Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered: A Heroic Poem (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)

ENRICO; OR, BYZANTIUM CONQUERED

THE OTHER VOICE IN E A R LY M O D E R N EUROPE

A Series Edited by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. RECENT BOOKS IN THE SERIES LAURA BATTIFERRA DEGLI AMMANNATI

CHIARA MATRAINI

Laura Battiferra and Her Literary Circle: An Anthology

Selected Poetry and Prose: A Bilingual Edition

Edited and Translated by Victoria Kirkham

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MADELEINE DE L’AUBESPINE

MARGUERITE DE NAVARRE

Selected Poems and Translations: A Bilingual Edition

Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition

Edited and Translated by Anna Kłosowska MODERATA FONTE (MODESTA POZZO)

Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance Edited with an Introduction by Valeria Finucci, Translated by Julia Kisacky, Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky CATHERINA REGINA VON GRIEFFENBERG

Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ

Edited and Translated by Rouben Cholakian and Mary Skemp MADELEINE AND CATHERINE DES ROCHES

From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of Les Dames des Roches Edited and Translated by Anne R. Larsen ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ

Autobiography and Other Writings Edited and Translated by Darcy Donahue

Edited and Translated by Lynne Tatlock MARGHERITA SARROCCHI MARÍA DE GUEVARA

Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain: A Bilingual Edition

Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus Edited and Translated by Rinaldina Russell

Edited and Translated by Nieves Romero-Díaz MARÍA DE ZAYAS Y SOTOMAYOR HORTENSE MANCINI AND MARIE MANCINI

Memoirs Edited and Translated by Sarah Nelson

Exemplary Tales of Love and Tales of Disillusion Edited and Translated by Margaret R. Greer and Elizabeth Rhodes

Lucrezia Marinella

ENRICO; OR, BYZANTIUM CONQUERED A Heroic Poem

 Edited and Translated by Maria Galli Stampino

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Chicago & London

Lucrezia Marinella, 1571– 1653 Maria Galli Stampino is associate professor of Italian and French at the University of Miami and author of Staging the Pastoral: Tasso’s Aminta and the Emergence of Modern Western Theater (2005). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2009 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50547-3 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50548-0 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-50547-2 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-50548-0 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marinella, Lucrezia, 1571–1653. [Enrico. English] Enrico, or, Byzantium conquered : a heroic poem / Lucrezia Marinella ; edited and translated by Maria Galli Stampino. p. cm. — (Other voice in early modern Europe) title: Byzantium conquered Summary: Translation of “L’ Enrico overo Bisantio acquistato; poema heroico”, an ambitious and rewarding narrative poem by a prolific female Venetian writer who flourished in the early 17th Century, demonstrating her skill as an epic poet when she was already known for her polemical treatise “On the nobility and excellence of Women.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50547-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-50548-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-50547-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-50548-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Dandolo, Enrico, 1108–1205—Poetry. I. Stampino, Maria Galli. II. Title. III. Title: Byzantium conquered. IV. Series: Other voice in early modern Europe. PQ4627.M84E5713 2009 851⬘.5—dc22 2009009431 o The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii Series Editors’ Introduction ix A Singular Venetian Epic Poem 1 Volume Editor’s Bibliography 67 Glossary of Principal Characters 71

Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered: A Heroic Poem (Prose Translation) To the Readers 77 Canto 1 and Summaries of Cantos 2–3 79 Canto 4 101 Canto 5 123 Canto 6 147 Canto 7 165 From Canto 8 185 From Canto 9 193 Canto 10 209 From Canto 11, from Canto 12, and Summaries of Cantos 13–14 229 Canto 15 249 From Canto 16 269 From Canto 17 285 From Canto 18 and Summaries of Cantos 19–20 293 Canto 21 305

From Canto 22 and Summary of Canto 23 321 From Canto 24, from Canto 25, and Summary of Canto 26 337 Canto 27 353 Appendix Cantos 6 and 7 and Excerpts from Cantos 8, 12, 22, 24, and 27 in Italian 375 Series Editors’ Bibliography 437 Index 475

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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n 2001 I was selected as participant to an NEH-sponsored Summer Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, entitled “A Literature of Their Own? Women Writing—Venice, London, Paris, 1550–1700” and directed by Albert Rabil, Jr. It was then that the seed for this work was planted: my interest in women writers was reinforced, and my passion for epic poetry rekindled. Undoubtedly, neither the Institute nor this volume would exist without Al Rabil’s leadership, help, wise advice, keen insight, and understanding. In 2001 he assembled a lively group of young scholars and an exceptional set of session leaders: Virginia Cox, Joan DeJean, Laura Gowing, Karen Newman, and Anne Jacobson Schutte. Al and his wife Janet opened their home to our conversations, feasts, and film-watching experiences—hospitality above and beyond the call of duty. In the years since, Al has offered me unstinting support both on a professional and human level. This is an exceedingly rare combination, and one that I particularly wish to single out gratefully. While at the Institute, I forged or deepened friendships that have helped my thinking and my writing in all subsequent work; in particular I would like to thank Julie Campbell, Melinda Gough, Julia Hairston, and Suzanne Magnanini. Valeria Finucci, friend and mentor, brought the Institute to my attention, and thus she deserves special recognition. Special thanks are also due to the anonymous reader for the University of Chicago Press. She was generous with and concrete in her suggestions, and she spurred me to another, much-needed reading of the original text that clarified (to myself, at least) some thorny passages. She also pointed out some weaknesses in the introduction that I hope I redressed. Any mistakes and infelicities are, needless to say, mine. Among the many colleagues at the University of Miami who have

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Acknowledgments helped with this project I want to thank especially Laura Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero. My former chair and coconspirator in things Early Modern, Anne J. Cruz, has supported me in many ways, above all inspiring me through her intellectual rigor, curiosity, and enthusiasm. The challenges of translating into my nonnative language are daunting and deeply fascinating. On a memorable trip to Eugene, Ore., Natalie Hester suggested Roget’s International Thesaurus as a trusted tool; I thank her for bringing it to my attention, as my English would have been much less rich and nuanced without it. In May 2005 I had the good fortune of presenting a paper at the “Theatre without Borders” conference at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. The hosts, Selhan and Cliff Enders, were kind and generous, and I thank them for making my stay enriching. The university is situated on the Haliç, or Golden Horn, where the attacks by sea described in Enrico took place. I cannot fully convey the emotion I felt upon seeing the sea walls, the remnants of the Theodosian Walls surrounding Istanbul, and the headstone for Enrico Dandolo’s tomb in Hagia Sophia. I also want to thank Jane Tylus for being an untiring, curious, and adventurous companion in those jaunts through Istanbul. Research assistants at the University of Miami who helped at various stages of this work—Peter Ganovsky, Jesús Miguelez, Annalisa Mosca, Beatrice Nanni, and Stephen Nobles—shared in my excitement and, more rarely, in my frustrations with the text. My mother, Anna Giannone Galli Stampino, offered her philologist-like eagle eyes to vet the transcription of the Italian text during an extended stay in Miami, on the occasion of my son Lawrence Armando’s birth in 2004. This volume is dedicated to him, who “Qualis gemma micat, fulvom quae dividit aurum” (“shines like a gem set in yellow gold,” Aeneid 10.134) to his proud mamma. Last, I want to thank most warmly Richard Audet for his perceptive reading of the typescript and thoughtful copyediting, and Randolph Petilos and Maia Rigas at the Press who saw this book through publication. I gratefully acknowledge institutional support from the University of Miami, in the form of two General Research Support Awards (in 2004 and 2006), as well as the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, specifically Dean Michael R. Halleran and Senior Associate Dean Daniel L. Pals, who awarded funds to help defray publication costs. I also benefited from a share of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant awarded to a collective project of which this edition and translation was a part, and I thank the NEH for its support. Maria Galli Stampino

THE OTHER VOICE IN E A R LY M O D E R N E U R O P E : INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr.

TH E OLD VOI CE A N D T H E OTH E R V O I C E

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n western Europe and the United States, women are nearing equality in the professions, in business, and in politics. Most enjoy access to education, reproductive rights, and autonomy in financial affairs. Issues vital to women are on the public agenda: equal pay, child care, domestic abuse, breast cancer research, and curricular revision with an eye to the inclusion of women. These recent achievements have their origins in things women (and some male supporters) said for the first time about six hundred years ago. Theirs is the “other voice,” in contradistinction to the “first voice,” the voice of the educated men who created Western culture. Coincident with a general reshaping of European culture in the period 1300–1700 (called the Renaissance or early modern period), questions of female equality and opportunity were raised that still resound and are still unresolved. The other voice emerged against the backdrop of a three-thousandyear history of the derogation of women rooted in the civilizations related to Western culture: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Negative attitudes toward women inherited from these traditions pervaded the intellectual, medical, legal, religious, and social systems that developed during the European Middle Ages. The following pages describe the traditional, overwhelmingly male views of women’s nature inherited by early modern Europeans and the new tradition that the “other voice” called into being to begin to challenge reigning assumptions. This review should serve as a framework for understanding the texts published in the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Introductions specific to each text and author follow this essay in all the volumes of the series.

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Series Editors’ Introduction TRAD I TI ON A L VI EW S OF W OM EN , 5 0 0 B . C . E . – 1 5 0 0 C . E .

Embedded in the philosophical and medical theories of the ancient Greeks were perceptions of the female as inferior to the male in both mind and body. Similarly, the structure of civil legislation inherited from the ancient Romans was biased against women, and the views on women developed by Christian thinkers out of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament were negative and disabling. Literary works composed in the vernacular of ordinary people, and widely recited or read, conveyed these negative assumptions. The social networks within which most women lived—those of the family and the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church—were shaped by this negative tradition and sharply limited the areas in which women might act in and upon the world. G R E E K P H I L O SO P HY AND FE MAL E NATURE . Greek biology assumed that women were inferior to men and defined them as merely childbearers and housekeepers. This view was authoritatively expressed in the works of the philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle thought in dualities. He considered action superior to inaction, form (the inner design or structure of any object) superior to matter, completion to incompletion, possession to deprivation. In each of these dualities, he associated the male principle with the superior quality and the female with the inferior. “The male principle in nature,” he argued, “is associated with active, formative and perfected characteristics, while the female is passive, material and deprived, desiring the male in order to become complete.”1 Men are always identified with virile qualities, such as judgment, courage, and stamina, and women with their opposites—irrationality, cowardice, and weakness. The masculine principle was considered superior even in the womb. The man’s semen, Aristotle believed, created the form of a new human creature, while the female body contributed only matter. (The existence of the ovum, and with it the other facts of human embryology, was not established until the seventeenth century.) Although the later Greek physician Galen believed there was a female component in generation, contributed by “female semen,” the followers of both Aristotle and Galen saw the male role in human generation as more active and more important. In the Aristotelian view, the male principle sought always to reproduce

1. Aristotle, Physics 1.9.192a20–24, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, rev. Oxford trans., 2 vols. (Princeton, 1984), 1:328.

Series Editors’ Introduction itself. The creation of a female was always a mistake, therefore, resulting from an imperfect act of generation. Every female born was considered a “defective” or “mutilated” male (as Aristotle’s terminology has variously been translated), a “monstrosity” of nature.2 For Greek theorists, the biology of males and females was the key to their psychology. The female was softer and more docile, more apt to be despondent, querulous, and deceitful. Being incomplete, moreover, she craved sexual fulfillment in intercourse with a male. The male was intellectual, active, and in control of his passions. These psychological polarities derived from the theory that the universe consisted of four elements (earth, fire, air, and water), expressed in human bodies as four “humors” (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm) considered, respectively, dry, hot, damp, and cold and corresponding to mental states (“melancholic,” “choleric,” “sanguine,” “phlegmatic”). In this scheme the male, sharing the principles of earth and fire, was dry and hot; the female, sharing the principles of air and water, was cold and damp. Female psychology was further affected by her dominant organ, the uterus (womb), hystera in Greek. The passions generated by the womb made women lustful, deceitful, talkative, irrational, indeed—when these affects were in excess—“hysterical.” Aristotle’s biology also had social and political consequences. If the male principle was superior and the female inferior, then in the household, as in the state, men should rule and women must be subordinate. That hierarchy did not rule out the companionship of husband and wife, whose cooperation was necessary for the welfare of children and the preservation of property. Such mutuality supported male preeminence. Aristotle’s teacher Plato suggested a different possibility: that men and women might possess the same virtues. The setting for this proposal is the imaginary and ideal Republic that Plato sketches in a dialogue of that name. Here, for a privileged elite capable of leading wisely, all distinctions of class and wealth dissolve, as, consequently, do those of gender. Without households or property, as Plato constructs his ideal society, there is no need for the subordination of women. Women may therefore be educated to the same level as men to assume leadership. Plato’s Republic remained imaginary, however. In real societies, the subordination of women remained the norm and the prescription. The views of women inherited from the Greek philosophical tradition became the basis for medieval thought. In the thirteenth century, the su2. Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.3.737a27–28, in The Complete Works, 1: 1144.

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Series Editors’ Introduction preme Scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, among others, still echoed Aristotle’s views of human reproduction, of male and female personalities, and of the preeminent male role in the social hierarchy. Roman law, like Greek philosophy, underlay medieval thought and shaped medieval society. The ancient belief that adult property-owning men should administer households and make decisions affecting the community at large is the very fulcrum of Roman law. About 450 b.c.e., during Rome’s republican era, the community’s customary law was recorded (legendarily) on twelve tablets erected in the city’s central forum. It was later elaborated by professional jurists whose activity increased in the imperial era, when much new legislation was passed, especially on issues affecting family and inheritance. This growing, changing body of laws was eventually codified in the Corpus of Civil Law under the direction of the emperor Justinian, generations after the empire ceased to be ruled from Rome. That Corpus, read and commented on by medieval scholars from the eleventh century on, inspired the legal systems of most of the cities and kingdoms of Europe. Laws regarding dowries, divorce, and inheritance pertain primarily to women. Since those laws aimed to maintain and preserve property, the women concerned were those from the property-owning minority. Their subordination to male family members points to the even greater subordination of lower-class and slave women, about whom the laws speak little. In the early republic, the paterfamilias, or “father of the family,” possessed patria potestas, “paternal power.” The term pater, “father,” in both these cases does not necessarily mean biological father but denotes the head of a household. The father was the person who owned the household’s property and, indeed, its human members. The paterfamilias had absolute power—including the power, rarely exercised, of life or death—over his wife, his children, and his slaves, as much as his cattle. Male children could be “emancipated,” an act that granted legal autonomy and the right to own property. Those over fourteen could be emancipated by a special grant from the father or automatically by their father’s death. But females could never be emancipated; instead, they passed from the authority of their father to that of a husband or, if widowed or orphaned while still unmarried, to a guardian or tutor. Marriage in its traditional form placed the woman under her husband’s authority, or manus. He could divorce her on grounds of adultery, drinking wine, or stealing from the household, but she could not divorce him. She could neither possess property in her own right nor bequeath any to her R O M A N L AW AND THE FE MAL E CO ND ITIO N.

Series Editors’ Introduction children upon her death. When her husband died, the household property passed not to her but to his male heirs. And when her father died, she had no claim to any family inheritance, which was directed to her brothers or more remote male relatives. The effect of these laws was to exclude women from civil society, itself based on property ownership. In the later republican and imperial periods, these rules were significantly modified. Women rarely married according to the traditional form. The practice of “free” marriage allowed a woman to remain under her father’s authority, to possess property given her by her father (most frequently the “dowry,” recoverable from the husband’s household on his death), and to inherit from her father. She could also bequeath property to her own children and divorce her husband, just as he could divorce her. Despite this greater freedom, women still suffered enormous disability under Roman law. Heirs could belong only to the father’s side, never the mother’s. Moreover, although she could bequeath her property to her children, she could not establish a line of succession in doing so. A woman was “the beginning and end of her own family,” said the jurist Ulpian. Moreover, women could play no public role. They could not hold public office, represent anyone in a legal case, or even witness a will. Women had only a private existence and no public personality. The dowry system, the guardian, women’s limited ability to transmit wealth, and total political disability are all features of Roman law adopted by the medieval communities of western Europe, although modified according to local customary laws. C H R I S T I A N D O CTRINE AND WO ME N’S P L ACE. The Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament authorized later writers to limit women to the realm of the family and to burden them with the guilt of original sin. The passages most fruitful for this purpose were the creation narratives in Genesis and sentences from the Epistles defining women’s role within the Christian family and community. Each of the first two chapters of Genesis contains a creation narrative. In the first “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27). In the second, God created Eve from Adam’s rib (2:21–23). Christian theologians relied principally on Genesis 2 for their understanding of the relation between man and woman, interpreting the creation of Eve from Adam as proof of her subordination to him. The creation story in Genesis 2 leads to that of the temptations in Genesis 3: of Eve by the wily serpent and of Adam by Eve. As read by Christian theologians from Tertullian to Thomas Aquinas, the narrative made Eve

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Series Editors’ Introduction responsible for the Fall and its consequences. She instigated the act; she deceived her husband; she suffered the greater punishment. Her disobedience made it necessary for Jesus to be incarnated and to die on the cross. From the pulpit, moralists and preachers for centuries conveyed to women the guilt that they bore for original sin. The Epistles offered advice to early Christians on building communities of the faithful. Among the matters to be regulated was the place of women. Paul offered views favorable to women in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul also referred to women as his coworkers and placed them on a par with himself and his male coworkers (Phlm 4:2–3; Rom 16:1–3; 1 Cor 16:19). Elsewhere, Paul limited women’s possibilities: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). Biblical passages by later writers (although attributed to Paul) enjoined women to forgo jewels, expensive clothes, and elaborate coiffures; and they forbade women to “teach or have authority over men,” telling them to “learn in silence with all submissiveness” as is proper for one responsible for sin, consoling them, however, with the thought that they will be saved through childbearing (1 Tm 2:9–15). Other texts among the later Epistles defined women as the weaker sex and emphasized their subordination to their husbands (1 Pt 3:7; Col 3:18; Eph 5:22–23). These passages from the New Testament became the arsenal employed by theologians of the early church to transmit negative attitudes toward women to medieval Christian culture—above all, Tertullian (On the Apparel of Women), Jerome (Against Jovinian), and Augustine (The Literal Meaning of Genesis). The philosophical, legal, and religious traditions born in antiquity formed the basis of the medieval intellectual synthesis wrought by trained thinkers, mostly clerics, writing in Latin and based largely in universities. The vernacular literary tradition that developed alongside the learned tradition also spoke about female nature and women’s roles. Medieval stories, poems, and epics also portrayed women negatively—as lustful and deceitful—while praising good housekeepers and loyal wives as replicas of the Virgin Mary or the female saints and martyrs. There is an exception in the movement of “courtly love” that evolved in southern France from the twelfth century. Courtly love was the erotic love between a nobleman and noblewoman, the latter usually superior in T H E I M A G E O F WO ME N IN ME D IE VAL L ITE R ATURE.

Series Editors’ Introduction social rank. It was always adulterous. From the conventions of courtly love derive modern Western notions of romantic love. The tradition has had an impact disproportionate to its size, for it affected only a tiny elite, and very few women. The exaltation of the female lover probably does not reflect a higher evaluation of women or a step toward their sexual liberation. More likely it gives expression to the social and sexual tensions besetting the knightly class at a specific historical juncture. The literary fashion of courtly love was on the wane by the thirteenth century, when the widely read Romance of the Rose was composed in French by two authors of significantly different dispositions. Guillaume de Lorris composed the initial four thousand verses about 1235, and Jean de Meun added about seventeen thousand verses—more than four times the original—about 1265. The fragment composed by Guillaume de Lorris stands squarely in the tradition of courtly love. Here the poet, in a dream, is admitted into a walled garden where he finds a magic fountain in which a rosebush is reflected. He longs to pick one rose, but the thorns prevent his doing so, even as he is wounded by arrows from the god of love, whose commands he agrees to obey. The rest of this part of the poem recounts the poet’s unsuccessful efforts to pluck the rose. The longer part of the Romance by Jean de Meun also describes a dream. But here allegorical characters give long didactic speeches, providing a social satire on a variety of themes, some pertaining to women. Love is an anxious and tormented state, the poem explains: women are greedy and manipulative, marriage is miserable, beautiful women are lustful, ugly ones cease to please, and a chaste woman is as rare as a black swan. Shortly after Jean de Meun completed The Romance of the Rose, Mathéolus penned his Lamentations, a long Latin diatribe against marriage translated into French about a century later. The Lamentations sum up medieval attitudes toward women and provoked the important response by Christine de Pizan in her Book of the City of Ladies. In 1355, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote Il Corbaccio, another antifeminist manifesto, although ironically by an author whose other works pioneered new directions in Renaissance thought. The former husband of his lover appears to Boccaccio, condemning his unmoderated lust and detailing the defects of women. Boccaccio concedes at the end “how much men naturally surpass women in nobility” and is cured of his desires.3 3. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Corbaccio, or The Labyrinth of Love, trans. and ed. Anthony K. Cassell, rev. ed. (Binghamton, N.Y., 1993), 71.

