Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 25th, 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. So today we have another document where
there's not much going on inside the document
itself, but some of its features make it interesting
to talk about. It's a really short document.
It begins with two lines on the bottom of folio
30R of register 1751, the same register we were
looking at yesterday, the secret seal register
for Joan. And we're only about 30 folios in,
so this is really, you know, the start of this
register still. Okay, well there's I got distracted
there's two lines that start at the bottom of
folio 30 are and then There are on the next folio
the continuation of the letter it only goes for
six more lines So we're super short here, and
it's a brief letter that simply establishes credentials
for a representative of Joann named Jaime Pallares
or Pallates and Jaime Pallates is going to journey
to the city of Barbastro. That is a city that
I had never heard of before today and it turns
out that it's a town that is halfway between
Huesca and LIeida. So it's in the region that's
around Zaragoza. It's in Aragon, so really like
the heartland of the realm of Aragon. And that's
the reason why this letter is written not in
Catalan, but it's written in Aragonese. and I
have had very little experience with being able
to recognize the difference between Catalan and
Aragonese. I mean, Aragonese has a lot of features
that make it way more like Castilian, so I should
be at the point where certain things start to
jump out at me, but they don't. So all right,
it's a learning process. I think one of the major
tip offs that this is aragonese is actually at
the end of the document. So the dating clause
ends on the last line of the letter. And in this
situation, the scribe. Pére de Beniure, who has
in previous letters decided that he wants to
spell out the number seven, has here instead
decided that he's going to write it in Roman
numeral. So we've got every part of the number
of the year, 1387, in Roman numerals. And then
we've got... So that word, it doesn't jump out
as similar to the Castilian Pequeno right away.
It has the letters P -E -G -N -Y -O And when
you first look at that, it doesn't seem to have
any resemblance to the Castilian word for small
Pequeno. It does, though. It's very related.
It is basically the same word, but just kind
of spelled a different way. So it's just the
small ring. And in Catalan, it would be petit.
anell like we saw in yesterday's document but
here oh maybe that was yeah i think that was
yesterday's document oh goodness yeah okay well
in yesterday's document or one of the ones very
recently we saw petit anell is the catalan version
of what we in english would say small ring and
here we've got the word for ring is spelled a
-n -i -e -l -l -o and so that difference should
alert me operative word should alert me that
i'm not looking at a document in wholly Catalan
or maybe in any part Catalan.There's all kinds
of other clues in here, but I'm just not as well
-practiced with my Catalan to immediately have
some of the other words jump out at me. And so
that's really where the number one tip -off is
that this is in Aragonese. But the use of the
Z... is a feature of Aragonese. So if we look
at line four on Folio 30V at the end, we've got
Deziamos with a Z. And you're not going to see
the letter Z like that in any Catalan document,
I think. That would be rendered with a C, with
a cedilla, or maybe even just spelled with a C
without the cedilla. So this is an Aragonese letter,
and it is written in Aragonese. Why? Well, Shadow
wanted to answer that question. It's written
in Aragonese because this is a town that is deep
in Aragon, and that's the language they have.
So it's really interesting that when Joan is
writing to the King of France, He uses Catalan,
and when he's writing to the king of Castile,
he uses Castilian, and I know Shadow, and then
when he's writing to the town leaders, the honorats
and prohomans, honoribus is who this is addressed
to, when he's... Okay, we're hearing you. We
hear you. Shadow, let me finish. All right, when
he's writing to them, the town leaders of what
I think was a pretty small town, he's writing
in Aragonese. So how did they make these decisions?
It could just be that the scribes in the chancery
had facility with these languages and didn't
really feel comfortable writing in French. They
felt comfortable writing in Latin, like when
writing to the pope in Avignon. But not French
apparently So that's interesting I will I would
love to see if somewhere in these registers if
there is a letter in French But my guess is no
there were definitely letters in some letters
that were read by them in Arabic I don't think
they wrote in Arabic but they had the ability
at least a couple people in that chancery had
the ability to read Arabic and so that's something
that became really important in relations with
Granada for example okay so this was a multilingual
context multilingualism was required. It was
the baseline. It wasn't like an add -on, oh yay,
we get to kind of have some folks that can write
in these different languages. Bonus! No! It was
like not a bonus, it was a requirement. And there
are many letters in Aragonese in the archive
of the Crown of Aragon, and this is one of them.
And all this one really says is, you know, I
think the crux of it is in line three of folio
30 v that you just have to give full credence
to the things that this representative Jaime
Pallares or Pallates is going to ask you to get
done when he shows up with this letter in hand
and then I do like to track this when they the
different phrases they use for saying that the
recipient of the letter should hear the words
spoken by the representative as if the king or
queen had said them themselves. In this case,
we have the phrase dezeamos so as if i personally
had wanted you to do it sort of that's a loose
translation but that's basically what it says
personal is the word used personally so now the
word persona is interesting because we've seen
it In other cases, Nostra Person as our body,
like our us personally, in the context of some
kind of injury that that might have been done.
And then if there's a loss that's happening to
the realm, it is something that is to our corona,
right? So King's Two Bodies, again, coming up.
All right. Well, I think, you know, because this
is pretty short and doesn't have any specifics.
It's all just talking about Obra or things being
said. We have pretty much reached the end of
this letter. Oh, I guess I can just say one more
thing that in the Addressee line we have so it's
really a catch -all for everybody who is a leader
of this city the the the huratis the you know
legal leaders the magistrates maybe would be
a good way to translate that and then prohomans
the council town councillors pro homens honoribus
the honorable with honor so all right that is
a little bit more about the way that town leaders
are referred to just for future reference we
could maybe compare it later on if we have oh
let's talk about actually the beginning of the
letter really quick honoribus boy no it's hombres
hombres buenos good men yeah All right, so all
these terms for when the king is referring to
the leaders of a town, and so we can maybe kind
of track that a little bit and be able to make
some conclusions about what the king might think
of particular leaders of the towns in how he
addresses them. But I don't know, it could just
be a Aragonese custom. use in the use of the
Aragonese language. So, all right, we're kind
of limited in how much we can infer. I'm just,
because there wasn't much to this letter, I'm
just kind of doing a little riffing here, a little
bit more than usual, maybe. Thanks for listening
to this episode of the Historian's Notebook,
season one, Molt Cara Companyona. If you are
leaving with more questions than you arrived
with, like, what the heck was going on in Barbastro
this time? Well, then I've done my job. Remember,
the historian's notebook motto 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.