Sampiro

Sampiro (c. 956 – 1041) was a Leonese cleric, politician, and intellectual, one of the earliest chroniclers of post-conquest Spain known by name.

Later he fled to Zamora in light of raids from Muslim territory, and eventually found himself in the royal court at León.

It forms part of the Corpus Pelagianum, a series of histories each continuing the last stretching back to Isidore of Seville's Historia Gothorum.

Sampiro praises his master, King Vermudo, as "quite prudent [because] he confirmed the laws dictated by Wamba, ordered the opening and studying of the collection of canons, loved mercy and justice, and tried to reprove evil and choose the good.

[5] The later historian Pelayo of Oviedo, who continued Sampiro's chronicle down to his own age, replaced this laudatory section with an attack on the king, bequeathing to historiography the nickname by which Vermudo II is always known: "the Gouty" (el Gotoso).