The book of the Repartiment in the Valencian historiography of the 19th century. Reception of the edition of Pròsper de Bofarull

Abstract

In 1856, Pròsper de Bofarull published the edition of the records of the Repartiment of Valencia preserved in the archive of the Crown of Aragon. Despite the importance of this historical source, Valencian historiography took a long time to pay attention to this work. At the beginning of the 19th century, the project of editing the Repartiment by the scholar Jaume Villanueva was thwarted, but the handwritten copy of the records would be used by local authors. Finally, thirty years after its appearance, the Repartiment of de Bofarull would be ‘discovered’, disseminated, and used by a new generation of historians who united the ideals of the Renaixença with the rigor of a critical and erudite history based on documentary evidence. In this sense, the activity of the canon and archivist Roc Chabàs, through his contact with the archive of Barcelona, was decisive in making the work of de Bofarull known, and even completing it with the indexes which facilitated consultation among Valencian scholars.