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Series Editors’ Introduction The negative perceptions of women expressed in the intellectual tradition are also implicit in the actual roles that women played in European society. Assigned to subordinate positions in the household and the church, they were barred from significant participation in public life. Medieval European households, like those in antiquity and in nonWestern civilizations, were headed by males. It was the male serf (or peasant), feudal lord, town merchant, or citizen who was polled or taxed or succeeded to an inheritance or had any acknowledged public role, although his wife or widow could stand as a temporary surrogate. From about 1100, the position of property-holding males was further enhanced: inheritance was confined to the male, or agnate, line—with depressing consequences for women. A wife never fully belonged to her husband’s family, nor was she a daughter to her father’s family. She left her father’s house young to marry whomever her parents chose. Her dowry was managed by her husband, and at her death it normally passed to her children by him. A married woman’s life was occupied nearly constantly with cycles of pregnancy, childbearing, and lactation. Women bore children through all the years of their fertility, and many died in childbirth. They were also responsible for raising young children up to six or seven. In the propertied classes that responsibility was shared, since it was common for a wet nurse to take over breast-feeding and for servants to perform other chores. Women trained their daughters in the household duties appropriate to their status, nearly always tasks associated with textiles: spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidering. Their sons were sent out of the house as apprentices or students, or their training was assumed by fathers in later childhood and adolescence. On the death of her husband, a woman’s children became the responsibility of his family. She generally did not take “his” children with her to a new marriage or back to her father’s house, except sometimes in the artisan classes. Women also worked. Rural peasants performed farm chores, merchant wives often practiced their husbands’ trades, the unmarried daughters of the urban poor worked as servants or prostitutes. All wives produced or embellished textiles and did the housekeeping, while wealthy ones managed servants. These labors were unpaid or poorly paid but often contributed substantially to family wealth. W O M E N ’ S R O L E S: THE FAMILY.

W O M E N ’ S RO L E S: THE CHURCH. Membership in a household, whether a father’s or a husband’s, meant for women a lifelong subordination to others.

Series Editors’ Introduction In western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church offered an alternative to the career of wife and mother. A woman could enter a convent, parallel in function to the monasteries for men that evolved in the early Christian centuries. In the convent, a woman pledged herself to a celibate life, lived according to strict community rules, and worshiped daily. Often the convent offered training in Latin, allowing some women to become considerable scholars and authors as well as scribes, artists, and musicians. For women who chose the conventual life, the benefits could be enormous, but for numerous others placed in convents by paternal choice, the life could be restrictive and burdensome. The conventual life declined as an alternative for women as the modern age approached. Reformed monastic institutions resisted responsibility for related female orders. The church increasingly restricted female institutional life by insisting on closer male supervision. Women often sought other options. Some joined the communities of laywomen that sprang up spontaneously in the thirteenth century in the urban zones of western Europe, especially in Flanders and Italy. Some joined the heretical movements that flourished in late medieval Christendom, whose anticlerical and often antifamily positions particularly appealed to women. In these communities, some women were acclaimed as “holy women” or “saints,” whereas others often were condemned as frauds or heretics. In all, although the options offered to women by the church were sometimes less than satisfactory, they were sometimes richly rewarding. After 1520, the convent remained an option only in Roman Catholic territories. Protestantism engendered an ideal of marriage as a heroic endeavor and appeared to place husband and wife on a more equal footing. Sermons and treatises, however, still called for female subordination and obedience. T H E OT H ER VOI CE, 1300 – 1 7 0 0

When the modern era opened, European culture was so firmly structured by a framework of negative attitudes toward women that to dismantle it was a monumental labor. The process began as part of a larger cultural movement that entailed the critical reexamination of ideas inherited from the ancient and medieval past. The humanists launched that critical reexamination. T H E H U M A NIST FO UND ATIO N. Originating in Italy in the fourteenth century, humanism quickly became the dominant intellectual movement in

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Series Editors’ Introduction Europe. Spreading in the sixteenth century from Italy to the rest of Europe, it fueled the literary, scientific, and philosophical movements of the era and laid the basis for the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Humanists regarded the Scholastic philosophy of medieval universities as out of touch with the realities of urban life. They found in the rhetorical discourse of classical Rome a language adapted to civic life and public speech. They learned to read, speak, and write classical Latin and, eventually, classical Greek. They founded schools to teach others to do so, establishing the pattern for elementary and secondary education for the next three hundred years. In the service of complex government bureaucracies, humanists employed their skills to write eloquent letters, deliver public orations, and formulate public policy. They developed new scripts for copying manuscripts and used the new printing press to disseminate texts, for which they created methods of critical editing. Humanism was a movement led by males who accepted the evaluation of women in ancient texts and generally shared the misogynist perceptions of their culture. (Female humanists, as we will see, did not.) Yet humanism also opened the door to a reevaluation of the nature and capacity of women. By calling authors, texts, and ideas into question, it made possible the fundamental rereading of the whole intellectual tradition that was required in order to free women from cultural prejudice and social subordination. A D I F F E R E NT CITY. The other voice first appeared when, after so many centuries, the accumulation of misogynist concepts evoked a response from a capable female defender: Christine de Pizan (1365–1431). Introducing her Book of the City of Ladies (1405), she described how she was affected by reading Mathéolus’s Lamentations: “Just the sight of this book . . . made me wonder how it happened that so many different men . . . are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behavior.”4 These statements impelled her to detest herself “and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature.”5 The rest of The Book of the City of Ladies presents a justification of the female sex and a vision of an ideal community of women. A pioneer, she has received the message of female inferiority and rejected it. From the four-

4. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards, foreword by Marina Warner (New York, 1982), 1.1.1, pp. 3–4. 5. Ibid., 1.1.1–2, p. 5.

Series Editors’ Introduction teenth to the seventeenth century, a huge body of literature accumulated that responded to the dominant tradition. The result was a literary explosion consisting of works by both men and women, in Latin and in the vernaculars: works enumerating the achievements of notable women; works rebutting the main accusations made against women; works arguing for the equal education of men and women; works defining and redefining women’s proper role in the family, at court, in public; works describing women’s lives and experiences. Recent monographs and articles have begun to hint at the great range of this movement, involving probably several thousand titles. The protofeminism of these “other voices” constitutes a significant fraction of the literary product of the early modern era. About 1365, the same Boccaccio whose Corbaccio rehearses the usual charges against female nature wrote another work, Concerning Famous Women. A humanist treatise drawing on classical texts, it praised 106 notable women: ninety-eight of them from pagan Greek and Roman antiquity, one (Eve) from the Bible, and seven from the medieval religious and cultural tradition; his book helped make all readers aware of a sex normally condemned or forgotten. Boccaccio’s outlook nevertheless was unfriendly to women, for it singled out for praise those women who possessed the traditional virtues of chastity, silence, and obedience. Women who were active in the public realm—for example, rulers and warriors—were depicted as usually being lascivious and as suffering terrible punishments for entering the masculine sphere. Women were his subject, but Boccaccio’s standard remained male. Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies contains a second catalog, one responding specifically to Boccaccio’s. Whereas Boccaccio portrays female virtue as exceptional, she depicts it as universal. Many women in history were leaders, or remained chaste despite the lascivious approaches of men, or were visionaries and brave martyrs. The work of Boccaccio inspired a series of catalogs of illustrious women of the biblical, classical, Christian, and local pasts, among them Filippo da Bergamo’s Of Illustrious Women, Pierre de Brantôme’s Lives of Illustrious Women, Pierre Le Moyne’s Gallerie of Heroic Women, and Pietro Paolo de Ribera’s Immortal Triumphs and Heroic Enterprises of 845 Women. Whatever their embedded prejudices, these works drove home to the public the possibility of female excellence. T H E C ATA L O G S.

T H E D E B AT E . At the same time, many questions remained: Could a woman be virtuous? Could she perform noteworthy deeds? Was she even,

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Series Editors’ Introduction strictly speaking, of the same human species as men? These questions were debated over four centuries, in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English, by authors male and female, among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, in ponderous volumes and breezy pamphlets. The whole literary genre has been called the querelle des femmes, the “woman question.” The opening volley of this battle occurred in the first years of the fifteenth century, in a literary debate sparked by Christine de Pizan. She exchanged letters critical of Jean de Meun’s contribution to The Romance of the Rose with two French royal secretaries, Jean de Montreuil and Gontier Col. When the matter became public, Jean Gerson, one of Europe’s leading theologians, supported de Pizan’s arguments against de Meun, for the moment silencing the opposition. The debate resurfaced repeatedly over the next two hundred years. The Triumph of Women (1438) by Juan Rodríguez de la Camara (or Juan Rodríguez del Padron) struck a new note by presenting arguments for the superiority of women to men. The Champion of Women (1440–42) by Martin Le Franc addresses once again the negative views of women presented in The Romance of the Rose and offers counterevidence of female virtue and achievement. A cameo of the debate on women is included in The Courtier, one of the most widely read books of the era, published by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione in 1528 and immediately translated into other European vernaculars. The Courtier depicts a series of evenings at the court of the duke of Urbino in which many men and some women of the highest social stratum amuse themselves by discussing a range of literary and social issues. The “woman question” is a pervasive theme throughout, and the third of its four books is devoted entirely to that issue. In a verbal duel, Gasparo Pallavicino and Giuliano de’ Medici present the main claims of the two traditions. Gasparo argues the innate inferiority of women and their inclination to vice. Only in bearing children do they profit the world. Giuliano counters that women share the same spiritual and mental capacities as men and may excel in wisdom and action. Men and women are of the same essence: just as no stone can be more perfectly a stone than another, so no human being can be more perfectly human than others, whether male or female. It was an astonishing assertion, boldly made to an audience as large as all Europe. Humanism provided the materials for a positive counterconcept to the misogyny embedded in Scholastic philosophy and law and inherited from the Greek, Roman, and Christian pasts. A series of humanist treatises on marriage and family, on education and deportment, and on the nature of women helped construct these new perspectives. T H E T R E AT ISE S.

Series Editors’ Introduction The works by Francesco Barbaro and Leon Battista Alberti—On Marriage (1415) and On the Family (1434–37)—far from defending female equality, reasserted women’s responsibility for rearing children and managing the housekeeping while being obedient, chaste, and silent. Nevertheless, they served the cause of reexamining the issue of women’s nature by placing domestic issues at the center of scholarly concern and reopening the pertinent classical texts. In addition, Barbaro emphasized the companionate nature of marriage and the importance of a wife’s spiritual and mental qualities for the well-being of the family. These themes reappear in later humanist works on marriage and the education of women by Juan Luis Vives and Erasmus. Both were moderately sympathetic to the condition of women without reaching beyond the usual masculine prescriptions for female behavior. An outlook more favorable to women characterizes the nearly unknown work In Praise of Women (ca. 1487) by the Italian humanist Bartolommeo Goggio. In addition to providing a catalog of illustrious women, Goggio argued that male and female are the same in essence, but that women (reworking the Adam and Eve narrative from quite a new angle) are actually superior. In the same vein, the Italian humanist Mario Equicola asserted the spiritual equality of men and women in On Women (1501). In 1525, Galeazzo Flavio Capra (or Capella) published his work On the Excellence and Dignity of Women. This humanist tradition of treatises defending the worthiness of women culminates in the work of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa On the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. No work by a male humanist more succinctly or explicitly presents the case for female dignity. T H E W I T C H BO O KS. While humanists grappled with the issues pertaining to women and family, other learned men turned their attention to what they perceived as a very great problem: witches. Witch-hunting manuals, explorations of the witch phenomenon, and even defenses of witches are not at first glance pertinent to the tradition of the other voice. But they do relate in this way: most accused witches were women. The hostility aroused by supposed witch activity is comparable to the hostility aroused by women. The evil deeds the victims of the hunt were charged with were exaggerations of the vices to which, many believed, all women were prone. The connection between the witch accusation and the hatred of women is explicit in the notorious witch-hunting manual The Hammer of Witches (1486) by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger. Here the inconstancy, deceitfulness, and lustfulness traditionally associated with women are depicted in exaggerated form as the core features of witch behavior. These traits inclined women to make a bargain with the devil—

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Series Editors’ Introduction sealed by sexual intercourse—by which they acquired unholy powers. Such bizarre claims, far from being rejected by rational men, were broadcast by intellectuals. The German Ulrich Molitur, the Frenchman Nicolas Rémy, and the Italian Stefano Guazzo all coolly informed the public of sinister orgies and midnight pacts with the devil. The celebrated French jurist, historian, and political philosopher Jean Bodin argued that because women were especially prone to diabolism, regular legal procedures could properly be suspended in order to try those accused of this “exceptional crime.” A few experts such as the physician Johann Weyer, a student of Agrippa’s, raised their voices in protest. In 1563, he explained the witch phenomenon thus, without discarding belief in diabolism: the devil deluded foolish old women afflicted by melancholia, causing them to believe they had magical powers. Weyer’s rational skepticism, which had good credibility in the community of the learned, worked to revise the conventional views of women and witchcraft. To the many categories of works produced on the question of women’s worth must be added nearly all works written by women. A woman writing was in herself a statement of women’s claim to dignity. Only a few women wrote anything before the dawn of the modern era, for three reasons. First, they rarely received the education that would enable them to write. Second, they were not admitted to the public roles— as administrator, bureaucrat, lawyer or notary, or university professor—in which they might gain knowledge of the kinds of things the literate public thought worth writing about. Third, the culture imposed silence on women, considering speaking out a form of unchastity. Given these conditions, it is remarkable that any women wrote. Those who did before the fourteenth century were almost always nuns or religious women whose isolation made their pronouncements more acceptable. From the fourteenth century on, the volume of women’s writings rose. Women continued to write devotional literature, although not always as cloistered nuns. They also wrote diaries, often intended as keepsakes for their children; books of advice to their sons and daughters; letters to family members and friends; and family memoirs, in a few cases elaborate enough to be considered histories. A few women wrote works directly concerning the “woman question,” and some of these, such as the humanists Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta, and Olympia Morata, were highly trained. A few were professional writers, living by the income of their pens; the very first among them W O M E N ’ S WO RKS.

Series Editors’ Introduction was Christine de Pizan, noteworthy in this context as in so many others. In addition to The Book of the City of Ladies and her critiques of The Romance of the Rose, she wrote The Treasure of the City of Ladies (a guide to social decorum for women), an advice book for her son, much courtly verse, and a full-scale history of the reign of King Charles V of France. W O M E N PATRO NS. Women who did not themselves write but encouraged others to do so boosted the development of an alternative tradition. Highly placed women patrons supported authors, artists, musicians, poets, and learned men. Such patrons, drawn mostly from the Italian elites and the courts of northern Europe, figure disproportionately as the dedicatees of the important works of early feminism. For a start, it might be noted that the catalogs of Boccaccio and Alvaro de Luna were dedicated to the Florentine noblewoman Andrea Acciaiuoli and to Doña María, first wife of King Juan II of Castile, while the French translation of Boccaccio’s work was commissioned by Anne of Brittany, wife of King Charles VIII of France. The humanist treatises of Goggio, Equicola, Vives, and Agrippa were dedicated, respectively, to Eleanora of Aragon, wife of Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara; to Margherita Cantelma of Mantua; to Catherine of Aragon, wife of King Henry VIII of England; and to Margaret, Duchess of Austria and regent of the Netherlands. As late as 1696, Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest was dedicated to Princess Anne of Denmark. These authors presumed that their efforts would be welcome to female patrons, or they may have written at the bidding of those patrons. Silent themselves, perhaps even unresponsive, these loftily placed women helped shape the tradition of the other voice.

The literary forms and patterns in which the tradition of the other voice presented itself have now been sketched. It remains to highlight the major issues around which this tradition crystallizes. In brief, there are four problems to which our authors return again and again, in plays and catalogs, in verse and letters, in treatises and dialogues, in every language: the problem of chastity, the problem of power, the problem of speech, and the problem of knowledge. Of these the greatest, preconditioning the others, is the problem of chastity. T H E P R O B L E M OF CHA S TITY. In traditional European culture, as in those of antiquity and others around the globe, chastity was perceived as woman’s quintessential virtue—in contrast to courage, or generosity, or leadership, or rationality, seen as virtues characteristic of men. Opponents of THE ISSUES.

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Series Editors’ Introduction women charged them with insatiable lust. Women themselves and their defenders—without disputing the validity of the standard—responded that women were capable of chastity. The requirement of chastity kept women at home, silenced them, isolated them, left them in ignorance. It was the source of all other impediments. Why was it so important to the society of men, of whom chastity was not required, and who more often than not considered it their right to violate the chastity of any woman they encountered? Female chastity ensured the continuity of the male-headed household. If a man’s wife was not chaste, he could not be sure of the legitimacy of his offspring. If they were not his and they acquired his property, it was not his household, but some other man’s, that had endured. If his daughter was not chaste, she could not be transferred to another man’s household as his wife, and he was dishonored. The whole system of the integrity of the household and the transmission of property was bound up in female chastity. Such a requirement pertained only to property-owning classes, of course. Poor women could not expect to maintain their chastity, least of all if they were in contact with high-status men to whom all women but those of their own household were prey. In Catholic Europe, the requirement of chastity was further buttressed by moral and religious imperatives. Original sin was inextricably linked with the sexual act. Virginity was seen as heroic virtue, far more impressive than, say, the avoidance of idleness or greed. Monasticism, the cultural institution that dominated medieval Europe for centuries, was grounded in the renunciation of the flesh. The Catholic reform of the eleventh century imposed a similar standard on all the clergy and a heightened awareness of sexual requirements on all the laity. Although men were asked to be chaste, female unchastity was much worse: it led to the devil, as Eve had led mankind to sin. To such requirements, women and their defenders protested their innocence. Furthermore, following the example of holy women who had escaped the requirements of family and sought the religious life, some women began to conceive of female communities as alternatives both to family and to the cloister. Christine de Pizan’s city of ladies was such a community. Moderata Fonte and Mary Astell envisioned others. The luxurious salons of the French précieuses of the seventeenth century, or the comfortable English drawing rooms of the next, may have been born of the same impulse. Here women not only might escape, if briefly, the subordinate position that life in the family entailed but might also make claims to power, exercise their capacity for speech, and display their knowledge.

