Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 21, 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 we've got a document from a type of register
that we don't look at too often. This is the
Gratiarum, and it's one of Joan's registers.
It's a register that has been described by the
archivists at the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
as one that is designated for the granting of
royal privileges. So every document in this register
should be some kind of commission granted or
whatever else would qualify as a royal privilege
the documents in this register like this one
often have a header so it makes it kind of easier
in a way so on folio5v at the bottom is where
our document begins and the header is Pro Raymundo
Diebra. And we've got Shadow howling at the
moon in the background here. All right, so hopefully
she will not be doing that too much and I won't
have to re -record all this. We'll see. All right,
so Raymundo Diebra is being granted a uh let's
see a position as a notary as an official document
creator for the kingdom of aragon so one of the
constituent pieces of the crown of aragon for
which the realm takes its name and so it's a
it's a big deal and you could kind of see how
in this document there's a lot of authority vested
in the notary for creating the records of all
sorts i think a lot of contracts for example,
that will have the full force of law. And so
if you're authorizing somebody to do that, they
absolutely need to be of high trust. And that's
how this document begins, saying that Raymundo
Diebra has earned that reputation. There's a
word in line two that is an interesting one,
I think. It's tabuloniatus and that means legal
clerk so the suffix atus is one that denotes
an official body so if you have done any learning
about ancient rome there's the office of the
consul right? And then the consulatus is the
official body. So the person's title is consul,
but then if you're talking about the institution,
you would be talking about the consulatus, and
that is where we get the English word consulate,
which is no longer the same kind of institution
as what was going on in ancient Rome, but it's
the word that's used for an office in the foreign
service. And so if you're in a country outside
of the United States and the embassy is not in
the city that you're in, there might be a consulate.
So that's a good Latin lesson. Yeah, this document
is in Latin. And I was pretty happy with how
my AI chatbot routine came up with a transcription
and translation for this document. I'm going
to bring you into that process a little bit more.
And the reason that I'm going to go deeper in
is because I myself had a question about what
I got at the end of the three stages that Claude
goes through when producing a transcription and
translation of the documents in late 14th century
gothic secretarial hand. So just as a reminder,
I mentioned it a couple times before on the podcast,
but I'll say it again here. What I do is I start
with Gemini because it seems to be in many ways
better at analyzing images, but then in the thinking
process that would come at the next stage, it
doesn't seem to be as good. And so that's where
I go to Claude. So I have both Gemini and Claude
come up with a transcription. of the document,
whether it's in Catalan or Latin. And then I
take Gemini's transcription and have Claude look
at it and reconcile it with the transcription
that Claude itself had made. And after that,
I offer some corrections or attempts to figure
out some of the tricky things. And then I have
Claude do stage three. So stage two is the reconciliation
with what Gemini created. Stage three is when
Claude looks at my feedback and then does another
thought process about overall what it has done
and what it saw from the other output, and then
it creates a new revised transcription and then
an English translation with footnotes about the
ambiguities and difficulties. I think, is a process
that helps to avoid some of the pitfalls with
the AI chatbot use, which is that they often
are producing things that are overconfident.
And in the process that I've set up, and I've
called it and identified it in Claude's program
as a project so that it has the same instructions
each time, and I don't have to keep retyping
the prompts. So in this Claude project, it has
these instructions to not cover up uncertainties
or ambiguities, but instead to always surface
them. And that has been pretty good. All right.
The thing that got me with this document very
curious about what Claude did was this idea that
is covered in Folio 6R, in kind of the middle
part of it, sort of starting in line six. And
Claude's English translation basically amounts
to, we authorize you, in this new official position
as a notary for the Crown of Aragon to put your
signature on the documents as an official attestation
to their authenticity and legal force, and this
is the part, provided that you are there at the
time. There's this clause that is revealing about
what the values were for giving a document legal
force. So what were some of the processes and
values? That's really important to me because
an ongoing question that I have is about whether
Joan was present. but really because I'm looking
at Joan from the lens of disability studies,
I really want to know whether Joan had to be
physically present with these documents at what
stages. So from the initial idea that a document
needed to be created to the drafting of the actual
words, maybe in a verbal stage, and then the
writing down of the document onto the paper,
and then the signing of the document, and then
at the end, the copying of the outgoing document
into the registers that we're looking at now.
And of course, Joan would not have had to be
present at that last stage. No one would really
expect that. But what were the requirements of
his presence in the other stages? That's something
that I'm really interested in. So when I see
in this document that a key part of legal enforcement
and legitimizing the legality of a new document
is that the notary must be present, when the
contract is being signed. I mean, well, that's
kind of obvious. Like, how are you going to sign
something that's not present? But I think there's
a little bit more going on here, which is that...
the creation of the legal force requires the
presence of the notary in more than just kind
of slapping his name down at the end. I think
there's something else being expressed here about
the presence of the notary, so I got really interested
in the exact word choices and the grammar in
this particular section of this document, which
is tough because it's in Latin and you have to
kind of figure out all these different choices
about the prepositional phrases. So I started
digging in and I noticed that Claude's transcription
at the end of stage three had a mistake. So in
line six, pretty much in the middle, the word
in the document that appears after signum is
ap - Pretty clear to me that that's a posueris.
