possible, however, that the prologue alone was written after 1492, and that the text itself is older. The number of these “ancient originals” is not stated, nor is there any mention of the language in which they were composed; Montalvo’s silence on the latter point might be taken to imply that they were in Castilian, but any such inference would be hazardous. Three books of Amadís de Gaula are mentioned by Pero Ferrús who was living in 1379, and there is evidence that the romance was current in Castile more than a quarter of a century earlier; but again there is no information as to the language in which they were written. Gomes Eannes de Azurara, in his Chronica de Conde D. Pedro de Menezes (c. 1450), states that Amadís de Gaula was written by Vasco de Lobeira in the time of king Ferdinand of Portugal who died in 1383; as Vasco de Lobeira was knighted in 1385, it would follow that he wrote the elaborate romance in his earliest youth. This conclusion is untenable, and the suggestion that the author was Pedro de Lobeira (who flourished in the 15th century) involves a glaring anachronism. A further step was taken by the historian João de Barros, who maintained in an unpublished work dating between 1540 and 1550 that Vasco de Lobeira wrote Amadís de Gaula in Portuguese, and that his text was translated into Castilian; this is unsupported assertion. Towards the end of the 16th century Miguel Leite Ferreira, son of the Portuguese poet, Antonio Ferreira, declared that the original manuscript of Amadís de Gaula was then in the Aveiro archives, and an Amadís de Gaula in Portuguese, which is alleged to have existed in the conde de Vimeiro’s library as late as 1586, had vanished before 1726. In the absence of corroboration, these dubious details must be received with extreme reserve. A stronger argument in favour of the Portuguese case is drawn from the existing Spanish text. In book I, chapters 40 and 42, it is recorded that the Infante Alphonso of Portugal suggested a radical change in the narrative of Briolanja’s relations with Amadís. This prince has been identified as the Infante Alphonso who died in 1312, or as Alphonso IV. who ascended the Portuguese throne in 1325. Were either of these identifications established, the date of composition might be referred with certainty to the beginning of the 14th century or the end of the 13th. But both identifications are conjectural. Nevertheless the passage in the Spanish text undeniably lends some support to the Portuguese claim, and recent critics have inclined to the belief that Amadís de Gaula was written by João de Lobeira, a Galician knight who frequented the Portuguese court between 1258 and 1285, and to whom are ascribed two fragments of a poem in the Colocci-Brancuti Canzoniere (Nos. 240 and 240b), which reappears with some unimportant variants in Amadís de Gaula (book II, chapter 11). The coincidence may be held to account in some measure for the traditional association of a Lobeira with the authorship of Amadís de Gaula; but, though curious, it warrants no definite conclusion being drawn from it. Against the Portuguese claim it is argued that the Villancico corresponding to João de Lobeiro’s poem is an interpolation in the Spanish text, that Portuguese prose was in a rudimentary stage of development at the period when—ex hypothesi—the romance was composed, and that the book was very popular in Spain almost a century before it is even mentioned in Portugal. Lastly, there is the incontrovertible fact that Amadís de Gaula exists in Castilian, while it remains to be proved that it ever existed in Portuguese. As to its substance, it is beyond dispute that much of the text derives from the French romances of the Round Table; but the evidence does not enable us to say (1) whether it was pieced together from various French romances; (2) whether it was more or less literally translated from a lost French original; or (3) whether the first Peninsular adapter or translator was a Castilian or a Portuguese. On these points judgment must be suspended. There can, however, be no hesitation in accepting Cervantes’ verdict on Amadís de Gaula as the “best of all the books of this kind that have ever been written.” It is the prose epic of feudalism, and its romantic spirit, its high ideals, its fantastic gallantry, its ingenious adventures, its mechanism of symbolic wonders, and its flowing style have entranced readers of such various types as Francis I. and Charles V., Ariosto and Montaigne.
