Chronica Naierensis facts for kids
The Chronica Naierensis or Crónica najerense was a very old book written in the late 1100s. It was created at a Benedictine monastery called Santa María la Real in a place called Nájera. This book is a type of chronicle, which means it tells a story of events in the order they happened.
The Chronica Naierensis was written in Latin. It covered a huge amount of history, starting from the Creation of the world all the way up to the time it was written. It focused on stories from the Bible, important events from classical history (like ancient Greece and Rome), the Visigothic people in Spain, and the kingdoms of Castile and León. This chronicle was very important. It became a key example for other Spanish historians who wrote in Latin later on. Some famous works that used it as a model include the De rebus Hispaniae by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and the Estoria de España which was supported by Alfonso X of Castile.
What's Inside the Chronicle?
The Chronica Naierensis wasn't a completely new story. Instead, it was like a big collection of information from many different sources. Think of it as a carefully put-together scrapbook of history.
One of its main sources was material from cantares de gesta. These were long epic poems or songs that told stories about heroes and important events. The chronicle also used information from ancient writers and the Bible. For its history about the Visigoths, it relied heavily on the writings of Isidore of Seville, a very important scholar from long ago. For more recent Spanish history, it included parts of the Corpus Pelagianum, a work overseen by Pelagius, Bishop of Oviedo.
How Old Is the Chronicle?
For a long time, people thought the Chronica Naierensis was finished around the year 1160. However, in 1995, a new study by Juan Estévez Sola changed that idea. He found that the chronicle must have been finished after 1173. This is because it used a book called Historia Scholastica by Pedro Coméstor as a source, and that book wasn't finished until 1173.
The earliest date for another book, the Linage del Cid, which used the Chronica Naierensis as its source, is 1194. This means the Chronica Naierensis had to be finished by 1194. So, we know it was written sometime between 1173 and 1194. This makes it a contemporary of the Historia Roderici, another important historical work from that time.
