Season 1, Episode 134

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Violant sends a second order to appear in court to a husband whose wife, named Regina, filed a complaint against him for violating their marriage.

Today’s Document

• Subject: legal complaint filed by a woman named Regina against her husband
• Date: May 7, 1387
• Day of the Week: Tuesday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1822 f148r-v
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Violant
• Recipients: Cresques Bonafos, a Jew of Girona residing in Figueres

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: this document shows Violant advocating for a woman, Regina, who filed a complaint against her husband; perhaps Violant, as a woman in power still operating with in a highly patriarchal context, sought to provide Regina with an extra effort in her pursuit of justice against her husband

• Contextualization: Marie A. Kelleher has shown that women made use of the legal system in the fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon in ways that could manipulate a patriarchical system in their favor ¹

• Corroboration: the earlier episode about this case was Episode 95; another example, regarding a Christian woman’s involvement in the legal system, was explored in Episode 12

• Close-Reading: this document includes the phrase ‘violation of marriage’ but does not provide any details about exactly what Creseques Bonafos did; Violant chooses to characterize Regina as ‘poor and miserable’ which implies that her husband’s actions impacted her material well-being

What is this document doing?

• This document adds enforcement to a summons through promising a severe financial penalty for a failure to appear.
• The document uplifts the status of a woman’s legal standing against ther husband.

Questions

• What happened to the Latin document sent to Cresques Bonafos on March 29th? Did he receive it?
• Did Cresques Bonafos read Latin? If not, would he have easy access to someone who could translate it for him?
• What does Cresques Bonafos’s failure to appear communicate about Violant’s authority?
• How motivated would the bailiff of Girona be to chase after Cresques Bonafos?
• Did Violant think of herself as more sympathetic to Regina compared to how Joan would react to this situation? Why or why not?
• How involved did Violant get with the details of this case?

AI Usage

The transcription and translation of this document was carried out by my OpenClaw pipeline. I also used ChatGPT to research the name Regina in fourteenth century Iberia.

Bibliography

• Kelleher, Marie A. The Measure of Woman: Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
• Kelleher, Marie A. The Hungry City: A Year in the Life of Medieval Barcelona. Cornell University Press, 2024.

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