WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:05.570 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:06.089 --> 00:00:13.250 it was February 5th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.250 --> 00:00:16.769 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:16.769 --> 00:00:20.769 University of New Mexico. And this is The Historian's 00:00:20.769 --> 00:00:25.469 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.289 --> 00:00:30.469 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:30.469 --> 00:00:33.429 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:33.429 --> 00:00:38.149 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:38.149 --> 00:00:42.310 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:42.310 --> 00:01:12.750 document. Today's document is one that I think 00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:21.310 is a special leveling up of the discourse around 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:28.069 Joan's illness. The sender is Violant. Violant 00:01:28.069 --> 00:01:32.719 is writing to a bunch of monasteries. And from 00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:36.260 what I can tell, the selection of monasteries 00:01:36.260 --> 00:01:40.560 here is pretty important. There's at least a 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:45.420 few of them in the list that are Carthusian monasteries, 00:01:45.780 --> 00:01:52.560 which are known for being more like hermit -style 00:01:52.560 --> 00:02:00.230 monasteries, I think. And so we have this letter 00:02:00.230 --> 00:02:06.230 going out from the Queen on February 5th, so 00:02:06.230 --> 00:02:10.569 it's a month since Pere the Ceremonious died 00:02:10.569 --> 00:02:16.909 and Joan and Violant became King and Queen. 00:02:18.610 --> 00:02:25.009 Violant is thanking the monasteries for their 00:02:25.009 --> 00:02:33.560 prayers and She's noting that those prayers probably 00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:42.500 had a beneficial effect on Joan because he is 00:02:42.500 --> 00:02:49.120 now in better health after, and we have the word, 00:02:49.939 --> 00:02:57.139 malalties, sickness. I think that Joan's illness 00:02:57.139 --> 00:03:00.289 in All the other documents we've looked at so 00:03:00.289 --> 00:03:06.810 far has been referred to obliquely, not using 00:03:06.810 --> 00:03:11.250 the word sickness, malalties, but using the word 00:03:11.250 --> 00:03:14.509 misfortune, accident, which does appear in this 00:03:14.509 --> 00:03:21.889 letter too. Or difficulties, the arduies, the 00:03:21.889 --> 00:03:26.539 difficulties encountered. And so for the first 00:03:26.539 --> 00:03:30.280 time I think on the podcast we are encountering 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:36.180 the word for sickness in medieval Catalan, malalties. 00:03:37.500 --> 00:03:40.560 I was talking to somebody who has been listening 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:44.439 to the podcast quite a bit and this particular 00:03:44.439 --> 00:03:49.979 listener wanted to have me read out one of the 00:03:49.979 --> 00:03:53.530 letters to kind of get a sense of the rhythm 00:03:53.530 --> 00:03:57.250 of it, the voice of it. And I do realize that 00:03:57.250 --> 00:04:01.710 not everybody has enough time to go to the web 00:04:01.710 --> 00:04:04.069 page for each and every document each and every 00:04:04.069 --> 00:04:09.150 day. And so I did want to grant that request. 00:04:10.009 --> 00:04:14.629 I feel like... I feel like Joan and Violant 00:04:14.629 --> 00:04:19.329 granting requests in these documents, but I'm... 00:04:19.970 --> 00:04:22.250 definitely have a different status level than 00:04:22.250 --> 00:04:25.250 the two of them. So yeah, I wanted to go ahead 00:04:25.250 --> 00:04:28.529 and read out one of the letters, and I think 00:04:28.529 --> 00:04:32.490 this is a really good one, and you'll notice 00:04:32.490 --> 00:04:35.529 what's good about it is that there's a lot of 00:04:35.529 --> 00:04:39.910 cognates to English, and you'll be able to hear 00:04:39.910 --> 00:04:42.029 that, and then you'll be able to hear just a 00:04:42.029 --> 00:04:46.050 little bit of the... official chancery style 00:04:46.050 --> 00:04:49.930 that a lot of the letters conform to. So when 00:04:49.930 --> 00:04:53.550 you listen to this one, you're getting a good 00:04:53.550 --> 00:04:58.389 sample of the kind of official correspondence 00:04:58.389 --> 00:05:03.410 tone that also involves a bit of a personal touch, 00:05:03.810 --> 00:05:10.850 because Violant is talking about her husband's 00:05:10.850 --> 00:05:15.529 weakened body. So you can't exactly keep it all 00:05:15.529 --> 00:05:20.750 business -like when that's the topic. All right. 