Los amantes de Teruel, Epopeya tragica

8vo. pp. [60], 700 [i.e. 722], [54]. Signatures: [sec.]-3[sec.]⁸ 4[sec.]⁶ A-3B⁸ 3C-3D². Vellum. With illustrations (portrait). Manuscript writing on endpapers. Worm holes on covers and endpapers. Spine title, evidence of ties.

First edition of an epic poem celebrating two star-crossed lovers, supposedly based on a thirteenth-century manuscript that Yagüe de Salas had discovered in Valencian ecclesiastical archives, although now seen as deriving from a novella of Boccaccio – perhaps via other lost versions. As a Spanish ‘original’ (often called ‘the Spanish Romeo and Juliet’) it deceived among others Lope de Vega and Cervantes, both of whom contributed adulatory sonnets to the preliminary material. In 1619 Yagüe’s further discovery and transcription of a ‘papel escrito de letra antigua’ confirming the spurious antiquity of the tale provoked the exhumation of two bodies buried at Teruel, still exhibited to pilgrims today, in their sepulchre, holding hands.

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