Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 18th, 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. If your name was Ferriol Forner and
you lived in the town of San Marti de Saroca
in 1387, you were in big trouble. Really big
trouble. Because the Queen of the Crown of Aragon
wrote a letter about you to the town's bailiff
and said that you, Ferriol Forney, were to be
apprehended and brought to Barcelona. Today's
document is in the Varia Register for Violant
and it actually doesn't state a seal level, which
is weird. There's a couple weird things about
this document, actually, and it is really one
that causes a lot of questions to come up about
how the Chancery operated. First of all, there's
a name in the scribal notation that I do not
recognize the first time that I am seeing at
least well I might have seen it before but forgot
about it it's the first time I'm seeing Andres
Granelli or possibly Andres Gravelli and it's
not one of Violant's usual scribes I was looking
around at the different folios around this and
I don't see that name coming up a whole lot don't
know where Bartolomeo Sirvent is. I don't know
why we are still entering things into the Varia
register. Or maybe, you know, this one is just
like, I don't know where it's supposed to go.
So they just threw it into the Varia register.
I mean, there's still a lot more folios left
in the Varia register. So they keep Varia going
on, even though it's really clear that stuff
that went into the Varia register. in the beginning
of that book those things like secret seal things
they are now going to be going into register
2053 that we've been looking at a little bit
already the one that we kind of started out at
the very beginning looking at the initial pages
So they're kind of getting their act together
in terms of being good about separating things
out into the different registers and where they're
supposed to go. But this is the first time I
think that I've seen a document that does not
have a seal level in the dating clause. So the
last sentence is datem in Barchinona a and then
18th dies de mars del anni de la nativita de
Nostra Senor and then the year date. So it doesn't
say what seal level this letter is. The date
itself is unusual. It's not rare, but it's just
not how they usually do it. Because often, you'll
have, I mean, like, I don't know, like in almost
all the documents we've been looking at, you
for the, for the number 1000 in the year, they
just have the letter M. But Andres Gravelli wanted
to spell out M -I -L for 1000. and then he does
ccc then he does lxxx and that brings us to 1380
and then you got to add the seven and what we're
used to seeing is a letter v and two i's for
the roman numeral for seven but this scribe instead
wrote set for the word seven and It just kind
of goes to show how there were different kinds
of practices or tics that the different scribes
had. And some scribes just love to use the word
for the last number of the year. Some scribes
like to spell things out in weird places instead
of using Roman numerals. They clearly know the
Roman numerals because they mix it up. I have
seen, I can't remember what it was, but I think
I have seen at some point in earlier work before
the podcast, a scribe spelling out everything,
like just not wanting to use Roman numerals.
So that does exist. That is, I think, rare. at
least for the reign of Joan and Violant.
So, Andres Gravelli is writing the year in his
own idiosyncratic way, and then we see some different
Latin words used in the probata, and unfortunately
damage to the paper has made it more difficult
to figure out What is being conveyed there? If
we're looking at the probata Andres Gravelli
and then Gosh, what is this next thing? It looks
like NIA Which could be something like Nostra
Maybe and then it seems that we have De Regina
so it could be like Our Lady queen. So you'd
have Domina, Regina, Our Lady, Queen. But Nostra,
it's not the Latin form there. So it looks like
N -I -A also. So I'm not quite sure what that's
saying. And then we've got that abbreviation
with the F. That is one that I haven't quite
figured out yet. It could be FUIT. Not sure.
And then we have add that one is very clear and
then we've got something that looks like r i
o but that is not an i in the middle it's something
else it's something like r t o there's two abbreviations
on top of it oh no wait the g is got a long kind
of leftward part to it, so I think it's just
one abbreviation mark. And I yeah, I'm not quite
sure what this is, and then we've got another
array geese. And then we've got treasurer. Treces,
I don't even know it. Tresesorio or something
like that. This is, when you see that capital
T and then you've got like a bunch of abbreviation
after it, chances are it's treasurer in English.
So the royal treasurer, you could say. So I'm
not quite sure who Andres Gravelli is saying
that he is, but... He's connected to the treasury,
and yeah, not quite sure. Now, content in this
letter is also interesting. Oh, we're not quite
done with the sourcing, though, because the way
that Andres Gravelli has decided to start the
letter is quite unusual, because we have Yolant
at the beginning. That's not unusual. That's
for Violant. But then we have Per la Gracia
de Déu, By the Grace of God, Queen of Aragon.
Again, not too unusual, but what gets really
unusual is that there's all these names, these
place names. Queen of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca,
Cerdanya, Corsica. and the countess of Barcelona
and Roussillon and Cerdanya, that length of spelling
all that out is unusual. Usually they're just
like, we don't need to write all that out, we'll
just do et cetera. And I'm not quite sure why
Andres Gravelli felt the need to do that. Maybe
he was just like excited because he got to write
in the register and hardly ever gets to do that.
