Background
He was born in 1197 in the Riojan village of Berceo, close to the major Benedictine monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla.
(Miracle tales, in which people are rewarded for piety or ...)
Miracle tales, in which people are rewarded for piety or punished for sin through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, were a popular literary form all through the Middle Ages. Milagros de Nuestra Sehora, a collection of such stories by the Spanish secular priest Gonzalo de Berceo, is a premier example of this genre; it is also regarded as one of the four most important texts of medieval Spain. Difficulties in translating this work have made it unavailable in English except in fragments; now Spanish-language scholars Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash have made the entire work accessible to English readers for the first time. Berceo's miracle tales use the verse form cuaderna via (fourfold way) of fully rhymed quatrains?which Berceo may even have invented?and are told in the language of the common man. They were written to be read aloud, most likely to an audience of pilgrims, and are an outstanding example of oral religious narrative. The total work comprises twenty-five miracles, preceded by a renowned Introduction that celebrates the Virgin in rich symbolic allegory. Mount and Cash's translation is highly readable, yet it retains the original meaning and captures Berceo's colloquial style and medieval nuances. An introduction placing the miracles in their medieval context and a bibliography complement the text.
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He was born in 1197 in the Riojan village of Berceo, close to the major Benedictine monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla.
It is possible that he studied in the short-lived institute of Palencia.
Gonzalo is recorded as being a deacon in his home parish in the early 1220s, and as a priest from 1237 on. His name is to be met with in a number of documents between the years 1237 and 1246.
He writes in the common tongue, the roman paladino, and his claim to the name of poet rests on his use of the cuaderna via (single-rhymed quatrains, each verse being of fourteen syllables).
Sometimes, however, he takes the more modest title of juglar (jongleur), when claiming payment for his poems.
The great majority of his legends of the Virgin are obviously borrowed from the collection of a Frenchman, Gautier de Coinci; but he has succeeded in making this material entirely his own by reason of a certain conciseness and a realism in detail which make his work far superior to the tedious and colourless narrative of his model.
(Miracle tales, in which people are rewarded for piety or ...)