Bibliography.—Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Gottfried Baist in the Grundriss der romanischen Philologie (Strassburg, 1897), ii. Band, 2. Abteilung, pp. 216-226 and 440-442; Ludwig Braunfels, Kritischer Versuch über den Roman Amadis von Gallien (Leipzig, 1876); Theophilo Braga, Historia das novelas portuguezas de cavalleria (Porto, 1873), Curso de litteratura e arte portugueza (Lisboa, 1881), and Questões de litteratura e arte portugueza (Lisboa, 1885); Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Origenes de la novela (Madrid, 1905); Eugène Baret, De l’Amadis de Gaule et de son influence sur les mœurs et la littérature au XVIᵉ et au XVIIᵉ siècle (Paris, 1873). (J. F. -K.)
AMADOU, a soft tough substance used as tinder, derived from Polyporus fomentarius, a fungus belonging to the group Basidiomycetes and somewhat resembling a mushroom in manner of growth. It grows upon old trees, especially the oak, ash, fir and cherry. The fungus is cut into slices and then steeped in a solution of nitre. Amadou is prepared on the continent of Europe, chiefly in Germany, but the fungus is a native of Britain. Polyporus igniarius and other species are also used, but yield an inferior product.
AMAKUSA, an island belonging to Japan, 2612 m. long and 1312 in extreme width, situated about 32° 20′ N., and 130° E. long., on the west of the province of Higo (island of Kiushiu), from which it is separated by the Yatsushiro-kai. It has no high mountains, but its surface being very hilly—four of the peaks rise to a height over 1500 ft.—the natives resort to the terrace system of cultivation with remarkable success. A number of the heads of the Christians executed in connexion with the Shimabara rebellion in the first half of the 17th century were buried in this island. Amakusa produces a little coal and fine kaolin, which was largely used in former times by the potters of Hirado and Satsuma.
AMAL, the name of the noblest family among the Ostrogoths, and that from which nearly all their kings were chosen.
AMALARIC (d. 531), king of the Visigoths, son of Alaric II., was a child when his father fell in battle against Clovis, king of the Franks (507). He was carried for safety into Spain, which country and Provence were thenceforth ruled by his maternal grandfather, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, acting through his vice-gerent, an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. In 522 the young Amalaric was proclaimed king, and four years later, on Theodoric’s death, he assumed full royal power in Spain and a part of Languedoc, relinquishing Provence to his cousin Athalaric. He married Clotilda, daughter of Clovis; but his disputes with her, he being an Arian and she a Catholic, brought on him the penalty of a Frankish invasion, in which he lost his life in 531.
AMALASUNTHA or Amalasuentha, queen of the Ostrogoths (d. 535), daughter of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, was married in 515 to Eutharic, an Ostrogoth of the old Amal line, who had previously been living in Spain. Her husband died, apparently in the early years of her marriage, leaving her with two children, Athalaric and Matasuentha. On the death of her father in 526, she succeeded him, acting as regent for her son, but being herself deeply imbued with the old Roman culture, she gave to that son’s education a more refined and literary turn than suited the ideas of her Gothic subjects. Conscious of her unpopularity she banished, and afterwards put to death, three Gothic nobles whom she suspected of intriguing against her rule, and at the same time opened negotiations with the emperor Justinian with the view of removing herself and the Gothic treasure to Constantinople. Her son’s death in 534 made but little change in the posture of affairs. Amalasuntha, now queen, with a view of strengthening her position, made her cousin Theodahad partner of her throne (not, as sometimes stated, her husband, for his wife was still living). The choice was unfortunate. Theodahad, notwithstanding a varnish of literary culture, was a coward and a scoundrel. He fostered the disaffection of the Goths, and either by his orders or with his permission, Amalasuntha was imprisoned on an island in the Tuscan lake of Bolsena, where in the spring of 535 she was murdered in her bath.
The letters of Cassiodorus, chief minister and literary adviser of Amalasuntha, and the histories of Procopius and Jordanes, give us our chief information as to the character of Amalasuntha.
