The Universitat de València will inaugurate on Monday, 27 July at 5 p.m. at the Duc de Calàbria Hall in La Nau Cultural Centre, the ‘The memory of Jaume I. Editions and translations of the Llibre dels fets’ exhibition, which goes through the editorial history of the monarch’s self-biography, and claims its value as one of the major foundational texts of the Valencian literature and culture. The exhibition’s opening will be preceded by an open academic session organised by the Academia Valenciana de Cronistas Oficiales in cooperation with the Universitat de València, with which the events of the Commemorative Day of the 750th anniversary of King Jaume I’s death start.
The event will start at 4 p.m. at the Main Hall of the Universitat de València with the institutional inauguration, undertaken by the Principal Juan Luis Gandía and the President of the Academia Valenciana de Cronistas Oficiales (AVCO), Josep Ramon Sanchís Alfonso. To continue with, the Professor of the Universitat de València Vicent Josep Escartí will hold the ‘The memory of Jaume I. Editions and translations of the Llibre dels fets’. Afterwards, at 5 p.m., the exhibition’s inauguration will be held, featuring the Vice-Principal for Research and Scientific Policy of the Universitat, Isabel Fariñas; the director of the Biblioteca Històrica, María Jesús García Mateu; and one of the coordinators of the exhibition, Antoni Ferrando.
The exhibition is organised by the Biblioteca Històrica of the Universitat de València, the team of the Vice-Principal for Research of the Universitat de València, and the La Nau Cultural Centre, and it has been organised by professors Vicent Josep Escartí, Antoni Ferrando, and Mateu Rodrigo. Cooperation between the organisers and the technical team of the Biblioteca allowed to gather, for the first time in history, all the editions, translations, and adaptations of the Llibre dels fets from 1515 to July 2026. In this date, the translation to Spanish carried out by Julia Butiñá, edited by the Alfons el Magnànim Institution from the critical edition of Ferrando and Escartí (2024), and published by the Universitat de València has just been released. The exhibition will allow to observe the full-scale reproduction of the most famous engravings that are illustrated in the oldest editions of the real chronicle.
The exhibition features a wide number of institutions, including the Academia Valenciana de Cronistas Oficiales, the Academia Valenciana de la Llengua, the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, the Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana, the Real Academia de Historia, the Universitat d’Alacant, and the Institut Virtual Internacional de Traducció (IVITRA), in addition to different services and libraries of the Universitat de València.
Thanks to the exhibition, the public will be able to take a visual, chronologically ordered journey through the entire written transmission of the Llibre dels fets, Jaume I’s memoir, which constitutes the only preserved self-biographic text from a European medieval monarch. Originally written in the Catalan or Valencian Romance languages spoken by the king, the chronicle narrates his life and his main conquests, and it turned, over the centuries, into one of the most influential texts of the Valencian literary and historical heritage.
The exhibiting journey starts with the first printed editions of the 16th century. In 1515, Diego de Gumiel published the part of the real chronicle that is focused on the conquest of Valencia within Aureum opus regalium privilegiorum. Later, in 1557, The city of Valencia published the Chronica o commentari del gloriosissim e invictissim rey en Jacme, considered the editio princeps of the work, which for centuries would remain the only complete edition of the text. Shortly after, the translations to Latin and Spanish made by Bernardí Gómez Miedes appeared.
The exhibition pays special attention to the recovery of the Llibre dels fets during the Renaissance, and to the large number of reviews, adaptations, and translations —particularly to Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, and Japanese—, published during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The renowned ones include those of Marià Aguiló, Ferran Soldevila, Jordi Bruguera, and the critical edition of Antoni Ferrando and Vicent Josep Escartí, which offers for the first time the entire text of the chronicle, since it includes the variations of different medieval versions.
The exhibition will remain open until 27 September at the Duc de Calàbria Hall in La Nau Cultural Centre.