In the transcription, at the end of Claude's
process, the word that comes up in the transcription
is oppositis, and I just cannot see how that
is correct. I can see how Claude got there because
the R is looking a lot like a O. Well, is that
now I'm starting to doubt myself. But OK, either
either the word ends in. It's not a T, it's an
E. So OK, so hold on. S, U, here's the second
half of the word. S, U, E. That is absolutely
clear. S, U, E. And then we've got two minims,
which I think is R, I, and then a very clear
S. So it could also be that those are two I's,
but I'm pretty sure that this is... it's an R.
I'm zooming in on it now. So... Okay, I'm right.
The word is apposueris. So I went to the Latin
dictionary, and guess what? It turns out that
apposueris and appositis, these two different
conclusions, mine and Claude's, they actually
don't end up making a gigantic difference in
meaning, because they both have this position
definition. Now it could, when we get into the
fine details of who is doing what in this sentence,
it can make a gigantic difference in terms of
the details of what's required, the fine details.
But in terms of the sense of the sentence, it's
it actually doesn't make a difference and that's
because at the end of the sentence in line seven
we have another really important word which is
the crux of of the meaning here for my the question
that i have and that word is the fourth word
in on line seven and here and here we've got
cats again okay so I've got two cats now in the
workspace. All right, so inter fuisse. That means
to be present, and then the word after it is
confitiaris. So we had an infinitive with inter
fuisse, to be present, and then we've got a present
subjunctive for the verb to acknowledge so there's
this idea i know i know shadow there's this idea
that you have to have an acknowledgement of being
present that you and so the exact grammar not
quite sure about but this is the sense that's
that's being conveyed here all right that was
really complicated and i'm not happy that i had
mewing interrupting cats as I was trying to explain
that, but you know, that's just life. Okay, so
what does this all tell me about these questions
that I'm curious about regarding the establishment
of legal force and the personal presence of those
who are trying to establish that legal force?
it tells me that their presence was important.
It tells me that the body there and functioning
as as you know testifying to their their bodily
presence is core to establishing legitimacy and
that you can't just do things through kind of
like auto pen i guess is what is what we might
think of as sort of the the way that sometimes
there could be a delegation. Now that's at the
level of this notary for the realm the constituent
kingdom of Aragon. Is that also true for the
monarch himself or do the chancery staff and
other officials help out to stand in for the
king in certain moments? That is still an open
question. One last thing I want to point out
about this document is that the scribe has decided
to spell out the name of the day. So in the dating
clause, we've got vicesima primera die marci,
which is the you know first plus 20 so the 21st
day of March and then after the year which actually
it's been spelled out the last number of the
year Septimo oh my gosh there she goes again
all right so Septimo has been spelled out and
After that, we have this really interesting phrase,
which is something like regne quae nostri primo,
which I think the AI correctly translated as
the first year of our reign, although I can't
quite figure out what the quae is doing there
in order to create that meaning. Then we've got
this plus sign, which is like a symbol for a
signature. And then we've got what I think is
a first name and last name. I think we've got
something like Dominicus and then Mosco. I know
that the last name Mosco was one that was used
at this time. common last name. And also that
there was someone named Domenich Masco who was
prominent in this time. I'm not quite sure if
this is the same person, but that's my guess.
And then the probata is a little tough. I am
not quite sure what is going on. It could be
Domenicus is the first word. I'm pretty sure
that's right. But then maybe we have like a last
name after that, that begins with the letter
E, then X, like Eixemenes, or something like that.
But then we've got the Mondavit, and then we've
got what looks like DO, and then the second line
we have, well, something like Rex. and then the
kind of, you know, fuereit or faceit or something,
pair, and then we have something that I can't
quite figure out, like vitem or something, and
then valent - there's something like valencia
or valentem, maybe not having to do with valencia.
So there's a lot of stuff that I do not know
about what's in this probata, but we're going
to keep our eye on those probatas, try to figure
them out over the course of this year. Alright,
thanks for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, Molt Cara Companyona. And
thanks for bearing with all of the cat noises.
It's always unpleasant when you've got a cat
yowling in the background. But at the same time,
I don't know, maybe... Does it make the podcast
more homey? I kind of think it does, so sometimes
I just decide to leave it in and other times
I re -record. Well, if that's been very irritating
to you, thank you for bearing with me. And if
you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, I have done my job. Remember, the
motto of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction
guaranteed. because good history is the kind
of history that leaves you with so many more
questions. You might also have been dissatisfied
by the fact that there were a lot of cat noises
in this podcast, so maybe that's another way
I'm living up to the motto. 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.