Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was February 19, 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 1 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 super fun. It's about A troubadour!
And we get a little window into some of the troubadour
culture that Joan and Violant were setting
up at the beginning of their reign. So this is
a document from Joan. It's in a commune register,
so these are the documents that don't really
require the secret seal. and it's a letter of
safe passage for a troubadour. This particular
document is one that is in Latin, but it's fully,
beautifully transcribed in the collection of
music -related documents put together by Trenchs i Odena
and Baiges i Jardi in their collection that
I've referred to earlier on the podcast. So they
have done a beautiful job of transcribing the
Latin, and so I know exactly what this says.
Not because when the paleography is taken out
of the picture, I can understand Latin perfectly.
No. But when I have a transcription that I can
copy paste into Google Translate, then I can
get a translation that I can then go through
and proofread. And that is my method for handling
the lovely situation when I have a document that's
already transcribed for me. And so in this...
document, we have a pretty straightforward situation.
A troubadour is traveling through France and
Joan has written him a safe conduct letter that
he can show to the authorities and all of the
territories that he's passing through as he is
getting to his destination. But there's a lot
that comes up in this fairly straightforward
document. Its purpose is pretty straightforward,
but then we can kind of read against the grain
of this document in order to make some inferences
about some aspects of troubadour culture. cultural
diffusion as well as conditions in the royal
family and so there's a way to get a lot out
of this that has really nothing to do with the
intention of the document itself. And so this
is something that historians love to do and it's
a key practice that you don't just kind of say,
oh, this document is about a land sale, so it's
only about land sale, or this document, in today's
case, is about safe conduct, so it's only about
traveling across territories. No, you want to
look at the document and what's in it with questions
in mind that could take you in directions other
than what the stated purpose or surface level
meaning of the document might be. This is a really
great example of that. Let's start out with how
the subject of this letter, the person who is
at the center of this letter, is identified.
In Latin, Jacobinus de Bar. Jacobinus de Bar.
There we go. And it's the name Jacob. So Jacob
of Bar. Sound familiar? Yeah, this is someone
who's named after the same region that Violant
is named after. So Violant came from Bar.
She's the daughter of Robert of Bar, Robert
de Bar. And that region in itself has a really
interesting history. Duchy of Bar was created
for Violant's father for staying loyal to the
French king at the time. I think that was Jean
I. And Robert was given this real kind of patchwork
of lands that are what is today close to the
German border, the eastern part of France, and
they're really disconnected. It almost looks,
if you're looking at it on a map, I'll see if
I can actually find an image of it. put it on
the webpage for today's document it looks like
kind of like a bunch of grapes because there's
these little units that are kind of connected
by stems or something so it's an odd little dutchie
but really the important thing is that not so
much the the shape of it as just the status of
it of being a duke is a really big deal and it
elevates you in your status when you're hanging
out in Paris And so that's really the reason
for creating that duchy. And, you know, okay,
we've got a minstrel who's from there. That's
great. And maybe, maybe this is how Violant
found out that the rumors had spread all the
way back. to the eastern part of France about
Joan's illness. Maybe she heard it from this
minstrel. I don't know. I'm not quite sure how
comfortable a minstrel would be saying, hey,
you know, word has spread that the king was,
you know, deathly ill. But I don't know. It's
just interesting to note that on February 18th,
we have Violant writing to her father saying,
don't believe those rumors and then on December
19th we have this minstrel who's from Bar being
given this safe conduct letter so not not quite
sure what to make of that i think it's not likely
to be a pure coincidence but i'm also pretty
sure that a minstrel would not be the messenger
necessarily, but he could be the carrier of the
letter. So perhaps Violant is sending the letter
with this minstrel as he goes back to France.
All right, so Jacob de Bar, let's talk about
minstrels and their traveling habits. It's really
clear from the work of music historians that
Joan was recruiting minstrels from very far
away, like Flanders and Bavaria. England way
early in in his lifetime so pretty much as soon
as he can he's trying to commission the travel
of minstrels to perform in his in his ducal court
as the Duke of Girona, and we see this in the
time that he was married to his first wife, Mata
d'Armagnac, in the 1370s. and of course this really
picks up steam after he's able to plug in to
the social network of Violant de Bar after their
marriage. So minstrels are coming from all over
the place, and also musical instruments are coming
from all over the place. Joan really likes to
collect musical instruments, and we had a document
earlier in the podcast about that. So This Jacob
de Bar is a minstrel that has traveled quite
far in order to perform, but to perform for somebody
quite special, the three -year -old Prince Jaume.
