WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:05.070 Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, 00:00:05.589 --> 00:00:12.550 it was February 10th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:12.550 --> 00:00:15.949 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:15.949 --> 00:00:19.449 University of New Mexico. And this is The Historian's 00:00:19.449 --> 00:00:23.570 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:24.370 --> 00:00:28.359 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. we're 00:00:28.359 --> 00:00:31.000 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:35.140 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:35.140 --> 00:00:38.859 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's 00:00:38.859 --> 00:01:08.530 document. Are you ready for some economics? Yes, 00:01:08.650 --> 00:01:11.370 today is going to be really economics focused. 00:01:11.689 --> 00:01:13.689 And if that made you groan, if you were like, 00:01:13.689 --> 00:01:16.069 Ooh, I think I'm just going to hit that skip 00:01:16.069 --> 00:01:18.689 to the next episode button. Keep in mind a couple 00:01:18.689 --> 00:01:22.769 things. First, if you're listening to this on 00:01:22.769 --> 00:01:26.230 February 10th, you are not going to be able to 00:01:26.230 --> 00:01:28.769 skip to the next episode because it isn't released 00:01:28.769 --> 00:01:32.609 yet. So just keep listening to this one. Second, 00:01:32.959 --> 00:01:35.879 even if you're listening to this at a time when 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:38.280 it's quite easy to skip to the next episode. 00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:42.760 Then I want you to just take a step back and 00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:47.060 think about when I say the word economics how 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:51.540 what I'm talking about can be expanded. And it's 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:55.140 really easy to think about economics as just 00:01:55.140 --> 00:02:00.540 like the boring graphs about supply and demand 00:02:00.540 --> 00:02:07.829 and just money and budgets. But economics is 00:02:07.829 --> 00:02:11.930 about any kind of human decision making that 00:02:11.930 --> 00:02:15.810 takes value into account. And it's also about 00:02:15.810 --> 00:02:19.469 exchange and how people related to each other. 00:02:19.590 --> 00:02:24.530 So in every economic transaction or in every 00:02:24.530 --> 00:02:30.020 economic project, there are all kinds of larger 00:02:30.020 --> 00:02:35.120 values imbued and you can see in the budgets 00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:39.439 and the numbers and the graphs the result of 00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:44.639 a lot of really interesting stuff that we don't 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:50.520 normally associate with money and the stereotypical 00:02:51.129 --> 00:02:54.889 idea of economics. And that really is something 00:02:54.889 --> 00:02:58.669 that's a major focus of mine in this particular 00:02:58.669 --> 00:03:01.629 project that I'm looking at in this season of 00:03:01.629 --> 00:03:04.849 the Historian's Notebook, because one of the 00:03:04.849 --> 00:03:09.669 major criticisms leveled at Joan and Violant 00:03:09.669 --> 00:03:14.090 is that they were financially irresponsible. 00:03:14.409 --> 00:03:18.150 And when all these modern historians, well, and 00:03:18.150 --> 00:03:20.949 also the early modern historians, or the historians 00:03:20.949 --> 00:03:24.949 that came within 100 years of their reign, when 00:03:24.949 --> 00:03:30.469 those writers are telling the story of Joan 00:03:30.469 --> 00:03:35.770 and Violant, they're almost all going to this 00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:40.169 reputation of theirs for being financially irresponsible. 00:03:41.050 --> 00:03:44.569 And then you don't get until the end of the 20th 00:03:44.569 --> 00:03:48.650 century with Dawn Bratsch Prince, you don't get 00:03:48.650 --> 00:03:56.650 a revision of that until a feminist scholar starts 00:03:56.650 --> 00:04:05.210 looking. And when you take a point of view, an 00:04:05.210 --> 00:04:10.419 historiographical angle, on Joan and Violant 00:04:10.419 --> 00:04:14.419 and this question of financial responsibility, 00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:19.180 you start to see it in a lot of the writings 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:24.879 that when people are talking about their management 00:04:24.879 --> 00:04:29.959 of money, they're also talking about gender. 