Communicatio-ns from SpanisJi Cancioucros. 87 



II. 



The Cancionero de la Colombina at Seville. 

 During a brief stay at Seville a few years ago I availed m3'self 

 of the opportunity to see what, if any, manuscript collections of 

 the medieval Lyric of Spain existed in the Librar}- of the Cathedral 

 Chapter of that city, in which, as is well known, the invaluable 

 treasure of codices and printed books gathered by Ferdinand Co- 

 lumbus has been deposited since 1550. Only one manuscript 

 was found to contain a collection of courtly verse of the loth 

 centur}'. This is the one bearing the signature E— AA. 144. 18, 

 and quoted in the somewhat elementar}' catalogue of manuscripts 

 under the title : Poetas varios antigtios)- This cancionero has Iseen 

 frequently referred to by the editors of the works of Gomez Man- 

 rique and Montoro,^ as well as by other writers,^ on the basis of 

 an imperfect 18th century cop}- of it which exists in the Biblioteca 

 Nacional (no. 13042 = antiguo Dd 61), but has apparenth' not been 

 consulted by them.^ In view of the fact that neither the Madrid 

 copy nor the references of critics give a correct idea of the contents 

 of this collection, I thought it useful, at the time, to prepare as 



^ The other three collections of verse, bearing- respective the sig- 

 natures 5. 3. 35 (antiguo 145. 10), 83. 3. (antiguo 141-5) and 7. 1. 19 (an- 

 tiguo 141—55) coniain poetr3' of the 16tli and 17th centui'ies. — As already 

 stated in my description of Ms. 4114 (antiguo M. 320) of tlie Biblioteca 

 Nacional at Madrid, shortly to appear in the Revue Hispanique, there 

 is no evidence of the existence of any other manuscript cancionero of 

 the 15th centmy in the Seville Library. Menendez y Pelaj^o quotes no 

 authority for his statement (Antologia 6, p. clvii— viii), that the original 

 of Ms. 3742 (antiguo 241) of the Biblioteca Nacional is still preserved in 

 the Colombina. 



- Amador de los Rios, Historia de la liter.espafiola 6, 533 ; Vera e Isla, 

 Traduccion del Salmo l de David (1879) p. 113; Cotarelo y Mori, Cane, 

 de A. de Montoro, p. xxv, 37 and 205 ; Uliagon, Revista de Archivos 1900, 

 p. 392. Paz y Melia, Cane, de Gomez Manrique 1, p. xxxviii has the 

 following- to saj^ about our codex : " Tambien la Biblioteca Colombina 

 poseia xni codice con viuchas j)oesias de nuestro autor, que he podido con- 

 sultar por hallarse en la Biblioteca Nacional copia mandada sacar por el 

 Padi"e Burriel."' There are only two poems by Gomez Manrique in the 

 collection. — The composition by Juan Alvarez Gato handed do-w^n in our 

 manuscript (fol. 117 v".) has remained unknown to so recent an investi- 

 gator as Menendez y Pelayo (Antologia 6, p. xxxviii ff.) who also over- 

 looked the two contained in ms. 4114 of the BibHoteca Nacional. — See 

 also Mussafia, Per la bibliografia dei cancioneros spagnuoli, p. 2. 



