WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.599 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, 00:00:07.139 --> 00:00:14.259 it was February 14, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:14.259 --> 00:00:17.920 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:21.539 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:21.539 --> 00:00:25.780 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:31.079 Season 1 is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:34.380 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:34.380 --> 00:00:38.960 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:43.759 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:07.820 --> 00:01:12.579 Today is Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day, 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:18.680 everybody! Well, at the time that Joan and Violant 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:22.359 ruled as king and queen of the Crown of Aragon, 00:01:23.239 --> 00:01:26.819 Valentine's Day celebrations had not really kicked 00:01:26.819 --> 00:01:31.170 off just yet. There's some debate over whether 00:01:31.170 --> 00:01:35.069 there's a reference to actual Valentine's Day 00:01:35.069 --> 00:01:38.549 as we know it today as a celebration of love 00:01:38.549 --> 00:01:43.170 in Chaucer. There's a bit of debate about whether 00:01:43.170 --> 00:01:48.670 that reference really is to St. Valentine as 00:01:48.670 --> 00:01:53.870 we think of Valentine's Day. But then in the 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:57.640 15th century, there's a lot of documentation 00:01:57.640 --> 00:02:03.340 of Valentine's Day being celebrated as a day 00:02:03.340 --> 00:02:09.740 to commemorate romantic love. But that's the 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:14.419 15th century, and we're still in the 1300s, well 00:02:14.419 --> 00:02:17.819 before any known documentation of Valentine's 00:02:17.819 --> 00:02:22.180 Day as a day to celebrate love. And so maybe 00:02:22.180 --> 00:02:28.330 we should Return to a tradition that It's not 00:02:28.330 --> 00:02:31.530 really a tradition at all. Actually, it's a moment 00:02:31.530 --> 00:02:37.750 in the reign of King Joan the first of Aragon 00:02:37.750 --> 00:02:42.169 and Queen Violant de Bar because on Valentine's 00:02:42.169 --> 00:02:47.270 Day Joan and Violant were probably still talking 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:53.610 about the bishop of Valencia, and on Valentine's 00:02:53.610 --> 00:02:58.370 Day itself, Violante wrote a letter to the pope 00:02:58.370 --> 00:03:03.750 and told the pope how much she and Joan really 00:03:03.750 --> 00:03:08.969 wanted the bishop of Valencia, James, Joanne's 00:03:08.969 --> 00:03:13.770 first cousin, once removed, to become a cardinal. 00:03:14.490 --> 00:03:21.500 So I think writing to the pope together is not 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:25.759 exactly a modern notion of romantic love but 00:03:25.759 --> 00:03:31.900 I think that they were really in cahoots together 00:03:31.900 --> 00:03:37.199 in this effort to get James the Bishop of Valencia 00:03:37.199 --> 00:03:41.419 to become a cardinal and so I am happy to report 00:03:41.419 --> 00:03:46.120 that on this Valentine's Day we do have some 00:03:46.120 --> 00:03:52.840 evidence that Joan and Violant were, well, I 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:58.400 can't say expressing romantic love to the pope, 00:03:59.419 --> 00:04:02.780 or the love that they had for each other to the 00:04:02.780 --> 00:04:07.360 pope, but we just have another instance in which 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:12.520 we can see coordination between them in the letters 00:04:12.520 --> 00:04:20.110 that we have in the registers. Now, this particular 00:04:20.110 --> 00:04:24.769 letter has some interesting features and it's 00:04:24.769 --> 00:04:27.649 in Latin so of course I struggled and of course 00:04:27.649 --> 00:04:32.810 I went to chat GPT. First of all, we know that 00:04:32.810 --> 00:04:36.730 the sender is Violant because it's in a register 00:04:36.730 --> 00:04:44.170 of hers