João Soares Somesso
Trovador medieval

Biographical Note:

Troubadour active in first half of the 13th century, that is, in the initial stage of the galician-portuguese poetry, whose initial biography, from Carolina Michaelis, has been reviewed in the last few years. Although the surname Somesso is absent from the Books of Lineages, Carolina Michaëllis1, based on the characterization as “good troubadour” made by the “Livro do Deão” (Dean’s book) to João Soares de Valadares, identified him as the latter (being Somesso, in her opinion, just a nickname meaning “submiss”), an identification later accepted by most researchers.
Son of the second marriage of Soeiro Aires de Valadares with a Galician princess or with Maria Afonso de Leão, bastard of Alfonso X (the Books of Lineages disagree on this point), João Soares would have been born still in the second half of the 12th century, in the place of Valadares, next to the river Minho.
More recently Xavier Ron Fernández2, still following the same identification, located another set of documents concerning the troubadour (in some of which the name Someso appears), allowing him to add new data to his biography. Thus, according to this researcher, the surname Somesso would make reference to a Galician toponym (probably from the land of his mother), Submeso/Someso, a locality in Rabal, county of Celanova, in the Minho frontier, very close to the place of Valadares, but also of the Galician village of Crescente, whose lordship João Soares himself would have held (1223). Furthermore, the documents seem to show that, in the 20’s of the 13th century, João Soares Somesso would have been vassal to Dom Martim Sanches, the bastard son of Sancho I and Maria Airas de Fornelos, who was, besides lieutenant of Terra de Lima since 1219, one of the most powerful lords of Galicia until 1229 (year of his death), also by having married into the powerful Castro lineage (Count Pedro de Barcelos, in his Lineages Book, extols his figure, naming Martin Sanches “o dos quatro condados”(he of the four counties), and proclaiming him the one true lord of Galicia at the beginning of the 13th century). Be that as it may, from the mentioned documents, Ron Fernandez specifies that the troubadourean activity of João Soares should have started around 1215/1220 and ended around 1246, the date of these documents mentioning him.
Even more recently, however (2012), the traditional identification of the troubadour with João Soares de Valadares seems to have become less certain, and this in virtue of another proposal by José António Souto Cabo3, that we should identifie the troubadour as the galician João Soares de Fornelos, documented between 1223 and 1257. It is a proposal based on what seem to be serious chronological discrepancies in the Lineages Books with regard to the Valadares family, and also on the existence of several homonyms in the region of the Minho border (as is the case of João Soares de Chapela, who Souto ends up considering half brother of the knight of Fornelos). Although this new identification is based on careful work on the sources, the complex family network of all the aforementioned homonyms (to which we could still add others of approximate chronology) makes the debate far from complete. Thus, already in 2014, Henrique Monteagudo4, analyzing all the data of Souto Cabo and also a new set of documents, proposed that, of the two brothers, it would be João Soares de Chapela (and not of Fornelos) the troubadour of Somesso.

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. 297-307.

2 Ron Fernández, Xavier (2005), “Carolina Michaelis e os trobadores representados no Cancioneiro da Ajuda”, in Carolina Michaelis e o Cancioneira da Ajuda hoxe, Santiago de Compostela, Xunta de Galicia.
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3 Souto Cabo, José António (2012), Os cavaleiros que fizeram as cantigas. Aproximação às origens socioculturais da lírica galego-portuguesa, Niterói, Editora UFF.
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4 Monteagudo, Henrique (2014), A nobreza miñota e a lírica trobadoresca na Galicia da primeira metade do século XIII, A Coruña, Toxosoutos.