Hello. In the Crown of Aragon, 639 years ago,
it was March 17th, 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.
All right, so today I have to fudge the rules
a little bit because Yes, there is a document
that is very clearly March 17th at the bottom
of folio 26 V of register 1751 which is one of
Joan's registers the register of the a sigelli,
the secret seal, and oh gosh there's a letter
in the middle that now that I'm looking at it
it's just clearly the 16th and that's yesterday
so I'm going to talk about both because the middle
one is just so much more interesting ah yeah
so we're going to really focus on the middle
document today but I will just point out some
things about the one from actually the 17th.
So actually let's let's do that first and something
that I like about this particular folio is that
they ran out of room at the bottom for the probata
and so they took a little scrap of paper and
pasted it onto the page so if you are able to
look at the digitized image of this page in register
1751 what you'll see is that at the bottom right
corner you can clearly see the line of the scrap
of paper that they pasted in and then and on
the left side the right side it's a little bit
more difficult to see but on the left side of
that scrap of paper for the probata where they
pasted it in you can see that line and then the
probata extends further down below the edge of
the folio itself now what's additionally interesting
from a material standpoint here is that you can
easily see that they pasted the paper, the little
additional scrap of paper, before finishing the
letter. The date, the year, the Roman numerals
for the year 1387, the way that the scribes almost
always wrote the last I in Roman numerals, had
a long descender below the line. And you can
see how that was clearly written after the scrap
of paper had been pasted onto the page. It's
like a really smooth line there. And you can
also see a faint, if you zoom in, you can see
a faint gap where the ink has Not gone onto the
very edge of that scrap of paper So there's like
a faint line that you can then trace over to
the bottom of the P that had the descender of
the P and then also the part of the S in Secretarius
that that descends far below the line so it's
really cool to see how the chancery handled the
situation when they realized oh boy we're not
going to have enough room and they almost had
enough room because if you look at the bottom
of the pasted piece of paper you can see that
the only part that like really ran off the length
of the page was the fancy probata symbol at the
very bottom But the last line reads mihi Pere
de Beniures, the name of the scribe. And the
descender of the P just goes a little bit beyond
what would have been the edge of the page. And
then pretty much everything else could have fit
except that probata symbol. But you can't really
have the official authorization of the document
without that probata symbol. Now, an additional
interesting thing is that the very bottom of
the probata is absent. And in this case, it looks
to me like somehow it got cut off. Like there
was more to this scrap of paper that had been
pasted in. and at some point it got ripped off
or cut off with a scissors because there's no
reason why the probata symbol would have been
drawn in this way originally it's just clearly
there was more to it if you're if you're looking
at it there's no way to justify the idea that
this is all they put, and that's all they had
at the bottom. I really don't think so. I think
there was more, and that somehow it got cut off.
But maybe you could make an argument now. It's
a little bit too much of a minutiae to get into
more detail about there. I did want to say, though,
that something is a little strange when we compare
that probata at the bottom to the probata symbol
that appears underneath the second document on
this page the one in the middle because there's
a p but there's no like swirly through the p
and that's very unusual so i'm not quite sure
why they left it off in this situation. The person
who was the scribe for the middle document on
this folio is the scribe that we've been seeing
a lot of for Joan, Pére de Beniure. And so I'm
not quite sure if there was some additional meaning
attached to the fact that we have the letter
P, but no typical swirl because We have at the
top the very flourishing Probata P for the end
of that document, which by the way is the document
that I think Joan and Violant worked on together
because we have the Violant scribe Bartolomeo
Sirvent. as the one at the bottom of that probata.
And then we have the, let's see, what can we
see in there? I don't think we have anything
to indicate. Well, we've got the plural, dominus.
Is it, I think it, I think that's saying that
both the king and the queen together. have written
that document so i might need to go back and
look at that one more closely in the future so
yeah we're talking about three different documents
today and by the way that one's from march 14th
the the one that ends at the top of folio 26
v all right so let's talk about the sourcing
information for the document from March 17th,
which is at the bottom of Folio 26V. It's the
one that had the scrap of paper added to it.
So this document is addressed to Don Pedro Bohil.
And at the bottom of the letter, we've got the
addressee line, Pedro bohil mayordomo domini
regis the the mayordomo major domo is a high
up official and i'm not all that clear on what
makes the mayordomo i mean it's basically like
the head of the house is what it equates to in
its literal translation but the actual duties
of the mayordomo and the actual status in relation
to other things like the chancellor or not quite
sure about the dividing lines but it seems like
Petro Bohil is Joan's representative to the
king of Castile because the letter itself is
about saying thanks for the information that
you've sent to me about affairs, the business
of things in the foreign lands, and say hi to
me for to my Molt car Frere Lo Rey, and also the
prince is his nephew's. So I think this is Well,
it could be in Navarre, actually, because Joan
also refers to the king of Navarre as Molt car frere
Lo rey. So maybe this is actually going to Navarre,
which might make more sense, because he calls
the children his nephews and the nebots, but
actually in Castile it was his sister. Who was
the queen? So actually, no, I think this is Castile.
