ARAGONESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE

ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

One of the peculiarities of early Aragonese history is the

relative dearth of historiographic materials surviving from the

old heartland of the kingdom. The Aragonese have traditionally

been viewed as proud of family and jealous of tradition. One

might expect that such people would have cultivated the writing

of history, but such does not appear to have been the case. An

analysis of the Aragonese source materials available to the

compilers of the fourteenth-century Chronicle of San Juan de la

Pen~a suggests that a native Aragonese historiographic tradition

was virtually non-existent in the eleventh and twelfth

centuries.(1)

King Pedro IV of Aragon (1336-1387) was a patron of the arts,

particularly of history, and had determined to compile an

official history of his realms. Sometime around 1350, he

requested the monasteries of Ripoll and of San Juan de la Pen~a,

reputed to be the oldest in his realms, to assist in the project.

Ripoll responded by sending from its library a copy of the

history of the counts of Barcelona, the Gesta Comitum

Barcinonensium. San Juan de la Pen~a, by contrast, invested

considerably more labor in complying with the royal request. The

scribes there utilized as a base the rather sketchy Aragonese

sections of the Cro'nica de los estados peninsulares,(2) probably

written near Huesca in 1305 and relying heavily on Rodrigo

Jime'nez de Rada's De rebus hispaniae.(3) They then utilized

various documents from the monastery's library and archives,

additional material from Jime'nez de Rada, and current oral

traditions in expanding its treatment. When the Chronicle of San

Juan de la Pen~a was completed around 1370, San Juan's

contribution, which covered the history of Aragon from the first

settlement of Spain to the year 1136, comprised about a third of

the entire account.(4) An close analysis of the sources of these

particular sections discloses the extent and nature of the source

materials available at San Juan de la Pen~a when the fourteenth-

century compilers wrote their history of eleventh- and twelfth-

century Aragon. Since San Juan de la Pen~a had been the major

monastic center of Old Aragon for over two centuries, the records

that had been preserved in its archives and were available to the

compilers of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a provide a good

reflection of the extent of Aragonese historiography during those

early years.

Chapters four through eleven of the Chronicle, recounting the

legendary foundation of the monastery of San Juan de la Pen~a,

the Christian settlement of the district, and the history of the

kings of Navarre up to the year 958, were based upon a unusual

document contained in the monastic archives. Copies of this

document, popularly known as The Donation of Abetito, have

survived, and the source can be analyzed.(5) Purporting to be a

grant of land to the monastery by King Garci'a II Sa'nchez and

his wife Toda, it is in fact a short history of the monastery to

the year 959, and may have been compiled in the period

1086-1103.(6)

It relies heavily upon the vita of Saints Voto and Felix,(7) to

whom the establishment of the monastery was traditionally

ascribed, upon documents and inscriptions from the monastery

itself, and upon a vanished account of the history of the

Sobrabran monastery of Pano, which the compilers mistook for that

of San Juan de la Pen~a itself.(8) Throughout its history, the

monks of San Juan de la Pea were eager to gain for their

monastery a reputation for great antiquity. Given the great

probability that San Juan de la Pen~a was not founded until 1025

and certainly did not gain real prominence until 1071, its

archives would have provided the compiler of The Donation of

Abetito little authentic material with which to construct the

sort of foundation document he might have desired. His readiness

to utilize traditional accounts and other materials of dubious

validity is therefore quite understandable. His work is

nevertheless a skillful attempt to create a coherent account out

of disparate and difficult materials.

Chapters twelve through fourteen deal with the Navarrese Kings

Sancho I Abarca, Garci'a I el Temblo'n, and Sancho Garce's III el

Mayor, and cover the years from 905 to 1035. There was apparently

no better source available than that of Jime'nez de Rada's De

rebus hispaniae, and the compilers relied upon it almost

exclusively, embellishing its romantic accounts somewhat. Some

specific data were drawn from charters contained in the cartulary

of San Juan known as the Libro go'tico, as well as individual

documents from the monastery's archives.

