Season 1, Episode 152

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Violant attempts to obtain the Cigonina, a book of magical counter-spells, presumably to help Joan recover from his illness.¹

Today’s Document

• Subject: seeking a book of counter-spells written by a Valencian bishop
• Date: May 25, 1387
• Day of the Week: Saturday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R2056 f16r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Violant
• Recipient: Jorda de Sobra, a doctor of law in Valencia

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: this document has received a lot of attention in the scholarship on Joan and Violant, since it demonstrates that, as a pattern, they routinely sought out unorthodox material[^mar]

[^mar]The passage that I read in today’s episode is Michael A. Ryan, A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cornell University Press, 2011), 119.

• Contextualization: magic, science, and faith were overlapping conceptual categories in the Middle Ages; on the one hand, the boundaries of medical practice were starting to become more enforced by university-educated professionals but on the other hand people still regularly sought out medical cures from sources not pedigreed by the university system

• Corroboration: the document tagged with magic offer a good set of sources to corroborate Violant’s stance on the sidereal; at the same time, we can see that doctors were still called, as in Episode 126 and also that Violant did her best to activate intercessionary forces in a more orthodox way by asking monasteries to pray for Joan, as seen in that same episode and Episode 43

• Close-Reading: compared to the text of the letter to Jordi de Sobra on May 29th, this one is silent on Violant’s motivation for wanting the Cigonina, saying only that there is a ‘gran necessitat’

What is this document doing?

• This document allows a search for an unorthodox, perhaps even illicit, text to enter into the archival record.
• The document demonstrates the reach of the queen’s knowledge about who might own specific cultural items.

Questions

• Did James, Cardinal of Valencia, inform Violant of Jordi de Sobra’s ownership of the Cigonina? If not, how did Violant hear about it?
• Why was Violant willing to have this information copied into the archival register? Or was it done without her really paying attention to that aspect of this correspondence?
• Did Violant perceive any risks in searching out this text at the time or did it feel entirely risk-free to her?
• What kinds of details did Violant have about the magical spells that had been placed on Joan?

AI Usage

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

Bibliography

• Duni, Matteo. “The Popes and Magic.” In The Cambridge History of the Papacy, 1st ed., edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, Robert A. Ventresca, Melodie H. Eichbauer, and Miles Pattenden, 486-513. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• Flint, Valerie. The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Princeton University Press, 1994.
• Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Third edition. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
• Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Rubió y Lluch, Antonio. Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval. Vol. 1. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908. Full text available on Hathi Trust
• Ryan, Michael A. A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon. Cornell University Press, 2011.
• Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. The Macmillan Company, 1923.

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