Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 19th, 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 comes from the register
Curiae Sigelli Secreti from Violant. So it's
the secret seal documents from her court. The
folio number is 3R and yesterday we were looking
at a document from Violant in the Varia register
and it was about some... financial crimes and
the bailiff was being sent after somebody in
the town of San Marti de Saroca. And today we've
got another financial document, but this one
is more about tax collection and Violant is writing
to the governor of Valencia, Mossen Aznar, and
we have seen a document from Violant to Aznar
before. It was in episode 53 on February 13th,
and the content of that was not about tax collection.
The content of that document was an apprehension
of a let's see, a Berenguer Vilagarut, somebody
who was a leader in one of the sides in this
feud that was going on between families or clans
in Valencia. And so it's really interesting how
the day before this letter, Violant is sending
out a note to somebody to apprehend some sort
of criminal, and then today we have a letter
that is not about that, but had been a previous
topic for this particular correspondent. The
topic of the letter today gives us a little window
into the administration of tax collection, and
also into the way that the royal family governed
the Muslim and Jewish neighborhoods differently
than the way they governed other places under
their purview. This is a pretty long letter for
a sort of simple action. The queen has decided
to send her treasurer or someone who's in the
treasury office. It's someone that we have heard
of before Anthony Rosar. Anthony Rosar is being
sent to Valencia and he's probably bringing this
letter with him in line six the line begins Rosar
because Antony's first name is on the previous
line. Antony Rosar de la Nostra Tresesora aquí
ara present. So I kind of read this over in my
initial just kind of looking through this letter.
In fact today I was like oh maybe maybe I don't
really need the AI for this letter because I
could understand every word the paleography was
really good and I was like well let's just kind
of do it because who knows what the chat bot
might come up with that I didn't really notice
and that turned out to be true because I myself
would not have really been attentive to this
phrase, a qui aura present, and Claude identified
it as something important in the letter, which
is that Violant is saying that as this letter
was made, Antoni Rosar was there, present, but
he is going to be traveling from Barcelona, where
the letter was made, to Valencia. And once he
gets there, the governor is expected to work
with him in order to write up all of the records
for the tax collection Los Emoluments in line
four. So it's interesting because You would think
that it wouldn't be necessary to send somebody
from the Royal Palace all the way to Valencia
that they could just collect the money and send
it on their own, but maybe this is how it normally
was? Or maybe, if you're of a more sinister frame
of mind, maybe there's not a lot of trust. for
this particular governor and so Violant has
decided that she needs to send somebody to oversee
the tax collection and all of the record keeping
along with the governor of Valencia. So there's
no real evidence of that over the possibility
that this was just normal procedure but Hey,
it's a possibility if you want to make it a little
bit more exciting. The other piece of this letter
in its content that I found super interesting
is that in the fourth to last line we have the
phrase Jeheus e moros and the last full sentence
of the letter is basically amounting to You're
gonna work with Anthony Rosar on all this tax
collection, but in the word empero, however,
you are not going to be doing this for the Jewish
and Muslim communities in Valencia. That is going
to be handled by another process. And I think
the process there, based on some of the stuff
that I've read, is that the Jews and Muslims
they self -report they have leaders of their
own communities that are in charge of doing all
of the governance and keeping in contact with
the royal family and they've got more of a direct
line and I think that that says a lot about the
interfaith encounter that we have in the Crown
of Aragon and it's probably a reflection, here's
my guess, it's probably a reflection of how when
you put officials in between the leaders of these
religious minority communities and the person
in the royal family who's benefiting from the
revenue collected then you're more likely to
have some corruption and that the person who's
the intermediary is more likely to mistreat the
minority community, maybe extorting more from
them and keeping a little bit for themselves,
or just behaving more cruelly with less understanding
in situations where somebody is maybe they're
having a difficult year and they can't make their
usual amount that they're supposed to pay, and
so in that situation the monarch themself is
going to be more understanding than maybe an
intermediary. So that's my guess as to why the
rules are different for the Jewish and Muslim
communities in Valencia. The probata for this
document is something very unusual. We're having
a very unusual probata couple of episodes here.
The first line, this was originally I think a
three -line probata. And the first line has been
erased. Not completely. There's little pieces
that you can see that mostly are on the edges,
the right and left edge of what was there on
the first line. But it's interesting that someone
felt the need to do an erasure there. The part
that's left has Bartolomeo Sirvent. And that's,
of course, one of Violant's most frequent scribes.
And then at the end of the second line, we've
got a usual Mondavit abbreviation, commanded.
And then the third line, we have some interesting
stuff. We've got a Regina or Rege abbreviation,
and then something like Fuit or Fuerit. Something
with an F and means something like made and then
we've got a probata P but it's followed by a
little P and that would be an abbreviation for
something like prop tear or I don't know something
that has a word with just like two P's in it
and then after that we have what looks to me
like the abbreviation for treasurer and then
another So something about this probata wasn't
correct in some way, as it was originally written.
I cannot tell what was there before the erasure.
Something that I think started with Domina, because
that's clearly a D right at the beginning before
the erasure. I don't really have enough at the
end to make a good guess. As I'm trying to figure
out more about what these probata statements
mean, I might be able to make an inference about
what was there, but I can say at this time that
we definitely have something related to money
causing different rules. When the chancery is
in cooperation with the Treasury, we're seeing
some kind of different authorization process.
And we've seen it in some of the documents earlier
in the last couple documents that we've talked
about, and we're also seeing it here. And I can't
quite tell why the rules are all that different.
but it is something that I hope to figure out
as the year goes on. Okay, I think that pretty
much does it for this particular letter. There's
a lot in there, but it just basically says you
gotta cooperate with our treasurer, and if you
do, we'll be happy. And it's the stuff that you
gotta do, and it's the way you gotta do it is
gonna make sense, and so everything should be
Going according to plan once our treasure gets
here there and and then we should hear Back that
you did what you were supposed to do That's what
the whole thing amounts to in a lot of words
It makes me kind of wonder is this so long because
viola is just really suspicious of this governor
of Valencia Mohsen Aznar That is something I'm
going to keep in mind as I'm looking at other
correspondence from Violant about Valencia.
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!