Cancione'ro

Cancione'ro (Span.; Port. cancioneiro, 'song-book'), in general, a collection of lyrical pieces by one or more authors; in particular, the designation of the, so to say, official collections of the poetic guilds which flourished in the middle ages at the courts of Spain and Portugal. The oldest of these works, which in their completeness present a view not only of the poetry, but of the life and thoughts of their time and place, is that of Dom Diniz of Portugal (1279–1325) and his court, a MS. copy of which is in the Vatican; the best edition is the Cancioneiro Portuguez of Theophilo Braga (Lisbon, 1878). There are also cancioneros of the courts of Aragon and Castile. These collections were succeeded by others of a more general character, in which the period and locality of the authors were equally disregarded, and the pieces classed simply according to subject. The earliest Cancionero General was published about the end of the 15th century (2d and enlarged ed. Valencia, 1511). The term is also sometimes applied to a collection of poems by various authors on one subject, such as the Vita Christi (Saragossa, 1492), and improperly in the title of the first collection of Spanish ballads, the Cancionero de Romances (Antwerp, n.d.; 2d ed. 1550).