and at the bottom of it there's a clear 00:04:44.170 --> 00:04:56.680 probata that labels Oh gosh, the ending is abbreviated, 00:04:56.699 --> 00:04:59.959 and I don't have a good enough grasp of Latin 00:04:59.959 --> 00:05:03.800 to tell you what the real ending is. But anyway, 00:05:04.100 --> 00:05:08.180 we know it's from Violant. It's in a register 00:05:08.180 --> 00:05:13.529 called varia. another Varia register, not the 00:05:13.529 --> 00:05:18.689 same Varia as yesterday. So yes, there were two 00:05:18.689 --> 00:05:22.490 different Varia registers being contributed to 00:05:22.490 --> 00:05:27.529 at the same time. Or maybe the binding of these 00:05:27.529 --> 00:05:31.629 Varia registers happened later and it wasn't 00:05:31.629 --> 00:05:34.550 quite as intentional on part on the part of the 00:05:34.550 --> 00:05:38.870 chancery staff to have two different varia registers 00:05:38.870 --> 00:05:44.449 going at the same time the dating clause has 00:05:44.449 --> 00:05:50.009 in it right before the date of the 14th of february 00:05:50.009 --> 00:05:58.980 that the seal level is so it's not the same as 00:05:58.980 --> 00:06:03.899 yesterday's, which was sigelo secreto acostumat. 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:10.319 This one ends in asueto, so I am just going to 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:13.439 try to investigate that and figure out the difference. 00:06:14.839 --> 00:06:19.579 But I don't have it yet, so stay tuned. I'm gonna 00:06:19.579 --> 00:06:21.660 get it by the end of this year. The difference 00:06:21.660 --> 00:06:27.220 between Sigelo Secreto Acostumat and Sigelo Secreto 00:06:27.220 --> 00:06:31.720 Assueto. There's some other interesting stuff 00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:37.259 at the bottom of this letter. The first chunk 00:06:37.259 --> 00:06:42.800 of Addressi material is the very long official 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:48.050 title of the Avignon Pope Clement. the sixth, 00:06:48.389 --> 00:06:50.970 and I just want to point out we've had this once 00:06:50.970 --> 00:06:55.910 before in the podcast, but the last line of that 00:06:55.910 --> 00:07:02.050 three -line chunk has the word universalis, so 00:07:02.050 --> 00:07:06.050 universalis ecclesiae, so the universal church. 00:07:06.389 --> 00:07:13.009 It's a statement that keys into the overall tense 00:07:13.279 --> 00:07:18.779 context of the Great Western Schism, and you 00:07:18.779 --> 00:07:23.379 could hear Shadow feeling the tension of that 00:07:23.379 --> 00:07:28.800 schism. Isn't that right, Shadow? Yeah. Yes, 00:07:28.939 --> 00:07:35.500 okay. That's enough. It was disturbing. I haven't 00:07:35.500 --> 00:07:39.160 talked about the Great Western Schism for a while, 00:07:39.160 --> 00:07:43.579 so it'd probably be good to review that and to 00:07:43.579 --> 00:07:48.079 explain what has got my cat Shadow so upset about 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:52.920 it. The Great Western Schism arose out of a dispute 00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:58.339 over the selection of the pope after Gregory 00:07:58.339 --> 00:08:03.439 XI had died, and that's it. So it's not really 00:08:03.439 --> 00:08:07.860 much of a doctrinal difference between the two 00:08:07.860 --> 00:08:13.699 sides that split. apart, they're instead just 00:08:13.699 --> 00:08:17.379 really focused on the leadership dynamics and 00:08:17.379 --> 00:08:20.560 the internal politics of the selection of the 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:24.019 pope. And so, oh, I think earlier I might have 00:08:24.019 --> 00:08:27.259 accidentally said Clement VI, but actually it's 00:08:27.259 --> 00:08:32.580 Clement VII, who is the pope in Avignon, and 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:38.100 the pope in Rome at this time is Urban VI. And 00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:43.860 so the leaders of the various polities in Western 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:47.820 Europe had to make a choice or attempt to stay 00:08:47.820 --> 00:08:51.220 neutral. This whole thing went down in 1378, 00:08:51.519 --> 00:08:54.740 and at that time, Per the Ceremonious was on 00:08:54.740 --> 00:08:57.279 the throne, and he had been around long enough, 00:08:57.299 --> 00:08:59.179 he was kind of old at that point, he had been 00:08:59.179 --> 00:09:02.220 around long enough to have seen all kinds of 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:07.139 crazy instability, and so he figured, you know 00:09:07.139 --> 00:09:09.519 what, they're just gonna sort this out. I'm not 00:09:09.519 --> 00:09:13.879 gonna bother taking a side here. And he wanted 00:09:13.879 --> 00:09:18.539 to just wait it out. But unfortunately, it was 00:09:18.539 --> 00:09:21.320 gonna go on for a while. It actually doesn't 00:09:21.320 --> 00:09:27.639 get resolved until after 1400. And so Joan, 00:09:27.879 --> 00:09:33.169 who had a bit more of a forethought of the future 00:09:33.169 --> 00:09:37.149 in his worldview. He decided that he was going 00:09:37.149 --> 00:09:41.889 to make a choice, and with his Francophilia, 00:09:42.029 --> 00:09:48.529 he chose the Avignon Pope, Clement VII. we see 00:09:48.529 --> 00:09:53.570 actually that Joan is one of the most steadfast 00:09:53.570 --> 00:09:59.389 allies of the Avignon papacy. And then one other 00:09:59.389 --> 00:10:02.409 thing that I'll reiterate from an earlier episode 00:10:02.409 --> 00:10:07.909 is that the pope who comes to power after Clement 00:10:07.909 --> 00:10:12.090 VII, which is well, this transition happens in 00:10:12.090 --> 00:10:17.519 the 1390s at some point, That person is from 00:10:17.519 --> 00:10:21.000 the Crown of Aragon. That person is actually 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:26.620 from the DeLuna family, related to Marti's wife, 00:10:27.179 --> 00:10:30.240 Maria DeLuna. Not a super close relation, but 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:35.740 like definitely in the clan, and so the Avignon 00:10:35.740 --> 00:10:40.639 papacy becomes so closely connected to the Crown 00:10:40.639 --> 00:10:45.340 of Aragon over the course of Joan and Violant's 00:10:45.340 --> 00:10:50.669 reign. My feeling as I'm looking at the documentation 00:10:50.669 --> 00:10:54.049 and reading the secondary literature is that 00:10:54.049 --> 00:10:59.950 Violant has some kind of connection also to 00:10:59.950 --> 00:11:04.190 Clement VII. I haven't found exactly what that 00:11:04.190 --> 00:11:08.029 is, but I think her social network and the social 00:11:08.029 --> 00:11:11.490 network of Clement VII have a lot of overlap. 00:11:12.039 --> 00:11:16.740 So we see Violant writing to the Pope directly 00:11:16.740 --> 00:11:19.799 on a lot of occasions, and this is one of them 00:11:19.799 --> 00:11:24.419 because I looked around the other pages in Joan's 00:11:24.419 --> 00:11:27.620 register from when he wrote to the Cardinals 00:11:27.620 --> 00:11:33.259 about James, the Bishop of Valencia, and I couldn't 00:11:33.259 --> 00:11:37.799 find a letter from Joan to the Pope directly, 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:42.149 but here's Violant a couple days later. writing 00:11:42.149 --> 00:11:47.110 to the Pope directly and saying, hey, my husband 00:11:47.110 --> 00:11:52.070 the King and I would be very pleased if you could 00:11:52.070 --> 00:11:57.929 expedite, there's the word expedire there in 00:11:57.929 --> 00:12:02.909 this letter, if you could expedite this process 00:12:02.909 --> 00:12:07.669 for James the Bishop of Valencia to become a 00:12:07.669 --> 00:12:13.379 Cardinal. So that's actually the content of this 00:12:13.379 --> 00:12:16.500 letter, but there's one last bit of writing at 00:12:16.500 --> 00:12:20.500 the very bottom of the folio underneath the chunk 00:12:20.500 --> 00:12:25.659 for the addressee of the Pope himself. And in 00:12:25.659 --> 00:12:31.240 this selection, we've got some language that 00:12:31.240 --> 00:12:36.070 indicates that all of the Cardinals in the College 00:12:36.070 --> 00:12:38.909 of Cardinals are also going to get a copy of 00:12:38.909 --> 00:12:43.490 this letter, but it's going to be somehow adjusted. 