Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was February 26, 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 Violant,
and it is once again in that Varia register,
and this is addressed to somebody who in the
first line is identified only as Mossen Berenguer.
There's a lot of berenguers out there. So luckily
we have a little line underneath the main text
dirigiter berengerio dolms milite and that last
word milite makes all the difference. It means
Well, in direct translation from Latin, it means
soldier, but the way it was used at this time,
it means knight. So Violant is writing to a
certain Berenguer. I think the last name is D
-O -L -M -S. And this person is a knight. This
person is... possibly like a knight for hire,
although I'm not sure. I wasn't able to find
anything about Berenguer Dolms to understand
why he has been called upon to perform the service
that he's being called upon to do in this letter.
And so it's a bit of a mystery there why it is
that we have this letter going out to a militi,
a knight, but the purpose of having someone with
some military training or some kind of armament
becomes clear when we get into the letter itself.
It turns out that there is another person named
Jacme Quinta, and that person is a tax collector,
or some kind of fee collector. The word that's
used for the funds that are being collected,
that word is demandes. So, demandes is a word
that just means something like a request or a
requirement. It's got a lot of different colloquial
uses. So I was a little bit concerned that I
might not be interpreting it correctly. Actually,
let me clarify. I was concerned that Claude was
not interpreting it correctly. I switched over
to Claude from ChatGPT to see how Claude version
opus 4 .6 would do with a translation from medieval
Catalan, and Claude did really, really well.
In fact, Claude was able to catch something that
was stumping me. There was an abbreviation, it's
in the fourth line, kind of in the middle, DRS.
and with a macron above it and I just could not
figure out what was being abbreviated there,
and Claude figured out that it was diners. It
was the unit of money. It hasn't come up all
that much. Usually we're seeing florins as the
unit of money, or maybe sous, and so to have
diners in the document, it's not super rare,
but it's just something that I wasn't used to,
and Claude found that, and then he also It also
found something that I really should have gotten
when I was transcribing this, but I didn't. So
in the fifth line down... In the middle again,
right before dia, is the word cascune, and I
had looked at the second C and thought it was
a T. You might be wondering what happened to
Gemini as my go -to for doing transcription.
Well, I did upload this letter into Gemini, and
for some reason it just flubbed it horribly.
Like I can't quite figure out why Gemini worked
so well on some occasions, and then on other
occasions it just is a disaster. So it was mistaking
a lot of the abbreviations, so it was getting
a lot of the P words wrong, and I just gave up
and I said, you know what, it's gonna take longer
for me to go through and correct the Gemini errors
than it would be for me to just go ahead and
transcribe this letter myself. So we'll give
Gemini another chance tomorrow and see what happens.
But yeah, Gemini is kind of this uneven experience.
That's what I can say about that. And I haven't
tried getting Claude to do a transcription from
the image. We might try that at some point. Anyway,
Claude came up with the conclusion that demandes
was being used here as a term for the collection
of funds, whether it's a fee or a tax. And I
just wanted some confirmation about that. And
Claude did a really good job of finding some
scholarly literature that indeed confirms that
demandes was used. as a term for fund collection
that a demandes would be a word meaning you're
going out and you're doing collections. So what's
happening in this letter is that jacme quinta
is the tax collector, and he's gonna need a little
bit of muscle as he goes around Catalonia and
demands that certain people pay what the crown
feels is owed to it. Berenguer Dolms is like
the enforcer. And so you can really imagine the
two of them walking around, well, probably at
horses, riding around Catalonia, going to wherever
they're supposed to go. It doesn't say which
parts of Catalonia, and collecting the money.
So that's the scenario here, very clearly. And
then... On the second to last line, we have somebody
reappear, who we've already talked about way
back in episode 37. On January 30th, we had a
document that mentioned Voilant's treasurer, Alatzar
Golluf. Alatzar Goluff, I think? I didn't realize
at the time, back on January 30th, that he is
definitely Jewish. He later appeared in some
documents that I was looking at after that episode
had been recorded, and I noticed that he was
referred to by faith group. So it would say something
like Jehu alatsar Goluff in order to mean the
Jew alatzar Golluff, who is the treasurer. And
here we have him appearing again. So he is very
high up in the administration. And we have this
moment where we can pause and say, look at the
interfaith encounter. that's happening here as
Alatzar Golluff has this role. So Benjamin Gampel
is my go -to source when thinking about Jews
in the Crown of Aragon specifically during the
reign of Joan and Violant. There's a tremendous
amount of scholarly literature about interfaith
encounter in the Crown of Aragon over the long
term. So one of the most prominent scholars of
that field is Brian Catlos, and I'll put a couple
of his books into the bibliography for this episode,
but there's been just a tremendous amount of
scholarship done even from the early 20th century
especially with Yitzhak Baer who did a really
tremendous work of scholarship on Jews in Iberia
and so there's a very very well -established
set of research strategies and sources all about
the interfaith encounter that took place in iberia
especially during these centuries where the peninsula
shifted from muslim rule to christian rule and
we can see that as the centuries progress the
restrictions placed on jews become more severe
but it is uneven. So in certain places, certain
cities, in certain professions, Jews are celebrated
and promoted. And even with individual people,
the story is very uneven. I think in particular
about Joan, who in his youth was very rabid
when it came to the conspiracy theory of Jews
stealing communion wafers. It really got him
riled up and he behaved very brutally to particular
Jews that had gotten caught up in that. conspiracy
-mongering and had been arrested and accused
of stealing communion wafers, and he authorized
some torture of them. And so again, really important
to realize that when we are following along the
interesting story of Joan and Violant, we're
not telling a story of heroes. We're telling
a story of interesting people who did in many
cases, reprehensible things, but also did other
things that we can look at according to our modern
lens, looking back and say, okay, well, that
was an interesting resistance that, you know,
maybe we are having a kind of revision of in
terms of their gender dynamic. That's my big
investigation. it's not in any way to excuse
the cruelty that they have exhibited in other
situations. Now let's talk about the Jews who
were high up in the administration, especially
in the treasury. They were treated in many cases
quite well and they were advocated for during
times of crisis. I'm thinking about the anti
-Jewish riots of 1391 in particular, which Benjamin
Gampel's book really focuses on. And in that
book, we have a lot of examples of Joan and Violant
really taking care to protect particular Jews
that they know that are high up working for them,
even an they express a lot of callousness toward
communities of Jews that are under attack in
the cities around the Crown of Aragon. So this
is a very complicated picture and it's very difficult
to paint with a broad brushstroke about questions
of morality. in regard to the interfaith encounter
in these moments of violence and conflict. But
documents like this, like today's document, provide
evidence of the close working relationship that
was just a constant feature of the royal family
of the Crown of Aragon with members of the Jewish
faith. So, again, a lot comes out from this document
when we get some specifics, unlike yesterday's
document, which was just horribly general. 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, 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.