Series Editors’ Introduction Women were excluded from power: the whole cultural tradition insisted on it. Only men were citizens, only men bore arms, only men could be chiefs or lords or kings. There were exceptions that did not disprove the rule, when wives or widows or mothers took the place of men, awaiting their return or the maturation of a male heir. A woman who attempted to rule in her own right was perceived as an anomaly, a monster, at once a deformed woman and an insufficient male, sexually confused and consequently unsafe. The association of such images with women who held or sought power explains some otherwise odd features of early modern culture. Queen Elizabeth I of England, one of the few women to hold full regal authority in European history, played with such male/female images—positive ones, of course—in representing herself to her subjects. She was a prince, and manly, even though she was female. She was also (she claimed) virginal, a condition absolutely essential if she was to avoid the attacks of her opponents. Catherine de’ Medici, who ruled France as widow and regent for her sons, also adopted such imagery in defining her position. She chose as one symbol the figure of Artemisia, an androgynous ancient warrior-heroine who combined a female persona with masculine powers. Power in a woman, without such sexual imagery, seems to have been indigestible by the culture. A rare note was struck by the Englishman Sir Thomas Elyot in his Defence of Good Women (1540), justifying both women’s participation in civic life and their prowess in arms. The old tune was sung by the Scots reformer John Knox in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558); for him rule by women, defects in nature, was a hideous contradiction in terms. The confused sexuality of the imagery of female potency was not reserved for rulers. Any woman who excelled was likely to be called an Amazon, recalling the self-mutilated warrior women of antiquity who repudiated all men, gave up their sons, and raised only their daughters. She was often said to have “exceeded her sex” or to have possessed “masculine virtue”—as the very fact of conspicuous excellence conferred masculinity even on the female subject. The catalogs of notable women often showed those female heroes dressed in armor, armed to the teeth, like men. Amazonian heroines romp through the epics of the age—Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532) and Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590–1609). Excellence in a woman was perceived as a claim for power, and power was reserved for the masculine realm. A woman who possessed either one was masculinized and lost title to her own female identity. T H E P R O B L EM OF S P E E CH. Just as power had a sexual dimension when it was claimed by women, so did speech. A good woman spoke little. ExT H E P R O B L E M OF P OWE R .

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Series Editors’ Introduction cessive speech was an indication of unchastity. By speech, women seduced men. Eve had lured Adam into sin by her speech. Accused witches were commonly accused of having spoken abusively, or irrationally, or simply too much. As enlightened a figure as Francesco Barbaro insisted on silence in a woman, which he linked to her perfect unanimity with her husband’s will and her unblemished virtue (her chastity). Another Italian humanist, Leonardo Bruni, in advising a noblewoman on her studies, barred her not from speech but from public speaking. That was reserved for men. Related to the problem of speech was that of costume—another, if silent, form of self-expression. Assigned the task of pleasing men as their primary occupation, elite women often tended toward elaborate costume, hairdressing, and the use of cosmetics. Clergy and secular moralists alike condemned these practices. The appropriate function of costume and adornment was to announce the status of a woman’s husband or father. Any further indulgence in adornment was akin to unchastity. T H E P R O B LE M OF K NOWLE D GE . When the Italian noblewoman Isotta Nogarola had begun to attain a reputation as a humanist, she was accused of incest—a telling instance of the association of learning in women with unchastity. That chilling association inclined any woman who was educated to deny that she was or to make exaggerated claims of heroic chastity. If educated women were pursued with suspicions of sexual misconduct, women seeking an education faced an even more daunting obstacle: the assumption that women were by nature incapable of learning, that reasoning was a particularly masculine ability. Just as they proclaimed their chastity, women and their defenders insisted on their capacity for learning. The major work by a male writer on female education—that by Juan Luis Vives, On the Education of a Christian Woman (1523)—granted female capacity for intellection but still argued that a woman’s whole education was to be shaped around the requirement of chastity and a future within the household. Female writers of the following generations—Marie de Gournay in France, Anna Maria van Schurman in Holland, and Mary Astell in England—began to envision other possibilities. The pioneers of female education were the Italian women humanists who managed to attain a literacy in Latin and a knowledge of classical and Christian literature equivalent to that of prominent men. Their works implicitly and explicitly raise questions about women’s social roles, defining problems that beset women attempting to break out of the cultural limits that had bound them. Like Christine de Pizan, who achieved an advanced education through her father’s tutoring and her own devices, their bold questioning makes clear the importance of training. Only when women

Series Editors’ Introduction were educated to the same standard as male leaders would they be able to raise that other voice and insist on their dignity as human beings morally, intellectually, and legally equal to men. The other voice, a voice of protest, was mostly female, but it was also male. It spoke in the vernaculars and in Latin, in treatises and dialogues, in plays and poetry, in letters and diaries, and in pamphlets. It battered at the wall of prejudice that encircled women and raised a banner announcing its claims. The female was equal (or even superior) to the male in essential nature—moral, spiritual, and intellectual. Women were capable of higher education, of holding positions of power and influence in the public realm, and of speaking and writing persuasively. The last bastion of masculine supremacy, centered on the notions of a woman’s primary domestic responsibility and the requirement of female chastity, was not as yet assaulted—although visions of productive female communities as alternatives to the family indicated an awareness of the problem. During the period 1300–1700, the other voice remained only a voice, and one only dimly heard. It did not result—yet—in an alteration of social patterns. Indeed, to this day they have not entirely been altered. Yet the call for justice issued as long as six centuries ago by those writing in the tradition of the other voice must be recognized as the source and origin of the mature feminist tradition and of the realignment of social institutions accomplished in the modern age. T H E O T H E R VO ICE .

We thank the volume editors in this series, who responded with many suggestions to an earlier draft of this introduction, making it a collaborative enterprise. Many of their suggestions and criticisms have resulted in revisions of this introduction, although we remain responsible for the final product.

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A SINGULAR VENETIAN EPIC POEM

T H E OT H ER VOI CE

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ucrezia Marinella is, by all accounts, a phenomenon in early modernity: a woman who wrote and published in many genres, whose fame shone brightly within and outside her native city, and whose voice is simultaneously original and reflective of her times and culture. With both her contemporaries and twentieth- and twenty-first century readers, her renown rests on a prose treatise, The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, published in Venice in 1600 to refute a rabidly misogynous tract, Giuseppe Passi’s The Defects of Women, published the previous year.1 Despite its importance and novelty, as Letizia Panizza avows, this treatise “was both unexpected and atypical” of Marinella’s previous production: “it was in prose, on a secular subject, and entirely polemical in spirit.”2 It is also atypical of Marinella’s later production, which includes (among others) a life of

1. Paola Malpezzi Price asserts that “Marinella’s presence in literary histories is due to the recognition given to her epic poem L’Enrico (1635) throughout the centuries,” but she bases her contention on its being “reprinted in 1844” while her other works were only available in seventeenth-century editions. Paola Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653),” in Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook., ed. Rinaldina Russell (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994). 234. Yet the anonymous author of the “Notizie sulla vita di Lucrezia Marinella” included in the 1844 L’Enrico edition damns it with faint praise: the reader “scorgerà che se Lucrezia fosse vissuta in tempi migliori, avrebbe il di lei ingegno ottenuto, anche da questo secolo, non iscarsa lode” (“will perceive that, had Lucrezia lived in better times, her mind could have gathered not a small amount of praise from our century”). Lucrezia Marinella, L’Enrico ovvero Bisanzio acquistato (Venice: Giuseppe Antonelli, 1844), ix. Conversely, The Nobility and Excellence of Women was reprinted during Marinella’s life, and it established her as a point of reference in the querelle des femmes in Italy: see, for example, Cristofano Bronzini, Della dignità, & nobiltà delle donne (Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1622). In it Onorio, the defender of women, cites Marinella’s treatise as closing the book on the entire polemic about the worth of women. 2. Letizia Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” in The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, ed. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 9.

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Maria Galli Stampino the Virgin Mary, a collection of religiously themed poems, a narrative romance, a verse pastoral play, a retelling in poetic prose of Saint Catherine of Siena’s life, and a prose tract that seems to contradict her pro-woman stances in The Nobility and Excellence of Women. The “heroic” poem L’Enrico overo Bisanzio acquistato of 1635 is, however, the most anomalous of all Marinella’s texts. As Benedetto Croce has remarked, in Italy during the seventeenth century the epic was considered the highest genre, the one that would definitively put writers on the literary map.3 Yet the epic’s wide scope and its public and political subject matter discouraged most early modern women writers. Indeed, only five epic poems have surfaced written by women in the period 1560 to 1650.4 Moreover, epic poems in early modern Italy typically served a dynastic purpose: they extolled a family reigning over a principality by establishing its roots in a mythical and glorious past. This is nowhere clearer than in Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo (1483), and especially in its continuation, Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto (1516–32): Ruggiero, one of Charlemagne’s knights fighting the so-called infidels, is posited as the founder of the Este family of Ferrara. Venice, however, was proud of its republican constitution, in which the doge was elected for a life term but had limited powers and was subject to numerous checks by other authorities in the city.5 Some scholars have maintained that the Hapsburg Empire’s proclivity to use epic poems to extol its military might against Moslem as3. “Comporre un poema eroico sembrava indispensabile al decoro di un letterato e, anzi, conferirgli il sommo decoro” (“Writing a heroic poem seemed necessary to a writer’s dignity; indeed, it seemed to bestow the highest dignity on him”). Benedetto Croce, Storia dell’età barocca in Italia (Bari: Laterza, 1957), 287. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. I thank Laura Benedetti for helping me find this citation among Croce’s plentiful writings on seventeenth-century Italian literature. 4. Virginia Cox has eloquently expounded the reasons for women writers’ distance from the epic, and she has analyzed the five extant epics in “Fiction 1560–1650,” in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 52–64. As Bernard Schweizer succinctly puts it, “thematically, classical epics extol the heroic deeds of illustrious men in warfare and nation-founding while validating the dominant moral, religious, and cultural values of the author’s society. Formally, epic has long been considered the crowning achievement of ‘timeless’ poetic genius, the repository of sublime diction, and even the product of ‘divine’ inspiration—all attributes carrying connotations of masculinity.” “Introduction: Muses with Pens,” in Approaches to the Anglo and American Female Epic, 1621–1982, ed. Bernard Schweizer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 1. Two of the five extant Italian epics by women, Moderata Fonte’s Floridoro and Margherita Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide, appeared in this same series, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, in 2006. 5. An excellent overview of the complex political order in Venice can be found in chapter 7 (interestingly entitled “The Paradoxical Prince”) of Edward Muir’s Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 251–97.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m sailants as well as against the native populations in what was then called the New World turned Venetian writers (and readers) away from this genre.6 The epic, however, was “foreign” in Venice for many additional political and cultural reasons. Lucrezia Marinella’s Enrico, on this count too, emerges as original and atypical.7 Still, a crusade as the topic for an epic poem had a prestigious antecedent: Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581, revised as Gerusalemme conquistata in 1593) concerns the First Crusade (1095–99). Marinella’s choice of the expedition that most involved the Venetians would not be peculiar, if not for the fact that the Fourth Crusade (1202–4) never reached the so-called Holy Land; instead it brought about the conquest of Constantinople, a Christian city—although an Eastern Orthodox (rather than a Roman Catholic) one. This move on Marinella’s part forcefully establishes her as a Venetian writer, one whose voice is as individual and fiercely independent as her hometown. She declares her work to belong with Tasso’s on her title page; as Rinaldina Russell points out, his Gerusalemme liberata was the first poem to be named “heroic.”8 But this positioning came with striking ideological attributes, given Marinella’s topic. Most early modern Italian epics (including the only other woman-penned historical heroic poem, Margherita Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide [Rome, 1606 and 1623]) pit Christian

6. See Françoise Lavocat, “Introduzione,” in Arcadia felice (Florence: Olschki, 1998), XXI, where she cites Ginetta Auzzas, “Le nuove esperienze della narrativa: il romanzo,” in Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1984), 1:290. Auzzas’s piece judges negatively all romanzo and epic production in the Venetian seventeenth century from a literary standpoint, offering the Croce-derived argument that those genres did not correspond to the local “spirit.” However, she includes a helpful list of the few works in this genre published in Venice: an incomplete Boemondo by Giovan Maria Verdizzotti (one canto only, 1607); Enrico overo Francia conquistata by Giulio Malmignani (1623; this Enrico is Henri III of Navarre, later IV of France); and Marinella’s own Enrico (Auzzas, ibid., 290–91). 7. While it is true that Floridoro was written by a Venetian woman (Moderata Fonte), it is dedicated to Francesco de’ Medici of Florence and his bride, the Venetian Bianca Capello; furthermore, its goal is to celebrate their lineage. See Moderata Fonte, Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance, trans. Julia Kisacky, ed. Valeria Finucci (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 3.62–66 (at pp. 139–40). Paolo Preto’s judgment is trenchant on the topic of the disharmony between Venice and the epic genre: there existed “assoluta incapacità della cultura veneziana ad esprimersi sul metro dell’epica sia essa ispirata alle vicende politico-militari della patria sia ai grandi fatti e personalità del mondo ottomano” (“an absolute inability of Venetian culture to express itself in epic meters, whether inspired by Venice’s own political and military events or by the feats and personalities of the Ottoman world”). Preto, “I Turchi e la cultura veneziana nel Seicento,” in Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Arnaldi and Pastore Stocchi, 2:328. 8. Rinaldina Russell, “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” in Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus, ed. Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 18.

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Maria Galli Stampino against Moslem fighters; furthermore, Tasso’s poem reflects the increasingly militant (some would say oppressive) attitudes and beliefs of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63). With Enrico, Marinella walks a fine line between ideological expectations, literary models, and civic and personal circumstances that lead to an atypical text. By selecting a topic that was both religiously and politically relevant, Marinella builds on some of her previous works, especially, as Laura Benedetti has recently shown, the hagiographic Colomba sacra (Marinella’s first printed work, from 1595).9 She also reinforces the Venetian mythical tradition that saw the city and the state it headed as sanctioned and protected by Saint Mark the Evangelist—linking the sacred and civic (and political) in a tight and inextricable bond.10 The obvious ties to an established literary genre such as the epic and to a time-honored tradition of patriotic pride in Venice must not tempt us to ignore the novelty and otherness of Marinella’s self-imposed task with Enrico. Women were excluded from political discussion (and, of course, direct action). However, in this poem Marinella singles out an important episode in the history of Venice to remind the world of her city’s destiny and import; in doing so, she asserts her voice not only as a writer11 but as a devout, loyal, and vocal Venetian subject. She dares to write in the highest literary genre of her time, one of only five women to do so in early modern Italy. She dares to write in a genre that for various cultural reasons was out of favor in Venice. She dares to select a topic that by necessity offers a commentary on current political debates of her time. Lastly, she dares to offer a Venetian version of the events of the Fourth Crusade, a crucial moment in the history of her city but for which no contemporary Venetian documents existed. With Enrico, in sum, Marinella lifts a powerful and striking “other voice.” M A R I N ELLA’S LI F E A N D W O RK

Generally speaking, we know very little about the individual lives of early modern women, unless some exceptional occurrence inscribed them in

9. See Laura Benedetti, “Saintes et guerrières: L’héroïsme féminin dans l’œuvre de Lucrezia Marinella,” Écritures 1 (2005): 101. 10. On the importance of Saint Mark to Venice’s self-image, see Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 78–92. 11. In this she is not different from contemporary writers. As Benson and Kirkham have incisively explained, in early modernity “authors competed for inclusion [in the canon then in formation] and announced their ambitions by imitating already accepted works in the subjects they chose and in the genres, language, and lexicon they adopted.” Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, “Introduction,” in Strong Voices, Weak History, ed. Benson and Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 2.

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written documents. Despite her numerous printed writings, Lucrezia Marinella is no exception to this rule. Nonetheless, archives have recently begun to yield some of their riches to patient and determined researchers such as Susan Haskins. Although we still know nothing about Marinella’s mother, not even her name, we know that her father, Giovanni Marinelli, was a physician and natural philosopher originally from Modena whose published writings concerned hygiene and beauty remedies (Women’s Ornaments [Gli ornamenti delle donne], Venice, 1562), as well as gynecology (Medicines Pertaining to Women’s Illnesses [Le medicine partenenti alle infirmità delle donne], Venice, 1563; revised and reprinted, Venice, 1574).13 Her older brother Curzio was also a physician, whose published works span medicine and history, including A Discourse on How to Study History in Order to Rule States (Discorso nel quale si scrive il modo di studiar l’Historie per reggere stati, 1580) that situate him in the camp “of Machiavelli-derived aristocratic republicanism” (“di un repubblicanismo aristocratico machiavelliano”).14 Lucrezia had a presumably older sister, Diamantina, who married a lawyer from Belluno and had died by 1620, and another older brother, Angelico, a priest who died after 1630.15 Though Giovanni was not from Venice, Lucrezia and the rest of her family “belonged to the cittadinanza although it is at present unknown when, as ‘foreigners,’ the Marinelli were granted this status.”16 Only five to eight percent of all Venetians were cittadini, and while they were not patricians, they constituted the largest cadre of civil servants and were the administra-

12. Such exceptionality could be a consequence of belonging to a certain family (such as noble women whose matrimonial contracts were negotiated by their families, and whose princely weddings were at the center of much written celebration, especially in the seventeenth century) or, at the other end of the spectrum, of exceptional circumstances that necessitated legal proceedings. Such is the case of the “aspiring saint” Cecilia Ferrazzi, whose Autobiography is edited and translated in this series (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe): see Cecilia Ferrazzi, Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint, trans. and ed. Anne Jacobson Schutte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Another such case is the painter Artemisia Gentileschi; her life is known essentially through the testimonies given in a rape trial against Agostino Tassi. For a good overview, see Elizabeth Cropper, “Life on the Edge: Artemisia Gentileschi, Famous Woman Painter,” in Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, ed. Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001). 13. On Marinelli, see Maria Luisa Altieri Biagi, Clemente Mazzotta, Angela Chiantera, and Paola Altieri, Medicina per le donne nel Cinquecento: Testi di Giovanni Marinello e di Girolamo Mercurio (Turin: Strenna UTET, 1992), introduction, 7–40; selections from Le medicine, 45–64. 14. Lavocat, “Introduzione,” XII. 15. Susan Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? New Documents Concerning Her Life (Part One),” Nouvelles de la république des Lettres 25, no. 1 (2006): 92. I thank Al Rabil for finding and sending a copy of this article. 16. Ibid., 89.

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Maria Galli Stampino tors of the charitable institutions of whose existence and tradition the city was so proud.17 Lucrezia was born in Venice in 1571; Giovanni Marinelli’s last printed work is dated 1576, so it is possible that her brothers might have had more influence on her upbringing than her father. Given the limited schooling that young women had access to, we must speculate that either her father or one of her brothers gave her encouragement and help in furthering her education, in writing, and in getting published. Another doctor and man of letters, Lucio Scarano, might have introduced Lucrezia to G. B. Ciotti, the publisher of her Nobility and Excellence of Women, dedicated to Scarano himself.18 In May 1607 Marinella became engaged to a physician, Girolamo Vacca; they married in August of that year.19 She was thirty-six years old, he was forty-eight; “by normal late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century standards, this was an extremely late marriage for both,” observes Haskins, “but Vacca may have been a widower.”20 Marinella’s dowry amounted to 3,500 ducats, though it is unclear whose money this was.21 We know nothing of her husband; from her 1645 will we know she was the mother of two children, Antonio and Paulina, and from a 1648 codicil we learn that Paulina had a daughter, Antoletta.22 Marinella died of a fever on October 9, 1653, and was buried in the parish church of San Pantaleone in Venice. If not for her printed works, Marinella’s life would have left very few marks on public Venetian life.23 We know of no correspondence of hers

17. Ibid. Haskins further explains that Venice’s lack of a university might have made it easier for Giovanni Marinelli and his family to have this honor bestowed on it. Ibid., 90. 18. See Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, ed. Dunhill, 39. 19. Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant (part 1),” 93, 104. 20. Ibid., 93. 21. Ibid., 107, 109. The legal documents pertaining to Marinella’s marriage can now be read in appendix 1 to Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant (part 1),” 117–19. 22. Marinella’s will can now be read in appendix 3 to Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant (part 1),” 122–23. 23. Giovanni Stringa, in his 1604 addition to Francesco Sansovino’s description of Venice and its history, praises Marinella in the following terms: “standosene nella sua camera tutto il giorno rinchiusa, & attendendo con vivo spirito agli studij delle belle lettere, vi ha fatto maraviglioso profitto” (“she spends her days holed up in her room, devoting her lively soul to the study of literature; so she has profited marvelously from it”). Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare . . . corretta, emendata, e più di un terzo di cose nuove ampliata dal M. R. D. Giovanni Stringa (Venetia: Altobello Salicato, 1604), 426. However, Stephen Kolsky has pointed out that Marinella’s “collaboration with Ciotti is a clear indication of her acceptance in academic circles and, more importantly, suggests a wider collaboration between the Academy and the woman writer, possibly as a de facto member of the Academy,” that is, the Accademia veneziana. “Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi: An Early Seventeenth-Century Feminist Controversy,” Modern Language Review 96 (2001): 977; Ciotti was the Academy’s publisher.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m and of no social functions that she initiated or in which she took part. We also know of no extant manuscript work. Remarkably, however, Marinella was prolific and successful enough to have her works printed over a long period of time. Her first work appeared in 1595, when she was twentyfour years old; it is a four-canto sacred epic poem entitled The Holy Dove (La Colomba sacra) or, alternatively, Saint Colomba, and composed in ottava rima (eight lines of eleven syllables linked by four rhymes following the scheme ABABABCC), the typical form for epic poems and the one Marinella preferred over all others throughout her writing career. Dedicated to Margherita Gonzaga (married Este), duchess of Ferrara, it follows Colomba’s devotional life and sufferings up to her martyrdom. Two years later, Marinella published Life of the Seraphic and Glorious Saint Francis (Vita del serafico et glorioso San Francesco) in the same genre and verse form as her first work. Her 1598 Cupid in Love and Driven Mad (Amore innamorato e impazzato) is a ten-canto moral allegory dedicated to another noblewoman, Caterina de’ Medici (married Gonzaga), duchess of Mantua. While the topic is drawn from the classical psychomachia tradition, Marinella’s Amore “reverses the roles, and subjects an arrogant, lustful Cupid to defeat at the hands of wiser, more virtuous women.”24 In 1600 the treatise The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men (La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, co’ difetti et mancamenti de gli uomini) was published to refute Passi’s misogynist treatise. It was enlarged in 1601, and this edition was reprinted in 1620. Marinella follows the structure of Passi’s text, offering in part I praise of women “for the virtues contrary to the vices Passi condemned” and, in part II, condemnation of “men for nearly all the same vices—and many more—that Passi had accused women of.”25 In 1602 she published a work in the same religious vein as her first ones, Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of the Universe (La vita di Maria Vergine Imperatrice dell’universo), which combines two different retellings of Mary’s life: one in ottava rima and the other in prose. Dedicated to the highest authorities in Venice (“Principe e Signoria,” i.e., doge and senate), it was reissued three times by the same printer, Barezzi, in 1604, 1610, and 1617. She appended to this, her third religiously themed text, some considerations on poetics, in which she adheres to Tasso’s dictates as well as those of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent (1545–63): “sacred, heroic, and philosophical subjects . . . should be expressed with the same eloquence and poetry that classical authors used for pagan subjects,”26 mixing the marvelous with the 24. Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” 9. 25. Panizza, A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, 72. 26. Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation.” 10.