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:35.139 that it's coupled so frequently that Joan is 00:04:35.139 --> 00:04:39.600 seen as a, quote, effeminate king, and then was 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:43.379 bad with money. It's really interesting to see 00:04:43.379 --> 00:04:47.899 how these are coupled, these ideas about Joan 00:04:47.899 --> 00:04:53.620 are coupled, and then also, especially in the 00:04:53.620 --> 00:04:58.500 older... secondary literature on Joan and Violant 00:04:58.500 --> 00:05:01.660 there's the criticism of Violant as not knowing 00:05:01.660 --> 00:05:06.439 her place and being too masculine and acting 00:05:06.439 --> 00:05:11.279 as a man and not being you know womanly enough 00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:17.420 and then oh the finances were terrible so I'm 00:05:17.420 --> 00:05:22.180 really curious about the story of the money and 00:05:22.180 --> 00:05:26.480 what was going on with economics at the time 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:33.620 because I really want to know whether it's accurate 00:05:33.620 --> 00:05:40.220 to say that Joan and Violant were significantly 00:05:40.220 --> 00:05:45.459 worse with money than others around their time 00:05:45.459 --> 00:05:49.680 or maybe just before. And then I also want to 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:55.699 know even if they were. How was the discussion 00:05:55.699 --> 00:06:01.519 of financial matters imbued or affected or influenced 00:06:01.519 --> 00:06:07.860 by ideas about how a king wasn't really being 00:06:07.860 --> 00:06:15.199 the king measuring up to expectations of what 00:06:15.199 --> 00:06:19.139 this exemplar of masculinity should be and how 00:06:19.139 --> 00:06:21.920 a queen would not be measuring up to expectations 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:27.019 of what a queen should be. And the economics 00:06:27.019 --> 00:06:29.879 is a place where you can see this happening. 00:06:30.379 --> 00:06:32.980 So when we go deep into the economics, we're 00:06:32.980 --> 00:06:35.959 building our background knowledge, our foundation 00:06:35.959 --> 00:06:39.620 for being able to understand some of the criticisms 00:06:39.620 --> 00:06:45.060 that come later. So that is just a huge historiographical 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:50.500 context for today's document. Today's document 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:56.149 is in Latin. But with the help of good old ChatGPT, 00:06:56.509 --> 00:06:59.829 I feel that I really understand what's happening 00:06:59.829 --> 00:07:05.829 in this Latin document. Hooray! I feel like it's 00:07:05.829 --> 00:07:10.850 been a rough go with understanding the Latin. 00:07:11.290 --> 00:07:16.089 But in this situation, I feel pretty confident 00:07:16.089 --> 00:07:21.810 that I know what's going on. Also, because ChatGPT 00:07:21.810 --> 00:07:25.470 was able to find some scholarly publications 00:07:25.470 --> 00:07:30.389 that have filled in the picture for me. And actually, 00:07:30.410 --> 00:07:34.550 I should clarify that last part. The second one 00:07:34.550 --> 00:07:36.730 that is very helpful, the second article that 00:07:36.730 --> 00:07:39.750 I'll mention today, I actually already had looked 00:07:39.750 --> 00:07:41.410 at a couple years ago, but I'd forgotten about 00:07:41.410 --> 00:07:45.319 it. and ChatGPT flagged it in its search. And 00:07:45.319 --> 00:07:46.660 I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that article. 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:49.500 And then I went back, looked at my notes. I'm 00:07:49.500 --> 00:07:53.839 going to put a quote from that article on the 00:07:53.839 --> 00:07:57.899 web page. All right, let's talk about this document. 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:04.259 It's in the commune register. So it's not a secret 00:08:04.259 --> 00:08:09.100 seal document like yesterday's. It's one that 00:08:09.100 --> 00:08:12.439 is maybe at this level of just normal business 00:08:12.439 --> 00:08:19.699 of the crown, of the king. And Joan is sending 00:08:19.699 --> 00:08:27.339 a warning to the officials of Lleida, Lerida. 