Hello. In The Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was March 30th, 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 another one about
the interfaith context of the late 14th century
Crown of Aragon. And it's again from Violant's
register, the Commune et Curie register number
1822. Yesterday's document was Violant's adjudicating
or getting involved in the adjudication of some
kind of dispute between a husband and a wife
who are both Jewish in the town of Figueres.
This is different. Today's document is all about
a response to something that was going on in
Girona. Actually, we kind of have a two -for
-one deal with today because folio 144r is about
the same topic as the document on the verso of
that folio and the recto side is a letter to
the bishop of girona and the verso side of that
same folio is a letter to the pro homens the
jurats the council the leaders of the city of
girona The issue at hand is once again discussed
in vague terms, but even though we don't have
any specifics about who was harmed or exactly
where in Girona the violence was taking place,
we do have phrases in the document to the bishop
and in the document to the jurats. the councillors
of Gerona that indicate that this was some bad
violence that had been perpetrated against the
Jewish neighborhood in Gerona. Here it is interesting
because the geographical terms are a bit different.
In the fourth line of the letter to the bishop
on Folio 144R, we have this phrase, lo call dels
juheus a la nostra aliama de aquexa ciutat,
the call, the neighborhood of the Jews of our
aliama in that city or in this city. So the
way that the word call is used, is maybe something
like a neighborhood within the community, like
maybe the aliama is being referred to here as
like the larger population, and the call is more
of a geographic term. Not quite sure about the
usage of those words, actually, and a scholar
who really focuses on the interfaith context
of Crown of Aragon in this time would know that
a lot better than me. But here we have a location
for where there are problems occurring, and it's
in the Jewish neighborhood. And there's phrases
in this letter to the bishop, such as dampnatges
mortalment, so mortal damages. There's injurias,
injuries. There's all kinds of different uses
of the word mal. So there's mal feytos, bad deeds.
And the letter is really chocked full of that.
And Violant also says that she herself is astonished
to hear all of this. and that it is happening
on the watch of the bishop, and then in the letter
to the jurats on the other side of this folio,
same kind of sentiment is being expressed. So
Violante is criticizing the leadership, the ecclesiastical
leadership. and the secular leadership in Girona
for allowing these attacks on the Jewish community
to take place. There's a couple interesting things
about this when we pull back and look at the
historical context. So there's been a lot of
scholarship about the history of Jews in the
Crown of Aragon, and one of the most prominent
scholars in the 20th century about medieval Spain
and Jewish history is Yitzak Baer and he has
a few pages in his monumental work about this.
It's an English translation of his work and so
I'll put that in the in the citations, the bibliographic
citations for this episode. But basically the
long story here in terms of the decades is that
the plague, the bubonic plague, which hit in
1348 really wiped out a lot of the prominent
leaders of the Jewish community. as well as leaders
in the Christian community in the town of Girona.
Girona was hit hard by the plague and all the
way 30 years later we see that there's still
effects of this because there's not really a
consistent leadership of the community as a result
and there's some infighting as well as conflict
between the leaders in the Jewish community and
the leaders of the Christians of the town who
are the majority. So Baer is observing how the
long multi -decade context of this made it especially
problematic for the rule of law and for property
to be respected. There's another dynamic though
which comes up not only in the work of Baer,
but also in one of the best books about this
particular time and place, Crown of Aragon, late
14th century, which I've talked about many times
on the podcast before. It's Benjamin Gampel's
monograph on the royal response to the anti -Jewish
riots of 1391. So in 1391, Violant and Joan,
they're still Queen and King. They are responding
to this conflagration of rioting and basically,
I think you gotta call it a pogrom. I don't know.
I think there's a lot of debate about using that
term outside of the, I guess what you would say,
like Eastern European context. or the you know
19th century or modern context or early modern
but it seems to me like the word really applies
and it's my personal interpretation after reading
Gampel's book and other books about violence
against Jews that basically in the Crown of Aragon
and in other times and places but in the 14th
century Crown of Aragon there's always this sense
that when the opportunity presents itself to
lash out, there's always going to be a significant
number of people in the Christian community who
are ready. They're ready to go with violence.
And so it's not so much that some kind of fervor
sweeps the land and inspires the violence that
would not have been there otherwise. I really
think and this is my interpretation based on
the reading I've done that there's always this
kind of population that's looking for an excuse
and it is really that population is given a real
free rein in 1391 and it's kind of contagious
and the more you let that population get away
with it and the more momentum they have, then
people who might not have been inclined to take
part in that cruelty and that violence, they'll
join in. And so it's really got a sense of momentum.