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Maria Galli Stampino verisimilar. We can surmise that the subject matter of this work, one of the holiest figures of the Catholic Church, might have prompted Marinella to defend her choice and her treatment explicitly. In 1603 a collection of Holy Verses (Rime sacre) was printed in Venice that included sonnets, madrigals, and longer poems. Two years later, in 1605, her verse-and-prose romance Happy Arcadia (Arcadia felice) appeared, also in Venice. It is dedicated to Eleonora de’ Medici (married Gonzaga), duchess of Mantua,27 and as a consequence an interpretation of this text as a roman à clé is possible, though not clear-cut.28 More important, Marinella follows Italian predecessors such as Jacopo Sannazaro in avoiding love as the rationale for the plot,29 in line with the moralizing goals of her religious and mythological works. A text that similarly mixes verse and prose is Saint Peter’s Tears (Le lagrime di San Pietro), printed in 1606, where prose passages offer a commentary on the story of the apostle Peter’s denying Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, which itself is told in verse. That same year, Marinella saw her Life of Saint Justine (Vita di Santa Giustina) printed in Florence as well as a reprint of her Life of the Seraphic and Glorious Saint Francis (Vita del serafico et glorioso San Francesco) of 1597. After eleven years of such copious production, no subsequent book by Marinella was printed until 1624. Indeed, after 1606 only three entirely new works appeared. Marinella’s marriage in 1607 supports Panizza’s hypothesis that “maybe she devoted herself to marriage and to bringing up her children” during this period, but, as Panizza concedes, “we do not know.”30 It is very likely that after her marriage “since neither of her children appears to have been born in Venice . . . Marinella may well have lived in or near Padua,” a city linked to her husband’s family.31 It is also “possible that Marinella and her husband may have been living apart” for years.32 After his death in 1629, a new phase of Marinella’s life opened, in which she would 27. Eleonora was cousin to Caterina, the dedicatee of Amore innamorato e impazzato (Caterina was Francesco I de’ Medici’s daughter, and Eleonora was his brother Ferdinando I’s daughter); Eleonora was also mother to Francesco Gonzaga, Caterina’s husband, and therefore her motherin-law. This dedication can now be read in Lucrezia Marinella, Arcadia felice, ed. Françoise Lavocat (Florence: Olschki, 1998), 1–2. 28. As Françoise Lavocat indicates. See “Introduzione,” XXV–XLI. 29. In that she differs from contemporaries such as Montemayor and Honoré d’Urfé. See ibid., XLIII. 30. Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” 12. 31. Susan Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part Two),” Nouvelles de la république des Lettres 26, nos.1–2 (2007): 204. Again I thank Al Rabil for obtaining a copy of this article for me. 32. Ibid., 216.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m be relatively more autonomous and “comfortable as she was independently wealthy.” 33 In any case, another burst of creativity materializes. In 1624 The Heroic Deeds and Marvelous Life of the Seraphic Saint Catherine of Siena (De’ gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica S. Caterina da Siena) was printed by Barezzo Barezzo in Venice, with a dedication to Maria Maddalena of Austria, Grand Duchess of Florence,34 and at that time co-regent with Christine of Lorraine of the Medici domains, within whose boundaries Siena lay.35 Marinella tackled a complex topic, as Catherine had been canonized in 1461, and numerous accounts of her life and visions were already circulating in addition to her own writings. Marinella emphasizes Catherine’s ascetic life and mystical visions rather than other aspects of her biography. As Paola Malpezzi Price has pointed out, it is in this work that “the transference of sexuality to the mystic plane”36 already evident in Colomba sacra and Vita del serafico et glorioso San Francesco reaches its fullest expression, an element that marks Marinella as a post-Tridentine writer who fully followed “contemporary literary taste.”37 In 1635 her epic poem L’Enrico, overo Bisanzio acquistato was printed by Gherardo Imberti in Venice. Like her 1602 La vita di Maria Vergine Imperatrice dell’universo, it was not dedicated to a noblewoman outside Venice but to the “most serene doge Francesco Erizzo and to the most serene Republic of Venice,”38 indicating the public relevance she attached to this poem. Marinella’s last new work appeared in Venice in 1645: An Exhortation to Women and to Others (Essortationi alle donne e agli altri) puzzles twenty-firstcentury readers because it seemingly retracts her bold assertions in The Nobility and Excellence of Women by accepting a strict division of roles between the 33. Ibid., 217. A short five weeks after her husband’s death, Marinella applied for the restitution of her dowry (ibid., 218) and was busy administering her patrimony, as indicated by many archival documents retrieved by Haskins (ibid., 219–21). 34. It bears emphasizing that Maria Maddalena was actually devoted to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, whose life she had seen performed on stage by students at the Jesuit university in Graz during her childhood and again at the Crocetta convent in Florence after 1621. See Kelley Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 41, 299–306. 35. Copies of two letters by Maria Maddalena and Christine are extant at the Florentine Archivio di Stato. Dated Leghorn, 21 March 1623 (presumably a typo for 1624), they thank Marinella for the books she had sent them as a gift. Archivio di Stato, Firenze; Mediceo del Principato 109, carta 274 recto. 36. Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653),” 236. 37. Ibid., 235. 38. “[S]ereniss[imo] Principe Francesco Erizzo, et Serenissima Republica di Venetia.”

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Maria Galli Stampino sexes. She also presents beauty not as a divine gift but as something fleeting and corruptible.39 One could attribute such a novel stance to old age; however, Kolsky has suggested that “Marinella is arguing in untramque partem, producing a rhetorically charged negative parallel to La nobiltà e l’eccellenza delle donne.”40 Most recently, Paola Malpezzi Price and Christine Ristaino have cleverly traced elements of the philosophical and rhetorical tradition of the Greek sophists in this text, showing that Marinella’s “language is often playful, her incorporation of opposites significant, and her message serious” but not coinciding with its literal meaning.41 Afterward, in 1647 she published a joint poetic celebration of Saints Francis and Claire in Victories of the Seraphic Francis and Glorious Steps of Saint Claire (Le vittorie di Francesco il serafico; Li passi gloriosi della diva Chiara) and in 1648 an additional verse work on the martyr Saint Justina, The Love Sacrifice of the Virgin Saint Justine (Holocausto d’amore della vergine Santa Giustina), confirming that devotional inspiration and religious themes were central to Marinella’s interests and works,42 and again underscoring the singularity of her epic Enrico. H I STO RI CAL A N D CU LT U R A L CON T EX TS O F MARI N E L L A’ S E P I C

In the classical tradition, particularly in the Roman one, epic poems served to outline and to legitimize territorial expansion and imperial pretensions. Specifically, as Sergio Zatti explains, canto 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid endorses Roman imperialism and its dependence on weapons but also honors peace

39. See Daniela DeBellis, “Attacking Sumptuary Laws in Seicento Venice,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford, UK: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 236–37. 40. Kolsky, “Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella,” 984. 41. Paola Malpezzi Price and Christine Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes” in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Madison, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008), 127. Haskins agrees, characterizing the tone in Marinella’s last text as “angry, resigned, and often ironic.” Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant (Part Two),” 228. 42. Scholars have debated whether her devotion was sincere or not. Malpezzi Price asserts that “Marinella’s interest in devotional subjects could not entirely be due to personal preference and choice. To a certain extent, it must be ascribed to the religious and political environment and to her keen awareness of public reception.” Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571– 1653),” 235. She supports this assertion with the work of historian Antonio Niero; see Niero, “Riforma cattolica e Concilio di Trento a Venezia,” in Cultura e società nel Rinascimento tra riforme e manierismi, ed. Vittore Branca and Carlo Ossola (Florence: Olschki, 1984). Panizza, on the other hand, never questions Marinella’s religiosity, as she implicitly considers her production and theoretical pronouncements an indication of her sincere beliefs. See, for example, Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” 10.

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and justice. Indeed, in his treatises on epic poetry, Tasso singles out Virgil as having selected the noblest topic for his work: not only is Aeneas’s arrival in Italy “great and illustrious in and of itself, but even greater and more illustrious when one considers that the Roman empire was born out of it.”44 Early modern Europe utilized the epic in many ways in this vein: the most obvious and canonical example is Os Lusiadas (1572), in which Luis Vaz de Camões celebrates Vasco da Gama’s voyages and the beginning of the Portuguese colonial empire.45 When Marinella wrote her epic poem, however, Venice’s commercial empire was already past its peak. Indeed, the so-called voyages of discovery by the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Dutch had already undermined Venice’s stronghold on the trade in spices, silk, and other exotic goods. Furthermore, its territory was threatened by various European powers (such as France, Spain, and the Hapsburg Empire) on the west, and by the so-called Turks on the east. While the famed naval victory at Lepanto (1571) was endlessly celebrated in Venice as well as in Spain, during that same year Venice lost the island of Cyprus, an important outpost in the eastern Mediterranean, to the same enemy, the Ottoman Empire. To make matters worse, by 1635 (when Enrico was published), Venice had recently experienced a severe plague epidemic (July 1630 through October 1631) that had affected the city as well as its possessions on the Italian mainland. Scholars have calculated that this outbreak caused the death of approximately 30 percent of the population of the city and the lagoon.46 Venetians saw divine punish-

43. “L’imperialismo romano riceve qui [Aeneid 6.847–53] la sua sanzione solenne, fondata sulla consapevolezza che tale dominio si impone con la forza delle armi (debellare superbos), ma si conserva con la pace e la giustizia (parcere subiectis)” (“Roman imperialism is here solemnly endorsed; there’s the awareness that this domain is imposed through the strength of weapons [debellare superbos], but that it is kept through peace and justice [parcere subiectis]”). Sergio Zatti, Il modo epico (Rome: Laterza, 2000), 42. 44. “[P]er sé grande e illustre; ma grandissimo ed illustrissimo, avendo riguardo a l’Imperio romano ch’ebbe origine da quella.” Torquato Tasso, “Discorsi del poema eroico,” in Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959), 552. 45. According to Zatti, “Camões tenta di fare per il Portogallo ciò che Virgilio aveva fatto con l’Eneide per Roma: scrivere un’epica celebrativa del carattere nazionale che raccontasse la storia del regno portoghese e insieme aderisse al disegno di un’epica classica tradizionale” (“Camões tried to do for Portugal what Virgil had done for Rome with the Aeneid, that is, write an epic that would celebrate national characteristics and that would tell the story of the Portuguese kingdom while following the outline of a traditional epic in the classical mold”). Zatti, Il modo epico, 75. 46. Details on deaths in Venice and her territories in northern Italy can be found in Paolo Preto, “La società veneta e le grandi epidemie di peste,” in Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Arnaldi and Pastore Stocchi, 2:390–91.

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Maria Galli Stampino ment in the epidemic; the senate made a vow to the Virgin Mary, which it carried out in building the Chiesa della Salute (meaning both “church of salvation” and “of good health”) across the Grand Canal from S. Marco, designed by Baldassare Longhena and arguably the city’s most important seventeenth-century edifice. After the plague Venice resumed its constant low-level warfare with the Ottoman Empire; this would soon explode in an all-out conflict for the possession of Candia (modern-day Iráklion), the main city on the island of Crete.47 Against this background it is clear that, much like its better-known antecedents, Enrico is infused by an element of nostalgia, which goes hand in hand with Marinella’s determined effort to convince her readers of the past, present, and future glory and excellence of her city and its territories. We could say about Enrico what Zatti has written about Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata: “It expressed an imagined desire of revenge against the eastern world by exorcizing the nightmare of Turkish expansion in Europe.” 48 Instead of celebrating the victory at Lepanto, as others had done,49 Marinella followed Tasso’s example more closely by selecting an episode further in the past, which allowed her more freedom with the plot.50 At the same time, the “contemporary parallel with a Christian Venice engaged in wearying struggles

47. Candia was under siege from 1645 to 1669, when it fell to the Ottomans. Crete was Venice’s last possession in the eastern Mediterranean, so its loss was particularly crucial for symbolic, territorial, and commercial reasons. 48. “[D]ava sfogo a una fantasia di rivalsa contro il mondo orientale esorcizzando l’incubo dell’espansione turca in Europa.” Zatti, Il modo epico, 67. 49. Interestingly, all but one of these male-authored poems were printed in cities other than Venice; see Antonio Belloni, Il Seicento (Milan: Vallardi, 1929), 206–7. This is especially striking when we consider that many, if not most, of the poetry collections celebrating the victory at Lepanto were published in Venice, even those assembled elsewhere. See Carlo Dionisotti, “Lepanto nella cultura italiana del tempo,” Lettere italiane 23, no. 4 (1971): 473–92, particularly 482. One such poem is Celio Magno’s Trionfo di Cristo per la vittoria contra Turchi rappresentato (1571), which in Haskins’ words “may well have been the inspiration for [Marinella’s] Enrico,” since Magno was a friend of Lucio Scarano, the dedicatee of her Nobility and Excellence of Women. See Haskins, “Vexatious Litigant (Part One),” 102. A detailed overview of the presence of the so-called Turk in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian visual arts and literature appears in Paolo Preto, Venezia e i Turchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1975), 244–82. 50. “Tolgasi . . . l’argomento dell’epopeia da istorie di vera religione, ma non di tanta autorità che siano inalterabili” (“the subject of an epic must be taken from stories of our true religion, but stories that are not so codified as to be unchangeable”). Torquato Tasso, “Discorsi dell’arte poetica,” in Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959), 357. This belies what Cox aptly calls Marinella’s “hubristic claim in the preface to her poem to owe nothing to ‘i moderni Poeti,’ and to have drawn her inspiration entirely from Aristotle’s theory and the model of Homer.” Cox, “Fiction 1560–1650,” 61. See “To the Readers” below.

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with ‘infidel’ Turks in a modern crusade” was more than merely literary or abstract; as Marinella had done with her Nobility and Excellence of Women, she again in this case indirectly (but no less clearly) took sides in the debates within the Venetian ruling elite on whether to wage war against the Turks or rely primarily on diplomacy.52 The narrative of the expedition against Constantinople, by 1635 the capital of the Ottoman Empire, is therefore simultaneously based on history, following Tasso’s dictum; an undeniable moment of glory for Venice; and a reminder to Marinella’s contemporaries that aggression pays off.53 It is also a reassurance that the republic is strong and can triumph over any enemy, in contrast with the doubts coursing through the city during that period.54 51. Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” 13. 52. Lavocat, “Introduzione,” XXI. The side advocating war had an uphill battle, since during the period 1530–70 Venice had adopted what Carlo Dionisotti has called “the doctrine of a comfortable, luxurious armed neutrality, by land and by sea” (“in terra e in mare, la dottrina di una comoda, fastosa neutralità armata”). Dionisotti, “La guerra d’Oriente nella letteratura veneziana del Cinquecento,” in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), 175. In his opinion, even Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata “did not succeed in including the commotion and boldness of war without having them go hand in hand with a tormenting nostalgia for peace and a persistent concern for its violence, cruelty, and death” (“non potè accogliere in sé il clamore e la baldanza della guerra e della vittoria senza accompagnarli con una struggente nostalgia della pace e con una insistente preoccupazione della violenza, della crudeltà e della morte”). Dionisotti, ibid., 179. Marinella’s position is rather boldly expressed in canto 1.12, where she decries what she terms “a troubled peace” (“travagliata pace,” 1.12.2). 53. It was through the Fourth Crusade that Venice had acquired much of the land in the eastern Mediterranean under attack in the seventeenth century. As Thomas F. Madden indicates, that crusade “would transform Venice from a merchant republic into a maritime empire.” Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 117. Giorgio Ravegnani calls this enterprise “a great deal for the Venetians” (“un buon affare per i Veneziani”). Ravegnani, Bisanzio e Venezia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), 114. He also provides a good overview of all territorial conquests. See ibid., 113–22. John Godfrey specifies that “the most important immediate consequence of the conquest [of Constantinople] was that the Venetians were able to establish an unshakeable position within the Eastern Empire, a position which all along had been their main objective and which was to be the basis of their future prosperity.” Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 154. Indeed, as Madden reminds us, “Crete remained under Venetian rule until 1669 and was by far the most durable manifestation of the Fourth Crusade.” Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 308. 54. As Del Negro asserts about the seventeenth century in general, “the military losses that Venice had incurred when it had tried to recover an active role within Italian politics, in 1630 and 1643, especially the loss of Candia, cast into doubt the ability of the republic to survive” (“I rovesci militari subiti da Venezia quando aveva tentato, nel 1630 e nel 1643, di ritrovare un ruolo attivo nella politica italiana e, in modo particolare, la perdita di Candia facevano oramai dubitare delle possibilità di sopravvivenza della repubblica”). Piero Del Negro, “Forme e istituzioni del discorso politico veneziano,” in Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Arnaldi and Pastore Stocchi, 2:409.

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Maria Galli Stampino It is tempting to simply reduce Marinella’s stance to an aggressive one mirroring the passion and enthusiasm for women’s rights that she shows in her treatise of 1600. Such an attitude would go hand in hand with her devotion to her city, and, as Garry Wills writes, it is customary to treat Venice as feminine, as the calm seductress, Serenissima. The older Venice thought of itself as masculine, the Lion City, one that lived under war discipline—not because its walls were scarred with cannon fire or its streets marked with battle monuments (thanks to its physical seclusion, they were not), but because so much of its population had to live out on the commercial ships and war fleets of an extensive empire, storming other people’s walls, bringing other cities’ treasure back to be absorbed into their own town’s distinctive fabric.55 We could simply say, then, that Marinella expresses this enterprising, seafaring, combative, and fearless element pervading Venetian culture. The latter, however, was more complex. The image of the city that Venetians cultivated and spread (the so-called “myth of Venice”) combined “the city’s liberty . . . with domestic harmony and respect for the territory of its neighbors, never with military might or aggression. Yet Venetians also loved to boast of their imperial possessions, obtained undeniably by war.”56 These two sides were never separate. If we look closely at Wills’s passage, we can advance this point further: Venice (Venezia) is always gendered feminine in Italian, as are all cities. So the grammatically feminine Venice is simultaneously a culturally ambiguous conqueror and ruler—like Rome, in Virgil’s famous dictum.57 Moreover, as Muir points out, in the yearly Marriage of the Sea ceremony “the doge was the husband of a maritime bride, who as the female partner was naturally and legally subject to the male.”58 Similarly, a male doge ruled over Venice like a husband over his wife. Consider the title of Marinella’s poem: L’Enrico overo Bisanzio acquistato indicates that the city the crusaders conquered is gendered male, as “acquistato” indicates. This immediately established a sense of otherness in her implicit readers, for whom cities were gendered feminine. Elsewhere By55. 56. 57. 58.

