WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:05.759 Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago, 00:00:06.379 --> 00:00:13.660 it was March 3rd, 1387. My name is Jonathan Seyfried. 00:00:14.060 --> 00:00:17.359 I'm a PhD candidate in history at the University 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:21.760 of New Mexico. And this is The Historian's Notebook, 00:00:22.219 --> 00:00:26.640 a podcast about how history gets made. Season 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:30.829 one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're looking 00:00:30.829 --> 00:00:33.570 at a document from each day of the first year 00:00:33.570 --> 00:00:38.109 of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen 00:00:38.109 --> 00:00:41.990 Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's document. 00:01:05.549 --> 00:01:10.049 So one of the big lessons from an earlier episode, 00:01:10.329 --> 00:01:12.590 kind of getting far back into the start of the 00:01:12.590 --> 00:01:18.150 podcast now, is that if you are the outgoing 00:01:18.150 --> 00:01:25.189 queen, then you are in big trouble when the king, 00:01:25.209 --> 00:01:31.049 your husband, dies and you become a widow. So, 00:01:31.049 --> 00:01:35.420 Sibilla had fled. before Pere's actual death, 00:01:36.079 --> 00:01:40.159 when it became clear that Pere the Ceremonious, 00:01:40.439 --> 00:01:44.180 Joan's father, was not going to recover. She 00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:47.760 fled. And this is because she had cultivated 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:53.340 a very, very poor relationship with Joan and 00:01:53.340 --> 00:01:58.500 especially with Violant. Now today, we have... 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:05.659 a document that is in the commune et curiae register 00:02:05.659 --> 00:02:10.280 for Violant. So a register that's about documents 00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:15.759 of her court and also is combined with commune 00:02:15.759 --> 00:02:21.460 seems to be something like just general matters. 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:25.060 Oh gosh that does not sound like a good description. 00:02:25.759 --> 00:02:27.599 I'm gonna have to dig in a little bit more on 00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:33.219 what commune registers mean, but this document 00:02:33.219 --> 00:02:40.620 is in response to a request from a draper named 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:44.719 Francisco Martina. The name Francisco Martina 00:02:44.719 --> 00:02:50.939 is at the very bottom of folio 134 V and at the 00:02:50.939 --> 00:02:57.770 top of folio 135r we see a descriptor for him 00:02:57.770 --> 00:03:01.750 the paleography and the latin make it a little 00:03:01.750 --> 00:03:05.710 well the paleography is not too bad so it looks 00:03:05.710 --> 00:03:11.469 to me like it's but then there's like a mark 00:03:11.469 --> 00:03:14.849 above so it's i'm not quite sure if it's supposed 00:03:14.849 --> 00:03:22.199 to be But anyway, it's definitely some reference 00:03:22.199 --> 00:03:27.360 to the profession of Draper, which is somebody 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:32.879 who deals in textiles. And I've been trying to 00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:36.180 work out exactly how much more specific we can 00:03:36.180 --> 00:03:40.770 get. Is it a textile? dealer like a merchant? 00:03:41.009 --> 00:03:44.250 Is it somebody who does additional work like 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:48.830 could be a tailor or could be some kind of clothier? 00:03:49.590 --> 00:03:58.030 It's not clear. So, Francisco Martina appealed 00:03:58.030 --> 00:04:04.710 to Violant. Why? Well, the content of the letter 00:04:04.710 --> 00:04:09.469 gets into that. and it has to do with the former 00:04:09.469 --> 00:04:17.990 queen, Sibilla. So what happened was that somebody 00:04:17.990 --> 00:04:22.149 who was indirectly connected to Sibilla through 00:04:22.149 --> 00:04:29.569 her brother, that rascal Bernat de Fortia, someone 00:04:29.569 --> 00:04:35.389 had given this draper, Francisco Martina, some 00:04:35.389 --> 00:04:39.110 money. Quite a lot of money. In fact, it looks 00:04:39.110 --> 00:04:45.850 to be something like 2600. Wait a second. Am 00:04:45.850 --> 00:04:57.129 I hold on? It's, it's 2400. No, it isn't 26. 