But I think there's always going to be this in
the 14th century, in particular, which I've read
about the most in the Crown of Aragon, there's
going to be this group of people in a lot of
localities, including Girona, Barcelona, and
others that are ready to go as soon as the opportunity
presents itself. And so they're always being
tamped down. And I think that the will to tamp
that down is not too great on the part of the
local authorities. So the desire to tamp that
down is very great on the part of Violante, as
you can see in this letter here. She's really
displeased that the Bishop of Girona has let
this happen. She's really displeased that the
town leaders of Girona have let this happen,
and Joan is also quick to write about how he's
displeased. Here's the thing, though, is that
what we see is that there's these these episodes
like what we're looking at here in late March
of 1387 that just keep coming up again and again
and then in 1391 it explodes and in 1391 Joan
and Violant and Marti they're all trying to
contain that kind of snowballing effect that
takes place in 1391 But they're not really able
to do a good job of it And it's not quite clear
that they're willing to sacrifice all that much
in terms of really like sending in people to
do serious violence against the perpetrators
of those riots All right, so all of this is to
try to contextualize and basically if you want
to read about that, go to Gampel's book. It just
explains it so well. Now, there's others too.
Brian Catlos's books do an amazing job on this
too. David Nirenberg's books do an amazing job
on this too. So let's talk about Girona in particular.
Let's keep in mind that another trend is that
around the Christian holidays these things tend
to bubble up more. There's more of, I guess,
like religious fervor that's happening and so
it provides those those malfeasants in the population
the opportunity to do some violence and take
some property. of the Jews, and so we're heading
toward Easter. So Easter in 1387 was April 7th,
so we're approaching that date. Now, when we
look at what was going on in Gerona at this time,
Gampel observes that, and he draws on a lot of
other secondary sources. There's a lot of literature
that he draws on, and he observes that April
2nd, there was violence in Girona. But here,
what we can see is that the violence had started
before April 2nd. So I'm not sure if there's
been discussion of this before. Gampel is referring
to, during his discussion of Girona, a piece
by Jaume Riera i Sans, who we've read about
in other in other topics in the podcast before.
Anyway, Jaume Riera i Sans has written about
some of the Jewish history in Girona and has
established that there was violence in Girona
on April 2nd. So is this information that is
in any way new. I'm not sure I'd have to go back
and dig around deeper into some of that secondary
literature, but suffice it to say that from the
very start of their reign, I mean we're about,
you know, 90 days or so in to their reign, they're
already encountering local leadership that is
allowing the violence against Jews to take place.
So when 1391 arrives, you know, four years after
this letter, then there's been this track record
of all these local leaders hearing from the king
and the queen about their displeasure regarding
the treatment of the Jewish communities, and
they're basically just not really doing anything
to prevent more violence in the future. And that's
a whole different way of looking at it versus
saying things like, everything was hunky -dory
and then just there was this, you know, special
conflagration that came up in 1391. No. What
we can see is that there is a steady drumbeat
of animosity, conflict, violence, deadly violence,
and property theft going on, perpetrated against
Jews by Christians, and it is a consistent thing.
Now is that to say that all relations between
Jews and Christians were characterized by that?
No, because you can also find a lot of examples
where Christians and Jews are doing business
together, where they are creating artistic works
together, so it is a mixture, okay? just as how
in our society you see that there are groups
of people who have heightened hostility towards
other groups, and then others who get along,
right? It's a mixture. So that is the way to
approach learning about this society in a very
far away time. And if you're listening to this
in, you know, the United States, it's a faraway
place. So keep that in mind that what we're looking
at today is an excellent example of the conflict
that was taking place between Christians and
Jews. And in, I think, Girona, it's pretty clear.
And we'll look at this again in a couple weeks
on April 20th that we really had the Christians
who were in the majority taking out a lot of
their frustrations on the Jewish community. and
in some cases doing forcible conversions. So
there's a forced conversion case that comes to
Joan's attention on April 20th and we'll look
at that document and Joan says no, that's not
gonna work. You can't force somebody to convert
and say you've got a new Christian. So anyway,
there's that. So, okay. That's today's document.
I feel like I ended up digressing a little bit
right there, but basically keep in mind that
we're gonna hear about these conflicts, but we're
also routinely going to see evidence of Jews
and Christians getting along and productively
interacting. And it's not to say that we have
a lot of examples of entire communities where
everybody got along, like multiculturalism style.
But we can see that the term that Brian Catlos
came up with, conveniencia, like what's convenient,
is really at play, where a lot of interfaith
work is happening, people crossing those faith
boundaries when it is a matter of benefit or
convenience. One quick note about AI usage. So
I'm still working on doing things with my new
AI agent through OpenClaw. And because of that,
I am backing off of the chatbots while OpenClaw
does its work and so today it's just me so no
AI usage for today's episode and I'll keep you
updated on what I get from OpenClaw and what
happens as I keep working on adjusting the instructions
that I'm giving to the agent, and so stay tuned
for more info about that in later episodes. Thanks
for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, Season 1, Mult Cara Companyona. If you
are leaving with more questions than you arrived
with, I've done my job. Because 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.