Jerónimo de Blancas y Tomás

Jerónim de Blancas y Tomás, (Zaragoza, c.1530/40 - ibidem, 11 December 1590) was a Latinist and an influential legal historian active in the Crown of Aragon.

He studied at the University of Zaragoza. In 1576 he revised the second part of the Annals of the Crown of Aragon by Jerónimo Zurita at the request of the deputies of the Generalidad de Aragón. He succeeded to the post of Chief Chronicler of the Kingdom Aragon on the death of Jerónimo Zurita in 1580. After his death in 1590 he was buried in the monastery of Santa Engracia in Zaragoza.

Work

In Ad regum Aragonum depictas efigies in diputationis aula positas inscriptiones(published in Zaragoza, 1587) the epigraphs in Latin of the gallery of portraits of the counts and kings of Aragon destined to decorate the royal hall of the Diputación del General del Reino. These inscriptions contained brief biographies of these kings and counts. In the same year he printed Fastos de los Justicias de Aragón hasta Juan IV de Lanuza, the Latin footnotes to the portraits of the Justicias located in the council chamber of their seat. In it he explains the historical origin of the Aragonese institution of Justicia de Aragón, which is completed with an account of the deeds of almost fifty Justices, ranging from Pedro Jiménez to Juan IV de Lanuza. His Coronations of the kings and queens of Aragon, which he wrote in 1583 although it was not printed until 1641, was widely distributed. It is the chronicle of the coronations of the kings since Pedro II. In Modos de proceder en Cortes de Aragón, which dates from 1585 and was also published in 1641, he analyses the Aragonese Corts. He also wrote a Summary of the Cortes, useful for accessing the contents of the acts of the Cortes that have not been preserved.

Jerónimo Blancas also owes a record of words of the Aragonese language, unusual in the Modern Age, which are included in a glossary annexed to his Coronations of the kings of Aragon, mainly from the sphere of institutions and the court, although some expressions from the colloquial language also appear. On the other hand, in the Aragonensium rerum comentarii he includes a parliament of Martín I written in Aragonese, on the occasion of his presentation before the Cortes of Aragon in 1398 in La Seo before the arms of the Aragonese courts, as well as the reply, with Aragonese and Catalan linguistic features of the bishop of the cathedral of Zaragoza.