Chapter sixteen is devoted to the establishment of the

independent kingdom of Aragon and the reign of its first king

Ramiro I (1035-1064).(9) The account is sketchy and reflects

meager sources. The death and interment of Ramiro's brother,

Gonzalo, may have been drawn from a lost chronicle of the

Sobrarban monastery of San Victoria'n; the mentions of Ramiro's

illegitimate son, Count Sancho Rami'rez, and of Ramiro's pact

with the king of Navarre are based upon documents from the

monastery's archives; and the account of Ramiro's death is simply

an expansion of a brief mention in the Chronicle of the

Peninsular States. There was obviously little material available

to the compilers of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a

concerning the period. This suggests strongly that the Aragonese

had no written account of the establishment of their kingdom or

of the reign of their first king.

Chapter seventeen covers the reign of Sancho Rami'rez, 1064-

1094, and utilizes the framework of the Chronicle of the

Peninsular States. This section departs from the previously

established style by adopting a rigid chronological framework and

presenting a number of more or less precise dates. The Chronicle

of the Peninsular States adopts a similar style, though less

pronounced than that of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a. It

is clear that the compilers of each work had available to them

formal annals that have not survived.(10) This source first

reveals itself with the notice that the monastery had adopted the

Roman liturgy at noon on Tuesday, 22 March 1071. Other events,

mostly achievements of King Sancho Rami'rez, are recorded for the

years 1080, 1081, 1083, 1084, 1088, 1089, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1093,

and 1094.(11) After the beginning of the siege of Huesca, the

dates become less frequent and are sometimes seriously in error.

This suggests that the source was in the nature of royal annals,

begun at San Juan perhaps at the behest of the king in about

1090, but deteriorating after his death in 1094.

This decline of historiographical activity is signalled by the

fact that the compilers of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a

apparently turned to a cantar de gesta for information about the

death and interment of Sancho Rami'rez. The manner of his death,

the use of quotes, the picture presented of the king on his

deathbed foretelling the future to his son, and the account of

how his body was hidden in a nearby monastery all suggest what

may once have been a longer and more complex tale.(12)

Chapters eighteen and nineteen discuss the reigns of Pedro I and

Alfonso I, 1094-1134, and are based primarily upon Jime'nez de

Rada and the Chronicle of the Peninsular States. It is

instructive that the compiler of the Chronicle of San Juan de la

Pen~a had no better sources available. It is uncertain what

sources the Chronicle of the Peninsular States utilized besides

Jime'nez de Rada, but it is clear that they were Navarrese, not

Aragonese. The Chronicle of the Peninsular States narrates, and

the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a repeats, how Tudela and its

territory were captured by the French count, Rotrou of Perche.

This account was untrue, and the fabrication appears to have been

designed to justify the retention of Tudela by the Navarrese as

the dowry of Rotrou's niece Margaret, wife of King Garcia

Ramirez.(13) The prominence and praise accorded to Gascons in

these sections of the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a supports

the general impression that the account was based upon Navarrese

sources. There would appear to have been no native Aragonese

account of such glorious Aragonese accomplishments as the

conquests of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Tudela, or the victories of

Alcoraz and Cutanda.

The last chapter of the Aragonese section of the Chronicle of San

Juan de la Pen~a is in many ways the most interesting. Covering

the reign of Ramiro II the Monk, 1134-1136, it begins with an

account of Ramiro's election that is in many ways simply an

expansion of Jime'nez de Rada's romantic and unhistorical tale.

After its discussion of Ramiro's accession, however, this

dependence ends, and the Chronicle moves directly into a detailed

narration of the famous Aragonese legend known as "The Bell of

Huesca." These passages are so evocative of the genre that one

author has constructed from them stanzas of poetry that are

probably the closest we shall ever get to a medieval Aragonese

cantar de gesta.(14)

Immediately after this romantic tale, the Chronicle begins to

discuss in a sober and informed manner Ramiro's resolution of the

hostilities that had sprung up between the Navarrese and

Aragonese.(15) The story combines international conferences,

frontier treaties, conspiracies, secret councils, dawn escapes,

betrayals, and royal alliances into a coherent whole that

constitutes a remarkably sophisticated piece of historiography.