00:05:21.170 --> 00:05:23.509 I'm going to begin the reading. It's going to 00:05:23.509 --> 00:05:27.870 go for a couple minutes here. And if you're kind 00:05:27.870 --> 00:05:30.769 of just wanting to hear me discuss the document 00:05:30.769 --> 00:05:33.670 and not listen to it, then you can just do a 00:05:33.670 --> 00:05:37.129 little fast forward. And I'll pick up after... 00:05:36.939 --> 00:05:41.939 medieval Catalan reading here and discuss a little 00:05:41.939 --> 00:06:03.430 bit more about what is in today's document. Benet 00:06:03.430 --> 00:06:08.189 ne sia Deiu, chi permet che tanta via durat. 00:06:08.870 --> 00:06:14.129 E com enles adversitats sia tengut tot Christia, 00:06:14.569 --> 00:06:19.769 Recorer a nostra signor Deiu. Lo qual es donador 00:06:19.769 --> 00:06:26.610 de tots bens, Sanador de totes malalties, E reparador 00:06:26.610 --> 00:06:32.740 de tots mals. Pregam vos tan affectuosamon. Como 00:06:32.740 --> 00:06:36.939 podemos que todos los días, en mises y otros 00:06:36.939 --> 00:06:41.800 honros canónicos, queráis hacer oraciones en 00:06:41.800 --> 00:06:48.620 la iglesia de vuestro monestad, como mi devout 00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:53.199 amigo percibirá. praying and supplicating to 00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:59.379 our Lord God and His Blessed Mother who wishes 00:06:59.379 --> 00:07:08.300 to restore health to the Lord. And since you 00:07:08.300 --> 00:07:14.139 have been praying for the Lord, just as for your 00:07:14.139 --> 00:07:20.199 natural Lord, we... Per les dittes, pregaries, 00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:26.540 e intercessions, nos tendrem per obligats a procurar 00:07:26.540 --> 00:07:32.439 vos gracies e favors. No en paga de les oraciones, 00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:38.680 Deiure fer ordinarets, en universal e en particular, 00:07:39.279 --> 00:07:43.339 per tots los frares del dit monaster, clerques, 00:07:43.740 --> 00:08:05.399 e leix. And then there's the Roman numerals for 00:08:05.399 --> 00:08:10.259 the year 1387. And then the probata at the end. 00:08:10.660 --> 00:08:13.259 So hopefully that gives you a little bit of a 00:08:13.259 --> 00:08:17.850 sense of... what it sounds like in Catalan, and 00:08:17.850 --> 00:08:21.230 I'm sure there's all kinds of pronunciation errors 00:08:21.230 --> 00:08:24.610 that I made, because I'm not a native Catalan 00:08:24.610 --> 00:08:28.509 speaker, and then in addition, Medieval Catalan 00:08:28.509 --> 00:08:31.089 would have been pronounced with some differences. 00:08:31.550 --> 00:08:37.610 So I apologize to anyone who knows a lot about 00:08:37.610 --> 00:08:40.370 how to pronounce Catalan and Medieval Catalan, 00:08:40.409 --> 00:08:44.399 because I probably did a pretty terrible job 00:08:44.399 --> 00:08:46.679 in comparison to someone who's done this for 00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:48.740 a while, but that was my best shot. And we're 00:08:48.740 --> 00:08:53.200 all about just giving it your best here on the 00:08:53.200 --> 00:08:56.679 Historian's Notebook, where we're just focusing 00:08:56.679 --> 00:09:02.320 on that beginner's mind and trying to just kind 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:05.879 of give it our best go. And all in the interests 00:09:05.879 --> 00:09:10.519 of learning and all in very, very deep respect 00:09:10.519 --> 00:09:15.190 for those who have been working on these materials 00:09:15.190 --> 00:09:19.389 for years and years and sometimes multiple decades 00:09:19.389 --> 00:09:21.549 and all of the knowledge that they have built 00:09:21.549 --> 00:09:27.990 up and that I draw on in order to make some guesses 00:09:27.990 --> 