Gonzalo de Berceo is the first writer in the Spanish language to reach us with a name and surname. Among his works, the Miracles of Our Lady stand out, a collection of twenty-five miracles preceded by an allegorical introduction in which are collected the most vigorous and popular traditions of the 13th century. Thanks to their simplicity and freshness, these pious stories, born in their day with the purpose of moving the faithful and awakening their devotion, still maintain their naive charm and survive with unusual strength. In this edition, Daniel Devoto has managed to capture the miracles in modern Spanish without losing the special aroma of the original text.

Gonzalo de Berceo was a medieval poet who professed as a monk in the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. Berceo refined the Castilian language, in its Riojan dialect variety, for which he included vocabulary from Latin and resorted to formulas from traditional oral literature and from the minstrel mester. His narrative and didactic works in verse always deal with religious themes and are basically made up of biographies of the saints, especially those who were worshiped in the monasteries with which he was linked. Currently, his best known work is the Miracles of Our Lady.