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.
Episode 171
ACA CR R1867 f2r Source: PARES
ACA CR R1867 f2v Source: PARES
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
I gave an initial transcription by Gemini to Claude for a reconciliation. Claude then produced a translation with footnotes.