Hello, in the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was February 23rd 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. There's so much to talk about with
today's document and I've got a noisy shadow
cat here with me For today's recording. So we'll
see how this yep. There she is. We'll see how
this goes Okay so this document is from the secret
seal register of Joan and In this document,
Joan is writing another safe conduct message.
So we saw this for a minstrel a few episodes
back. I think we, oh yeah, we also saw it in
the pair of episodes where the outgoing copy
had actually come back to the Crown of Aragon
and it had that red wax seal on it. So I'm going
to link to both of those episodes in the web
page for today's. Now, there's a very revealing
AI usage lesson with today's document. It was
just yesterday that I was singing the praises
of Gemini, but then I think it was yesterday's
episode when I also said that in the fall Gemini
had been dramatic with some of its hallucinations
and I thought that that was done but in the transcript
of my Gemini chat conversation You will be able
to see how in certain moments with the paleography
Gemini was trying to tell me that I was wrong
and it was sounding really persistent and I Did
some extra research because I was like, well,
maybe I was kind of like doubting myself But
then as I was working on it, I was like no this
there's just no way that Gemini can be right
about this And so before I get into the source
information and the content more deeply with
this particular document, I'm going to point
out the AI usage issue. And goodness, this is
one of those days when I feel like this episode
could be 90 minutes because there's so much juicy
stuff being referred to in the document itself,
and then also in regards to the person who's
receiving this safe conduct letter. All right,
but we'll have to just be concise. And first,
the paleographical issue. You'll notice that
in the second line of the second folio of this
document so one kind of an annoying and confusing
thing is that the scribes decided that they needed
to put two lines of this document on the bottom
of folio 15 R and then continue with the bulk
of the document on folio 15v. I had had this
theory earlier in the podcast that the scribes
were intentional about trying to fit things on
the amount of space on the page, and so it's
a bit of a mystery to me why it would be so important
to save that amount of paper but maybe they were
just like hey if you can fit two lines on there
fit two lines on there if you don't have a shorter
letter to squeeze into that little bit then you're
just gonna have to go on to the next page it's
a really yeah I guess it kind of fits with my
theory that they were always trying to conserve
the paper but at the same time it's like why
do you need to start a document with those just
those two lines on the bottom of one page i guess
it's you know conservation of paper obviously
but i mean it's just an interesting severity
in that ethos of the conservation of the paper
to have just two lines on the previous folio.
So really what we're paying attention to is folio
15v because the information in those two lines
at the bottom of the previous folio are just
the usual introductory stuff from Joan. You
know, this is Joan the king of all these realms
and this document goes out to everybody who might
see it. It's pretty boilerplate where it gets
interesting is in the second line of folio 15
v where about one two three four five words in
we see a very clear name isabel isabel spelled
with a Y at the beginning, which was actually
quite common. In a lot of the Chancery documents,
even about 100 years later, about the famous
Isabella of Castile married to Ferdinand of Aragon
and sponsor of Christopher Columbus, Isabel is
often spelled with a Y. at the beginning instead
of how it is now commonly rendered with the letter
i so okay we have isabelis so the ending on that
is a well i want to say it's a nominative but
if you have an is at the end i don't think it
would be so there's something about maybe it's
in dative here I'm not going to go too deeply
into the Latin grammar today because we've got
a lot of other stuff to do. Let's just register
the fact that I'm not sure on site at this point
because I'm not as well practiced in Latin as
others. All right, then we have day, so it's
Isabella of. Then what it looks like to me is
the letter M and then A I O R I C. and then there's
a macron over, so I read this as Majoricem,
it's Isabella of Majorca. I had not heard of
Isabella of Majorca, and I think that has a lot
to do with the fact that I start my focus when
Joann's rain begins and in the 1380s when he
is together with Violant and I don't really
read too much before 1380. So that explains why
I don't really know about Isabel of Mallorca
when if I had been reading a lot about I guess
you could say the early half of Pere the Ceremonious
is reign I would definitely know about Isabella
of Mallorca and I'll tell you why a little bit
later but we're on the paleography piece now
so I read that as an M and Gemini read that as
an AR and that really surprised me and I pushed
back and I said Gemini I just don't think that's
an AR and it pushed back on me and said no you're
making a mistake it actually called it a quote
classic paleographical mistake. That I was making
a classic paleographical misread when I insisted
that that was the letter M and not an AR. And
then it proceeded to use other examples in the
document to try to convince me. And I said, wait
a second, Gemini, look at your own transcription
of the very last line that dating clause where
there's the word for 1000, right? I think it's
millisimo or millenio. Yeah, I mean, oh my gosh,
my Latin. And it transcribed it as an M and that
M looks the same as the M. that's in this second
line just a slight tiny difference and eventually
Gemini relented and then was able to clarify
some information about who this person is but
it really wanted me to believe that it was Isabella
of Armagnac. There was an Isabella of Armagnac,
but it's very easy on Wikipedia and just general
Google searching to see that Isabella of Armagnac
was not alive. She had died in I think it was
like 1375, and so there's no way that she would
need a safe conduct letter in 1387, you know,
12 years after her death. So either Joan was
writing for some kind of zombie Isabella, or
maybe vampire, or Gemini was completely wrong.
