ZURITA, Jeronimo, et al.

First edition of this compendium of chronicles of the medieval Aragonese kings and the rulers of the kingdom of Sicily, consisting of the Renaissance historian Zurita’s Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum, issued in the second part with an account of Robert and Roger Guiscard or Viscardi, Norman Dukes of Sicily, by Gaufredo Malaterra, an eleventh-century monk resident in Sicily; the life of Roger II, King of Sicily by another monastic author, the twelfth-century Alessandro Telesino; and a genealogy of Robert Guiscard taken from the fourteenth-century historian Ptolemy of Lucca.

Zurita, sometimes considered to be the first ‘modern’ Spanish historian, begins his account as early as the seventh century, setting the scene for the development of the historical scene over the next five hundred years: the simultaneous rise of the Visigothic kings in Spain, from whom the Aragonese were descended, and the appearance of the Saracens during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, spreading to control all of North Africa and eventually much of Spain. However, much of his account is dedicated to Aragonese exploits outside of Spain, including the Sicilian Vespers, in which Aragon took control of Sicily from the French, and the subsequent bloody wars for control of the island. Zurita’s account ends in 1410 with the death of King Martin of the House of Barcelona, who was regent of Sicily. In order to confirm the authenticity of his account, Zurita personally sought out sources in Sicily, Naples and Rome.

The second part consists of works devoted entirely to Sicilian history, all by early medieval chroniclers, describing the Norman conquest of the island. The first, by the monk Malaterra, is possibly a first-hand account of the adventures of the Viscardi or Guiscard brothers, Norman nobles who first settled in Apulia in southern Italy, operating effectively as bandits, before their conquest of Sicily from the Saracens. Roger was invested by his brother Robert as effectively the first King of Sicily, and the account may well have been finished before his death in 1101, since it is not mentioned in the text. The second work, by the abbot Alessandro Telesino, describes the reign of Roger’s son, Roger II, and his attempt to expand Norman rule into Naples, etc., and ends with an alloquium or address praising him. The final work is a genealogy of Robert Guiscard describing his later medieval descendants as kings of Sicily, extracted from the chronology of Ptolemy of Lucca. It is preceded by the printer’s apology for the corrupted state of the medieval texts, and followed by a brief account of the origin of the city of Aquila in Apulia.