Season 1, Episode 58

Return to episodes list

Joan gives instructions and safe passage to a merchant, and mentions that he could not write his own signature on the document.

Today’s Document

• Subject: safe passage and instructions for Mediterranean merchant ship
• Date: February 20, 1387
• Day of the Week: Wednesday
• Language: Catalan
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1827 f31v-32r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipient: Guillem Ramon, the merchant captain

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: the purpose of this document focuses on the logistics of Mediterranean trade, as Joan offers his monarchical authority for the protection of the French goods, and implicitly the entire ship, to the merchants

• Contextualization: the key insight of Disability Studies is that disability and able-bodiedness are determined by particular human societies - the example of corrective lenses demonstrates this effectively; the apparatus constructed to bolster the authority of the state, specifically the tremendous documentation procedures of the chancery, allowed for overcoming a monarch’s disability;

• Corroboration: the document examined for today’s episode corroborates all of the previous accounts of Joan’s infirmity, explored in many previous episodes, including Episode 13, Episode 19, Episode 27, Episode 43, and Episode 56; further corroboration, ideally in other documents that admit Joan’s inability to write his signature, would help me to definitively connect his disability in this letter to the lingering effects of his illness or general sickliness (as opposed to a temporary injury like a broken arm)

• Close-Reading: reading against the grain, the impact of this document arises from a close reading of the last sentence before the dating clause; Joan writes that the recipients of this document should act as if he had signed it, because due to ‘accident’ he could not write his signature

What is this document doing?

• This document demonstrates the power of the bureaucratic procedures of the state to overcome obstacles of a king’s disability.
• The document invokes monarchical authority to regulate aspects of trade connected to relations with neighboring realms.

Questions

• What ailment caused Joan to not be able to write his signature?
• Did this disability go unmentioned in a large number of other chancery documents from these weeks?
• What other aspects of Joan’s infirmity might have been concealed by the chancery’s procedures?
• Was there anything unusual about this merchant shipment?
• Who was Guillem Ramon and what shaped his decision to transport the French goods referred to in this letter?

AI Usage

I asked Claude to generate an outline of recent developments in Disability History to get me started with this subfield. My use of ChatGPT helped me to figure out the connection between the mention of ‘signada’ and Joan’s disability.

Bibliography

• Barclay, Jenifer L., and Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, eds. Cripping the Archive: Disability, History, and Power. University of Illinois Press, 2025.
• Bertelli, Sergio. The King’s Body: Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Revised Edition. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
• Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology. Princeton University Press, 1957.
• Krötzl, Christian, Katariina Mustakallio, and Jenni Kuuliala, eds. Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Social and Cultural Approaches to Health, Weakness and Care. Ashgate, 2015.
• McGuire, Coreen Anne. “What Is Disability History the History Of?” History Compass 22, no. 6 (2024): e12813.
• Metzler, Irina. “Disability in the Middle Ages: Impairment at the Intersection of Historical Inquiry and Disability Studies.” History Compass 9, no. 1 (2011): 45–60.
• Rembis, Michael A., Catherine Jean Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielsen, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History. Oxford University Press, 2018.

← return to episode list