WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:06.540 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:13.839 it was February 15th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.839 --> 00:00:17.239 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:17.239 --> 00:00:21.219 University of New Mexico. And this is The Historian's 00:00:21.219 --> 00:00:26.120 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.899 --> 00:00:30.960 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:34.399 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:34.399 --> 00:00:39.219 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:39.219 --> 00:00:43.880 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:08.359 --> 00:01:13.239 Alright folks, you ready for a time warp? This, 00:01:13.239 --> 00:01:16.480 I mean we're already in a giant time warp, but 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:21.459 even further, or I guess even more winding, this 00:01:21.459 --> 00:01:25.000 document takes us back all the way to episode 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:33.239 two. from December 26th, the second day of 1387. 00:01:33.739 --> 00:01:35.420 If you weren't here for the beginning of the 00:01:35.420 --> 00:01:39.239 podcast, you might not know this, but the day 00:01:39.239 --> 00:01:43.859 for New Year's Day shifted. And in some places, 00:01:43.879 --> 00:01:46.620 it was all the way in March on Annunciation Day. 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:52.079 But in the Crown of Aragon in this time period, 00:01:52.640 --> 00:01:56.579 they celebrated the new year and changed over 00:01:56.579 --> 00:02:02.959 the date of the year on December 25th and so 00:02:03.180 --> 00:02:06.900 our first episode of the podcast, following along 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:11.199 everything that happened in 1387, it was December 00:02:11.199 --> 00:02:13.960 25th. And then episode two, second day of the 00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:19.479 year, was December 26th. And on that day, Joan 00:02:19.479 --> 00:02:24.240 wrote a letter to somebody who he started the 00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:31.520 letter off as Maestro Caro Amigo. Maestro Caro 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:36.740 Amigo. And this letter starts off the same way. 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:42.300 But if you go back and look at our document from 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:46.500 December 26th, Episode 2, what you'll notice 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:50.800 is that there's a difference in the addressee 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:54.409 listed at the bottom of the letter. And this 00:02:54.409 --> 00:02:57.969 really threw me off. I didn't really connect 00:02:57.969 --> 00:03:01.689 it back when I first was working on this letter. 00:03:02.189 --> 00:03:06.150 I've actually seen a lot of letters from Joan 00:03:06.150 --> 00:03:11.530 and Violant to the master of the hospitallers, 00:03:11.949 --> 00:03:15.930 Juan Fernandez de Heredia. and they almost always 00:03:15.930 --> 00:03:19.810 in the address line at the bottom will have the 00:03:19.810 --> 00:03:23.990 term roda the master of Rhodes because the title 00:03:23.990 --> 00:03:27.430 of the head of the hospitallers was the master 00:03:27.430 --> 00:03:30.669 of Rhodes as in like the island the greek island 00:03:30.669 --> 00:03:34.509 Rhodes because that's where the headquarters of 00:03:34.509 --> 00:03:39.870 the order of the hospitallers was located by contrast 00:03:40.199 --> 00:03:44.180 This letter's addressee line at the bottom gets 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:47.620 into some really tough paleography at the end. 00:03:48.379 --> 00:03:52.800 The first part is pretty readable. It's a dirigir, 00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:58.060 so directed to Magistro, the master, and 00:03:58.060 --> 00:04:02.460 then we got our tough word. The first letter 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:09.000 is almost certainly an H. it just does not look 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:15.479 like an H, but if you compare it to the, let's 00:04:15.479 --> 00:04:20.680 see, sixth word in the third to last line, it's 00:04:20.680 --> 00:04:25.120 there saying, havemos, that H, this particular 00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:29.839 scribe just puts like the hump of the H really 00:04:29.839 --> 00:04:35.800 high up. And so if you compare, the H there to 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:40.000 what we see at the beginning of this last word 