And here... Jaume is referred to as Jacoby. So
in Latin, the name that we would associate with
Jacob was used for Jaume. It's interesting because
James is like an English form of Jacob. And in
English, though, we think of these very different
names, but in fact, James and Jacob, they're
in Latin, they're the same. Well, they have the
same origin point in Latin, I guess is a better
way to say it. So, Jaume, who's referred to here
as Primogeniti Nostri Carissimi, our most dear
firstborn, and then we've got his French title,
Dauphini Gerunde, the Dauphin of Gerona. And
then he also has another title that's listed
here, the Count of Cervera, Comites Cervarie.
So this minstrel is designated as a minstrel
for the three -year -old prince. What does that
mean? Does that really mean that he is dedicated
really only to performing for the three -year
-old? I sort of, I mean, obviously it's not going
to only be the minstrel and the toddler. It's
going to be the other people around at all the
performances. But I just, I get the feeling that
Jacob de Bar might specialize in, I don't know,
like the medieval equivalent of baby shark. That
this is somebody who's capable of doing music
and entertainment for kids. And this is probably,
you know, not somebody who is only going to be
performing that crazy cutting edge, ours subtilior
that you know, is very kind of hard on the ears,
but can be an acquired taste for those sophisticated
enough to enjoy it. So yeah, maybe Jacob de Bar
can also do some ars subtilior for the adults
after little Jaume's bedtime. But here he is
identified as the minstrel that is really for
the Prince Jaume. So that's a really interesting
feature of all of this that we've got minstrels
that are associated with individuals in the royal
family and that is actually something that's
corroborated by a bunch of other documents where
there's a particular minstrel who is identified
as belonging to the house of the queen or the
king's royal court royal household. So there's
certain minstrels that have long term appointments
in the households of different members of the
royal family. And then there's other minstrels
who are just passing through and they're not
really getting that long term appointment. And
so That's just another distinction for how this
musical patronage was organized. And I think
it's super interesting to see all these different
angles on it and to try to imagine how there
were. acts that were passing through and would
perform for just one night or two nights maybe,
and then maybe they could have kind of jam sessions
with the long -term house troubadours. It'd be
pretty cool. Anyway, that's just my guessing
at how all of this might work. One thing that
I want to mention before I forget, and I actually
wanted to put it earlier in today's podcast,
is the vocabulary around minstrels. The word
that's used to describe Jacob de Bar in this document
is ministrerius. And in Catalan, the most direct
translation of that is ministrer, which sounds
to us like minister, but that is a false cognate,
so it's more like minstrel. And so when we're
talking about the troubadours, they're often
referred to as minstrels, but you'll also see
the word joglar or joglars. So that's another
word to look out for. And I think there is another
word that begins with the letter T, something
like that sounds close to troubadour, but I can't
remember at the moment. If I do find that, I'll
put it in the webpage for today's episode. Something
else to point out as we're reading against the
grain of this letter, which is that there's a
specification of his belongings, Jacob de Bar,
the minstrel, that are protected in this letter
of safe conduct. That's super interesting. It's
in the line that begins... oh, let's see, where
does it start? Okay, so it's line one, two, three,
four, five, six. The end of line six. It starts
with this phrase, duobus equatoris, his two horses.
So the list begins his two horses, his servants,
his gold, his joc. This word is something that
wasn't easily translated. I think his instruments,
his jocalibus. And then other goods, aliis bonis.
So there's this list of his things as he's traveling.
