, it's she's not
French. And I think I don't know in Joan's
mind if it was like an equal problem or a lesser
problem that it was his father's granddaughter.
So yeah. So, Joan went against his father's wishes
and married Violant de Bar, and that's when
Père the Ceremonious writes that poem, saying
you're making a dreadful mistake. The reason
why Père the Ceremonious wanted Joan to marry
Maria, Queen of Sicily, was to solidify the Crown
of Aragon's hold and rule over Sicily, which
was a problem. And that problem became worse
in the next year, in 1381, when Maria was actually
kidnapped and then ransomed back to Père and
was then in exile out of Sicily. So in 1387,
Joan is writing to the Queen of Sicily, who's
not in Sicily. She's in exile. I don't exactly
know where she is, but maybe in Barcelona. I
don't know. What happens a little bit down the
road into the future is that Martí has his son,
who's also named Martí, marry Maria, Queen of
Sicily. So what's kind of confusing is that Martí
the elder is married to Maria de Luna, and Marti
the younger is married to Maria of Sicily. So
two couples named Marti and Maria, parent generation
and child generation. So that makes for some
confusing history writing. And then what happens
is Marti, the elder, along with Marti the Younger
and Maria of Sicily. They all go to Sicily in
1392 with a whole lot of military force, and
they reassert the control, the rule over Sicily,
and it actually stays under the rule of the Crown
of Aragon for a while, a while. so at least 10
more years maybe further down the road but then
oh even more complications come up because of
people dying Marti the younger actually dies
before Marti the elder and so it's all just yeah
it there's no lack of complication in this story
of the Crown of Aragon and Sicily. But that gives
you a little introduction to how complicated
it got. Alright, so now you know a little bit
more about the relationship between the Crown
of Aragon and Sicily and how Marti is connected
in to all of that. And this moment in this register,
we see Joan reaching out to the Queen of Sicily,
maybe doing something like, hey, I haven't forgotten
you, and, you know, we're gonna try to restore
you to your throne. By this time, the Queen of
Sicily, Maria, is actually not yet married to
Marti the Younger. They get married in 1390.
So that's cookin'. and uh but but not done yet
all right whoo hopefully you were able to keep
up through all that my goodness i i almost feel
like i need to make another kind of like Sicily
family tree but that family tree that i made
already that that took a long time so i don't
know that's gonna have to be a project for later
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, and maybe the questions are not even about
the document of the day, and they're about this
very confusing history of Sicily, well, I've
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 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.