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:33.659 And he's warning them that if they don't pay 00:08:33.659 --> 00:08:40.759 up to a certain fellow named Berenguer de Almencario, 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:47.899 then they're going to be in trouble. So what 00:08:47.899 --> 00:08:56.700 does the municipality of Lleida owe to Berenguer 00:08:56.700 --> 00:09:03.080 de Almencario? That... Oh, I should have said 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:06.460 his name is Berenguer. Berenguer de Almancario. 00:09:07.379 --> 00:09:10.940 The answer to the question gets into this larger 00:09:10.940 --> 00:09:16.299 picture of the economics in the Crown of Aragon 00:09:16.299 --> 00:09:21.860 at this time. And something that I really want 00:09:21.860 --> 00:09:28.879 to emphasize is that this economy was highly 00:09:28.879 --> 00:09:33.149 financialized. What do I mean by saying highly 00:09:33.149 --> 00:09:38.789 financialized? When there's a lot of commerce, 00:09:38.950 --> 00:09:42.350 it means there's a lot of buying and selling 00:09:42.350 --> 00:09:45.029 in the marketplace and shipments and stuff like 00:09:45.029 --> 00:09:49.429 that. When we say that an economy is highly financialized, 00:09:49.730 --> 00:09:52.649 what that means is that there was a lot of investment, 00:09:53.350 --> 00:09:57.750 there were a lot of loan instruments, there was 00:09:57.750 --> 00:10:03.610 a lot of banking. And so when we look at the 00:10:03.610 --> 00:10:06.690 Crown of Aragon in the late 14th century, we're 00:10:06.690 --> 00:10:15.470 looking at a very extensive network of borrowing 00:10:15.470 --> 00:10:24.490 and lending money, of loans and debts and creditors. 00:10:24.750 --> 00:10:30.889 And it is gigantic. If you are interested in 00:10:30.889 --> 00:10:33.809 economic history already, and the stuff I was 00:10:33.809 --> 00:10:35.169 saying at the beginning of the episode, you were 00:10:35.169 --> 00:10:38.269 like, oh yeah, I'm on board. There's so much 00:10:38.269 --> 00:10:43.909 to study here because the number of loan instruments, 00:10:44.789 --> 00:10:49.909 the number of arrangements of debtors and creditors, 00:10:49.990 --> 00:10:54.730 it's just astonishing. It really is something 00:10:54.730 --> 00:11:02.620 that makes a person question the difference between 00:11:02.620 --> 00:11:05.320 modern capitalism and what we're looking at in 00:11:05.320 --> 00:11:08.620 the 14th century, which most would call a pre 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:17.200 -modern time. So what is the nature of the particular 00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:25.059 debt that the municipality of Lleida has? It's 00:11:25.059 --> 00:11:30.879 called a censal. And the censal is like what 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:34.340 in our time we would call a bond, where the city 00:11:34.340 --> 00:11:37.000 has run out of money and they just got to borrow 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.799 some and then they pay it back and they pay interest 00:11:39.799 --> 00:11:50.860 on it. And Berenguer de Almencario was wealthy 00:11:50.860 --> 00:11:56.899 and could afford to loan Lleida some money. How 00:11:56.899 --> 00:12:02.659 do I know that Berenguer de Almencario was wealthy? 00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:08.980 He appears in a dissertation by Joaquin Salleras Clarió 00:12:08.980 --> 00:12:15.120 and he's listed in a couple different 00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:21.039 records as having lent out money to other municipalities. 00:12:22.399 --> 00:12:26.470 He seems to have been... a very wealthy person 00:12:26.470 --> 00:12:32.049 in Valencia, which I'm not quite sure what to 00:12:32.049 --> 00:12:35.049 make of because that's pretty far from Lleida, 00:12:35.129 --> 00:12:38.970 and maybe he just wasn't in Valencia the whole 00:12:38.970 --> 00:12:42.289 time and he was living someplace closer, or maybe 00:12:42.289 --> 00:12:46.769 he was really wealthy and just had loans, these 00:12:46.769 --> 00:12:49.490 censal loans to a bunch of different municipalities. 