So I went over to chat GPT and was like, I don't
think there's an Isabella of Armagnac and chat
GPT had trouble with this. Like, why are you
chat bots having so much trouble when you it's
just so it's so clear even from Wikipedia that
this person is not alive. And I asked about Isabella
of Majorca, and ChatGPT had trouble with that,
and Gemini initially had trouble with that, and
I just was looking just on Wikipedia, and I found
the Isabella of Majorca without all that much
trouble. So this was a moment that is a really
good demonstration of the problems with the AI
chatbots at this time. That while Gemini did
another fantastic job with transcribing the gothic
secretarial hand, I mean its mistake with the
letter M was really glaring, but I really shouldn't
allow that to take over again saying that you
know, basically it did great with most of the
other words. I mean, even with abbreviations
and things crossed out and so, you know, you
just have to watch out for the glaring errors
and don't let its authoritative tone push you
around, right? Maybe we won't have this problem
in the future, chatbots, but for now... we have
this problem. And so, again, you cannot just
turn over everything to the chatbots and whenever
you're taking away some kind of conclusion based
on what the chatbot gives you, it's got to be
treated as a provisional conclusion unless you
do some additional research to confirm it. Alright,
let's go to the sourcing of this letter. So one
of the really important things about this letter
is that it's from Joan and not Père the Ceremonious.
Père the Ceremonious held grudges and he was
no fan of Isabella of Mallorca. Why? Because
he was responsible for her father's death, and
they don't get along. Her father was James III
of Majorca, who rebelled against Pere the Ceremonious,
wanting to keep Majorca as an independent kingdom
and not as a part of the Crown of Aragon. Pere
the Ceremonious defeated Isabella's father, and
he died on the battlefield, right? And then she
was actually captured and she was imprisoned
for her teenage years in Valencia and she was
only freed at the age of about 20 when she agreed
to renounce her claim to any rule over Mallorca.
So at that point in 1358 she was let out of jail
and then she got married and She just kind of
bopped around like doing a bunch of different
diplomatic things along with her husband But
the real story in terms of conflict Conflict
with Pere the ceremonious and crown of Aragon
is with her brother So when her brother got old
enough he James the fourth tried to once again
fight for the independence of the island of Mallorca
and he actually led an invasion of Roussillon
which is the province that's today in the southwest
of France so sort of like around Montpellier
so and Perpignan to be more exact i think so
James the fourth he tried to get Majorca back
for their family, and he also did not succeed.
He ended up dying, some say, in Isabella's arms.
I think as the result of the strain of war, I
don't think it was a battle injury, but I think
because of what he was doing, somehow Yeah, maybe
it was a battle injury or some kind of illness
that he contracted when he was fighting I can't
remember exactly but anyway drama he died in
her arms now Now James IV of Majorca had was
involved in some other drama in the time period
of like the 1370s early 1370s because he married
Joanna of Naples who was a really fascinating
powerful woman of the mid 14th century and one
of the conditions of the marriage was that James
the fourth would have no governance over Naples
and the crown of Aragon also had a claim to Naples
that Joanna was fighting off but not it was as
much of a threat as from other places like weirdly
Hungary had a claim to rule over Naples so that
was just oh it's so convoluted but it's a great
story so if you can read that book by Elizabeth
Casteen titled From She -Wolf to Martyr about
Joanna the First of Naples you will not be disappointed
it's such a really interesting story of intrigue
and power and a medieval woman who was just a
fascinating test case for how far you can push
it for a woman to rule in this time period on
her own, like in defiance of a lot of the men.
