Chronicle of Muntaner

Ramon Muntaner was born in Peralada in 1265. He was the son of a remarkable family that hosted Jaume I the Conqueror (in 1274, Jaume I went to the Second Council of Lyon and sojourned in the Castle of Peralada with Alfonso X the Wise of Castile. This fact, which occurred when he was nine years old, was one of his most precious memories and he mentions this event with emotion in the Chronicle. In the same way that in the European novelist tradition (for example, Chrétien de Troyes ), it is exposed to us, how the vision of a great hero in the eyes of a child is capable of changing the course of his life. Muntaner says that the vision of James I when he was a child led him to devote himself as a writer explaining everything he had seen.[3]

In 1285, Peralada was destroyed by the Almogavars during the Crusade against the Crown of Aragon and had to emigrate. When he was twenty, Ramon Muntaner took part in the conquest of Menorca ; Later, he participated in the fight against the French during the War of Sicily, in 1300 at the Siege of Messina, next to Roger de Flor and as the administrator of his company. In the summer of 1302, he began under the orders of this leader, the expedition to the East. In 1307, he left the company, and in 1311 he got married.[4]

In 1315, he had to travel between Sicily and Roussillon, as he was in charge of a delicate mission: to transport from Catania to Perpignan an orphan baby, the future Jaume III of Mallorca, in order to deliver him to his grandparents. From that moment on, his memoirs were removed and matured for ten years, until he had a revealing "dream" that prompted him, in 1325, at the age of sixty, in Valencia, to start writing the Chronicle, which he finished three years later. Muntaner died in Ibiza in 1336

Sertorius and the Example of the Horses, after Hans Holbein the Younger. The drawing illustrates the example Sertorius gave to his followers that in the same way a horse's tail can be picked out hair by hair but not pulled out all at once, so smaller forces could defeat the Roman armies.[5]

Muntaner had a personal relationship with all the kings of the House of Aragon, the House of Mallorca and the House of Sicily belonging to the lineage of the Casal de Barcelona that were contemporary to him. In doing his work, he mainly resorted to historiographic texts for the reigns of James I and Peter the Great, and, from Alfons el Franc, his almost exclusive source is his own experience.

The work was written to be read aloud. Whenever he addresses his "listeners", he usually calls them "lords". Muntaner managed to establish direct communication with his "listeners". For this, he uses joglaresque procedures (such as the question "What will I say?"), As well as using a live and colloquial language

The fundamental objective of the work is to glorify the kings of the House of Aragon. The monarchism of our chronicler is closely related to providentialism and nationalism. The blood, a common destiny and the language (the beautiful catalanesc of the world ) are the elements that make up the base of the Catalan and Aragonese community. It is impossible to find in the whole of medieval Europe anything that resembles the "national" maturity of the Chronicle

His life and adherence to the dynasty and the Catalan language, to which he expressed an extraordinary devotion, represent the counterweight to the centripetal forces within the Catalan national community resulting from the organization of conquered lands in new kingdoms (Mallorca, Valencia, Sicily) and, sometimes, the implantation of a new dynastic branch (Mallorca, Sicily). The awareness of the danger of division and the value of the union also explained it in its chronicle, especially in the example of the rush plant, "mata de jonc" in Catalan (Similar to the Sertorius horse tail example).[6][7]

With this work, Ramón Muntaner also became the first author in the Catalan language to capture the aspirations of a large part of the Catalan elite for an Iberian political reunification, as he commented on Ariza's interview between the monarchs of the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile, in which the latter proposed to Peter the Great an alliance between them, the king of Portugal and the king of Mallorca, Muntaner added: "... And, assuredly, he spoke the truth; if these four Kings of Spain whom he named, who are of one flesh and blood, held together, little need they fear all the other powers of the world..." (."..si aquests quatre reys que ell nomenava d'Espanya, qui són una carn e una sang, se teguessen ensemps, poch duptare tot laltre poder del món.").[8][9][10]