00:12:49.990 --> 00:12:53.830 I'm not quite sure what to make of that Valencia 00:12:53.830 --> 00:13:00.320 connection. But here, this Latin letter is Joan 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:05.559 writing to this municipality saying, as king, 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:08.639 doing a little sourcing here, as king, I'm telling 00:13:08.639 --> 00:13:13.399 you that you need to pay this guy. He's let me 00:13:13.399 --> 00:13:17.759 know you haven't paid him and you owe him quite 00:13:17.759 --> 00:13:22.100 a lot of money. So it seems like we're looking 00:13:22.100 --> 00:13:31.929 at a sum. of I think uh well it says a hundred 00:13:31.929 --> 00:13:36.629 what does it say a hundred three hundred pounds 00:13:36.629 --> 00:13:43.149 it's the unit of currency is llibres so that's 00:13:43.149 --> 00:13:46.789 a lot of money I'm not quite sure why we don't 00:13:46.789 --> 00:13:51.090 have a thousand numerical I just noticed this 00:13:51.090 --> 00:13:56.049 that the unit uh the The number is like a hundred 00:13:56.049 --> 00:14:00.330 of three hundreds. Anyway, it's a lot of money. 00:14:00.950 --> 00:14:03.970 And what Joan is saying is that if you, city 00:14:03.970 --> 00:14:09.909 of LIeida, don't pay up, then I am going to fine 00:14:09.909 --> 00:14:14.509 you, that you'll have to pay to me, a hundred 00:14:14.509 --> 00:14:21.889 florins. So you better pay up. And so here what 00:14:21.889 --> 00:14:27.990 we have is the king advocating on behalf of a 00:14:27.990 --> 00:14:36.450 creditor to a city. And the article that gives 00:14:36.450 --> 00:14:39.450 some really great background context to this 00:14:39.450 --> 00:14:44.490 is won by three authors actually in a collection 00:14:44.490 --> 00:14:51.649 on pre -modern European finances. Manuel Sanchez, 00:14:52.309 --> 00:14:57.490 Angel Selma Muñoz, and Antoni Furio in 2008 wrote 00:14:57.490 --> 00:15:01.509 in an English language, which has a native English 00:15:01.509 --> 00:15:04.730 speaker I'm really grateful for. They wrote a 00:15:04.730 --> 00:15:11.750 real great breakdown of the financial instruments 00:15:11.750 --> 00:15:16.629 that were utilized by cities in the 14th century. 00:15:17.279 --> 00:15:21.740 And it's available. They've generously made it 00:15:21.740 --> 00:15:26.500 available for free on the academia .edu website 00:15:26.500 --> 00:15:29.139 for I can't remember which one of them. I'll 00:15:29.139 --> 00:15:33.179 put a link to it in the web page for today's 00:15:33.179 --> 00:15:40.000 episode. So cities often found themselves short 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:45.620 of cash. And there were all kinds of different 00:15:45.870 --> 00:15:49.990 types of loans that they could take out, and 00:15:49.990 --> 00:15:52.690 the censal, which is mentioned here in Latin 00:15:52.690 --> 00:15:57.409 a couple times in this letter. Censualem is, 00:15:57.409 --> 00:16:02.429 I think, how you pronounce it in the Latin. In 00:16:02.429 --> 00:16:05.889 this particular document, it appears a couple 00:16:05.889 --> 00:16:10.250 different times. I think, well, one that's sticking 00:16:10.250 --> 00:16:14.169 out to me is in the fifth line from the bottom. 00:16:15.150 --> 00:16:19.269 in the middle of that line, you can see it. Oh, 00:16:19.269 --> 00:16:22.929 it's also in the fourth line, third word from 00:16:22.929 --> 00:16:27.350 the end. So these Censals were a type of loan 00:16:27.350 --> 00:16:31.389 that we would call a bond. And yeah, you just 00:16:31.389 --> 00:16:38.289 paid it back with interest and you could get 00:16:38.289 --> 00:16:40.529 a cash infusion if you were a city that was running 00:16:40.529 --> 00:16:46.690 out of money. And so There were all kinds of 00:16:46.690 --> 00:16:50.409 lone instruments, and this was one of them. And 00:16:50.409 --> 00:16:53.970 the exact details of it, that granular level, 00:16:54.850 --> 00:16:58.950 you have to kind of dig a little bit deeper into 00:16:58.950 --> 00:17:03.529 that. But basically, they all had different lone 00:17:03.529 --> 00:17:09.250 terms, like in duration, and when the interest 00:17:09.250 --> 00:17:15.369 would accumulate. frequency of what's the term 00:17:15.369 --> 00:17:18.230 for for this I can't remember but the frequency 00:17:18.230 --> 00:17:23.309 of when that interest is is accrued all of that 00:17:23.309 --> 00:17:27.089 could vary and so that is why we've got a bunch 00:17:27.089 --> 00:17:30.150 of different terms here and then also levels 00:17:30.150 --> 00:17:35.109 of guarantee would affect a loan instrument being 00:17:35.109 --> 00:17:39.390 categorized in one category versus another the 00:17:39.589 --> 