The ''Liber maiolichinus'' ''de gestis pisanorum illustribus'' ("Majorcan Book of the Deeds of the Illustrious Pisans") is a Medieval Latin

epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film with heroic elements Epic or EPIC may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and medi ...

chronicle in 3,500 hexameters, written between 1117 and 1125, detailing the

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...

n-led joint military expedition of Italians, Catalans, and

Occitans The Occitans ( oc, occitans) are a Romance-speaking ethnic group originating in the historical region of Occitania (southern France, northeastern Spain, and northwestern Italy). They have been also called Gascons, Provençals, and Auvergnats.The ...

against the '' taifa'' of the

Balearic Islands The Balearic Islands ( es, Islas Baleares ; or ca, Illes Balears ) are an archipelago in the Balearic Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The archipelago is an autonomous community and a province of Spain; its capital is ...

, in particular

Majorca Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain and located in the Mediterranean. The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Bal ...

and

Ibiza Ibiza (natively and officially in ca, Eivissa, ) is a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is from the city of Valencia. It is the third largest of the Balearic Islands, in Spain. Its l ...

, in 1113–5. It was commissioned by the commune of Pisa, and its anonymous author was probably a cleric. It survives in three manuscripts. The ''Liber'' is notable for containing the earliest known reference to "Catalans" (''Catalanenses''), treated as an

ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

, and to "Catalonia" (''Catalania''), as their homeland. The ''Liber'', which is the most important primary source for the brief conquest of the Balearics, portrays the expedition as motivated by a desire to free Christian captives held as slaves by the Muslims and to curtail Muslim piracy "from Spain to Greece". Christian zeal is stressed no less than civic pride and the account of the 1113 expedition is prefaced by a history of Pisan–Muslim conflicts in the eleventh century.Randall Rogers (1997), ''Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 194–5. The ''Liber'' is also the earliest source for the raid of the Norwegian king Sigurd Jorsalfar on

Formentera Formentera (, ) is the smallest and most southerly island of the Pityusic Islands group (comprising Ibiza and Formentera, as well as various small islets), which belongs to the Balearic Islands autonomous community (Spain). It covers an area of ...

, one of the Balearic islands and a hotbed of piracy.

Notes

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External links

Latin text of the ''Liber maiolichinus'' with Spanish introduction
1113–1115 Balearic Islands expedition Medieval Latin poetry Crusade literature 12th-century Latin literature * An article on the Liber maiorichinus and other Pisan texts of the same perio