Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was March 4th, 1397. 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.
Before we get into the sourcing and content of
the document itself, I just want to point out
that there's something interesting about the
materiality of today's document. Well, it appears
on folio 1V of register 2053, meaning that it's
on the back of the very first piece of paper.
containing letters in this register. So what
I'm going to do for today's web page is I'm going
to upload everything that has been scanned and
made available on Pares for the first pages of
register 2053. And what you'll be able to see
is the cover page that the archivists at the
Archive of the Crown of Aragon have written up
for this register and then after that you're
going to see the initial pages like the cover
page there's a blank page and then we get to
the first page of recorded letters and that would
be folio 1r which is actually Number, oh gosh,
hold on a sec. Let's see. Folio 1R is actually
the fourth image in the series on PARES for
this register. And the third image is a blank
page. It's the verso of what we see as the title.
The title page is kind of cool. It has sort of
larger thicker letters written in the late 14th
century probably at the beginning of when the
Secret seal Letters were being gathered. So what's
interesting is that you know, we've been looking
at a lot of letters from Violant in the register
called Varia, and it seems like at the end of
February of 1387 is when the chancery is kind
of really established its different categories
of registers for Violant, and so the very first
letters that appear in This register, which is
titled Curia sigelli secretum regina yolantis.
So the secret seal of the court of Queen Violant.
The first letter in there is dated February 27th.
And then the second letter is actually hard to
find a date, to be honest. I'm looking at it
right now on Folio 1R, and there's this thing
in the middle that I can't...yeah, there's really
no date on that. Not quite sure what's going
on there. And then at the very bottom of 1R,
there's two lines. Can't quite figure out why
they wanted to squeeze two lines. They do that
sometimes. I've seen that a couple times. Well,
there's two lines of the letter that ends on
the first half of folio one V, which is dated
the 25th of February. And then there's the letter
that's our focus for today for March 4. And then
on the page following, which I'm not going to
be posting onto the website, there's the fifth
of March, actually, I think we are going to be
looking at that one tomorrow. And then the 20th
of March on the same page. So that's kind of
crazy that we jump from the 5th to the 20th.
It's a little weird. Well. You know kind of par
for the course as you've noticed by this point
There's a lot of jumping around of the dates
just for kicks. I'm gonna look at the next page
following which we have actually dated Looks
like oh gosh, what is it even? Dated well another
one for the 20th at the bottom, and then there's
one at the top of This I guess would be folio2v,
and it doesn't seem to be dated. Goodness gracious.
Well, we'll just have to figure that out. Or
maybe not. So the very beginning of the register,
let's go back to that for a second, and just
want to point out that in addition to the very
large letters that are the title of the folio,
there's a message at the top which includes the
name Bartolomeo Sirvent. So I think that Bartolomeo
Sirvent was pretty much like the head of the
scribes who contributed to this. particular register,
and he was one of the most frequent scribes for
Violant in this period, and actually stretching
years into her reign. And we see that it was
begun, the register was begun on the 17th of
February of 1387, and that's pretty much all
that that says. Alright. There's a couple other
things on this page. There's the date range.
That is not written in the handwriting of the
late 14th century, so the stuff that is on the
page sort of in its center below the title. And
even the title might not be. Actually from. The.
14th century that I'm yeah I think it's actually
much later now that I'm looking at it because
if you compare the handwriting at the top where
we have the statement from Bartolomeo Sirvent
to the handwriting that appears in the center
of the page that is clearly not 14th century
gothic secretarial hand the the thick print large
letter print, I think was added closer to the
time of the message in the center that I'm going
to explain in just a sec. So yeah, I think really
when this register was set into storage at the
end of its, so 1390 is the end of its range,
I think that there was nothing written on the
front of this page other than the three lines
at the very top and then it was much later something
like at least the 18th century when and I'm guessing
more like the 19th century when this other writing
was added onto this page. Now the three categories
that are listed on the center. They each have
numbers after them. Six, six, and I believe that's
a 93? Not sure. These are categories of storage,
and I believe that Calaix is a box, and so this
is indicating that it's on shelf six, Its order
number is 6 and then I and then I think it means
box 93. So these were stored not vertically like
what we are used to seeing in bound volumes on
a library or archive shelf. I think I'm correct
in in my understanding and memory of what I read
about the archive of the Crown of Aragon that
they were in boxes. And that helps to explain
some of the insect and worm damage that these
worms were not traveling horizontally through
multiple registers. They were traveling vertically,
like maybe from the top down. And so that doesn't
quite explain how the patterns might not match
up, but I'm... But yeah, I think it would be
really interesting in the future once all of
these images can be uploaded into some kind of
powerful image processing program that the holes
can be matched up so that it can be determined
what registers were stored on top of what other
registers for the centuries that they might have
been. in there undisturbed. So eventually the
Archive of the Crown of Aragon numbered the registers
differently, and they came up with a scheme that
put them in rough chronological order, so that
when we look at registers from the reign of Pere
the Ceremonious, we're looking at registers that
generally are going to start with something like
a one, so like the one thousands. and then when
we are looking at registers from starting with
Joan's reign we're looking at registers that
are in the late teens something like you know
the 19s 1900s series and then for Violante several
of her registers are are in the 2000, so like
this one is 2053. There's another one that a
lot of scholars have worked with 2037. So that
gives you a little bit of a window into the materiality
of these registers and these documents that we
look at, and then also a little bit into the
history of the archive of the Crown of Aragon,
which I think is really fascinating. All right,
now let's get to the document. This is written
by Violant. The scribe is Bartolomeo Sirvent.
