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A GENEALOGY OF CASTILIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: FROM NOMINA REGUM TO SEMBLANZAS Robert Folger University of Munich While the taller alfonsi was working on the Estoria de España, a monk of the abbey of Saint-Denis, named Primat, completed the first section of the so-called Grandes Chroniques de France (1274), a chronicle of the French kings from their supposed Trojan origins to his own era. Around 1350 the Grandes Chroniques were further elaborated and updated . The impressive work done by the monks at Saint-Denis, and later by a royal official, is by no means unrivaled, as is often claimed (Gabrielle Spiegel, Chronicle Tradition 1 2). The parallels between French and Castilian regal, "official" historiography are numerous and deserve an in-depth comparison. I want to focus on a marginal aspect which is central to the understanding of the structural coherence and "social logic" ( Spiegel, Past as Text. 26) of French and Spanish royal historiography from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century: sketches of the kings which conclude the account of the events which occurred during their reign. In a perceptive article Gabrielle Spiegel has argued that the "medieval historical text is a transparency and history [is] apprehended as perceptual field" ("Genealog)" 46). Hence the historiographical labor is shaped by structures preexisting in the historiographer's Lebenswelt. Spiegel calls these structures '"perceptual grids', which directed the historian's glance at relatively fixed categories of human experience and governed both the nature of his perceptions and the manner in which he transmitted them" (46). It is her claim that genealogy is the principal perceptual grid diat moulds the Grandes Chroniques de France. Written and read in the genealogical mode, history becomes Li coRóxicA 32.3 (Summer, 2004): 49-68 50Robert FolgerLa coránica 32.3, 2004 a series of biographies glued togedier by the principle of succession according to hereditary law. Each reign is treated as coterminous widi the life of the ruler, and every regnal segment of the Grandes Chroniques begins and ends with summary portraits of kings, an unmistakable trace of die biographical orientation. ... The result is a narrative gallery of kings in continuous succession not unlike the sculptural elements of the same name on the west façade of Notre-Dame. (49, my emphasis) Spiegel propounds an important reorientation in received author-centered notions of historiography by acknowledging the readers' creativity . If the chronicle's narrative matter was not explicdy linked by a syntax of relation, there is no reason to assume that a medieval reader could not have made die necessary connections in his own mind.... Because the writer does not explain connections we need not suppose that die reader could not supply them, any more than we need suppose that the interrelations between iconographie elements of a stained glass window remains necessarily unintelligible to the viewer because diey are set off from one another by lead frames. (52, my emphasis) Notwithstanding Spiegel's claim, the authors of the Grandes Chroniques were not consistent in sketching portraits of the French kings. Moult estoit biaus et preuz et gracieus; ausi com il croissoit et amendoit en cors, ausi profitoit-il en noblece de euer et en bones meurs. (1: 55) Chilperis, Ii rois de Soisons, estoit si habandonez à luxure, que tout adés menoit il grant torbe de fames ovec lui contre l'oneste de son estât. Plus le servoient por sa biauté, que eles ne fesoient pour la noblece de son lignage. (1: 206) While in the cited examples it is surelyjustified to speak of "summary portraits", in most cases the reader must piece togedier the portraits in his imagination. On the other hand, the reader of the Castilian chronicles by Pero López de Ayala is systematically aided by very tangible portraits. In the portion ofthe chronicles dealing with Enrique II, for example, the chronicler reports the monarch's deadi and his age at die time ofdeath, A Genealogy of Castilian Historiography51 and dates the event. He calculates the time die king ruled and concludes the chronicle with a summary portrait: "E fue pequeño de cuerpo, pero bien fecho, e blanco e rruuio e de buen seso e de grand esfuerço e...
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