Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 15th, 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, well, it's actually
a pair of letters that Joan has composed in order
to do some law enforcement in Valencia. So the
people who are mentioned in this letter, both
these letters on the first line of each letter,
are the Portantveus de Governador. of the Kingdom
of Valencia. The role of a portantveus de governador
is not clear to me, but it's some kind of official
that is connected to the office of the governor,
some kind of law enforcement person, I guess,
because what's described in both of these letters
is pursuit of criminals. So in the second line
of the first letter, at the very end, it says
Then also in the second line of the second letter
we have at the end Dei diverses e enormes crims.
So this is basically saying there's a lot of
crimes Like very diverse and enormous and it's
pretty clear to me after tangling with this for
a while that these are financial crimes And the
reason, I have two reasons for that. First of
all, in the second letter, we have a name in
the, what is it, one, two, three, four, fifth
line, Julia Garrius, or Julia Garius. Julia Garius
is somebody that is with Joan for his entire
reign, might have actually been working for him
before. I'm not sure where he was before the
start of the reign of Joan and Violant, but
he is with them the whole time in the treasury.
And he is actually named as one of the principal...
Oh gosh. malfeasance in the aftermath of Joan's
death in 1396 when Maria de Luna opens up a criminal
investigation into Joan's advisors. And I mean,
in fact, you know, it's, it's also Violant's
advisors too. So one of the people that we've
seen a lot of in the documents in the podcast
for Violant is Bartolomeo Sirvent. And I was
just looking at something the other day. And
the criminal investigation against Joan's
advisors after his death in 1396 came up and
I was looking at that and I was like, oh my gosh,
Bartolomeo Sirvent is in there. And so a lot
of the people who were in this role as scribes
were also, I think, seen as having some power
and being influential enough so that when, after
the death of Joan, people are looking for
someone to punish for financial misdeeds or bad
policy, they include people like Bartolomeo Sirvent.
They also include the people who were in charge
of the finances, and in 1396 that is identified
as Julia Garrius. So there are, oh and Esperandeu
Cardona is another one of them, but Julia Garrius
is one that gets a lot of blame for financial
misdeeds having to do with how he managed the
treasury. in especially the last couple years
of Joan's reign. But here we are at the very
beginning of Joan's reign, and now Julia Garrius
is part of trying to apprehend the criminals
who have done some kind of financial crime. And
the way that this is phrased in the letters here,
these two letters, is that they have done something
to Nostra Fisc. And when I say that in, you know,
aloud, you're probably thinking, oh, F -I -S
-C, as in fiscal, and that then connects to financial
things. But guess what? In these documents, the
scribe, Père de Basant, has decided to spell
it P -H -I -S -C -H. So that I initially thought
we were talking about something physical. Like,
when I saw the phrase, you know, that it was
something that had been against De Nostre Fisc,
I thought it was more like Physique. And so I
went down this whole thing of like, oh my gosh,
it's like Joan pursuing somebody who injured
him bodily. But nope. No, no, no. It is fiscal.
And so the reason that I'm feeling pretty sure
about that is because the P-H was interchangeable
with the F in a lot of the scribal record. And
then also Julia Garrius is well known as someone
who was involved in the management of finances
for the royal family during the reign of Joan
and Violant. So why are there two letters? Yeah,
that's a toughie, actually, because, you know,
if you're looking at the way that these are starting
out... They're really similar. So one of them
starts out The other one starts out So basically,
there's some kind of plural you being addressed
here, like maybe a group of officials, but I
looked around on the folio and I couldn't exactly
find out from the what's up later on the folio
and then also what came before on the previous
folio a determination about exactly who this
is being sent to. I think we can pretty much
infer that officials in Valencia are going to
be the ones that are receiving this. All of this
pretty much boils down to, hey, you've got some
financial criminals running around there in Valencia,
and you should apprehend them and also get them
to explain what they have done. So it seems to
me like the key phrases well the key verb is
anotar so anotar shows up in the first letter
in line one two three four five and actually
when i'm giving these line numbers i'm not counting
lo rex at the beginning so sorry about that
if that's caused confusion but yeah usually i
i start the line numbering When I'm just talking
about it like this from the first like full line
Although technically I should not be doing that.
So maybe I'll stop Oh gosh Anyway, so we've got
in line five This phrase before that it comes
before the fisc right and it says que en anotar
lo and then a word that is really hard to figure
out because it's abbreviated and also this particular
scribe is not conventional when he's using the
abbreviations for the with the letter p like
sometimes his abbreviation for per is something
that would look from other scribes like a pro
but i'm pretty sure this is a pro abbreviation
pro and then it looks like we've got something
like a ci and then an n and then the abbreviation
mark above which could be any number of letters
so gosh probably figure this out later and like
kick myself and resist the temptation to come
back into the recording and, like, insert into
the audio recording what this word actually is.
But it's something. I mean, it's something like
to annotate, to list, to expose the particulars
of what happened to the fisc, to the finances,
and That's the nature of the diverse and enormous
crimes. So it seems to me that Joan is telling
the officials to do what they probably are already
incentivized to do, which is to apprehend these
financial criminals. But I think this anotar
which is also in the fourth line of the second
document. I think that that is important here.
I think Joan is looking for some kind of itemization
of what the crimes were. It's perhaps an effort
to understand something financial, which is something
I'd be interested to know if Joan had that.
desire to understand financial records. I have
seen nothing to suggest that he had any interest
in that at all. And in fact, I've seen a lot
to suggest that he was quite indifferent to the
details of financial management. But if we're
seeing a break in that pattern with this particular
set of documents, that would be interesting.
All right still trying to hone in on the question
of why there are two Why there are two documents
and Well, one of them includes the name of Julia
Garrius the second one and the first one does
not so one recipient one set of recipients is
Meeting up, connecting to Julia Garrius, and
then the other set of recipients is maybe outside
of that loop. And they're maybe, I don't know,
more like on the ground. And then they're going
to turn over the criminals once they find them
to the higher -ups that are the recipients of
the second document. I don't know. That just
seems so... out on a limb, as I'm saying that,
and something that has to do with the way that
these letters start, where one of them is sapiats quel
and the other starts with ja sabets. You know with.
Gosh. So I am doing a intensive seminar in medieval
Catalan in August and this is exactly the kind
of thing that I am gonna ask like what is happening
with these phrases how is their meaning different
because to me they sort of amount to the same
thing it's basically just communicating you know
that the Portantveus de Governador is carrying
out this investigation. So I will have to put
a pin in this until I guess August, but I feel
like something about the Catalan grammar might
be a clue to who the different intended recipients
are for these two letters, and why one of them
includes Julia Garrius in its content, and then
the other one does not. And otherwise they are
just pretty similar letters. Okay, so... Thank
you for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, Mult Cara Companyona. If
you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, and you're just really burning
to know about that answer about medieval Catalan
and Sapiats versus Sabets, well, I have done
my job. Because remember, the motto of the historian's
notebook is dissatisfaction guaranteed. But who
knows, if you check back and look at the webpage
for this particular document in August, maybe
I will have updated it with some additional knowledge,
and you'll at least have some satisfaction about
that question on Medieval Catalan. So 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.