Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was March 8, 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.
Today's document is a short one. It's about ten
lines and gosh, Violant, she just cannot stop
writing to the Pope. It's like, can a single
day go by when she's not writing to the Pope?
I don't quite understand how this is working
that things just keep like randomly coming up
and she has to write to the pope like yet again
after all of the correspondence that's been going
on for the last two weeks where she's writing
to the pope about all the different things well
here we go we've got yet another another petition
for some kind of office probably although it
doesn't say it's so general It's in Latin, so
I did my usual, what's become my usual routine,
where I have Gemini do a transcription attempt,
and then I have Claude do a transcription attempt,
and then I have Claude reconcile the two, and
that seems to be producing a pretty accurate
transcription. This time around, the The interpretation
from Gemini that this was written in Barcelona,
which to me is really good, a good interpretation.
It's in the second to last line of the letter,
Barchinone. It's very, to me, a clear A -R -C
-H -N, but that... B at the beginning, the way
the scribe wrote it, it makes it look like an
L. And so Claude decided to override Gemini's
interpretation there and say that this was Lleida.
So that was a mistake on Claude's part. So the
transcription of the Latin is going generally
okay. The results are definitely not perfect.
I mean, there's times when Gemini is totally
off and Claude does a very helpful correction,
and then there are times where they're both stumped
and I go in and I try to figure it out. Is my
skill all that much better than those two large
language models combined? Um, sometimes. All
right, maybe 75 % of the time. So here in this
letter, we have very little information about
who the subject of the letter is. It's somebody
named Petrus. There's no shortage of people named
Petrus, that's for sure. And of course, in Catalan,
that would be Pere. In Castilian, that would be
Pedro. In English, that would be Peter. So at
the end of the second line, we have this phrase,
fidelum familiarum nostrum petrum, our faithful
familiar Peter. I guess instead of familiar,
you could say acquaintance or something like,
oh, there's got to be another word that makes
it a little bit closer than acquaintance. but
subject maybe might work. I don't see words being
used in these letters for subject exactly, so
maybe familiarum is almost like what they say
instead of using the word subject. So we've got
the first name Petrus at the end there, and then
the next line really looks like spiritu a molto.
tempore, spiritua molto tempore, and then after
that it's a little rough trying to figure out
what that word is after tempore, but what's clear
is that we're not getting any other additional
information about who this particular petrus
might be. Not only that, But further down in
line five, we have mention of contenta sub petitione
contained in this petition. So the large language
models, they figured that this was like a cover
letter for a packet, and that there would be
a packet of information about this particular
Petrus and that this was referring to those contents
and that's why this letter is so general because
you don't need any information identifying this
particular person because this is just the outside
cover that is meant to be Kind of just a general
introduction to the content a little recommendation
and then there's gonna be documents inside that
offer more specifics and Alas, we have no idea
where that packet is if that is even what is
going on so there's on the next page of this
register it jumps ahead to March 12th and it's
on a different topic so whatever those documents
might have been that were included in the petition
we don't have that so Alas, there is not that
much to say about this particular fellow, this
particular Peter, out of the many Peters in the
Crown of Aragon in the late 14th century. So
what are we going to do here? I think that there's
not much that we can do with this letter. There
is couple other there are a couple other things
that i want to point out as little mysteries
so first of all we have seemingly for no reason
that i can figure out an additional statement
at the bottom so we've got the usual probata
at the very bottom right domino regina mandavit
mihi and we have Not the usual Bartolomeo Sirvent.
Maybe Bartolomeo Sirvent had a day off on this
day. But then above that we've got Etius and
then an H. Maybe honore is oftentimes what's expanded
when you just have an H. Or maybe Aragonem? I
can't quite off the top of my head say what the
ending there is. What kind of ending Aragon is
supposed to have. But what this all amounts to
is basically saying, you know, you're devoted
daughter, Violant, queen of Aragon. And it's
interesting that that is added in there. Maybe
it was something extra that was written at the
bottom of the actual letter that got sent out.
And then we've got this really different kind
of abbreviated word following the date. So I
kind of working my way up from the bottom here.
So after the year, all of the Roman numeral letters
for 1387, we've got the letter P with the curl
that is for pro. So pretty sure that it is pro.
And then it's either a T or a C. The little Bit
that goes up above makes me think that it's a
T and Then we have an H and then we have the
abbreviation for the US so it's something like
I Know shadow. It's it's frustrating. Can't figure
out what this word is. Is it something like?
Know it's a struggle. It's a struggle. So I'm
gonna try to figure that one out It's not like
Procurator there is an H in there and it's probably
a th and ah Like something pro they use Gosh
don't know the information at the lower right
is all very standard for in a dressy line for
the Pope. So all the usual stuff, you know, the
universal church, blah, blah, blah. All right.
Well, let's see. I'm trying to think of what
else I could pull out from this letter that could
be useful in any way. But alas, it is just so
general. All of the usual stuff like, you know,
hope that you're doing well and that you're going
to continue on for a long time. The last phrase
right before the dating clause is Pertempora
Longoria. And let's see if there's anything else.
Goodness. i am pretty sure that we are kind of
at the end of the line with with this oh okay
wait here's something else on line five yeah
it's such a rambling episode i'm so sorry all
right so on line five the same line where we
had the contenta sub petitione the last two words
in that line are interclusa odd And then the
next word in the next line is expeditionis. So
interclusa, I thought, was a word that would
mean like included, like here included, to be
expedited. But actually, interclusa means hinder.
So I think what's being said here is please don't
do anything to hinder the expediting of a favorable
ruling for the said Peter. But I'm having trouble
finding the negation for interclusa. So that
is something a little bit mysterious about the
medieval Latin. in this letter and that one word,
interclusa, it might be something just a little
bit more idiomatic. All right, that's what I
got for this little document. Violante. Penpals
with anti -pope. Clement VII. Of course, she
would have considered him the real pope and the
Roman one the anti -pope. 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, such
as, which Peter is this letter about? Then 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, including if I can
figure out what that little word is after the
year at the end of this letter. Hopefully I'll
figure it out at some point. 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.