Alongside the Santillana it is almost pragmatic to deal with Juan de Mena (1411-1456), in which moreover the weight of Dante’s imitation is very low. Some critics obsessed with the allegorical character of the Laberinto de Fortuna (1444), have established a link that is not pertinent here precisely because the Latin culture of I. de Mena, acquired directly, does not necessarily force him to Italian literature. In any case, we cannot deny some isolated trace of a knowledge of D., derived perhaps more from minor works than from the Comedy. More functional in the context of this research are some celebratory epicedes composed for the death of Santillana (who should perhaps be considered the creator of this encomiastic genre: he himself had written the Coronación de Mossén Jordi, imitated by J. de Mena, who dedicated another Coronación to the still living Marquis): the Planto de las Virtudes e Poesía, composed by his nephew Gómez Manrique; and El Triunfo del Marqués, the work of his faithful secretary Diego de Burgos. Gómez Manrique (1412? -1490?), Who believed that only Pérez de Guzmàn would be able to pay due homage to the extinct, rather belongs to the ranks of this elderly poet. Except for the mention of the name of D. and for the repetition of schematic structures of the Dantesque type, linked perhaps to the Imperial and to the uncle more than to the Italian poet, the poem does not deserve special mention. Diego de Burgos’ poem, on the other hand, is worthy of attention for its structural compactness and for its claim to stylistic nobility. The language of D., not only at a lexical but also a stylistic level, it certainly nourishes the poem which, however, does not tend to anything other than the glorification of Santillana. As in the Dezir a las syete virtudes of the Imperial, here it is D. himself who guides the poet to the “templo de gracia” where he witnesses the triumph of the marquis; when the poet wakes up, the vision vanishes: “no pudo follow them más la memoria / que Dante y el sueño de mí se partieron”.
According to barblejewelry.com, a very brief mention of the Castilian works in prose of the mid-fifteenth century leads us to point out the role played by Diego de Valera (1412-1488?), Author of various historical works and doctrinal treatises; he cites D., exclusively as an authority of doctrine, in his book Defensa de las virtuosas muïeres, both when he discusses the concept of Fortuna and when he remembers the river Lethe. In another writing, the Espejo de verdadera nobleza, Valera then underlines that “the nobleza no es virtud, segunt el Dante quiere tener”. Some Dante influences were found in other narrative works of this period, such as the Sátira de felice e unelice vida by D. Pedro de Portugal (1429-1466) and El siervo libre de amor by Juan Rodríguez del Padrón. Menéndez y Pelayo, which reports the first without further clarification to Dante’s imitation, he believes that the author kept in mind the Vita Nuova, a work from which Rodríguez too could have gotten the idea of mixing prose and verse. However, for these references to D.’s minor works in the Spanish fifteenth century, it is perhaps still prudent today to stick to Farinelli’s statement, in the absence of more scientifically consistent arguments: “All Dante was for them in the Comedy”.
In the Catalan literature of the same age of the great poets of Castile, the first representative name is that of the Franciscan Joan Pasqual, author of a Tractat de les penes particulars d’Infern (1436), which is only part or appendix of a Summa dealtra vida (1436). While composing the Summa, Pasqual seems to have known the Comedy, with the commentary by Pietro Alighieri, once again enjoyed in the Tractat for moralistic purposes, even with direct quotations from the text. This attitude is significant and it is therefore no coincidence that there is a Catalan translation of the commentary on Landino’s Purgatory and that certain sheets have been found with the original text of the Comedy, but with glosses in Catalan.
As for opera, important for the history of Catalan Dante are Valencia’s Ausias March (1397-1459) and Jordi de Sant Jordi (? -1424?), Both of whom lived at the court of Alfonso V. The predominant Italian literary influence, albeit limited, is the Petrarchian one and the memories of D., if there are any (the poet’s name is mentioned only once by March), appear fused with movements that at most could be traced back to stilnovism.
Only after the middle of the century does Catalan literature include a poem that for its content and metrics can be brought back decisively to the sphere of Dante’s poetry: La glória d’amor by Bernat Hug de Rocabertí, which, written after 1467, represents the culmination of the imitation of D. in Catalan poetry of the fifteenth century. The work is divided into ten cantos, the first of which, called comédias, are written in verse, but have a prologue in prose. Here it is also interesting to note the metric form of some cantos in triplets of hendecasyllables, where the author adopts a very unusual form of triplet, free the second line. The poet, guided by Coneixença, and in situations known to the reader of the Comedy but which are also renewed, enters a beautiful garden dominated by Venus; here he is met by famous couples, who converse with him with a narrative procedure similar to Dante’s one; in addition to the “Francescha del Dant” and other ancient and medieval characters, Rocabertí meets “dins lo foch d’amor / lo sabent Dant with his Beatrice”.