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CANTIGAS DE FRANCIA.
Alfonso X El Sabio. 1221 - 1284.
Eduardo Paniagua.
PN-520
Alfonso X (1221-1294), king of Castile and León, pursuer for
eighteen years (1257-1275) of the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, has
been labelled "Emperor of Culture" because of the intensity
of his works on History, Science and Law, and because of his participation
in poetry, music, book illumination and architecture.
As part of his project of rendering into the vernacular the classical
knowledge of the Arabic, Latin and Hebrew cultures, he ordered the production
of some manuscripts comprising the most advanced ideas in these fields.
The intellectual cast of his court, with experts and connoisseurs from
the furthermost parts of the known world, gradually made himself and
his kingdoms more and more renowned in the Europe of the 13th century.
It is in the poems from the Cantigas of Santa María, written
in the Galician-Portuguese language, rather than the works written in
Castillian, that the poet-king is personally best reflected.
Alfonso gathered a great number of Iberian and Transpyrenean Marian
works from before his time. Among the latter it is worth pointing out
the French sources for the Cantigas of the different Marian sanctuaries:
Rocamadour, Soissons, Paris, Chartres, etc; and the authors: Hugo Farsitus,
Gautier de Coincy, Herman de Laon, Gobius, Etienne deBourbon, Vincent
de Beauvais, Jean Le Marchand, the Speculum Historiale and the Provençal
miracles.
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