Hello. In the crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 14th, 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 a really great one for my
overall research question about how Joan and
Violant were cooperating in their rule of the
Crown of Aragon at the outset of their reign.
So this particular document is in the Secret
Seal Register. And it is addressed to, well,
as Violant phrases it, So calling this particular
king brother is something that I figured out
was the way that is customary when Violant and
Joan are addressing the King of Castile. And
it's an interesting move to call the King of
Castile brother. There is a very fraught history
between Castile and Aragon, and yet there's also
these moments it really vacillates between like
going to war together like there was the War
of the Two Pedros that is the name for the conflict
between joan's father Pere the ceremonious and
then a king of castile who went down in history
as Pedro the Cruel so there there was a fierce
war between castile and aragon in the the the
not so distant past but the current king of Castile
is definitely one who's more friendly towards
Aragon and actually married Joan's sister Eleanor
and so the current king of Castile, Juan I, so
John I of Castile, it's kind of interesting that
it's John I of Castile at the same time that
it's John I of Aragon. So I don't know. I think
they kind of have a bit of a bond. Juan in Castile
has been on the throne for a bit longer. I think
he started his reign in 1380. And by the time
Joan and Violant become king and queen of the
Crown of Aragon, I think relations have really
smoothed over. And so there's this brother, this
king brother address -y custom that is one that
we're gonna see just consistently when Joann
and Violant write to the king of Castile. The
content of the letter is super interesting. It's
basically a very long apology, and it's not like,
you know, they did something terrible. It's that
they're just gonna have to say no. And the topic
that they're saying no to is mysterious. It's
referred to just as, you know, the thing that
was requested. So there was something that the
King of Castile requested, and he sent two ambassadors.
And this is super interesting, too, because the
ambassadors are religious figures. So they're
a bishop and an archdeacon, I think. And so there's
these two religious officials, these two ecclesiastical
office holders, who are coming from Castile as
ambassadors of the King of Castile to the Crown
of Aragon. And I'm not. quite sure if we can
really infer all that much about the content
of the request from the King of Castile by the
fact that he sent religious figures as ambassadors.
It could just be that that was not strange to
send clerics as your ambassador for whatever
kind of request you might have. or it might be
that it had something to do with some ecclesiastical
management of some kind. The Kingdom of Castile
was in line with the Crown of Aragon in its support
of the Avignon Pope during the Great Schism.
So I think that the religious figures, the ecclesiastical
officials who are acting as ambassadors here
would not really have any trouble in terms of
being on sort of the same side of things as the
ecclesiastical officials in the Crown of Aragon.
Yeah, that's kind of the best I can do when trying
to think through what it means that the ambassadors
were ecclesiastical officials. So the interesting
part of this letter for my purposes is, gosh,
it's really about halfway through, a little over
halfway through the part of the letter that's
on folio 95 V. And I guess what I'll do is just
say the line number. 12 and then going on until
line 16. That whole sentence is basically conveying
that the king has also sent a letter in response,
la letra responsivia, and that letter is a rejection
of whatever request was being made by the king
of Castile and Violant is referring to it in
a way that shows that she knows full well what
was written in it or at least that the point
of it and so basically here she's summarizing
This said Lord. for reasons necessary and urgent.
We're not going to be able to do the thing that
you had asked us to do. And this has been explained.
The reasons have been explained, apparently,
in the letter that Joan sent. I would love
to find that letter. I've, of course, been looking
around the various registers and can't have it
come upon that letter. Of course, it doesn't
help that there's big jumps in the chronology
of the different letters, and so maybe further
down the line, you know, like in the middle of
April or something, we'll have a few letters
for March, and I'll be able to find that in one
of Joan's registers. But what this shows is
that Violant is helping to smooth this over,
that she's writing this very long letter, and
then the other parts of the letter are all about,
we really value you, and we hope you're doing
well, and please, if there are other things,
this is how the letter ends, if there are, like,
an otra manera is on the last line of folio 95
v and then on on the next folio there's she kind
of repeats that idea by saying uh you know other
you know other things please let us know and
we are here to help you whenever we can so basically
Violant is in a sense, assisting with this diplomatically
difficult situation in which Joan, at the beginning
of his reign, has to say no to the King of Castile.
So that is a challenging, awkward thing to do.
because you want to kind of start out in your
diplomatic exchanges at the beginning of your
time in power by kind of building up the relationships.
And by saying no to some particular request,
it's causing some difficulty in that overall,
you know, ideal situation diplomatically. And
so Violant comes in. and she writes this long
letter to try to reassure the King of Castile
that everything is very positive in the way that
they're thinking of him and please don't give
up on trying to ask us to do things because we
want to build up this relationship through doing
things that benefit you, because of course, then
it can be reciprocated later is the implication.
So, Violant is stepping in to help to smooth
over this perhaps awkward or difficult situation.
And so we can see here that there is this level
of cooperation between Joan and Violant. If
you had a king who just was handling his own
business and didn't really bother to even talk
to the queen, as happens, I mean, there's plenty
of medieval kings who essentially ignore their
wives, the queen, and so that's kind of... in
many ways the opposite of what's going on here,
that we see evidence that Violant is participating
in the maintenance of relationships, diplomatic
relationships, that she is able to do so because
she is confident in her familiarity of the issues.
She doesn't list them out explicitly here, but
it's very clear to me that the length of this
letter and its tone and also the fact that she
calls out the ambassadors by name, it really
does communicate that she is in the know. And
therefore, I see this letter as one that does
demonstrate that they're really working together
and communicating a lot together about issues
at hand. There's something else I wanted to point
out about this document at the end, which is
the language. So if you are following along really
closely, you've probably noticed that when a
document is written in Catalan, the word for
the preposition for is per. It's often abbreviated
as a P with a horizontal line through the descender.
But this letter, it uses the word por for what
in English we have as the word for for and the
reason for that and other different differences
in the spelling of words that you'll see in this
letter compared to the ones in Catalan the reason
is that this is in a mixture of Catalan and Aragonese
and Castilian. We have Shadow here saying, I
want to learn about the different subtleties
in these vernaculars. So it's interesting because
we have, goodness, Shadow. Okay, come here. Oh,
all right. Got Shadow on the lap, so now we can
continue. All right, so the... So it's not consistent,
okay, because there's still the X being used
for what in Castilian would be like a CH sound.
And so the actual distinctions between Aragonese
and Catalan are a little bit beyond my knowledge
base. And then the moments where in Catalan and
Castilian the words are very similar, but have
a difference in the Castilian form, I sometimes
don't, I don't notice because I don't have as
much experience with both languages to identify
them right off the bat. So what I can tell you
is that there's a lot of accommodation linguistically.
in this letter to make it easier to read for
a Castilian reader. And that, I think, is another
example of how Violant, as well as the Chancery
staff, are handling the diplomatic relationship
here. Like, they're really showing through the
language choice and the spellings and such that
they are sensitive to the perspective of the
audience. In this case, the King of Castile,
who of course would be most comfortable in the
language Castilian, which today is commonly known
as Spanish. So that though is in Iberia today,
not really a a very accurate way of describing
the language, so it would be known as Castilian
in Iberia today. Okay, so a little bit of a micro
attention to some of the language issues in this
letter, but it does speak to the larger concern
and diplomatic relationship maintenance that
goes on at this time. Alright, 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, 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 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!