Hello! In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 27th 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 is a letter from Violant to
her parents, the Duke de Bar and the Duchess
of de Bar. And in previous letters to her parents,
Violant has been a little bit more candid than
usual there was one a while ago I think it was
in February where she said don't believe the
rumors about Joan's health he's fine admitting
that there were rumors I mean it could be that
she was not being all that candid because possibly
some of the rumors were actually true and Joan
wasn't doing so well health -wise and she didn't
want her parents to know but at least you know
she's candid to the extent that she admitted
there were rumors so when i look at a letter
from Violant to her parents i'm looking for
opportunities to notice anything as subtle as
it might be that might tip off that there's still
some problems with Joan's health. And this particular
letter doesn't really give me all that much to
work with, to be honest. She does use the word
convalescence when talking about Joan and his
health, but she is continuing to use this very
extreme language about how well he's doing so
she mentions that he is plenarement restitute
like fully recovered and that he's got perfecta
sanitat he's got perfect health so okay we've
got you know, these statements that assert that
everything is going just fine with Joan's health
even though we see weird ambiguities and inconsistencies
earlier in March. I think the last document that
we looked at that was about this way that they're
reporting Joan's health condition was on March
22nd. So on the webpage for this document, I'm
going to be putting all kinds of links to other
episodes in the corroboration section of the
webpage. So here we have this letter. It's basically
putting in the record that Joan is doing great
health -wise. And I just want to take a moment
to give you a heads up about what's coming. because
what I'm really looking for are when cracks begin
to show in this narrative about Joan's health
being just fine because the real drama with his
health and his next moment of peril comes in
April 27th. And when I say the next moment, what
I'm talking about is the existing historiography.
So the historians that have identified documents
already that talk about Joan's health during
this period as we get into the springtime and
approaching summer of 1387. They have already
found and written about documents regarding Joan's
health and Violant's response to something very
serious that happens in late April and into May.
I'm gonna do a quick rundown of the historians
who have written about this and identified documents
in these registers about what happens to Joan
at the end of April. So the first document is
April 27th and Dawn Bratsch Prince wrote about it
and it mentions that Joann is ill. Then we go
to a series of documents that Josep Roca wrote
about, and those are April 29th, April 30th,
and May 4th. And those documents mention a very
severe condition that Joan has. It doesn't specify
what's going on, but that he's in bad shape.
Then in the folios that are right around the
ones that Roca talked about, I found another
one. I don't think any historian has written
about it yet. It's from May 15th, where there's
mention of a grave fever. And then May 25th,
there's a document that Rubio e Lluch talks about.
still talking about how Violant is responding
to Joan's illness. May 27th there's one by Rodrigo
Mateo Lizondo and then on July 12th we have a
letter that Dawn Bratsch Prince discusses in which
Violant is discussing the recovery that Joan
has made, and on July 25th there's one in the
collection by Lizondo about miracles that brought
Joan out of his illness. So we've got this
period that is roughly from the end of April
through pretty much the entirety of May in which
Joan is in big trouble health -wise. That's
how I'm reading this right now, but what I'm
really looking for are indications that something
was going wrong earlier in April, and we're now
in March 27th, and so we're really on the lookout
for this, and then trying to figure out what
Joan was capable of. in terms of his normal
duties during the month of April and when he
gets into trouble and how long he's out of commission
and then when in May he seems to be back back
in terms of functioning enough to to resume the
level of activity that he had and that we see
in other moments in the archive so What's gonna
be really interesting is to track How what we
know which is that there is some moment where
Joan is not okay and and try to figure out
how that shows up in the archive the Moments
that Joan was in big trouble in January. We
do see a little bit of a more chaotic representation
of a lot of the documents in that late January
period but that overlaps with when they're transitioning
into becoming king and queen so it's really hard
to understand what is chaotic in the records
because of Joan's illness and what's chaotic
just because of the transition that we're seeing
from one reign to another. So this will be interesting
to see what I notice in the registers as we move
forward. And then there's this other wrinkle,
which is that Rafael Tasis y Marca and Josep
Roca are making an argument about how some of
the letters that we see in the end of April are
actually referring to what happened in January.
