Structural Confusion in the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Navigating Unstable Narratives in the Miracles of Castrojeriz

Abstract

This article addresses links between musical-poetic structure and architecture in four songs of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Made at Alfonso X of Castile’s court in the latter years of his reign (1252–84), the Cantigas present a unique case of miracle narratives (cantigas de miragre) set to song. As Parkinson has shown, the four songs in the Castrojeriz set present technical faults that hinder effective comprehension of their miracle texts. This article shows that the songs’ cyclical structures can aid textual logic by aligning narrative highlights with points of sonic focus in the poetry and music. Tension between textual and musical-poetic form often mirrors the songs’ narratives, which concern difficulties during the construction of Castrojeriz’s church. This article argues that such tensions can be read as a text-as-building metaphor, also alluded to in the songs as they appear in surviving manuscripts.

The links between musical composition and architecture have long been a source of debate in the intellectual discourse of the later Middle Ages. From Vitruvius’s De architectura, laws that govern the rational arrangement of space within a building have been compared to the acoustic designs for theatres, musical instruments, and machines designed to make various forms of noise.¹ In her analysis of the intersections between musical and artistic theory, Bonnie J. Blackburn has shown how the crossover between the two disciplines attests to a drive to ‘elevate architecture to the status of a liberal art’, and while her study focuses on Renaissance musical theory it also testifies to strong precedent in the writings of medieval authorities.² This confluence between composition and construction is compelling, and has retained currency long beyond the departure of Renaissance humanism. The dictum that architecture represents music in material form – as a kind of ‘frozen sound’ – has persisted through the Romantic era and, some have argued, continues to inform contemporary approaches towards sound, space, and composition.³ The power of this analogy rests upon processes and parameters that are common to the art of making in both disciplines. To make a composition requires creative imagination, which must be regulated by planning, organization, and an awareness of one’s practical limitations. Such restrictions to a writer’s or composer’s creativity can also emerge through the structural parameters of textual or musical form. These priorities remain pertinent to the art of construction, too, where laws of physics pose structural boundaries that regulate an architect’s creative drive, along with principles of aesthetic taste.

This article considers the porous boundaries between the architectural and the musical-poetic in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of 427 Marian devotional songs, written in Galician-Portuguese at the court of Alfonso X of Castile in the latter half of the thirteenth century.⁴ This collection is multifaceted in its choice of song forms, yet the majority – 356, or 83.4 per cent of the total – are narrative miracle songs, which are known as cantigas de miragre. This article offers a context-rich analysis of a subset of four cantigas de miragre, all of which are set in the northern Castilian fortress town of Castrojeriz. These songs recount the building of the church of Nuestra Señora del Manzano, a structure that still stands on the edge of the town today.⁵ Their narratives concern a series of accidents that took place during this period of the church’s construction.⁶ In ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ (CSM 242) and ‘Aquel que de voontade’ (CSM 249), a stonemason loses his footing on a scaffold inside the unfinished church.⁷ Meanwhile, ‘Tan gran poder a ssa Madre’ (CSM 252) recalls how a team of masons, working underneath the church, is trapped by an avalanche of sand.⁸ Finally, in ‘De muitas guisas miragres’ (CSM 266), a beam falls onto a congregation from precarious heights during a mass.⁹

The Castrojeriz set has been examined before, and earlier studies prove how the set’s songs pose unique questions regarding poetic structure, narrative cohesion, and compositional process. In his 1998 study, Stephen Parkinson noted copious grammatical errors that occur in all four songs, and several of these complicate the logic in sentence formation.¹⁰ Parkinson theorized that at least two of the miracles in the set (CSM 242 and CSM 249) represent parallel miracles composed at the same time, using similar schematic narratives with prominent reuse of text. His findings, corroborated by a later 2011 study, point towards a wider phenomenon throughout the Cantigas of narrative duplication, evidenced by similar patterns of paired, or grouped, narratives.¹¹ Parkinson’s analyses show the complications inherent in setting the Castrojeriz tales to song, where poetic manipulation of their texts works alongside a complex series of compositional stages in the surviving manuscripts.¹² This present article adds a further, musicological voice to this discussion. The following analysis suggests that the Castrojeriz songs’ structural issues can help inform their interpretation, where text and music, when crafted into a song structure, can work metaphorically to mirror the building blocks that form an architectural edifice. Songs can thereby depict architectural stability – or lack thereof – sonically through the medium of poetry and music, as well as visually when such songs are inscribed onto the pages of a manuscript.

This article builds its own line of argument by examining thirteenth-century intellectual associations between song composition and the construction of buildings. Such interplay between ideals of musical-poetic composition and architecture demonstrate a long historical precedent, and the following discussion shows how allegorizations of the rhetorically regulated text as a strong and stable edifice rests upon a much older, literary foundation built from Classical and Biblical sources. This article then presents a focused study of two Castrojeriz miracles – ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ and ‘Aquel que de voontade’ – which are of interest given the close similarity that Parkinson has already observed between their narrative plotlines. Assessing these songs’ musical-poetic forms alongside their texts, sonic structures – particularly the cantiga de miragre’s prominent vuelta section – can emphasize significant moments within the songs’ narratives. The song form thereby works as a sonic scaffold that supports the dissemination of textual meaning. Conversely, moments where music and poetry clash with narrative logic allegorize problems in the Castrojeriz church’s construction. Similar themes of structural cohesion and rupture also emerge in the miniatures of the Castrojeriz narratives that survive in one of the Cantiga manuscripts, codex F. This dialogue between musical-poetic and visual architecture points to a new understanding of the construction of the Cantigas, and suggests further ways in which the poets’ priorities might have been echoed by others who were part of the wider Cantiga project, such as musicians and illuminators.¹³ Such a methodological approach – one that integrates musicology, poetry studies, art history, and architecture – is rare in the discipline. Yet this blurring of methodologies offers invaluable potential for scholars in disparate fields, who might consider how other repertories can be read as analogous to architectural edifices or processes of construction.

