If he lived on through the reigns of Pedro I (1357-67) and Fernando (1376-83), and acquired new distinction in battle in the reign of the latter, this might account for Zurara’s assertion that he wrote _Amadis_ in the reign of Fernando. But the chief obstacle to the authorship of Vasco is the existence in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_ (Nos. 230 and 232 A) of a song by Joan de Lobeira, _Leonoreta, fin roseta_, which reappears with slight variations in Montalvo’s _Amadis_ (Lib. II, cap. xi: _este villancico_). It would seem then that Joan, not Vasco, wrote _Amadis_. Joan de Lobeira,[135] or Joan Pirez Lobeira, flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century, and so we have _Amadis_ dating not only from the reign of King Dinis but from the first half of his reign. But does the existence of the poem entail that of a prose romance? The early mention of Tristan, e.g. by Alfonso X, does not necessarily imply the existence of a thirteenth-century Peninsular _Tristan_ in prose. May we not accept the poem, written in the stirring metre, dear to men of action, used by Alfonso X (C. M. 300), as merely a proof of the popularity of the story, fondness for an episode perhaps treated in greater detail in the Anglo-French original than in Montalvo’s version? Certainly it is in the highest degree improbable that a Spaniard, writing at the end of the fifteenth century, should extract a poem from the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ and insert it in his prose; but the improbability disappears if in the middle of the fourteenth century a Portuguese (Vasco de Lobeira), perhaps drawn to the story by the poem of his ancestor, incorporated it in his romance. The late Antonio Thomaz Pires in 1904 discovered at Elvas the will of a João de Lobeira, _mercador_, who died there in 1386, and in Dr. Theophilo Braga’s latest opinion[136] there were three Portuguese versions of _Amadis_: that of the father, this João de Lobeira, written in the time of King Dinis (a long-lived race these Lobeiras!), that of the son,[137] Vasco, and a third by Pedro de Lobeira in the first half of the fifteenth century. The threefold authorship of this family heirloom is even more _cruu de creer_ than the theory that a single Lobeira--Vasco--wrote it in the middle of the fourteenth century. A certain note of disapproval of _Amadis_ as fabulous, shared by Portuguese and Spanish writers,[138] perhaps indicates a fairly late date: its irresponsible fiction would be less excusable if it was written in an age which was beginning to attach serious importance to _nobiliarios_ and ‘true’ chronicles. Moreover, if the Portuguese adaptation of an Anglo-French legend had been even remotely as developed as the form in which we now have it, the Infante Afonso must have seen at once that the faithfulness of Amadis was absolutely essential to the story. But especially the fact that the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_, familiar with Tristan and the _matière de Bretagne_, are silent on the subject of _Amadis_ is