Garry Wills, Venice: Lion City—The Religion of Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 13. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 17. See above, note 43. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 119.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m zantium is dubbed “gran” (meaning both “large” and “great”), which is grammatically ambiguous (4.50.1, 8.33.2, and 13.2.1). It is implicitly designated as the capital of the eastern Roman Empire, for Marinella repeatedly calls it Rome:59 it is “the second Rome” (7.64.2) and the “Greek Rome” (9.43.3), then the “lost Rome” (24.101.2) in Enrico Dandolo’s foreseeing mind (“lost” to its current rulers, soon to be defeated and expelled from the city); and in these cases it is grammatically feminine. To make the resemblance between Rome and Byzantium topographically cogent, Marinella emphasizes that the latter was also built on seven hills (see 2.79.1, 8.33.2, and 22.61.7). The resemblance with the Rome in Latium does not stop there, however: Byzantium is dubbed a “haughty city” (“città superba,” 9.31.2 and 19.46.2) endowed with “proud towers” (“superbe Torri,” 22.61.7), thereby illuminating a negative dimension of the eastern Roman Empire—and of any empire in general. Byzantium, then, is grammatically masculine but insistently likened to a grammatically feminine city that ruled over an empire. It is the opposite of the grammatically feminine, sea-ruling, republican Venice. In contrast to Byzantium, the crusaders, especially their Venetian leader, constitute a model of republican behavior: in the crusading camp, no decision is taken by one individual, as Enrico consults with his peers over every choice (see 4.53–54, 19.5, 19.13, and 23.37–38).60 And while Venice is rarely mentioned explicitly, the epithets and phrases used to describe it emphasize its femininity. It is a “virgin queen” (“Vergin Regina,” 2.28.4); additionally, it is “a virgin and praised wife to Neptune” (“Vergin del gran Nettun lodata sposa,” 7.5.8, transferring onto Venice the paradox associated with Mary in Christian theology: both virgin and mother), and “lady of the sea” (“Donna del Mare,” 7.28.2). Here the genders of the Marriage of the Sea ceremony are reversed: the female city rules over the sea, not vice versa. Grammatically, this corresponds to the gender attribution of these nouns in

59. For historical details on the so-called translatio Imperii (moving the imperial capital from Rome to Byzantium), see note 63 to canto 7.64. 60. The harmony within the crusading camp is juxtaposed to the divisions among the Byzantines. In canto 2.42.2 and 8, the enemy kingdom is said to be plagued by “war, sedition, discord, and fights” (“Guerra, sedition, discordie, e risse”), as well as “divergences, fires, hatred, and nasty turns” (“Contentioni, incendi, odij, e dispetti”), in keeping with a theme evident in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. Furthermore, in the description Erina offers to her guest Venier of the reasons for her family’s exile from Venice, her forefather’s cardinal sin is to have harbored desires for king-like power after becoming doge; his attempted coup failed, and Venice’s republican order was maintained. Erina’s exile still expiates her forefather’s mistake (see 6.28–35 and notes).

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Maria Galli Stampino Italian, but it is hard not to see Marinella’s deliberate hand at work here: a female republican city triumphs over a male, imperial one.61 Venier, one of the main crusading characters, explains his provenance to Erina, the woman who cares for him after a shipwreck, stating: 5.68. I was born where a venerable city lies sublime and glorious on a gulf of a great sea. Her heart is full of love no less than of justice and faith. Her name is Venice. Who would fully describe the many gifts that heaven has bestowed on her? A cloud of graces and virtues perennially rains them in her lap.62 Feminine elements are clearly present both on the grammatical level and on the semantic one. “Gulf” (“Seno”) is also the bosom: Venice’s location is sheltered, a natural harbor that is therefore fitting for a port, but also nourishing and protecting like a mother’s bosom. “Lap” (“Grembo”) is also the womb, incubating and bringing forth the gift that the (male) heaven is bestowing on this city. Adding to this important male presence, the sea is personified by the god Neptune from Roman mythology. In Venier’s description Venice is “sublime,” “glorious,” and “venerable” (“sublime,” “gloriosa,” “venerabil”), adjectives that underscore its similarity to another virgin, Mary, who according to the gospels miraculously gave birth to Jesus. Other elements point to the pious nature of Venier’s home city: Venice’s “heart is full of love no less than of justice and faith” (“cor [è] ripieno / Non men d’amor, che di giustitia, e fede”), bringing together a so-called natural virtue (justice, one of the four that are found in all humans) with two so-called theological ones (love and faith, i.e., those revealed by Jesus and related in the gospels, of which therefore only Christians are aware). As Muir has underscored, Venice’s internal order relied on “a peculiar hybrid of liturgical and ceremonial elements, taken from diverse sources,” which reinforced the city’s sense of itself as divinely chosen and thus “enabled the Venetians to withstand the tremendous forces for change . . . that ravaged the rest of Italy during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”63 The com-

61. For all these reasons, in the body of the poem all references to Venice will be in the feminine. 62. 5.68. Nacqui là, dove al gran Nettun nel seno / Sublime posa, e gloriosa siede / Venerabil Città, c’ha’l cor ripieno / Non men d’amor, che di giustitia, e fede. / Venetia detta, hor chi può dir à pieno / L’ampie doti, che’l Cielo à lei concede? / Poiche cortese piove nel suo grembo / Di gratie, e di virtù perpetuo nembo. 63. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 5, 16.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m mingling of the republican and civic with the liturgical and religious was the norm in Venice, and Venier’s description of his city in the passage above confirms that Marinella adhered to this view. Marinella underscores Venice’s privileged state as “chosen city” in an episode in canto 16, when Rainiero is rescued and healed by Criso, a hermit, with the help of an angel. If the presence of the latter were not enough of an indication of the divine favor bestowed on one of Venice’s foremost warriors, Rainiero, while lying close to death, is treated to a wondrous sight: Venice, depicted as a “gentle virgin” (“Vergin gentile,” 16.62.3) accompanied by Saint Mark, embodied in a lion (16.59), entreats Mary to grant that it may “live happily in . . . Neptune’s lap, far away from evil, wearing the perennial badge of [its] virginity to your [i.e., Mary’s] glory and to [its] praised good quality.”64 Throughout this episode Marinella exploits the language of virginity that was simultaneously appropriate for a woman’s behavior, suitable for a text written by a woman, and proclaiming Venice’s independence and liberty to the world.65 In one more crucial aspect does Marinella advertise Venice’s self-image to the world: the mythology of its origins. As Muir explains, “one popular saga . . . claimed that during the Italian campaign of Attila [the Hun, in the fifth century CE] many refugees from Venetia fled to the sparsely populated islands in the peaceful lagoons at the head of the Adriatic. . . . The eventual success of Pope Leo I in halting Attila’s conquest of Italy added a religious, perhaps even miraculous, element to the events.”66 In canto 7, when Erina illustrates to Venier a painting about his city’s birth, she follows the same blueprint: 9. Observe how cruel Attila leads the strong army of the Huns and others. He retreats angrily after being badly beaten by Etio, returning to Hungary with few people. He drags behind him all the way to Hungary a disloyal crowd, crosses the Alps, and turns the world into

64. “[G]oder possa con felice riso / Nel grembo al mio Nettun lungi da mali. / Con gloria tua, con mio lodato pregio / Di mia verginità perpetuo il fregio” (16.70.5–8). 65. Elsewhere Venice is depicted as a daughter to Saint Mark and as wife to the sea, two family roles befitting early modern women. Saint Mark is designated as “De la sposa del mar Padre amoroso” (“loving father to the bride of the sea,” 22.18.2). 66. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 68. Ravegnani makes explicit the fictional nature of this myth: “this was not a pell-mell flight, but a retreat planned by the Byzantines who still ruled over the Italian lands that the Lombard had not conquered” (“non si trattò . . . di una fuga disordinata, bensì di un ripiegamento pianificato dall’autorità bizantina che ancora governava i territori italiani sopravvissuti all’espansione longobarda”). Bisanzio e Venezia, 7.

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Maria Galli Stampino a grievous state; he descends into Italy: O, the cruel one brings along so much anguish, so many deaths, so much damage. 10. He then lies siege to Aquileia, plunders it, and sets Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan on fire. He destroys and dismantles Ausonia’s proud buildings and fertile plains. Now he’s at the city of flowers; he captures it in a sweet manner, so he seems courteous and humane. But look, soon all her people lie on the ground, killed by him. 11. Here is one that leaves his beloved home and rests his steps among the Venetian reeds. He abandons the learned and pompous city to Attila’s merciless greed and faithless heart. His name is Magno, and his deeds are equal to it; he is a faithful friend to heaven, on which he keeps his eyes. With pity-filled wishes he lifts the poor and adorns Venice with beautiful temples and offers sublime examples. 12. Do you discern that? Amid a horrible tempest, one that batters not just flowers, but woods and trees, this famous motherland rises like a new marvel, royal in her appearance. While the cruel barbarians infest all Esperya with their constant evil, she becomes more beautiful, adorns herself, and grows heavenward through her illustrious virtue and her renowned riches.67 Erina emerges as Venier’s guide and source of knowledge about his hometown’s history, though she herself is an exile. She offers specific historical elements to ground and prove her narration, such as the name of the Roman general who defeated the Huns (Etio) and of the pope who freed Italy from Attila (Leo I, also known as Leo the Great, and here referred to as Magno in

67. 7.9. Come conduca il crudo Atila mira / De gli Hunni, e d’altri essercito possente / Rotto da Etio irato si ritira; / Torna ne l’Ungheria con poca gente; / Colà schiera sleal dietro si tira; / Là passa l’Alpi, e’l mondo fa dolente; / Escende ne l’Italia, ahi quanti affanni / Porta il crudel, quanti homicidi, e danni. 10. Ecco assedia Aquilea, saccheggia, e accende / Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, e Milano; / E de la bella Ausonia strugge, e stende / Gli edifici superbi, e’l fertil piano. / Ecco de’ fiori la Città, ch’ei prende / Con dolci modi, e par cortese, e humano; / Ma tosto guata, ahi miserabil sorte, / Per lui tutte sue genti à terra morte. 11. Ecco Colui, che lascia il caro nido, / E tra Veneti Giunchi il pie riposa, / Lascia à l’empia ingordiggia, al petto infido / D’Atila la Città culta, e pomposa, / Magno di nome, e d’opre, amico fido / Del Cielo, à cui tien gli occhi, e con pietosa / Voglia il miser solleva, e di bei Tempi / Orna Vinegia, e da sublimi essempi. 12. Scerni? tra quella horribile tempesta / Che non pur batte i fior; ma boschi, e piante, / Qual nova meraviglia sorger questa / Patria famosa di real sembiante. / E mentre, che’l crudel Barbaro infesta / L’Esperia tutta in tanto mal costante; / S’abbellisca, s’adorni, al Ciel sormonte / Per virtù illustre, e per ricchezze conte.

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octave 11). She also enumerates Italian cities, most of which formed Venice’s hinterland in the seventeenth century (all those mentioned in octave 10 except for Milan). I shall presently comment on the presence of a female guide through history, which is not unprecedented in epic poems. For now I want to emphasize the exceptional situation of Venice vis-à-vis the rest of the Italian peninsula in this tale: Marinella twice indicates that Italy was razed to the ground, though she uses two different classical names to refer to it (Ausonia, 7.10.2, and Esperya, 7.13.5). Furthermore, she does not spare a jab at one of Venice’s traditional antagonists, Florence, unmistakably depicted as “the city of flowers” (“de’ fiori la Città,” 7.10.5). Florence’s capture contrasts starkly with Venice’s safe location, so the former’s demise implicitly contrasts with the latter’s birth. Marinella, however, does not merely contrast topographical locations—for this could be an accident of geography, perhaps a sign of divine benevolence, but lying outside human control nevertheless. Instead she indicates that Florence surrendered: Attila “captures it in a sweet manner, so he seems courteous and humane. But look, soon all her people lie on the ground, killed by him,”69 underscoring this through the direct address to Erina’s listener and an implicit one to her implied reader.70 Marinella’s emphasis on elements relevant to Venice’s own history and tradition also serve to deflect attention from other features in Enrico that do not fit her chosen topic and genre. While the Fourth Crusade was a defining moment in Venice’s history and narrative,71 it was also an eccentric expedition: it never reached the so-called Holy Land; it laid siege, ravaged, and conquered not one but two Christian cities;72 and it pitted Christians against Christians, rather than Christians against Moslems. Marinella had to select her language wisely in order to avoid putting the spotlight on one of the most contentious aspects of this expedition: the Venetians fought while

68. As Muir puts it, “legends, unlike history, can not tolerate ignorance, and so legend-makers invented whatever details seemed necessary to command belief.” Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 70 (such as, in this episode, the names of its main players). 69. “[P]rende [Florence] / Con dolci modi, e par cortese, e humano; / Ma tosto guata, ahi miserabil sorte, / Per lui tutte sue genti à terra morte” (7.10.5–8). 70. This is all the more obvious in the 1635 printing, where inverted commas indicating direct speech are missing, and therefore the second-person command form could easily be directed to Venier or to the reader of that particular page. 71. Indeed, the conquest of Constantinople was celebrated yearly on December 6, through a procession to the chapel of Saint Nicolas inside Saint Mark. See Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 98, 213. 72. That is, Zara (modern-day Zadar, on the Croatian coast) and Byzantium.

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Maria Galli Stampino excommunicated. Pope Innocent III had specifically banned any assault on Christian cities when he approved the compact between Venice and the crusaders coming from beyond the Alps.73 Nevertheless, the troops attacked and took Zara. Afterward, the Franks managed to convince the Pope that they “had clearly acted under duress” (i.e., under pressure from the Venetians), and therefore Innocent “promised his own absolution to the Crusaders on condition that they made vows of future obedience to Rome. . . . The papal messenger who carried the letter of absolution for the Franks also took with him a specific sentence of excommunication for [Enrico] Dandolo and the entire Venetian expeditionary force.”74 Men who had pledged to fight to conquer the Holy Land knowing that they would end up in paradise were now assured of going to hell upon their death—not a trifling matter for deeply religious people as were those who took the Cross. Marinella cleverly erases any mention of the siege and sack of Zara, shifting the emphasis at the beginning of her poem to the crusade as Innocent III had called for it. Indeed, only the first octaves of canto 1 contain the usual epithets used to describe the enemy: Moors (1.6) and Turks (1.10 and 28). Yet by showcasing them, Marinella adroitly de-emphasizes their absence from the rest of her poem. The poem’s very title might share in this rhetorical strategy: Manlio Pastore Stocchi has traced the rhyme “Cristo / acquisto” (“Christ / conquest”) from the opening octave of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata throughout various poems celebrating the Christian victory at Lepanto. By utilizing “acquistato” in her title, not only does Marinella echo Tasso’s reworked poem (Gerusalemme conquistata), but she brings to mind the ideologically laden terms welded together in the first lines of Tasso’s poem as well as in a long poetic and rhetorical tradition.75 Once the religious basis for the us-versus-them terminology prevalent in poems such as Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide is no longer available, Marinella adopts (and adapts) the rhetoric juxtaposing East and West, Greeks and Romans, that pervades Virgil’s Aeneid. Eastern, Greek 73. Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 51. 74. Ibid., 81. It is true that even the leaders of the warriors from north of the Alps did not carry out all that the Pope had requested of them; instead, “they simply suppressed the papal letter. At the leaders’ behest, the crusade bishops preached to the host that the pope had willingly absolved everyone.” Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 145. On the issue of the excommunication, see Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 70–85; Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 119–45, 149–51; Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (New York: Viking, 2004), 102–26; and Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade. The Conquest of Constantinople (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 80–81. 75. Manlio Pastore Stocchi, “Sopra l’incipit della Gerusalemme liberata,” in Medioevo e Rinascimento veneto con altri studi, ed. Lino Lazzarini (Padua: Antenore, 1979), 2:221–27.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m people are not to be trusted, as they are wily and tricky and rely on magic to secure victory;76 Western, Roman (or, more generally, European) people are paragons of virtue, lovers of justice, and fair in dealing with others, even in the face of deceit. This rhetorical move has many weighty consequences. First, it reminds Enrico’s intended (Venetian) readers of another version of the origin of their city, that is, its foundation at the hands of a Trojan fugitive.77 Second, it aligns Venice’s domain with the Roman Empire, giving it far more preeminence than it had in 1635 (and, one could argue, than it had ever had). Third, by so doing Marinella’s own epic poem is associated with the Aeneid, the canonical work that celebrated the Roman Empire. Fourth, it underscores Venice’s importance and heritage against those of the Vatican and of other major political players of the time (the Hapsburg Empire and Spain especially).78 Lastly, it de-emphasizes that the crusade as it took place was a very different military expedition from what Pope Innocent had originally envisioned. Still, religion plays a role in Enrico: there’s the obligatory invocation to the Virgin Mary before a battle (canto 23); the miraculous rescue of the Venetian knight Rainiero by a hermit who is given a reviving potion by an angel (canto 16); and the reassurance that Venice is protected by the Christian God and destined for future glory and lasting peace (cantos 14 and 22). In one place Marinella forcefully, even polemically, states the orthodox beliefs of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent: octave 16.29 is devoted to the Trinity and to the incarnation of Christ to save humanity from

76. Phrases such as “Greek deceit” (“greco inganno,” 8.64.4), “unfair Thessalians” (“Tessalici iniqui,” 8.68.4 and 8.72.2), and “unfaithful Thracians” (“Traci infidi,” 8.69.3 and 8.79.3) recur especially when the Venetians and Franks are attacked during a truce. Ovid’s Metamorphoses also present a negative view of Thracians. For example, Polymestor is a Thracian whose cruelty provokes Hecuba’s revenge (13.549ff.), and Tereus, who rapes his wife’s sister Philomela, is king of Thrace (4.440ff.). 77. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 66–68. Interestingly, Giovanni Ricci has pointed out that in texts written in Ferrara there prevailed “a lexical tradition that, through mere assonance, saw ‘Turks’ and ‘Teucri’ as synonyms (Teucer was the mythical founder of Troy),” hence Teucres in Latin and Teucri in Italian mean “Trojans” (“una tradizione lessicale che, per pura assonanza, voleva sinonimi i termini ‘turchi’ e ‘teucri’ [Teucro era il mitico fondatore di Troia]”). Ricci, Ossessione turca: In una retrovia cristiana dell’Europa moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 108. This pseudo-etymology is missing from Enrico, perhaps because, in the alternative version of the city’s mythology, a Trojan fugitive was believed to have founded Venice. 78. In so doing, Marinella reverses one crucial aspect of Gerusalemme liberata; according to David Quint, Tasso “not only is an apologist for papal supremacy, but [he] also upholds this supremacy at the expense of Italian political aspirations.” Quint, “Political Allegory in the Gerusalemme liberata,” in Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 214.