00:17:43.910 Loans that Joan and Violant took a lot of heat 00:17:43.910 --> 00:17:48.730 for taking out are called mogubells. And hopefully 00:17:48.730 --> 00:17:52.309 I'll encounter a record of a mogubell sometime 00:17:52.309 --> 00:17:55.509 this year. And at that point, I'll go into greater 00:17:55.509 --> 00:17:58.490 detail about the mogubells, but they were really 00:17:58.490 --> 00:18:01.690 usurious. I mean, the interest rates on these 00:18:01.690 --> 00:18:04.089 could be really out of control. There wasn't 00:18:04.089 --> 00:18:08.940 a lot of regulation about interest rates, and 00:18:08.940 --> 00:18:14.980 so you could charge someone a gigantic, exploitative 00:18:14.980 --> 00:18:18.059 level of interest rate, and if they accepted 00:18:18.059 --> 00:18:21.380 that contract they would be on the hook for paying 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:26.519 that exorbitant amount of money as it compounded 00:18:26.519 --> 00:18:33.539 over time. There was what the authors of this 00:18:33.539 --> 00:18:37.380 article that I have just been talking about There 00:18:37.380 --> 00:18:42.559 was a, quote, constant financial emergency on 00:18:42.559 --> 00:18:45.799 the part of municipalities and also on the part 00:18:45.799 --> 00:18:51.319 of the royal family, pretty much from the 1340s 00:18:51.319 --> 00:18:55.720 all the way until the end of the 14th century. 00:18:56.859 --> 00:19:01.559 Père, the ceremonious, Joan's father, was 00:19:01.559 --> 00:19:09.160 a wrecking ball when it came to the financial 00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:14.339 networks of the Crown of Aragon. He at one point 00:19:14.339 --> 00:19:19.779 in 1381 just said, I'm not gonna pay the loan 00:19:19.779 --> 00:19:22.619 back. You're just gonna have to eat that. And 00:19:22.619 --> 00:19:25.039 he said that to one of the most prominent banks 00:19:25.039 --> 00:19:28.700 in Barcelona. And that bank, it collapsed and 00:19:28.700 --> 00:19:32.980 it was like a financial crisis for the banking 00:19:32.980 --> 00:19:36.819 system of the Crown of Aragon. and what Joan 00:19:36.819 --> 00:19:40.420 and Violant inherit is the aftermath of a lot 00:19:40.420 --> 00:19:48.599 of of that. So basically there's a very intense 00:19:48.599 --> 00:19:54.940 financialized system that at the same time is 00:19:54.940 --> 00:20:01.779 rocked by certain scandals occasionally and then 00:20:01.779 --> 00:20:10.519 also by bankruptcies, and as we look at who's 00:20:10.519 --> 00:20:12.960 taking out loans, which government entities, 00:20:13.339 --> 00:20:16.839 which individuals are taking out the loans, and 00:20:16.839 --> 00:20:20.940 then who is giving the loans, who are the creditors, 00:20:21.099 --> 00:20:24.099 we will start to see some very interesting things. 00:20:24.740 --> 00:20:28.599 And I will just put out one name for the moment 00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.859 for you to keep a lookout for when thinking about 00:20:31.859 --> 00:20:35.559 the economics. of the Crown of Aragon in the 00:20:35.559 --> 00:20:39.240 late 14th century, and that is a Genoese fellow 00:20:39.240 --> 00:20:44.799 named Lucchino Scarampi. And we've got a document 00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:47.819 that involves Lucchino Scarampi coming up in a 00:20:47.819 --> 00:20:51.420 little while. All right, thanks for listening 00:20:51.420 --> 00:20:53.519 to this episode of the Historian's Notebook, 00:20:53.740 --> 00:20:57.720 season one, Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving 00:20:57.720 --> 00:21:00.980 with more questions than you arrived with, I've 00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:04.549 done my job. Remember, the motto of the historian's 00:21:04.549 --> 00:21:09.109 notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. But hey, 00:21:09.289 --> 00:21:10.750 over the course of this year, we're going to 00:21:10.750 --> 00:21:14.309 come back to economics, so maybe at that point 00:21:14.309 --> 00:21:18.769 it'll be less dissatisfying. Visit the website 00:21:18.769 --> 00:21:22.450 to see an image of today's document and additional 00:21:22.450 --> 00:21:25.349 show notes. And listen again tomorrow to hear 00:21:25.349 --> 00:21:28.430 about the next day in the first year of the reign 00:21:28.430 --> 00:21:32.789 of King Joan I of Aragon. and Queen Violant 00:21:32.789 --> 00:21:36.029 de Bar. In the meantime, take care.