Was just randomly looking at https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/oraculo-manual-y-arte-de-prudencia--0/html/fedb3724-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html and was caught off guard by the use of the letter ç to represent the sound of z. Also noticed a few words spelled with an i instead of y like how it says “rei” instead of “rey.”
I don’t know, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s to distinguish between a fricative and/or voiced sound and a non-fricative/non-voiced one. Probably between two of these three:
- the English z sound
- the English soft th sound
- the English s sound
See also ç in the related languages: Catalan, Occitan, and French.@davel @FunkyStuff The letter ç has an interesting history. It is a variant of the letter z, not the letter c. The letter z in the Visigothic script had very curly ends: ꝣ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic/_script
Some (Portugguese) place names are also written with ç or z in different languages: Açores / Azores, Moçambique / Mozambique
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maybe it’s a memory of the time when spanish had 6+ sibilants. or maybe the author still had more than the 2 (or 3) modern spanish has.
