page_title: Historia silense
section_title: Contents and structure
hierarchical_section_title: Historia silense / Contents and structure
context_page_description: The Historia silense, also called the Chronica silense or Historia seminense, and more properly Historia legionense, 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. Though originally intended as a gesta of Alfonso, it is primarily an original account of the reign of his father, Ferdinand I. For its earlier history it relies on the works of Isidore of Seville, Julian of Toledo, and the Vitas sanctorum patrum Emeritensium for the Visigothic period, the Chronicle of Alfonso III for the ninth century, the work of Sampiro for the tenth and early eleventh centuries, and the Chronicon of Pelayo of Oviedo for the eleventh century. The Historia along with Pelayo's Chronicon provide the only surviving versions of Sampiro's otherwise lost history.
context_section_description: The surviving Historia is a preamble or introduction intended to provide the historical background to the (probably) unfinished Gesta Adefonsi. Pérez de Urbel divided it into chapters for his 1959 edition. The first six chapters describe the Visigothic kingdom and introduces the themes that will be developed in the rest of the work. The seventh chapter is a description of the author's purpose in writing, and it contains the most important clues to his identity. Chapters eight through thirteen narrate the opening of Alfonso VI's reign and his conflict with his brothers, Sancho II of Castile and García II of Galicia. The author mentions the death and burial of García in 1090 and then announces that he will "unravel the kingdom's origin" in the next chapters.
  The text comes (mostly) in blocks of edited text taken from older historical works. The first block (chapters 14–38) is drawn from the Chronicle of Alfonso III, specifically the earlier 'Rotense version' found in the late-10th-century Códice de Roda. It covers the period from the reign of Wittiza (694–710) to that of Ordoño I (850–866). The second (chapters 39–47) narrates the reigns of Alfonso III, García I, and Ordoño II from 866 to 924. It ends in mid-sentence and may have been the original work of the "monk of Silos". The third is taken from Sampiro and corresponds with the first thirty chapters of his work (as numbered by Pérez de Urbel in his 1952 edition and not re-numbered by him in 1959). These chapters cover the years from 866 to the death of Alfonso V (1028), but differ from the preceding chapters with respect to the years up to 924. Sampiro's text, as incorporated into the Historia, shows little signs of editing and may have been a late addition or perhaps the later addition of a different compiler. The thirtieth and final chapter of Sampiro does show signs of editing (for which its English translators, Simon Barton and Richard A. Fletcher, numbered it 30*).
  The monk resumes his original account after Sampiro with a chapter numbered 69. This chapter through 79 concerns the history of León between 956 and 1037 (and includes yet more overlap with the preceding chapters of Sampiro). Chapters 78 and 79 may quote from a now lost planctus of Vermudo III (died 1037, buried at San Isidoro). Chapter 74 provides background on the Kingdom of Navarre. The final section of the Historia (chapters 80–106) is a history of the reign of Ferdinand I, with an interpolated and edited version of the Translatio sancti Isidori (chapters 96–102), an account of the translation of Isidore's relics in 1063. The final two chapters (105–6) may also be derived from a now lost source describing Ferdinand's last days. The last recorded event in the Historia is the funeral of Ferdinand on 2 January 1066. Ferdinand's last days took place at San Isidoro.
caption: The Four Horsemen in a manuscript of Beatus of Osma's Commentary on the Apocalypse made in 1086, the same year as the battle of Sagrajas and probably depicting contemporary Spanish knights.
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