00:04:57.850 --> 00:05:00.930 Oh my goodness, my Latin numbers are getting 00:05:00.930 --> 00:05:05.720 all messed up. Hold on just a second. So uh the 00:05:05.720 --> 00:05:14.939 amount is yeah 24 ,200 solides that is a lot 00:05:14.939 --> 00:05:24.379 of money and that was what this draper received 00:05:24.379 --> 00:05:31.199 from somebody named Guillaume de Piru who's 00:05:31.199 --> 00:05:37.540 identified here as of the House de Domo, of the 00:05:37.540 --> 00:05:44.819 House of Bernat de Fortia. So the draper was 00:05:44.819 --> 00:05:51.040 given thousands of solides. And this took place 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:57.779 in November of the previous year, I think. So, 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:02.709 or maybe there was just like an earlier request 00:06:02.709 --> 00:06:07.670 made to Queen Sibylla in November of the previous 00:06:07.670 --> 00:06:14.889 year, but in Line 16 of Folio 135R, we have the 00:06:14.889 --> 00:06:22.569 date of the 13th of November of the year prior. 00:06:24.110 --> 00:06:28.529 Okay, so there's a lot of players in this little 00:06:28.529 --> 00:06:32.810 episode, and there's a lot of money. but in the 00:06:32.810 --> 00:06:37.889 end it seems quite clear that Violant rules 00:06:37.889 --> 00:06:43.509 in favor of the Draper and basically says the 00:06:43.509 --> 00:06:51.310 Draper does not have to pay and that her treasurer 00:06:51.310 --> 00:07:01.110 is to enforce this and somehow Sibilla's treasurer 00:07:01.449 --> 00:07:07.069 was also involved? Or maybe, okay wait, maybe 00:07:07.069 --> 00:07:10.389 the draper went to the treasurer's first, because 00:07:10.389 --> 00:07:15.029 both treasurers are mentioned. Sibilla's treasurer, 00:07:15.290 --> 00:07:22.350 whose name is Johan Callot, and then Violant's 00:07:22.350 --> 00:07:26.550 treasurer is actually the addressee of this document, 00:07:26.870 --> 00:07:33.209 Alatzar Golluff. the Jewish treasurer for Violant. 00:07:33.810 --> 00:07:38.329 Okay, so there's a lot more people now involved, 00:07:38.670 --> 00:07:41.850 but I think the way this goes is that the Draper 00:07:41.850 --> 00:07:46.050 made a request or is interacting somehow with 00:07:46.050 --> 00:07:50.089 the treasurer, who then is going to be the one 00:07:50.089 --> 00:07:57.029 to issue out this ruling to basically say that 00:07:57.029 --> 00:08:04.139 the creditor, Guillaume de Piru, who's connected 00:08:04.139 --> 00:08:07.860 to Bernat de Fortia, who's the brother of former 00:08:07.860 --> 00:08:13.100 Queen Sibilla, that the creditor, Guillaume de 00:08:13.100 --> 00:08:16.839 Piru, that he's not gonna get his money back. 00:08:17.100 --> 00:08:20.800 And I think the clear implication here is that 00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:24.399 he's not gonna get his money back from the Draper, 00:08:24.439 --> 00:08:28.129 and so the implication is that he's going to 00:08:28.129 --> 00:08:35.070 have to extract that money from Bernat de Fortia. 00:08:36.029 --> 00:08:40.889 So basically there's a lot of twists and turns 00:08:40.889 --> 00:08:46.549 in the story of this money, and I don't know 00:08:46.549 --> 00:08:50.730 what justification the draper has for saying 00:08:50.730 --> 00:08:55.149 I just don't want to pay it back. Maybe something 00:08:55.149 --> 00:09:00.450 happened like the money was used to finance the 00:09:00.450 --> 00:09:05.789 purchase of some textiles and the ship that had 00:09:05.789 --> 00:09:09.990 the textiles sank or was captured by pirates 00:09:09.990 --> 00:09:12.230 or something, and so there's no way to pay the 00:09:12.230 --> 00:09:16.549 money back because of that. But I mean, then 00:09:16.549 --> 00:09:18.549 we would probably have that mentioned. We'd have 00:09:18.549 --> 00:09:20.990 something about a shipment mentioned in the document, 00:09:20.990 --> 00:09:25.659 and I don't see anything like that here. So, 00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:30.500 Violant, I think the bottom line here is that 