Hello, in the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was February 22nd 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. So yesterday I talked about using Google's
Gemini AI Chatbot and how I came back to it after
a while and discovered it had this really improved
quality when it came to understanding the Latin
in a document, but also with transcribing from
an uploaded image. So I really feel like I have
Got this sort of new amazing tool in my toolbox
now, and I'm just going to be using it. pretty
much for every Latin document. But let me be
clear, if I was intending to move forward with
a career as a medievalist, if I was going to
be focusing on medieval studies for the next
25 years, then there's absolutely no way that
I would continue to use an AI chatbot as my go
-to. I would really buckle down and get better
at Latin and get a lot more practice with it.
So the whole purpose of this podcast is to delve
into different areas of very far apart times
and places in order to demonstrate how experts
in those fields have accumulated a knowledge
base of the history in these different times
and places and then how I can use some of the
tools that are now available such as the large
language models and other kinds of technology
in order to really understand their expertise
better and to try to come up with something that
makes some kind of new insight all the while
really appreciating that the true expertise comes
from spending many, many years in each of these
areas. So this season is Medieval Crown of Aragon.
There will be other seasons where I will be very
upfront about how I am relying on the expertise
of others and if I were to stay in those particular
areas of history for about 20 years how things
would be different. So the historian's notebook
is about getting started. It's about orienting
yourself as somebody who wants to make a contribution
to our understanding of the past it's not about
trying to assert expertise it's about recognizing
expertise all right all that said i got a transcription
from Gemini, that was pretty good. I did need
to make some really important corrections. And
if you look at the transcript from Gemini that
I've put on the webpage for today's episode,
you'll see that there were probably about 10
words total interspersed around this document,
which is about, I would say, about 10 lines long.
and it could really change the meaning. There
were times when Gemini got the wrong ending for
a word, and it would dramatically change the
meaning of the sentence. But what I will say
is that the overall topic of the document, Gemini
was able to understand that pretty much from
the start. That even after I made my corrections
to its transcription, it didn't really alter
the overall intent. That kind of worries me because
like how can you have so much difference in the
document but then still come out with the same
overall understanding? I think one of the answers
to that is that these are very formulaic. So
the register we're working with today is one
of Joan's registers it's the curiae register
meaning it's the register of of the court or
the the small section of people like committee
you could say who is in charge of processing
a lot of the governance along with joan that's
my current understanding of what would be indicated
by the placement in the the curiae register,
and at the top of the document we have pro curia,
for the curiae, for the court. So these are matters
that are very routine in the sense that the bureaucrats
who are operating along with Joan here, they've
seen situations crop up like the ones that are
covered in this register just hundreds and hundreds
of times. And so they're really used to using
some stock phrases in order to handle the typical
cases that come in. Now, how would I try to recognize
something that's not typical? Well, I would definitely
need more Latin expertise, I would need more
expertise in all of the legal matters and kinds
of cases that would come up at this time and
get the king's attention. So I do not have the
expertise required to understand if there's anything
strange or unusual in this particular document.
What I do have, though, along with the help from
Gemini is a very secure knowledge of the general
topic and a certain knowledge of the place, and
from there further research has revealed a bit
more of the context. So let me explain. The first
two lines contain the names of Well, actually,
yeah, I think two names. And I did get tripped
up, and Gemini did too, with the word that follows
Fidelibus. Because to me, it looks like it could
be something like Nostris, but I feel like it's
actually the name of an office. But I'm really
having a hard time. untangling the minims there
like is that the letter m is there a v in the
middle is the letter that's the third well i
don't even know how many letters the one that's
right before the the final letter the final letter
is an s and it looks like it could be an i but
sometimes if you have an are right before the
s it can look like that so both gemini and i
are struggling with whatever that word is but
then following the mystery word is a pretty clear
uh something like a petro or a petuo or a peruo
and then a and what looks like a perera and so
then we've got et and then a very recognizable
Raymundo and it looks like Raymundo has a bit of
a longer last name or there's like a little slash
after what looks like vinos and then we've got
day and that could be more of Raymundo's last
name or it could actually be the start of some
kind of phrase um i think it's parochia of the
of the parish of and i'm pretty sure about that
and i think gemini agrees so we've got two people
in the first line but then we've got this parochia
and then it got really tough because i definitely
could see sancti at the end of the first line
And then the next line, I had no idea what was
going on. It was a very difficult paleographical
mystery because that, it turned out to be a letter
A and then the letter X. And I just, I hardly
ever see A followed by X. It's almost always
an E followed by the X. I was just really thrown
off by this. And then we have a clear day after
that AX word, and followed by that we've got
a word that looked to me like Sardinia. It kind
of started in the same way that you would spell
Sardinia, the island. So I at first glance when
I encountered this document, I was like, oh,
it's something about Sardinia. but then look
at the end of that word. It ends with a very
clear e -o -l -a. Or is that a y -o -l -a? I
think it's more like an e, but sometimes the
y's can come out like that. Either way, though,
if you sound it out, it's yola. So sardiniola.
