João Baveca
Trovador ou Jogral medieval

Biographical Note:

We know almost nothing about this author, except the data that may be inferred from his songs. Thus, the references that he makes in them to the segrel Bernal de Bonaval or the soldadeira Maria Balteira, as well as the exchanges with Pedro Amigo de Sevilha or Pero d'Ambroa, locate him surely in Castilla, in the second third of the 13th century, in the courts of Fernando III and Alfonso X.
His status as minstrel seems to be possible to deduce by his placement in the songbooks, where he’s integrated in the Galician minstrel’s group, and also by his exchange with Pero d’Ambroa, in which it seems to be inferred that he was at some troubadour’s service. However, as Resende de Oliveira doesn’t fail to mention1, the Book of Lineages of Count Dom Pedro mentions a certain Fernão Baveca (30BB5), second husband of Dona Teresa Peres de Vide, nephew of the troubadour Fernão Fernandes Cogominho (and perhaps even mentioned by him in one of his compositions) and their sons, Fernão and Afonso Baveca. The same Fernão Baveca is equally documented in Barroso, in the middle of the 13th century. Not being impossible that João Baveca belonged to the same family, therefore possibly being a portuguese knight, we lack data to validate this hipothesis.

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, p. 358.