Hello. In The Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was March 7th, 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 really kind of hilarious.
So you've noticed that what we really do on this
podcast is we look at letters attributed to Joan
or attributed to Violant. My original idea for
the podcast was that sometimes I'd be able to
work in letters from other people, like we have
registers of letters from Marti. or Maria de
Luna. So that's really kind of difficult to do
because just navigating these registers and finding
letters takes a whole lot of time. But occasionally
I'll come across something in the secondary literature
that I feel would be a great addition to the
Joan and Violant authorship that dominates
the podcast. And actually this one It wasn't
really all that hard to find because it's right
on the next page of register 1751 after what
we were looking at yesterday. But I came across
it before I was going through this register for
the purposes of yesterday's podcast. It was written
about in an article by the scholar Jaume Riera
i Sans in a 1987 article about Joan and Violant's
first son, Jaume, coincidentally the same name
as the scholar who was writing that piece. So
Jaume has been mentioned before on the podcast.
He was designated the Dauphin in early January,
and this was a move that a lot of critics of
Joan and Violant saw as a bridge too far in
terms of the importation of French customs into
the crown of Aragon. But for Joan, there was
no bridge too far when it came to the importation
of French customs. He loved French culture so
much, and the more that he could bring in, the
better. And so he designate, he and Violent designated
Jaume officially as the Dauphin. So it's a French
term for the first in line to the throne. And
Jaume the Dauphin is in the beginning of 1387.
He's three years old, and he's about to turn
four at the time of this letter that we're going
to look at today. His birthday is March 23rd.
1384 oh that would mean that he's actually turning
uh three so yeah problem with counting there
he's about to turn three and and so uh what do
you do if you've got you know a near three -year
-old child and you're you're just starting out
your reign and you're establishing some groundwork
with the Avignon Pope in that nerve center of
diplomacy and reaching out to try to lay groundwork
for how you're going to relate to this extremely
powerful authority who has control over so much
property and so much power in your realm through
all of the ecclesiastical positions, what are
you going to do? Well, I don't know if you thought
of this already, but Joan and Violant had
kind of a fun idea. They decided that they would
compose a letter in the voice of their three
-year -old. in the voice of their three -year
-old son to the pope and the letter itself is
a hoot because what's so funny is that the scribe
writing in latin okay latin is so hard like oh
my gosh like what three -year -old would be able
to write in latin definite genius So the scribe
is self -consciously playing with this whole
thing. And the letter, it starts out with this
statement, which is quite funny, I think, in
which he's saying, even though, so in the voice
of Jaume. So, okay, so I have a translation
here. Hold on, hold on just a second and bring
it up. Here's how and I got this translation
from Claude by the way, I think did a pretty
good job It's provisional. All right, but even
if we just get a general sense here and there
are some certain mistakes we we can follow along
with the Latin especially because There's a certain
really really fun moment in the letter right
at the beginning so the letter translated into
English goes most blessed and most Clement father.
Although we are constituted in tender years and
innocence, such that we can scarcely utter A
-A -A, the artless babbling words of infancy,
Nevertheless, among certain other little ones,
even if older than us in age, there are those
whom we hold dear and who had been attentive
to us while we were formerly wailing in our cradle
and afterward. And therefore we humbly supplicate
your apostolic holiness that you deign to kindly
admit and mercifully grant the small list enclosed
with the present letter which we offer to your
same holiness in favor of the aforesaid persons
blah blah blah blah blah and then what comes
is this weird request to um make it so that the
particular privilege of uh who can get into the
canonry in Girona like who can who can become
an ecclesiastical official that it can only be
for nobility like that's that's Jaume's request
to the pope and the way that this letter ends
after all of this is requested is kind of cute
so on folio 23r There's the probata in which
we have the scribe, Pere de Beniure, who's Joann's
scribe for most of this register, taking credit
for the work of writing this. But, you know,
he's got the usual mandavit mihi saying this
was commanded to me, but the people listed above
that line on the probata Dominus Rex et Domina
Regina. So what's happened here is that we have
another moment where Joan and Violant are
unified in voice, and now they're speaking through
two other people. They are instructing the scribe
Pere de Beniure to hold their words, the words
that they're saying, but the words are in the
voice of their son, Jaume. So the scribe probably
responsible for some of the artistic and creative
flourishes in this letter, but I would say that
also Joan and Violant are sharing in some
of the creative process here that led to a Latin
letter written to the Pope in the voice of the
young three -year -old Prince Jaume the Dauphin.
So I just think that, you know, it's clear that
when Jaume Riera i Sans, the scholar who wrote
this article about Jaume, and he kind of notes
that this is a kind of fun little thing, and
it's cute, and that we should look at this and
think about how Joan and Violant had a sense
of humor about them. Claude, in its analysis
of this letter, came up with another angle on
it, which I think is a really interesting one,
that if you send a request in this cute way,
it makes it so that if the Avignon Pope, Clement
VII, denies it, then he looks like he's a total
curmudgeon like of course the pope knows that
the three -year -old did not actually write this
letter and that the three -year -old will have
no idea that the pope has ruled against him but
still he's rejecting this game if he were to
deny the request that the sort of persona of
Jaume is making. So the pope is in a position
of looking like kind of a curmudgeonly grumpster
if he says no. And so it's a bit of a manipulation
to do this, to connect some kind of random request
about who gets to be in the ecclesiastical postings
in Girona to this voice of a child. So it's manipulative.
It's cute. It's got a sense of humor. It's got
an edge. It's just got this cleverness that I
think speaks a whole lot to the way that Joan
and Violant could work together. Because if
you are not getting along together as a king
and queen, if your marriage is just a formality
and you don't really like each other, is this
the kind of thing that you would be able to produce?
Okay. Maybe, maybe, but probably not likely.
It's way more likely that if you have a kind
of working relationship that is functional and
cooperative, that you would come up with this
idea to do something like this. Okay, maybe this
was a convention. Maybe medieval monarchs wrote
to the pope in the voice of their toddler. all
the time. I have never heard of that, but we
have to also admit that that is a possibility.
I just think it's not so likely. I think that
I'm going to agree with the scholar Jaume Riera
i Sans in his article that he wrote in 1987,
and just say that This is a clever and original
kind of thing to do. And this is right in line
with exactly what I'm trying to investigate in
this podcast, which is getting into some examples
of how Joan and Violant were doing this
cooperative rule that Their reign was this level
of cooperation that was something different than
what we usually see. Thanks so much 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 more 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.