00:12:44.210 --> 00:13:00.129 So the last phrase in that bottom chunk is So 00:13:00.129 --> 00:13:03.990 something is going to be left out sine without 00:13:03.990 --> 00:13:08.019 the subscript. and I'm not quite sure how much 00:13:08.019 --> 00:13:12.019 of an adjustment is being indicated here, but 00:13:12.019 --> 00:13:15.399 I do find it really interesting that the scribes 00:13:15.399 --> 00:13:19.940 took the time to spell out that there would be 00:13:19.940 --> 00:13:24.320 a difference in content for the copies of this 00:13:24.320 --> 00:13:28.220 letter that are being sent to the College of 00:13:28.220 --> 00:13:32.360 Cardinals, because usually they don't get that 00:13:32.360 --> 00:13:36.450 nitty -gritty with what is going to be different 00:13:36.450 --> 00:13:41.149 about copies. So maybe this is indicating there's 00:13:41.149 --> 00:13:46.409 something a bit more different in the outgoing 00:13:46.409 --> 00:13:48.809 letters, the copies that are going to or the 00:13:48.809 --> 00:13:50.870 one copy that's going to go to the College of 00:13:50.870 --> 00:13:55.070 Cardinals. Or maybe they're just making sure 00:13:55.070 --> 00:14:01.090 to be super clear because this is a high status 00:14:01.090 --> 00:14:07.720 recipient. I do want to say at this point that 00:14:07.720 --> 00:14:11.460 I'm noticing that Violant writes to the Pope 00:14:11.460 --> 00:14:17.500 a lot. Like, it's almost like every other day 00:14:17.500 --> 00:14:22.220 she's writing to the Pope. So it's like the Pope 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:28.279 update of the day, it seems. But in this instance, 00:14:28.279 --> 00:14:31.879 we've got the coordinated effort between Joan 00:14:31.879 --> 00:14:38.379 and Violant. on behalf of the bishop of Valencia, 00:14:38.740 --> 00:14:44.320 trying to get him to become a cardinal. So it's 00:14:44.320 --> 00:14:47.440 not just, you know, the latest pope update or 00:14:47.440 --> 00:14:51.080 like the latest thing on the pope list from Violant. 00:14:51.620 --> 00:14:56.740 We've got, in addition to that, we've got this 00:14:56.740 --> 00:14:59.360 coordinated effort that's happening that I see 00:14:59.360 --> 00:15:02.679 again and again and again, and others such as 00:15:02.730 --> 00:15:06.789 Claire Ponsich have pointed out is just happening 00:15:06.789 --> 00:15:11.450 a lot in the correspondence of Joan and Violant. 00:15:12.629 --> 00:15:15.909 I did want to just mention really quickly something 00:15:15.909 --> 00:15:20.590 else about Valencia, which is that it is very 00:15:20.590 --> 00:15:24.950 closely interwoven into the governance and economy 00:15:24.950 --> 00:15:29.159 of the Crown of Aragon. It's been under the sovereignty 00:15:29.159 --> 00:15:35.179 of the Crown of Aragon for about 150 years. So 00:15:35.179 --> 00:15:38.960 we're not talking about some kind of far -flung 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:44.639 random region. We're talking about a very interwoven 00:15:44.639 --> 00:15:48.519 part of the Crown of Aragon, as you can imagine 00:15:48.519 --> 00:15:52.000 from the fact that one of the main authorities 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:58.509 there is the First cousin once removed of Joan 00:15:58.509 --> 00:16:02.830 himself, and I'm talking about James the Bishop 00:16:02.830 --> 00:16:08.210 of Valencia. All right, thanks for listening 00:16:08.210 --> 00:16:12.269 to this episode of the Historian's Notebook, 00:16:12.549 --> 00:16:16.360 Season 1. Molt Cara Companyona! If you are 00:16:16.360 --> 00:16:18.799 leaving with more questions than you arrived 00:16:18.799 --> 00:16:23.279 with, I have done my job. Remember, the motto 00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:27.580 of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction 00:16:27.580 --> 00:16:31.440 guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image 00:16:31.440 --> 00:16:34.519 of today's document. and additional show notes, 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.860 and listen again tomorrow to hear about the next 00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:41.940 day in the first year of the reign of King Joan 00:16:41.940 --> 00:16:47.080 I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the 00:16:47.080 --> 00:16:48.899 meantime, take care.