around. So that's super interesting. And then
Joanna of Naples spent a lot of time in Avignon
and was trying to curry the favor of Pope Clement
VII in Avignon. Oh gosh, I hope I got that number
right because I'm like, is it the sixth? No,
it's the seventh. So when Violant is writing
to the Pope in Avignon, she's maybe continuing
a kind of pattern. that Joanna had set up where
basically there's a lot of activity from the
queens in conversation with the pope. I don't
know, that might be a bit of a stretch in terms
of the context. So all right, Isabella of Majorca
was not a friend of Pere the Ceremonious. He
probably didn't care if she just kind of, you
know, did stuff. elsewhere and didn't want to
deal with her. But then Joan takes over and
he's more friendly and you can tell in this he's
writing this safe conduct letter which seems
you know kind of generous and and why is it generous?
It's generous because he's saying that no one
can collect on her debts basically. So He specifies
that she's got this big retinue, and we'll talk
about the size of that retinue in just a moment.
But he says that no one is allowed to take anything
from her. I know, no one. And all of her creditors,
like Shadow is playing the creditors, being mad.
Why? Because she owed a ton of money. So by this
time... Isabella of Mallorca was like really
broke and like trying to get money from all which
way places and she was being chased by her creditors
actually so this safe conduct note is very nice
to her because it basically makes it so that
if her creditors find her They're not allowed
to collect from her while she's traveling around
in the lands ruled by Joan. So with the context
in mind, we can see that Joan was being actually
very nice to Isabella of Majorca. Not quite sure
why. That's one of the questions I have. Like,
why was Joan so much more friendly? You don't
have to be. I mean, what was to be gained? Maybe
it was just like anything his father did, he
just kind of wanted to go the other direction.
I don't know. Let's talk about the retinue. So
in the, let's see, one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight. Seventh line of folio 15V,
we can see it's crossed out. There was this,
in the end. after the cross out the equitum,
so horses, okay? So the retinue had 60 horses,
sexaginta, and then they crossed it out and then
above it they wrote centum, a hundred, and then
they crossed that out and went back to 60. What
is going on here? How is this happening that
there's this back and forth about the number
of horses in Isabella of Majorca's retinue? Are
they getting updates about the information? Who
is making the correction? Why is someone noticing,
oh, it's not 60, it's 100? Why does it really
matter how many there are I mean it does because
if you show up with a with a hundred and you're
only protected for 60 the people trying to collect
and you'll be like well, you're over what it
says in your document and so We're gonna take
your extra 40 horses and the horses might represent
Actually people and parts of the revenue and
the treasure they have on them. So there's there
is a lot to unpack with just that question of
why there was a correction that needed to be
made and before we wrap up this episode there's
one more thing we need to talk about there is
a little note that was added to the bottom of
this one a little while later and it's a case
where in this situation I've been trashing Gemini
quite a lot but here Gemini really came through
and it's again with the letter M so it's so funny
because I was correctly recognizing the letter
M and Gemini was getting it wrong in the document
itself but this little added note below the document
I oh my gosh the scribe just really I really
just did a number on the letter M. Alright, so
the second line of that little note that's been
added on, you might be able to identify, well,
what looks like the third word from the end.
And that has an A -D -I. You could maybe argue
that that's like a Y, but it's an I. A -D -I.
So, odd -y. And then before that, that, folks,
is the letter M. I know, Shadow, it's distressing
because it doesn't look like an M at all. But
what happened there was the scribe, and it's
maybe the same scribe because we have Idem as
the probata, but later on that scribe came back
or another scribe came in and wrote this note
saying something about May, I know. Shadow has
a lot to say about this. Well, it's an extension.
So what happened was that this original document
said the safe conduct for Isabella of Majorca
goes until the end of April. And she needed more
time and she was granted it. And so they gave
her an extension. through the end of May to have
safe conduct through all of the realms. I know
Shadow's really excited that Isabella of Mallorca
got an extension. She just can't stop talking
about it. I know! Shadow! She's really just over
the top. I mean, I don't know what connection
you have to or you have to Isabella of Mallorca,
Shadow, but maybe Isabella of Mallorca was in
some kind of a jam and she really needed that
extra time and she got that extension and it
made a big difference and now she's reincarnated
as Shadow and that's why Shadow's making a lot
of noise right now. Just one theory. Alright,
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, like, why did Isabella need to
journey around in the Crown of Aragon anyway?
I don't know. Well, if you have questions like
that, 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 links to the Wikipedia pages for Isabella
of Mallorca and her brother James IV. 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.