[392] The “Caballería Christiana” was printed in 1570, the “Caballero de la Clara Estrella” in 1580, and the “Caballero Peregrino” in 1601. Besides these, “Roberto el Diablo”—a story which was famous throughout Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and has been revived in our own times—was known in Spain from 1628, and probably earlier. (Nic. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 251.) In France, it was printed in 1496, (Ebert, No. 19175,) and in England by Wynkyn de Worde. See Thomas, Romances, London, 1828, 12mo, Vol. I. p. v.
[393] Who this Hierónimo de San Pedro was is a curious question. The Privilegio declares he was a Valencian, alive in 1554; and in the Bibliothecas of Ximeno and Fuster, under the year 1560, we have Gerónimo Sempere given as the name of the well-known author of the “Carolea,” a long poem printed in that year. But to him is not attributed the “Caballería Celestial”; nor does any other Hierónimo de San Pedro occur in these collections of lives, or in Nicolas Antonio, or elsewhere that I have noted. Are they, nevertheless, one and the same person, the name of the poet being sometimes written Sentpere, Senct Pere, etc.?
[394] It is prohibited in the Index Expurgatorius, Madrid, 1667, folio, p. 863.
[395] I take, as in fairness I ought, the date of the appearance of Montalvo’s Spanish version, as the period of the first success of the Amadis in Spain, and not the date of the Portuguese original; the difference being about a century.
[396] See the very curious laws that constitute the twenty-first Title of the second of the Partidas, containing the most minute regulations; such as how a knight should be washed and dressed, etc.
[397] I should think there are accounts of twenty or thirty such tournaments in the Chronicle of John II. There are many, also, in that of Alvaro de Luna; and so there are in all the contemporary histories of Spain during the fifteenth century. In the year 1428, alone, four are recorded; two of which involved loss of life, and all of which were held under the royal auspices.
[398] See the [account of the Passo Honroso] already given, to which add the accounts in the Chronicle of John II. of one which was attempted in Valladolid, by Rui Diaz de Mendoza, on occasion of the marriage of Prince Henry, in 1440, but which was stopped by the royal order, in consequence of the serious nature of its results. Chrónica de Juan el IIº, Ann. 1440, c. 16.
[399] Ibid., Ann. 1435, c. 3.
[400] Claros Varones de Castilla, Título XVII. He boasts, at the same time, that more Spanish knights went abroad to seek adventures than there were foreign knights who came to Castile and Leon; a fact pertinent to this point.
[401] Historia Imperial, Anvers, 1561, folio, ff. 123, 124. The first edition was of 1545.