WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.700 Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago, 00:00:06.299 --> 00:00:13.019 it was February 24th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:13.019 --> 00:00:16.739 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:16.739 --> 00:00:20.859 University of New Mexico, and this is the Historian's 00:00:20.859 --> 00:00:25.620 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:30.780 Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:33.899 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:33.899 --> 00:00:38.460 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:43.700 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:07.629 --> 00:01:14.250 Today we've got a document from Violant and the 00:01:14.250 --> 00:01:23.150 recipient is a certain Brother Guillaume de Urges 00:01:23.150 --> 00:01:29.150 I think is how we would Expand the abbreviation 00:01:29.150 --> 00:01:33.730 there for that name. It's got a U -G -E -S. I 00:01:33.730 --> 00:01:36.799 think that would be a something like an Urge 00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:41.939 or I don't think it would be an Urgelles. So 00:01:41.939 --> 00:01:49.099 the identity of this recipient is I think a little 00:01:49.099 --> 00:01:53.560 bit up for grabs. I'm trying to figure out if 00:01:53.560 --> 00:02:00.680 I can really be sure that the Commendador identity 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:04.560 that's listed next to his name in the addressee 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.680 line below the text block of this letter means 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:12.819 that he's a commander of a hospitalers unit in 00:02:12.819 --> 00:02:17.919 a place named Aliaga. And the reason why I'm 00:02:17.919 --> 00:02:21.139 thinking this is a member of the hospitalers 00:02:21.139 --> 00:02:26.800 is because, first of all, that's what Gemini 00:02:27.319 --> 00:02:31.639 presented to me in its analysis of this letter 00:02:31.639 --> 00:02:36.080 all on its own. But then I started to look around 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:41.560 the folio here and I noticed that the letter 00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:47.120 that precedes this one and actually begins on 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:55.099 folio 87V, the previous page, it's about the 00:02:55.099 --> 00:02:59.830 same people. So, the letter that precedes this 00:02:59.830 --> 00:03:04.150 one in the register, it's from five days before, 00:03:05.169 --> 00:03:11.150 and it's addressed to the Pope, and Violant in 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:18.550 that letter discusses a Garcia Aznar and also 00:03:18.550 --> 00:03:25.539 a Guillaume de Urges. So in that letter, and 00:03:25.539 --> 00:03:27.539 in fact, it's really easy to see right at the 00:03:27.539 --> 00:03:33.060 top of Folio 88R, we've got the word hospitalis, 00:03:33.219 --> 00:03:39.280 and so that made me feel like I could trust the 00:03:39.280 --> 00:03:44.280 conclusion that Gemini reached. But goodness 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:48.560 gracious, I have grown quite frustrated with 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:54.409 Gemini's analysis and quote -unquote, deep thinking, 00:03:55.069 --> 00:04:01.830 because yet again, Gemini has carried out a hallucination, 00:04:02.409 --> 00:04:07.509 and it has told me when I asked it about a particular 00:04:07.509 --> 00:04:12.169 phrase, it gave me an answer and cited sources 00:04:12.169 --> 00:04:16.529 that don't exist. The sources that it came up 00:04:16.529 --> 00:04:22.790 for are like weird amalgams of different sources, 00:04:23.269 --> 00:04:28.790 so it just is still having this problem that 00:04:28.790 --> 00:04:32.610 I encountered with it when I tried to use it 00:04:32.610 --> 00:04:37.110 for research purposes back in the fall of 2025. 