Season 1, Episode 92

Joan inquires about obtaining a mappa mundi created by Abraham Cresques.¹

Episode 92

Today’s Document

Sourcing: evidently Joan receives information about the newest arrivals of treasures in Mallorca since he heard about the hunting birds from India; the cartographers of the Mallorcan school had been supplying maps to royals and other elites for decades by this time and Joan would have heard of Abraham Cresques long ago; throughout his lifetime, Joan consistently pursued cutting edge culture and science (including what we today would call psuedo-science); the map that Joan sought in 1387 was very likely quite similar to the famous Catalan Atlas, made in 1375 by Abraham Cresques, possibly for Joan himself as a gift for the King of France, which survives and today is on display at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Contextualization: the Mallorcan cartographic school began in the thirteenth century and historians debate whether it or Genoese cartographers invented portolan charts; Abraham Cresques and his son Jehuda were the premier cartographers in Mallorca and also built a variety of nautical instruments
Corroboration: the document examined in Episode 45 corroborates this one in that we see Joan working to procure treasures from Mallorca and working with information that he has received about the presence of luxury items there; Joan’s interest in cartographical and nautical innovations is attested in his January 8th letter to his brother, examined in Episode 8, about which items of their dying father’s he was most interested in having
Close-Reading: the use of the word ‘India’ in this document intrigues me since it remains unclear what geographic entity Joan had in mind, as this could refer to the orient in general or a place a specific as Arabian sea ports such as Kochi or Goa

This document arranges the purchase of luxury items and reiterates the role of the procurator in that supply chain.
The document furthers the connections between the royal family and prominent Jewish families in the Crown of Aragon.

Was the recipient of this letter, Joan’s procurator in Mallorca, also the source of information that Joan had about news and products there?
What is the likelihood that Joan in fact received a map from Jehuda Cresques later this year? If Joan did get a map, what happened to it?
Were any of the hunting birds in this letter raised on Mallorca or did they all originate from faraway places?
What was the funding source that Joan drew from in order to make these purchases? How as it similar or different from the funding he needed to pay soldiers in Sardinia?
How much did Joan discuss cultural purchase with Violant?
Had Violant seen the Catalan Atlas during her time in Paris before she moved to the Crown of Aragon in 1380?

I did not use AI for this episode because this document had already been transcribed by Antonio Rubió i Lluch.²

Cresques, Abraham. L’atlas Catala, en el sis-cents aniversari de la seva realització, 1375-1975. Barcelona: Diàfora, 1975.
Rubió y Lluch, Antonio. Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval. Vol. 1. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908. Full text available on Hathi Trust

Document transcribed by Antonio Rubió y Lluch, Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval, Vol. 1. (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908), 345. ↩
This document was partially transcribed by Antonio Rubió i Lluch and cited by Claire Ponsich. Antonio Rubió y Lluch, Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 1908), 345. ↩