Published in Returning to Eden

Keywords: Keywords: Afonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Medieval Art., Vault.

This work analyses the text and images of the Cantiga 65 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria by the Castilian king Afonso X with the aim of demonstrating how the vaults of medieval sanctuaries relate to the ivy leaves and the main character of this Cantiga, an excommunicated man who wandered across half the world to receive from the Virgin herself the grace of redemption, in addition to glimpsing the immortality of faith and friendship in an abandoned church, already covered by vast foliage.