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:47.839 of the line. It becomes a passable H and a better 00:04:47.839 --> 00:04:51.699 contender for the letter H than as it would be 00:04:51.699 --> 00:04:55.639 a contender for any other letter. And then the 00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:59.240 O is sort of clear, and then the letter S, it 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:02.240 just looks a lot like the P that follows it, 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:05.199 but it's a little bit skinnier, so I think we 00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:08.699 can be pretty sure that this is H -O -S -P, and 00:05:08.699 --> 00:05:13.279 then I -T is pretty clear, and then the A is 00:05:13.279 --> 00:05:16.899 not clear, but it sort of follows the strokes 00:05:16.899 --> 00:05:19.959 that an A would usually have, and then L -I -S. 00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:26.790 I used ChatGPT, for this letter and I have to 00:05:26.790 --> 00:05:31.170 say this is the instance in the podcast where 00:05:31.170 --> 00:05:37.350 I have gotten the most leverage out of what the 00:05:37.350 --> 00:05:41.089 large language model chat bots can do because 00:05:41.089 --> 00:05:44.110 while I could have gone through and googled a 00:05:44.110 --> 00:05:48.269 lot of the stuff in here and figured out the 00:05:48.269 --> 00:05:51.930 same thing that ChatGPT retrieved for me pretty 00:05:51.930 --> 00:05:55.949 much. It would have taken me three hours and 00:05:55.949 --> 00:06:00.509 ChatGPT was able to provide it in like 10 minutes 00:06:00.509 --> 00:06:05.110 at most. So first off, I wanted to just have 00:06:05.110 --> 00:06:07.709 ChatGPT run through some other possibilities 00:06:07.709 --> 00:06:12.589 for what this last word in the addressee line 00:06:12.589 --> 00:06:17.449 could possibly be, but chat GPT came down on 00:06:17.449 --> 00:06:19.269 the same side of this as I did that it's really 00:06:19.269 --> 00:06:25.290 got to be hospitalis especially because at the 00:06:25.290 --> 00:06:28.089 end of the second line of the letter we've I 00:06:28.089 --> 00:06:31.250 think got the word orden so we're talking about 00:06:31.250 --> 00:06:37.850 an order and then other little clues in the letter 00:06:37.850 --> 00:06:44.310 help out with that too so Joan is writing to 00:06:44.310 --> 00:06:48.709 somebody that he calls Maestro Caro Amigo. The 00:06:48.709 --> 00:06:52.050 person could be identified as the master of the 00:06:52.050 --> 00:06:56.550 hospitallers. And so I think it's just got to 00:06:56.550 --> 00:07:02.629 be Juan Fernandez de Heredia. And I am just really 00:07:02.629 --> 00:07:08.560 surprised to not see some form of Rhodes in the 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.379 Addressee line, so I'm still holding out like 00:07:11.379 --> 00:07:15.740 a little cautionary note here that maybe this 00:07:15.740 --> 00:07:19.300 is not Juan Fernández de Heredia, but I'm... 00:07:19.290 --> 00:07:23.069 I don't know, I'm like at this like 98 % sure 00:07:23.069 --> 00:07:27.689 that it is. And then that can take us back to 00:07:27.689 --> 00:07:32.350 compare to corroborate what we had from December 00:07:32.350 --> 00:07:39.329 26th of 1387, which is, remember, before February 00:07:39.329 --> 00:07:44.600 15th of the same year. And in that earlier letter, 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:48.459 we've got a recommendation for some kind of ecclesiastical 00:07:48.459 --> 00:07:53.079 post. This letter takes that whole thing a step 00:07:53.079 --> 00:07:57.420 further. And again, it's it is just it's chat 00:07:57.420 --> 00:08:02.000 GPT that has surfaced some of this for me in 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.579 a way that I honestly don't think I would have 00:08:04.579 --> 00:08:09.100 had the time to discover on my own just through 00:08:09.100 --> 00:08:15.139 Googling and so forth. What I learned is that 00:08:15.139 --> 00:08:24.720 the place name that is mentioned in the seventh 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:33.279 line is near Tourelle and that place in the letter 00:08:33.279 --> 00:08:40.460 is Vielle or Ville. And that is a small town 00:08:40.460 --> 00:08:46.139 that is near the city of Teruel. And Teruel has 00:08:46.139 --> 00:08:49.299 been around ever since Roman times and was actually 00:08:49.299 --> 00:08:53.559 the site of a really terrible bloody battle during 00:08:53.559 --> 00:08:59.720 the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Teruel is about 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:04.720 halfway between Zaragoza in the north and Valencia. 