João Velaz
Trovador medieval

Não são conhecidas cantigas deste autor.

Biographical Note:

Troubadour in the initial stage of the galician-portuguese poetry, whose songs were lost, but whose name is in the Colocci index, which tells us that he would be the author of a love song, included in the initial folios of the Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional, nowadays lost.
Resende de Oliveira1 and, more recentently, José António Souto Cabo2, established the minimum data of the author’s biography, certainly one of the oldest on the record. Documented between 1158 and 1181, João Velaz belonged, on his father’s side, to an important Galician lineage, connected to the Trava, being son of Dom Vela Guterres (mordomo to Fernando II) who was, on his turn, son of Dom Guterre Bermudes, a noble made count by Afonso VII. On his mother’s side (his mother being Sancha Ponce de Cabrera) the troubadour had also Catalan ascendancy, since his grandfather, Pôncio II Geraldo (1105-1162), besides being count in Castilla and Leon, was also viscount of Girona and Àger, and lord of Cabrera, in Catalonia. The son of Dom Poncio, Geraldo III Ponce de Cabrera (1145-1160), besides being a patron of occitan troubadours, was perhaps a troubadour himself, if we can identifie him with a Giraut de Cabrera, the author of an important composition known as Ensenhamen (but its author could also be his son, Geraldo IV Ponce), Altought from Catalan origin, as we have said, the lineage setled in the Leonese court with D. Pôncio, one of the nobles that accompaigned princess Berengaria of Aragon on the occasion of her marriage to Fernando II. Born arrond 1145-1155, his grandson João Velaz should have been, in Souto Cabo's opinion, the earliest galician-portuguese troubadour. His death would have occurred between June and December 7 of 1181, the date in which his brothers confirm the donations made by him to the monastery of Moreruela and the cathedral of Santiago, proof that he had since passed away (Souto Cabo).

References

1 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.

2 Souto Cabo, José António (2012), Os cavaleiros que fizeram as cantigas. Aproximação às origens socioculturais da lírica galego-portuguesa, Niterói, Editora UFF, pp. 17-41.
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