Dominion and Dynasty in the Estoria de España

Abstract

The Islamic invasion of 711 was recorded and relived in Iberian chronicles from the years immediately afterward to the end of the Middle Ages and beyond.¹ It was given particular prominence in the rich historiographical tradition of thirteenth-century Spain, headed by Bishop Lucas de Tuy’s Chronìcon mundi (1236), and Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s De rebus Hispaniae (1243) and Historia Arabum (1245).² The work of these historians shaped the chronicle that was to play a starring role in the second half of the thirteenth century: Alfonso X of Castile’s history of Spain, the Estoria de España (1252–84).³ The Estoria was conceived as a general history of Spain and differed from its precursors in two main respects: it was the first historiographical work in Spain to be composed in the vernacular, and it was a project closely connected to the personal and political ambitions of its overseer, King Alfonso, ambitions that reached further than the broad Christian-Classical context in which Lucas de Tuy and Jiménez de Rada sought to place Spain. Alfonso designed his chronicle to extend from the time of Noah to his own reign, and used his project to further his efforts to become Holy Roman Emperor, as a means of showcasing his credentials for the role. Alfonso’s challenge in this regard was how to represent the Islamic conquest. The invasion marked the demise of the Visigothic kingdom and would change the ethnic, religious, and cultural constitution of the Peninsula forever.