It is distinctly superior in quality to any other source we have

encountered, and, judging by the overall treatment, it was

written by an eye-witness to some of the events, a person with

access to public records and able to interview some of the main

figures involved. It is impossible to determine the authorship

with any certainty, but the bulk of the evidence suggests that it

was written in the Navarrese monastery of San Salvador de Leire.

It is an excellent piece of history, and one only wishes it had

been continued.(16) This does not seem to have been the case,

however. Immediately after discussing Ramiro's success in

persuading Alfonso VII of Castile to abandon his support of

Navarre in favor of establishing a protectorate over exposed

Aragonese territory, the narrative of the Chronicle of San Juan

de la Pen~a loses specificity and depth. The source utilized in

the preceding section was both unusual and interesting, but it

stood alone and unfortunately tells us little about Aragonese

historiography in the period.

An analysis of the Aragonese sources of the Chronicle of San Juan

de la Pen~a suggests that there was remarkably little in the way

of historical writing in Aragon in the eleventh and early twelfth

centuries. There may have been a chronicle kept in the Sobrarban

monastery of San Victoria'n, but this cannot be proven. The

demonstrated Aragonese sources are reduced to four: the Vita of

Saints Voto and Felix, The Donation of Abetito, the lost Annals

of San Juan de la Pen~a, and Hebrethme's Translation of St.

Indalecio. Moreover, the first three are closely interrelated,

and an analysis of their interconnections is worth the effort.

The original manuscript of the Annals has not survived, but some

preliminary jottings for such a work have been preserved in a

royal document dated 15 May 1090, found on folia 100-103 of the

cartulary of San Juan de la Pen~a known as the Cartulario

visigo'tico. Folia 97-112 of this compilation form a separate

cartulary, bound with other materials, but written in caroline

miniscule rather than visigothic script, and prepared sometime

around 1095. The document of 15 May 1090 suggests a possible

reason for its compilation. In it King Sancho Rami'rez confirmed

the monastery in all of the possessions it had acquired prior to

his conquest of Mun~ones in 1089, and freed these properties of

all royal taxes and services. This would have provided ample

motivation for assembling documentation of such acquisitions, and

the Caroline Cartulary appears to have been intended, at least in

part, to perform this function. The first document of the

compilation, in the position normally occupied by a foundation

charter, is the Donation of Abetito to which we have referred

previously. One detail demonstrates the close connection between

the royal document of 1090 and the Donation of Abetito. The

former ends with the note that the prior of San Juan, in an

effort to defend the monastery's lands against trespassers, had

decapitated a sheep with his own hands. Accepting the

justification of this action, the king granted the monastery the

right to kill the animals of trespassers. The Donation of Abetito

concludes with a similar license, supposedly granted by Garci'a

II Sa'nchez in 959, but in fact copied from a concession to the

monastery of San Julia'n de Labasal in 893. It is difficult not

to conclude that the author of the Donation of Abetito was also

the copyist of the royal charter of 1090 as well as being the

compiler of the Caroline Cartulary.

Moreover, there are sufficient similarities in style and approach

between the Donation of Abetito and the Life of Saints Voto and

Felix as to suggest a single author here also. Both show a

familiarity with, and willingness to utilize, archival materials.

The description of Voto clearing with his sword the overgrowth

hiding the primitive monastery and finding the inscriptions

hidden there has close affinities with the account of Count

Galindo and his hunting party finding and clearing the monastery

of San Marti'n de Cercito. The Donation of Abetito, for its part,

utilizes numerous archival sources, such as the license to kill

stock to which we have already referred. Both accounts utilize

oral sources. The Life acknowledges this explicitly, and the

Donation has apparently incorporated historical traditions

properly pertaining to the Sobrarban monastery of San Juan de

Pano. Both are adept at setting scenes, and are particularly

impressed with the striking location of the monastery itself.