What an interesting insight into the material
culture of travels that the minstrel, first of
all, has all it has two horses, this specific
number, and then also has servants, and then
has a bunch of goods and then that he's got these
instruments that it's like this whole little
caravan that's going and he's not just traveling
on his own this is like i guess you're um You're
like coach bus like when bands travel from city
to city in in our culture today Like they have
the big coach bus This is kind of like the equivalent
of that like there's a little entourage and so
they all need to be specified and protected not
just the body of Jacob de Bar himself and if you
have that specified then he can point to it and
say you tried to take one of my horses, I'm supposed
to have two. Interesting question arises if somehow
they obtain a third horse on the way, but I guess
that is something you could expect to be consistent,
that if you set out with two horses, you'd have
two horses the whole time, unless one of them
got into some kind of health problems or something.
All right, so a wonderful use of the ablative
case. I was talking about Latin case endings
in an earlier episode, and this one has this
whole list of belongings that are all with the
endings that match their particular Declension
is the term in Latin for the group of nouns that
have the same pattern of ending. And so that's
why we have this whole list of things and they
don't all have the exact same ending. Some of
them have the ending of BUS and others have the
ending of IS. It's because they're in different
noun groups and those groups of nouns are called
declensions. So a little bit of a Latin lesson
there for you. All right, one other thing I wanted
to mention with this letter, which is that it
specifies a time period. That's really interesting.
In the last line of the letter, last two lines
I should say, Joan specifies that this safe conduct
letter is for the upcoming month of April. That
makes sense. But then he ends that sentence with
et non ultra, no other time period. So this safe
conduct letter is time stamped. And it's a really
interesting thing to ponder. Why do you need
to time stamp your safe conduct letter? Well,
There was this incident that I just found out
about from 1384, in which a minstrel was engaged
to assassinate the King of France. Yeah, in 1384.
Who hired him to do that? It was... the father
of Charles III of Navarre, Violant de Bar's
buddy, so Charles II, whose cognomen is The Bad.
So Charles the Bad, I mean, this is one of the
reasons he got that cognomen, he hired a minstrel
to go poison the king of france and like everybody
he was like get the duc de Berry too like anyone
who's there kill them all and and so he set him
up with a bunch of poison and and then this minstrel
got caught and executed And there's a really
interesting article about that, like an old article
written in 1949. It was an English minstrel,
actually. So there's a whole, like, 100 years
war dynamic going on in that to the enmity between
England and France and so on. All right, that
was a digression. But it's all to point out that
you don't want to have a minstrel or really anybody
having this, like, blanket safe letter conduct
that they could use at any time because you don't
know what they're going to be getting up to in
the future. So you need to time stamp. that you
need to time limit your safe conduct letter.
And that's what's happening here. So I really
hope that Jacob de Bar made it to his next destination
during the month of April, because if not, he
would have needed to get another safe conduct
letter from somebody else. Oh, and then here's
one last question. Oh my gosh, I'm really going
long on this, but there's just so many that come
up. Why do you need a safe conduct letter? What's
so risky or dangerous about travel at this time?
Okay, certainly there's like the fear of bandits
on the road, like getting robbed, but like they're
not gonna care if you have a safe conduct letter,
probably. So what's the... risk? Like is it really
so risky to like show up to the next realm in
the line of realms between, you know, Barcelona
and wherever you're going in France? Why is this
so necessary? I have a feeling it's not so much
about physical danger, although it could be,
but I think there's certain costs that might
be incurred, like taxes or tolls. It was really
common when you got to a new territory that you
were going from one place that was ruled by one.
monarch into some place that was ruled by another
monarch or duke that you'd have to pay like a
gate fee to pass through. And I think maybe,
I'm not sure about this, I have to research it
more, but maybe in some cases the safe conduct
was to get you out of having to pay as much.
I'm not sure it could like get you like a kind
of exemption from tolls or taxes, but maybe that's
part of it? Not sure, and maybe they was just
dangerous. Maybe, you know, the first instinct
when someone saw Minstrel entering the territory,
the guardhouse, they were like, oh, this person's
not vouched for by anybody, so let's take one
of their two horses. I don't know. I need to
research a little bit more about travel in the
Middle Ages, try to figure out why Jacob de Bar
really needed a safe conduct letter. Alright,
well, there's other questions and other things
that we could do reading against the grain with
this document, but we have reached the end of
the time. For this episode, at least. Thanks
for listening to this latest installment of the
Historian's Notebook, Season 1 Molt Cara Companyona.
If you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, 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.
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.