Composition and Construction: An Intellectual Context to the Castrojeriz Set

Early associations between the composition of texts and the art of construction emerge in rhetorical treatises, which compare the subdivisions of a speech to the blocks that make up a building. David Cowling notes how Plato’s Gorgias likens the ordering, framing, and gathering of rhetorical tools to the preparation of building material. These parallels are also echoed in Dionysius of Harlicarnassus’s De compositione verborum. ¹⁴ The author and engineer Vitruvius’s treatise De architectura borrows Ciceronian rhetorical terms for order (ordinatione), arrangement (dispositione), and proportion (eurythmia) for the erection of buildings.¹⁵ Quintilian in his Institutio oratoria compares the role of rhetorician and poet to that of builder or architect. Buildings, Quintilian reasons, consist not just of raw building materials; rather, they need to be deployed and assembled into a rational organization (or dispositio), linking them up logically.¹⁶ A speech, poem, or song must make use of the necessary constituent parts, assembled rationally by those skilled in the art of rhetorical reasoning.¹⁷ This procedure requires a writer to assemble their text, which is achieved by arranging the material into a hierarchically compiled form that comprises interlocking textual components. Mary J. Carruthers observes how these ideas were adopted into early Christian thought, from the representation of Christ as the keystone of the Church, to the designation of St Peter and the popes as the foundations upon which the Church is built (Matthew 16. 18).¹⁸ In the New Testament image of the Church centred on Christ, early Christian sources incorporate the community of the faithful into this architectural ensemble. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he regards the body of believers within the Church as an assembly of kinsmen and friends to the saints, built upon foundations of apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2. 19–22). All unite into one cohesive, logical assembly of faith, supported ultimately by Christ. These New Testament ideas stem from a passage in Psalm 118 that compares God to the rejected cornerstone (Psalm 118. 22), which Christ, his disciples, and the evangelists heavily quote in the gospels and epistles.¹⁹

The theological link between architecture and text in biblical sources was highly influential to early patristic thinkers from the time of Origen. In his Ars rhetorica, Atilius Fortunatianus compares the architectural ductus – which comprises a channel used in the conveyance of liquids – to the ductus of rhetoric.²⁰ Both the rhetorical and the musical ductus share the idea of leading: whereas a rhetorical ductus comprises elements of a speech that direct listeners to think in a particular way, the musical ductus leads a melody to a particular range or tonality.²¹ The musical ductus can refer to the signal of either a conductor or a notational grapheme that leads performers to make specific melodic gestures. Meanwhile, Rabanus Maurus likens exegetical methods for scriptural text to parts of a building in his prologue to the Allegoriae in universam sacram scripturam, with historia as the foundation, allegoria forming the walls, anagogia the roof, and triopologia as the decoration.²² In Rabanus’s allegory, historia sets the precedent for inventio. It is thus the basis of memoria, which Elizabeth Eva Leach shows to be the source of available, pre-existing ideas that the mind assembles – like a builder or craftsman – into new structures and ideas.²³ This text-as-building metaphor was also used as a rhetorical means to justify the morality of architectural standards. In his treatise on the construction of church buildings, John Bromyard uses the terms ordinatio and dispositio for the organization of a monastic house’s cloister. Such rhetorically charged terms imbued the spatial organization of a sacred house with the moral and spiritual beauty characteristic of a well-constructed sermon or religious letter.²⁴ This porousness between building and composition emerges, too, in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s influential Poetria nova, where he instructs writers of verse to assess the material relevant to the matter at hand before the act of composition, as an architect draws up a circle with a compass to plan a building. The workman–poet should construct the whole fabric of the poem within the buildings of the mind.²⁵ Here, Carruthers observes the conventional image of the composer as master builder, comparing the depiction of the builder or surveyor as mapper to the composer as mapper: one who needs to plot a composition in the mind before performing it or writing it down.

The text-as-building metaphor most commonly deploys a church or temple as an allegorized receptacle of logically structured arguments within sacred texts. Such a metaphor helps strengthen the faith of the believers, who are convinced by the reading of these texts. Most instances of the metaphor describe a sacred building as resting on strong foundations, representing a firmly argued basis in historia and memoria. ²⁶ The impenetrable walls represent either the allegoria that supports an argument, or the approbatio of circumstantial evidence.²⁷ Both these components must be suitably well constructed to support the argumentatio in the building’s roof.²⁸ Thus, the text-as-building metaphor consistently valorizes the building in positive terms as robust, secure, and impregnable. Why then might the writers of the Castrojeriz set complicate this metaphor, by highlighting complications in the church’s construction? How can participants make sense of four songs that – rather than uphold the text-as-building metaphor in its conventional form – instead subvert it to highlight its potential shortfalls?²⁹ Given that rhetorical texts made in Iberia close to the time of the Cantigas’ production rely heavily on sources that deploy text-as-building metaphors, composers and listeners would have approached such repertoire with certain expectations.³⁰ If the Cantigas’ participants performed or listened to the Castrojeriz set, the metaphor would have acquired new meaning, given that these texts potentially imply God’s house as prone to structural collapse.³¹

