King, Georgiana Goddard: A brief account of the military orders in Spain (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1921)

16
MILITARY ORDERS
Lope de
Vega
Zorita
de los
Canes
Bull was obtained and apparently the
Cistercian authority acknowledged. He
was an important figure in a troubled time,
when Alfonso VIII was still a baby and
the feuds of Castro and Lara were laying
the land waste. A shadowy and ghostly
image in the rule of successive Masters, he
is barely discernible as late as 1178: at
any rate he fought the Moors many times.
D. Frey Fernando Escaza was his suc-
cessor, and assisted at the siege of Zorita.
Now the tale of the Siege of Zorita is a
tract, and admirably edifying when Rades
y Andrada relates it, who knows well how
to adorn a moral. When Lope de Vega in
his turn gives an act or two to the great
castle, wherein the seneschal is noble-
hearted, the traitor ingeniously false, and
the barber deftly villainous, he supplies
better reading than The Troublesome Raigne
of King John. But the whole story is too
rich to be put off into a paragraph here,
and the ruined castle and church, whereon
Torres Campos y Baibas has published
most excellent matter, are too splendid to
be overlooked, and Zorita de los Canes
HISPANIC NOTES