Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 26, 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 are 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 you know how a couple days ago we were looking
at a document about how Joan needed to raise
money to get soldiers to go to Sardinia to combat
some of the resistance of the Sardinians against
Catalan rule? Okay, well that costed some money
and he was worried that he wouldn't get the funding
to pay those soldiers. There was a lot of urgency
in that letter. Well, here we are a couple days
later and Joan is writing to the royal procurator
in Mallorca and it's on a completely different
topic and he doesn't really say anything about
the money specifically, but I mean, he basically
says, whatever you need to obtain these things,
I will be providing to you. Right, and so he's
like I am gonna send you whatever provisions
you need in order to buy all these things and
What is it that is getting? purchased with money
who knows from where is a bunch of cool hunting
bird stuff and something that ties in to an extremely
famous mappa mundi, a map of the world. All right,
it's so fun to talk about these things that I
don't even know which one to do first. Well,
Joan starts out with the birds. So this is
a really difficult thing to figure out what he's
talking about exactly, like what kind of bird.
He uses the word gallines de India so it's
like I mean the word is like chicken it's like
chickens from India but I don't think he's like
all that excited about chickens I think it's
some kind of like other bird like a hunting bird
like not Falcons because he uses Falcons later
on in the letter so I don't know exactly what
type of hunting bird he has in mind, but I'm
pretty sure it's a hunting bird. So he is writing
to the procurator. I'm having trouble saying
it in English now. The procurator, and he's saying
you have to send the three pairs of Birds of
India there's some birds that have arrived from
India and two of them are male He will maybe
he's heard that there's a bunch of birds and
he want and this is the quantity he wants He
wants three pairs and he wants at least two males
So that's how he starts the letter, you know
send me these birds that I've heard about that
have come into Mallorca from India. So right
there we have really interesting revelations
that Joan receives information about the kind
of stuff that arrives to Mallorca. We already
got that. I mean earlier in, I guess it was maybe
a couple weeks ago, he had verified that he had
received a whole bunch of treasures from Mallorca,
including sapphires and all kinds of gold stuff
and cool textiles and carpets. So we know that
he's frequent. shopper when it comes to the cool
stuff that arrives in Mallorca. But what's neat
is that we have this claim that there are birds
that have come from India. And of course, you
know, what is it? What is the word India mean
in this context? It could just mean from Far
away it could mean Silk Road. It's not necessarily
Claiming the actual place of India that we would
know today but it is interesting that there's
a possibility and it's definitely the case that
Catalan merchants made it into the Red Sea and
the Arabian Sea and so it is definitely a possibility
that when Joan is talking about these birds
from India that they actually did come from India
someplace like Goa, for example, or maybe even
further south someplace like Kochi. All right,
now let's move on to The next part of the letter,
this is exciting. The name Cresques comes up.
So, and also he's identified as a Jew. So, Cresques
jehu. All right. The Jew Cresques . So already
we've got interfaith context coming up here.
So the, let me just read it out. So he has found
out that this Jew named Cresques who was making
a world map for Joan has died. This is a reference
to actually someone that's very famous. One of
the most reproduced maps of this era, a Portolan
map made by Cresques is known as the Catalan Atlas.
It is currently in the Bibliotheque Nationale
in Paris. And actually, I had the opportunity
to go look at it myself. And so I think I'm going
to post a selfie that I took with the Catalan
Atlas in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris
onto the web page for today's document. This
map, and I'll put a couple different images on
it, is often reproduced. in world history textbooks
these days because it demonstrates the connectivity
all across the Mediterranean with in the kind
of trade networks with the Saharan trade networks
and all the way into the Silk Road. So basically
It's got a lot of little passages and details
and illustrations. It's a beautiful work. Now,
I don't think that the actual Catalan atlas that
survived to this day and is reproduced so much
is the one that Joan is referring to here.
That particular map made by Cresques is one that
he was commissioned to create for Charles V of
France, and that was before 1380. So Cresques
was making maps for a lot of high -profile clients.
It is true that he had been appointed to a royal
position for the Crown of Aragon. and he lived
in Majorca this whole time. And so he had additional
funding in order to increase the productivity
of his workshop and for all the materials. At
this time, Majorca hosted this map -making school.
It's actually called the Majorcan Cartographic
School, and there's a little Wikipedia page about
it that I'll link to on the webpage for this
episode. The Majorcan Cartographic School produced
Portolan chart maps, and there's a bit of a debate
about whether it was the genoese or these Mallorcans
who invented portolan charts when we say portolan
we're talking about the custom in map making
where there's all these straight lines these
diagonal straight lines that are inter that are
kind of connected in like intersections so it
looks like a bunch of like stars in a way so
that's portolan map making and It's an invention
that really aids in navigation, and so it's possible
that the creators of that were these Majorcan
cartographers, but it's up for debate. It could
have been the cartographers in Genoa. that invented
that. But the important thing to understand about
this Mallorcan cartographic school is that they
were almost all Jewish. So it was the Jewish
community in Mallorca that gave rise to this
group of artisan mapmakers, and they were renowned
all over Europe. So they supplied maps to royals
all over the place. And indeed, part of the launching
of Portugal into major power player status. in
the long -distance trade that was happening in
the 15th century can be traced back to how the
King of Portugal recruited cartographers from
Majorca to move to Lisbon and to help start out
a greater understanding of cartography and navigation.
