Abstract

Of the more than four hundred poems written in praise of the Virgin Mary either by Alfonso the Wise or at his behest and known collectively as the Cantigas de Santa María, five in particular, Cantigas 209, 235, 279, 366, and 367, are of inestimable benefit to the historian for the explicit descriptions they provide of the king's ill health and suffering. Cantiga 235 is the most valuable of these informative compositions both for its broad historical perspectives and for its rigorous chronological ordering of significant episodes; it provides information that allows us to review and reassess what is undeniably the most crucial period of Alfonso X's reign as king of Castile