The sudden growth in popularity of the romances in the opening years of the sixteenth century -which led printers desperately to publish whatever chivalric material they could lay their hands on, such as the ancient Caballero Cifar, and perhaps Tirante el Blanco- is also explained by noble preoccupations. As Marañón has pointed out, in Los tres Vélez, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1962), pp. 45-46, these years were not the happy ones they are commonly said to have been. The great military endeavor of the reconquest was concluded, and the army suffered a sudden decline in importance. The discovery of America was of no particular interest. The centralizing tendencies which we see as the foundation of a modern state were seen by many as the erosion of traditional aristocratic privileges. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella meant that after her death, Castile was ruled by an Aragonese king, who did not hide the fact that his interests were Aragonese and not Spanish. (And even he was preferable to the Flemish Carlos V).
It is not hard to understand why, at this time especially, the nobility would turn to the romances of chivalry to read about a world which was in many ways superior to the one they lived in, in which the nobility still had a clear-cut and essential function, where life was varied, exciting, and adventurous, and in which the individual still had abundant opportunities to show his abilities and win status.
Beardsley, pp. 129-30.
We only have Olivante de Laura (with a dedication by the printer, not the author, which suggests an earlier date of composition), Rosián de Castilla (a short work and not a true romance), Lidamarte de Armenia, Febo el Troyano, and Policisne de Boecia published after this date, although there were written and published continuations of earlier works, such as those of the Espejo de príncipes (whose first edition is of 1555 -during the reign of Carlos V- not of 1562, the date usually found in bibliographies).
This can be seen from the splendid bibliography of Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino, Diccionario bibliográfico de pliegos sueltos (siglo XVI) (Madrid: Castalia, 1970), pp. 34-45 and 643-46.
The 1568 Florisel edition and the 1575 Amadís edition; the publication in 1576 of Febo el Troyano was almost certainly subsidized by its patron.
In 1585, two reprints of the Espejo de príncipes, Part II and one of the Primaleón; in 1586 the Amadís, Cristalián, the Espejo de príncipes, and two of the Espejo de caballerías; in 1587 the Amadís, two of the Sergas and of Lisuarte de Grecia, Belianís and its second part, and the publication of Part III of the Espejo de príncipes.
In 1588 was published the version of Fray Juan de Pineda of the Passo honroso, with its description of chivalric life under Juan II, whose court was the most recent Castilian model for that of Carlos V.
Lest it be thought that this fluctuation was present in all types of publishing except the very lowest, it can quickly be confirmed that the two periods referred to as virtually devoid of commercial interest in the romances of chivalry (1556-61, 1567-79) witnessed an intense activity in the fields of scientific and religious publishing, fields less subject to external vicissitudes, and to a somewhat lesser but still significant degree in the fields of belles-lettres and poetry (cf. the printing history of Montemayor and Garcilaso, for example).
The publication in 1554 of the first Spanish translation of Heliodorus and of the Lazarillo is surely coincidental.
Croce has already stated how «innumerevoli attestazioni» (of which he unfortunately gives but one -a quotation from Jerónimo de Urrea) pointed to the romances of chivalry as the soldiers' reading matter (La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la rinascenza, 4th ed. [Bari: Gius, Laterza, 1949], p. 210). Probably the editions of the romances published outside the peninsula were printed with the soldiers in mind.
«Los historiadores de aquel tiempo no convienen en la pérdida total que tuvo la escuadra de los españoles... Lo cierto es que la desgracia fue tal que cubrió de luto toda la España, porque no había familia ni casa de las distinguidas en todo el reino donde no se llorase la muerte de algún hijo, hermano o pariente, de manera que Felipe, temiendo el efecto que podría producir sobre el pueblo este luto general, publicó un edicto como hacían los romanos en semejantes circunstancias, mandándolo cesar» (José Sabau y Blanco, chronological tables to Mariana's Historia general, XVI [Madrid, 1820], lxxii).
An example of a member of the middle class who read romances of chivalry would be Fernando de Rojas, a converso who never rose above the position of mayor of Talavera. Among the books he owned when he made his will (1541) we find two «libros del Amadís» (two books of the Amadís cycle), Esplandián, Palmerín, Primaleón, Platir, and the Segunda Parte de Don Clarián (see Appendix). In the inventory it was noted that these books were «traídos y viejos y algunos rotos», presumably from use, as no note is made on the condition of a group of legal books he also owned. (Taken from Fernando del Valle Lersundi, «Testamento de Fernando de Rojas», RFE, 16 [1929], 382).