SOURCE: Clarke, Dorothy Clotelle. “The Decir de Micer Francisco Imperial a las siete virtudes: Authorship, Meaning, Date.” In Hispanic Medieval Studies in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Harvey L. Sharrer, pp. 77-83. Madison Wis.: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, Ltd., 1992.

In the following essay, Clarke explicates the poem Decir a las siete virtudes from the fifteenth-century collection Cancionero de Baena.

The longest (465 verses), undoubtedly the best known, the most scribe-garbled, and the least understood and variously interpreted poem contained in the fifteenth-century Cancionero de Baena is the “Dezir a las siete virtudes,” attributed in the rubric to Micer Francisco.¹ Modern critics have added the surname Imperial to Francisco, thus identifying the poem's author with another poet, the well-known Micer Francisco Imperial (d.1409 according to Gaibrois de Ballesteros), one of the principal poets at the royal court of Castile during the early...