00:09:32.730 and inferences about the meaning of what I'm 00:09:32.730 --> 00:09:37.830 looking at here. Okay, let's talk about some 00:09:37.830 --> 00:09:44.769 more of the content of this letter. And there's 00:09:44.769 --> 00:09:48.610 the word accident in the first line, which is 00:09:48.610 --> 00:09:53.970 misfortune. And then there's the word intercessions, 00:09:54.330 --> 00:09:58.429 intercessions. And these two words, they signal 00:09:58.429 --> 00:10:03.210 something in the context that is super important 00:10:03.210 --> 00:10:09.009 for understanding what's happening when Violent 00:10:09.009 --> 00:10:14.200 is thanking these monks for their prayers and 00:10:14.200 --> 00:10:18.700 also saying, hey, keep it up, please. What's 00:10:18.700 --> 00:10:25.820 going on is that there's a very deep belief in 00:10:25.820 --> 00:10:30.159 the interconnectedness between the divine and 00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:33.779 what happens to people in their daily lives. 00:10:35.059 --> 00:10:41.279 Joan's illness is not interpreted according 00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:46.059 to the way that we would normally in our time 00:10:46.059 --> 00:10:51.940 think about sickness. In our time, we still have 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:58.039 a pretty common practice of trying to invoke 00:10:58.039 --> 00:11:03.080 higher powers beyond the scientific in order 00:11:03.080 --> 00:11:08.659 to give a little boost toward the recovery from 00:11:08.659 --> 00:11:13.639 some kind of illness. People will pray for their 00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:18.820 loved ones to get better. If you yourself are 00:11:18.820 --> 00:11:23.919 feeling ill, you're gonna take medicine probably, 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:28.419 but you're also going to just have a little bit 00:11:28.419 --> 00:11:33.080 of a hope that, and you might not necessarily 00:11:33.080 --> 00:11:35.820 invoke some kind of deity, but you'll have some 00:11:35.820 --> 00:11:41.559 kind of supernatural level of hope. Maybe you'll 00:11:41.559 --> 00:11:46.259 call it luck. Maybe you'll say, oh, I just kind 00:11:46.259 --> 00:11:51.779 of had a willpower element here that pushed me 00:11:51.779 --> 00:11:54.919 through that illness. It's pretty common for 00:11:54.919 --> 00:12:00.200 people when they're sick, even in our society, 00:12:00.879 --> 00:12:06.580 to not be purely scientific in the way that they 00:12:06.580 --> 00:12:11.279 interact with the experience. of illness. So 00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:15.679 you can definitely understand a little bit about 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:19.519 what I'm going to say here, and I myself am limited 00:12:19.519 --> 00:12:24.039 in my understanding of what I'm about to try 00:12:24.039 --> 00:12:31.799 to characterize. Imagine a society where it's 00:12:31.799 --> 00:12:36.559 not just like this added bonus to have prayers. 00:12:37.399 --> 00:12:42.559 when someone is sick, but it's actually channeling 00:12:42.559 --> 00:12:49.299 into something that's very real. Here's an interesting 00:12:49.299 --> 00:12:54.740 fun fact about medical education in the Middle 00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:59.220 Ages. If you were training to be a physician, 00:12:59.879 --> 00:13:03.919 someone who would do surgeries, say, in order 00:13:03.919 --> 00:13:11.320 to repair an injury on a body, You were actually 00:13:11.320 --> 00:13:17.159 given more hours of training in astrology than 00:13:17.159 --> 00:13:23.480 you were in anatomy. This is because there was 00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:27.700 a very deep -seated belief that the position 00:13:27.700 --> 00:13:34.419 of the stars had an actual physical effect on 00:13:34.419 --> 00:13:40.179 the goings -on on Earth. So you wouldn't want 00:13:40.179 --> 00:13:45.759 to do a surgery on a day that the stars were 00:13:45.759 --> 00:13:51.799 not aligned toward the maximum benefit of the 00:13:51.799 --> 00:13:57.200 movement of all of the physical material of a 00:13:57.200 --> 00:14:01.220 body on the earth and the I guess you could say 00:14:01.220 --> 00:14:06.419 