Who were the poets and musicians active in the courts of the medieval Crown of Aragon? For whom did they perform? What was their role in fostering the cultural politics of their patrons? How did they transform the poetic and musical landscape of Europe?
The MiMus DB is a database that houses information from a vast corpus of documents related to artists involved in the musical life of the courts of the kings of the Crown of Aragon from the mid-13th to the mid-15th century. The documents have been transcribed from the original manuscripts held at the ACA (Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó, Barcelona). The database offers open access to a growing collection of historical data, including over 1,000 meticulously curated and annotated documents. This evidence not only corroborates existing hypotheses derived from the intertextual borrowings and allusions embedded within medieval Occitan, Catalan, and French poetry but also empowers researchers to gain new insights into the creation and reception of lyrical texts. Consulting the documents curated in the MiMus DB proves invaluable, particularly in mitigating the dearth of manuscripts bearing musical notation—a persistent challenge confronting Catalan music historiography. The database serves also as a tool for investigating the relationships among patrons who supported musical activities, demonstrating that in the 14th century, French song in particular, had evolved into an international commodity with the ability to build cultural capital for its sponsors.
