Although the extension of intellectual culture and the triumph of Humanism were outstanding facts of the period, there were notable cultivators, too, of the sciences, moral, social, and natural, especially the last-named. Studies in geography, cosmography, and cartography received a great impulse through the discovery of America, and many scientific works along these lines were due to the scholars connected with the _Casa de Contratación_ (House of Trade), or India House. Medical works were even more prominent, not a few of them on the subject of venereal disease. A number of these works were mutilated or condemned altogether by the Inquisition, in part because of their doctrines, but also because of the anatomical details which they contained, for they were considered immoral. [Sidenote: Polite literature.] [Sidenote: La Celestina.] [Sidenote: History.] [Sidenote: The theatre.] In polite literature the leading characteristics were the complete victory of the Italian influence, the predominance of Castilian, the popularity of the romances, and the beginning of the Castilian theatre. The Italian influence manifested itself both in the translation of Classical and Italian Renaissance works and in an imitation of their models and forms. Castilian was employed, not only in Castile and Aragon proper, but even in the literary works of Portuguese, Catalans, Valencians, and not a few individuals (Spaniards in the main) at the court of Naples, although Catalan and Valencian poetry still had a vogue. The poetry of the era often exhibited tendencies of a medieval character,--for example, in its use of allegory. It is curious to note also the prevalence of two somewhat opposed types of subject-matter, religious and erotic; in the latter there was a vigorous school which often went to the extreme of license. The romances of love and chivalry gained even greater favor than in the preceding period. The _Amadís de Gaula_ (Amadis of Gaul) of Vasco de Lobeira was translated from the Portuguese by Garcí Ordóñez de Montalvo, and many other novels on the same model were written. One of these was _Las sergas de Esplandián_ (The deeds of Esplandián) by Ordóñez de Montalvo himself, references in which to an “island California” as a land of fabulous wealth were to result in the naming of the present-day California, once believed to be just such an island. Much superior to the amatory or chivalric novels was a remarkable book which stood alone in its time, the _Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea_ (The tragi-comedy of Calixtus and Melibea), better known as _La Celestina_ (1499), from the name of one of the characters, believed to have been the work of Fernando de Rojas. In eloquent Spanish and with intense realism _La Celestina_ dealt with people in what might be called “the under-world.” This was the first of the picaresque novels (so-called because they dealt with the life of _pícaros_, or rogues), out of which was to develop the true Spanish novel.