THE CANTIGA OF VALCAVADO. CRITICAL AND STUDY EDITION

Since its first publication just over a century ago, what has come to be known as the Cantiga of Valcavado has not received the attention it deserves for its uniqueness and importance. It was not until the end of the last century that some partial approximations were found, and it was not until the first decade of the present century that a new edition was published, highlighting the need for an in-depth study of the text and its context. The Cantiga of Valcavado, an undoubted example of a Marian cantiga, but which was nevertheless not included in the collection sponsored by Alfonso X, is found on folio 3 recto of the Valcavado Beatus codex. Written in an extremely precarious manner and on a completely anomalous medium, it presents serious problems not only related to its textual fixation, but also to its dating, its authorship, the interpretation of its particular linguistic physiognomy, its relationship with the Alfonsine corpus, and the reconstruction of the history of its manuscript transmission. This work offers a new critical text and addresses all these aspects, proposing a comprehensive hypothesis that attempts to address the aforementioned problem.