Season 1, Episode 111

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Joan mansplains legal matters to the Governor of Valencia and instructs him to apprehend Berenguer de Vilaragut for various crimes including lèse-majesté.

Today’s Document

• Subject: chasing after the wily Berenguer de Vilaragut so that he can be executed
• Date: April 14, 1387
• Day of the Week: Sunday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1751 f43v
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipient: Governor of Valencia

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: as king, Joan de jure holds the highest level of judicial authority in the territory, but also must face political realities that make his de facto power much more limited; the recipient, the Governor of Valencia, must contend with the pressures put on him by local factions and it is likely that making trouble for Berenguer de Vilaragut will result in retributions and difficulties for his government

• Contextualization: the fact that Berenguer de Vilaragut can play jurisdictions off against each other, in this case the municipal authorities of the city of Valencia versus the royal authority of the state, shows that in this time period the different regions of the Crown of Aragon could have a great deal of autonomy; as new regions became incorporated into the Crown of Aragon in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they accepted the rule of the larger state in exchange for preserving the legitimacy of local laws, often called fueros

• Corroboration: today’s document provides the next installment in the history of Berenguer de Vilaragut, previously examined in Episode 51 and Episode 105; the fact that the pursuit of Berenguer de Vilaragut requires several follow-up documents reveals either that de Vilaragut has enough power to keep resisting apprehension and prosecution, or that the authority of Joan and Violant carries less sway in Valencia

• Close-Reading: Joan’s impatience with the Governor of Valencia comes through as he relates the legal justifications required to get Berenguer de Vilaragut executed; Joan lets loose a whole lot of adjectives for the malfeasance done by Berenguer de Vilaragut, including lèse-majesté, but never includes any detail about the actual crime

What is this document doing?

• This document deploys legal technicalities in an effort to move forward on the desired goal of having someone executed.
• In providing a line of reasoning for not simply assassinating an adversary, the document makes an effort to comply with the prinicipal of the rule of law.

Questions

• Was any of the legal information in this document news to the Governor of Valencia?
• How concerned was Joan with the legal niceties of this situation? Do we see the legalese of his councilors at work in this document?
• Why had Joan taken over this case from Violant? Or was Violant also continuing her pressure on the Governor of Valencia regarding Berenguer de Vilaragut?
• At this point, did Berenguer de Vilaragut have any chance of escaping apprehension or punishment?

AI Usage

The OpenClaw pipeline output for today’s document was very successful and helped me to focus on the tone of the part of the letter in which Joan gives legal education to the Governor of Valencia. In a full-text search of all the OpenClaw pipeline outputs, from six reigsters, this is the only one that came up for lèse-majesté, but the paleography might have prevented it from being transcribed successfully.

Bibliography

• Lloret, Paz. “El linaje de los Vilaragut y la violencia nobiliaria.” Saitabi: Revista de la facultat de geografia i història 51–52 (2001): 269–84.

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