Historia silense

Annunciation of the Shepherds fresco of the 12th century in Pantheon of the Kings at Basilica of San Isidoro, León, where the Historia legionense may have been written.

The Historia silense, also called the Chronica silense or Historia seminense, and more properly Historia legionense, is a medieval Latin narrative history of the Iberian Peninsula from the time of the Visigoths (409–711) to the first years of the reign of Alfonso VI of León and Castile (1065–1073). Though originally intended as a gesta of Alfonso, it is primarily an original account of the reign of his father, Ferdinand I (1037–1065). For its earlier history it relies on the works of Isidore of Seville, Julian of Toledo, and the Vitas sanctorum patrum Emeritensium for the Visigothic period, the Chronicle of Alfonso III for the ninth century, the work of Sampiro for the tenth and early eleventh centuries, and the Chronicon of Pelayo of Oviedo for the eleventh century. The Historia along with Pelayo's Chronicon provide the only surviving versions of Sampiro's otherwise lost history.