Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was February 18th, 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.
Today's document is one that will knock your
socks off. I just couldn't believe what I was
reading when I came upon this letter in one of
Violon's registers, the Varia. And believe me,
this Varia, I think what happened is that they
just were getting organized. with a lot of the
setup for the registers for the new reign. And
so Varia is actually all this stuff put together
that would have normally been in the secret seal
or other things. There's just a lot of secret
seal documents in the Varia. And so I think that
the reason we have a Varia register here is because
of the big transition period as the close out
of Pere's archives takes place and then the setup
of the archives for the new king and queen are
getting going. So these letters they're in the
middle of others that are not secret seal but
these are definitely whoo -hoo these are secret
seal. All right. I don't even know where to begin.
Should I just tell you the big headline here?
All right, Violant is admitting that Joan
was very sick. It's the first time that I've
seen her do this. It's February 18th and no one
has included these particular letters in the
histories of Joan's illness. So Josep Roca, who
really did the foundational archival work about
Joan's illness in this year, has identified documents
from April that he says are retrospective that
talk about this time in the early months. of
the year. And then we also have Jaume Rira i Sans,
who has done work and has found documents from
January itself. And I'm trying to think of who
else. I'll put more citations in the bibliography.
But basically, oh, I think Rafael Tasis i Marca
has identified that there's documentation for
Joan's illness in January, and we can infer from
his lack of movement to Barcelona in those first
weeks of January, based on the letters that we've
seen in the itinerary put together by Daniel
Girona y Llagostera, and then just looking at
the registers themselves. He's just not in Barcelona
when By all accounts and reasons he should have
been taking the throne there in Barcelona So
we know that he has gone through this illness
in January And the question is how long has it
lasted? How much has it been? lingering and here
we have a document in February middle of February
Well, actually yeah and and Here we've got this
admission from Violante that there has been big
trouble. I'm going to read out this letter in
full. It is about 12 lines long. All right, so
we have Violante not at the beginning with La
Reyna, but at the end she signs it off as La
Reyna. So it starts. [see episode webpage for transcription]
... the 18th of February of 1387, La Reyna. I did that the dates in English
because I always get tripped up and they're in
Roman numerals anyway. All right, so she's writing
to her father and I will also say that I'm going
to include on the webpage for this document a
letter that appears in an earlier folio that
she writes to her brother and it's a little bit
more circumspect than this one to her father,
but it's the same sense. This one to her father
is saying that, and it's in the second line of
the letter, which is at the very bottom of folio
86 V, that my husband was, and then this verb
is a tough one because it doesn't seem to have
really gone through. I think there's some spelling
difference, because the best definition I could
find was distracted, but I think something like
thrown off course or disturbed, so distrasiat,
distrasiat de malaltia, de febre. So thrown off
by or disturbed by malaltia, illness, there's
the word. illness. That word has been glossed
over and referred to by euphemism in a lot of
the earlier documents by saying, you know, arduis
negocis, difficult business, or accidents. And
then we've got accidents in this line too, but
malaltia is actually said. And not only that,
but Violante specifies it further with the word
for fever, febre, which interestingly enough
is very close to the word for February. So I
don't know the etymological relationship there,
but there's great similarity but anyway malaltia
de febre illness of fever and then she adds to
all trace accidents and other misfortunes i mean
she just has admitted it why well we get the
answer a little bit later but first she adds
two lines of reassurance that he's today okay
and at on the next page on folio 87r line two
at the end todos los metges dihen all the doctors
say he is out of danger as fora de perill so he's
okay now is the main point that she's trying
to get across. Why does she need to say this?
It's because she is aware that there have been
rumors. I mean, reports. I mean, a rumor that
is true would be a report. There's been a leak
of the information. out and about, and so she's
become aware that others found out, and she refers
to this as alcunes noves contrarias, some contrary
news, and that's in line three of folio 87r.
So Violant is definitely reassuring her father
and you know, he can spread the word, I guess,
that Joan is okay. And she also in later in
the letter talks about her own children are all
okay. Everybody is okay. And so this letter is
one that, well, confirms a bunch of things. First,
that they were not successful in keeping Joan's
illness secret. I guess that's not really a shocker.
Everybody had to have noticed that Joan was not
in Barcelona and Violant was in those early weeks
in January. So word leaked out and now they're
doing damage control. It also confirms something
about the speed of the correspondence. So here
we are in February 18th, and it seems to me that
Joan was okay by the end of January. So are
we seeing here a delay in the transmission of
information? I'm not quite sure where in France
Violant's father is located at this time. Is he
all the way in the county of Bar, which is actually
close to today's border between France and Germany?
Or is he in Paris? I'm not sure. By the way,
Violant's father's name is Robert de Bar. So
where is Robert de Bar right now, and has he
written to Violant telling her that he's heard
that Joan has been deathly ill? and that there
could be a serious problem with the succession?
I don't know, but it definitely confirms that
there is this communication lag of at least a
couple weeks, and the fact that she's sending
this letter out on February 18th and not January
29th says something possibly about communication
timeframes? Or maybe, maybe not. There's another
possibility that Joan's illness has lingered.
and that even though he's physically able to
get to Barcelona by January 19th, that's the
day when he starts signing his letters from Barcelona.
Even though he's been there for weeks, like since
January 19th, he emerged out of peril in... only
the last week or so. So Violant maybe is writing
with more fresh news than we might otherwise
think if we are inferring that Joan was all better
by the time he got to Barcelona on January 19th.
So... Is it a lingering illness or is it a communication
time lapse issue? Those are the questions that
I'm trying to sort out and I hope that in some
documents that I encounter between now and that
big one in April that I'll find a clue about
that. But to see the phrase malaltia de febre
sickness of fever in a letter from Violant about
Joan that was a shocker I did not expect her
to say that and maybe the fact that she is feeling
comfortable using that phrase is an indication
that Joan has been well for at least a couple
weeks So many questions about this one, goodness.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you
are leaving with more questions than you arrived
with, well, I hope so, because I mean, goodness,
there's some nice juicy questions from this one.
If you've got one of those in your mind now,
I've done my job. Remember, the motto of the
historian's notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed.
Visit the website to see an image of today's
document and additional show notes, including
a reprise of all of the sources that I found
about Joan's illness. 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.