Season 1, Episode 104

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Joan commissions Johannes de Monte as an official royal messenger.

Today’s Document

• Subject: commission for an official royal messenger
• Date: April 7, 1387
• Day of the Week: Sunday (Easter Sunday)
• Language: Latin
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1890 f161v
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipient: Johannes de Monte

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: Joan, as king, held the power to appoint all sorts of officials and provide them with salaries; however, it is very possible that appointments like this were handled by his advisers, such as the chamberlain and that Joan simply signed off on them

• Contextualization: in the Late Middle Ages, the growth of the state, and the expansion of its bureaucracy, required more messengers and couriers

• Corroboration: the documents examined in Episode 41 and Episode 42 feature a messenger named Gerau who delivered personal messages for Joan and Violant and thus might have had much higher status than Johannes de Monte; there are also messengers directly mentioned in the documents examined in Episode 47 and Episode 56

• Close-Reading: the use of the phrase ‘latorem presentium’ might indicate that Johannes de Monte has been present in the province of Aragon for a while and is part of this document’s review of his well-established reputation

What is this document doing?

• This document incorporates an individual person into the state apparatus.
• The document invests the messenger with the authority and legitimacy of the state.

Questions

• Who was Johannes de Monte?
• Had Joan ever met Johannes de Monte?
• Was there anything unusual about this commission?
• Why are herald commissions so rarely found in this register?

AI Usage

I used Gemini for an initial transcription, which I then had Claude reconcile with its oWn initial transcription. Claude then produced a translation into English with footnotes. This episode features a great example of how errors can compound when using LLMs for automatic text recognition. In this case the ‘ad’ early in the document triggered Gemini to interpret the word as ‘admiral’ and then both LLMs got stuck with thinking that this document was about the navy in some way. In addition to the use of AI for this episode, I also used the online Latin dictionary, Whitaker’s Words.

Bibliography

• Girona y Llagostera, Daniel. “Itinerari de l’Infant En Joan, Fill Del Rei En Pere III. 1350-1387.” III Congreso de Historia de La Corona de Aragón (Valencia), Hijo de F. Vives Mora, 1923, 169–592. Available on Google Books, accessed December 26, 2025.

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