Season 1, Episode 125

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Joan sends Luchino Scarampi to negotiate with Guillermo Raymundo about the consequences of his capturing a Genoese merchant ship sailing from the Levant.

Today’s Document

• Subject: the legal and diplomatic fallout from a Catalan pirate’s seizing of a Genoese ship
• Date: April 28, 1387
• Day of the Week: Sunday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1751 f53r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipient: the Catalan corsair Guillermo Raymundo, Count of Montcada and Agosto

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: Guillermo Raymundo, Count of Montcada and Agosto, was at this time already a famous adventurer, having captured/rescued Maria of Sicily in 1380 so that she could marry Joan’s nephew, Martí the Younger; the ongoing dispute over the act of piracy in 1386 does appear to count as highest level diplomacy, with the matter’s inclusion in a 1390 peace treaty attesting to its impact; Joan might have felt a bit of satisfaction at the fact that at least on one occasion the act of piracy helps his realm at the expense of his rival; the selection of Luchino Scarampi to get involved as a mediator reflects Scarampi’s past role as a peace treaty negotiator between the Crown of Aragon and Genoa, but also the level of trust that he has earned from Violant and Joan – or possibly instead the very large amount of wealth that he has accumulated by this time

• Contextualization: the ongoing rivalry between the Crown of Aragon and Genoa at times escalated into military conflict but for most of the 1380s and 1390s it was made up of low-level proxy fighting and trade disputes

• Corroboration: the documents examined in Episode 116 and Episode 135 corroborates the existence of an ongoing piracy problem for the Crown of Aragon, while this document demonstrates the ways that a pirate could further the interests of the Crown of Aragon; the document examined in Episode 121 provides another angle on the rivalry between the Crown of Aragon and Genoa

• Close-Reading: the toponym for Damascus conflicts with Zurita’s idenfication of the seized cargo’s source as Beirut; perhaps Damascus and Beirut were interchangeable for Joan at this time

What is this document doing?

• This document only slightly gestures toward a condemnation of piracy.
• The document perpetuates the less than cordial relations between the Crown of Aragon and Genoa.
• The document entrusts Luchino Scarampi with another high level diplomatic task, further embedding him in the highest levels of state governance.
• The document demonstrates a capable monarch managing a diplomatic problem.

Questions

• Did Joan approve of Guillermo Raymundo or consider him a nuisance?
• How much did Joan actually care about the restitution of the cargo to Genoa?
• Was the ship actually from Beirut?
• How did Luchino Scarampi deal with this dispute while also handling the betrothal negotiations in Avignon?

AI Usage

The transcription and translation of this document was carried out by my OpenClaw pipeline.

I also used Claude to research Guillem Ramon Moncada, but only after the results of the OpenClaw pipeline led me on a wild goose chase with an erroneous connection to Sardinia. The key step in finding out information about the Guillem Ramon Moncada in today’s document came from my keyword search through the transcription of Jerónimo Zurita’s chronicle on the history of the Crown of Aragon, written in the sixteenth century.

Bibliography

• Ferrer i Mallol, Maria Teresa. “La pace del 1390 tra la Corona d’Aragona e la Republica di Genova.” Fonti e studi (Genoa) 12 (1966): 151–91.
• Ferrer i Mallol, Maria Teresa. “Catalan Commerce in the Late Middle Ages.” Catalan Historical Review, no. 5 (2012): 29-65.
• Rohan, Padraic. “Transforming Empire: The Genoese from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1282-1492.” Ph.D., Stanford University, 2021.
• Zurita, Jerónimo. Los cinco libros postreros de la primera parte de los Anales de la Corona de Aragon. Vol. 2. Zaragoza: Pedro Lanaja y Lamarca, 1668. available on Google Books. Accessed April 17, 2026.

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