00:09:04.970 --> 00:09:07.429 in the south on the coast of the Mediterranean, 00:09:08.169 --> 00:09:11.889 and it's a mountainous region, generally speaking. 00:09:12.789 --> 00:09:17.409 And so this particular location is in the province 00:09:17.409 --> 00:09:22.950 named after Teruel, and the town in this letter, 00:09:23.029 --> 00:09:27.129 mentioned in this letter, Vielle or Ville, is 00:09:27.129 --> 00:09:33.220 the site of what is today ruins of what was originally 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:37.940 a templar castle. The Order of the Templars, 00:09:38.360 --> 00:09:40.980 the Knights Templars, when they were going strong 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:47.679 they had a castle in this town and it was part 00:09:47.679 --> 00:09:50.740 of their overall network of castles and so on 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:54.419 and so forth. And then the templars were persecuted 00:09:54.419 --> 00:10:00.850 and started to peter out, and the hospitallers 00:10:00.850 --> 00:10:05.049 took over a lot of their properties and territories, 00:10:05.330 --> 00:10:10.629 and this particular castle is one of those. So 00:10:10.629 --> 00:10:14.370 Joan, in this letter, is recommending somebody 00:10:14.370 --> 00:10:23.690 named Brother Almany de Choulouet, or Ehoulouet, 00:10:23.710 --> 00:10:31.250 and The last part of the name there is correspondent 00:10:31.250 --> 00:10:38.350 to the modern town of Ejulve. So maybe even at 00:10:38.350 --> 00:10:40.870 that time that U would have been pronounced as 00:10:40.870 --> 00:10:46.149 a V. In Latin, by the way, the U's and the V's 00:10:46.149 --> 00:10:51.730 are interchangeable. So Joan is recommending 00:10:51.730 --> 00:10:57.980 this particular friar. for the command position 00:10:57.980 --> 00:11:03.019 of this hospitaller castle. But then there's 00:11:03.019 --> 00:11:09.440 more! This particular posting was actually the 00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:13.919 first major assignment, the first major posting 00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:19.860 for Juan Fernández de Heredia himself, decades 00:11:19.860 --> 00:11:26.340 earlier. And so this is an interesting full circle 00:11:26.340 --> 00:11:31.220 moment, maybe rife with nostalgia. But I don't 00:11:31.220 --> 00:11:37.679 know if Joan is aware of that. My guess is that 00:11:37.679 --> 00:11:43.820 he is because this letter seems to me to be pretty 00:11:43.820 --> 00:11:49.980 overflowing with praise and it's a strong recommendation 00:11:49.980 --> 00:11:54.159 letter. I think in today's parlance we would 00:11:54.159 --> 00:11:58.980 say something like, I recommend with the highest 00:11:58.980 --> 00:12:06.779 enthusiasm. And so possibly Joan is nudging at 00:12:06.779 --> 00:12:10.220 Juan Fernandez de Heredia saying, I've found 00:12:10.220 --> 00:12:14.379 somebody that you would be proud to have in the 00:12:14.379 --> 00:12:17.759 post that you once held when you were starting 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:21.960 out. So there's that little poetic resonance 00:12:21.960 --> 00:12:28.200 that honestly I would not have been able to connect 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:31.639 very easily. It would have taken me some time. 00:12:31.639 --> 00:12:35.009 It would have gotten there eventually, but This 00:12:35.009 --> 00:12:38.230 is still a bit tangential to my main research 00:12:38.230 --> 00:12:41.250 question. I'm not really seeing much about the 00:12:41.250 --> 00:12:45.149 relationship between Joan and Violant together 00:12:45.149 --> 00:12:48.870 surfacing in this letter. Maybe something else 00:12:48.870 --> 00:12:53.389 will come along down the road and it'll trigger 00:12:53.389 --> 00:13:00.269 that connection, but I was able to leverage the 00:13:00.269 --> 00:13:03.610 large language model very beautifully to bring 00:13:03.610 --> 00:13:06.909 out some interesting details in this letter. 00:13:07.509 --> 00:13:10.629 So I'm not one to say that you should always 00:13:10.629 --> 00:13:15.710 use ChatGPT or always use an AI chatbot. I'm 00:13:15.710 --> 00:13:20.799 just saying that if you use it, cautiously, and 00:13:20.799 --> 00:13:23.899 you practice with it, and you don't give yourself 00:13:23.899 --> 00:13:27.019 over to it, but you remain open to what it could 00:13:27.019 --> 00:13:30.820 deliver for you, then you have a lot of benefits 00:13:30.820 --> 00:13:34.860 to be gained. And in other situations, I've been 00:13:34.860 --> 00:13:38.259 really like, oh, it was more of a waste of time 00:13:38.259 --> 00:13:42.399 to use chat GPT. But in this situation, it really, 00:13:42.460 --> 00:13:48.450 it really paid off. I also want to One last thing 00:13:48.450 --> 00:13:51.789 