Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 1, 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.
Well first of all we are now in March and No
more of those lovely double F's for February
I'm gonna miss those fun double F's but luckily
for us in the final sign off to Today's document
there is a double F but it is actually part of
this. Oh gosh, I don't even know what you call
them. They're these little phrases. I'm trying
to get to the bottom of this and actually the
Latin group that I mentioned yesterday is going
to help out with this. There's these series of
little phrases. that occur at the end of the
documents and it's sometimes there's a name and
sometimes it's not a name and they're usually
like one two or three words long and they've
been a little bit of a mystery to me sometimes
i can figure out okay it's just one person's
name but it how does it relate to the person
who is signed off on the probatum at the bottom
as saying, you know, I'm authorizing this document.
Is it somehow related to the format of the actual
letter that got sent out, the original copy?
So I'm trying to get to the bottom of that, but
hey, if you're feeling not quite ready to let
go of the double F's of February, well, hopefully
the very last couple words of today's document
will help you to gradually release yourself from
the joy of seeing the double F of February because
that's it no more February 1387 all right well
that was a little somber but what I can tell
you about today's document is that it's kind
of heartwarming And this document is basically
authorizing an old age pension. So there was
this guy named Domenico Lull and the header above
the letter or document is really more of a document,
not a letter. The heading has the name Domenico
Lull with the P and the curl around to the left
for pro. So that heading reads for Domenico Lull.
And as you get into this document, you realize
that Domenico Lull is a bailiff or I should say.
was a bailiff in Valencia who was a loyal and
trusted bailiff for the state in the city of
Valencia for many years and has now reached old
age. And this document authorizes a pension for
him so that he can live out the rest of his years
after his loyal service in comfort and have some
kind of pension to help him meet his expenses.
So this is a social service document. It's super
interesting to see. It's not representative.
There were not old age pensions for everybody.
You really had to have a high up government job
in order to have an old age pension. But it's
kind of neat to see this old age pension sort
of a social safety net, at least for somebody
in the middle ages. And just to have this evidence
of a kind of kindness, a kind of reward for service
that comes from years of loyalty, I just think
that it's a nice sweet moment in the documentation.
Now, I'm romanticizing it when I go into it like
that. It's totally possible that Domenico Lull
was a terrible person and was a total jerk and
exploited people. And maybe one of the reasons
why he was such a good bailiff was because he
was using muscle in order to extort people to
pay up. So we can't assume that just because
somebody is getting an old -age pension that
they were, you know, loyal, trusty, and all of
these positive qualities. But it's possible,
right? And so that's just the kind of check that
I need to put on myself whenever I get a little
bit teary -eyed in a document. I'm actually teary
-eyed because it's like full -on allergy season
in Albuquerque right now, so it's not exactly
connected to to Domenico Lull and his old age.
Let's talk about how old age is referred to.
Let's do a bit of a close reading of this document.
So in line 10, about three words in is the word
senio. senio and then the word after that is
pregravitatus so senio is in the ablative it
could also be in the dative i think it's it's
clear here that it's in the ablative and i think
oh i didn't look it up ahead of time i think
pregravi tus is also oh gosh I'm so yeah trying
to remember these Latin case endings because
there's there's different forms of nouns different
categories of nouns called declensions and you
gotta know which is which all right so but I
think actually this is more of like a verb oh
my gosh This phrase means weighed down by age.
Yeah, so pre -gra -vi -tas. Oh, God. Pre -gra
-va -tus is some kind of verb form. And the phrase
basically is a elegant metaphorical way of saying
you're really too old to do the work anymore.
it's kind of a nicer way of saying enfeebled
and so senio here is the ablative for agedness
you can say and then pre gravatus is a verb form
for saying weighed down so you can you can sort
you can start to kind of see the English descendant
from these Latin words, right? Because in Pre
Gravatus we have the English word gravity for
something about weight. And then, of course,
in Senio, if you just put an R in English at
the end of those letters, you have the word senior.
