Season 1, Episode 171

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Due to the delay in his coronation due to illness, Joan makes a request to James I of Cyprus to allow the knight Hugo San Pau to remain in Barcelona longer than expected.

Today’s Document

• Subject: request for a reprieve in feudal obligations for the knight Hugo San Pau
• Date: June 13, 1387
• Day of the Week: Thursday
• Language: Latin
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1867 f2r-v
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipient: James I, King of Cyprus

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: James I’s sister-in-law was Eleanor of Aragon, the first cousin of Pere the Ceremonious, Joan’s father; by 1387, James has turned against Genoa and this probably explains Joan’s tender address to him as ‘consanguinous carissime,’ dearest kinsman; throughout 1387 and the subsequent early years of his reign Joan kept trying to raise money for his coronation and also to become healthy enough for it

• Contextualization: Genoa had long dominated Cyprus and interfered in its internal politics; with Genoa as the chief rival of the Crown of Aragon for dominance in Mediterranean trade, Pere the Ceremonious took every chance he got during his reign to marry off a royal woman to a power player in a Mediterreanean island; there were longstanding traditions by which knights declared fealty to a particular lord or king and then carried out obligations, although ‘feudalism’ is a term that has become very difficult to define across differing contexts of Western Europe and the Mediterranean region

• Corroboration: thus far, the only other time Joan admitted to a disability was the document examined in Episode 58; for other episodes that touch on the way Joan’s disability was hidden or revealed, see the episodes tagged for illness

• Close-Reading: Joan chose to use the phrase ‘nostri corporis distenciam’ to describe the severe illness that forced him to delay his coronation and this word choice lacks attestation in Logeion other than possibly related to distentus, meaning occupied or swelled out

What is this document doing?

• This document connects the physical state of the body of the king to an act of diplomacy.
• The document acknowledges the traditions of feudal obligations across the Mediterranean region.

Questions

• Was Hugo de San Pau eager to return to Cyprus or more interested in finding reasons to extend his stay in Barcelona?
• Did Joan find it uncomfortable to put the fact of his disability into writing?
• Had there been a realistic chance that the coronation could have happened in the first half of 1387, given the financial circumstances?
• What were the current expectations for the scheduling of the coronation ceremony?

AI Usage

I gave an initial transcription by Gemini to Claude for a reconciliation. Claude then produced a translation with footnotes.

Bibliography

• Benes, Carrie E., ed. A Companion to Medieval Genoa. Brill, 2018.
• 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.

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