Clues to the authorship of the Cantigas de Santa Maria from the Toledo manuscript

Abstract

The project of his Galician-Portuguese Cantigas de Santa Maria (CSM) occupied Alfonso X during almost all of his reign (1252–84). That his profane poems, forty-four in number, were authored by him is not in doubt. The 420 CSM is a different story. In the nineteenth century they were believed to be all composed by Alfonso. But given his turbulent reign and his didactic aim of providing his subjects with new works in law, history, science, and more (in Castilian) to advance the cultural level of his society, there remain doubts as to which of these hundreds of poems he did, in fact, compose, dictate, or write the music for. Concentrating on the first redaction of 100 CSM, manuscript To. (to include the final Pitiçon), I defend the thesis that Alfonso is the “maker,” the “architect,” and the royal compiler of poems by himself and a select group of Galician-Portuguese collaborators in these CSM, also with music and miniatures throughout, making it the unsurpassed work of medieval Marian art. Shoring up my argumentation are separate commentaries on Prologues A and B, and cantigas 1, 2, 10, 54, 98, and the Pitiçon.