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Maria Galli Stampino Adam and Eve’s original sin; its polemical intent is directed against Protestants, but also (and perhaps more so) against Eastern Orthodox Christians (such as the majority of Byzantine dwellers), who believe that the third person of the Trinity (the Holy Spirit) was not issued from the perfect love between the father (God) and the son (Christ) because this would undermine the Holy Spirit’s perfection. The Aeneid-derived disdain for the Greek enemy and issues of religion merge in one interesting episode in canto 9: Icete’s overthrowing of a bronze statue of Minerva (the Roman goddess of wisdom) from a tall marble column in Byzantium’s main square. Misinterpreting the statue’s “pose” and “attitude” (“atti,” “portamento,” 9.37.3) as “wishing ill on Thrace” (“del mal della Tracia abbia vaghezza,” 9.37.4), and having secured Alessio’s permission, he throws it on the ground (9.46), despite a voice from the statue announcing the city’s eventual demise (9.44–45). Icete is quickly punished, as a dragon emerges from the dirt and drags him to his death underground (9.49–52). Here Marinella attributes to the Byzantines pre-Christian, superstitious beliefs, erasing any reference to their actual religion and further accentuating their essence as enemies, “others,” non-us. The side with which Marinella openly identifies, however, does not always align with the tenets of the Catholic Church: such is the case of Erina, who nevertheless plays a crucial structural role in the poem as discussed below. Since Erina and her forefathers have long been exiled from Venice and cut off from civilization, organized religion has been absent from her upbringing. Marinella does not ignore the implications of Erina’s history, devoting a few octaves to explaining why Erina still makes a worthy example and guide: as she explains to Venier, “we hold and believe that my Christ lives among dead souls. I hold that he accepts our vows, our altars, and our prayers; I hold that he despises a merciless heart and ugly thoughts.”79 What Erina suggests here is that it is unnecessary to follow the tenets of the Church as long as one holds some basic precepts to be true. This would be too radical a thought in the 1630s, even in a city such as Venice where tensions with the papacy were not unknown (see the famous interdict of 1606 by Pope Paul V, caused by two laws passed by Venice, one forbidding the alienation of real estate to members of the clergy and the other requiring approval by civil authorities for building new churches). Thus Erina states that her soul might not enter paradise, but only limbo (6.68), where Dante places the just who have died without baptism (Inferno 4). And while she 79. “[H]avemo, & honoriam, che lece / Viver tra le mort’ombre ancho al mio Christo. / E credo, che di noi voti, Are, e prece / Gradisca, empio cor sprezzi, e pensier tristo” (6.66.3–6).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m underlines the importance of baptism for one’s soul to be saved (6.65), she indirectly denies the role of actions (so-called “works” in the polemics of the time) in human salvation, which was the view espoused by Protestants. The detail of water “wash[ing] [the soul’s] hair” (“À lei non lava il crine,” 6.65.6) as sine qua non for salvation, however, juxtaposes Catholic practice with the Protestant innovation of baptism by immersion. Marinella again walks a fine line between orthodoxy and radically independent ideas, even in a domain that was typically avoided at the time. In this respect alone Enrico is utterly different from its modern (though unacknowledged) models, Tasso’s and Sarrocchi’s poems. The topic broached by the former in Gerusalemme liberata (the First Crusade) reflected the emphasis prevailing during the 1570s and ’80s on Catholic doctrine and on the separation between Rome-sanctioned beliefs and practices and those to be rejected (because belonging to the Protestant churches or to other infidels, such as Moslems), as well as Tasso’s personal obsession with religious orthodoxy. Sarrocchi’s choice was equally “obvious,” as Rinaldina Russell puts it, since “for the Roman church the greatest threat to Christianity continued to be the Ottoman Empire.”80 Between the 1570s and the 1600s, and from Ferrara to Rome, a shift occurred from spirituality (in Tasso’s case) to affairs of state (in Sarrocchi’s, who lived in Rome and was keenly aware of machinations at the political level). In Venice in the early 1630s, conversely, Marinella concentrates on glorifying history, rewriting it to suit her Venetian ideology; Enrico reminds her readers of past victories, points the path toward potential future glory, and counters the anti-Venetian stance on matters of religion that pervaded the first decades of the seventeenth century. These elements illustrate how Marinella engages complex literary, cultural, and political contexts. An analysis of plot and characters will confirm that this poem is undeniably Venetian and that it simultaneously bears the subtle mark of its woman author. PLOT, H I S T ORY, A N D CH A R AC TE RS

In the early modern period the choice of a genre implied ideological and content-related choices but also formal consequences. Epics were in verse, and specifically within the Italian tradition, they were in octaves of endecasyllabic (i.e., eleven-syllable) lines, and divided into cantos. Marinella illustrates her ambitions for Enrico by writing a poem composed of twentyseven-cantos; this has numerological import (twenty-seven is three cubed, 80. Russell, “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 21.

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Maria Galli Stampino i.e., the perfect number times itself, twice), and it constitutes a literary reference to the would-be perfect epic poem of the Italian Renaissance, Gian Giorgio Trissino’s Italy Liberated from the Goths (L’Italia liberata dai Goti, written in 1527 and published in Rome in 1547–48). Dedicated to the Hapsburg emperor Charles V, the latter deals with the war waged by the eastern Roman emperor Justinian against the barbarian Ostrogoths in the sixth century CE. Tasso singles it out as having a most appropriate and dignified topic,81 but as Zatti reminds us, “that work was a total failure,”82 as it follows classical rules about structure and topic while using nonrhyming lines that impart a prosaic tone to the whole work.83 Marinella’s twenty-seven cantos are the Venetian, republican, rhyming counterpart to Trissino’s failed text. Rinaldina Russell asserts that Margherita Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide “exercised considerable influence on” Enrico, as the latter contains “characters, episodes, segments, details of battles, comparisons, and descriptions that, notwithstanding the existence of previous models for both writers, show themselves to be closely patterned on similar ones in Sarrocchi’s poem.”84 Indeed, the details of this influence will be pointed out in footnotes in the translation; they are frequent and undeniable. However, two angles are as important as the issue of derivative prestige. On the one hand, we have an implicit, but no less clear, case of a woman writer’s work influencing another—which is to say, of a text penned by a woman that was recognized in its preeminence as an example to be followed and outdone.85 On the other, the ideological divergence between Marinella and Sarrocchi (as well as Tasso) lies beneath the stylistic and formal similarities; Enrico exists on a fine line between homage to its predecessors and an eccentric, even het-

81. Tasso, “Discorsi del poema eroico,” 552. 82. “[I]nsuccesso dell’opera fu totale.” Zatti, Il modo epico, 64. 83. See Giovambattista Giraldi Cinzio’s harsh criticism in 1554: “I truly believe monsignor Bembo to be right when he told me in Bologna that we needed to be thankful to Trissino for bestowing nonrhyming lines to the stage; similarly we needed to withhold our thanks from him for using them in other genres; he has turned men who speak our language to such degree of laziness that they now pick nonrhyming lines for epic works” (“Veramente mi pare che monsignor il Bembo . . . il vero dicesse quando a Bologna mi disse che, come si avea d’aver grazie a Trissino ch’avesse dati que’ versi alla scena, così gli si devea aver mala grazia che avesse fatti sì nighittosi gli uomini della nostra favella coll’usargli in altre materie . . . che . . . avessero scielti tali versi per eroici”). Giraldi Cinzio, Discorso dei romanzi, ed. Laura Benedetti, Giuseppe Monorchio, and Enrico Musacchio (Bologna: Millenium, 1999), 127–28. 84. Russell, “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 40, 41. 85. As Russell states, “Some . . . passages are elaborately extended—this is especially discernible in the enlargement of parallel similes—with the obvious intention to surpass a predecessor.” Russell, “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 41.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m erodox, point of view. Undoubtedly the insistence on orthodox antecedent (such as Gerusalemme liberata and Scanderbeide) advances Marinella’s strategy to de-emphasize the most problematic elements of her subject matter. As we have seen, the topic that Marinella chose was in keeping with theoretical pronouncements on epic poetry as well as with examples of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century texts in the genre. It is based on history, but not on so recent an episode that its plot might contrast with someone’s living or reported memory. Not surprisingly, Marinella’s story differs substantially from what historians tell us occurred before and during the Fourth Crusade. A short summary of Enrico’s plot is in order. On the way to Jerusalem, the crusaders hear a mysterious voice explaining how the Byzantium ruler has been overthrown; making a quick detour, the army restores him to his throne and sails on toward Jerusalem. However, the ruler’s disembodied voice alerts them that he has subsequently been murdered; the crusaders then decide to return to Byzantium, where they set up camp on the north shore of the Golden Horn (canto 1). After a first pitched battle with no clear winner (canto 3), Alessio (the illegitimate ruler) returns to the city with many provisions, envisioning a siege (canto 4). A naval battle takes place soon afterward, which the crusaders win; during the ensuing ten-day truce the Byzantines try setting the Venetian fleet on fire (canto 8). A second battle takes place, resulting in a Byzantine victory (canto 12), but soon the crusaders recover and attack Byzantium, setting the city on fire (canto 14). The enemy, under the cover of darkness, assault the crusaders’ camp (canto 17), but a second attack against the city takes place soon after, and another fire (canto 19). At that point Alessio escapes Byzantium, and Mirtillo takes charge (canto 20). A third and decisive attack occurs (canto 23); the crusaders enter the city, and Mirtillo takes refuge in a castle, waiting for help from abroad (canto 24). Help does come, in the form of King Giovanissa’s army, but the latter is also defeated (canto 26); Byzantium is finally conquered, and Enrico bestows power on fellow crusader Baldovino (Baldwin) of Flanders (canto 27). Some crucial elements of this expedition are cleverly omitted or modified to suit a peculiarly Venetian and religious standpoint. The crusaders had set out for Zara rather than Jerusalem: the Venetians had supplied ships and provisions following their compact with the crusaders, but they had not been paid. Zara had been a Venetian port but it rebelled in 1186; Dandolo and the Venetians utilized the crusading army to recapture it after a siege in 1202. It was at Zara that the leaders of the crusade decided to proceed to Byzantium to support a young nobleman’s desire to avenge his father’s

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Maria Galli Stampino overthrow and blinding: his name was Alexius Angelus, son of the former emperor Isaac II and brother-in-law of Philip of Swabia, a German crusade leader.86 Economic considerations played a part in this decision as well. Not surprisingly, Marinella chooses to emphasize a sense of duty toward and pity for the affronted (see 1.28). She also imagines that Alessio (as she calls him) was quickly restored to power only to be killed by another Alessio (historically, Alexius Mourtzouphlus, i.e., endowed with bushy eyebrows) and Mirtillo,87 that the crusading fleet had left Constantinople, and that they decided to return to right yet another wrong (see 1.47–57). Historically, the crusaders expected to reinstate Alessio painlessly, but when that did not happen, they set up camp on the north shore of the Golden Horn, and this stage of the crusade began without the army’s departure for Palestine.88 Factually, there were a skirmish and three crusading attacks against Byzantium; Marinella recounts one open-field battle and three attacks. As readers we get the impression that these followed quickly on each other’s heels, when in fact a considerable time elapsed between the first and second attacks.89 The necessity to keep readers involved in the story accounts for this time compression, which also has the effect of highlighting the crusading army’s resilience and ability to recover from battle. Marinella also erases any mention of the destruction brought about by the fires the crusaders set to the city and of the terrible sack that followed the conquest.90 None of this is surprising, given the tone of an epic poem and the aura of noble generosity and selflessness bestowed on all crusading warriors. Notably the 86. See Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 83–87, 110–20; Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 146–49; and Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 127–41. 87. Marinella breaks one historical character into two, as she calls the one who overthrew the rightful ruler “Mirtillo, nicknamed Murcifle” (“Mirtillo, che Murcifle si chiamava”; see “To the Readers” below), and she keeps another character named Alessio. 88. See Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 102–4; Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 158–59; and Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 163–64. 89. The three attacks took place on 17 July 1203, 9 April 1204, and 12 April 1204. See Ernle Bradford, The Great Betrayal: Constantinople 1204 (London: Hoddon and Stroughton, 1967), 86– 93, 143–45, and 149–53; Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 101–9, 121–25; Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 160–62, 171–72; Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 173–83, 242–44, and 247–54; and Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 123–28, 177–79, and 181–84. 90. On the fires, see Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 162, 164; Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 206–20; and Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 128– 29, 145–146. On the sack, see Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade, 126–33; Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 173–74; Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 258–80; and Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 193–200.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m most famous sacked object to make its way to Venice was the “quadriga of bronze horses originally part of a charioteer group at the Hippodrome”91 in Byzantium, which since then has sat atop the entrance to the church of Saint Mark, one of the most memorable sights in the city. Marinella cleverly exploits that “there are no extant contemporary Venetian accounts” of the Fourth Crusade;92 she fills a gap in how Venice recounts a crucial moment in its history to the world. She presents this expedition as a Venetian enterprise or, more specifically, one propelled forward by Enrico Dandolo himself. One would never gather from her depiction of Dandolo’s feats and courage that at this time he was in his early nineties and blind.93 His role, and an important one at that, was rather organizational, political, and motivational. In his 2004 monograph Jonathan Phillips remarks that “throughout the crusade Enrico Dandolo proved a monumentally influential figure—an unrivalled source of advice and encouragement for the other leaders.”94 Dandolo pushed for an early treaty that would regulate how the Byzantine Empire was to be divided and who would be in charge of the city of Byzantium (the so-called Pact of March), indications of Dandolo’s desire that Venice be repaid and that stability be imposed quickly, with little room left for territorial bickering.95 The new emperor was to be chosen by twelve electors, six Venetian and six Franks; eventually Baldovino of Flanders was elected on 9 May 1204 and crowned a week later in Hagia Sophia. Yet even this display of political acumen by Dandolo was not enough for Marinella: 27.94. Enrico lifted the pious Frank Baldovino to be the great leader of the empire, with the support of the best heroes; he wanted that

91. Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 173. 92. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, xvii. See also Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade, 44. I have been unable to read Niccolò Zorzi, “Niceta Coniata fonte dell’Enrico, ovvero Bisanzio acquistato (1635) di Lucrezia Marinella,” in Incontri triestini di filologia classica 4 (2004–5): 514–28. This essay promises to shed some light on other sources for Enrico. 93. A biographical sketch of Dandolo can be found in Giorgio Cracco, “Dandolo, Enrico,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’enciclopedia italiana, 1986). 94. Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. 319. Similarly, in Bradford’s words, “like the famous First Crusade of 1097, the Fourth was predominantly a French enterprise. . . . While the bulk of the lesser nobility and men-at-arms was French or French feudatories, the fleet that carried them and the galleys that escorted them were Venetian. Boniface might be the nominal head of the expedition, but to all intents and purposes the man whose galley led the fleet, and whose ability and intelligence controlled it, was Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice.” Bradford, The Great Betrayal, 24. 95. See Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 168–70.

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Maria Galli Stampino courageous warrior to carry the weight of such responsibility. Then he divided the goods of the proud Greeks, and he justly took his own part. Glorious and worthy in victory, he granted that illustrious Gaul the kingdom of Thrace.96 Of the five verbs in this stanza, four refer to Enrico, presented as the decision maker of the situation. Marinella’s position is far from unique: in the Ducal Palace in Venice, in the Hall of the Great Council, two paintings hang depicting Baldovino’s election and crowning by Enrico Dandolo in Byzantium, implying that the latter had the power to bestow such a crown on his fellow crusader.97 Just as the signoria decided to incorporate this scene among the most important in Venice’s history to adorn the Hall of the Great Council, similarly Marinella closes her poem on this crowning achievement of Dandolo: 27.94 is the last octave of the poem. Given this ideological background, it is utterly unsurprising that Marinella pays little attention to non-Venetian crusading characters (although with some female exceptions, discussed below). It isn’t that Baldovino or Bonifatio are never mentioned; they are present in passing, mostly in battle scenes, that is, as part of a group. The Venetians, such as Venier or Rainiero, are far better fleshed out, even when they are not univocally positive. Such is Giacinto’s case. He is introduced early in the poem (2.27) with elements that mark him throughout the poem. He is “handsome” (“bel,” 2.27.1), his face indeed surpassing the beauty of a sculpted Cupid: “the face of the god Cupid sculpted and painted by an excellent hand cannot be compared to his” (“Ne al suo, da dotta man sculto, e dipinto / Volto di divo Amor, puote agguagliarsi,” 2.27.5–6). Notably, in his second appearance (3.91– 93) his description includes elements taken from the canon of Petrarchan beauty. Not only is he “almost a sun surrounded by rays that one sees getting brighter all the time” (“quasi un sol cinto / Di raggi, e’l miri ogn’hor più vivo farsi,” 2.27.3–4), his looks surpass anyone else’s (3.91.3–4), his cheeks 96. 27.94. De i primi Heroi co i voti al sommo impero / Baldovino il pio franco Enrico eresse, / Come gran Capitan, prode guerriero / Volle, che di tal mole il pondo havesse. / Poi partito ogni ben del Greco altero / Giustamente per se la parte elesse; / Cosi vincente glorioso, e degno / Concesse al Gallo Illustre il Tracio Regno. 97. For a list of the Fourth Crusade-related paintings on the quay side of the Hall of the Great Council, see The Ducal Palace in Venice (Venice: Ferrari, 1956), 76. A broader perspective on the program for the paintings in the Hall after the 1577 fire can be found in Norbert Huse and Wolfgang Wolters, The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 302–7. I thank my colleagues Laura Giannetti and Guido Ruggiero for suggesting these sources.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m are like roses sprouting in snow (3.91.5–7), and his hair is curly and blond (3.92.1–4). He is also “good” (“buon,” 4.7.3 and 4.14.7) and a valiant warrior: he wishes for glory in his fight with Oronte (11.90), slays many in his second appearance (3.92–93), vindicates slain companions (26.54–57), is merciless in the last attack (27.27–29), and is even compared to a dragon (12.23.2). His courage is demonstrated by his volunteering to go into the Byzantine camp to assess their losses after a pitched battle (canto 4). His transformation from proud warrior to humble pilgrim (4.18–22) indicates that his outward appearance cannot belie his noble soul; his kindness is evident even to his enemies, whose worries, pain, and cares he relieves by merely talking (4.31).98 Indeed, one of the Byzantines describes him to Alessio as “not a man, but a god” (“Huomo non già; ma un Dio,” 4.38.7) who appears and disappears in a mysterious manner. Yet Giacinto allows himself to be led astray by romantic love, when he frees Idilia from her impending sacrifice, falls in love with her, and fails to return for his single combat against Oronte at the appointed time (canto 11). When Esone conjures a spell during a crusading attack on the walls to the city (canto 19), Giacinto is among the warriors who cease to fight, seeing his beloved Idilia in the ghost evoked by the enemy magician. While he is redeemed (some of his fiercest fighting occurs in canto 27), he is not an unequivocally positive character—we would say that he is human, but this is indeed faint praise for a warrior in a heroic poem. Giacinto’s opponent in his one-on-one fight is Oronte, king of Hyrcania. Marinella often refers to the latter as “the Hyrcanian” (e.g., 9.65.7, 11.91.2, 24.30.3, 27.30.6), and this is not merely a stylistic solution to avoid repeating his name: it serves to underscore his provenance and, implicitly, his fierceness.99 Hyrcania was an administrative unit of the Persian Empire, to the east of the Caspian Sea; it was remote and wild, and especially notable for its tigers. Indeed, Marinella mentions Hyrcanian tigers in a simile describing Ardelio’s uncertainty as to his first victim after being freed from his chains (15.59). Oronte knows how or where to strike when fighting; yet

98. In Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, it is the woman warrior Erminia who takes on different clothing, namely that of a shepherdess. Still, her “maestà regia” (“royal majesty”) is evident in her actions; her clothes cannot hide it (7.18.3). 99. The name Oronte recurs in other texts that precede Enrico. In Giovambattista Giraldi Cinzio’s tragedy Orbecche (performed in 1541), Oronte is the namesake’s husband and the target of her father’s hatred and revenge. In Guidubaldo Bonarelli’s pastoral Filli di Sciro (performed 1605; printed 1607), Oronte is a minister to the king of Thrace. In Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, Oronte is the name of a Syrian river that surrounds an island housing Armida’s castle (14.57.2); it designates a remote and dangerous place.