I wish they would just say it. But okay, so then
everything else is just kind of general. Things
are going well. Pleasantries. So there's not
much to this letter, and that's why I wanted
to spend time fudging the rules of the podcast
and and talking about the middle document on
folio 26v because i think that one is super interesting
because we've got a specific place name and a
specific person who we've talked about before
so way back on let's see the date February 23rd
on February 23rd on the podcast we talked about
Isabella de Mallorca and Joan wrote a safe
passage letter for her so that she could travel
through the Crown of Aragon and not have to pay
up to all her creditors because she had a ton
of debt at this time and she wanted to come hang
out in the Crown of Aragon for don't know why
and she didn't want to have to you know pay her
creditors who were coming after her to pay up
on the debts that she owed and so Joan wrote
her a letter that she could present at all of
the different border crossings saying that it
would not be allowed for anybody who claimed
to be a creditor of hers to take any of her things
and then on that February 23rd document there
was a little notation that extended the time
period of her protection from the duration of
the month of March and into the month of April.
So originally the document protected her for
March and then there was that notation that said
we're going to extend this into April and and
maybe May. Oh gosh, I'm kind of starting to doubt
my memory about that exactly how long the extension
was for. So Isabella de Mallorca was going to
arrive at the border between France and the crown
of Aragon pretty soon. And we know this because
this letter that Joan wrote on, it looks like
the 16th of March, is addressed to the governor
of Roussillon, and it says, hey, when the princess
of Mallorca, Infanta de Mallorca is in the first
line, when Isabella de Mallorca arrives to the
border crossing at Salces, there's a fort there,
write to me, let me know, and I will then be
able to get affairs in order to receive her in
Barcelona. And I think this is super interesting
for several reasons. First of all, the fort at
Salses is still standing. Now, the Wikipedia
page says that it was constructed in the 15th
century, so I think that the actual structure
that's there today was not the exact same structure
that was there in the time that Isabella de Mallorca
arrived in 1387. But, you know, it's Wikipedia,
so the exact dating might be a little bit off.
or it could just be that there was a significant
expansion of the fort in the 15th century and
if you go there today maybe you'll be able to
see where the earlier 14th century structure
was or maybe just the center part of it is from
the 14th century, and then the larger surrounding
additional parts of it are from the 15th century.
That's pretty common. By the way, it reminds
me of something, which is that if you go to the
Louvre, there in the basement of the Louvre,
you can see the castle that was there in the
14th century. The castle where Violant definitely
spent time as the resident of the royal court
of Charles V. So Violant was there in that castle,
and there's parts of the castle walls that still
exist underneath the building that is the later,
you know, 18th century, I think, structure that
was built for the Louvre Palace. So that is really
super interesting. So I say that in order to
emphasize that for a lot of these locations in
Spain and France that we're talking about, you
can see pieces of what was there in the 14th
century, and then later structures were built
up around it. and sometimes incorporated it in
later centuries so there's all over the place
in these areas that were valuable as capitals
or regional centers they basically built up around
older structures a lot of the time and we've
talked about that with like mills like old mills
that date from the 15th century but probably
have one wall remaining in the structure from
the 14th century, something like that, or even
earlier. Okay, so I will put a link to the Wikipedia
page for the Salses Fort. It's located just a
little bit north of Perpignan, and so this was
like the border checkpoint between France and
the Crown of Aragon at this time. And so this
document reveals a whole lot about travel practices
for the elite. So Isabella de Mallorca would
have been met by representatives from the state
officials of the Crown of Aragon and might have
been escorted to Barcelona. I would be overjoyed
if later on in say March or April, I was able
to see some other document that helps us to track
the movement of Isabella de Mallorca. I also
wonder if this says something about the level
of trust that Joan had of Isabella de Mallorca?
Like, is this person potentially a source of
trouble for him, and just he wants to be informed
of her movement. And that's why this letter exists,
and the instruction is being sent out to the
governor, whose name I'm pretty sure is Pedro
ca Garriga. So these are just some of the questions
that come up. as we are looking at this particular
snapshot of the relationship between Joan and
Isabella de Mallorca, which has a complicated
history because... His father, Joan's father,
would never do something this kind, I think,
for Isabella de Mallorca because of the past
conflict between her brother and the Crown of
Aragon, which I went into detail about in the
February 23rd episode. So if you're curious about
that, go back and listen to that one. And 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 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.
maybe even a picture of the Salses Fort. 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.