00:04:37.930 --> 00:04:43.089 So I think I'm done with Gemini when it comes 00:04:43.089 --> 00:04:49.139 to trying to substantiate information in the 00:04:49.139 --> 00:04:52.800 academic secondary literature. It's just going 00:04:52.800 --> 00:04:56.279 to keep making things up. I tested out two of 00:04:56.279 --> 00:04:59.759 its sources in what it gave me in response to 00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:03.379 my follow -up questions today, and both of those 00:05:03.379 --> 00:05:07.319 sources were non -existent. The authors existed, 00:05:07.319 --> 00:05:11.740 and then they had pieces that were sort of like 00:05:11.740 --> 00:05:16.730 similar in title maybe, but basically Gemini 00:05:16.730 --> 00:05:20.350 just made up the titles of articles and then 00:05:20.350 --> 00:05:24.850 when I pressed Gemini on one of them by an author 00:05:24.850 --> 00:05:26.889 that I recognize and I've referred to a bunch 00:05:26.889 --> 00:05:32.170 of times, Josep Trenchs i Odena, well Gemini said 00:05:32.170 --> 00:05:36.769 that I could find information about my the phrase 00:05:36.769 --> 00:05:39.110 that I was looking for and information about 00:05:39.110 --> 00:05:42.269 the kinds of phrases used in Chancery documents 00:05:42.269 --> 00:05:47.250 at this time in one of the books by Trenchs i Odena 00:05:47.250 --> 00:05:50.329 and I have that book and I looked at it and it 00:05:50.329 --> 00:05:54.569 doesn't have anything about the phrasing that 00:05:54.569 --> 00:05:57.769 I'm asking about or or you can see the transcript 00:05:57.769 --> 00:06:09.629 I was I was looking at the phrase So it's the 00:06:09.629 --> 00:06:14.209 last line of the letter before the dating clause, 00:06:15.350 --> 00:06:23.769 and Violant is saying that the recipient should 00:06:23.769 --> 00:06:28.110 be... oh, and see, this is why I was trying to 00:06:28.110 --> 00:06:34.430 get some help, because I think that the recipient 00:06:34.430 --> 00:06:40.829 of the letter is trying to get to a a good conclusion 00:06:40.829 --> 00:06:47.509 the Buena Conclusión with the Pope or I think 00:06:47.509 --> 00:06:51.230 it is also possible in the wording of this to 00:06:51.230 --> 00:06:55.569 to interpret it that Violant is going to be 00:06:55.569 --> 00:07:01.069 telling Guillaume de Urge about the conclusion 00:07:01.069 --> 00:07:08.319 of the business at hand with the pope and i'm 00:07:08.319 --> 00:07:13.079 trying to figure out exactly who is doing what 00:07:13.079 --> 00:07:19.759 about who there is certainly a request about 00:07:19.759 --> 00:07:23.959 garcia aznar and trying to get garcia aznar some 00:07:23.959 --> 00:07:29.100 kind of ecclesiastical position so all right 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:34.720 all of this is to say that Gemini is quite good 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:37.000 at transcribing. It didn't get everything right. 00:07:37.139 --> 00:07:40.540 It made some significant mistakes, but I would 00:07:40.540 --> 00:07:44.240 say it was like 90 % correct. And so it's way 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.779 easier for me to take a transcription that Gemini 00:07:47.779 --> 00:07:51.839 does and proofread it as opposed to typing out 00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:57.089 an entire transcription. I will use Gemini for 00:07:57.089 --> 00:08:01.449 that, for the transcription purposes here. I 00:08:01.449 --> 00:08:03.709 might go back and try Claude again. I've heard 00:08:03.709 --> 00:08:06.730 that Claude has had a really powerful upgrade. 00:08:07.790 --> 00:08:10.850 But anyway, Gemini is good for this image stuff, 00:08:11.089 --> 00:08:15.939 you know, transcribing the the gothic secretarial 00:08:15.939 --> 00:08:21.860 hand, but when you try to ask Gemini to do research 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:26.620 and to give you some direction and sources from 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:30.980 the secondary literature, it's just not up to 00:08:30.980 --> 00:08:34.620 the task right now. For some reason, it is just 00:08:34.620 --> 00:08:39.940 prone to hallucinate its answers. All right. 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:46.740 We are in this stage and I don't know how permanent 00:08:46.740 --> 00:08:51.320 of a stage it is when Violant is just writing 00:08:51.320 --> 00:08:55.919 to the Pope a lot. I mean it's like February 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:59.940 just really like picks up where Violant is writing 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:02.679 to the Pope about all kinds of things and there's 00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:08.000 a lot going on with her interests and trying 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:14.879 to promote her goals through the means available 00:09:14.879 --> 00:09:20.700 in the Avignon papacy in that diplomatic nerve 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.840 center. So she's, I think at this point I've 00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:26.639 