Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was February 6th, 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.
I just love some of the material and chancery
practice dynamics of this particular letter,
because we are in a register called Varia, which
importantly is not Diversorum. It's Varia. Is
it various things? Diverse things? No, not diverse
things. So yesterday's document was from the
page before this one, and it was Violant writing
about Joan's illness. So, personal stuff. And
then you turn the page, and you look at folio
80R, and you've got a letter in Latin, and...
Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm feeling
really good about my Latin today, because I think
I got all this. I mean, I didn't do it on my
own, of course. But with the assistance of the
AI chatbot and going over some of its interpretations,
I think I really understand this letter. But
this letter, you know, maybe you're thinking,
ooh, it'll be about something personal again,
or some very intense... kind of religious topic.
No. It's about a broken -down mill in sort of
a smaller town, and so it really is like this
whiplash feeling of when you're turning the pages,
especially in a register like this one called
Varia, you're just not really prepared for the
kinds of transitions from one letter to the next,
and it is the next day. So the letter about Joan's
illness was from the 5th of February, and then
today we've got this letter about the broken
down mill in the 6th of February. So I just want
to point out a couple things about Chancery Practice
with this letter here. First of all, I want you
to notice, if you're able to look at this on
the webpage, that the letter starts out with
Yolans, etc. So there's not even like any kind
of concern about listing out all of the realms
that Violant is in charge of, and it's just like,
you know, we don't have to be fancy here. This
is a small town. And I pretty quickly took a
little doing, but I pretty quickly found out
that the name of this town in Catalan is Torroella
de Montgrí. And you can see that in the second
line. So in Latin, the toponym is Turriellem de
Montegrino. I think it's the correct thing. It's
an N -O at the end. So there's the real kind
of leveling down of the seriousness or the formalities.
It's not like it's a jokey letter. It's a businessy
letter, but it's just the amount of ornateness
that you sometimes see in these is just not present.
And you can just look further down the page.
So the next letter, which is actually from an
earlier date, from January 28th, starts Yolan's
Dei Gracia Regina Aragon. Or there's a macron,
there's maybe Aragonem. Oh, what's the case?
Oh, goodness. I don't know. So, you can see that
based on factors, I don't exactly know the factors
that determine this for sure, but things like
who the recipient is, or the seriousness of the
matter, you'll have a different level of ornateness.
in the sender's title. In our document today,
it seems like this is an issue that does not
really call up a lot of anxiety. And I'll explain
that when I get into the content of the letter
a little bit more. But I want to point out a
couple other things about chancery practice here.
After the initial beginning of the letter that
states the sender, Yolans, etc., in this case,
the first word to appear is Fideli, and it's
spelled with two Fs because it's starting out
the letter. And I hope you've been enjoying the
spelling of February with two Fs. since we started
the month of February. We're six days into that
now. And yeah, you can pretty much count on February
being spelled with two Fs in every single letter
that we look at this month. And I would like
to bring that back. I think that would be wonderful.
I would love to keep spelling February with two
Fs because that's just FFun. See what I did there?
Fun with two Fs. Alright, so I just wanted to
point out that when you have a proper noun or
like the beginning of a sentence, the beginning
of the letter, and it's an F word, it's very
common to see the two Fs. The other thing I want
to talk about here is at the end of the letter
with the dating. So we have datem barchinonem,
and then spelled out sexta die februari so you
see this sometimes where the scribe will just
prefer to spell out the number that is the day
and other times they'll opt for the roman numerals
and there's really no set pattern here that I
have discovered. Other than when a scribe likes
to spell out the day, they'll also tend to enjoy
spelling out the number of the last number that
appears in the year. So right below sexta, you'll
see septimo. There's a macron abbreviation line.
which stands for the M in Septimo, and that is
for the number seven, which is the last number
in the year 1387. The previous letters in that
last line of today's document is the Roman numeral
for 1380. So you have 1380 in Roman numerals,
and then septimo for the seven for 1387. And
what's kind of nice about this is that you can
really get a reinforcement of your of your understanding
of Roman numerals for a moment here, because
a document like this really helps you understand
that the M is for mile for thousand. The three
C's are for 100 each for the 300 that gets added
on to the 1000 to get you to 1300. The L is for
50. And then the three X's are for the 30 that
you add to 50 in order to get to 80. So when
I see a date like this, it really helps me to
reinforce my memory of Roman numerals, which
for some reason I just don't really remember
that easily. All right, so let's talk about what's
inside this letter. Turns out that there's a
broken down mill, and Violent is writing to the
bailiff and procurator in this town, Toroella
de Montgri. That person's name is Bernardo Torroni.
