Season 1, Episode 38

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Violant informs the Queen of Navarre of the death of Pere the Ceremonious.

Today’s Document

• Subject: Violant informs the Queen of Navarre of the death of Pere
• Date: January 31, 1387
• Day of the Week: Thursday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1818 f96r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Violant
• Recipient: Queen of Navarre

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: this is a letter from one newly ascended queen to another; but it also is a letter shaped by the close relationship between Violant and Charles III, the recipient’s husband; perhaps that makes this letter more formal or even awkward

• Contextualization: the centuries-long traditions of queen lieutenancy in Iberia inform the way that Violant writes this letter to Eleanor of Castile, Queen of Navarre; both of them know that a succession means the potential for an entirely new level of status and power; both Pere the Ceremonious and Charles II of Navarre had tempermental personalities and ruled for decades

• Corroboration: it is helpful to contrast this letter with the ones Violant wrote to her mother and to the Viscountess of Roda; to those she trusts, Violant has no qualms about including personal details that reveal her emotional and physical struggles

• Close-Reading: ‘sogres’ is the word for father-in-law, and I think Violant includes it here to highlight the commonality of the experience between her and the Queen of Navarre, eaching having a tempermental father-in-law who ruled for a long time and died in early January; the phrase ‘and what they have remains to others’ invokes a proverbial sense of justice in the transition from one generation to the next through inheritance and maybe even hints at a natural cycle; ‘fiancosament’ is the word for confidently and here I think Violant reveals that she will not hesitate to use the entirety of the power granted to her by law, by tradition, and (implicitly) by her husband’s unconventional ideas of the queen’s place in politics; ‘nostre voler’ neatly offers a double meaning, as it could mean ‘our will’ in the sense of the royal we, and at the same time it could serve to reinforce the framing of their situations as linked together as both these new queens take the initial steps of establishing their reigns

What is this document doing?

• This document forges a bond between two medieval elite women, coincidentally brought together by the near simultaneous deaths of their father-in-laws.
• The document also presents an aggressive case for ambitious exercises of power.

Questions

• What was the date that the scribe intended to write on the last line of this letter?
• Is the tone of this letter routine or are there subtle personal touches?
• Did Violant have any reason to think that the Queen of Navarre had not yet been informed of Pere’s death?
• How was Violant’s relationship with the Queen of Navarre? As friendly as the one she had with Charles III?

Additional Notes on the Document at the Top of the Folio

I want to note a couple of other things in the January 6th letter from Violant to Joan. Violant clearly mentions Jaume in line 7, referring to him as ‘l’infant en Jac’ with a macron over the ac. This must refer to Jaume and there are other documents in which Jaume is called Jacobus in Latin. Dawn Bratsch-Prince has written that Jaume was with Joan during the early weeks of January and was also sick.¹ This is possible, but it is certain that Jaume was with Violant on January 20th when she wrote to Charles III of Navarre, as discussed in this podcast in Episode 27.

AI Usage

I used ChatGPT to research some of the vocabulary in the letter from Violant to Joan, in particular the type of cloth that Violant used to enclose Pere’s rings, mentioned in the letter to Joan on the same folio as today’s document.

Bibliography

• Bratsch-Prince, Dawn. Violante de Bar: 1365-1431. Translated by María Morrás. Ediciones del Orto, 2002.

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