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Juan Fernández de Heredia’s History of Greece
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Abstract
The Aragonese Hospitaller Juan Fernández de Heredia, Master of Rhodes from 1377 to 1396, was an outstanding patron of historical compilations, all of them translated into Aragonese. He promoted the earliest translations into any western language of Plutarch’s Lives, of parts of Thucydides and of Zonaras’ Epitome of Byzantine history; he also produced a version of the Chronicle of the Morea with an entirely original section which covered much of the fourteenth century. These and other sources in his corpus formed the basis for a unique initiative, a continuous history of Greece.
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References
1 Detailed treatment and references, mostly not repeated here, in Luttrell, A., ‘Juan Fernández de Heredia and the Compilation of the Aragonese Chronicle of the Morea’, at www.xoan.net/morea Google Scholar. The major study of the literary production is af Geijerstam, R., Juan Fernandez de Heredia: La Grant Cronica de Espayna libros 1-11 (Uppsala 1964)Google Scholar. The most balanced general introduction to the patron and his works is Blecua, J. M. Cacho, El Gran Maestre ]uan Fernández de Heredia (Saragossa 1997)Google Scholar, which lacks footnotes but lists manuscripts, editions, bibliography and much other detail. ]uan Fernández de Heredia y su Ѐpoca: IV Curso sobre Lengua y Literatura en Aragón, ed. Egido, A. — Enguita, J. M. (Saragossa 1996)Google Scholar, presents extensive further studies and references but contains historical inaccuracies.
2 Fernández de Heredia was a pioneer but a thoroughly medieval one; repeated attempts to portray him as a ‘humanist’ are to be rejected, as Cacho, , El Gran Maestre, 130-2, 182-4Google Scholar, emphasizes. The attractive frescoes from Sorgues have frequently been attributed to Fernández de Heredia’s patronage, but incorrectly: Blagg, T. — Luttrell, A., ‘The papal palace and other fourteenth—century buildings at Sorgues near Avignon’, Archaeologia 109 (1991) 184-6Google Scholar.
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34 E.g. Massó, ‘Inventari’, items 2, 33, 62, 206.
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36 Item 214 is still being identified as the Morea: e.g. in Marín — Montaner, ‘Estado actual’, 259.
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38 It seems that no such attempt was made until the nineteenth century.