Castrojeriz is just one of a series of places that form the focus of miracle collections in the Cantigas. ³² Yet the presence of four related stories about the church is unsurprising, given the significance that it and the surrounding town held to the Castilian royal family.³³ Alfonso X’s grandmother Berengaria of Castile (c. 1179–1246) was a distinguished patron of the Order of Santiago, which defended all towns that – like Castrojeriz – lay along the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago. Berengaria’s special devotion to Nuestra Señora del Manzano is implied through her will of 1214, which commanded the construction of a new church building. Given Alfonso X’s close family relationship with his grandmother, it is understandable that a church into which she invested active interest should be mentioned several times in his own personal, artistic, and spiritual project.³⁴ Since these four works fall nearby to each other in their two surviving witnesses, were written at a similar stage of the Cantiga project, and contain a unified construction theme, it is also feasible that they would have been perceived as a self-contained set.³⁵ Structural or narrative features common to the Cantiga collection therefore operate differently here, given the interaction between the set’s subject matter – concerning the assembly of a church – and the parallel construction of a story set to song. A product of the following analysis is therefore a reframing of conventional Cantiga analysis and its need to apply universal standards across the repertoire. In so doing, this article questions the cohesiveness of the repertory – grounded in the theory that Alfonso X represents the unifying author of the collection – and instead considers the Castrojeriz set as a product of more than one individual, each of whom responded to the specific contexts under which the set was created.³⁶ This article therefore offers a new way to approach universal methodologies towards vernacular song studies, accommodating the tendency to apply generalizing standards where specific contexts are also important.³⁷

Two Cantigas de Santa Maria: ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ (CSM 242) and ‘Aquel que de voontade’ (CSM 249)

Two accounts of the same story, ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ and ‘Aquel que de voontade’, form the focus of Parkinson’s study.³⁸ Both contain similar storylines of a stonemason who loses his footing while working at the top of Castrojeriz’s church. There is only one significant narrative difference between these two songs: in ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’, the stonemason is saved from falling by the Virgin, whereas in ‘Aquel que de voontade’ the worker manages to fall and survive without injury. Parkinson has argued convincingly that ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ in its current form arose from a five-strophe version that had been expanded by a well-meaning yet technically inexperienced scribe, whereas ‘Aquel que de voontade’ is an adaptation from CSM 242’s original.³⁹ Parkinson concludes that expansion in ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ explains the want of narrative progression in its third to fifth strophes, as well as its infelicities of syntax and grammar. The purpose of the following discussion is not to refute Parkinson’s valid claims regarding both songs’ origins. This article does nevertheless suggest alternative ways in which these songs could have conveyed meaning to their participants, despite ostensibly lacking syntactical or grammatical direction.

It is certainly true that CSM 242 has a less than conventional narrative structure (Example 1). In most cantigas de miragre, the authorial voice – implicitly but probably not literally Alfonso X – speaks to the reader in the first strophe as part of an opening exordium. ⁴⁰ Such an opening is common to a large number of the Cantigas, but ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ is unusual in that this introduction is distributed across two strophes. Strophe one expands upon the sentiments described in the refrain (‘E d’ ela fazer aquesto | á gran poder, a la fe’, 1.1). The listener then hears Alfonso X state his will to narrate – a common trope of the opening – at the beginning of the second strophe.⁴¹ The main narrative body – in which the stonemason slips and is saved miraculously by his fingernails – only begins in the third strophe, and continues to the fifth strophe with much copying of material in between.⁴² Parkinson suggests the first strophe’s dramatic redundancy is proof that it was added later, which justifies ‘giving musicians what they frequently want – good reason for omitting one or more strophes to make a performance of manageable (or recordable) length’.⁴³ While Parkinson’s analysis accurately notes the narrative stasis at this early section of the song, the inference that strophes can simply be omitted must be probed further. Although the narrative of CSM 242 may seem incoherent – and even though the song may have functioned in an earlier form that was subsequently expanded – the analyst can still consider how such a rehashed form might have been approached and rationalized by the song’s participants.⁴⁴

Example 1 Text, translation, and melody of ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ (CSM 242).

Despite the problems posed by the narrative structure, the musical-poetic form offers consistency to ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ and the rest of the set.⁴⁵ A feature observed across the cantigas de miragre – present in both CSM 242 and the rest of the Castrojeriz songs – is the combination of a cyclical musical-poetic structure with a linear miracle narrative.⁴⁶ The structure of most cantigas de miragre is one based upon repetition, typified by the form commonly known as the zejel (Example 2).⁴⁷ This structure is grounded around moralistic refrains, which alternate with a sequence of narrative strophes. Complicating this cyclical refrain–strophe model is the repetition that takes place within a strophe, which is typified by the oscillation between two sections, known the mudanza and vuelta. The section that occupies the first half of the strophe – the mudanza – characterizes itself by its distinction from the refrain, achieved by deploying different metrics, rhymes, and melody. The unfamiliarity generated by the mudanza is short-lived, however, since it is followed by the vuelta. This latter section represents a point of sonic return and familiarity – one that is ‘memorially marked’ – achieved by recapping the refrain’s metre and melody, which brings listeners back to the memory of the original refrain.⁴⁸ This culmination of familiar metrics and melody intensifies with the arrival of the refrain’s rhyme, which usually occurs in the final line(s) of the vuelta. This build-up of familiar elements propels the vuelta forward, leading audiences to expect the return of the refrain with its moralistic message. It is this constant switching – first between refrains and strophes, and second between the mudanza and the vuelta – that makes the cantiga de miragre embody an almost-perpetual cycle between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Example 2 Simplified structural summary of the majority of cantigas de miragre.

Such a form does not always coincide with the narrative linearity of the strophes. The switching between refrain and strophe interrupts narrative trains of thought, while the refrain that breaks apart the plotline has little to do with the strophe text in a strictly narrative sense.⁴⁹ Such rupture is made more apparent by the frequency of enjambement, or incomplete syntax that occurs at the end of a musical-poetic unit.⁵⁰ Enjambement forces narrative segments to spill over into the following line, and where this break occurs between strophes the narrative must be cut by the interjecting refrain, thereby generating a sense of structural separation. This article argues that the Castrojeriz songs deploy these structural features as a metaphor for the construction theme of the church of Nuestra Señora del Manzano. The cantiga de miragre’s structure is sound enough to use the vuelta as a point of familiarity, which hones listeners’ attentions to the central narrative points of the miracle story. On the other hand, moments of disjunction – intensified by jarring interstrophic enjambement – mirrors the theme of unpredictability in the town church’s construction. Given the specific contexts under which the Castrojeriz songs were written, and the subject matter they handle, universal facets of style – interstrophic enjambement and circular musical-poetic form – acquire new and unique meaning when framed within these construction narratives. Parkinson’s valuable analysis of the Castrojeriz set therefore sits alongside a specific context, where unstable song forms were rationalized and reinterpreted based upon particular approaches towards understanding song text.

