In the summer of 1416, two of the most powerful officials in the kingdom of Navarre exchanged a few lines on a single sheet of paper. Matxin de Zalba’s Letter, preserved in Pamplona at the Archivo Real y General de Navarra under the shelf mark Comptos, Registro 339, fol. 109, bears neither date nor place, but the royal household accounts place the exchange in mid-July of that year, at the court of Charles III the Noble.
The Navarrese Court of Charles III, Between Olite and Pamplona
Martín de San Martín, the king’s secretary and administrator of the royal household, wrote first; Matxin de Zalba, receiver general of the kingdom’s finances, answered below. Both had risen through an administration that had grown steadily more Navarrese since 1411, as French officeholders gave way to men from the Basque-speaking north. Each wrote in Romance every day of his professional life. Here, in the margins of a fiscal query, both slipped into Basque.
One Sheet of Watermarked Paper, Two Nearly Identical Hands
The piece measures 22 × 19.3 cm and carries a watermark common at the time. The writing, a Gothic cursive minuscule of marked French influence, fills the upper two-thirds of the sheet; San Martín deliberately left the lower portion blank for the reply. The two hands differ only in size, slant and ink. Both men signed autograph, and the sheet carries no decoration and no address on the verso.
A Private Note Turned Fiscal Voucher
San Martín asked, in writing, how large a tax remission the king had granted the people of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port; Zalba gave the figure in Basque. It has been argued that San Martín later filed this very note with his accounts, lacking the royal grant itself.
A scrap meant to be discarded is now the longest surviving medieval text in Basque.
We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Letter of Matxin de Zalba - 1416": Matxín de Zalba's Letter - 1416 facsimile edition, published by Editorial Mintzoa, 2016
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