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Maria Galli Stampino his desire to prove his mettle is such that on the battlefield he sees too many opportunities. His sword is his religion, as Marinella explains when she introduces him; he is neither Christian nor Moslem but transcends organized religion: “His heart didn’t harbor our true faith but neither did that faithless man believe in Mohammed. . . . His only law and reason was his sword, to which he had entrusted all his goods. He was more impatient, cruel, bold, and fierce than a leader or a warrior has ever been or is.”100 His only goal is fighting, and when he cannot, he is like a caged lion (9.65). A true military man, he obeys orders even when he does not agree with them—notably, in canto 27, when Mirtillo has retreated to a fortified castle and thus Oronte is unable to fight; here again he is likened to a caged lion (27.3). Although upset at being beaten by a woman warrior (Claudia; see below), in canto 24 Oronte addresses Meandra as his equal when he devises a strategy to fight the crusaders back from the city doors: “From on high the Hyrcanian saw the courageous Franks wreak havoc to the land, and said: ‘Look, Meandra, how these barbarian enemies wound and beat our soldiers; heaven is against us, and it grants them what a man harbors in his haughty heart. I’ll go, you stay here and defend this spot. A famous kingdom is falling to Italian swords.’ ”101 While he bestows a defensive role on Meandra, reserving the offensive one for himself, he does acknowledge her ability to keep the assailants at bay; he talks to her and to no one else. In the end Oronte dies, hit by one of Emilia’s arrows (27.52) after a long combat with one of the most valiant Venetian warriors, Plautio. Marinella underscores how his behavior does not change as he approaches death: “When he was alive he showed himself impatient, implacable, and haughty all the time. He also proved himself no less strong or superb or wild than any other warrior. Similarly, when he was breathing his last he showed himself formidable, severe, threatening, cruel, and filled with pride as he was pushing his ferocious soul to the threshold to hell.”102 While early modern

100. “Non chiude in petto nostra vera fede; / Ne quella di Macon l’infido tien; / . . . / Solo legge, e ragion dona, e concede / Al ferro, in cui ripost’ha ogni suo bene, / Impatiente, e acerbo, audace, e fero, / Quanto mai fosse, o sia Duce, o Guerriero” (9.9). 101. “L’Ircan, che d’alto i franchi arditi vede / Con molte squadre à danneggiar la terra, / Disse, guata Meandra, come fiede, / Il Barbaro inimico, e i nostri atterra; / Come il Cielo contrario à lui concede, / Quanto in petto superbo huom chiude, e serra, / Io vado, resta tù in difesa, hor cade / Regno, famoso sotto Itale spade” (24.10). 102. “Qual già vivendo dimostrossi ogn’hora. / Impatiente; implacido, & altero, / Tale d’ogni guerrier mostrossi anchora / Non meno forte, che superbo, e fero. / Tal nel mandar gli ultimi spirti fuora / Si scoprì formidabile, e severo, / E minacciante, e crudo, e pien d’orgoglio / Spinse l’alma feroce al basso soglio” (27.51).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m epics present antiheroes as arrogant and contemptuous of humans and gods alike,103 Oronte does not fully fit this mold, partly because his only religion is war; his behavior reflects his ability as a warrior and his desire for action and glory rather than empty boisterousness and rash judgment. Oronte is a valiant enemy but not the reason for war. This role belongs to Alessio, the illegitimate emperor. Alessio is the political head, and he relies on his general, Mirtillo, for military advice and strategy. Alessio is largely depicted in a negative light: he readily believes that Giacinto is a divine sign of favor on Byzantium rather than an enemy spy (4.49); he is stunned and incapable of a dignified reaction after a military downturn (9.2– 3); and he always trusts the magician Esone’s advice (10.16–17). Moreover, Marinella indicates that he is unfit to rule not simply because he acceded to power through violence and deceit, but because he is willing to save himself and his family without any concern for Byzantium, its people, and his own soldiers: on Esone’s advice, he leaves for a safer place with a few people. His last appearance is utterly pathetic: after he is told in a dream that Byzantium has fallen and he sees the dead and wounded being carted home even to the city where he has fled, he remains motionless, “as if made of marble” (“qual di marmo,” 25.36.1), since he understands that even his flight has not saved him and has earned him “blame and shame” (“biasmo, e vergogna,” 25.36.8). Yet his last decision is to escape even further: “he gathered one or two, left his home and his land, and went where error and fate led him.”104 Directionless till the end, Alessio is consistently presented as an incapable, inept man whose ambition is not supported by his qualities. Mirtillo is Alessio’s military counterpart and a far more nuanced character. Though introduced as the actual deposer of the legitimate ruler (1.49), he yields to Alessio (2.41), taking on the role of military leader. He commands his troops (e.g., 12.51–52), kills many enemies (e.g., 8.83), spurs his soldiers on through words and deeds (e.g., 12.53, 23.42–43, 24.67–68), advises Alessio to attack (14.57–58), is called upon to offer his strength after Plautio breaks into the city the first time (14.83–88), and chokes back his tears and continues to fight even when all seems lost (27.69–71). Yet he also cries openly over a slain family member (27.17), and, more important, is in love with Eudocia. This is nowhere more evident than in canto 13,

103. As pointed out by Russell, who lists as examples Turnus and Mezentius in the Aeneid, Rodomonte in Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso, and Argante in Gerusalemme liberata, adding Ferratte and Agrismeta in Scanderbeide. See Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide, ed. Russell, 139 n. 1. 104. “[S]ol con uno, o due s’aduna, / E del suo albergo, e de la terra fuori / Và, dove error lo guida, e la fortuna” (25.42.2–4).

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Maria Galli Stampino where the Byzantines celebrate their victory with jousts and other revels. Following the rules of staged tournaments, Mirtillo parades in front of the ladies on whose behalf the knights will fight (13.7–10), then he devotes his future exploit to Eudocia (13.28–31), kills a monstrous animal with his arrows (13.41–46), and finally enjoys his reward, that is, Eudocia’s presence (13.61–62). Love has no part in the epic knight’s ideal (indeed, it leads Orlando to lose his mind and to forget his goal in Boiardo’s and Ariosto’s poems), and thus it is fitting that Marinella attributes it to an enemy warrior. However, to a twenty-first-century reader Mirtillo is a far more likeable character: there is no contradiction between fighting and being in love for him, as the former can be put in the service of the latter.105 Consider, for example, Mirtillo’s avowed goal before fighting in the joust of canto 13: “He wanted her [Eudocia] to love him, and that her love increase. He was jealous of his beloved, clever and fierce. Whether he, a famous lover and courageous knight, stood before her, left, stayed put, rested, or moved about, he had her in his mind at all times, in her beauty and liveliness. Such was his love that he thought it a trifle to risk his life so as to make her love him.”106 The various elements to Mirtillo’s personality make him an interesting character and a worthier opponent than either Alessio or Esone. The latter is a conjurer of black magic, another stock character in epic poems; he carries out the role of Ismeno in Gerusalemme liberata and of Zebad in Scanderbeide. He is undoubtedly a negative character, one-dimensional and doomed from the beginning, given his utter faith in the gods of the netherworld. Because of his devotion to the wrong gods, Esone is the only enemy in Enrico who fits the mold of canonical Italian epic poems, that is, one who falls into a different group by virtue of his beliefs. From his first appearance he shows himself to be false-hearted and untrustworthy: in canto 8 he advises Alessio to attack the Venetian fleet with incendiary devices during a truce; in canto 10 he persuades Alessio that the sacrifice of a virgin will placate the god till then ill-disposed toward the Byzantines; in canto 11 he puts his plan to kidnap and kill Idilia in place, though he is ready to escape in haste when Giacinto arrives (11.14–16); in 105. Arguably, this was also the case in seventeenth-century Italy, though with a different emphasis: actual fighting was far rarer than displaying one’s abilities with weapons in highly choreographed, fully staged tournaments and jousts that courts utilized to celebrate dynastic events such as weddings, alliances, and births. 106. “Brama, che l’ami, e che in amar s’avanzi, / Geloso del suo amor scaltrito, e fero, / Quanto, che possa haver le porta innanzi / Famoso amante, e prode Cavalliero, / Che se vada, o se stia, riposi, o stanzi, / L’ha bella, e viva sempre nel pensiero: / Poco li par, per far, che l’ami porre / La vita à risco, si l’ardor trascorre” (13.24).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m canto 19 he conjures up a ghost, taking on the appearance of each crusading knight’s beloved, with the result that they stop fighting; and in canto 20 he spurs Alessio to abandon Byzantium, convincing him that this is preferable to taking one’s life. In his stubborn reliance on the underworld he indicates that only true faith, that is, the crusaders’ religion, is worth following. Furthermore, his trickiness makes him the absolute opposite of Enrico and his host, where the rules of knighthood prevail. Enrico is the paragon of fairness, courage, and piety; he is the model for all crusading fighters (and, implicitly, for the poem’s readers) as well as the Venetian response to Alessio, Mirtillo, Esone, and Oronte. His first appearance (1.13–15) highlights his exceptional wisdom and religiosity, along with his organizational abilities. A courageous fighter (e.g., 3.4–13 and 3.37–39), he is also concerned for his wounded troops (e.g., 3.104–105 and 4.4). Unlike Esone, he invokes the Christian God before fighting (8.66–70) and thanks him for his help afterward (8.31, 14.63–64). Unlike Oronte, he understands strategy and is not afraid to make a rational decision to retreat (12.102–3). And unlike Alessio, he does not celebrate any victory, devoting all his time to preparing for the next assault (13.75–76).107 He knows how to galvanize his troops for battle with a speech (e.g., 14.11–15), and he works tirelessly to prepare the host (e.g., 19.1–8, 19.11–18). The only direct divine intervention in the poem also singles out Enrico, when Emilia’s arrows turn back to where they came and leave him untouched (27.62–67). Indeed, at the end of the poem “vanquished Greece lay at Enrico’s feet,”108 underscoring once more his singularity and justifying why it was in his power to bestow the newly conquered empire on Baldovino. Marinella’s glorification of Dandolo is far from surprising, as it fits one of the recurrent intentions of early modern epic poems. What is striking (and in line with the ideological position she expresses in other writings) is the importance given to women characters. Many more appear here than in male-authored canonical epics, and they run a wider gamut. In Paola Malpezzi Price’s words, “these female characters can be divided in two groups: the former as defined by the traditional roles assigned to women in a wartorn society, the latter as ideal female figures created by the poet’s imagination.”109 107. The juxtaposition is evident in Marinella’s word choice in 13.75: on the one hand we have “leader Enrico eschews and abhors all luxury and pleasure” (“il Capitano Enrico, / Ch’ogni lusso, e piacer fugge, & abhorre,” 13.75.1–2), and on the other “the soft Greek” (“molle Greco,” 13.75.6). 108. “Vinta d’Enrico al piè la Grecia giace” (27.90.7). 109. Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653),” 237.

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Maria Galli Stampino Most mothers, daughters, and wives belonging to the first group are Byzantine, as dictated by the logic of the plot: a mostly male army fights a city where male warriors and male and female dwellers of all ages live.110 However, within the constraints of this plot Marinella cleverly includes two examples of married couples torn apart by war, one belonging to the crusading camp, the other to the Byzantine one.111 The episode of Clelia and Lucillo takes place in cantos 4 and 5, after the first pitched battle, when Enrico charges Venier to go to Cyprus to gather additional troops. Lucillo is the king of Cyprus’s son, and Clelia is his young wife, filled with forebodings by Venier’s very arrival (4.67–70). Overflowing with hopes of glory, but aware of Clelia’s reaction, Lucillo decides to hide his decision to join Venier until the last moment (4.66). When their fateful conversation takes place, it is filled with anxiety on her part and reassurance on his. Specifically, Clelia fears his sea voyage; her words must have echoed with Venetian women, for whom the seafaring absence of a loved one was a fact of life but no less a cause for worry (4.73–77). She goes so far as to ask to go with him, so that they would die together if a storm were to hit their vessel (4.78), prefiguring the conclusion of this episode. For all his desire for military glory, Lucillo is torn (4.85), but he falls back on traditional arguments: a man’s role is to gain glory for himself and his family, while a woman’s is to keep her reputation (and that of her husband’s family) unblemished (4.83–84). When a storm does hit, he repents his decision and invokes Clelia’s name before dying (5.19–22, 27–28). 110. Here, for example, from octave 9.30 is a group depiction of women looking at the army leaving the walls, themselves excluded from battle: “Pale and with fearful hearts, chaste mothers and beloved wives observed their sons and much-loved men from the top of the walls. They were sad and full of sighs. They could see their sweet features shine in their clear and radiant armor among the bushes and thorns. When they went further their eyes didn’t help any longer, so they looked onto the dust that went up” (“Pallide, e di timor percosse i petti / Le caste Madri, e le dilette spose, / Mirano i figli, e i cari lor diletti, / Sopra le mura meste, e sospirose: / Veggon tra Dumi, e sterpi i dolci aspetti / Splender ne l’armi chiare, e luminose: / Fatti lontani il guardo più non vale. / Guatano il polverio, che in alto sale”). Marinella utilizes the terms that are normally associated with traditional female family roles (“chaste mothers” [“caste Madri”] and “beloved wives” [“dilette spose”]) and concentrates on the women’s feelings in such circumstances (“sad and full of sighs” [“meste, e sospirose”]). Their frustration at not being able to see their men any longer is effectively expressed in the last line, which also includes a hint of the fragility of human life in war, faint and frail like dust. 111. Malpezzi Price and Ristaino draw attention to “Marinella’s focus on married couples, as opposed to the unmarried lovers often embroiled in amorous pursuits in Boiardo’s and Ariosto’s epics” and attribute this to a “moral preoccupation” that pervades all of Marinella’s work and that is in line with Tasso’s pronouncements as well as Counter-Reformation concerns. Malpezzi Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes,” 88.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m Meanwhile, Clelia spends her days crying in fear (5.31–37) until one night the drowned Lucillo appears to her in a dream (5.39–45). She immediately goes looking for him on the shore (5.47), and when she finds him she forgives him (5.52). Clinging to his corpse like an ivy or a grapevine (5.53.1– 4), she becomes one with him and dies: 5.54. . . . [A]s she held him in her arms, she changed; she became cold and icy and similar to him. 55. Nobody could untie her beautiful and delicate arms from that loving knot. Her face was against his most beloved one, and it wasn’t possible to move it or separate it from it. What a miracle of love! Who could not talk about it? One must put this among love’s highest wonders: Love joined those that the wrath and furor of fate had separated.112 In a scene reminiscent of Ovid’s Metamorphoses but suitable to Christian beliefs, Clelia’s death illustrates the power and strength of her love. Marinella indeed treats this as a “miracle” (5.55.5) that cannot be kept silent. The description brings together the physicality of love and the physicality of death: Marinella insists on yoking a verb expressing “cold” (5.54.8) and images of body parts (“arms,” 5.55.1, and “face,” 5.55.3), creating a paradox that brings to mind the commingling of the sexual and the mystical in her devotional works. Like Lucillo, the Byzantine Corradino conceals his order to go into battle from his wife Areta; when he appears in full armor she is immediately filled with fear (17.70). Like Clelia, Areta dreads that he might not come back, but unlike Clelia, her terror is that he might be killed on the battlefield (17.71). She apprehends being deprived of the one human presence in her life: 17.72. You are to me a dear father and a venerable mother, a sweet brother and a beloved husband, now that my good father has exhaled his soul to heaven in his devotion and service to his warriors. My brother fell to a cruel destiny in his prime among courageous warriors on the day that Enrico took Pera and painted the ground with our soldiers’ blood. 112. 5.54. Mentre abbracciato il tiene, cangia stile, / S’aggela, e affredda, à lui divien simile. 55. Ne già le belle, e delicate braccia / Da que’ nodi amorosi alcun può sciorre, / Giunta hà la faccia à la bramata faccia, / Ne concess’è di moverla, o disciorre. / O miracol d’amor, chi fia, che’l taccia? / E non tra le altre sue queste anchor porre / Supreme meraviglie, Amor congiunse / Quei, che del Fato ira, e furor disgiunse.

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Maria Galli Stampino 73. My mother then ended her painful days moaning, vanquished by pain. So I was left alone to cry over my land’s unhappy events, damages, and disdain. You’re the only one to support me, instead of those many; you make my days happy and full; you make my air serene and the sky joyful: you are my father, my mother, my brother, my companion, and my husband.113 Areta has lost two male members of her family in battle, and the example of her heartbroken mother is still vivid in her memory. She has nobody but Corradino; this is a loving assertion, but also one that would have rung familiar to early modern women, whose support wholly depended upon their husbands.114 Like Clelia, Areta offers to go with her husband rather than staying behind by herself (17.75). Seizing a rhetorical opportunity, in his reply Corradino emphasizes that the emperor himself has asked him to go into battle; he highlights his wishes to fight for his country, ruler, and city, something that the losses in Areta’s family should make her well understand (17.77–86). Again like Clelia (or any early modern wife), Areta has no recourse but to accept her husband’s decision. Marinella utilizes an interesting simile to describe the change in her demeanor: 17.87. As when proud Aquilone exhales a breath of bothersome chill from its deep cave, repelling and dissolving the veil of dark clouds that shadowed the sky and the somber air (so that the world was without sun), and everything goes back to being clear and happy, so she chased away her cloudy feelings to please her beloved, after he spoke.115 113. 17.72. Tu Padre caro, e veneranda Madre / Mi sei: tu fratel dolce e sposo amato. / Poscia, che tra guerrieri il mio buon Padre / Spirò lo spirto al Ciel devoto, e grato: / Il fratel mio tra coraggiose squadre / Cadde sù l’età prima al crudo fato, / Ohime nel dì, ch’Enrico Pera vinse, / E del sangue de’ nostri il Suol dipinse. 73. Vinta perciò dal duol la genitrice / Finì gemendo i travagliosi giorni; / Rimasi sola al pianto, à lo’nfelice / Successo de la Patria, à danni, à scorni, / Di tanti solo tu sostien la vice, / Per te mi sono i di lieti, & adorni: / Per te seren m’è l’aere, e’l Ciel gioioso. / Padre, Madre, fratel, Compagno, e sposo. 114. On the legal status of women, especially widows, see Thomas Kuehn, “Person and Gender in the Laws,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (London: Longman, 1998), 87–106; and Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), chap. 4. 115. 17.87. Come se d’atra nube ombrato è’l Cielo; / E l’aria oscura, e senza Sole il mondo, / Se spira fiato d’importuno gelo / Il superbo Aquilon dal sen profondo; / Scaccia, e dissolve il nubiloso velo; / Ritorna il tutto allhor chiaro, e giocondo, / Tal essa scaccia del suo Amante à i detti / Per compiacerlo i nubilosi affetti.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m Her generosity, nobility, and success at repressing her anguish are likened to a natural phenomenon, a cold wind sweeping the clouds away. Not only does Areta suppress her fears, she wishes Corradino glory and success on the battlefield, stating that she understands the patriotic reasons for his decision. After Corradino goes into battle, Areta is left to observe him from a high tower, like the rest of the Byzantine women;116 but soon she cannot endure the tension, and she retreats to her chambers, assured of his return (18.7). When she hears the trumpets sound retreat, she eagerly awaits him, but a messenger delivers instead news of his death (18.21–22). Again Marinella likens her reaction to a natural phenomenon: 18.23. Like the setting sun deprives the world of many beautiful and dear elements, so that the world seems cold, dark, horrible, and barren, filled with fear, without light, and icy, in the same manner the happiness, joy, and the dear, royal, and praised parts of her disappeared at those fateful words; only sadness, pallor, and pain remained in her. 24. She was left like one hit by an enemy hand with a cruel sword that takes his spirit away, and who now feels the pain of a mortal wound. She was silent and motionless, as it was no use moaning, for the weight of her pain was too great. Her feelings of grief were not expressed in tears, nor was her pain let loose in deep sighs.117 Her first reaction is numbness rather than a pain that can be expressed outwardly; then, in keeping with the description of the battle in which Corradino was engaged, Marinella utilizes the simile of a deep wound that at first provokes no pain to describe Areta’s subsequent feelings. Like Clelia’s, Areta’s thoughts soon turn to finding her beloved’s corpse; once darkness falls, she goes to the battlefield looking for him with two companions (18.27–29). This offers Marinella an opportunity to dwell on

116. See above, note 110. 117. 18.23. Come al cader del Sol dispoglia il mondo / Di tanti vaghi aspetti il bello, e’l grato; / Freddo, & oscuro, & horrido, e infecondo / Sembra, e pien di spavento, orbo, e gelato. / Tal quant’era di lieto, e di giocondo, / E di caro, e di regio, e di lodato / Sparve à i detti funesti, e restò solo / Tristezza in essa, pallidezza, e duolo. 24. Rimase tal, qual resta quello, alquale / Ferro crudel da man nemica è sceso, / À rapirli lo spirito, e di mortale / Piaga nel cor da quel si senta offeso; / Tace, stà immota, à lamentar non vale; / Che del travaglio è troppo grave il peso, / Ne’l suo penoso affetto è in pianto sciolto, / Ne in sospir gravi è’l suo dolor disciolto.

