ABSTRACT
The splendid pictorial collection of nearly two thousand miniatures illuminates the historiated codices of the Cantigas de Santa Maria provides the most reliable evidence for the study of Castilian society in the second half of the thirteenth century. Both manuscripts are known as the Historiated Cantigas or History Cantigas for the characteristic full-page illumination of each poem, usually structured in six vignettes and in twelve in those poems of quinary numeration. Through the different miniatures illuminating their pages, the reader connects with the life of the people, beyond political, economic and social vicissitudes, both outside and within contemporary regulations and morality. Even though the author's are looking at a work whose original intent was indubitably to exalt the Virgin Mary, therefore religious in nature, its miniatures have repeatedly been recognized as secular in nature, specifically on account of their expressive freedom and the fact that they mirror the society of the time.
