VALENTIA REGNVM. Kingdom of Valencia

This entire region takes its name from the city of Valentia, as if from its primary city, and it comprises the ancient Hedetania, Contestania, and a part of the Ilercaones. This region received the title of Kingdom around the year of salvation 788, as Petrus Merhinensis and Petrus Anthonius Beutherus are my authorities for this.

There are two mountains in this kingdom, beyond the others: they name the one Mariola, and the other Penna Golosa (you might call it the "Greedy Crag" in Latin), to which there is a great influx of herbalists and physicians from elsewhere: for there is a great abundance of rare plants and herbs in them. It also has a silver mine, where one goes from Valencia to Tortosa, in a place called Buriol. Stones are found there, interspersed with golden veins or streaks, in a place named Aioder. At the promontory of Finistrat there are iron mines, and likewise near the place of Iabea. Around Segorbe are traces of stone quarries, from which marbles were once accustomed to be transported to Rome. In Picacent alabaster is dug up, and everywhere alum, red chalk, and gypsum in great quantity. But the greatest profit of the region is from the pottery, which they themselves call porcellanas porcelain; whether these are the murrhina murrhine ware/precious vessels of the ancients is uncertain. They make these so skillfully and with such elegance in several places in this kingdom that they do not fear to contend in excellence with the most outstanding of Italy (whose reputation among all is so great).

Among the cities of this kingdom, Valentia is the primary one and an episcopal see: concerning whose bishop, Marinæus Siculus and Damianus Goefius are witnesses that he holds thirteen thousand gold ducats annually. Pliny calls this a Roman colony, three thousand paces removed from the sea, as the same reports. Annius, from Manetho, and Beutherus, from the Annals, hand down that it was called Rome in the ancient age, by Rom, King of the Spaniards: let the credibility rest with them. In an ancient inscription it is named COLONIA IVLIA VALENTIA Julia Valentia Colony; Beutherus adds that it retained the name of Rome until the Romans subjugated it for themselves. They expanded and ennobled it and named it Valentia, with the word signifying the same.