Regarding the Catalan Company of the East, Ramon Muntaner began to write his chronicle in 1325, that is, 17 years after the Byzantine Greek George Pachymeres wrote his work De Michaele et Andronico Palæologis. While the work of Pachymeres offers the Greek vision of the facts, emphasizing the atrocities committed by the Company and Roger de Flor until 1308, the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner is the only western source that relates the events experienced by the Catalan Company of The Orient. In some aspects, the work of Ramon Muntaner becomes, not only a glorification of Roger de Flor and the Company, but also a counter-narrative of the work of Pachymeres, relating some facts that the Greek does not mention, and eluding to explain facts that the Greek author does report in detail. Some of these facts would be:

• Massacre of the Genoese : Pachymeres affirms that the origin of the massacre began as a result of a debt that Roger de Flor had not settled with the Genoese, while Muntaner did not explain why the confrontations originated.
• Battle of Germe : despite being a minor battle, Muntaner does not comment anything.
• Executions summary of Germe: Pachymeres explains the barbarism of Roger de Flor in wanting to execute the Greek military who had surrendered the fortress to the Turks, accusing them of cowardice. Muntaner does not comment anything.
• Summary executions of Kula: Again, Pachymeres explains the barbarism of Roger de Flor in wanting to execute the Greek military who had rendered the fortress to the Turks, accusing them of cowardice. Muntaner does not comment anything.
• War contributions to Philadelphia: Pachymeres explains that, after releasing the city of Philadelphia, Roger de Flor imposed on the city the payment of illegal and abusive war contributions. Muntaner does not comment anything.
• War contributions to Ephesus: Pachymeres explains that, after Bernat de Rocafort met with Roger de Flor in Ephesus, he committed all kinds of atrocities to raise the payment of more war contributions. Muntaner does not comment anything.
• The Siege of Magnesia : Pachymeres explains that the governor of Magnesia executed the almogavar garrison that was protecting the treasure of the Company and seized it, and then withstood the siege to which the Company underwent the city. Muntaner does not comment anything.
• Figures: it is unknown in what source Muntaner was based when citing the number of the armies, the number of killed, wounded and captured people, which are always favorable to Roger de Flor and the Catalan East Company, which in fact is a truism for they stayed there from 1303 till 1390 being the Turkish uncapable to defeat them.

Muntaner's work had great repercussions and diffusion during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and was used, for example, in various passages of Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell. It was edited for the first time in the sixteenth century, coinciding with a time of great revision of historiography; This first edition was commissioned and paid by the jurors of the city of Valencia. New printed editions took place during the 19th century, during the period of romantic exaltation of the European medieval past, even a translation into English made by the Hakluyt Society in 1920-21[11]

The relations of the Crown of Aragon with other kingdoms and territories gave place, already since the Middle age, to the creation of big quantity of exonyms that nowadays they are almost forgotten. Here follow some of the exonyms that appear in the Chroncle of Muntaner:

• Cetines, for Athens, capital of Greece
• Estives, for Thebes, city of Greece
• Port Jonc, for Navarino, city of Greece
• Taix, for Tassos, a Greek island
• Sant Jaume de Galicia, for Santiago de Compostela, capital of Galicia
• Sibília, for Seville, capital of Andalucia
• Saragossa de Sicília, for Siracusa, city of Sicily
• Xaca, for Sciacca, city of Sicily
• Sena, for Siena, city of Italy
• Florença, for Florence, city of Italy
• El Goi, for Gozo, an island of Malta
• Patraix, for Patras, city of Greece
• Xifellonia, for Cefalònia, island of Greece
• Curfo, for Corfu, island of Greece
• Brandis, for Brindisi, city of Italy
• Otrento, for Otranto, city of Italy
• Candia, current Heraclion, city of Crete

• Ramon Muntaner
• Catalan Company
• History of the sword
• The four great chronicles
• Book of the facts of James I
• Chronicle of Bernat Desclot
• Chronicle of Pere Terç

• Manuscript of the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner on line.
• On-line version (readable).
• Chronicle of Ramón Muntaner, translated to the English for Lady Goodenough.
• Work edited of Ramon Muntaner.
• Francisco of Moncada, Expedition of the Catalans and Aragoneses against Turkish and Greeks, 1623.
• Goodenough, Lady (1920). Chronicle of Muntaner. Hakluyt Society - Vol.1. pp. Pdf.
• Goodenough, Lady (1921). Chronicle of Muntaner. Hakluyt Society - Vol.2. pp. Pdf.