WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.440 Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:05.960 --> 00:00:12.779 it was February 27th, 1387. My name is Jonathan 00:00:12.779 --> 00:00:16.339 Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the 00:00:16.339 --> 00:00:19.899 University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's 00:00:19.899 --> 00:00:23.800 Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made. 00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:28.760 Season 1 is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:31.760 looking at a document from each day of the first 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:36.340 year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and 00:00:36.340 --> 00:00:40.719 Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:04.329 --> 00:01:07.189 Alright, we're getting to the end of February, 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:10.150 and I don't know about you, but I'm really gonna 00:01:10.150 --> 00:01:14.810 miss those double Fs for February. They were 00:01:14.810 --> 00:01:18.590 really fun to look at each day this month. Alright, 00:01:18.629 --> 00:01:22.890 let's talk about this document. Guess what? Violant 00:01:22.890 --> 00:01:28.469 is writing to the Pope. Again. And, spoiler alert, 00:01:29.430 --> 00:01:33.510 tomorrow, February 28th, She's gonna write to 00:01:33.510 --> 00:01:39.670 the Pope yet again, Violant. She's like real 00:01:39.670 --> 00:01:43.769 pen pals with Clement VII, writing him almost 00:01:43.769 --> 00:01:47.530 every day, it seems. What do we make of that? 00:01:48.530 --> 00:01:51.129 Well, hopefully by the end of this year we'll 00:01:51.129 --> 00:01:55.810 make something of that. All right, so this is 00:01:55.810 --> 00:02:00.590 Violant writing to the Pope again, and... This 00:02:00.590 --> 00:02:05.670 letter seems to be a pretty straightforward recommendation 00:02:05.670 --> 00:02:12.270 regarding personnel. Yeah, so there's another 00:02:12.270 --> 00:02:18.629 vacancy. So it seems like someone named Bonanatus 00:02:18.629 --> 00:02:27.409 de Podio has died. And that person, I think, 00:02:27.889 --> 00:02:36.110 was somehow like maybe a bishop or somebody in 00:02:36.110 --> 00:02:40.569 Urgell. So the place name of Urgell comes up 00:02:40.569 --> 00:02:46.349 a whole lot and Violant is recommending somebody 00:02:46.349 --> 00:02:56.689 for that post named Jacobo de Avelanda. Oh gosh, 00:02:57.129 --> 00:02:59.949 here's the problem is that When I'm looking at 00:02:59.949 --> 00:03:05.409 this letter, it seems to me like the last name 00:03:05.409 --> 00:03:17.129 for Jacobo is A -V -E -L -L -A -N -E -D. Avelaneda. 00:03:17.349 --> 00:03:22.729 Avelaneda. But it is possible that the second 00:03:22.729 --> 00:03:26.949 letter of that name, that surname is a n, so 00:03:26.949 --> 00:03:33.509 it might be anellaneda. Oh gosh, could go kind 00:03:33.509 --> 00:03:38.110 of either way. So well anyway, Jacobo is apparently 00:03:38.110 --> 00:03:42.349 a stand -up fellow, and Violant goes on for 00:03:42.349 --> 00:03:46.030 a little while about how he's really qualified 00:03:46.030 --> 00:03:52.509 to take over for the dead Bonanatas de 00:03:52.509 --> 00:03:56.520 Podio. And there's someone else that appears 00:03:56.520 --> 00:03:59.800 in the letter. I think the bishop of Urgell who's 00:03:59.800 --> 00:04:04.740 somebody else named Berenguer. Yeah Can't have 00:04:04.740 --> 00:04:09.439 too many Berenguers in medieval Crown of Aragon. 00:04:10.639 --> 00:04:13.819 So Urgell is the place here being mentioned. 00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:16.120 We haven't really talked too much about Urgell. 