Note 821 — Chapter XXVIII

“Los Amantes de Teruel, Epopeya Trágica, con la Restauracion de España por la Parte de Sobrarbe y Conquista del Reino de Valencia, por Juan Yague de Salas,” Valencia, 1616, 12mo. The latter part of it is much occupied with a certain Friar John and a certain Friar Peter, who were great saints in Teruel, and with the conquest of Valencia by Don Jaume of Aragon. The poetry of the whole, it is not necessary to add, is naught. The antiquarian investigation of the truth of the story of the lovers is in a modest pamphlet entitled “Noticias Históricas sobre los Amantes de Teruel, por Don Isidro de Antillon” (Madrid, 1806, 18mo);—a respectable Professor of History in the College of the Nobles at Madrid. (Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. VI. p. 123). It leaves no reasonable doubt about the forgery of Salas, which, moreover, is done very clumsily. Ford, in his admirable “Hand-Book of Spain,” (London, 1845, 8vo, p. 874), implies that the tomb of the lovers is still much visited. It stands now in the cloisters of St. Peter, whither, in 1709, in consequence of alterations in the church, their bodies were removed;—much decayed, says Antillon, notwithstanding the claim set up that they are imperishable. The story of the lovers of Teruel has often been resorted to, and, among others in our own time, by Juan Eugenio Harzenbusch, in his drama, “Los Amantes de Teruel,” and by an anonymous author in a tale with the same title, that appeared at Valencia, 1838, 2 tom. 18mo. In the Preface to the last, another of the certificates of Yague de Salas to the truth of the story is produced for the first time, but adds nothing to its probability. See ante, pp. 301-304.