A sonic turning back is an essential component in CSM 242’s strophe, with its vuelta falling in lines 3–4. Melodically, CSM 242 incorporates a complete recap of the musical refrain beginning in line 3 of the strophe – that is, two full lines before the recap of rhyme ‘a’. The song’s poetic form is identical to the other three songs: recap of the refrain rhyme ‘a’ in line 4 of each strophe, falling at the conclusion of the vuelta. CSM 242 also displays a clear division between a musical-poetic mudanza in the earlier half of each strophe, and the sonically charged vuelta in the latter half, which prefigures the arrival of the refrain. Integral to this process – as in the majority of cantigas de miragre – is the gradual return of the refrain’s metre, melody, and (finally) its ‘-er’ rhyme in the vuelta. This sense of return generates expectancy for and focuses attention upon the refrain that ensues.⁵¹ It follows – as has been argued elsewhere – that the sonically impactful vuelta displays a clear affordance for highlighting its text, and thrusts it into prominence in contrast to the less distinctive mudanza sections.⁵² It is through sonic familiarity that CSM 242’s structure can support its narrative and carry home the central points of the miracle.

In ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’, this structure works in such a way that when placed together – separate from their mudanzas – the texts of each successive vuelta work to create a coherent, independent narrative, as displayed in Example 3. Turning to the main narrative events in the third to fifth strophes, Parkinson notes much duplication of text; however, when taken sequentially, there is a clear sequence in the vueltas of the stonemason working (‘lavrar encima da obra’, 3.4), falling (‘coidou caer’, 4.3), invocating (‘e assi chamand’ estava | a Sennor’, 5.3), and being saved (‘e colgado por caer’, 5.4). The interstrophic enjambement between strophes three, four, and five – ponderous when viewed as a succession of strophes with interposed refrains – allows these sections to link narratively (and almost syntactically) when they are viewed as a hypothetical supra-narrative edifice.⁵³ Parkinson views such repetition as corruptions from an original pair of strophes that were expanded.⁵⁴ Had ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ been written anew – without recourse to this older draft – he shows how the narrative structure would have been more linear, with fewer cases of duplication. While Parkinson’s claims are certainly valid, it is also possible to see the vueltas as conveying the main points of action throughout the narrative. As the vuelta – with its memorable refrain-based metrics, melody, and rhyme – is more readily heard and remembered, these sections of text sound more prominently to performers and listeners, even when scattered in between other narrative material. The text stands out because of the vuelta’s melodic similarity to the refrain, a sonic highlight that may well have been intended for audience participation, and hence called for greater expectation.

Example 3 Strophes 2–6 of ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ (CSM 242), with successive vuelta sections emphasized to show narrative progression.

As well as shoring up potential weaknesses in narrative structure, vuelta sections frequently furnish additional exegetical meaning to what has been heard already.⁵⁵ In the first strophe, Parkinson correctly notes that there is poetic deficiency brought about by repetition of vocabulary. Specifically, lines 1.1–2 and 1.4 both make use of ‘vertude’ and ‘poder’. Nevertheless, their division within two sections of the strophe imbues them with subtly different meanings. Lines 1.1–2 offer up circumstantial information on Mary’s authority: it has been given to her from God (‘ca Deus lle deu tal vertude | que sobre natura é’, 1.2). Yet it is only in the vuelta section where the essential explication is given: Mary utilizes this power and virtue to come to the aid of her believers, and this is done swiftly to those who ask for it (‘mui tost’ acá nos acorre | sa vertud’ e seu poder’, 1.4). The audible reappearance of the ‘a’ rhyme (‘-er’) in line 1.4 accentuates the relation between her aid (‘e seu poder’) and the faith of her believers mentioned in the refrain (‘mui cruu de creer’, R1): it refers implicitly to the pair of line endings in R1 and R2, linking her faithful (‘creer’, R1) and the active verb of performing (‘fazer’, R2) with the Virgin’s divine authority (‘poder’, 1.4). Thus there is a clear accord in semantics, generated by the simultaneous harmony in metre, melody, and rhyme that can only occur between the vuelta and refrain.

Subsequent sections of the song work in similar ways. In the second strophe, the listener observes geographical specifics in the mudanza (‘que en Castroxeriz fezo’, 2.2), whereas the vuelta clarifies the agent (‘por un bon ome pedreiro’, 2.3) and his devotion (‘que cada dia lavrar | ya ena sa ygreja’, 2.3–4), while summarizing the fundamental narrative of the miracle. The main miracle event – Mary not letting the stonemason die (‘non quis leixar morrer’, 2.4) – is reserved for the end of the vuelta at the recurrence of the ‘a’ rhyme. Parkinson notes that the vuelta in the fifth strophe essentially repeats material found in the mudanza (‘Enas unllas atan ben | o teve’, 5.1–2; ‘dependorado das unllas’, 5.4), and yet it also reframes repeated information within the didactic message of the song; namely, that the stonemason was saved from falling (‘caer’) as a consequence of his invocation to Mary (‘e assi chamand’ estava | a Sennor que nos manten’, 5.3). This passage in the vuelta contradicts its mudanza, which is dramatically superfluous: that the stonemason did not fall, even though he may have been large and unwieldy (‘macar gross’ era’, 5.2). Similarly, the enjambed line between 4.4 and 5.1, although ungainly in construction, fulfils some demand for clarity. It aligns the ‘teer’ of 4.4 sonically with Mary’s miraculous act that is mentioned in the refrain (‘ligeiro fazer’, R2). That the rest of the sentence is enjambed to the end of the line is less problematic: although the grammatical structure is corrupted, the Virgin as subject is apparent by context, and is implied intertextually by her mention in the refrain text that follows (‘pode-o Santa Maria | mui de ligeiro fazer’, R2).