Finally, both are interested in the origins of the material

remains of the monastery. These grounds are largely

impressionistic, but, coupled with the relative contemporaneity

of the two documents, it would appear reasonable to conclude that

the Life and the Donation had a single author, a man who was also

the writer of the Annals as well as the compiler of the Caroline

Cartulary.

Some things may be deduced concerning this individual. First, he

was a foreigner or he would not have had to solicit oral

testimony to compose his elaboration of the Life of Saints Voto

and Felix, would have used the Spanish Era in dating rather than

the Year of the Incarnation, and would not have mistaken the

Sobrarban monastery of San Juan de Pano for San Juan de la Pen~a.

Second, judging from the superlatives accorded to the memory of

Saint Martin of Tours in the Life, he was probably French. His

account of the saint's final homecoming would suggest that he was

not immune to homesickness. Last, he probably left the monastery

by 1095, the date of the last documents entered in the Caroline

Cartulary and the year in which the Annals were apparently no

longer being kept.

The cover of the Libro de San Voto states that the Life had been

composed by a certain "Macario," of whom nothing else is known.

All in all, this may well have been the author of all of the

Aragonese sources utilized by the compilers of the Chronicle of

San Juan de la Pen~a: Macario, a French monk who arrived at San

Juan de la Pena sometime after 1090 and probably left in 1095. In

short, the Aragonese sources were not been written by an

Aragonese at all. They were composed by a Frenchman in response

to a specific archival requirement.

This raises the question as to why a proud, dynamic, and

expanding people such as the Aragonese failed to produce any

historians. The simple fact of the matter appears to be that the

Aragonese instead produced an oral tradition which has since

disappeared. Only infrequently does the Chronicle of San Juan de

la Pen~a reveal its reliance upon written histories, but time and

again it discloses the remnants of a rich and vibrant oral

literature. Sometimes these stories, such as the rise of Ramiro

and the Council of Borja, are drawn from Jime'nez de Rada. Most,

however, such the Campana de Huesca and the warrior transported

from Antioch to Alcoraz must have drawn directly from the oral

tradition, since no other source of these stories survives.

The number and nature of these cantares de gesta suggest that the

Aragonese were intensely interested in history, but not in

immutable facts fixed forever on ink and parchment. We can see in

the inaccuracies of their tales some of the uses to which their

histories were put: to explain the origin of families, to

establish the antiquity of institutions, to justify custom, to

cast past events in human proportions, to make a political point,

or perhaps to point out a moral. In this sort of activity, the

songs of the minstrel are infinitely more useful than the

manuscripts of the historian since they evolve with the times. In

the eleventh and twelfth centuries the cantares de gesta

adequately embodied Aragonese ambitions and aspirations. There

appears to have been no historiographical tradition in the modern

sense of the term.

ENDNOTES

1. The standard Latin text of the Chronicle is that provided by

the Cr'nica de San Juan de la Pen~a, ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta

(Textos Medievales, 4: Valencia: Anubar, 1961). The modern

Aragonese version is Cr'nica de San Juan de la Pe~a (versi'n

aragonesa). Edici'n cr'tica, ed. Carmen Orcastegui Gros

(Zaragoza: Instituci'n Fernando el Cat'lico, 1986); also

published in J. Zurita. Cuadernos de Historia 51-52 (1985): 419-

569. The Catalan version is found in Cro'nica general de Pere III

el Ceremonio's. dita comunament Cro'nica de Sant Joan de la

Penya, ed. Amadeu-J. Soberanas Lleo' (n.p.: Alpha, 1961).

2. Cronica de los estados peninsulares (texto del siglo XIV), ed.

Antonio Ubieto Arteta (Coleccio'n filolo'gica, 11: Granada:

Universidad de Granada, 1955).

