Description

Vindel Parchment

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

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The Vindel Parchment, now housed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, was discovered quite by chance. In 1914, Pedro Vindel, the librarian and antiquarian from Madrid after whom the parchment is named, discovered it as part of the binding of a manuscript copy of Cicero’s De officiis.

The discovery of this parchment was a landmark in the history of Galician-Portuguese  troubadour poetry. The Vindel Parchment (latter half of the 13th century) not only contains seven cantigas de amigo, a complete work attributed to the Galician composer and performer Martin Codax, but is also the only document to feature the music of six of these cantigas. Hence this parchment is doubly valuable because it features the only cantigas de amigo known to have a musical score.

This parchment contains seven songs sung by a maiden awaiting her absent lover in Ría de Vigo, with a monophonic musical score for six of them.
Cantigas de amigo are the most original genre of medieval Galician lyric poetry. In these short, lively ballads belonging to the European “women’s song” genre, a maiden in love (the amiga) sings – alone or accompanied by her female friends, sisters or mother – about her life, hopes and sorrows, and sometimes about nature too. The waves in the sea near Vigo are highly symbolic in Martin Codax’s ballads, imbuing his lyrics with great eroticism.

Until the discovery of the Vindel Parchment, the only known medieval Galician cantigas with a musical score were the religious Cantigas de Santa María of Alfonso X the Wise. The Sharrer Parchment (late 13th or early 14th C) discovered subsequently, featured seven poems by King Dinis I of Portugal which were secular and yet belonged to the “cantigas de amor” (love ballads) genre.

It is not yet known which scriptorium made the Vindel Parchment although it must have been well equipped and had skilled scribes. Palaeographic evidence and the musical scores, e.g. similarities between the six melodies by Martin Codax and the music of some of the Cantigas de Santa María, suggest that Martin Codax was involved with the Castilian courts of Alfonso X the Wise and Sancho IV.

A loose folio, exquisitely and painstakingly made as a gift or for an exchange between poets. A title stating the name “Martin Codax” can be seen at the end of the top left margin on the parchment.

It was acquired in 1977 by the Morgan Library of New York where it remains to this day – after suffering as many vicissitudes as the lamentations of the protagonist of the lyrics: “Ondas do mar de Vigo, / se vistes meu amigo? / e ai Deus, se verrá cedo?...”