Fernão Velho
Trovador medieval

Biographical Note:

Some uncertainties remain regarding the identity of this troubadour, that may be either Portuguese or Galician. Carolina Michaëlis identified him as one of the members of the Portuguese Velho lineage, more specifically as one of the sons that Gonçalo Peres Velho had with Constança Gonçalves de Arga, a nun he kidnapped from the Vuiturinho monastery1. That being the case, he would be related to two other older troubadours, Pero Velho and Paio Soares de Taveirós. Like Resende de Oliveira2, however, we have doubts regarding this identification, essentially because it implies a rather late chronology (as Pizarro3 documents, this Fernão Velho, son of Gonçalo Peres, is still alive in 1368) that appears to contradict both the position of his compositions in the manuscripts, and also the references that he makes, in one of his satirical compositions, to the famed Maria Balteira, a soldadeira well-known by the troubadours and minstrels in Alfonso X’s circle. This researcher therefore points to a Galician nationality, putting forward two documented homonyms, one in Ourense and the other in Viveiro, being that the last one might have been connected to the court of the magnate Dom Rodrigo Gomes de Trastâmara.

References

1 Vasconcelos, Carolina Michaëlis de (1990), Cancioneiro da Ajuda, vol. II, Lisboa, Imprensa nacional - Casa da Moeda (reimpressão da edição de Halle, 1904), pp. 434-438.

2 Oliveira, António Resende de (1994), Depois do espectáculo trovadoresco. A estrutura dos cancioneiros peninsulares e as recolhas dos séculos XIII e XIV, Lisboa, Edições Colibri.

3 Monteagudo, Henrique (2008), Letras primeiras. O Foral de Caldelas, os primordios da lírica trobadoresca e a emerxencia do galego escrito, Corunha, Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, p. 330.