In the thirteenth century, profound changes in Spanish
society drove the invention of fresh poetic forms by the new clerical
class. The term mester de clerecía
(clerical ministry or service) applies to a group of narrative poems
(epics, hagiography, romances) composed by university-trained clerics
for the edification and entertainment of the predominantly illiterate
laity. These clerics, like Gonzalo de Berceo, understood themselves as
cultura...
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