Season 1, Episode 65

Violant writes to the Pope about a personnel recommendation for an ecclesiastical post in Urgell.

Episode 65

Today’s Document

Subject: Violant’s recommendation of Jacobo de Anellaneda for an ecclesiastical vacancy in Urgell
Date: February 27, 1387
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Language: Latin
Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1819 f89r
Link to PARES
Place: Barcelona
Sender: Violant
Recipient: Avignon Pope Clement VII

Sourcing: Urgell, a province of Catalonia, would have been to Violant definitively under royal purview for positions of authority and prestige; Violant, well aware of the power that comes from maintaining social networks, likely chose Jacobo Anellada for this recommendation based on existing loyalties
Contextualization: the Great Western Schism; social networks as a source of royal power; Urgell as a longtime component of the Crown of Aragon
Corroboration: this document corroborates Violant’s authority to pressure to the Pope regarding vacant positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy also demonstrated in the document examined in Episode 31; some of Violant’s and Joan’s letters about ecclesiastical vacancies have been addressed to leaders of the Hospitallers, as in Episode 3, Episode 4 and Episode 53
Close-Reading: it remains unclear to me whose death created this vacancy, but it might have been Bonanati de Podio; the ‘curia Romana’ mentioned in line 5 is the Papal court at Avignon, which they considered as the rightful location of the Roman institution of the Papacy

This document enacts Violant’s power through deployment of her social network.
The document reinforces the position of the Pope as a partner according to Violant’s perspective.

How had Jacobo de Anellada previously demonstrated his loyalty to Violant?
What kind of ecclesiastical position in Urgell had become vacant? Was it the bishop?
What factors would have influenced the Pope’s decision-making about how to fill this vacancy?
Would the Pope have seen this letter and made a decision, or would it be handled by someone lower in the papal bureaucracy?

In this episode, I mentioned the chancery document from Episode 25 that I was able to reunite with its original copy.

For this episode, I combined uses of Gemini and Claude.

McLean, Paul Douglas. Culture in Networks. Polity, 2017.
Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417). Brill, 2009.
Ryan, Michael A. “The Horn and the Relic: Mapping the Contours of Authority and Religiosity in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 1, no. 1 (2012): 49–71.
Seyfried, Jonathan. ‘The Social Networks of Violant de Bar,’ Medieval People, Vol. 40 (2025).