00:04:16.740 --> 00:04:21.420 There's a Count of Urgell that Joan is really 00:04:21.420 --> 00:04:24.980 close to and over the course of his reign he 00:04:24.980 --> 00:04:27.699 shares a lot of his treasures with. Actually, 00:04:27.720 --> 00:04:30.839 it's more like the other way around that Joan 00:04:30.839 --> 00:04:34.660 demands that the Count of Urgell sends him a 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:39.980 lot of treasures, especially... Unicorn Horn. 00:04:40.420 --> 00:04:42.839 I don't know if I've mentioned the Unicorn Horn 00:04:42.839 --> 00:04:46.860 yet on the podcast, but Joan was a big fan. 00:04:47.319 --> 00:04:50.339 I'm not sure that he writes about Unicorn Horn 00:04:50.339 --> 00:04:53.800 at any point in this the First Year of His Reign, 00:04:53.819 --> 00:04:56.319 but he might and hopefully we'll get one of those 00:04:56.319 --> 00:05:00.040 letters and that'll be fun to talk about because 00:05:00.040 --> 00:05:03.639 Joan was a big believer in the power of the 00:05:03.639 --> 00:05:07.379 Unicorn Horn. Well, this was actually Narwhal 00:05:07.379 --> 00:05:10.439 Tusk, and there's a whole lot of research about 00:05:10.439 --> 00:05:13.980 that. I'll just kind of fill in some additional 00:05:13.980 --> 00:05:17.399 notes on Unicorn horn in today's episode, but 00:05:17.399 --> 00:05:20.699 we are like way off on a tangent here talking 00:05:20.699 --> 00:05:22.779 about Unicorn horn. It's just that one of the 00:05:22.779 --> 00:05:26.420 most funny episodes in the story of Joann and 00:05:26.420 --> 00:05:29.819 his pursuit of Unicorn horn is when he finds that 00:05:29.819 --> 00:05:33.259 the Count of Urgell, which I think is like... 00:05:33.290 --> 00:05:37.189 Is it his cousin? They're related, uncle -cousin, 00:05:37.209 --> 00:05:39.550 something like that. He finds out that the Count 00:05:39.550 --> 00:05:43.769 of Urgell has obtained some unicorn horn, and 00:05:43.769 --> 00:05:47.149 he writes him to say, hand it over, give me your 00:05:47.149 --> 00:05:52.050 unicorn horn. So, moment of family tension there. 00:05:52.930 --> 00:05:56.970 So anyway, Urgell, that's all I think about when 00:05:56.970 --> 00:06:01.149 I think of Urgell. Apologies to all of the current 00:06:01.149 --> 00:06:05.290 listeners who live there. So, all right, we've 00:06:05.290 --> 00:06:08.970 got this letter. It's about an ecclesiastical 00:06:08.970 --> 00:06:13.370 position. Violant is making a recommendation. 00:06:14.550 --> 00:06:18.689 And what else is there to say? I can't really 00:06:18.689 --> 00:06:22.790 pick out any subtleties here in this particular 00:06:22.790 --> 00:06:26.029 letter, even though it seems pretty long. I did 00:06:26.029 --> 00:06:31.069 try a new technique with the AI chatbots. Yep, 00:06:31.170 --> 00:06:35.990 I used... basically a whole lot of resources 00:06:35.990 --> 00:06:39.629 environmentally, a lot of water probably, in 00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:43.810 order to have both Gemini and Claude work on 00:06:43.810 --> 00:06:47.389 this sort of together. So I started with Gemini. 00:06:47.850 --> 00:06:51.930 I got a transcription. I was not too pleased. 00:06:52.430 --> 00:06:55.870 Again, I mean Gemini was doing so great. couple 00:06:55.870 --> 00:06:59.730 days ago and now it's just flubbing it. So it 00:06:59.730 --> 00:07:01.670 got some things right. And so what I did is I 00:07:01.670 --> 00:07:07.129 had Claude do a transcription and then put Gemini's 00:07:07.129 --> 00:07:13.290 results into a reply and said to Claude, hey, 00:07:13.810 --> 00:07:19.730 I had another LLM generate a transcription. Please 00:07:19.730 --> 00:07:23.709 use it in order to identify some things that 00:07:23.709 --> 00:07:28.129 you might improve. in yours. And I think that 00:07:28.129 --> 00:07:33.110 that was good. I'm quite sure that there's a 00:07:33.110 --> 00:07:37.089 lot that's missing from the transcription. There's 00:07:37.089 --> 00:07:40.529 a lot that's missing in the subsequent translation. 00:07:41.069 --> 00:07:44.730 But my main goal, remember, is at this point 00:07:44.730 --> 00:07:47.850 in the initial run through of the documents to 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:50.949 try to identify documents that I would come back 00:07:50.949 --> 00:07:54.769 to later that are really pertinent to my research 00:07:54.769 --> 00:07:58.970 question. And certainly, if I'm using these chat 00:07:58.970 --> 00:08:02.250 bots, I'm going to miss some stuff that I would 00:08:02.250 --> 00:08:07.189 not miss if I was spending, you know, multiple 00:08:07.189 --> 00:08:12.370 hours. on doing the transcription and translation 00:08:12.370 --> 00:08:17.949 myself, but I would say that for a letter like 00:08:17.949 --> 00:08:21.949 this where it seems to just kind of fit a lot 00:08:21.949 --> 00:08:26.850 of the patterns for the way that the king and 00:08:26.850 --> 00:08:32.149 queen interacted with the ecclesiastical administration 00:08:32.149 --> 00:08:35.629 and personnel changes, there's just not a lot 00:08:35.629 --> 00:08:39.970 to really work with here in terms of what I'm 00:08:39.970 --> 00:08:43.730 focused on. So I'm going to just kind of let 00:08:43.730 --> 00:08:47.830 it go with the kind of sketched out knowledge 00:08:47.830 --> 00:08:54.190 that I have about this document and maybe come 00:08:54.190 --> 00:08:58.100 back to it. if it reappears in some way, any 00:08:58.100 --> 00:09:01.860 of the people in there happen to show up again 00:09:01.860 --> 00:09:06.960 in different context, different situation that 00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:12.029 is connected to my main research question about 00:09:12.029 --> 00:09:17.110 how Joan and Violant ruled together. And of 00:09:17.110 --> 00:09:19.549 course I'm always kind of flipping back and forth 00:09:19.549 --> 00:09:23.029 in the registers trying to just develop a general 00:09:23.029 --> 00:09:26.389 sense of what else they're writing about on these 00:09:26.389 --> 00:09:31.710 same days. And maybe I'll happen upon a document 00:09:31.710 --> 00:09:37.870 from Joan that is also about the ecclesiastical 00:09:37.870 --> 00:09:42.809 vacancy in Urgell. And then it becomes very connected 00:09:42.809 --> 00:09:48.549 to my main research question. So this might be 00:09:48.549 --> 00:09:52.870 a good time to take a step back and just remind 00:09:52.870 --> 00:09:59.269 everybody what this project is. all about. Yeah, 00:09:59.450 --> 00:10:01.990 I kind of want to do that every, you know, dozen 00:10:01.990 --> 00:10:04.309 episodes or so, and I don't think I've done it 00:10:04.309 --> 00:10:10.750 for a while. So this project is all about conveying 00:10:10.750 --> 00:10:14.309 the abundance of the archive of the Crown of 00:10:14.309 --> 00:10:19.200 Aragon. The documents that we look at every day, 00:10:19.580 --> 00:10:24.759 they are copies of the official thing that was 00:10:24.759 --> 00:10:31.139 sent out. Before the letter was folded and before 00:10:31.139 --> 00:10:37.559 a wax seal was applied to it, the chancery scribes 00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:40.240 would write a copy of it on a different piece 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:43.480 of paper that would be kept. And that's what 00:10:43.480 --> 00:10:47.159 we're looking at. So for every single letter 00:10:47.159 --> 00:10:52.580 that we see in these registers, there is a twin 00:10:52.580 --> 00:10:56.320 that went out there and maybe has not been preserved. 00:10:56.419 --> 00:11:01.879 I mean likely has not been preserved. So there 00:11:01.879 --> 00:11:05.840 are a couple that came back to the Archive of 00:11:05.840 --> 00:11:10.269 the Crown of Aragon. for the letters generated 00:11:10.269 --> 00:11:15.649 in the year 1387 and I was lucky enough to be 00:11:15.649 --> 00:11:21.370 able to reunite one of those to its copy because 00:11:21.370 --> 00:11:25.149 there's been a scan of each so the outgoing letter 00:11:25.149 --> 00:11:28.909 was found its way back into the archive and then 00:11:28.909 --> 00:11:31.649 there was the copy so if you're interested in 00:11:31.649 --> 00:11:39.940 that definitely go back to episode recorded for 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:43.419 January 18th and I didn't know it when I was 00:11:43.419 --> 00:11:46.220 recording the episode that I would actually find 00:11:46.220 --> 00:11:51.740 the the copy the register copy because I had 00:11:51.740 --> 00:11:54.399 actually chosen to use the outgoing copy for 00:11:54.399 --> 00:12:00.580 that episode and so that was a pretty satisfying 00:12:00.580 --> 00:12:05.990 experience to reunite the outgoing copy a digital 00:12:05.990 --> 00:12:08.610 image of the outgoing copy with a digital image 00:12:08.610 --> 00:12:14.429 of the register chancery copy and I wrote about 00:12:14.429 --> 00:12:16.649 that on the website even though I didn't mention 00:12:16.649 --> 00:12:19.750 it in the episode itself because I only discovered 00:12:19.750 --> 00:12:24.190 it later kind of by happenstance. So that's a 00:12:24.190 --> 00:12:28.029 little bit about the material that we're looking 00:12:28.029 --> 00:12:33.679 at in this podcast in terms of how it was created. 