The Hakluyt Society has printed for its members the first
volume of The Chronicle of Muntaner, now first translated into English from the Catalan by Lady Goodenough, with a good historical introduction. Muntaner was born in Catalonia in 1261 and completed his chronicle in 1328. Ho describes the wars in which Aragon in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made herself mistress of the Western Mediterranean and curbed the power of the Angevin and of the Moors. This first volume deals with the expulsion of Charles of Anjou from Sicily, after the Sicilian Vespers, and with the defeat of the French invasion of Catalonia. 1VIentstner's account of his adventures with the Catalan Company, which established itself for a time at Gallipoli and then at Athens, is reserved for a later volume. The veteran solder was a spirited narrator, even if, as the editor says, he did not pretend to be impartial where the honour of Aragon was concerned. His chronicle well deserved to be put into English, and Lady Goodenough's version is distinctly readable.
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