In the
Middle Ages, the
Galician-Portuguese lyric, sometimes called
trovadorismo in
Portugal and
trobadorismo in
Galicia, was a
lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or
lírica profana (see
Cantigas de Santa Maria for the religious lyric). At the time
Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of
Iberia for lyric (as opposed to epic) poetry. From this language derives both modern
Galician and
Portuguese. The school, which was influenced to some extent (mainly in certain formal aspects) by the
Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered on the person of
Alfonso X,
The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings of but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in Medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a revival movement called Neotrobadorismo.