João Zorro was a late 13th century Galician or Portuguese

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...

at the court of

Afonso III of Portugal Afonso IIIrare English alternatives: ''Alphonzo'' or ''Alphonse'', or ''Affonso'' (Archaic Portuguese), ''Alfonso'' or ''Alphonso'' (Portuguese-Galician languages, Portuguese-Galician) or ''Alphonsus'' (Latin). (; 5 May 121016 February 1279), ca ...

, or as it is most likely at the court of

Denis of Portugal Denis (, ; 9 October 1261 – 7 January 1325), called the Farmer King (''Rei Lavrador'') and the Poet King (''Rei Poeta''), was King of Portugal from 1279 until his death in 1325. Dinis was the eldest son of Afonso III of Portugal by his second ...

. He is noted for his 10

cantigas de amigo ''Cantiga de amigo'' (, ) or ''cantiga d'amigo'' ( Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, more specifically the Galician-Portuguese lyric, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition n ...

about ancient sailors, written on the eve of the great voyages of discovery. Like most similar

of his time, the musical notation wasn't recorded. Zorro is unusual among

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

poets for writing about calm and domesticated seas, rather than about wild and deadly oceans. In his poems, sailors only lament about missing their home countries, lovers etc. His work sheds light on the attitudes towards the sea of the early European explorers.

Works

His works were transcribed in the hypothetical "Livro das Cantigas", now lost but probably transcribed in the 16th century manuscripts called Cancioneiro da Biblioteca Nacional and Cancioneiro da Vaticana. They are mostly cantigas de amigo, ten in all, and only one cantiga de amor. The musical notation of his cantigas has not survived. Like the also jogral Martim Codax sang mainly the themes related to the sea. A very particular feature of this author is the Ciclo "de Lisboa" (of the "barcas" or d'"El Rei de Portugal"), a uniform set in which the king of Portugal (D. Dinis I) appears as an intervener and in which there is a consistent reference to the throwing overboard of barcas from the medieval shipyards of Lisbon (then called tercenas and which occupied the space where the Paço da Ribeira was later built).

Notes

13th-century Galician-Portuguese troubadours {{Portugal-poet-stub