Chronicle

Chronicle of San Juan de la Peña (fol. 1r).

Crónica is the name of a literary genre that consists of a compilation of historical facts narrated in chronological order according to the times. The word comes from the Latin chronica, which in turn is derived from the Greek chronos.

Features

The events are narrated in the temporal order in which they occurred, often by eyewitnesses or contemporaries, either in the first or third person. In the chronicle a simple, direct, very personal language is used and admits a literary language with repetitive use of adjectives to emphasize the descriptions. It uses action verbs and presents space and time references. The chronicle takes a certain temporary distance from what is called historical writings.

The chronicle literature does not have the methodological rigor of scientific historiography, its claims are very different, so its use as a historiographical source is done with the necessary precaution by historians; as they do here when qualifying the Chronicle of Alfonso III:

... is more extensive and detained and its flow of data and news, so it makes the period between Wamba and Ordoño I, much greater than that of the Albeldense Mission. However, does this mean that we are in the presence of a story written to the minor, punctual, full of life and colorful of the history of Asturias? No. Unfortunately, it is a poor cronicon, inspired by the Isidorian tradition, in which a minimum number of events is collected and not always the most important ones; they are narrated mostly unaccounted for, without clarification or details, with the least number of words and without specifying the dates in which they occurred, nor setting their link with the immediate events. Like all the Spanish-Christian chronicles of later times, it is a mere collection of real biographies; just like the historical texts of Europe of those centuries, it accommodates in its pages the miracle, and in a similar way that most Arab stories, exalts even the hyperbole victories and silences or disguises defeats.

The chroniclers themselves recorded such limitations:

... the chronicles are written by the command of the Kings and Princes; and by the pleasure and smoothing, or by fear of anger, the writers write more what they command or what they believe will please them, than the truth of the fact as it happened.

Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Generations and semblances

Annals, chronicles and universal chronicles

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the use of the terms "annals", "chronicles" and "histories" is ambiguous, misleading and, in practice, interchangeable.

Properly, the annals only distinguish the events year by year, while the chronicles are historical records in which the events are simply recorded in the order of their succession by an author who is at least partly contemporary with the events that register. The genre of the universal chronicle arises from the need to introduce into the chronicle the origins of the world and man according to the Bible, continuing with the history of the chosen people until the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ and the emergence and expansion of Christianity; It also seeks to establish synchronisms between the biblical chronology and those of the ancient empires, that of Greece (archons of Athens) and that of Rome (consular fasti).

General chronicle and particular chronicle

The chronicles that did not have a general purpose, but were limited to reviewing chronologically the notable events of a specific character, are sometimes called particular chronicles, which is why they are identified with the biographical genre. A particular chronicle is, for example, that of Pero Niño, called El Victorial (ca. 1463). One of the many works on El Cid is also called Crónica particular de el Cid (1512 and later editions).

Journalistic genre

Crónicas are also a journalistic genre. They are classified as "yellow" or "white" depending on their content. The yellow ones have more subjective material and generally the authorized voice is a person or common citizen; White uses more objective material and the authoritative voice is usually the authority, a professional, etc.

The historical chronicle

It is understood by chronic the detailed history of a country or region, of a locality, of a time, of a man or of an event in general, written by an eyewitness or by a contemporary who has recorded, without comment, all the details he has seen, and even all those who have been transmitted to him. Such are, for example, the Latin chronicles of Flodoardo, canon of Reims, and of Guillermo de Nangis and the French chronicles of Froissart and Enguerrand de Monstrelet. Of all European countries, the richest in chronicles are France, Spain, Italy and England.

In the first centuries of our era it was when the word chronic or chromon began to be used to designate a certain genre of historical composition, that is to say a story written according to the order and succession of times; history of a country, of a province, of a time, etc.

Among all the peoples of modern Europe are from the 5th to the 15th century a number of writers, monks most of them, who have left chronicles of different genres in Latin or vulgar language. These were the origins of a nation or the history of an illustrious family or of a remarkable era.

...

They occupy the first place not for their interest but for their remote date those Latin, dry and discolored chronicles, where events have been recorded without comment and without details. The relationship of an eclipse of the sun or a hailed rain occupy as much place as a battle or a change of dynasty. These brief chronicles, written by monks, bear the name of the place where they were written or the place where they were discovered.

List of most notable historical chronicles