The De Rebus Hispanie and the Mature Latin Chronicle in the Iberian Middle Ages

Abstract

The De Rebus Hispaniae is one of three Latin chronicles produced at the court of Fernando III of Leόn-Castile (1218–1252), and its near contemporary translation into the Spanish of the period made it the most influential of them on the subsequent development of historical writing in Iberia. Its author was the then archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (1210–1247), an intimate actor in and eyewitness of the many major events in Iberia. He himself was raised in Spanish Kingdom of Navarre and was educated in the universities of Bologna in Italy and Paris in France. That background enabled him to realize that the history of Iberia could not any longer be reduced simply to the history of Leόn-Castile. Writing from semiretirement after 1238 he reworked the traditional world chronicle to produce the first true history of Iberia.