3. Rodericus Ximenius de Rada, Opera (Textos Medievales, 22:

facsimile reproduction of the edition of 1793: Valencia: Anubar,

1968).

4. San Juan's contribution is found in chapters four through

twenty-one. Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Notas sobre la Cro'nica de

San Juan de la Pen~a," Pirineos, 6 (1950): 463-493, discusses the

organization of the work as a whole, as well as the procedures of

its compilation.

5. The Donation of Abetito is contained in the so-called Libro

go'tico of the Library of the Faculty of Law of the University of

Zaragoza, charter no. 273, and dated 959. See Angel J. Canellas

Lo'pez, "El cartulario visigo'tico de San Juan de la Pen~a,"

Homenaje a Don Agusti'n Millares Carlo (2 vols.: Madrid: Caja

Insular de Ahorros de Gran Canaria, 1975), 1: 205-250 for the

structure and catalogue of this cartulary. Canellas, p. 216,

dates the compilation of the section of the cartulary in which

this document is found to the period 1086-1103. Another copy is

found in the Libro de San Voto, in the same library, charter no.

2, dated 959. See Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "El Libro de San Voto,"

Hispania Sacra, 3 (1950): 191-204 for a discussion of this

compilation. The Donation of Abetito has been published by Manuel

Magallon Cabrera, Coleccio'n diploma'tica de San Juan de la Pen~a

(Anexo de la Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas, y Museos: Madrid,

1903-04), pp. 44-54 as charter no. 13, dated 959. A text and

discussion of The Donation of Abetito will appear in Antonio

Dura'n Gudiol, El condado de Arago'n, but was not available at

the time of writing.

6. The fact that the monastery was not actually founded until

about 1025 and did not achieve much importance until 1071,

militates against accepting the Donation as genuine, although it

does utilize historical material and its authenticity cannot be

definitively rejected until Dura'n's views are available. It

occupies the position within the so-called Caroline Cartulary,

contained within the Libro go'tico, in which a foundation charter

would be expected to appear, and, by its historical character,

performs that function. This is not unusual. See Cartulario de

San Juan de la Pen~a, ed. Antonio Ubieto Arteta (2 vols.: Textos

Medievales, 6 and 9: Valencia: Anubar, 1962-63), charter no. 9,

dated (ninth century?), where a similar historical account is

provided for the foundation and endowment of the monastery of San

Marti'n de Cercito. If The Donation of Abetito was written to

serve this purpose, its date would be that assigned by Canellas

to the compilation of the Caroline Cartulary, 1086-1103.

7. The Vita of Saints Voto and Felix may be found in the Acta

Sanctorum, 7 (29 May): 56-63. There are two versions, a

primitive account and a later, expanded and elaborated narration

attributed to an otherwise unknown Macarius. The author of the

second version mentions that he had based his expansions upon

traditions told to him, suggesting that he was not a native. His

use of superlatives ('sanctissimis ac gloriossissimis") when

referring to Saint Martin, and his allusion to Martin's eventful

return home, suggests that he was French, and not immune to a

certain degree of homesickness. If this author was Macarius, he

would have been a French monk, perhaps one of the Cluniacs

assigned to San Juan de la Pena after its reestablishment as a

Benedictine house by King Sancho Rami'rez in 1071.

8. For a discussion of San Juan de Pano and its history, see

Antonio Dur'n Gudiol, Ramiro I de Arag'n (Zaragoza: Guara

Editorial, 1978), pp. 100-104. Dur'n suggests that Blasco, abbot

of San Juan de Pano, was head of a monastic congregregation of

which San Juan de la Pen~a was only an almonry until 1071. In

that year, Sancho Ram'rez elevated San Juan de la Pen~a into the

mother house on the occasion of his introduction of the Cluniac

reform. This would explain the presence of a chronicle from San

Juan de Pano in the archives of San Juan de la Pen~a.

9. Chapter fifteen is merely transitional, explaining the reasons

for moving from consideration of the kings of Navarre to those of

Aragon.

