In most of the imitations and translations just noticed, the influence of the Church is more visible than it is in the class of the original Spanish romances. This is the case, from its very subject, with the story of the Saint Graal, and with that of Charlemagne, which, so far as it is taken from the pretended Archbishop Turpin’s Chronicle, goes mainly to encourage founding religious houses and making pious pilgrimages. But the Church was not satisfied with this indirect and accidental influence. Romantic fiction, though overlooked in its earliest beginnings, or perhaps even punished by ecclesiastical authority in the person of the Greek Bishop to whom we owe the first proper romance,[391] was now become important, and might be made directly useful. Religious romances, therefore, were written. In general, they were cast into the form of allegories, like “The Celestial Chivalry,” “The Christian Chivalry,” “The Knight of the Bright Star,” and “The Christian History and Warfare of the Stranger Knight, the Conqueror of Heaven”;--all printed after the middle of the sixteenth century, and during the period when the passion for romances of chivalry was at its height.[392] [391] The “Ethiopica,” or the “Loves of Theagenes and Chariclea,” written in Greek by Heliodorus, who lived in the time of the Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius. It was well known in Spain at the period now spoken of, for, though it was not printed in the original before 1534, a Spanish translation of it appeared as early as 1554, anonymously, and another, by Ferdinand de Mena, in 1587, which was republished at least twice in the course of thirty years. (Nic. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 380, and Conde’s Catalogue, London, 1824, 8vo, Nos. 263, 264.) It has been said that the Bishop preferred to give up his rank and place rather than consent to have this romance, the work of his youth, burned by public authority. Erotici Græci, ed. Mitscherlich, Biponti, 1792, 8vo, Tom. II. p. viii. [392] The “Caballería Christiana” was printed in 1570, the “Caballero de la Clara Estrella” in 1580, and the “Caballero Peregrino” in 1601. Besides these, “Roberto el Diablo”--a story which was famous throughout Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and has been revived in our own times--was known in Spain from 1628, and probably earlier. (Nic. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 251.) In France, it was printed in 1496, (Ebert, No. 19175,) and in England by Wynkyn de Worde. See Thomas, Romances, London, 1828, 12mo, Vol. I. p. v.