The Chronicon Compostellanum is a narrative Latin

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...

 chronicle

Chronicle

Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...

 of the history of Spain

History of Spain

The history of Spain involves all the other peoples and nations within the Iberian peninsula formerly known as Hispania, and includes still today the nations of Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain...

 from the arrival of the Visigoths (which it dates to 400) until the death of Queen Urraca of León on 15 March 1126. It was probably written shortly after this date, and probably in Galicia. It covers the history of the Visigothic kingdom and their succcessors, the Kingdom of Asturias

Kingdom of Asturias

The Kingdom of Asturias was a Kingdom in the Iberian peninsula founded in 718 by Visigothic nobles under the leadership of Pelagius of Asturias. It was the first Christian political entity established following the collapse of the Visigothic kingdom after Islamic conquest of Hispania...

, rapidly, incorporating the Laterculum regum ovetensium ("List of the kings of Oviedo"), a regnal list of the Asturian monarchy from Pelagius to Alfonso II

Alfonso II of Asturias

Alfonso II , called the Chaste, was the king of Asturias from 791 to his death, the son of Fruela I and the Basque Munia.He was born in Oviedo in 759 or 760. He was put under the guardianship of his aunt Adosinda after his father's death, but one tradition relates his being put in the monastery of...

 written sometime after 791 and also incorporated in the Chronicon Iriense

Chronicon Iriense

The Chronicon Iriense is a short Latin chronicle of the Diocese of Iria Flavia, modern Santiago de Compostela, during the period beginning in 561 and ending in 982. It is usually found appended to the Historia Compostellana in medieval manuscripts, though it is also found in twelfth-century...

and the Annales Portugalenses veteres. For the eleventh-century Kingdom of León

Kingdom of León

The Kingdom of León was an independent kingdom situated in the northwest region of the Iberian Peninsula. It was founded in AD 910 when the Christian princes of Asturias along the northern coast of the peninsula shifted their capital from Oviedo to the city of León...

 it is the earliest surviving source after the Historia silense

Historia silense

The Historia silense, also called the Chronica silense or Historia seminense, is a medieval Latin narrative history of the Iberian Peninsula from the time of the Visigoths to the first years of the reign of Alfonso VI of León and Castile...

(1109–18). The cause of Urraca's death—in labour with the child of her lover, Pedro González de Lara

Pedro González de Lara

Pedro González de Lara was a Castilian magnate. He served Alfonso VI as a young man, and later became the lover of Alfonso's heiress, Queen Urraca. He may have joined the First Crusade in the following of Raymond IV of Toulouse, earning the nickname el Romero...

—is recorded in the Chronicon. Its first editor and publisher, Enrique Flórez

Enrique Florez

Enrique Flórez de Setién y Huidobro was a Spanish historian.Florez was born in Valladolid. At 15 years old, he entered the order of St Augustine. He subsequently became professor of theology at the University of Alcala, where he published a Cursus theologiae in five volumes...

, in his twenty-eighth preliminary note to the appendix of Latin documents in the twenty-third volume of his España Sagrada, described the text thus:

Este documento fue escrito en unas copias de la Historia Compostelana, que tuve al tiempo de publicar aquella Historia, y por esto le doy nombre de Chronicon, tomado de uno de aquellos Codices, porque tampoco está en todos, pues no es obra de sus Autores, sino de algun posterior, y nada afecto a la Reyna D. Urraca, madre de D. Alfonso VII. Su copia salió muy errada en los numeros del principio: pero tiene muchas individualidades acerca de los hijos de D. Fernando I. por lo que, y habiendole ya citado en otras partes, le damos con los otros.

This document was written in some copies of the Historia Compostelana Historia Compostelana The anonymous Historia Compostelana is based on the relation of events by a writer in the immediate circle of Diego Gelmírez, second bishop then first archbishop of Compostela, one of the major figures of the Middle Ages in Galicia... , that I had at the time of publishing that Historia, and for this reason I gave it the name of Chronicon, taken from one of those codices, because neither is it in all of them, nor is it the work of its authors, rather of one writing later and with no affection for the queen Doña Urraca, mother of Don Alfonso VII. Its copying has left it quite erroneous in the numbers towards the beginning: but it has many unique facts about the sons of Don Ferdinand I for which, having already cited them in other places, they are given with the others.

Editions

• Enrique Flórez
  Enrique Florez
  Enrique Flórez de Setién y Huidobro was a Spanish historian.Florez was born in Valladolid. At 15 years old, he entered the order of St Augustine. He subsequently became professor of theology at the University of Alcala, where he published a Cursus theologiae in five volumes...
  
  , ed. "Chronicon ex Historiæ Compostellanæ Codice. Nunc primum editum." España Sagrada, XX (1765), 608–13, and XXIII (1767), 325–28. Madrid.
• Emma Falque Rey, ed. "Chronicon Compostellanum," Habis, 14(1983):73–83.