Angelus or The touch of the Virgin: the Music in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (13th century) by King Alfonso X
Bárbara Dantas
Original title: Angelus ou O toque da Virgem: a Música nas Cantigas de Santa Maria (séc. XIII) do rei Afonso X
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Alfonso X, Architecture, Art, Cantigas de Santa María, Middle Ages, Music, Poetry.
Harmonious as a song, the Galician-Portuguese poetry, systematized by the zéjel metric, was the basis of the poetry of Cantigas de Santa Maria, a compilation that contains reports of miracles and praises to the Virgin performed in the second half of the 13th century at the request of the castilian king Alfonso X (1221-1284), creator, sponsor and supervisor of the work. In Cantigas, reality is overcome by imagination without limits and the relation of poetry with two other artistic forms (Music and image) makes it literary support in which the themes of the songs to the Virgin were formed. Music and image share with the poetry a sensitivity capable of expressing in different ways certain reports of miracles or praise. For this article, I present to you the Cantiga 276 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. From iconographic and architectural analyzes, I realized the association between church bells, the architecture of the sanctuary towers where they are housed and the melody of the Angelus (The Virgin's Touch).
Soissons: the stone builds the Marian faith (The Cantiga 53 of Cantigas de Santa Maria by Afonso X)
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: Soissons: a pedra edifica a fé mariana (a Cantiga 53 das Cantigas de Santa Maria de Afonso X)
Published in Mirabilia Journal
Keywords: Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa María, Middle Ages, Soissons Cathedral.
Alfonso X, sovereign of the peninsular kingdoms of León and Castilla, honored the fame of the kings of the medieval West of the 13th century and dedicated much of his time and money to promoting the arts, sciences and Marian cult. One of the ways to unite all these initiatives was the creation of the Cantigas de Santa María, a set of hundreds of stories of miracles and praises to the Virgin Mary, in which another hundred full-page illuminations are recorded. This work will focus on Cantiga 53 and aims to show the technical development implemented by gothic architects, as well as the syncretism between the French and peninsular kingdoms with regard to cathedral architecture, for the example of Soissons Cathedral.
The Architecture in the Cantigas de Santa María
Bárbara Dantas
Original title: A Arquitetura nas Cantigas de Santa María
Published in
Keywords: Architecture, Cantigas de Santa María, King Alfonso X, Middle Ages.
The king Alfonso X believes in the power of the Virgin Mary to overcome the evil. He orders scholars and craftsmen to produce the Cantigas de Santa María, compendium with more than four hundred reports of miracles and praises to the Virgin, versed in galician-portuguese. Book illuminators have enriched your offering with hundreds of illuminations and thousands of capitular letters. In addition, the verses were accompanied by musical notations, labor that handed to troubadours. In the work, there are three artistic expressions: Literature, Painting and Music. The medieval world is represented in the Cantigas, an artistic prototype of a fully lived reality. Submissive to the temporality of the source, the research began with the reading of the Cantigas and the selection of the most cited artistic supports. Sixteen cantigas and their illuminations make mention of Architecture are present in this work. To analyze the historical illuminations, the method of iconographic analysis of Erwin Panofsky was used. Jean-Claude Schmitt's proposal of articulation between image and text was essential for this book. The objective of this work is to show that Architecture was the artistic expression chosen by the craftsmen of the alfonso´s codex to represent the mental dimension of the marian cult, faith in which the gothic architecture dignified those who worked for this purpose, from the peasantry to the king, but above, the work of the Master builders, doctors in stone, the architects.
The Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Afonso X (13th century). Cantiga 84: religious orders and aedificationes
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: As Cantigas de Santa Maria do rei Afonso X (século XIII). Cantiga 84: as ordens religiosas e as aedificationes
Published in
Keywords: Cantigas de Santa María, Medieval Architecture, Medieval Literature, Miniature, Religious Orders.
This work aims to show the importance of medieval religious orders for the realization of architectural works in the medieval period. The main source of this study is not an architectural work in itself, but a codex. Both in images and texts, this book delights us with many references to architectural works. It is the Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Afonso X. A compendium of the 13th century formed by about 420 songs recorded in Galician-Portuguese through rhythmic verses. The songs are “illuminated” by hundreds of historical full-page illuminations that represent in images what the text says in words. Cantiga 84 is the driving force behind this brief survey of some buildings that marked the Middle Ages and still enchant the world.
