Much of Alan Deyermond's work on sentimental romance concerned the various frontiers of the genre, be they generic or linguistic. In this article, I wish to foreground the material frontiers of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón's Siervo libre de amor (c. 1440) within its manuscript context as a participant text in a particular scriptum, ‘the unique presence that is the individual, concrete manuscript’ (Dagenais 1994: 129). The focus on the physical context of Siervo will permit me some reflections on generic relations and linguistic analogues. My approach is particularly informed by the lines pursued by Pedro M. Cátedra (1995), Emily Francomano (in press), and Barry Taylor (in press), but participates in the broader field of compilation studies. Cátedra and Francomano examine the manuscript as a register or matrix that assists the modern critic in understanding how the compiled works might have been read and used. In Cátedra's words, ‘El acto de la compilación, por la misma condición literaria de las piezas elencadas, no puede achacarse a un mero azar o a caprichosa economía codicológica’ (1995: 38). Taylor (in press), on the other hand, examines the manuscript as one of a series of material traces of works now considered incomplete. He studies the manuscript context as the final product in a series of processes of transmission in which various individuals participated – authors, compilers, scribes, rubricators, and so forth – in order to shed light on the reception and transmission of the works under consideration as complete or otherwise.