page_title: Historia silense
section_title: Authorship and provenance
hierarchical_section_title: Historia silense / Authorship and provenance
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 author of the Historia identifies himself as a monk of the domus seminis ("house of the seed"), long identified with Benedictine monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos in Castile, based on a marginal note in the Fresdelval manuscript that read "Santo Domingo de Silos". This position was strongly defended by historian Justo Pérez de Urbel, himself a monk of Silos. The author's lack of interest in Castilian matters and his ignorance of Castilian geography, as well as the complete absence of Silos from the Historia, suggest another monastery, probably in León. The term domus seminis may derive from a misunderstanding of the abbreviation dms scis, which could have stood for Domnis Sanctis ("at the lord saints'"). The monastery of Sahagún, the most important monastery in León during the reign of Ferdinand I and which maintained close ties with the royal court, was often known as Domnis Sanctis on account of its dual dedication to Facundus and Primitivus. While Sahagún is mentioned three times in the Historia and Alfonso VI was buried there, neither this burial nor the abbacy at Sahagún of Bernard de Sedirac (1080–85) are mentioned in places where they would be expected.
  Another possible source for domus seminis was suggested in 1961 by the paleographer Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz. He suggested that it was a mistaken expansion of sci ihnis, in fact an abbreviation of sancti Iohannis, that is, Saint John's. A house in the city of León, with a community of monks dedicated to John the Baptist and one of nuns dedicated to Pelagius of Córdoba (San Pelayo), was founded in 965 by Sancho I of León and enjoyed royal patronage. Though it suffered several raids from Almanzor, it was restored by Alfonso V (999–1028) and patronised heavily by his daughter Sancha and her husband, Ferdinand I. In 1063 these monarchs had the relics of Isidore translated from Seville to Saint John's, which they refurbished and embellished. The house was thereafter known as San Isidoro de León (though the use of "Saints John and Isidore" for the male community is found in a diploma of Alfonso VI of 1099). The anonymous author, if sancti Iohannis was indeed his intention, may have sought to indicate that he became a monk at the monastery before 1063. He elsewhere refers to the church as hanc ecclesiam (this church), indicating perhaps his own locality and his intended audience (his brother monks).
  The author is sometimes known as the Monk of Silos, despite that this identification has now been discredited. His purpose in writing he declares in the seventh chapter to describe "the deeds of the lord Alfonso, the orthodox emperor of Spain", that is, Alfonso VI. He also testifies to the "wisdom and goodness" of Urraca of Zamora, Alfonso's sister and ally, "more by experience than by report". Urraca was a noted patron of San Isidoro, where she was buried and where her donation of the Chalice of Doña Urraca survives to this day. Besides the Christian Bible, the author quotes liberally from Ovid, Virgil, and Gregory the Great, but his favourt authors are Sallust (the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum) and Einhard (the Vita Karoli magni).
caption: The Panteón de los Reyes at San Isidoro, where Ferdinand I and Alfonso VI were buried, and where the Historia silense may have been written.
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