page_title: Cantigas de Santa Maria
section_title: Codices
hierarchical_section_title: Cantigas de Santa Maria / Description / Codices
context_page_description: The Cantigas de Santa Maria are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the medieval Galician-Portuguese language during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile El Sabio and often attributed to him.
  It is one of the largest collections of monophonic songs from the Middle Ages and is characterized by the mention of the Virgin Mary in every song, while every tenth song is a hymn.
  The Cantigas have survived in four manuscript codices: two at El Escorial, one at Madrid's National Library, and one in Florence, Italy. The E codex from El Escorial is illuminated with colored miniatures showing pairs of musicians playing a wide variety of instruments. The Códice Rico from El Escorial and the one in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence are richly illuminated with narrative vignettes.
context_section_description: The Cantigas are preserved in four manuscripts: To (códice de Toledo, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 10069), T (Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS T.I.1), F (códice de Florencia, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS b.r. 20) and E (códice de los músicos, Biblioteca de El Escorial MS B.I.2). E contains the largest number of songs (406 Cantigas, plus the Introduction and the Prologue); it contains 41 carefully detailed miniatures and many illuminated letters. To is the earliest collection and contains 129 songs. Although not illustrated, it is richly decorated with pen flourished initials, and great care has been taken over its construction. The T and F manuscripts are sister volumes. T contains 195 surviving cantigas (8 are missing due to loss of folios) which roughly correspond in order to the first two hundred in E, each song being illustrated with either 6 or 12 miniatures that depict scenes from the cantiga. F follows the same format but has only 111 cantigas, of which 7 have no text, only miniatures. These are basically a subset of those found in the second half of E, but are presented here in a radically different order. F was never finished, and so no music was ever added. Only the empty staves display the intention to add musical notation to the codex at a later date. It is generally thought that the codices were constructed during Alfonso's lifetime, To perhaps in the 1270s, and T/F and E in the early 1280s up until the time of his death in 1284.
caption: Miniatures, Cantiga #35
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