History and Topography for the Legitimisation of Royalty in Three Castilian Chronicles

Résumé En

This paper analyses in historical context the recourse to history and to royal cities for the legitimisation of Castilian kingship in the last three Latin chronicles, the Chronicon Mundi, the so-called Chronica Latina Regum Castellae and De Rebus Hispaniae, written c.1230-1240. This crucial decade of the reign of king Fernando III of Castile-Leon (1217-1252) was characterised by the new campaigns against the Muslims in al-Andalus, which led to the huge territorial expansion of Christian kingdoms, including the conquest of Cordoba (1236) and late of Seville (1248), following the union of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon in 1230. The aim of this article is to show how the competing forces and the contradictions that the political process set in motion found reflections in the competing discourses among the texts, even though they were written almost at the same time by ecclesiastics all close to royal circles. Special attention will be paid to their narrative models, their different political conceptions and their ways of constructing legitimacy.