contigo me las pegara,
e non te alçara la vara,
per ser mi competidor.
This is not an isolated instance of profanity in high places, for Álvaro de Luna’s repugnant performance was equalled in the Letanía de Amor by the grave chronicler Diego de Valera, and was approached in innumerable copies of verse by many professed believers. The abundance of versifiers during the reign of Juan II. is embarrassing. In the Ilustraciones to the sixth volume of his Historia de la literatura española, José Amador de los Ríos gives two lists of poets who flourished at this period, and (allowing for the accidental inclusion of three names in both lists) he arrives at a total of two hundred and fifteen. Even so, it seems that the catalogue is incomplete; but we should thank Ríos for his good taste, forbearance, or negligence in not making it exhaustive. It is extremely doubtful whether two hundred and fifteen poets of superlative distinction can be found in all the literatures of Europe put together; it is certain that no such number of distinguished poets has ever existed at one time in any one country, and many of the entries in Ríos’s lists are the names of mediocrities, not to say poetasters. We may exclude them from our breathless review this afternoon, just as we must pass hurriedly over the names of minor prose-writers. There is merit in Álvaro de Luna’s Libro de las virtuosas e claras mugeres in which the Constable replies to Boccaccio’s Corbaccio and takes up the cudgels for women; there is uncommon merit in a venomous and amusing treatise, branding the entire sex, by Juan II.’s chaplain, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo—a work which he wished to be called (after himself) the Arcipreste de Talavera, but to which a mischievous posterity has attached the title of El Corbacho or the Reprobación del amor mundano. There is merit also in the allegorical Visión delectable of Alfonso de la Torre, and in the animated (though perhaps too imaginative) narrative of adventures given by Gutierre Díez de Games in the Crónica del Conde de Buelna, Don Pero Niño. And no account of the writers of Juan II.’s reign would be complete without some mention of the celebrated Bishop of Ávila, Alfonso de Madrigal, best known as El Tostado. But El Tostado wrote mostly in Latin, and, apart from this, his incredible productivity weighs upon him.
Es muy cierto que escrivió
para cada día tres pliegos
de los días que vivió:
su doctrina assi alumbró
que haze ver á los ciegos.
We must be satisfied to quote this epitaph written on [60] El Tostado by Suero del Águila, and hurry on as we may, blinder than the blind. When all is said, the importance of El Tostado and the rest is purely relative. We need only concern ourselves with the more significant figures of the time, and this select company will occupy the time at our disposal.