Despite the existence of many studies on the sources and the circumstances that would lead to the composition of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Songbook), elaborated in the scriptorium of the Castilian-Leonese King Alfonso X during the second half of the 13th century, many questions still remain unanswered before there is a satisfactory explanation whether for scholars or simple enthusiasts of this magnum opus. This mostly stems from the absence of documentary sources and the lack of concrete references – other than rhetorical comments – whether to the production context of these texts or to the models that might have inspired them.

While, for the first part of the collection, it is clear that the reasons for the inclusion of many of the Cantigas de Santa Maria songs corresponds to Alfonso X’s desire to imitate the great collections of Marian miracles that spread throughout Europe with the purpose of demonstrating – precisely through his choice of the most famous prodigies – his deep devotion to the Virgin Mary, nevertheless, these reasons no longer seem sufficient to justify some of the other inclusions as the collection advances.

In fact, in addition to the miracles of international renown unrelated to the propaganda activities of local shrines, miracles soon begin to appear in the work which demonstrate a connection with places of worship consecrated to the Virgin Mary located on the Peninsula and with the rationale behind their composition not seeming to coincide only with an aesthetic or doctrinal taste arising from a highly consolidated miraculous tradition.

Returning to some of the sanctuaries chosen to represent the Virgin Mary’s capacity to manifest on the Peninsula (such as, and for example, those of Tudia, Rooms, Villasirga and the Portuguese case of Terena), it immediately becomes apparent that other reasons linked to the political and personal vicissitudes of the monarch overlap with those already mentioned of a devotional order.

On the basis of these preliminary observations, anchored in previous contributions that have appropriately highlighted the progressive inclusion of these more localised prodigies and/or those linked to the political experiences of the Castilian-Leonese sovereign, this seminar will strive to define some of the possible motivations that would lead Alfonso X and his collaborators to consider some sanctuaries rather than others and how much (and where) the “weight of history” might operate in their selection and their miracles.

In this sense and in keeping with the proposed title, this meeting will focus on understanding whether the historical and personal biography of the Castilian monarch played a decisive role during the collection phase of the prodigies that will be examined or if, in certain cases, the sovereign took advantage of a set of traditional materials and motives to renew them in a new and personally favourable political and social context.

Biographical note
Manuel Negri obtained his Master’s Degree in Modern Philology from the University of Padua in 2012 and has, since 2017, been a Medieval Studies doctoral degree student on an Extraordinary Grant Award from the University of Santiago de Compostela for his thesis on the saints and models of saintliness in the Cantigas de Santa Maria Songbook. He is currently a Contracted Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Galician Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (I2C – Mod. A, funded by the Galician Regional Council) and Academic Visitor at the Faculty of Medieval Language and Literature, the University of Oxford. His research primarily focuses on medieval Galician-Portuguese religious poetry, specifically on the sources for the Cantigas de Santa Maria Songbook and their linkage with the historical, cultural and literary contexts of the 13th century Iberian Peninsula. He has participated in several international congresses dedicated to medieval literature and his works have been published in the most renowned journals in this field, including Cultura Neolatina, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Revista de Literatura Medieval and Critica del Testo. He is a member of the Hispanic Association of Medieval Literature (AHLM) and an Integrated Researcher at the Centre for History of Society and Culture, the University of Coimbra (CHSC).