From The Editor

In this volume of La corónica we are delighted to have for the first time an article in Galician, evidence of our commitment to publish groundbreaking articles on medieval Iberia in the modern languages of the Peninsula. In this article, Ana Boullón underscores that copyists and their reading habits and linguistic background often play an essential role in the linguistic profile of texts that have come down to us in manuscript copies. Boullón explores how the two extant copies of the Crónica de Iria possess archaic linguistic features that suggest the work was composed earlier than the fifteenth century and that Rui Vázquez was not its author.

The next article in this volume by Fernando Riva examines the thirteenth-century Castilian Libro de Alexandre and offers an analysis of the letter-symbol tau, a Hebrew letter conflated with the Greek t used by Christian scholars as symbol for the cross and symbol of Christian supercession of Jewish religious truths. Riva argues that the author of the Libro de Alexandre weaves the tau through the narrative to remind readers of the apocalyptic nature of messianism. Rocío Rubio Moirón turns to a more personalized form of the supernatural in the third article, focusing on how changing notions about affect and humor and their role in Christian piety affect how Gonzalo de Berceo chose to depict people possessed by demons. Rubio Moirón invites us to expand the definition of disability to include possession and explores the role of exorcism as an act of community protection. Affect and its expression is also central in Charles Elerick's study of word choice and emphasis in the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor, the subject of the fourth article in this volume. Joseph Snow, a long-time collaborator and contributor to La corónica's pages, offers a study and English translation of seven of the cantigas d'escarnhio attributed to Alfonso X. These translations are the second in our "Texts and Translations" series, which was inaugurated in 2017 with Isabelle Levy and David Torollo's translation of Jacob ben El'azar's Sefer ha-meshalim (in volume 45, no. 2, 2017).

You will also see that the volume opens with a remembrance of Linda Kay Davidson and her work by George Greenia, long-time editor of La corónica, who has generously shared the necrology he wrote for his friend and fellow lover of the Camino which originally appeared in Ad Limina. Greenia reviews Davidson's important scholarship on the Camino de Santiago, as well as sharing personal anecdotes that give us a sense of her warm personality and important efforts to promote and explain the Camino experience.

It also gives me great pleasure to announce in this volume the creation of the Nancy F. Marino Award for Best Essay in Hispanomedieval Studies, which will be awarded at this year's International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. This prize, which carries both professional recognition and a cash prize, is possible thanks to the generosity of Frank McBath, Nancy's husband, in honor of her service to the field and particularly her mentorship and support of emerging scholars. If you have received your PhDs in the last 4 years or are a graduate student currently enrolled in a MA or PhD program who will be presenting at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo please apply! And if you are a senior scholar, please encourage eligible junior scholars you know and mentor to apply (by April 15).

And once again, I would like to thank Isidro Rivera, Managing Editor, and his team at the University of Kansas (Ángel María Rañales Pérez, Indira Y. A. García, Scott Raines, and Juanita Reyes) who have all helped with revision on multiple versions of the articles. In addition, special thanks to Christina Ivers, Víctor Pascual Durán and Robert Hultgren who have also assisted in the editing of this volume.

In addition to our work in bringing together this volume, the editors have also organized panels at several of the leading American conferences for scholars...