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Macías is one of the earliest known cancionero poets of the late Middle Ages. As such, he wrote still very much in the vein of the Galaico-Portuguese lyric of the middle of the fourteenth century. Little of any certainty is known about him, although he appears to have been from Galicia in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and to have flourished between 1340–1370. His poetry, which received wide circulation through cancioneros especially in Castile during the fifteenth century, is dominated by themes of catastrophic love and sacrificial desire. As in the case of many of the earlier Provençal troubadours, the tragic incidents to which his poems refer led to the creation of a legend around Macías as a martyr to love. Don Pedro, Condestable de Portugal, Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Hernán Núñez, and much later Argote de Molina, all recall dramatic anecdotes about him. These tell how Macías was slain by a jealous husband, who discovered the poet’s love for his wife. Macías’s fame as a martyr of romantic love extended itself into literature well beyond the fifteenth century. In both the early modern theater and nineteenth-century literature the legendary figure of Macías became synonymous with paradigmatic tragic lover. Lope de Vega made Macías the protagonist of his drama Porfiar hasta morir, and Mariano José de Larra was inspired to write a play titled Macías and a novel called El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente based on his celebrated exploits.

E. Michael Gerli