tracked about like four different people that 00:09:26.639 --> 00:09:30.460 she's sent over to Avignon in order to carry 00:09:30.460 --> 00:09:36.419 out some different parts of her agenda. And I 00:09:36.419 --> 00:09:42.429 think that maybe this Guillaume de Urge is 00:09:42.429 --> 00:09:46.509 one of those, but it's really hard to tell from 00:09:46.509 --> 00:09:50.889 this little letter. And this one I actually might 00:09:50.889 --> 00:09:56.850 come back to because the way that Violant and 00:09:56.850 --> 00:10:00.870 Joan are arranging their correspondence with 00:10:00.870 --> 00:10:04.169 the Pope is starting to get really interesting 00:10:04.169 --> 00:10:08.679 to me. It appears that it is Violant who is 00:10:08.679 --> 00:10:12.860 in charge of communicating with the Pope. I have 00:10:12.860 --> 00:10:15.580 to kind of just keep tabs on this because I'm 00:10:15.580 --> 00:10:19.779 not quite sure, but from the looks of it to me 00:10:19.779 --> 00:10:26.159 it seems like there's just this imbalance happening 00:10:26.159 --> 00:10:29.000 where there's just way more letters from Violant 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:32.240 to the Pope than there are Joan to the Pope, 00:10:32.279 --> 00:10:35.500 but that could just be what I'm happening to 00:10:35.500 --> 00:10:39.279 look at at this point and I would need a bit 00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:43.059 more of a systematic search in order to really 00:10:43.059 --> 00:10:45.559 conclude something from that and goodness I'm 00:10:45.559 --> 00:10:48.879 hoping that that sometime this year there's going 00:10:48.879 --> 00:10:51.700 to be a really great breakthrough either through 00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:56.840 my own work trying to get these documents to 00:10:56.840 --> 00:10:59.860 be full -text searchable or through the work 00:10:59.860 --> 00:11:03.000 of somebody else or one of the AI programs so 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:09.240 that I can build a database of all the letters 00:11:09.240 --> 00:11:12.700 in these registers from this year and be able 00:11:12.700 --> 00:11:15.419 to arrange them and search them and answer questions 00:11:15.419 --> 00:11:20.240 like what is the total number of letters that 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:22.659 Violant sent to the Pope versus what is the 00:11:22.659 --> 00:11:25.120 total number of letters that Joan sent to 00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:28.539 the Pope? But let's just hold off on that question 00:11:28.539 --> 00:11:31.379 for the moment, because right now we don't have 00:11:31.379 --> 00:11:34.960 the technological resources to answer it. I mean, 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:37.580 I could just painstakingly go through and do 00:11:37.580 --> 00:11:42.299 some counting, but there's only so much time 00:11:42.299 --> 00:11:44.779 available, and I do not have time to do that. 00:11:46.259 --> 00:11:50.070 Let's turn our attention to something in this 00:11:50.070 --> 00:11:55.870 letter in particular that I think indicates a 00:11:55.870 --> 00:11:59.570 piece of the puzzle regarding this question about 00:11:59.570 --> 00:12:03.470 how Joan and Violant arranged their communication 00:12:03.470 --> 00:12:07.470 with the Pope in Avignon. The letter begins, 00:12:08.129 --> 00:12:13.220 fray guillem. It's being addressed to Guillem 00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:34.820 d 'Urges, the commander of Aliaga. All right, 00:12:34.820 --> 00:12:39.299 so what that translates to roughly, and I know 00:12:39.299 --> 00:12:42.190 I messed up something a couple things in there 00:12:42.190 --> 00:12:45.090 due to Abbreviations that needed to be expanded 00:12:45.090 --> 00:12:47.789 and I wasn't quite sure how but anyway what it 00:12:47.789 --> 00:12:54.929 roughly translates to is to brother William, 00:12:54.929 --> 00:13:01.389 the Lord King Lord and husband of mine most 00:13:01.389 --> 00:13:07.659 dear right so you Joan says molt cara companyona 00:13:07.659 --> 00:13:12.000 and Violant usually phrases it something like 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:16.080 like this marido nostro muy caro so my my most 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:20.480 dear husband and and what is the verb 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:25.559 he's written, he's written in favor of Garcia 00:13:25.559 --> 00:13:33.179 Aznar the some kind of religious position