Season 1, Episode 89
Violant refers to earlier documents from Pere the Ceremonious to require officials to give Thomas Soler pension payments.
Episode 89
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ACA CR R1822 f142v Source: PARES
Today’s Document
- Subject: arrangements for a pension for Thomas Solers, based on earlier documents
- Date: March 23, 1387
- Day of the Week: Saturday
- Language: Latin
- Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1822 f142v
- Link to PARES
- Place: Barcelona
- Sender: Violant
- Recipients: Thomas Solers and other officials
Historical Thinking Notes
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Sourcing: the existence of the earlier document quoted inside this one indicates that the scribes had the ability to refer back to archival records from years prior
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Contextualization: the difficulty of the paleography in this document presents a contextualization challenge, as I am not even certain of the location of the people mentioned in it; however, we do see at work here the legitimacy of Iberian queen lieutenancy as Violant now weighs in on a matter that had previously been addressed by the king, Joan’s father
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Corroboration: while my difficulty understanding this document makes corroboration challenging, it might be helpful to compare this document to others that mention hefty penalties, such as the documents examined in Episode 34, Episode 40, and Episode 84
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Close-Reading: Violant chose to issue a threat of a penalty of one hundred florins and that lends urgency to the resolution of whatever problem that has to do with Thomas Solers
What is this document doing?
- This document weaves together the bureaucratic processes under different members of the royal family across a span of at least two years.
- The document presumes that the queen’s status as arbiter is as legitimate as the past king’s.
Questions
- How did an earlier ruling by Joan’s father wind its way through the system to become part of Violant’s portfolio?
- What was the initial complaint and why was the earlier ruling not sufficient to address it?
- What aspect of this situation merited the hefty penalty of one hundred florins?
- What were the offices or social status of all the people mentioned in this document?
AI Usage
The AI chatbots did worse at the transcription this go around, and I think this is due to my attempt to warn them about damage to the paper. I used Gemini for an initial transcription, which I then had Claude reconcile with its own initial transcription. Claude then produced a translation into English with footnotes.