that Chat GPT didn't really pick out, but I want 00:13:51.789 --> 00:13:55.549 to highlight is that in a close reading of this 00:13:55.549 --> 00:14:01.029 document, I just want to note this word that 00:14:01.029 --> 00:14:08.210 to me is helping to think of this letter as invoking 00:14:08.210 --> 00:14:12.450 a bit more of an emotional connection, not necessarily 00:14:12.450 --> 00:14:15.450 the nostalgic twist that I was talking about 00:14:15.450 --> 00:14:20.700 before. but it's this word that is in that third 00:14:20.700 --> 00:14:23.700 line from the bottom where we had looked for 00:14:23.700 --> 00:14:26.899 the letter H and that weird way of writing H 00:14:26.899 --> 00:14:31.879 in havemos and right afterwards it's the word 00:14:31.879 --> 00:14:39.320 acorazon and the last three letters are CON, 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:43.000 but the C has a çedilla, which makes it a soft 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:45.879 C, which then what could later be turned into 00:14:45.879 --> 00:14:49.919 the letter Z. And so we have some kind of reference 00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:53.320 to the heart here, if unless I'm reading this 00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:55.279 wrong, and there's like another definition. But 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:57.600 that's what I think right now is that there's 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:03.419 this reference to the heart that there's some 00:15:03.419 --> 00:15:09.269 kind of extra umph emotionally that had to do 00:15:09.269 --> 00:15:13.289 with the deeds that have have been carried out 00:15:13.289 --> 00:15:20.110 by this this um i think it's referring to the 00:15:20.110 --> 00:15:23.429 deeds of the friar alamani but it could actually 00:15:23.429 --> 00:15:29.809 be um in connection Joan has some special connection 00:15:29.809 --> 00:15:33.909 to this friar emotionally, or it could be invoking 00:15:33.909 --> 00:15:37.509 the special connection between Joan and Juan 00:15:37.509 --> 00:15:41.470 Fernández de Heredia. So, not quite sure where 00:15:41.470 --> 00:15:45.429 the corazón connection is, but it's there. And 00:15:45.429 --> 00:15:48.830 I just want to note that particular word and 00:15:48.830 --> 00:15:53.429 see when that word might come up again in future 00:15:53.429 --> 00:15:58.210 letters. Of course, there's still so many unanswered 00:15:58.210 --> 00:16:05.740 questions, like, did Fray Alemani de Ejulve 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:10.779 get the job? And what happened to him afterwards? 00:16:11.879 --> 00:16:16.440 Did Violant also correspond with Juan Fernandez 00:16:16.440 --> 00:16:19.379 de Heredia, the master of Rhodes, the master of 00:16:19.379 --> 00:16:24.139 the hospitalers, around these days? Was this 00:16:24.139 --> 00:16:28.600 particular person mentioned in her letters? Well... 00:16:28.669 --> 00:16:32.570 It's really hard to figure out until these become 00:16:32.570 --> 00:16:36.970 searchable. And as the paleography presents so 00:16:36.970 --> 00:16:39.809 much of a challenge, it's incredibly difficult 00:16:39.809 --> 00:16:43.850 to make them searchable. Although with advances 00:16:43.850 --> 00:16:49.590 in optical character recognition and handwritten 00:16:49.590 --> 00:16:53.389 text recognition, there might actually be full 00:16:53.389 --> 00:16:57.570 text searchability of these in the not too distant 00:16:57.570 --> 00:17:03.389 future. Alright, thanks for listening to this 00:17:03.389 --> 00:17:06.730 episode of the Historian's Notebook, Season 1, 00:17:07.009 --> 00:17:10.309 Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving with 00:17:10.309 --> 00:17:13.230 more questions than you arrived with, I have 00:17:13.230 --> 00:17:17.490 done my job. Remember, the motto of the Historian's 00:17:17.490 --> 00:17:22.220 Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. Visit 00:17:22.220 --> 00:17:25.220 the website to see an image of today's document 00:17:25.220 --> 00:17:28.720 and additional show notes, including links to 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:30.940 little Wikipedia pages about all these different 00:17:30.940 --> 00:17:36.000 places, and also a link back to episode two, 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:39.880 where you can see the other letter to Juan Fernandez 00:17:39.880 --> 00:17:45.000 de Heredia. And listen again tomorrow to hear 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:48.619 about the next day in the first year of the reign 00:17:48.619 --> 00:17:53.099 of King Joan I of Aragon. and Queen Violant 00:17:53.099 --> 00:17:56.420 de Bar. In the meantime, take care.