Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was February 25th, 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 from the secret
seal register of Joan, and it is addressed to
someone very clearly spelled out in an addressee
line at the end of the letter. So the person's
name is Pedro Tolza, and then following that
name is his title, Advocato Fiscale Regni Valencia.
And also, I think it's the continuation of his
title here after the word at. procurator, the
financial procurator of the same kingdom. Now
that part's in Latin, but the letter itself is
in Catalan. And so I can say that I... can understand
pretty much every word of this letter. I got
a quick transcription from Gemini and then transferred
that over, copy pasted it into ChatGPT for the
translation, and that sped things up and I Really,
I do think I could have done it myself. It just
would have taken a whole lot longer. And in this
initial run through, I think it's a valid use
of the AI chatbots to get a general sense of
what is going on. And then I zoom in on particular
phrases after doing a bit of a proofread. So
I think that process is a good way to handle
the time constraints that are associated with
looking at this many documents. So, Joan is writing
to his financial head person in Valencia and
starts out by saying that he has been sent information
by the governor. of Valencia. The governor of
Valencia, I'm not quite sure who that is at this
time, and earlier this month we had a bunch of
letters that were connected to James, the bishop
of Valencia, and the whole effort to get James
to become a cardinal. So here we've got another
position of authority. It's not easy for me to
understand how the governor and the royal family
member James the bishop would power -share exactly.
I mean on paper it's clear that James would be
in charge of ecclesiastical authorities and the
governor would be in charge of secular authorities,
but you know with The person who's in charge
of the ecclesiastical authority, also a member
of the royal family, right? It's Joan's cousin.
Well, first cousin once removed. But still, like
that's, you know, that's recognizably, it's not,
it's not distant. It's a royal family member.
who's in charge of the church apparatus there
in Valencia. And so we have to really think about
how there's this blending of authority and in
the situation in Valencia. It really might be
that the ecclesiastical leader, James, has got
more of a leadership role than the governor.
but I'm not sure because I don't know who the
governor of Valencia is at this time. Alright,
so Joan has gotten some information from the
governor of Valencia and the information has
to do with certain malfeasance so there's some
kind of judicial process being referred to here
and it's all vague and and really it's quite
frustrating because there there's usually at
least some person's name or some something to
kind of like give me a clue and i can maybe do
some more research but in this particular letter
it's all just referred to as things like the
case or the the uh process or the information
and we don't have any kind of hint about the
specifics for what it is that Pere Tolza is trying
to remedy but in the second to last line on folio
14 V, we do have an interesting phrase. And it
starts with the second to the last word, segons
fur e bona raho, in tal manera. So segons according
to fur. So fur is an interesting word in this
time and place. It basically is the law, but
instead of seeing the word leis, we see this
word fur. The word fur is used usually in the
context of the local statutes, almost like you
could say the state law versus the federal law
if we're making an analogy to kind of the modern
American system. The furs are often the laws
that go way back and have emerged out of long
traditions, and the furs in a particular city
or province will be sort of accepted as that
province joins in the larger state of the Crown
of Aragon. So what Joan is referring to here
is the local law that has sort of a much more
long -standing status, kind of a tradition associated
with it, and then he adds the phrase a bona raho
and good reason or good justification. So what
he's saying here is that Pedro Tolza, the procurator,
the person in charge of the money in, or the
royal money in Valencia, is going to find a way
to solve these problems that the governor informed
me about. And, well, and he's telling Pedro.
Tolza to do it, and you Pedro Tolza, you should
do this according to the local Valencia law,
the fur, and then also according to good reason.
So it seems to me that we've got a moment of
governance of the kind of faraway territories
that at first it seems pretty humdrum. It seems
like there's nothing very radical going on. We
just get a little snapshot of what it's like
to have to direct people to solve problems in
a way that just makes sense in a place that Joan
probably never set foot in and never will. That's
an interesting question. Did Joan ever visit
Valencia? I'm not sure that he ever did. And
so the running of the kingdom is sometimes just
rubber stamping things, I guess, or just telling
the person who's in charge to do the thing that
they're in charge of anyway. It's really hard
for me to see why this particular document is
even necessary. Maybe it's something like just
a way of saying to Pedro Tolza that he knows
about the situation, that this is something that
he's monitoring, so you'd better do a good job
of solving the problem. And indeed, the last
line before the dating clause is So, you know,
certify, you know, confirm that these deeds have
been done. So, Joan wants to be informed about
the outcome here of whatever the heck is going
on. I did a little bit of research trying to
figure out, well, what is going on? It's not
easy to find information about Pere or Pedro Tolza.
There's not a lot in the secondary literature
on him after just a little preliminary searching.
And then I just did a quick browse through Thomas
Bisson's book, A Short History of the Crown of
Aragon, just to see if there was just anything
that was happening in Valencia around 1387, the
beginning of 1387, that might provide a clue
into this. Nothing all that substantial happened
that would kind of merit mention in The Short
History of the Crown of Aragon. So this is a
case where really, there's just not a lot of
info about what's happening. And maybe we're
gonna get a clarifying letter somewhere else
down the road, and this particular vague directive
to Pedro Tolza will make sense. And once again,
I said this yesterday, I'll say it again today.
I am really hoping that these registers at one
point become full text searchable because then
we can do a search for other letters that involve
Pedro Tolza and maybe figure out just what is
going on. I also looked around the the other
letters and it seems like the other letters in
this in the folios around this one in the register
are not really about the same thing they're about
different places so yeah i'm kind of really coming
up short with this particular one and so maybe
there's gonna be another letter down the road
that helps to figure it out and so Ah, gosh,
what can I say? This is going to be a pretty
brief episode here on the Historian's Notebook,
because this is pretty much as much of a blind
alleyway, as they say, as you can get into when
you're working with these documents, where you
get something that's super vague. The other secondary
literature doesn't really turn up anything about
it. So... Yeah, pretty dissatisfying, but hey,
that's our motto, right? Yeah, 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
what the heck is going on in Valencia with money
troubles or, you know, like embezzlement? Do
you even know? Well, if you've got questions
like that, then I've done my job, because there's
that motto of the Historian's Notebook, dissatisfaction
guaranteed. Yeah, really feeling it this time,
goodness. 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.