Season 1, Episode 91

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Joan issued a credential letter for his official heading to Barbastro.

Today’s Document

• Subject: credential letter for Jaime Pallates
• Date: March 25, 1387
• Day of the Week: Monday
• Language: Aragonese
• Archival Reference Number: ACA CR R1751 f30r-v
• Link to PARES
• Place: Barcelona
• Sender: Joan
• Recipients: Prohomens of Barbastro

Historical Thinking Notes

• Sourcing: as king, Joan could extend his authority to all the various towns within the Crown of Aragon; Jaime Pallates’s specific mission is not specified and so the purpose of this document is to invest Pallates with authority as a representative of the king himself; compliance from the Prohomens of Barbastro is presumed; Jaime Pallatres is referred to as a councilor, possibly a kind of procurator, but he seems to lack an official title

• Contextualization: today’s document reflects the larger patter of the growing state apparatus during the Late Middle Ages; the monarchs of the Crown of Aragon, like many elites in the Late Middle Ages, employed a wide array of officials and hired people to act as representatives; the ranks and titles of these officials or temporary representatives varied and sometimes no official job title got attached to the correspondence

• Corroboration: the document examined in Episode 21, a letter to the Prohomens of Girona, corroborates this one as it is another instance when Joan addresses a town council directly

• Close-Reading: Joan used the phrase ‘nostra person’ to invest Jaime Pallates with the authority of the king himself

What is this document doing?

• This document extends the political authority of the king to a distant town.
• The document acts as an instrument for the exercise of power by the designated representative of the king.

Questions

• What was the purpose of Jaime Pallates’s journey to Barbastro?
• Did Jaime Pallates have an official title or position in Joan’s court?
• Would the Prohomens of Barbastro have considered this rather routine or was it unusual?

AI Usage

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.

Bibliography

• Boucoyannis, Deborah. Kings as Judges: Power, Justice, and the Origins of Parliaments. Cambridge University Press, 2021.

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