And guess what? If I had grown up around Barcelona,
I probably would have immediately connected that
toponym to, well, it's not too far away, like
the actual Catalan Cerdanyola. There is a town
that is kind of on the other side of the mountains
of Barcelona, but like... pretty close like those
of you who are listening in albuquerque it's
kind of like talking about the east mountains
like you can you can get there you go through
a pass and then you get there and people commute
from like you know edgewood into albuquerque
all the time a little bit of albuquerque geography,
and those of you who are listening in other places
probably don't really have a clue what I'm talking
about, but that's okay. So yeah, so basically
there's this this town called Cerdanyola, and
I was unaware of it because I did not grow up
around Barcelona and haven't really spent all
that much time there, just visited a couple times.
And so it was Gemini that made the connection,
and then was able to provide me with some starting
points to look at some of the history around
Cerdanyola around this time. And I did ask
Gemini to connect its information to academic
sources, but it does a poor job of that, in my
opinion, like it just... If chat GPT is way better
at telling you exactly where it got the information
and I just think Gemini is a little bit like
paltry on this like it'll give you an article.
That doesn't exactly seem connected or it'll
give you two articles and one of them is clearly
about it The other one you're like what so I
open up these Articles and just do a keyword
search to try to figure out. All right Can I
find where in this article Gemini got the information?
And if I can find that then I will move forward
with it. And if I can't, then I just treat it
as a provisional possibility. And Gemini was
the one that really disturbed me with Hallucination
just three months ago when I was working on a
different project. So I am a little bit wary
of some of Gemini's analysis, but I do know that
the recent version of Gemini has gotten a lot
of positive reviews. So, alright. Let's see,
what did I find? What did Gemini find, to be
more exact? What did I find when I checked Gemini's
work? That's probably the best way. That there
was some kind of dispute over jurisdiction of
this place called Cerdanyola. And what was happening
was that there was a lord who had authority over
this region as well as others by the name of
Simó de Marimón. Simó, which is like Simon, Simó
de Marimón had been fighting with Barcelona.
the municipality of Barcelona over a certain
kind of jurisdictional claim that the city of
Barcelona would make over nearby towns. That
kind of claim was called the Carreratge. The Carreratge
was derived from the word Carrer, which is like
the street. So if you had a street that connected
a town to Barcelona, a nearby town, Barcelona
would say, look, this street, it connects, this
pathway connects, and so you're now part of the
city. And they would try to impose all the various
taxation and jurisdictional things like the courts
and who rules and who decides and stuff like
that on these these areas. And so it seems to
me like what has happened here is that Joan
has now been called upon to make a ruling in
the case of whether Cerdanyola should be handed
over essentially from Simon de Marimón. to the
city of Barcelona and of course Simon de Marimot
is not wanting this and would would maybe be
the complainant in this and and the purpose of
this document this is where I'm leaning on Gemini's
interpretation but I I can see where it got it
because there is this mention of Duos Dias in
the fifth line. What has to be done in two days?
Well, it looks like Raymundo and Petro have to
show up and give testimony about certain facts
regarding what's happening in Cerdanyola. and
if they don't then they get fined a hundred florins,
which is a lot of money. So my guess is that
Petro and Raymundo are going to show up to the
Curia and give their testimony about what has
been going on. That is as much as I can say with
a degree of certainty about this. If this was
a little bit more connected, or maybe way more
connected, to my primary research questions about
Joan and Violant and how they established
their reign as a cooperative project. To what
extent was it a cooperative project? If I could
kind of see some entry point for that I would
go deeper with this, but at this point I don't
see the connection, so I'm just going to note
it down, have all the information on the web
page that I'm creating for this episode, and
maybe something will come up later in one of
Violant's letters, and then I can connect it
back. That has happened on this podcast, and
that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for, but
for now I feel complete with my process. for
this document, even though I do not feel complete
with my understanding. So that is, I think, a
really good demonstration of the approach of
the Historian's Notebook overall, and it's one
that, of course, will leave many questions open
as we go through. But I think this episode is
a really good one for taking a step back and
looking at overall what is the purpose of the
project and how do the new AI tools fit in to
that project. 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've done my job,
because 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 some very
long transcripts of AI chatbot conversations
with Gemini. and listen again tomorrow to hear
about the next day in the first year of the reign
of King Joan of Aragon and Queen Violant de
Bar. In the meantime, take care.