[531] Bouterwek, Hist. de la Lit. Española, traducida por Cortina, Tom. I. p. 162. Latassa, Bib. Antigua, Tom. II. pp. 25-38.
[532] Bouterwek, trad. Cortina, p. 177. This manuscript, it may be curious to notice, was once owned by Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great discoverer, and is still to be found amidst the ruins of his library in Seville, with a memorandum by himself, declaring that he bought it at Barcelona, in June, 1536, for 12 dineros, the ducat then being worth 588 dineros. See, also, the notes of Cerdá y Rico to the “Diana Enamorada” of Montemayor, 1802, pp. 487-490 and 293-295.
[533] Bruce-Whyte (Histoire des Langues Romanes et de leur Littérature, Paris, 1841, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 406-414) gives a striking extract from a manuscript in the Royal Library, Paris, which shows this mixture of the Provençal and Catalan very plainly. He implies, that it is from the middle of the fourteenth century; but he does not prove it.
[534] Sarmiento, Memorias, Sect. 759-768. Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 651, article Vidal de Besalú. Santillana, Proverbios, Madrid, 1799, 18mo, Introduccion, p. xxiii. Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 5-9. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi, Paris, 1813, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 227-230. Andres, Storia d’ Ogni Letteratura, Roma, 1808, 4to, Tom. II. Lib. I. c. 1, sect. 23, where the remarks are important at pp. 49, 50.
[535] Mariana, Hist. de España, Lib. XVIII. c. 14.
[536] “El Arte de Trobar,” or the “Gaya Sciencia,”—a treatise on the Art of Poetry, which, in 1433, Henry, Marquis of Villena, sent to his kinsman, the famous Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, in order to facilitate the introduction of such poetical institutions into Castile as then existed in Barcelona,—contains the best account of the establishment of the Consistory of Barcelona, which was a matter of such consequence as to be mentioned by Mariana, Zurita, and other grave historians. The treatise of Villena has never been printed entire; but a poor abstract of its contents, with valuable extracts, is to be found in Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes de la Lengua Española, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II.
[537] See Zurita, passim, and Eichhorn, Allg. Geschichte der Cultur, Göttingen, 1796, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 127-131, with the authorities he cites in his notes.
[538] Anales de la Corona de Aragon, Lib. X. c. 43, ed. 1610, folio, Tom. II. f. 393.
[539] Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 666.
[540] Ibid., p. 408.