Given that ‘Aquel que de voontade’ was probably based upon a common exemplar to CSM 242’s original, five-strophe version, it is instructive to reassess this second narrative of the lucky stonemason, with attention to the links between its refrain and vuelta sections.⁵⁶ Whereas both CSM 242 and CSM 249 display a great deal of structural likeness, ‘Aquel que de voontade’ was evidently created along simpler, more narratively chronological lines (Example 4). Compared to the pervasive enjambement between strophes in CSM 242, no cases emerge in ‘Aquel que de voontade’ that create serious disruption of the narrative.⁵⁷ Each return of the vuelta introduces a new turn in the miracle’s plot, with the mudanza in lines 1–2 merely recycling narrative material from the preceding vuelta. Thus, lines 2.3–4 introduce the protagonist of the miracle (‘Mas un deles ren pedir’, 2.4), whereas 3.3–4 announces the miracle for the second time (‘E porend’ or’ ascoitade | o que ll’avẽo enton’, 3.3). In lines 4.3–4 listeners learn of the accident (‘foron-ll’ os pees falir’, 4.4), whereas 5.3–4 introduces Mary’s salvation (‘assi o guardou a Virgen’, 5.4), and 6.3–4 turns to the protagonist’s praise (‘por loar a ssa mercee | e os seus bẽes gracir’, 6.4).⁵⁸ This structure therefore supports the telling of novel and significant material, which is focused in the memorially marked vuelta. Old narrative material tends to fall in the mudanza, allowing performers to relay it to those listeners who did not grasp it fully the first time. Sonic cues of melody and rhyme also help recall previous sections of the song’s narrative that are thrust into new contexts. The recap of the refrain’s ‘a’ rhymes displays prominent themes of devotion to Mary (‘Santa Maria servir’, R1), as well as listeners’ potential to doubt an unlikely miracle (‘sen mentir’, R2).⁵⁹ It explicates the Thomist view – popular in the late thirteenth century – that though doubt may beset the believer, faith acts as the primary vehicle to truth, over and above scientific reason.⁶⁰ Thus there is reference in 1.4 to ‘mentes’, a cognate of ‘mentir’ in R2, reflecting the subject’s ability to heed the message in the first strophe, despite doubting its validity.⁶¹ The authorial voice of Alfonso therefore requests that the audience hear attentively (‘e querede-o oyr’, 1.4) – a common trope in opening strophes – to understand the message of the song: truth via faith literally arrives to the believer through sonic experience.

Example 4 Text, translation, and melody of ‘Aquel que de voontade’ (CSM 249).

This revelation emerges through an understanding of the text, but also via sonic recall of the refrain, instigated during each return of the vuelta. For instance, the narrator in strophe three exclaims that listeners can recount the miracle to others if they take heed (‘que falar e departir’, 3.4). Yet here participants’ doubts are also implied: if they are truly faithful, the reader of the miracle will be willing to risk scepticism and even derision when they recount it to others. Other strophes use the sonic memory of the refrain to comment further on the implausibility of the miracle: the refrain that follows 4.4 (‘foron-ll’ os pees falir’) and 5.4 (‘que sol non se foi ferir’) implies that the believer may take the story for a lie. Nevertheless, R1 assures the listener that they will be willing to believe the miracle if they are genuine followers. The good faith of the narrative subject – he who asks for nothing more than to serve Mary (‘ren pedir’, 2.4) and give thanks for his blessings (‘os seus beẽs gracir’, 6.4) – is thus implicitly conjured up through association with the ‘a’ rhyme at each successive vuelta.

The relations between these two songs are obvious given the similarity of their stories, not to mention the ways they deal with the sonic planning of narrative. Although their narratives are far from straightforward, the sonic weight of both songs’ refrain melodies offers a scaffold that supports and restores meaning to sections that are otherwise misunderstood. So far, this article has shown how cyclical structures – far from impeding the intelligibility of narrative – can work as a tool that guides the audience, driving home essential narrative messages in miracle stories, which concern the characters’ needs to remain faithful to the Virgin in the face of mortal danger. The imbrication of the stonemason narrative and the songs’ moral lesson is achieved by the sonic impact of the refrain, which functions both as a textual motif to interrupt the miracle, and its melodic reminder in the vuelta that re-emerges with new text contrafacted to it. This musicological contribution to the Castrojeriz set’s existing scholarship also showcases the role of sound and memory in supporting messages within a song’s text for the benefit of its audience.

