Season 1, Episode 64

Violant orders a knight, Sir Berenguer Dolms, to provide protection for a tax collector, Jacme Quinta.

Episode 64

Today’s Document

Sourcing: Violant has a clear purpose here, to ensure that no one evades the tax collection undertaken by Jacme Quinta; as queen, she depended on a steady flow of tax revenue to fund her various projects and to surround herself with all of the necessary accoutrements of her office
Contextualization: in the Crown of Aragon, queens had their own portfolios and received tax revenues directly from those sources; the role of Alatzar Golluff, as treasurer, illustrates the long-term pattern of the employment of Jews in state offices in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries; at the same time, Jews could face suspicion and persecution from members of the royal family, as Joan himself carried out in his youth¹; the diner was the lowest unit of currency, the equivalent of a penny

Corroboration: the document examined in Episode 37 corroborates Alatzar Golluff’s role as a high official in Violant’s administration, and here he is directly identified as the Treasurer; other documents earlier in the podcast, such as Episode 5, Episode 29, and Episode 44, have corroborated Violant’s efforts at securing revenue streams to her coffers
Close-Reading: the word ‘militi’ signaled that Berenguer Dolms was not just an everyday person but in a special knightly class; the abbreviation ‘drs’ expands to ‘diners’ and the inclusion of a unit of currency in this document helped to guide the interpretation of it as primarily related to the collection of taxes, referred to as ‘demandes’

This document organizes a partnership for the purpose of increasing revenue.
The document illustrates a technique in the exercise of power, specifically the hiring of a person for the purpose of using the threat of violence to obtain compliance.

What about this particular tax collection required the presence of armed muscle?
Had Berenguer Dolms provided this service for Violant before?
Why would such force be required for collection of sums in the lowest unit of currency?
How would Jacme Quinta and Berenguer Dolms have worked together? Did they travel as a pair?

For transcription of this document, Claude did a much superior job to Gemini.

Feliu i Montfort, Gaspar. “Finances, Currency and Taxation in the 14th and 15th Centuries.” Catalan Historical Review, no. 9 (2016): 25–44.
Gampel, Benjamin R. Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391-1392. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Lord, Alana. ‘‘Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You:’ Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon.’ In Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle, edited by Theresa Earenfight, 225-247. Brill, 2018.
Sánchez, Manuel, Ángel Sesma Muñoz, and Antoni Furió. “Old and New Forms of Taxation in the Crown of Aragon (13th-14th Centuries).” In La fiscalità nell’economia Europea secc. XIII-XVIII, edited by Simonetta Cavaciocchi. Firenze University Press, 2008. Available for free at CSIC

Alana Lord, ‘‘Our Servants Say Scandalous Things about You:’ Royal Households in the Fourteenth-Century Crown of Aragon.’ In Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: More than Just a Castle, edited by Theresa Earenfight (Brill, 2018), 225-247. ↩