Fernando de Rojas is generally recognized as the author, or possibly the co-author, of a single literary work popularly known as Celestina. The work was an immediate best-seller in Spain when it first appeared in print in 1499, and it was rapidly translated into other European languages: by 1525 close or loose versions existed in Italian, French, German, and English; by mid century the list expanded to Hebrew (now lost) and Dutch. By 1640, when the work was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Roman Catholic Church for the second time, more than ninety Spanish-language editions printed in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands existed, and it had been rendered into Latin in 1624 by the German scholar Kaspar von Barth. Celestina was not only translated but also adapted: its plot intrigues and boldly conceived characters inspired an anonymous popular ballad of six hundred lines around 1510, an actable eclogue in...