So that was a really great opportunity to draw
out some kind of Latin to English lineage there,
and also to pull out a little bit of an idiomatic
expression that really clarifies that all of
this is about an old age pension. I did not pinpoint
this on my own. Like, if you're having this idea
that I suddenly got amazing at Latin and just
read through this and then pulled out that phrase
as the important one, that would be inaccurate
because my Latin is nowhere near good enough
just to kind of skim through that all this dense
writing and then flag that right away. In fact,
senio in my mind wasn't immediately connected
to the word for old man in Latin, which is senex,
which is one of the first words you learn if
you're studying Latin. It's one of your initial
set of vocab that you get introduced to if you're
starting out with Latin, senex. So I didn't make
that connection and so it guess who it was? It
was AI. Yeah. So I was remarking to my dissertation
advisor, Dr. Gibbs, the other day that it's like
this podcast is somehow turning into like a journal
of of the usefulness of AI as it develops and
as new versions come out and as people learn
how to use it. And it's almost like there's a
shadow podcast about the AI. But really, the
whole idea of the Historian's Notebook is to
think about the different tools historians have
when they initially encounter documents as they're
trying to figure out their argument about what
happened in the past and also to put together
in their mind some kind of narrative. So there's
all sorts of tools that historians have used
and these new tools with AI are ones that are
really shaking things up. in the way that we
can see demonstrated in today's episode. And
here's Shadow to say hi. Come on up, Shadow.
All right. So what I did for this one is as I've
talked about how I've been frustrated sometimes
by Gemini, because occasionally I know that's
my frustration Shadow's frustrated too. Sometimes
Gemini comes out with a wonderful transcription
of this 14th century gothic secretarial hand,
and other times it doesn't. So what I decided
to do as a process that I'm going to stick with
for a little while, a couple weeks or something,
is I'm actually using more than one AI in order
to help out. So I'm starting with Gemini and
getting a transcription. Then I'm moving to Claude
and having Claude do an original transcription,
which is never as good as Gemini. But then Claude
seems to be better. I know Claude seems to be
better. Would you please? OK, I pause the recording
so that Shadow could finish telling me what she
needed to tell me. And I think she's happy now
having communicated what she needed to. She's
still here, so we'll see what happens. Alright,
what was I saying? Claude is better at thinking
through. the corrections to the transcription.
So Gemini is better at the initial figuring out
of the alphabetical characters written in the
gothic secretarial hand. Gemini is better at
expanding the abbreviations. Claude is better
at catching some things that don't quite make
sense. And the process for today's document is
actually a great example of that. So I had Claude
do an initial transcription of this document
based on the image that I uploaded. It was not
good. And then I put in Gemini's transcription
and said to Claude, hey, here is a transcription
from another source and please compare it to
what you did, and to the original image, and
then reconcile these as best you can. That is
a process that Claude handled very well. And
so from there, there were some important corrections.
for some reason and this is really this this
i think is super interesting when we start to
think about how large language models work and
how they're all operating from recognizing patterns
for some reason gemini actually inserted the
word militi the word for knight or soldier into
the document it's so weird like there's no It's
not in there at all, but in the first few lines
it in Gemini inserted the word Mili -ti in front
of the name of Domenico Lull because it recognized
in a lot of this other stuff that if we're talking
about like an old -age pension. Maybe it even
kind of went back to my earlier document from
a couple days ago with Berenger Dolms, who in
that one there was a milliti, a knight. So yeah,
Gemini inserted that in there. And it's like,
why are you violating the definition of the word
transcription? Transcription in no way can be
interpreted as insert some words. But I guess
if you're expanding abbreviations, you're inserting
some letters, I don't know. But that was a really
interesting output that I noticed from Gemini.
So Claude identified that and said, There's no
word mealy tea in the document, and so I'm going
to remove that as I reconcile the transcription
that I did with the transcription that you have
provided me from another source. And both what
I will say is that both Gemini and Claude identified.
This as a document that initiates an old age
pension for Dominico Lull and both of them. pulled
out senio pre gravatus as a key phrase that identifies
Domenico Lull as old and in that category for
receiving an old age pension. So it was a really
interesting experiment with the large language
model AI chatbots, and we'll see what happens
as I continue to use that process. 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 who got the old age pensions and who
didn't? I'm really curious about that. but we
don't have the answer from this document. 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. 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.