ABSTRACT
Turning to poetry, we find that foreign influence has become all-powerful during the fifteenth century. The series of the old Spanish heroic and religious epic ends with the Poem of Alfonso XI. Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino is, however, at his best in the hymns to the Virgin, in which he, like other secular poets of the age, frequently gives proof of a strong religious spirit underlying the artificial exterior of courtly life. Macias, surnamed el Enamorado, a Galician retainer of the Marques of Villena, was himself a verse-writer, but he is known rather as a subject for poetry than as a poet. A poet more worthy of the name is the Marques of Santillana, whom we have mentioned in connection with the early history of the drama, and must mention again in connection with proverbs. Santillana has left one of the most important literary documents of his time, in his Letter to the Constable of Portugal.
