Bernat Desclot is a Catalan historian, probably originally from vizcondado de Castellnou, Roussillon (France) . He lived in the second half of the 13th century .
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His authorship is the second, the oldest of the four great chronicles of the Crown de Aragón , el Libre del Rey en Pere d'Aragó e dels seus antecessors passats [2] , also known as the Chronicle of Bernat Desclot . He married a lady from Cabrils Marta Recatalinus in 1256. The spouses had seven children, but later it turned out that one of the boys was born from a relationship between Lady Recatalinus and another man. The marriage broke up. Very little documentary evidence has been preserved of Bernat Desclot. An attempt was made to identify him with Bernat Escrivà , a character who at that time held various important posts in the royal curia of Pedro III of Aragon ( 1276 - 1285 ), the curia office in Gandia in 1282 and the position of royal treasurer in 1283 . Reached the camarero position of King Alfonso III , nicknamed "Free", and died in 1287 .
The date of writing the chronicle may coincide with the conquest of Sicily (1283), but the acts that took place between 1137 and 1285 are described. The historian Coll i Alentorn divides the work into three parts according to the different nature of the documentary sources; one is embedded in the previous chapters in the reign of Jaime I of Aragon , the other, consisting of descriptions of the reign of this king, and the third, about Pere II el Gran, whom he describes with obvious goodwill. The first part uses the traditions of wandering artists, legends serve as sources. The second is based on modern historical sources by the author. It seems that the third part uses mainly the personal memories of the author or eyewitnesses who still lived. The style that Desclot uses as a writer is realistic and at the same time epic and passionate. Although the author is concerned about cleaning up and brightening the available sources [3], the earliest edition of his History of Catalonia was published in 1616 in Barcelona, in 1793 by the Sancha printing house in Madrid. In the latter, in particular, there are sections related to the French invasion in 1285 and the defense undertaken by Pedro III with the Almogavars
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 BNF identifier : Open Data Platform 2011.
- ↑ Les quatres grans cròniques medievals catalanes , en www.xtec.cat (recursos)
- ↑ Bernat Desclot i la seva època