Destabilizing Enjambement

Even in a group as self-contained as the Castrojeriz set, there are instances where the sonic power of the vuelta cannot paper over blatant cases of rupture. Many of these instances occur at moments of interstrophic enjambement, which sever narrative passages mid-clause and place the non-narrative refrain in between. Such an interruption occurs in line 3.4 of ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’. Here the strophe ends with a passive, non-descriptive word, ‘acaecer’ (‘to happen’, or ‘to befall’). Given that refrain rhymes are often associated with narrative drive when recalled in the vuelta, ‘acaecer’ seems anticlimactic in comparison to the preceding narrative. We can attribute such writing to poor craftsmanship; however, ‘acaecer’ also helps create dramatic suspense. The concomitance of such an unrevealing term with the dynamically active sonic cue of the vuelta informs listeners that although ‘acaecer’ is non-descriptive, it should be referring to something much more dramatic. The audience does not learn what this unknown event is until the next strophe (lines 4.3–4). The refrain then not only acts as a dramatic parenthesis, but also provides exegetic commentary. It informs the audience that although whatever happened may be hard to believe – as implied by the refrain (‘O que no coraçon d’ ome | é mui cruu de creer’, R1) – it not only happened to the stonemason of the miracle: his hanging serves as a metaphor to all of Mary’s believers when their faith is put to the test in the face of earthly danger. The word ‘acaecer’ is also euphemistic: inviting the possibility of something terrible yet unknown happening to the stonemason, it softens the metaphorical blow, but in so doing suggests to audiences that the thing is so terrible that it cannot be mentioned. Derived from the Latin a(d)- + -cadere (literally, ‘to fall’), the use of ‘acaecer’ is unsubtle in implying the stonemason’s fate. Placing the narrative climax across two strophes therefore generates a praeteritio that is fully realized in performance. The arrival of the fourth and fifth strophes, in which the event is depicted in more detail (‘no mais alto logar y | da obr’, e anbo-los pees | lle faliron’, 4.1–2), renders the previous euphemism of ‘acaecer’ a paralipsic exclamation, in recompense for the suspense created earlier. Listeners’ expectations are first thwarted by the euphemistic ‘and then it happened’; the cue of the stonemason’s feet slipping, precipitating his fall (‘e anbo-los pees | lle faliron’, 4.2) overcompensates this, forcing the audience to relive the accident in agonizing detail. The expansion of strophes four and five – viewed by Parkinson as an infelicity of style – may therefore be seen instead as manipulation of the strophic form to generate maximum dramatic suspense.

Enjambement can create anticipation within the miracle narrative, but it can also work as an allusive implement, mirroring the state of physical or psychological estrangement in a miracle’s characters.⁶² To demonstrate this point, it is worth considering briefly the two songs in the Castrojeriz set that do not form the focus of this article. ‘Tan gran poder a ssa Madre’ (CSM 252, Example 5) contains several passages of enjambement, yet its two most significant cases fall in 2.4–3.2 and 4.3–5.1. The passage in 2.4–3.2 is dramatic: ‘logo’ and the adversative conjunction ‘mas’ both surprise the listeners in a dramatic turn of events. Here interstrophic enjambement divides the simile that qualifies the avalanche. Before audiences can learn what closes the workers off in the song’s narrative, they are themselves closed off from the message by the refrain.⁶³ The refrain does not just act as a suspense holder: it also undertakes a metaphorical re-enactment of what is described in the text. It bridges participants from the rest of the miracle where the expected relief will arrive. Yet as a part of the song best suited for wider participation, it puts listeners into the builders’ shoes, challenging them to question their own religious convictions.⁶⁴ Its message, particularly its claim that the participants can be rescued from the depths of the earth (‘deu en[o] fondo da terra’, R1), acts as reassurance for the troubled. Lines 4.3–5.1 are of an altogether different character: the devil has laid claim to the builders’ souls, but Mary has vanquished him (‘aa Virgen que aterra || O demo’, 4.4–5.1). The enjambed passage prevents listeners from hearing whom it is Mary terrifies, since ‘O demo’ falls in line 5.1. Given that this passage repeats much of the material used already in the third strophe, it is implicit who fears the Virgin: each refrain mentions the devil’s realm, describing the depths of the earth (‘eno fondo da terra’, R1). Nonetheless, this enjambed line provides a further level of reference. Not only does the Virgin terrify the devil, but also the withheld agency of the clause suggests that listeners too must show fear and deference. Followed immediately by the refrain – which speaks of God’s great power that he bestows to Mary, qualified by ‘tan gran’ – audiences remember not just to be thankful to the Virgin, but also to fear her and God lest they receive a similar fate.

Example 5 Text, translation, and melody of ‘Tan gran poder a ssa Madre’ (CSM 252).

A further case occurs between strophes four and five of ‘De muitas guisas miragres’ (CSM 266, Example 6). Here the audience has learned that the Virgin’s intervention saved the congregation from the falling beam (‘quis a Virgen que ferissa | a nunll’ om’’, 4.4). Appended to the end of line 4.4 is an introduction to a new clause, explaining that bystanders were so crammed in that they could not have escaped injury (‘E quen viu tal || Miragre! ca tan espessa | siya a gent’ aly’, 4.4–5.1). The enjambement occludes what the people in the miracle have seen. Although the event was unearthly, as implied in lines 4.3–4, the enjambed line allows performers to suggest that something else – perhaps something worse – may have befallen the congregation. The interruption of the refrain leaves a further suggestion: beginning with the mention of miracles (‘De muitas guisas miragres’, R1), participants effectively sing a gloss upon the material that is yet to be told in line 5.1, but which can be inferred from the events of lines 4.3–4.⁶⁵ In so doing, the passage offers reassurance that what listeners will learn in the following strophe can only be good under the Virgin’s promise. The message of the refrain hence urges participants to believe in good (‘por que en Deus creamos’, R2), just as the refrains of ‘O que no coraçon d’ ome’ and ‘Aquel que de voontade’ urge listeners not to doubt their miracles’ validity. Given their close placements within F and E, the message of faith in the face of man’s natural tendency to doubt could have informed related Castrojeriz songs on an intertextual level. Thus, this case of narrative dislocation could be interpreted as dramatic suspense, but one that reinforces the essential message of refrains in the wider set.

Example 6 Text, translation, and melody of ‘De muitas guisas miragres’ (CSM 266).