spiritual waves that would connect between the 00:14:06.419 --> 00:14:13.600 everyday physical world and the divine. So when 00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:18.399 we're looking at what Violant is saying to these 00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:26.700 monks in relation to Joan's illness, we're encountering 00:14:26.700 --> 00:14:33.100 people who saw a much more direct connection 00:14:33.100 --> 00:14:41.990 between the divine and bodily conditions. And 00:14:41.990 --> 00:14:46.330 it's not to say that it was a regular occurrence 00:14:46.330 --> 00:14:52.509 for them to cure something by prayer. It's not 00:14:52.509 --> 00:14:56.009 like every single day they witnessed in a kind 00:14:56.009 --> 00:15:00.730 of cause -effect fashion the connection between 00:15:00.730 --> 00:15:07.860 the divine and the bodily conditions of someone 00:15:07.860 --> 00:15:17.320 improving or not, but they did not have any doubt 00:15:17.320 --> 00:15:22.059 that there was a role for the divine to play, 00:15:22.059 --> 00:15:26.899 and that the more influence you would try to 00:15:26.899 --> 00:15:32.379 build up in the divine, there would be a real 00:15:32.379 --> 00:15:39.440 effect, and What would block it is the question 00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:41.740 that would come up in their minds. Not whether 00:15:41.740 --> 00:15:44.879 it was efficacious or not. It would obviously 00:15:44.879 --> 00:15:49.320 have an effect. All these prayers would work 00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:59.200 to make Joan healthy. But the question is, is 00:15:59.200 --> 00:16:06.110 there something else that is at work in the opposite 00:16:06.110 --> 00:16:12.230 direction? Is there a curse? And this is something 00:16:12.230 --> 00:16:18.789 that is very real for Violant, for Joan, for 00:16:18.789 --> 00:16:20.929 everyday people. This, I think, is an instance 00:16:20.929 --> 00:16:25.610 where by looking at what the elite are writing 00:16:25.610 --> 00:16:29.110 about, because we have way more records surviving 00:16:29.110 --> 00:16:33.230 from the elite, we can actually extrapolate out 00:16:33.399 --> 00:16:36.519 and make some reasonable inferences about everyday 00:16:36.519 --> 00:16:43.019 people. And I think it's very legitimate here 00:16:43.019 --> 00:16:50.840 and is justified by a lot of the evidence, not 00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:53.659 just in these documents, but evidence that's 00:16:53.659 --> 00:16:57.440 been collected widely about life in the Middle 00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:02.950 Ages, to say that this is a window into how pretty 00:17:02.950 --> 00:17:10.309 much everybody. And I would say that in Christian 00:17:10.309 --> 00:17:14.829 communities and amongst Christians, this was 00:17:14.829 --> 00:17:18.730 a very real thing, maybe even more so than in 00:17:18.730 --> 00:17:21.009 the Jewish and Muslim communities. But even in 00:17:21.009 --> 00:17:22.849 the Jewish and Muslim communities, there was 00:17:22.849 --> 00:17:24.990 still a belief in the connection between the 00:17:24.990 --> 00:17:30.569 divine and the everyday occurrences. With Christian 00:17:30.569 --> 00:17:33.309 communities, though, there's this added bonus. 00:17:33.930 --> 00:17:36.750 And that's where the word intercession comes 00:17:36.750 --> 00:17:43.009 in. The intercession that Violent mentions here, 00:17:43.190 --> 00:17:45.809 it's not just saying, oh, you helped, you interceded 00:17:45.809 --> 00:17:52.509 in this. It's actually referring to a very large 00:17:52.509 --> 00:17:58.450 practice of connecting to the divine in all sorts 00:17:58.450 --> 00:18:02.150 of methods. And one method that was extremely 00:18:02.150 --> 00:18:05.170 popular in the Middle Ages, and actually continues 00:18:05.170 --> 00:18:08.970 to be very popular even to this day, is relics. 