Three Books Of Amadis Of Gaul Dated.

The three Books of Amadis, dated. By Santiago Sevilla When were those books written? That is the question!. Why are they not a single book? The answer is that they were written in different periods of time, in accordance with real events, that served as inspiration. This would be a bold, and daring statement, were it not for the most fortunate finding of its unexpected accuracy. Paring the events of the life of the presumed author of the romantic epic of "Amadis", Henry of Castile, Senator of Rome, with the events told in the novel, we can find correspondence and easy connuvial. A number of situations can be pointed at: 1. The Battle of Cadfan is mentioned in "Amadis" under the name of the town of Galfan. At this time, 1257, Henry of Castile was in England, apparently in Bristol, together with Prince Edward Planagenet. So he was at the vicinity of Wales, where the English were cruelly defeated by the Welsh, as told in "Amadis" in some astonishing detail. The marriage of Alexander III King of Scotland with Margareth of England at age 11 and 10 (1251) inspired the early love between Oriana and Amadis in the first chapters of "Amadis".The first book of "Amadis" appears to have been written while Prince Henry of Castile was in England between 1255 and 1259. 2.The Second Book, written most probably in Tunis, when Prince Henry of Castile served as soldier of fortune and traveling knight to the Emir Al Mustansir, between 1260 and 1265, present us with the contemporary battles of Lewes and Evesham in England, of which Henry of Castile got good knowledge from Guy de Montfort, Count of Mola, in Italy: Simon of Montfort was changed into the traitor Barsinan; and the Second Book also describes us the hunting, and confrontation with lions, beasts never found in England, but much present in North Africa. 3. The Third Book is the tale of the gratest battles in the real life of Prince Henry of Castile: Benevento, Sciacca and Tagliacozzo, in the years 1266,-67,-68, against the Arabic King (Manfred of Hohenstaufen and his Sarracens), later angainst the French occupation in Sicily, at the port city of Sciacca (The castle of the Boiling Lake), and finally, the Battle against the Seven Kings, or Tagliacozzo, against Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, brother of King Louis, the Saint of France and king of many other territories. The last book of "Amadis", deals also with recent inspirations in real life, it appears. In spring of 1276, Eleanor of Montfort and England was captured on her way to Wales to marry the Prince of Wales Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and she was taken prisoner to Windsor by King Henry III. Before, in 1267, by the Treaty of Viterbo, (where Henry of Castile was present) the daughter of King Charles of Anjou, Beatrice of Sicily, was given in marriage to Phillip of Courtenay, the son of Baldwin II Latin Emperor of Constantinople. Both events together inspired the later imprisoned Henry of Castile to write about the abduction of Oriana by Amadis from open sea on the way to marriage in Constantinople, to his Firm Island, in the last chapter of his Third Book, all written between 1268 and 1292, while imprisoned in the castel of Canosa di Puglia, and Castel del Monte. The conquest of Sicily by Peter III of Aragon, defending the inheritance of Constance of Hohenstaufen, his queen consort, appear in "Amadis" as the conquest of the Island of Mongaza. The Battle of the Hundred Knights, and the single jousting duel of Amadis are inspired by the duel at Bordeaux between Peter III of Aragon and King Charles of Anjou, set for 1st.of June 1283. The Battle of Col de Panissards (1285) is also referred to in the third book of "Amadis", giving accurate tactical details of that most cruel event. It all coincides with the presence of Prince Henry of Castile in Castel del Monte, where he was kept with a certain degree of respect for his dignity, as Ferdinand

Gregorovious tells us. He was able to correspond, and was well informed about the events of his time, translating it into his masterly novel. So the writings follow the inspirations, which have a date and we can guess, with some certainty, when each of the three books was written. Unfortunately the plagiarist of Prince Henry's "Amadis", Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo destroyed and replaced the last parts of the Third Book and left us with the unkown, he, happily flattered by his cultists and foolish admirers, notwithstanding his wickedness.