ABSTRACT
Chronicles have long ceased to be considered mere reservoirs of data or facts. They are evidently so, but their value as ideological manifestations of a certain period and of specific social or political standpoints has gained ground and is now one of their main assets for historians. The Iberian Peninsula is rich in that type of source in the Central Middle Ages, specifically Castile-Leon. Since the nineteenth century, the "Book of Deeds" has produced all sorts of controversies about many of its aspects, but consensus, albeit an unstable one in some issues – seems to have been reached on all of them. The first words of the Prologue of the "Book of Deeds" brilliantly sum up the content of the whole work by borrowing a scriptural sentence from the Epistle of St. James: "faith without works is dead".
