Fernão Froiaz
Trovador medieval

Biographical Note:

There is no reliable data allowing us to draw a minimum biography of this troubadour, that may have attended Alfonso X’s court, judging by a song by this monarch that seems to use in a parodic way a refrain from one of his cantigas de amigo (Jurávades-mi vós, amigo). With the family name under the form “Forjaz”, the Lineage books (LD19A5) mention a Fernão Rodrigues Forjaz, descendant of Dom Nuno de Lara (but taking the family name from his maternal grandfather, Diogo Forjaz) that would have lived in the second half of the 13th century, which seems to match the chronological arc of the troubadour. We don’t know, however, his exact nationality. It is possible that he was related to Durão Forjaz, Sancho II’s chancellor, or maybe to the troubadour Estêvão Peres Froião (in both cases being Portuguese and having probably passed to Castile)1. For his part, Resende de Oliveira, in his 2011 paper on Count D. Pedro de Barcelos2, points out in a footnote the possibility that Fernão Froiaz may have had some family connection with the Count's mother, D. Gracia Anes Froiaz, a native of Torres Vedras (and, in turn, daughter of a João Froiaz). The fact, we add, that Alfonso X parodically used the refrain of the aforementioned troubadour's cantiga de amigo to, in turn, respond to a playful "threat" from João Airas de Santiago to go to Portugal, perhaps reinforces the possibility that Fernão Froiaz was indeed Portuguese.But these are merely conjectural hypothesisand that do not allow us to be certain about his nationality, since the family name was equally used by Galician families.

References

1 Barbieri, Mario (1993), "Fernan Froiaz", in Dicionário da Literatura Medieval Galega e Portuguesa, Lanciani, Giulia e Tavani, Giuseppe (org.), Lisboa, Editorial Caminho.

2 Oliveira, António Resende (2011), “O genealogista e as suas linhagens: D. Pedro, Conde de Barcelos”, Legitimação e linhagem na Idade Média peninsular, org. Georges Martim e José Carlos Ribeiro Miranda, Porto. Também disponível em e-Spania, 2011, , Porto, SMELPS, p. 370, note 4.
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