In the early 20th century, Zacarías García Villada discovered the Nodicia de kesos on the backside of a tenth-century parchment recording a gift to the monastery of San Justo y Pastor, which was located in either Chozas de Abajo or Ardón del Esla in the Kingdom of León.[1] It is a list of the cheeses used up by the monastery in various activities, either as food or as payment. Its orthography is reflective of early Iberian Romance pronunciation and diverges sharply from classical Latin. It predates any distinction between the Leonese language and Castilian.[2] The conventional title of the list comes from its first three words (incipit) and means "list of cheeses", similar to modern Spanish noticia / lista / relación de (los) quesos.
The document is one of the texts that Ramón Menéndez Pidal used in his work Origins of Spanish (1926) to give an account of the state of peninsular romances in the 10th century.
The original is currently kept in the archives of the Cathedral of León, under the name Manuscript 852v.
An "extraordinary parallel" to the Nodicia is found on a Visigothic slate from the late 6th or early 7th century, found in Galinduste. The graffito identifies itself as a Notitia de casios.[3]