canongue 00:13:33.179 --> 00:13:39.340 de Vic, so Vic is a place in Catalonia, and he's 00:13:39.340 --> 00:13:43.759 written about, so it's Joan, he has written about 00:13:43.759 --> 00:13:52.340 Garcia Aznar to our Lord, Nostra Senor, lo Papa, 00:13:52.600 --> 00:13:57.549 the Pope. And what's interesting is that violant 00:13:57.549 --> 00:14:01.269 has also written to the pope as we were just 00:14:01.269 --> 00:14:05.929 looking at that latin letter from five days before 00:14:05.929 --> 00:14:09.870 and so it's interesting how violant is doing 00:14:09.870 --> 00:14:13.590 this kind of coordination i do want to say that 00:14:13.590 --> 00:14:17.929 i'm i'm actually growing somewhat uncertain about 00:14:17.929 --> 00:14:21.889 the way that violant addresses the pope because 00:14:21.889 --> 00:14:26.909 there's this weird variation and I am pretty 00:14:26.909 --> 00:14:30.110 sure that the prior letter to this one in this 00:14:30.110 --> 00:14:32.750 register is to the pope, but I might have to 00:14:32.750 --> 00:14:37.029 come back to this because there's other letters 00:14:37.029 --> 00:14:41.710 that are way more deliberate in reverence and 00:14:41.710 --> 00:14:46.169 include way more of the titles of the pope than 00:14:46.169 --> 00:14:50.220 the one that we're seeing. earlier here on this 00:14:50.220 --> 00:14:52.659 folio that starts well it actually starts the 00:14:52.659 --> 00:14:59.639 previous folio on folio 87 v so a lot of questions 00:14:59.639 --> 00:15:06.740 are coming up about why violant is not mentioning 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:11.779 her correspondence to the pope the one that appears 00:15:11.779 --> 00:15:14.980 right before this that she had written five days 00:15:14.980 --> 00:15:22.029 before and then also why she feels like it's 00:15:22.029 --> 00:15:28.049 helpful to coordinate this communication and 00:15:28.049 --> 00:15:32.830 why is it that Joan isn't simply writing to 00:15:32.830 --> 00:15:38.710 brother William Frey Guillem. So there's those 00:15:38.710 --> 00:15:42.289 questions. There's also the Chancery operation 00:15:42.289 --> 00:15:46.649 question about why is it a five -day difference 00:15:46.649 --> 00:15:50.090 between the Latin letter about the same people 00:15:50.090 --> 00:15:54.470 and then this Catalan, you know, this might actually 00:15:54.470 --> 00:15:58.570 be some kind of Aragonese Catalan hybrid. Gemini 00:15:58.570 --> 00:16:00.950 had that idea and I just thought that might be 00:16:00.950 --> 00:16:04.029 because of transcription errors, but I'm actually 00:16:04.029 --> 00:16:07.950 looking at this and it seems like some of the 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.779 prepositions might be not so much what I usually 00:16:12.779 --> 00:16:16.879 see in Catalan, so just kind of that idea popped 00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:21.120 into my head. But basically there's just a lot 00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:26.320 about the chancery operation that this set of 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:28.879 letters, one from the 19th and the other from 00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:36.580 today the 24th, just kind of brings up more questions 00:16:36.580 --> 00:16:40.700 about about that aspect of of this archive and 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:44.500 these particular letters and the issue at hand. 00:16:45.419 --> 00:16:51.620 So lots of questions still coming up. And that 00:16:51.620 --> 00:16:56.919 brings us to the end of the episode. Thanks for 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:59.980 listening to this installment of the Historian's 00:16:59.980 --> 00:17:04.559 Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you 00:17:04.559 --> 00:17:06.480 are leaving with more questions than you arrived 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:10.640 with, I have done my job. Remember, the motto 00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:14.279 of the Historian's Notebook is, dissatisfaction 00:17:14.279 --> 00:17:17.819 guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image 00:17:17.819 --> 00:17:21.440 of today's document and additional show notes. 00:17:22.079 --> 00:17:25.740 And listen again tomorrow to hear about the next 00:17:25.740 --> 00:17:29.380 day in the first year of the reign of King Joan 00:17:29.380 --> 00:17:34.420 I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the 00:17:34.420 --> 00:17:36.259 meantime, take care.