Season 1, Episode 5

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The silence in Violant’s register of letters hides what must have been a very active period as King Pere the Ceremonious lay dying. To understand Violant’s role in the logistics of succession, it helps to introduce a few additional figures, such as Sibilla de Fortià and Joan’s brother Martí.

With a bunch of Joan’s letters just ahead, today’s document returns to Violant and introduces into the podcast another type of record in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, the registers of the finances of the royal family. These treasury records, known as the Patrimonio Real, the Royal Patriomony, offer tantalizing glimpses into the lives of Joan and Violant.

Today’s Document

• Subject: A record of a payment to a ‘panier’ of the queen’s household
• Date: payment for the period of October 1, 1386 to December 29, 1387
• Day of the Week: Saturday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA RP MR, vol. SG, 904, f72v. (image 95)
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Account Holder: Violant
• Authorizer: Johan Callos
• Recipient: Simon de Fornells

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: Johan Callos, as an authorized official in the royal treasury, acted as an agent of Violant’s finances and thus held a position of very high trust; as a record of a payment, nothing about this document appears to intentionally or reflexively frame a self-fashioning narrative, but all the structures of the treasury records serve to establish the authority of official record-keeping

• Contextualization: Records like these, with its highly itemized and detailed records of spending, reflect the increased monetization in the Late Middle Ages compared to financial records in the Early Middle Ages;

• Corroboration: This register, as well as other digitized registers, contain thousands of payment records to use as comparison; in the future, I hope I will encounter another payment to a ‘panier’ so that I can make a comparison;

• Close-Reading: notice how in these treasury payment records the authorizer follows formulaic language when referring to the king and queen, in a way that indicates over-arching conventions

What is this document doing?

• This document itemizes the contribution of an employee of a royal household
• The document also sets in motion the release of funds to the recipient

Questions

• Was Simon de Fornells a chief baker or one of several bakers on staff?
• Did this baker stay in Girona or accompany Violant to Barcelona?
• Was the payment of 356 sous (solidis) for three months of work and goods a high or low amount for a ‘panier’?
• What subtleties in this document might exist as evidence of the major change of Violant’s status from duchess to queen?

Additional Notes

In this document, the covers a period from before Violant became Queen but the payment was made from the Queen’s treasury. I think the end date of December 29th a reflection of Violant’s move from Girona to Barcelona. My guess is that Joan and Violant received information about a turn for the worse in Pere’s languishing state. With the King’s death imminent, Joan and Violant make a mysterious decision - that Violant will leave Girona before Joan and arrive to Barcelona much earlier. As Violant gets organized to travel and then begins her journey, the letters in her registry pause.

Decisions about the logistics of ascension must have reflected the strained conditions of the family dynamic between the members of the royal family. Tomorrow’s document will center on this but in this episode I explained a little bit about the main cause - Sibilla de Fortià, the current Queen of the Crown of Aragon.

Bibliography

• Silleras Fernández, Núria. “Money Isn’t Everything: Concubinage, Class, and the Rise and Fall of Sibil.La de Fortià, Queen of Aragon (1377-87).” In Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, edited by Theresa Earenfight. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

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