BERNARD DESCLOT

'Bernard Desclot' was a Catalan chronicler whose work covering the brief reign of Pedro III of Aragon (1276-85) forms one of the four ''Catalan Grand Chronicles'' through which the historian views thirteenth- and fourteenth century military and political matters in the Kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia,^[1] including the "Aragonese Crusade". Desclot's ''Chronicle'' begins in the eleventh century but gains especial interest when he comes to describe events current within living memory. Bernard's literary model was Romance, and his account is spiced with dramatic monologues of the central characters and thrilling episodes, such as the escape of Pedro's brother, Jaime of Mallorca, from the fortress of Perpignan, through the castle's drains.
Nothing of Bernard himself is known save what little can be gleaned through his ''Chronicle''.
F.L. Critchlow provided an English translation of the section covering the reign of Pedro III in ''Chronicle of the Reign of King Pedro III of Aragon, 1276-85'' (Princeton University Press) 1928.

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1. The other three sources are the autobiographies of Jaime I of Aragon and Ramon Muntaner and the royal chronicle of Pedro IV of Aragon.