que te sirua toda vja.
As the Libro de buen amor had been in print for some seventy years before the Pretender made the laughable fiasco described by Pérez Galdós, it is quite possible that Don Juanondón had read the first of the Goços de Santa Maria in the supplement. But it is not very likely: for, though the Archpriest’s poems are mentioned in an English book published nine years before they appeared in Spain,[5] they never were, and perhaps never will be, popular in the ordinary sense. Juan Ruiz was far in advance of his age. He lived and died obscure. No contemporary mentions him by name, and the only thing that can be construed into a rather early allusion is found in a poem by Ferrant Manuel de Lando in the Cancionero de Baena (No. 362):—
Señor Juan Alfonso, pintor de taurique
qual fue Pitas Payas, el de la fablilla.
But this, at the best, is indirect. Santillana merely refers to the Archpriest incidentally. Argote de Molina, in the next century, does indeed quote one of the Archpriest’s serranillas (st. 1023-27); but he is misinformed as to the author, and ascribes the verses to a certain ‘Domingo Abad [54] de los Romances’ whose name occurs in the Repartimiento de Sevilla. Still there is evidence to prove that Juan Ruiz found a few readers fit to appreciate him. A fragment of his work exists in Portuguese; the great Chancellor, Pero López de Ayala, imitates him in the poem generally known as the Rimado de Palacio; Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera and a kindred spirit in some respects, speaks of him by name, and lays him under contribution in the Reprobación del amor mundano. The famous pander who lends her name to the Celestina is closely related to Trotaconventos, and Calixto and Melibea in that great masterpiece are developed from Don Melón de la Uerta and Doña Endrina de Calatayud. The Archpriest’s influence on his successors is therefore undeniable. But, leaving this aside, and judging him solely by his immediate, positive achievement, he is not altogether unworthy to be placed near Chaucer,—the poet to whom he has been so often compared.
CHAPTER III
THE LITERARY COURT OF JUAN II.
The reign of Juan II. is one of the longest and most troubled in the history of Castile. In his second year he succeeded his father, Enrique el Doliente, at the end of 1406, and for almost half a century he was the sport of fortune. Enrique III.’s frail body was tenanted by a masterful spirit: his son was a puppet in the hands of favourites or of factions. Juan II.’s uncle Fernando de Antequera (so called from his brilliant campaign against the Moors in 1410, celebrated in the popular romances) acted as regent of Castile till he was called to the throne of Aragón in 1412, when the regency was assumed by the Queen-Mother, Catherine of Lancaster. The generosity of contemporaries and the gallantry of elderly historians lead them to judge Queen-Mothers with indulgence; but Catherine is admitted to have been a grotesque and incapable figurehead, controlled by Fernán Alonso de Robles, a clever upstart. Declared of age in 1419, Juan II. soon fell under the dominion of Álvaro de Luna, a young Aragonese who had come to court in 1408, and had therefore known the king from childhood. Raised to the high post of Constable of Castile, Álvaro de Luna resolved to crush the seditious nobles, and to make his master a sovereign in fact as well as in name. But the king was a weakling who could be bullied out of any resolution. Factious revolts were met with alternate savagery and weakness. Opportunities were thrown away. The victory over the Moors at La Higuera in 1431, and the rout [56] of the rebel nobles at Olmedo in 1445, failed to strengthen the royal authority. At a critical moment, when he seemed in a fair way to triumph, Álvaro de Luna made an irremediable mistake. In 1447 he promoted the marriage of Juan II. with Isabel of Portugal: she was ‘the knife with which he cut his own throat.’ At her suggestion the unstable Juan took a step which has earned for him a prominent place among the traitor-kings who have deserted their ministers in a moment of danger. Álvaro de Luna had fought a hard fight for thirty years. In 1453 he was suddenly thrown over, condemned, and beheaded amid the indecent mockery of his enemies:—
Ca si lo ajeno tomé,