So these maps and these particular map makers
are really important for the trajectory of Europe
as a whole. And here we have Joan seeking out
a product from that particular school. It's not
clear which map this was or whether it currently
survives. The Wikipedia page, which I know is
not authoritative, and I'm going to talk about
that in just a bit, but the Wikipedia page for
Cresques , for Abraham Cresques , lists a bunch of
his maps that do survive, and none of them are
currently in Spain. So they're held in libraries
in other places, like I think there's one in
Florence, for example. Word of caution, when
you look at the Wikipedia pages for the Majorcan
Cartographic School, for Abraham Cresques, for
his son Yehuda Cresques, and for the Catalan Atlas,
there's a lot of inaccuracies on these Wikipedia
pages. Generally speaking, they will give you
an accurate idea of what the importance of all
of this was, culturally and economically. but
there are small details that are again and again
being repeated on these Wikipedia pages that
are incorrect. So at one point, Joan is linked
to Abraham Cresques in a way that is not possible.
So here, you know, we have documentation in today's
document from the Archive of the Crown of Aragon
that Abraham Cresques had died around 1387 or
maybe late 1386 and stuff on the Wikipedia page
makes it seem like he was still alive into the
1390s so obviously someone there creating those
pages is getting confused and maybe some secondary
sources have gotten confused but we are absolutely
sure that Joan is not mistaken at this point.
There's plenty of documentation later on, too.
And actually, in July, we're going to look at
a document where Joan is referring to Abraham
Cresques' son, Yehuda. So it's pretty clear that
Abraham Cresques died in late 1396 or around.
1386 or 1387. Okay, so basically Joanne is interested
in getting a Mappa mundi. There were a lot of
medieval elites that wanted to look at Mappa mundi's
maps of the world, and for obvious reasons they're
really interesting. And Joan was definitely
somebody who was a acquirer of knowledge and
culture, and these world maps I'm sure would
have been a great joy for him to peruse. And
I am quite confident in saying that he would
have shared this with Violant. Okay, let's talk
about what else is covered in this letter. So
he's heard, Joann has heard that Abraham Cresques
has died. And so he's concerned, Joan is concerned
about getting his map that he had commissioned.
And so. He says if it's not finished, then there
is a Christian here in Barcelona that I know
who would be able to finish it. So just send
it. So that's what he says to his procurator
in Mallorca. And then he goes back to another
topic of another product that he's wanting to
get from Mallorca, Falcons. So he talks about
falcon—he was really into falconry, and there's
just a whole gigantic literature about falconry.
I think I've talked about it once before on the
podcast. Falcons are not efficient for obtaining
prey for like cooking. Like for eating like there
it just takes a long time to train them and what
they get is not anything That's you know big
so if you're really concerned about hunting for
the reasons of nourishment Then Falcons are not
the way to go but if you are instead excited
by watching a falcon hunt its prey by swooping
around in the sky and you have a lot of spare
time on your hands to train them or have a staff
of people to train them, meaning you're wealthy,
then in the middle ages you love some falcons.
And there were a lot of falconers and there were,
I mean, geez, you know, going all the way back
to uh what's his face Frederick Frederick in
um Sicily he god what's his name Frederick the
second i think he had like 50 different people
working as falconers and he knew them all by
name he's just loving his falcons so there's
definitely a lot of medieval elites that are
just deep into falconry i guess it's kind of
exciting and see him swooping around in the air
and all that stuff. So anyway, Joan is really
into falcons, and he mentions that there's some
falcons that he would like his procurator to
obtain from Majorca. I think there seems like
they've been made in Majorca. So native Majorcan
falcons. I don't know enough about falconry to
know. If that's like, you know, the best Falcons
out there, the ones in Mallorca, maybe. So mapmakers
and falconers. Mallorca's got it going on. Alright,
so I think that's pretty much it for today's
document, but it's really great because it connects
into a material object that you can go to see.
in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and while
that's not exactly the same object that Joanne
looked at, you can be confident that as you look
at the Catalan Atlas, it's known as the Catalan
Atlas, that you were looking at something that
Joan very similar to the product that Joan
himself, and probably Violant too, would have
looked at with great interest, as they were very
curious about geography and the world all the
way back 639 years ago. 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,
a whole bunch of images of the Catalan Atlas
made by Abraham Cresques, 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.