's ,
13th century What mainly distinguishes the is its focus on a world of female-voiced communication. The earliest examples that survive are dated from roughly the 1220s, and nearly all 500 were composed before 1300. are found mainly in the
Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, now in Lisbon's Biblioteca Nacional, and in the
Cancioneiro da Vaticana, both copied in
Italy at the beginning of the 16th century (possibly around 1525) at the behest of the Italian humanist
Angelo Colocci. The seven songs of
Martin Codax are also contained, along with music (for all but one text), in the
Pergaminho Vindel, probably a mid-13th-century manuscript and unique in all Romance philology. Stylistically, they are characterized by simple strophic forms, with repetition, variation, and parallelism, and are marked by the use of a refrain (88% of the texts). Even
Mendinho, author of a single song, has been acclaimed as a master poet. ==Types of
cantigas==