00:12:34.259 --> 00:12:39.059 One thing I also want to review is that the paleography 00:12:39.059 --> 00:12:45.860 is called Gothic Secretarial Hand. It's 14th century 00:12:45.860 --> 00:12:50.299 Gothic Secretarial Hand, and it's like a cursive. 00:12:50.779 --> 00:12:54.159 So there are manuscripts that are produced at 00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:58.620 this time that are not in this script but are 00:12:58.620 --> 00:13:02.019 in the I guess what you could call like stereotypically 00:13:02.019 --> 00:13:03.740 like what you would think of when you think of 00:13:03.740 --> 00:13:06.440 a medieval manuscript like kind of the blocky 00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:12.220 letters and those are scripts that are reserved 00:13:12.220 --> 00:13:16.620 for the fanciest products and these letters that 00:13:16.620 --> 00:13:21.659 we're looking at they are businessy so there's 00:13:21.659 --> 00:13:26.190 not really a concern with the art history of 00:13:26.190 --> 00:13:29.509 the written word as it appears on the page. The 00:13:29.509 --> 00:13:34.870 purpose of these documents is to record the information 00:13:34.870 --> 00:13:40.190 quickly and efficiently, and so it's a script 00:13:40.190 --> 00:13:44.519 that could be written very fast. cursive handwriting. 00:13:44.759 --> 00:13:48.000 The letters will flow together much more easily. 00:13:48.539 --> 00:13:51.820 And then also there are a ton of abbreviations 00:13:51.820 --> 00:13:56.120 and all of those abbreviations added up will 00:13:56.120 --> 00:13:59.580 cut down on the amount of time that it takes 00:13:59.580 --> 00:14:04.940 to get letters entered in to the archival register. 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:10.669 The abbreviations are indicated most frequently 00:14:10.669 --> 00:14:13.610 by a horizontal line across the top of the word 00:14:13.610 --> 00:14:17.549 we call that a macron and then there are other 00:14:17.549 --> 00:14:22.870 abbreviations that are like curved above the 00:14:22.870 --> 00:14:26.149 letter or like a little loop or there's a bunch 00:14:26.149 --> 00:14:29.210 of different abbreviation marks and so you kind 00:14:29.210 --> 00:14:34.409 of get used to recognizing which marks mean which 00:14:34.669 --> 00:14:40.529 letters or entire words can be rendered as a 00:14:40.529 --> 00:14:45.070 mark or a kind of non -alphabetical character 00:14:45.070 --> 00:14:49.830 so that when these scribes are writing, they're 00:14:49.830 --> 00:14:53.830 deploying all of these conventions and fortunately 00:14:53.830 --> 00:14:57.269 for me, it's a lot of these have been recorded 00:14:57.269 --> 00:15:01.210 and they're quite standard. So it's pretty rare 00:15:01.210 --> 00:15:05.389 that there's some kind of unusual novel never 00:15:05.389 --> 00:15:08.769 -before -seen abbreviation in one of these letters. 00:15:10.149 --> 00:15:15.830 It all makes for a very big challenge to transcribe 00:15:15.830 --> 00:15:19.110 and translate. I'll talk a little bit more about 00:15:19.110 --> 00:15:22.889 that tomorrow and some of the really wonderful 00:15:22.889 --> 00:15:26.149 resources that I have in order to help with that 00:15:26.149 --> 00:15:31.210 challenge, not just in terms of technology or 00:15:31.210 --> 00:15:35.009 in terms of glossaries, but in terms of people 00:15:35.009 --> 00:15:38.129 that have helped me out along the way. So you'll 00:15:38.129 --> 00:15:41.750 hear a lot more about that for tomorrow's document. 00:15:42.679 --> 00:15:45.860 Thanks for listening to this episode of the Historian's 00:15:45.860 --> 00:15:50.340 Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. If you 00:15:50.340 --> 00:15:52.460 are leaving with more questions than you arrived 00:15:52.460 --> 00:15:56.379 with, I've done my job. Because remember, the 00:15:56.379 --> 00:16:00.700 motto of the Historian's Notebook is, dissatisfaction 00:16:00.700 --> 00:16:04.779 guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image 00:16:04.779 --> 00:16:08.100 of today's document and additional show notes. 00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:11.500 and to listen again tomorrow to hear about the 00:16:11.500 --> 00:16:15.360 next day in the first year of the reign of King 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:20.039 Joan I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. 00:16:20.279 --> 00:16:22.159 In the meantime, take care.