The Deprecation of the Greeks: a Very Old Story.

Leaving aside the woes and bewitchments of Gerusalemme’s heroines for a little while, I would like to return to the war between Franks and Saracens and to the hostile stance  of Torquato Tasso towards the Greeks, one of the great powers of the times, although they were called Romans back then – but this did not confuse Tasso and his contemporaries, as it did not confuse the chroniclers of the Crusades. In view of recent developments in the European world of politics and finance, and particularly in the Eurozone, it is interesting to see Tasso’s depiction of the Greeks in his epic.

Tasso used William of Tyre as his main historical source; William of Tyre, in his turn, born over a hundred years after the First Crusade, based his account on previous chronicles, among which  Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Ierosolimitanorum: the great heroes in that narrative are Bohemond and his nephew – none other than our old acquaintance, Tancred. The Gesta were hostile towards the Greek emperor Alexius I Comnenus, who did not trust Bohemond and was not particularly keen to allow the rather unruly bands of crusaders to devastate his lands. For Tasso, Alexius is of course ‘the treacherous emperor of the Greeks … with his wonted cunning’ (I.69) (Albert of Aachen’s chronicle, on the other hand, paints a much more favourable picture of the emperor, who had the difficult role of balancing his moral obligation to the Christian armies with consideration of his own people…)

In Canto One, Tasso describes the various armies participating in the Crusade. This is how he presents the Greeks:

Two hundred ride behind them, Grecian – born,

each armed so lightly that it seems he lacks

all steel, with scimitars athwart their sashes worn,

and bows and quivers rattling on their backs.

Their wiry steeds, well fed on little corn,

are tireless in long treks and swift attacks.

Quick to maraud and quick to quit the fight,

roving and scattered, they wage war by flight. (I.50)

Tasso’s description seems to refer rather to Ottoman Turks (e.g. ‘scimitars athwart their sashes worn’) or Arabs (their wiry steeds, well fed on little corn’) rather than to offer historical representations of Byzantine Greeks. (And this conflation has its own significance, too). Tasso writes over a hundred years after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, and barely ten years after the Battle of Lepanto, in 1571, in which the Ottoman Fleet was defeated by a Holy League of the Catholic states of the Mediterranean. (Bonus info: Miguel de Cervantes fought in that battle and was wounded, too!)

Tatinos rules that band, the only Greek

who joined the Latin armies. Oh, the shame!

the crime! These wars – were they too far to seek,

right at your doorstep, Greece? And yet you came

to lounge, a lazy spectator and weak,

who waits to see the outcome of the game?

If you are now a slave, your slavery

is (don’t complain!) justice, not infamy. (I.51)

In Greek mythology, the Nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mmenosyne (=Memory), protected the Arts and Sciences. In this 1745 illustration of Jerusalem Delivered by Giambattista Piazzetta, you can see the Muses on Mt Helicon, their residence, while two winged figures are carrying a cameo with Torquato Tasso’s portrait.
Sp Coll Hunterian Cd.2.1., Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library.

The scornful tone and the belief that the Greeks brought their slavery upon themselves due to their deceit, weakness, and indolence seem to have initiated a narrative tradition of hostile and deprecatory assessment which is strangely echoed in similar remarks in Western Europe today on the ‘lazy’ and ‘untrustworthy’ Greeks. What Tasso cannot mention – since it wouldn’t fit in the time-frame of Gerusalemme Liberata, having happened about a hundred years after the First Crusade – is that those brave and honest Frankish crusaders led the Fourth Crusade against Constantinople; that first Fall of the City in 1204 weakened the already faltering Byzantine Empire considerably, and eased off the work of the Ottomans in 1453. Yet, according to Tasso and the mainstream narrative in the centuries to follow, it was the Greeks who were treacherous:

The faith of Greeks – who knows not how it fares?

One treason shows all treason they can do –

no, thousands show it, since a thousand snares

that faithless, greedy folk has laid for you. (II.72)

On the one hand, the narrative fictional tradition of the ‘Fallatia Graecorum’; on the other, the historical fact of the Fourth Crusade which shows treachery to be firmly in the Frankish court. But fiction seems to be winning over fact, every time. A rather melancholy thought, this.

Fair and Brave Maidens, Part One

In Canto Two, the old, wicked king of Jerusalem, Aladdin* wants to find a way to destroy the Christian population of the city, so that they don’t cooperate with the invaders and bring him down. An evil sorcerer and necromancer by the name of Ismen advises him to steal a sacred statue of the Virgin Mary from a Christian church and place it in his mosque, then accuse Christians for the sacrilege. The evil plan is duly carried out, and the following morning all the Christians in Jerusalem are trembling with fear, expecting certain death.
But a fair and saintly virgin, Sophronia, comes forth and confesses to the crime, seeking to become a martyr for the Christian faith. Sophronia wants to give up her life to God, although there is a man, Olindo, who is madly in love with her and has asked her to marry him several times, but in vain.
King Aladdin is filled with desire for the beautiful maiden and is amazed by her courage; he is also furious because her act has thwarted his plans, and so he condemns Sophronia to death at the stake.  But as she is about to be led to the public execution place, something unexpected happens … (to be continued)

---

* Aladdin is an invented name, obviously much more attractive for a western audience – and more easily pronounceable – than Iftikhar ad-Daula, who was the historical ruler of Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade.