10. Ubieto believes that these annals were written probably in

the early years of the reign of Alfonso I (1104-1134). He also

suggests that they may be related to the Adnotaciones de ecclesia

Sancti Iohannis de Pe~a, MS Aemilian. 30 of the Biblioteca de la

Academia de Historia, which would date them to about 1120. See

Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Arag'n. Literatura medieval, 1

(Zaragoza: Anubar, 1981). p. 25 and note 28.

11. The notice for 1084 is concerned with the translation of

Saint Indalecius, the acount of which was written by a monk by

the name of Hebrethme. See Hebrethme, "Acta translationis Sancti

Indaletii," Acta Sanctorum April, vol. 3: 733-739. It is unlikely

that the compilers of the Chronicle worked directly from

Hebrethme's account, since they date the event to Holy Thursday,

5 April. In 1084, Holy Thursday fell on 28 March, the correct

date of the translation. For a discussion of this passage, see

Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "Sobre la nunca ren~ida batalla de Morella

(1084)," Bolet'n de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 49

(1973): 97-115.

12. See Federico Balaguer Sa'nchez, "La muerte del rey Sancho

Rami'rez y la poesi'a e'pica," Argensola 4 (1953): 197-216, for a

discussion of the death of Sancho Ram'rez and the possible

relation of the accounts of that event to a lost cantar de gesta.

13. Cro'nica de los estados peninsulares, p. 126; Lynn H. Nelson,

"Rotrou of Perche and the Aragonese Reconquest," Traditio 26

(1970): 113-133.

14. See Antonio Ubieto Arteta, "La Campana de Huesca," Revista de

Filologi'a Espan~ola 35 (1951): 29-61.

15. See Charles J. Bishko, "A Hispano-Cluniac Benefactor in the

Epoch of Navarro-Aragonese Separation: Fortu'n Garce's Cajal and

the Foundation of San Adria'n de Vadoluengo (Sanguesa), 1133-

1145," Estudios en homenaje a Don Claudio Sa'nchez-Albornoz en

sus 90 anos, 2 (Buenos Aires: 1983), 275-312. The text may be

found in Pro'spero Bofarull Mascaro', Coleccio'n de documentos

ine'ditos del Archivo General de Arago'n, (40 vols.: Barcelona:

1847-1910), 4: 360-364. The manuscript states that it was

faithfully copied from a carta percamenea in the year 1293, but

fails to indicate the provenance of the original or whether the

transcription was complete or partial. Neither question can be

easily solved. Since the account was utilized by the compilers of

the Chronicle of San Juan de la Pen~a, it is reasonable to assume

that a version was present in the library of San Juan de la Pen~a

in the 1350's. Since it has not survived, it likely perished

there, perhaps in the fire of 1492. Since no other version has

appeared, it is likely that the source located at San Juan de la

Pen~a was the sole exemplum, and the source of the copy in the

Archives of the Crown of Aragon. Authorship is a more difficult

matter to decide. C.J. Bishko (p. 305) suggests that it may have

been written by a monk of the monastery of San Salvador de Leire,

perhaps even Abbot Garci'a himself, shortly after 1137. This

conclusion is based upon the prominence of Fortu'n Garce's Cajal

and the monastery of Leire in the carta pergamenea, however, and

would be less certain if the carta were only a partial

transcription. Nevertheless, if the passages in the Chronicle of

San Juan de la Pen~a represent the entire account, Bishko's

suggestion is still attractive. In any event, except for the fact

that the manuscript was found in San Juan, there is no reason to

believe that a member of that congregation was its author.

16. Published in Documentos correspondientes al reinado de Sancho

Rami'rez. Volumen I. Desde TLXIII hasta TLXXXXIIII anos, ed.

Jose' Salarullana y de Dios (Coleccio'n de documentos para el

estudio de la historia de Arago'n, 3: Zaragoza: M. Escar, 1907),

charter no. 41, dated 15 May 1090.