And I'm trying to evaluate that argument and
trying to figure out why Roca was making that
assertion. Still haven't quite figured that out.
I have to go back and read what Roca wrote very
carefully. And just to keep in mind, that Josep
Roca spent a ton of time in these archives and
was very masterful in his understanding of all
of this material. He was writing in the 1910s
and 1920s. I think that his big biography of
Joan was 1929, but if you try to read that cover
to cover, it's a really tough read because it's
almost like sort of what I'm doing with this
podcast. He's got a gigantic number of documents
that he's trying to weave together and it's more
of like a journal of the documents thematically
than it is like what we would expect of a biographical
treatment so for example he's got a whole chapter
on what he calls Joan's superstitions things
like astrology and other kinds of Joan getting
into what would be called the sidereal the magic
and the Health cures that were you know, maybe
what we would think of as less medical and more
magical and so he had Roca has this whole chapter
on what he calls Joan superstitions and he
basically goes from like beginning to end like
from Joan's entire life looking at documents
about his belief in magic or pursuit of the sidereal.
And so he's got these, then he's got another
chapter on his marriage, Joan's marriages. And
so it doesn't read chronologically. And then
what's more confusing about this, which would
be fine. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing
a work of history like that, but what's confusing
is that Roca is is inserting a lot of direct
quotations from the documents and he just kind
of tends to jump around chronologically a lot
so it's like he he made notes about all these
documents and then he's he's kind of transcribing
his notes more than he is pursuing an argument
so it reads more as a notebook than it does as
a historical argument. So I mean, you know, maybe
after listening to this podcast that will feel
very comfortable to you. But you also have to
be able to read Catalan or have a way to translate
the Catalan. Which can be kind of tough. Some
of that 1920s Catalan is not really the same
colloquially as the Catalan writing today. So
there's been a couple moments where I've been
really tripped up as I'm trying to read that.
which is why I can't at this point figure out
why he's saying that stuff that's written about
Joan's perilous health condition in late April
is referring back to January, but it does seem
like that is what Roca is saying. Alright, so
that's what's coming up. That's what we're looking
for, and I would say that, you know, we've just
got this steady drumbeat of Violant saying that
Joan's health is good and it's and she's writing
a letter like that almost once a week to somebody
and you know there's certain moments where she's
writing it you know to everybody. So we have
this steady drum beat about Violant putting
out there that Joan is doing well health -wise
and what we're going to look for is how she handles
it when It's just like really scary for her about
you know, is he gonna survive and I think that
we're gonna see that in the upcoming weeks and
Yeah, I'm just curious about when the first instance
is that we'll we'll see that and if it is something
that we're gonna notice before The document that
Dawn Bratsch Prince identified which is dated April
27th so today's letter we can do a little bit
more discussion of it in particular. Violant
is writing to her father, and she starts out
with this information about some merchants. So
in line three, it's like fourth word from the
end of the line, there's mercaderes. So there's
some kind of, you know, fet del, dels mercaderes,
some kind of business of the and if some kind
of decision that has to be made later on in the
letter about four lines down we see the word
decisio del negoci. So there's some kind of decision
about the business regarding the said merchants,
but nothing specific is mentioned here. And then
there's also the word justicia, some kind of
justice. There's some kind of decision that has
to be made about some merchants that somehow
her father knows about or has given her information
about. Don't know what that is referring to.