00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:36.639 Violant is once again sticking it to Sibilla 00:09:36.639 --> 00:09:41.240 de Fortia and her brother Bernat de Fortia, who 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:46.100 by the way are still imprisoned and their fates 00:09:46.100 --> 00:09:51.049 are going to be decided. in the coming weeks, 00:09:51.470 --> 00:09:55.110 and they are not sure whether they're going to 00:09:55.110 --> 00:10:01.610 survive. They could be found guilty of being 00:10:01.610 --> 00:10:04.870 traitors. There's this suspicion out there that 00:10:04.870 --> 00:10:09.610 maybe Sibilla used sorcery in order to make Joan 00:10:09.610 --> 00:10:14.509 ill in those early days of January, and maybe 00:10:14.509 --> 00:10:20.120 Bernat can be seen as someone who was rallying 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:24.639 forces to put up some kind of a fight and so 00:10:24.639 --> 00:10:27.919 they're they're not sure how they're going to 00:10:27.919 --> 00:10:30.659 get out of this but i can tell you one thing 00:10:30.659 --> 00:10:34.779 they're going to owe a lot of money when they 00:10:34.779 --> 00:10:40.179 do and this is just one example of that because 00:10:40.179 --> 00:10:44.789 i have a feeling that when this Guillaume de 00:10:44.789 --> 00:10:47.669 Piru is not able to get his money back from 00:10:47.669 --> 00:10:53.110 the draper. He's going to go to Bernat de Fortia 00:10:53.110 --> 00:10:57.340 in order to get his money back. So there's a 00:10:57.340 --> 00:11:01.340 lot that's accumulating in terms of financial 00:11:01.340 --> 00:11:06.240 arrangements that had they stayed in power, had 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:10.200 Sibilla de Fortia continued to rule as queen 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:13.519 for another year, it probably would have resolved 00:11:13.519 --> 00:11:19.320 without any cost to her brother Bernat. But Pere 00:11:19.320 --> 00:11:25.240 the Ceremonious has died and Sibilla made enemies 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:30.259 out of the next in line for the throne. I just 00:11:30.259 --> 00:11:35.440 don't understand exactly what she was expecting 00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:38.159 in terms of being able to get away with that, 00:11:38.679 --> 00:11:42.710 but sometimes you're... kind of put on the defensive. 00:11:42.889 --> 00:11:46.610 I would guess that Sibilla's perception was something 00:11:46.610 --> 00:11:51.149 more like she had to defend her own honor and 00:11:51.149 --> 00:11:55.149 was in competition with Violante on a number 00:11:55.149 --> 00:12:01.330 of fronts in terms of status and such. So that's 00:12:01.330 --> 00:12:04.029 my speculation about kind of the backstory of 00:12:04.029 --> 00:12:09.639 why Sibilla made choices that put her and her 00:12:09.639 --> 00:12:13.519 brother in this position of I'm sure there's 00:12:13.519 --> 00:12:19.600 way more examples like this of when the Financial 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:24.019 deal was kind of getting sorted out and because 00:12:24.019 --> 00:12:28.580 of the change in Leadership and losing power 00:12:28.580 --> 00:12:36.779 you're now going to get stiffed so I think Her 00:12:36.779 --> 00:12:40.820 brother seems to have been just sort of this 00:12:40.820 --> 00:12:46.200 rascal. I like the term rapscallion and he seems 00:12:46.200 --> 00:12:48.279 to have just spent money on all kinds of things 00:12:48.279 --> 00:12:52.960 and was sort of a thorn in the side of Sibilla. 00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:55.259 Just a constant embarrassment because of all 00:12:55.259 --> 00:13:01.049 of his kind of nouveau riche habits. That's the 00:13:01.049 --> 00:13:05.190 sense I get. So this might also be another instance 00:13:05.190 --> 00:13:11.649 of Bernat de Fortia just making unwise business 00:13:11.649 --> 00:13:14.789 deals and it's coming back to bite them even 00:13:14.789 --> 00:13:19.049 harder now that they are no longer in power. 