Season 1, Episode 72

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Joan lays out a long list of demands for his ambassadors to present to the Pope.

Today’s Document

• Subject: Joan’s big plans for diplomacy in Avignon
• Date: March 6, 1387
• Day of the Week: Wednesday
• Language: Latin
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1751 f17v-21r
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipients: the Pope and multiple Cardinals

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: with Joan’s and Violant’s ascension to the throne, many of the details of their support would be expressed in staking out positions on long-held debates; from the length and breadth of the issues addressed in this document, it appears that Joan and Violant consider Avignon Pope Clement VII willing to entertain a large array of reforms and accommodations; the dowry amount listed for Yolande of Aragon in this document, 100,000 florins, would have required someone with deep connections in the regional financial network such as Luchino Scarampi

• Contextualization: Joan’s father, Pere the Ceremonious, refused to explicitly support either of the sides in the Great Western Schism; the power to control ecclesiastical appointments remained a perennial desire for monarchs during the Middle Ages; Sicily had gone through quite a lot of changes in its governance in the recent decades, as discussed in Episode 40

• Corroboration: the document on f17v corroborates Violant’s commission for Luchino Scarampi discussed in Episode 66 and the three letters to different ranks of ecclesiastical officials on f18v matches how Violant wrote her letters of reference for Scarampi

• Close-Reading: the breadth of topics addressed in these articles indicates a lot of historical understanding about earlier eras, especially in the references to Popes Innocent and Urban; Bartolomeo Sirvent, Violant’s primary scribe, is the name in the probata on f18r within Joan’s register, possibly indicating a level of cooperation that Violant had in drafting these documents

What is this document doing?

• This document presumes that the Avignon Papacy will adopt a great many policy changes in exchange for political support.
• The document, in this range of folios, associates marriage negotiations within a range of diplomatic activities expected to play out in Avignon.

Questions

• Was Joan putting as much effort into the marriage negotiation process as Violant?
• Did Joan expect Clement VII to view all these policy demands favorably?
• Who were the ambassadors for the Crown of Aragon? Did they travel with Luchino Scarampi or did Scarampi travel separately?
• Who were the major power players among the cardinals?
• What was Violant’s involvement in drafting all of the policy statements in these folios?

Additional Notes

The following folios contain Joan’s full list of demands for the Pope.

Joan also wrote commissions for Luchino Scarampi

AI Usage

Since I had eight folios of material for today’s episode, I wanted to see if the AI chatbots could handle that amount of transcription and translation. The results were that both Gemini and Claude struggled. Gemini only offered summaries or transcriptions of some of the text on each folio. Claude did attempt to transcribe everything, but then when at the reconcilation phase could only ‘remember’ three of the eight documents. Although the final product from Claude was worth the time it took me to shepherd it through, if I were to do this again I would not attempt to have the AI chatbots do images of eight folios at once.

Bibliography

• Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378-1417). Brill, 2009.

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