Note 792 — Chapter III

It is something like the well-known German poem “Theuerdank,” which was devoted to the adventures of Maximilian I. up to the time when he married Mary of Burgundy, and, like that, owes some of its reputation to the bold engravings with which its successive editions were ornamented. One of the best of the Cavallero Determinado is the Plantiniana, Anvers, 1591, 8vo. The account of the part—earlier unsuspected—borne by the Emperor in the composition of the Cavallero Determinado is found on pp. 15 and 16 of the “Lettres sur la Vie Intérieure de l’Empereur Charles Quint, par Guillaume Van Male, Gentilhomme de sa Chambre, publiées pour la première fois par le Baron de Reiffenberg, Bruxelles, Société des Bibliophiles Belgiques, à Bruxelles, 1843,” 4to; a very curious collection of thirty-one Latin letters, that often contain strange details of the infirmities of the Emperor from 1550 to 1555. Their author, Van Male, or Malinæus as he was called in Latin, and Malinez in Spanish, was one of the needy Flemings who sought favor at the court of Charles V. Being ill treated by the Duke of Alva, who was his first patron; by Avila y Zuñiga, whose Commentaries he translated into Latin, in order to purchase his regard; and by the Emperor, to whom he rendered many kind and faithful services, he was, like many others who had come to Spain with similar hopes, glad to return to Flanders as poor as he came. He died in 1560. He was an accomplished and simple-hearted scholar, and deserved a better fate than to be rewarded for his devotion to the Imperial humors by a present of Acuña’s manuscript, which Avila had the malice to assure the Emperor would be well worth five hundred gold crowns to the suffering man of letters;—a remark to which the Emperor replied by saying, “William will come rightfully by the money; he has sweat hard at the work,”—“Bono jure fructus ille ad Gulielmum redeat; ut qui plurimum in illo opere sudârit.” Of the Emperor’s personal share in the version of the Chevalier Délibéré Van Male gives the following account (Jan. 13, 1551):—“Cæsar maturat editionem libri, cui titulus erat Gallicus,—Le Chevalier Délibéré. Hunc per otium a seipso traductum tradidit Ferdinando Acunæ, Saxonis custodi, ut ab eo aptaretur ad numeros rithmi Hispanici; quæ res cecidit felicissimè. Cæsari, sine dubio, debetur primaria traductionis industria, cùm non solùm linguam, sed et carmen et vocum significantiam mirè expressit,” etc. Epist. vi.

A version of the Chevalier Délibéré was also made by Gerónimo de Urrea, and was printed in 1555. I have never seen it.