The ''Breve chronicon Lauretanum'' ("Short Chronicle of Loreto") is a brief anonymous

medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...

chronicle A chronicle (, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events ...

from the

Kingdom of Sicily The Kingdom of Sicily (; ; ) was a state that existed in Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula, Italian Peninsula as well as, for a time, in Kingdom of Africa, Northern Africa, from its founding by Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was ...

. It contains short notices on events of the years 1187, 1188, 1190, 1195 and 1220, but is most useful for the continuous narrative it provides for the period 1249–1271. It focuses mainly on events in and connected with the county of

Loreto Aprutino Loreto Aprutino ( Abruzzese: ') is a ''comune'' and town in the Province of Pescara in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. History The presence of necropoleis at Colle-Fiorano and at Farina-Cardito suggest that a significant pre-Roman settlement ...

. The entire chronicle is short enough to have been first published in a single footnote, but it provides information not found elsewhere about the counts of Loreto and the prince of the Abruzzi,

Conrad of Antioch Conrad of Antioch (; born 1240/41, died after 1312) was a scion of an illegitimate branch of the imperial Staufer dynasty and a nobleman of the Kingdom of Sicily. He was the eldest son of Frederick of Antioch, imperial vicar of Tuscany, and Margher ...

. It is known from two manuscripts: one from the fifteenth century in the

Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli The (''Victor Emmanuel III National Library'') is a national library of Italy. It occupies the eastern wing of the 18th-century Palazzo Reale in Naples, at 1 Piazza del Plebiscito, and has entrances from piazza Trieste e Trento. It is funded and ...

, segn. IX, C.24, fol. 52^v–53^r, and another, with slight variations, from the seventeenth century and once in the private possession of Gennaro Aspreno Galante. In the Napoli manuscript it bears the title ''Chronicon Lauretanum MCLXXXVII–MCCLXXI'', on which the modern editors' title is based. In the seventeenth-century manuscript, it is called, rather grandiosely, the ''Chronica regni Siciliae'' ("Chronicle of the Kingdom of Sicily"). Bartolommeo Capasso, ''Le fonti della storia delle provincie napolitane dal 568 al 1500'' (Naples: Riccardo Marghieri, 1902)
p. 104

Excerpts

:''Anno MCCXXXXIX captus est comes Bernardus Laureti comes de mandato Domini Imperatoris, et falsa occasione sumpta ab eodem Frederico morte crudelissima, ut dicitur, condempnatus est.'' In the year 1249, Count Berard I the count of Loreto, was arrested by order of the Lord Emperor rederickand, a false charge taken up, Frederick condemned him, it is said, to a most cruel death. :''Anno domini MCCLXVII mense Ianuarii predicti domini Conradus et Iohannes de Malerio, fracto carcere, evaserunt latenter extra Regnum fugientes et eodem anno Conradinus applicuit cum exercitu suo apud Veronam, denique anno sequenti.'' In the year of our Lord 1267, in the month of January, the aforesaid lords Conrad and John of Mareri, breaking out of prison, went into hiding, fleeing out of the kingdom, and that same year Conradin pitched his army in Verona, and in the following year.

Notes

{{reflist Italian chronicles