00:18:09.509 --> 00:18:14.269 So if you have a piece of a saint's body, then 00:18:14.269 --> 00:18:19.809 you can have a channel of intercession where 00:18:19.809 --> 00:18:25.430 you can connect spiritually with that physical 00:18:25.430 --> 00:18:30.200 remnant, and it will then be a kind of added 00:18:30.200 --> 00:18:37.740 channel to get you access to the divine. So people, 00:18:38.660 --> 00:18:41.039 especially Christians of the Middle Ages, were 00:18:41.039 --> 00:18:47.519 looking for these intercession avenues and the 00:18:47.519 --> 00:18:53.900 prayers of the monks are another such intercessionary 00:18:53.900 --> 00:19:00.740 action. So I've kind of thrown out a lot at you 00:19:00.740 --> 00:19:06.539 in this with a lot of context about the way that 00:19:06.539 --> 00:19:13.220 medieval people interacted with the divine and 00:19:13.220 --> 00:19:18.859 blended it in to the everyday. There's a more 00:19:18.859 --> 00:19:20.960 practical question that I just want to touch 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:23.819 on before the end of today's episode, which is 00:19:23.819 --> 00:19:27.279 about Joan's health and trying to track what 00:19:27.279 --> 00:19:31.740 was going on. This letter makes it seem like 00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:37.559 Joan has mostly recovered. There's another letter 00:19:37.559 --> 00:19:41.099 to a lot of these monasteries. I'm not sure if 00:19:41.099 --> 00:19:43.440 the list is actually the same list or if there's 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:45.779 a little bit of a difference, but Dawn Bratsch 00:19:45.779 --> 00:19:52.319 Prince, in an article from 1994, found an article 00:19:52.319 --> 00:19:56.720 and transcribed it not an article, a letter, 00:19:57.039 --> 00:19:59.240 and transcribed it in which Violant is writing 00:19:59.240 --> 00:20:01.980 to monasteries again, a lot of the same monasteries 00:20:01.980 --> 00:20:06.279 as the ones in today's letter, and saying, thanks 00:20:06.279 --> 00:20:10.240 for keeping up the prayers. Joan has been ill 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:15.759 for a long time. And that's on April 29th. So 00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:21.160 is there one long continuous illness here? That's 00:20:21.160 --> 00:20:23.680 a possibility. And we're going to try to keep 00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:27.099 tracking this because, remember, it's around 00:20:27.099 --> 00:20:32.619 the end of April that Violant reveals even more 00:20:32.619 --> 00:20:38.059 information about the extent of Joan's illness. 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:42.039 And it's also in April that Violant reveals 00:20:42.039 --> 00:20:48.279 that she has sought out a book of curses. not 00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:52.579 to place a curse on anybody, but to try to find 00:20:52.579 --> 00:20:59.319 out if there is a counter spell in order to negate 00:20:59.319 --> 00:21:03.299 the effects of the curse that she believes Joan 00:21:03.299 --> 00:21:09.359 has been subjected to by some evildoer, some 00:21:09.359 --> 00:21:13.519 adversary. So that's what's coming up in April, 00:21:13.740 --> 00:21:18.140 and maybe we'll see hints of it beforehand. But, 00:21:18.519 --> 00:21:23.019 I think we've gotten to the end of today's episode. 00:21:23.099 --> 00:21:25.420 There's, I know, a whole lot more that we could 00:21:25.420 --> 00:21:26.779 talk about. We could talk about some of these 00:21:26.779 --> 00:21:31.039 monasteries. I'll put some links to information 00:21:31.039 --> 00:21:35.539 about them in the webpage for today's episode. 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:39.240 Thanks for listening to this installment of the 00:21:39.240 --> 00:21:43.319 Historian's Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. 00:21:44.349 --> 00:21:46.769 And if you are leaving with more questions than 00:21:46.769 --> 00:21:51.069 you arrived with, I've done my job, because our 00:21:51.069 --> 00:21:55.789 motto here at the Historian's Notebook is, dissatisfaction 00:21:55.789 --> 00:22:00.630 guaranteed. Visit the website jonathanseyfried.net 00:22:00.630 --> 00:22:06.109 to see an image of today's document and 00:22:06.109 --> 00:22:09.549 additional show notes. and listen again tomorrow 00:22:09.549 --> 00:22:12.849 to hear about the next day in the first year 00:22:12.849 --> 00:22:17.390 of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen 00:22:17.390 --> 00:22:21.869 Violant de Bar. In the meantime, take care.