00:13:20.789 --> 00:13:25.029 So tons of questions come up. If I spent a bit 00:13:25.029 --> 00:13:30.049 more time and when I say a bit, I mean like many, 00:13:30.190 --> 00:13:34.029 many, many hours trying to really get to the 00:13:34.029 --> 00:13:36.450 bottom of the meaning of the Latin sentences 00:13:36.450 --> 00:13:40.830 here. I'm sure that I could be more definitive 00:13:40.830 --> 00:13:45.389 and also some other aspects of how this deal 00:13:45.389 --> 00:13:50.769 went wrong might become illuminated. but I think 00:13:50.769 --> 00:13:53.909 I'm going to leave it there for this initial 00:13:53.909 --> 00:13:55.830 run -through. I could totally see myself coming 00:13:55.830 --> 00:14:00.529 back to explore this later if I'm deciding that 00:14:00.529 --> 00:14:04.330 I'm going to really make the Sibilla versus Violant 00:14:04.330 --> 00:14:08.009 tension something important in the historical 00:14:08.009 --> 00:14:11.090 narrative that I want to craft out of all of 00:14:11.090 --> 00:14:13.809 this research that I'm doing, but I'm not quite 00:14:13.809 --> 00:14:17.049 sure that that's going to happen in the narrative 00:14:17.049 --> 00:14:22.029 in the end. One last thing, I want to verbally 00:14:22.029 --> 00:14:27.250 acknowledge that I did my usual Gemini plus Claude 00:14:27.250 --> 00:14:31.149 routine with this, where I had Gemini do an initial 00:14:31.149 --> 00:14:33.309 transcription, then Claude had a transcription, 00:14:33.409 --> 00:14:36.190 and then had Claude try to reconcile them. I 00:14:36.190 --> 00:14:39.429 really like what's happening there. And if you 00:14:39.429 --> 00:14:42.889 go to the website for today's document, what 00:14:42.889 --> 00:14:47.649 you'll see is that Claude's output is, I think, 00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:53.830 really useful in that Claude is, I've been able 00:14:53.830 --> 00:14:59.870 to set up a project in my Claude account that 00:14:59.870 --> 00:15:03.190 makes it so that the same instructions are applied 00:15:03.190 --> 00:15:06.870 again and again and Claude knows that I want 00:15:06.870 --> 00:15:10.610 it to surface ambiguities and not hide them. 00:15:11.049 --> 00:15:15.409 And so there's lots of footnotes in Claude's 00:15:15.409 --> 00:15:18.870 translation. of this document and transcription. 00:15:18.870 --> 00:15:23.250 Claude is surfacing questions in a way that I 00:15:23.250 --> 00:15:30.269 approve of in terms of historical method. So 00:15:30.269 --> 00:15:33.690 it seems to be going well. I think the initial 00:15:33.690 --> 00:15:37.509 output by Gemini was a little weird and subpar, 00:15:37.909 --> 00:15:42.370 but sometimes Gemini is great and sometimes it's 00:15:42.370 --> 00:15:46.009 just striking out. So take a look at some of 00:15:46.009 --> 00:15:52.029 the AI chatbot reporting and see what you think 00:15:52.029 --> 00:15:58.750 about how all of this is being analyzed, both 00:15:58.750 --> 00:16:05.929 by me and by the bots. And yeah, definitely an 00:16:05.929 --> 00:16:10.659 interesting new use of technology to try to to 00:16:10.659 --> 00:16:13.600 try to just get a foothold in what the documents 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:16.720 are about. And sometimes you can get some interesting 00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:19.139 conclusions, but they're always provisional, 00:16:19.139 --> 00:16:21.600 always provisional, until you can do the hard 00:16:21.600 --> 00:16:26.139 work of really being sure of that Latin transcription 00:16:26.139 --> 00:16:29.899 and translation. Thanks for listening to this 00:16:29.899 --> 00:16:33.000 episode of the Historian's Notebook, season one, 00:16:33.320 --> 00:16:36.500 Molt Cara Companyona. If you are leaving with 00:16:36.500 --> 00:16:38.840 more questions than you arrived with, I've done 00:16:38.840 --> 00:16:42.820 my job. Remember, the motto of the Historian's 00:16:42.820 --> 00:16:47.559 Notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. Visit 00:16:47.559 --> 00:16:50.279 the website to see an image of today's document 00:16:50.279 --> 00:16:54.100 and additional show notes, and listen again tomorrow 00:16:54.100 --> 00:16:57.200 to hear about the next day in the first year 00:16:57.200 --> 00:17:02.259 of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and Queen 00:17:02.259 --> 00:17:06.279 Violant de Bar. In the meantime, take care.