Cohesion and Rupture in the Cantiga Manuscripts

This article has so far addressed the text-as-building metaphor through the Castrojeriz’s text and music. Now consideration turns to ways in which this allegory is played out in the surviving manuscripts. While many such cues are overt – achieved using illuminations or decorations that illustrate an architectural theme – it is also worth addressing those that are metaphorical, and which refer to a manuscript as a container, or a conceptualization of physical space.⁶⁶

This spatial analogy emerges through the large-scale organizing of the Cantiga codices, which function as metaphorical edifices that are built upon smaller structural components. Such blocks that help structure the surviving Cantiga sources are the cantigas de loor, which head the beginning of each song decade. In the case of manuscripts T, F, and E, longer miracle songs are also assigned for every ‘quint’ in the middle of the decade (i.e., 5, 15, 25, 35). Such structuring turns the codex into an architectural assemble, comprising different markers that divide the codex into manageable subsections. It resembles, as Galvez points out, the rhetorical rooms that form the pillar of memoria, which rhetoricians advise orators to adopt to memorize their speeches.⁶⁷ Compartmentalizing a speech and locating these sections within rooms in one’s mind – spaces grouped by their identification with words, concepts, or objects – is a principle that aids the reader’s recollection, and which corresponds to the rational structuring of a speech (or its dispositio).

All three Cantigas with miniatures rely on elements of repetition that supplements this codicological structure. The four manuscripts all make use of colour to demarcate sections of the songs’ refrains – distinguishable by the use of rubricated text – which stand out from the strophes’ black text, and which divide songs up into smaller units. The Códice de los músicos (E) incorporates a visual place-marker for each cantiga de loor comprising a miniature of a singer or instrumentalist (Figure 1). While existing scholarship has explored their links to intended performance practice, the function of codex E’s miniatures also points to manuscript navigation, since such images help the reader to locate the beginning of each song decade. Visual structuring is yet more complex in the two Códices ricos (T and F), which incorporate a lavish illustration scheme where each song is illustrated by a full folio – or folios – each comprising six miracle panes per page.⁶⁸ Ideals of stability – generated by this large-scale repetition and consistency – and instability (engendered by inconsistency and interruption of this structuring) can be observed throughout the sources. Such structural organizing points to a rhetoric in the Cantigas that is both sonic and visual, and which influenced the ways these songs were written, assembled into manuscripts, and understood.

Figure 1. Miniature initials of four cantigas de loor from codex E: a) CSM 10 (fol. 39^v); b) CSM 170 (fol. 162^r); c) CSM 240 (fol. 218^v); and d) CSM 370 (fol. 333^r). Reproduced with permission. Foto: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, B-I-2.

This visual rhetoric also emerges in the subject matter of the miniatures in T and F, offering a more literal analogy to the contents of a miracle’s text. Both Códices ricos replicate architectural details – urban settings, interiors of churches – in multiple consecutive miniature panes (see CSM 66, codex T, fol. 98^r, Figure 2).⁶⁹ A trope consistent in most cantigas de miragre is the placing of Mary’s altar, which – when present in the story – usually appears in the right side of its associated illustration. For Francisco Corti, the presence of recurring motifs in the miniatures of codices T and F amount to a rhetorical structuring, where consistency achieves a sense of balance and cohesion to the miracle narrative.⁷⁰ Such visual rhetoric mirrors the textual rhetoric of the Cantigas’ miracle texts, which often contain similar structural markers. For instance, the frequency of miracles that incorporate a final miracle pane with a church setting, including Mary’s altar in its right-hand side, echoes the concluding strophe in a Cantiga’s text, which frequently addresses the need to praise the Virgin in its closing strophe. Such visual repetition reflects the practical limitations of the miniature teams, who may have deployed easily replicable templates in what was most likely a rushed compilation process. They do nevertheless attest to a structuring within the visual narrative that – alongside the repetition within the musical-poetic form – achieves an order and equilibrium in each miracle story.

Figure 2. Miniatures from CSM 66 in codex T (fol. 98^r). Reproduced with permission. Foto: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, T-I-1.

While consistency is a frequent priority in the manuscript’s visual rhetoric, such stability is at times countered by prominent points of rupture, where figures in miniatures break apart a story’s visual consistency. Such moments are few, and most occur within the cantigas de loor (see CSM 50, codex T, fol. 74^v, Figure 3), facilitated by their tendency to leave out miniature captions. While most miracles in T and F place a spatial limit on their visual depictions – set within the squares of each miniature pane – certain scenes in these praise Cantigas emerge out of their frames and into the empty caption space, jarring with the order set by the manuscript’s spatial boundaries. These few occurrences often coincide with points where God or Mary emerge signifying their ability to break beyond the sublunary world and intercede in the miracle story.⁷¹

Figure 3. Miniatures from CSM 50 in codex T (fol. 74^v). Reproduced with permission. Foto: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, T-I-1

The songs of the Castrojeriz set also show this balance between consistency and inconsistency.⁷² In CSM 266 (codex F, fol. 84^r, Figure 4), readers observe the visual balance where the top two panes – which preface the main miracle scene and are parallel to the opening introductory strophes – are set outside the space of the church in what appears to be a forest, showing the same scene of a man on a cart pulled by oxen. Meanwhile, the bottom four panes show the main event of the miracle, and offer a consistent architectural backdrop, with the left-hand arch under construction. Mary’s altar appears in the right-hand corner on steps, with scaffolding in the nave, and the left-hand and middle arches occupied by the congregation. Visual symmetry also emerges in CSM 252 (codex F, fol. 82^r, Figure 5), where the first and last panes depict the architecture of the Castrojeriz church. As with many cantigas de miragre, Mary’s altar appears in the right-hand aisle of the church structure. Meanwhile, in the middle panes the team of workers – trapped under their pile of debris – receives a different setting, under a mound of earth and building material. Here the visual scene changes to somewhere outside the church, symbolizing the rupture from safety and the protection of the Virgin within the house of God. Here the readers see from the final pane – as the song text and captions affirm – that the team of masons is ultimately saved. Such visual use of place to symbolize safety with Mary in her church, and peril without her in a foreign location, is common. A similar example emerges in CSM 41 (codex T, fol. 59^v, Figure 6), where a moneychanger is tormented by a pack of devils. This particular scene where the main character is almost tempted away from the Virgin has a barren background, and is visibly distinct from the surrounding vignettes – all of which are in set in buildings – showing the character’s estrangement from civilization and the Virgin’s protection.