Maybe we'll see something about that later. Second
half of the letter is all about the health of
everybody, Violant says, you know, Joan is
convalescing perfectly, everything's great, and
then wishes all of her family back in France
the best of health. There's some interesting
stuff at the bottom of this letter, which is
the Latin instruction at the very bottom left,
right below the text block. in which we see that
the scribe, her I think most trusted consistent
scribe Bartolomeo Sirvent, has written that
there's been another letter that has been sent
to the duquesa debar, so her mother. So basically
what we see here in the second two the last line
I guess you could also say the middle line of
that Latin phrase is mutatis mutandis and we've
seen that before in one of the letters I think
maybe it might have been in one of the Scarampi
letters not sure but mutatis mutandis is idiomatic
for saying that with all the things changed that
should be changed so this is actually a phrase
that is still used in legal contexts today in
courts in the United States and legal documents
basically shorthand for saying like the main
points are all identical but we're just changing
around some of the smaller details and it's basically
saying like you don't need to have an entirely
new copy recorded here because it's just common
sense to understand that when the same letter
is being sent out to somebody else certain necessary
details will be changed such as instead of saying
molt car pare it will probably start molt cara
mare or something like that so that phrase let's
just do a little latin lesson here because I
think it's really interesting to figure out well
like how is this phrase operating and how did
it go from being a literal phrase like literally
what it would be translated to is something like
having been changed needing to be changed that's
literally what those words are being translated
to in their particular tenses and what's going
on grammatically is that this is a construction
known as the ablative absolute the ablative absolute
is when you have a noun and a participle in a
pairing that is meant to be a separate phrase
so it usually stands alone as a separate clause
and basically it's used to indicate that there
is kind of some sort of separation from the other
content of a sentence or maybe that there's some
kind of other person doing something so a noun
plus a participle that is separated out from
the rest of the sentence that is an ablative
absolute so the participle part of that is participle
is a grammatical term that means a verb that
is acting as an adjective so in this sense the
ing part of something like needing to be changed
the needing is now a an adjective it's it's not
a verb because it's got the ing it's in the when
you have the ing it's the gerundive So mutandis
is the ablative case of a plural gerundive and
it means needing to be changed. Mutatis is an
ablative plural and also let me just explain
the term ablative. The term ablative is the word
used in grammar to mean that there's some kind
of separate something is separate or has some
kind of separate agent within some clause that's
not connected in the direct meaning of the sentence.
Is that at all understandable? I'm not sure.
But I thought I would just break down mutatis
mutandis for you all in case anyone was curious
About how Latin works a little bit and I've probably
mangled that explanation people who really know
their Latin if you're listening to this Yeah,
I I know I messed that up in some places, but
it's the general idea here that we have this
method in Latin for putting together concepts
that in English we would need a prepositional
phrase for. We would need something like the
word with. in order to get the meaning across.
But in Latin, you can play with the endings of
the words that change based on your tenses and
the function grammatically in the sentence. And
you can get these fun phrases that are alliterative,
fun to say, mutatis mutandis, and they stick
around. You know, it's something that's very
useful. It's a very shorthand way of saying with
the things changed that should be changed and
it's a concept that is useful because it saves
you the time of writing a whole new copy in your
archival register if we're talking about this
particular document from 1387 and it also saves
you time in a contemporary legal context where
there's an understanding that we're not going
to have to go through painstakingly copies copies
copies of things when we can just overall say
look these documents have been changed where
they need to be in the small details but the
overall point and meaning is the same all right
you now know a whole lot about that phrase, and
I do too. And let me explain that I didn't just
come up with that on my own, all that explanation.
Nope. I had the help of good old AI chatbot,
ChatGPT. So ChatGPT helped to break down the
grammar for me. As I was looking at it, I recalled
explanations from some of my Latin teachers,
and so... it tracked with what i remembered and
so it's not like i was just going to chat gpt
but in this case the ai chat bot was a helpful
assistant for my memory and my own refreshing
of my understanding one other thing about ai
usage for today's episode i for the last several
episodes have had the same routine with doing
some transcription through Gemini and Claude,
but today, on March 27th, Claude was having some
problems. It was not able to function. Basically,
there's a major outage for Claude on the morning
of March 27th, 2026. And so I ran this document
through Gemini and I got, you know, some okay
transcription, but there is a lot that Gemini
didn't quite get, and so basically it was not...
I didn't spend much time looking at that. Just
checking a couple things. 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, like
my explanation of Latin grammar might not have
really been that great. Well, if you still have
questions about that, I've done my job. Well,
also I'll post the chat GPT transcript so you
can get a better understanding of the ablative
absolute and mutatis mutandis from there. Well,
okay. 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.