‘A Turkish Mosque lighted after the Mahometan manner where Aladine the Emperor is seated on a Throne surrounded by his Divan 1759.’ Jane Elizabeth Collins. This information is © The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, 2014

 

Heroes, historical and fictional, Part One

Seventeenth century artist Giambattista Piazzetta depicted Godfrey, Duke of Lotharingia, in a classical mode: his dress, helmet and demeanour – and semi-nakedness- link him to the Greco-Roman epic heroes and gods. But his gesture of pointing to the heavens is specifically Christian, and so is the winged angel who brought God’s decision of making him the leader of the Christian army. Tasso wanted to write a great Christian epic to equal the pagan ones of antiquity, and he did it using many of the classical conventions. Sp Coll Hunterian Cd.2.1., Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library

Who is the hero in this story? He is introduced to us in Canto One (think of a Canto as a chapter in a novel), in accordance with epic etiquette. Godfrey, Duke of Lotharingia (1060-1099) was a historical figure. He was one of the leaders of the First Crusade: he led a large contingent, along with other nobles, most notably his brother Baldwin, Hugh of France, Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders (many Roberts, which is perhaps what inspired Walter Scott’s novel on the First Crusade, Count Robert of Paris – but more of that later), and many others, from the Rhineland to Hungary, then through the Balkans to Thrace and Constantinople, where he met with other contingents and more leaders. Uniting outside Constantinople the “pilgrims”, as they called themselves (the terms Crusade and Crusader were invented much later, in the sixteenth century), crossed the Golden Horn, passed on to Anatolia, and from there moved towards Jerusalem,  their ultimate destination.

Was Godfrey a hero in history? It depends. He was certainly brave in terms of the values system of his time: an aristocratic warrior who led armies to war, being the first among them to plunge into battle. It would also seem that he was honestly religious in his purpose to liberate the Holy Sepulchre  from Muslim rule (which was the Crusaders’ professed aim), rather than motivated solely by ambition and greed, like many others who participated in that enterprise. Perhaps this was the reason why Godfrey was unanimously elected by the other leaders of the First Crusade to become the first King of Jerusalem. It is interesting that Godfrey did not accept the title of King, postulating that there was only one King in Jerusalem and that was Jesus Christ, so he took the humbler title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre instead. But he died within less than a year, and his brother Baldwin, who had no such scruples, became Baldwin I, first official Latin King of Jerusalem. Tasso will play upon this difference of character, offsetting the one brother, the pure Christian hero, against the other, the grasping and worldly lord (not quite a villain though – this type will be reserved for “infidels” only, and to a lesser degree, for Greeks).

In Jerusalem Delivered history is stretched a little to make for a more compelling narrative. The action begins in Canto One, stanza 7, when “the Eternal Father downwards cast his eyes” and sees that the Crusaders are not doing as well as it was hoped. They need a leader, so God who examines all hearts decides that Godfrey is the one. In a scene which has striking similarities to rhapsody α of The Odyssey combined with the Christian story of the Annunciation, God sends Gabriel (the Christian counterpart of Hermes, the winged messenger) down to earth, to apprise Godfrey of his decision. Godfrey summons the leaders and in a rousing speech urges them into action: Jerusalem must be delivered. Peter the Hermit (another historical figure, “who first preached the crusade and led it out”), representing spiritual authority and inspired by God, convinces the assembled nobles to make Godfrey their leader:

“Make one sole head lend them its light and force;

to one sole man sceptre and power bring:

grant him the place and image of a king.”

Thus fact is embellished by fiction in Tasso’s epic. Narrative reality has its own rules in epic poetry: the random and even pointless character of historical facts would be very badly received by an audience that expects a certain unity and determinate structure. Therefore Godfrey the “single charismatic leader” is infinite preferable to “the fragmented, conflicting leadership of reality.” The latter is material for historians; the former is the prerogative of the poet.

 

Welcome to First Crusade Fictions

 

 

The poet of Jerusalem Deliveredwearing his crown of laurels. © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014

 

Frontispiece of Jerusalem Delivered. © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow 2014. Torquato Tasso began composing his monumental epic in the early 1570s. Parts of the work as well as pirated complete editions of it were in circulation before its first authorized edition in 1581. This illustration is possibly from an eighteenth century edition: the Hunterian Collection in the Special Collections at the University of Glasgow includes a two -volume edition (Foulis: Glasgow, 1763; Sp Coll Hunterian Cz.3.25-26, vols 1-2), which contains the same illustrations by Sebastien LeClerc.

Writers and fans of historical fiction would agree: Torquato Tasso was the George R.R. Martin of his time. Tasso’s epic fantasy, Jerusalem Delivered, based on the First Crusade, is populated with knights and fights, male and female warriors and witches, castles and dragons, forests and quests. The illustrations in two different editions, housed  in the Hunterian Art Gallery collection and in the Special Collections of the Glasgow University Library,  capture the exotic and magical appeal of this heroic world.
Factual sources, of course, tell a rather different story: chroniclers and historians, geographers and travel-writers depict the extraordinary event of the First Crusade and the world that created it from the point of view of reality. Maps and photographs of the Holy Land reveal a world completely different to the one created by the poet’s flights of fancy.
Realist or fantasy, historical fiction is ever inspired by known facts, then fills in the gaps with its own inventions, enhancing our experience and enjoyment of the past.
In this blog I will present some of the illustrations inspired by the great Renaissance poet’s epic fantasy, as well as factual information on the First Crusade, and then look at how historical reality, fiction, and fantasy interweave to create inspiring, unforgettable works like Jerusalem Delivered.The challenge of creating a plausible, recognisable world which uses historical reality but is not tied down by it is of great personal interest to me as a writer (and avid reader) of historical fiction and fantasy: it will be great if other reader/writers will eventually participate in these discussions and will be inspired, and inspiring, in their turn.