Figure 4. Song text and miniatures from CSM 266 in codex F (fols. 83v–84^r). Reproduced with permission. Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. E’ vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.

Figure 5. Song text and miniatures from CSM 252 in codex F (fols. 81^v–82^r). Reproduced with permission. Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. E’ vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.

Figure 6. Miniatures from CSM 41 in codex T (fol. 59^v). Reproduced with permission. Foto: Patrimonio Nacional, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, T-I-1.

CSM 242’s miniatures (codex F, fol. 88^r, Figure 7) offer a complex interplay between stability and instability, and this visual dialogue emerges from the miracle’s own architectural subject matter. Its six panes show an almost identical architectural edifice to the Nuestra Señora del Manzano church in the remainder of the set, with Mary’s altar in the right-hand side. Further consistency emerges through the well-like device that appears in panes 2–6, while the stonemason hanging by his fingertips provides symmetry to the two middle vignettes. Yet in panes 2 and 5 there is a visual rupture, where the teams of stonemasons are shown to breach above into the space reserved for the empty captions. Given the lack of captions throughout F, it is possible that they would have been entered last, and it is strange to think that miniaturists would have not followed precedent by limiting their illustrations to the panes provided.⁷³ While it is possible that the codex’s rushed final assembly was a factor in this rupture of space, it is also feasible to view such breakage as a mirror to the sonic destabilization that interstrophic enjambement creates for the narrative text. Here the audience witnesses an awkward combination of two priorities played out both sonically and visually. First, a need for cohesion and consistency, created by repetition of visual cues such as architectural edifices, and through sonic elements such as the refrain and its mirroring in the vuelta. Contrary to this stability is the subtle use of rupture and conflict, where symmetry and balance are broken – by visual breaks in the miniature pane, and sonically by enjambement – and then resolved later at the miracle’s closing, where communal faith in the Virgin restores order.

Figure 7. Song text and miniatures from CSM 242 in codex F (fols. 87^v–88^r). Reproduced with permission. Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura - Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. E’ vietata ogni ulteriore riproduzione con qualsiasi mezzo.

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Analysis of the miracle Cantigas – or of any song repertory from the Middle Ages – benefits from a variety of methodological approaches. As this interdisciplinary analysis of the Castrojeriz songs has shown, universalizing analytical tendencies, typified in the Cantigas by forms such as the zejel and virelai, can be better understood when their functions are considered alongside specific contexts. This article has demonstrated how narrative themes of structural instability and interstrophic enjambement – both in the Cantigas and more specifically in the Castrojeriz set – provoke a radical rethinking of the hermeneutical and epistemological principles that supported construction, performance, and reception of song. While the Castrojeriz set’s structural instability complicates their integrity, this article contends that such weaknesses are the key to the set’s success. Given their plot lines that detail haphazard construction, the structural abnormalities in the Castrojeriz set invite readers to consider how specific contexts might invite a more nuanced understanding of text–music relations than has been considered previously.

In an intellectual environment that privileged the intelligibility and logical structuring of sound over its mere beauty, the Castrojeriz set – because of its narrative disjunction and divergence – poses questions to its audience. Both performers and listeners are faced with the challenge of heeding to a song’s structural priorities at the expense of its narrative logic. From Augustine’s perspective – where music must act as a vehicle for its associated text – such an approach is unacceptable.⁷⁴ Yet to repair narrative disjunction by eschewing refrains and strophes runs the risk of structural collapse in the songs themselves. Medieval listeners may have appreciated the parallels between the physical toil involved in the construction of the Castrojeriz church and the spiritual doubts of the believer as they struggle to appreciate both a song and its fundamental text. For a performer or listener to sing a structurally correct version of the song, their comprehension of its narrative – and, implicitly, their own faith in the Virgin – may just as surely suffer, mirroring the characters in the Cantiga miracles when faced with moments of turmoil in their crises of faith.⁷⁵

Ultimately, however, the Castrojeriz church’s integrity is maintained by its sufficiently robust structure. The narratives of the four Castrojeriz songs are likewise saved by their musical-poetic scaffolds. The set’s reliance upon the sonically charged vuelta is key here, functioning as a memorially marked sonic cue, which provides clarity to the songs’ disjointed narratives. Likewise, visual rupture in the manuscripts – summarized in the broaching of proscribed space in codex F’s depiction of CSM 242 – is compensated by the reliance upon the stability of the codex’s visual rhetoric. These songs therefore represent potential corruptions that fulfil their narrative requirements through unorthodox and original means, informed by nuanced contexts that depend upon an equilibrium between consistency and technical flair. These contexts are conditioned by the text-as-building metaphor, which engages with the Cantigas’ musical-poetic, codicological, and visual elements alongside rhetorical principles. This allegory between construction and composition thereby rationalizes the set’s unique, interior logic where suspense, instability, and disjunction are central.

While only a small number of cantigas de miragre directly involve the theme of construction in their narratives, this article has opened up novel approaches in the analysis of vernacular song, with broader consideration for the intellectual environment that surrounds it. Such a methodology is of relevance far beyond the theme of construction, since it considers narrative themes and their interactions with the creative outputs of people involved in the production of artistic works. Viewing such repertories through different perspectives – poetic, musical, art-historical – permits analysts to consider the different stages involved in the manufacture of a song repertory, and the ways narrative ideas might feed into that process. Beyond that, though, it challenges analysts to reflect on the ways in which divergent roles in the manuscript production process can communicate, exchanging ideas and techniques in their drive to create vernacular song.