And it's really, this letter's so nice for understanding
how the conventional chancery letters are formatted,
because at the end of the second line, you've
got the salutem, and salutem et gratiam. that's
the phrase that usually concludes the information
about the addressee and so you've got all this
information about the title of the person and
where they are and then in the two words before
salutem you've got the person's first name and
last name so if i had to teach a class on reading
the medieval Latin and medieval Catalan, I guess,
too, of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, I
would use this as an example because it's nice
and clear, easy to read in terms of, you know,
the quality of the scribe's penmanship, and also
the issue at hand is a pretty straightforward
one. There was a mill in this town. It broke.
And because it's broken, or destroyed, maybe?
It's hard to figure out the exact valence of
dioructionem. It's not generating revenue like
it used to. And this is in Violant's portfolio.
probably used to be in Sibilla's portfolio. And
so Violant is now saying to these folks, hey,
if you repair your mill, I will actually pay
you back for the cost of those repairs. And then
it's a win -win because you get to have your
mill operating again and make money off of the
product of the milling, and I then get to take
my cut from the tax revenue. So a sound investment
decision is being carried out here, and it seems
like it should move forward without any problems.
Talk about a reasonable, peaceful slice of, you
know... what it's like to rule a kingdom. So
I got curious about this place. Torroella de Montgris.
Went to Google Maps, did a little googling around,
and I just was swept away by the tourist information
about this region. the region around Torroella de
Montgri looks really gorgeous. It's kind of
close to the coast. The town itself is not on
the coast, but there's then another town that's
kind of in the same touristy region that has
this whole aquatic museum, a museum of the Mediterranean
Sea, and some of the hiking and so on around
there looks just really wonderful. The castle
The Montgris Castle looks very sturdy. It looks
like kind of the shape of like a sand castle.
There's not a lot of ornamentation on it, but
it's a big kind of hunk of a castle still around.
You can go climb up it. And then in the town
of Torroella de Montgris itself, there's a plaza
with a chapel. church of or chapel of Saint Anthony
and it's got like a clock tower on it and it's
been renovated it doesn't look exactly like it
did in 1387 but you can kind of get a sense for
the look and feel of this town in the 14th century
if you go and just go to google street view and
just kind of look around the towns the little
the old town center and then I got curious well
is there anything left of this mill and what's
funny is that there's a hotel and it's renovated
out of a mill that in the hotel's website which
I'll link to on the web page for this this episode
they say that it's a mill from the 15th century
that they then renovated into a hotel. And it's
really, it's neat. There's a whole website about
the renovation process, some interesting photos.
Could the mill from the 15th century be kind
of a rebuild of the one that we're talking about
here? Is it possible that they didn't get the
rebuild going until sometime after 1400? Or is
the dating on the website for this hotel not
as exact? And the hotel that you can stay in
today is actually the structure that was financed
by Violante in 1387. Don't know. Don't know the
details on that. But just the idea that you could
go stay in that hotel that was built out of the
structure that is at least dating to the 15th
century and was a mill. Not sure if it's the
same mill. Could be a completely different location,
but I don't know. I mean, it's just... I don't
know. I just got... I got a little bit wistful
about the idea of traveling through Catalonia.
visiting some of these places. Funny enough,
one of the early episodes there was a place that
Joan stayed as he kind of got sick as he was
journeying from Girona to Barcelona in early
January and that got turned into a hotel also.
So I hope that, you know, maybe I can collect
over the course of this year a bunch of places
that are mentioned in these letters. that have
been turned into hotels and then just go and
stay in them for a while, kind of journey through,
tracing the steps. That would be a really nice
vacation. Alright, so I got a little bit into
travel bug mode there, but I hope you have enjoyed
this latest installment of The Historian's Notebook,
Season 1. If you are leaving with more questions
than you arrived with, then I've done my job.
Maybe you're wondering how much money does this
mill generate? What is it like to be a miller
in Catalonia in the 14th century? This letter
says nothing about that. Other than maybe someone
high up might give you some money if your mill
got damaged and you would be able to repair it
and look at that. That's kind of nice. But so
many questions. So many questions. How did Violant
find out about this? Is it something that Sibilla
had been aware of? Was the destruction from like
some kind of storm? Or was there some something
violent or was it just kind of run down? We do
not know. All these questions. Well, remember
if you're feeling dissatisfied... that you don't
have answers to those questions, that fits right
with our motto, dissatisfaction guaranteed. Visit
the website to see an image of today's document
and additional show notes, all those links that
I mentioned, 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.