We have a nice clear addressee line below the
text block of the letter. Visconti de Roda. So
this is Ramon de Perellos. And that is somebody
that's come up in the podcast before. He's one
of the most experienced and skilled diplomats.
It's possible. that he is one of the most trusted
counselors for Violant. She might have known
him back in France when she first found out that
she was going to be marrying Joan and moving
to the Crown of Aragon. So here we have a letter
which it's really hard to judge how urgent this
is because there's language in it that seems
extremely urgent but is it is it really like
emergency level urgent or is it just you know
clarifying you know because what the letter says
is that to return to Barcelona, and the problem
is that there's been other communication sent
to him that might have been giving him some other
instructions. So, okay, where is it? It's on
line one, two, three, four, five, six. On line
six. There's been other correspondence that has
been sent to Ramon de Perellos with other instructions
and now Violant is saying you have to ignore
all those and there's you know other and all
the other things you're doing in Avignon and
the line about Avignon is the next line below
and and so you have to come back you have to
come to Barcelona and then actually, like, without
delay. So, sans tardare, no delay. And he's supposed
to come back, it seems, with the ambassadors.
And then all of this is is then couched in this
in this introduction. in which she says, okay,
I've received your letters. This is line one.
I've received your letters. And then she says
she's received ambassadors from the King of France.
And so what has changed? This is something that
is quite mysterious to me. So she's received
information from the King of France. And then
that is implicitly the reason that she wants
Ramón de Pérellos to come back right away from
Avignon. And what's really weird about this is
just a few days earlier she dispatched Luchino
Scarampi to Avignon. So is this on some kind
of similar topic? Like is this about the marriage
negotiations and and Scarampi is replacing Ramón
de Perellos? It doesn't really seem like it, but
it is kind of weird how close in time these are,
and I guess Violant in the letter is saying
that it has to do with what she's heard from
the King of France, and I guess that is not related
to what she has... instructed Scarampi to do
about the marriage negotiations. So maybe there's
like another track that's running here, like
there's some other issue that they're trying
to get resolved, that Joan and Violant are
trying to get resolved and the King of France
is working with them on it. Or maybe the number
one mission in Avignon right now are these marriage
negotiations and it is connected. there's just
no way to know because they keep these letters
just so general. But there is urgency. The question
is what's the level of urgency? And I do have
to say that I have never seen quite this level
of like get your butt back here right away. It
seems like there might be even like some kind
of note of of panic in here, but I'm just not
sure. It could it could simply be written that
way because Violant knows that other instructions
have been sent by herself or by Joan to Ramon
de Perellos, and he might be confused if he doesn't
have this like ultra clear, very repetitive message
about don't delay, ignore all the other instructions,
get back to Barcelona. Hopefully we are going
to figure out why, and what this is all about,
and if there really was a kind of emergency level
of urgency to this summons. All right, one last
thing to mention. My process with Gemini and
Claude is going strong, and so I'll add the reports
from those AI chatbots into the AI usage statement
on the webpage for this episode. It's interesting
to kind of see how it's working and try to track
what is useful about it. I think that this did
go a lot faster with their assistance and that
it's kind of a scaffold for me as I'm getting
a better grasp of some of the tone and some of
the vocab of medieval Catalan and medieval Latin.
I will say that I went to my old Catalan medieval
Catalan glossary in order to get a definition
for the word les shots in the fourth line toward
the end. L -e -x -a -t -s in the English letter
pronunciation, because that looked... I was wondering
is that about laws? It's not. It just means to
leave in medieval Catalan, but that's not in
modern Catalan. Can't... I'm not quite sure what
the equivalent is in modern Catalan. Okay, so...
Oh, well that phrase you might just be curious
to know. Lexats des tot. Okay, I'm leaving
everything. All right, cool. So still using some
non -AI resources as I am getting stronger at
the reading of the script. and also the translation.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, season one, Molt Cara Companyona. If
you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, I have 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.