History of Spain (E1)
This is the only manuscript of the Estoria de España [History of Spain] that can be ascribed with certainty to the royal Scriptorium. It contains the so-called ‘early version’, written between 1270 and 1274, and was the first project promoted by Alfonso X with the aim of telling the history of the Iberian Peninsula from its origins to his own reign.
Various Arabic and Latin sources were used to compile the text, notably De rebus Hispaniae by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. The manuscript itself was produced around the same time that the text was written, but it was unfortunately left unfinished, as only the illumination of the first book was completed, containing images of Noah’s Ark, Hercules fighting two lions, the Tower of Hercules lighthouse, the founding of Seville and the so-called King Rocas. Blank spaces were left, however, for other illustrations that were never executed.
A few years later, around 1278, the first folio was added depicting a complex scene of the court of Castile in which the king hands over a book (a symbol of royal power) to his heir. The last two books of the manuscript were removed and used to create another codex (Ms. X-I-4) that carries on Alfonso’s project with materials produced during the reigns of Sancho IV and Alfonso XI.
This manuscript, together with the volume of the Estoria de España that continues it (Ms. X-I-4), was used by Ramón Menéndez Pidal for his edition of the Primera crónica general de España [First General Chronicle of Spain].