Estoria de España

The Estoria is divided into four large parts; the chapter numbers are from Menéndez Pidal's edition: There were two major periods of work on the book.

Unfortunately for Alfonso X, the following years were hardly more peaceful: Maghrebi invasions, rebellions, the premature death of his designated heir Fernando de la Cerda.

This interrupted work on the Estoria de España, but, given the focus back to Biblical times, the subject matter overlapped significantly.

In the light of recent and difficult times, Alfonso disowned the original version of 1271, and proposed a new edition reflecting the experience of facing a rebellious forces including even his own son Sancho.

[2] In 1906, philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal published the texts of two manuscripts (the second continuing the story of the first, which concludes with the Muslim conquest of Spain) conserved at the library of El Escorial, which he believed to be originals from the time of Alfonso X.

He entitled the collection the Primera Crónica General de España - Estoria de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289 ("First general chronicle of Spain: History of Spain ordered to be composed by Alfonso the wise and continued under Sancho IV in 1289").

The Estoria puts forth a worldview heavily influenced by the Policraticus written a century earlier by John of Salisbury and then in vogue in political circles of the Christian West: the kingdom is a body, the king its head and heart, the people the limbs.

The Estoria played a role in elaborating a common past for the nation (in the medieval sense of that word), to build an identity, and for the individual to find his place in this group.

This history of Spain written in Castilian court served also to support the Neogothic ideology the kingdoms of León and Castile were the repositories of the authority of kings Visigoths who fled the Muslim conquest.

In claiming the legacy of the Goths, who had secured the political and religious unity of the entire peninsula, the Castilians sought to impose their hegemony on various peninsular kingdoms: Aragon, Navarre, Portugal and of course the Muslim territories.

Still, systematic use of what would now be called Old Spanish begins in the time of Alfonso X, in particular because of the ever wider circulation of manuscripts of the Estoria and other works in the court, to the nobility, and to the monasteries and cathedrals.