So he's like, I'm just going to stretch this
out as much as I can because I love the fact
that I get to do this. I really like that theory.
Yeah, Shadow likes that theory, too. I don't
know if you were able to hear her, but she she
was voicing support for that idea. The cool thing
that we get to see here is that after Cerdanya
we've got a faint little slash and then we have
a capital A and what I'm really starting to understand
is that when the A looks like this even if it's
not like here, it's large size in line two. But
if you go two lines down and just a little bit
to the right, you'll see another slash and then
the A is not written quite as large, but the
shape of the A is indicating that it is another
capital letter. It's the beginning of the next
sentence. And this is something that I had to
help out. Claude with as Claude was doing the
reconciliation of its transcription with Gemini's
transcription. So the AI models are not able
to make that I know they're not they're not able
to make that recognition. And so Being aware
of that is really important. I mean, there are
other times in this letter where the A is written
like that and it's in the middle of a word, but
there is there's just kind of like a largeness
about it. I think it's something to do with the
stroke on the right side of the A. It's kind
of like this thicker stroke than what you see
in the A's that appear in the middle of words
and elsewhere in the letter. Okay, so what else
can we say about the materiality of the document
itself and its sourcing? I think we've got to
the point where we can move on from that and
start to talk about the content. So, well, one
more thing. The addressee is the bailiff of San
Marti de Saroca and the AI chatbots Gemini
and Claude had a lot of trouble with that place
name because of the damage to the paper that
obscured De and then makes it look to a machine
that the word ca, the C with a sedia and then
an A, is something bigger than what it is. And
then I think it's also got some trouble reading
that capital R, and then the O that comes after
that capital R. That I've really had to get used
to. But if you look at the second line, like
it's the third place name for russio and rossello
that r -o and you compare that to the r -o in
roca in the beginning of the third line you can
get this nice confirmation that that's an r -o
and then a c -h -a so we've got a letter that's
being addressed to and the bailiff is in charge
of financial matters for the state in the particular
town. And so it seems to me quite clear that
Ferriol Forner, the subject, the person who is
the subject of this letter, has committed some
kind of financial crime. But it is super interesting
to me that the amount of money that is listed
for the penalty is 500 florins. That is a lot
of money. So something that Ferriol Forner did.
was like really bad like serious level of theft
or embezzlement here i'm not quite sure now yeah
i know shadow is like oh my gosh this this Ferriol
Forner goodness it's quite shadow's really
participating in the i know in the podcast okay
okay all right so okay you need to quiet it down
I know. You gonna quiet down? Okay, I think we
can move on. So let's think about this penalty.
I first thought that... Would you please? I first
thought that this penalty was like a threat against
the bailiff. Like you have to... apprehend this
person or else you are going to pay 500 florins.
Then I was like, no, that doesn't really make
sense. But the phrase that comes before the 500
florins is a little bit confusing. So we'll start
from the beginning of the sentence on line four.
Okay, so what that means is to you we order and
command expressly and of certain and then we've
got a word that i used to be able to recognize
and then i messed it up so gemini had no clue
what this abbreviation was for a word that starts
with an s seems to have the letter c And Claude
also flagged it as, like, I don't know what this
is. And I said, oh gosh, like, this is really,
like, racking my brain because I know I used
to know this. And I thought it was something
like scrita. And then I put that in as a correction
for Claude. And then Claude came back to me and
said, oh, this is actually probably Sciencia,
wisdom or knowledge. and that's what it is. So
this is a word that I saw a whole lot when I
was working on another article conference paper
that I did, a conference paper on the troubadour
competition that Joan got started in Barcelona.
And so wisdom is something that came up a whole
lot in that context. The knowledge and wisdom
of the Troubadour composition. So here we've
got certain knowledge about, about the fine of
500 florins. So it's not saying that the bailiff
is going to have to pay the 500 florins. It kind
of is like, I think, the bounty. So, you know,
this person Ferriol Forner is is gonna have to
pay 500 florins and it seems like There's going
to be a nice percentage of that that will go
to the bailiff we don't know the bailiff's name
and There's like a strict time associated with
this in line 1 2 3 4 5 6 The time period is rapid,
and here it is. Dins en journe après ce qu 'elle
a présent. Meaning, in one day after the present
time that you get this. So, Violant wants this
to take place the next day. Apprehend this person
immediately. Don't let them get away. So I really
would like to know just what this Ferriol Forner
did in order to merit the Queen going after him
like this, and with such a high penalty. And
is it connected to anything else that that we've
been reading about? Or is this just kind of some
random new thing that popped up? in Violant's
portfolio. 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.