Historical fiction is generally based on historical facts, and the author will certainly have delved into sources, usually chronicles, history books, or studies about the time and the events of her or his temporal setting. I’ve mentioned before that Torquato Tasso’s source on the First Crusade was William of Tyre. This is an episode in Book One of William’s chronicle:
There was a certain infidel living in the city [Jerusalem], a treacherous and wicked man, who persecuted our people with insatiable hatred. This man was determined to devise some scheme that would bring about their destruction. One day, he stealthily threw the carcass of a dog into the temple court, a place which the custodian – and indeed the whole city as well – were most careful to keep scrupulously clean. Worshippers who came to the temple to pray the next morning found the mouldering body of the unclean animal. Almost frantic, they at once roused the whole city with their cries. The populace quickly ran to the temple, and all agreed that without question the Christians were responsible for the act. Need more be said? Death was decreed for all Christians, since it was judged that by death alone could they atone for such an act of sacrilege. The faithful, in full assurance of their innocence, prepared to suffer death for Christ’s sake. As their executioners, with swords unscathed, were about to carry out their orders, however, a young man, filled with the spirit, came forward and offered himself as the sacrifice. (William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, transl. and annotated by Emily Atwater Babcock and A.C. Krey, New York: Columbia University Press, 1943, vol. 1, p. 68)
William Hunter owned an Italian translation of William of Tyre’s chronicle. Interestingly, the translator Giuseppe Horologgi dedicates his translation to the then Duke of Lorraine, descendant of Godfrey. These pages contain the episode which inspired Canto Two in Tasso’s epic. Sp Coll Hunterian l.6.17, Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library.
There follows an exchange between the unnamed young man and the Christian community: he explains that it is better for a man to die than a whole people, and the Christians promise to offer his family the honour of “carrying the olive which signifies our Lord Jesus Christ” in solemn procession of Palm Sunday. William of Tyre concludes this episode thus:
“The young man then gave himself up to the chief men of Jerusalem and declared that he was the criminal. In this way he established the innocence of the other Christians, for, when the judges heard his story, they absolved the rest and put him to the sword. Thus he laid down his life for the brethren and, with pious resignation, met death, that most blessed sleep, confident that he had acquired grace in the sight of the Lord. (ibid., p.69)
This narrative is clearly the basis of the story in Canto Two. It is equally obvious that Torquato Tasso, inspired by this historical episode, took many liberties with it. He embellishes the truth, as he declared he would do in his introduction. He elaborates on causality and agents: the sacrilege is devised, planned and perpetrated by evil sorcerer Ismen (the ‘certain infidel’, ‘treacherous and wicked man’ of William of Tyre’s historical narrative) and wicked king Aladdin (another fictional creation) in order to exterminate the Christians of Jerusalem. He changes the object of sacrilege from a foul, rotting dog-carcass to an elevated, holy statue of the Virgin, thus providing another connection with classical epic[2]. He changes the martyr figure from a young man to the much more pathetic and attractive one of a young, beautiful virgin – but he keeps the young man character as a lover, inserting the element of romance into a typical narrative motif of Christian sacrifice. He changes the execution plan from a beheading to a burning (perhaps because his sixteenth century audience would be more familiar with it?) And he provides a happy ending to the episode, with the intervention of the fictional character of Clorinda, thus introducing one of the main characters of his epic into the story.
A historical fiction writer of today moves along those lines, more or less, in dealing with facts and transforming them into fiction. Nothing is lost, everything is put to good use for the narrative purposes, and history is transformed into something much more intriguing and satisfying.
[1] William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, Volume One, translated and annotated by Emily Atwater Babcock and A.C. Krey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 68-9.
[2] The statue of a holy figure is a motif borrowed from classical epic: in the siege of Troy, Odysseus and Diomedes enter the city by stealth to recover the powerful wooden statue of Pallas Athene, which would guarantee protection to its owners. See Torquato Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme Liberata), translated by Max Wickert, with an Introduction and Notes by Mark Davie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 407.
First Crusade Fictions 