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Maria Galli Stampino the carnage, a way to underscore the high price of war on men and women alike. When Areta finds Corradino, she decries their fate, the forebodings she felt when she first saw the Venetian fleet, and the cruelty of being separated from her husband by death (18.30–36). Her main concern is to bury him: 18.36. . . . “Will he be torn by dogs? Will my love remain unburied, covered in blood? 37. “This will never occur. I’d rather my own hated limbs be prey to a thousand wild animals! This breast will provide a chair for his beautiful and sad limbs so that he will lean and sit on it.” As she spoke she started her dark and unlucky work, so that what she wanted might take place: she lifted him with her hands, and soon her compassionate handmaids were helping her. 38. They were laden with that sweet weight, and they turned their feet toward their customary dear dwelling. No yell or bark or steep rocks could delay the trip that they had started. Finally, they placed him on the couple’s wedding bed, sighing and moaning. There she again turned to wailing, almost melting her beautiful body in water.118 Areta’s trial is compounded by the necessity to give proper burial to Corradino’s corpse, which entails a physically arduous and psychologically challenging feat for her and her handmaids. Marinella stresses the body’s weight, associated with a cliché from Petrarchan love poetry, “sweet weight” (“soave pondo”), by juxtaposing the verb “laden” (“oppresse”) that expresses both the physicality of the task and its psychological underpinnings. Areta’s tears are copious but her melting is only metaphorical, as opposed to Clelia’s metamorphosis; she begs for a funeral monument to honor Corradino’s deeds, and she obtains it (18.40–41). After Corradino’s funeral she turns all her thoughts to God, beginning a life of penance, poverty, and fasting. She is not confined to her home, how-

118. 18.36. Da Cani fia sbranato, & insepolto / Rimarrà l’amor mio nel sangue involto? 37. Ah? ver giamai non sia, pria restin queste / Membra odiate à mille Belve in preda; / Ma questo sen fia à le sue belle, e meste / Seggio; ove anchora egli s’appoggi, e sieda; / Cosi dicendo à l’opre atre, e funeste; / Perche, quanto desia, tanto succeda; / Con le mani il solleva, e tosto quelle / À l’oprar dan favor, pietose Ancelle, 38. E dal soave pondo oppresse, i passi / Volgono al loro hospitio usato, e caro. / Urlo, latrato, o dirupati sassi, / Non pon tardar la via, che incominciaro; / E dove il marital suo letto stassi, / Gementi, e sospirose lo posaro; / Quivi di nuovo al lamentar si volse, / E quasi in acqua il vago corpo sciolse.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m ever, for at night she leaves the city walls to bury her dead family members, continuing the humble task that she started with Corradino’s corpse: 18.45. While night spread her dark veil, and the sea was silent and each animal rested, dead Corradino’s beloved wife would go out, filled with compassionate zeal. In the doubtful light that the sky offered, in the bleak darkness of that shadowy hour, she looked for the bloodless and unhappy corpses of her family members and of her friends. 46. She would then pick up a hoe with her hand that scorned a royal scepter, she would move the dirt, and then with sad but praiseworthy face she would bury her dear dead. She devoutly prayed for their eternal peace, and that an everlasting light might shine on them, with her soul under the sway of holy love and a desire for pity toward those killed heroes.119 By singling out a lowly tool (a hoe) and a modest and physical action (moving dirt), Marinella underscores the humility and dignity of Areta’s task; through it (together with her prayers) she shows her devotion. It is noteworthy that Marinella chooses a Byzantine (i.e., an enemy) woman as a shining example of devout widowhood. Marinella might also be commenting unfavorably on the stricter enclosure policy for nonmarried women in the Catholic Church; indeed, Marinella never suggests that Areta’s limiting her forays to the nighttime is dictated by the potential dangers of war during the daytime. Marinella declares her empathy for both Clelia and Areta by way of a direct address, a rhetorical device that she utilizes primarily with female characters. In Clelia’s case, it is couched in the description of her reaction to Lucillo’s decision to join the crusading army: “But as soon as he revealed to you, his light, that his chest enclosed a desire for eternal honor, a stiff ice and sad affection filled your tired limbs and enveloped your heart.”120 This turn of phrase expresses an emotional proximity between the author and 119. 18.45. Mentre stendea la notte il fosco velo, / E tacea’l mare, e ogn’animal riposa, / Uscia ripiena di pietoso Zelo / Del morto Coradin l’amata sposa; / Et al dubbio splendor, che porgea’l Cielo / Tra’l buio oscuro di quell’hora ombrosa. / Scegliea de’ suoi congiunti, e de gli amici / Li cadaveri essangui, & infelici. 46. E con la man, che regio scettro sdegna, / Piglia la zappa, e’l terren tragge, e poi / Con fronte mesta; ma di lode degna, / Dona sepolcro à i cari estinti suoi; / E con lo spirto, in cui santo amor regna, / E pio voler verso gli uccisi Heroi, / Prega in atto devoto eterna pace, / E che risplenda à lor perpetua face. 120. “Ma come à te sua Luce, il chiuso petto / Scoprì pien di desio d’eterno honore, / Tosto un rigido ghiaccio, un mesto affetto / Occupò i lassi membri, e strinse il core” (4.72.1–4).

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Maria Galli Stampino her character, and it fosters the same between the character and the implied readers. In Areta’s case, the direct address is instead a more open metapoetic, self-aware commentary: “Who can I compare to you, soaked in tears? Perhaps Niobe who was turned to tears?”121 In addition to the emotional proximity between the author’s voice and her character, Marinella here reinforces her own authority by appealing to the shared classical knowledge of the learned elite by referring to a story found in both the Iliad and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.122 As for their male counterparts, reading these two episodes side by side refines Paola Malpezzi Price’s opinion “that inglorious death awaits those who follow more readily the allure of glory rather than their women’s love.”123 Lucillo indeed dies before reaching Byzantium; Corradino, however, is said to have felled many enemies in battle before succumbing to Plautio’s sword (18.10–18). In a fundamental sense, therefore, his death is not “inglorious,” though it provokes sadness not just in his wife but in Alessio as well (18.19). Their quick deaths constitute a subtle yet noticeable sign of Marinella’s prowoman stance in the poem. Additionally, as Malpezzi Price and Ristaino have pointed out, Marinella “deflates [the male heroic] quest when it is pursued in the name of personal glory and financial gain rather than taken up for a selfless and noble cause”; it is remarkable that even a Christian knight is depicted as falling into this trap.124 In Enrico, it is clear that women bear the burden of the pain and anguish caused by war. Canto 15 is an interesting example of Marinella’s conflicted position about war, since it is the source of great suffering but also a manifestation of the courage of the warriors of both camps (and of both genders). In order to rescue Ardelio, whose mother entrusted him to her care and who is kept prisoner in the crusading camp, the warrior woman Meandra carries out a daring sortie with two companions, Ernesto and Dione. After freeing Ardelio, Meandra and her companions come under attack, and Ernesto is killed. The description of his mother’s reaction to the sad news is more specific and emotional than Clelia’s and Areta’s: 15.75. A chill colder than death ran through that wretched woman’s bones; a harsh horror placed much dread in her soul. Her heart be121. “Chi à te posso agguagliar di pianto aspersa, / Niobe forse in lagrime conversa?” (18.26. 7–8). 122. See note 7 to 18.26 for additional details on this mythological episode. 123. Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653),” 237. 124. Malpezzi Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes,” 88.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m came almost like ice; her life became a question mark, and it almost fled her because of her enormous pain. Yet the Greek host knew that it is only too true that one doesn’t die from pain. 76. She tore out her gray hair and beat her chest as well as her pale, old, and creased face. She clapped her hands and turned to the clear sky, almost an enemy to her rest, and her voice failed, unable even to moan. All she did was tremble, sadly and tearfully. Everybody admired such a sight, an unequaled spectacle of pity. 77. Then she ran in a crazed manner to where her son lay in his pallor. She saw his wound and his neck and chest that used to be white and were now covered in dried-up dark blood. She fell to the ground, pulled down by her own weight. All feelings were squeezed out of her heart by this unhappy occurrence, and she couldn’t speak or move out of appalling pain.125 The assertion that “one doesn’t die from pain” (“non si muor di duolo,” 15.75.8), far from being ironic, serves to underscore how the pain that this unnamed mother feels will continue as long as she lives; war disrupts the normal sequence of generations, as mothers are left to bury their sons. The language of love poetry that Marinella utilizes in Clelia’s and Areta’s moans recurs here (see 15.77.3–4, contrasting the whiteness of Ernesto’s body with the red marks of his spilled blood on it), but the image Marinella evokes is different: not erotic longing but a mother’s memory of and nostalgia for her young son’s body. The physical expression of Ernesto’s mother’s pain is reflected in her words after she comes to; she underscores the fate of a woman left without a man to take care of her in her old age, again a description that must have sounded familiar to Marinella’s contemporaries. Indeed, her situation awakens the sense of responsibility of the most valiant warriors:

125. 15.75. A la misera allhor per l’ossa corse / Un gel più, che di morte, un duro horrore, / Che tanta tema à lei ne l’alma porse; / Che ispaventò, quasi fè ghiaccio il core, / À tal annuntio la sua vita in forse / Fù per fuggir, spinta da gran dolore: / Ma ben fù noto, e aperto al Greco stuolo, / Che troppo è ver, che non si muor di duolo. 76. Stratia il canuto crin, si batte il seno, / E’l volto antico, pallido, e rugoso: / Percote Palma à Palma, il Ciel sereno / Mira, quasi nemico al suo riposo, / Viene à i lamenti allhor la voce meno. / Sol freme in atto mesto, e lagrimoso: / Ogn’un viene à tal vista, à tanto, e tale / Spettacol di pietà, cui non è eguale. 77. Corre, qual forsennata, dove steso / Ne giace il figlio dipallore asperso, / Vede la piaga, e d’atro sangue appreso / Il collo, e’l seno, che fù bianco, e terso; / Al pian caddè, tratta dal proprio peso, / Che ristretta nel cor dal caso averso / Rimase ogni virtù, ne moto, o voce / Allhor formò punta dal duolo atroce.

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Maria Galli Stampino 15.85. Pain, terror, and sadness developed among those armed men and in those cruel chests because of such a mother’s cries. Even the most burning feelings were chilled. Dione, Mirtillo, and Filocaio led that pain-filled woman to her sad home with compassion, and gave sweet help to her failing life with whatever comfort they could offer.126 Even “cruel chests” (“feroci petti,” 15.85.2) are sensitive to a mother’s moan; it is especially noteworthy that the chief enemy of the crusaders, the stubborn Mirtillo, is described here as feeling pity. Once again Marinella presents circumstances that depict the crusaders’ enemies as filled with the same emotions, reactions, and cultural expectations as the implied reader. Ernesto dies so that Ardelio may be freed, and the latter’s presence involves another nameless female character, his mother, the queen of Argos and Corinth: 9.12. In those days an admirable woman ruled over Argos and Corinth; she had reached old age and was her kingdom’s base and column after the king had died and the kingdom was in danger of ruin. She had worn a sword on the field; but then she gave it up to wear hitherto neglected women’s clothes.127 Marinella’s word choice is telling: she eschews the explicit term “regina” (“queen”), while leaving no doubt that this woman “ruled” (“imperava,” 9.12.1). The two adjectives “old” (“senil”) and “admirable” (“mirabil”) are juxtaposed in the original to express that she is not a Petrarchan beauty but a woman who deserves admiration for other reasons, such as being the “base and column” (“base, e Colonna,” 9.12.4), that is, the foundation to her kingdom after its king’s death. Marinella also introduces the queen’s past, something she has in common with her niece Meandra: she used to be a warrior but in her old age she gave up the sword “to wear hitherto neglected women’s clothes.”128 126. 15.85. Un dolor, un terror, una tristezza. / Nacque tra l’armi, e ne’ feroci petti / Pe’i lai di tanta madre; una lentezza, / Che raffreddò li più cocenti affetti; / Ma Dione, e Mirtillo con dolcezza, / Con filocaio, & altri i mesti tetti / Condusser la dolente, e car’aita / Dier con conforti à la cadente vita. 127. 9.12. Imperava in que’ giorni Argo, e Corinto / Giunt’à l’età senil mirabil Donna; / Ch’al Regno fù; poiche’l buon Re fu estinto, / Ne le ruine sue Base, e Colonna: / Già in Campo trattò il ferro; & hor, c’hà scinto / Il brando, e presa la negletta gonna. 128. “[H]à scinto / Il brando, e presa la negletta gonna” (9. 12.5–6).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m Marinella also presents this character’s deep ambivalence vis-à-vis battle: she is still attracted to fighting, though her physical strength does not allow her to participate,129 and therefore she would like her son to reap glory on the battlefield. At the same time she is aware of the dangers involved, and she asks Meandra to protect him: “His mother looked at him half-happy and half-sad; she enjoyed it [the trappings of battle] but she wanted and denied her own wishes at the same time.”130 Like Areta, she too refers to her defenseless state: 9.18. “Virgin, my niece, daughter by blood and by affection, dear and beloved to me, you are the pride to all my glories and a sublime and rare marvel to our sex and our age. Do not deny me: take this son of mine as a companion. Defend him in bitter fight and repel the hostile blows that enemy hands will direct against him. 19. “You know, my faithful niece, that after the great damage and the harsh death of my husband I live in sadness, and that I spend my days in black garb wishing for death. Only Ardelio seems to bring much sweetness and peace to my trying anxiety. What would I do, alas, if he were to die there? I don’t dare to say that.” She stopped and spoke no more.131 Even a queen and former woman warrior does not dare to think about being deprived of a man to support and protect her. Her interlocutor, Meandra, is responsive to the queen’s worries, but in her words the emphasis falls on fighting and reaping glory on the battlefield: 9.20. Meandra replied: “You defended me like a mother when I was young, when you readied my hand to pick up weapons and glory 129. References to her diminished physical strength appear twice in this episode (9.13 and 26–27), as if Marinella wished to ensure that readers not overlook it. 130. “Qual tra gioia, e mestitia il guata, e gode, / E nega, e vole à un tempo il suo desire” (9.16.1–2). 131. 9.18. E tu, Vergine, mia Nepote; e figlia, / Per sangue, e per amor diletta, e cara; / Vanto d’ogni mia gloria, e meraviglia / Del sesso, e de l’età sublime, e rara, / Non mi negar; teco compagno, piglia / Questo mio Germe, e ne la pugna amara / Difendillo, e ribatti i colpi aversi, / Che fien da man nemica in lui conversi. 19. Sai Fida mia, che dopo i gravi danni; / E’l duro fin del mio fedel Consorte, / Ch’io vivo mesta, e sotto negri panni / Passo i miei giorni desiando morte. / Ardelio solo à i miei noiosi affanni / Par che dolcezza, e pace alquanto porte; / Che farei lassa, se colà perisse? / Ciò dir non oso, e tacque, e più non disse.

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Maria Galli Stampino among cruel warriors. So it is right that I guard him from painful and harsh wounds and that I remove him from bitter and unhappy blows in battle. Let him come into his own so that he may be strong and courageous and look like a worthy son to you both in war and in peace. 21. “And if it is—heaven forbid—that the fury of lively battle steals him from us, I pray that the certain hope of a cruel revenge may comfort your heart in pain: my glance alone will send that enemy’s soul flying to blind horror! By God, let’s banish that promise; he’s alive, and others will die by his hand.”132 The juxtaposition is deliberate, as if Marinella wants to underscore two divergent behavior models for women. There is also, however, a strong sense of continuity, given the past fighting experiences of Ardelio’s mother and the emphasis placed on the family bonds between her and Meandra. In other words, Marinella implies that different activities are suitable for women at different stages in their life just as they are for men; the two women reflect a gradual transformation rather than an absolute break with one’s past. Meandra has indeed learned her skills at her female relative’s hand, as 9.20 indicates. Then in addition to protecting Ardelio, she teaches him as well (14.22). Her traits emerge from the phrases Marinella utilizes to characterize her: she is a “great woman” (“gran Donna,” 14.118.1 and 15.68.2), “noble woman” (“nobil Donna,” 15.10.1), “strong woman” (“forte Donna,” 15.52.1), “maiden” (“Donzella,” 17.20.7), “royal maiden” (“regal Donzella,” 15.53.1), “courageous maiden” (“Donzella ardita,” 17.32.1), and “unbeaten woman warrior” (“indomita guerriera,” 19.106.5). However, Marinella uses another term to introduce her: Ardelio’s mother first addresses Meandra as “virgin” (“Vergine,” 9.18.1) before she even identifies her as a relative— “Virgin, my niece, daughter by blood and by affection, dear and beloved to me, you are the pride to all my glories and a sublime and rare marvel to our sex and our age.”133 Moreover, in battle she is called “ferocious vir132. 9.20. Ben è ragion, rispose, se qual Madre / Teco me pargoletta difendesti, / Allhor, che la mia man tra crude squadre / Palme, e’l ferro à pigliar pronta facesti, / Ch’io tra l’armi da piaghe acerbe, & adre, / Il guardi, e’l toglia à colpi amari, e infesti, / E s’allievi, che sembri, e forte, e audace / Ben di te degno figlio in guerra, e in pace. 21. Se fia, che’l Ciel no’l voglia, che’l furore / Di fervida battaglia à noi l’involi, / Con certa speme l’addogliato core / Di vendetta crudel prego consoli: / Lo spirto del nemico al cieco horrore / Solo col guardo mio farò, che voli; / Ma per Dio tal augurio hormai si caccia, / Viv’egli, e per sua mano altri ne giaccia. 133. “Vergine, mia Nepote; e figlia, /Per sangue, e per amor diletta, e cara; / Vanto d’ogni mia gloria, e meraviglia / Del sesso, e de l’età sublime, e rara” (9. 18.1–4).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m gin” (“Vergine feroce,” 12.40.3) and “admirable virgin” (“Vergine miranda,” 14.25.2). Meandra will die in battle a virgin, without generating an heir to a ruling family or compromising her status in any other way. Meandra is courageous but not foolhardy—she tries to convince Dione and Ernesto to stay behind when she attempts to rescue Ardelio (15.42–43); she urges her companions and Ardelio to leave the crusaders’ camp at the first light of dawn to avoid detection and possibly capture (15.68). She is likened to a wolf wreaking havoc among lambs (12.40; the use of “Agnelle” to designate her victim is particularly poignant, as it designates the young of the species, as if Meandra were going against maternal instincts) and to a rough shepherd who witnesses the effects of a fire on his fields or those of an overflowing river (14.91). She openly expresses her emotions when she sees her dead companions and her ravaged city: she “moans and sighs” (“geme, e sospira,” 14.114.8). She feels pain for Ernesto’s death and promises to take revenge on his killer: “That woman warrior’s noble chest was stirred by pity. She promised the unhappy people that she would take her revenge according to their wishes, and she called Jove as her witness.”134 Her most significant trait, however, is her ability to inspire her troops with rousing speeches, something that Marinella insists upon through repetition. Meandra urges warriors into battle (12.40–41), reminds them of their desire for glory (14.26), scolds them for allowing one crusading warrior to kill so many (14.92–93), and finally rallies them when they seem ready to flee from their enemy, appealing to their sense of shame (14.116–17). Meandra’s speeches are always reported directly, and this trait is all the more noteworthy as speaking (and speaking in public especially) was deemed shameful for early modern women, akin to the loss of one’s virginity.135 There is but one antecedent to Meandra’s direct addresses to the troops, Rosmonda’s successful rallying cry in Scanderbeide 13.78–79. All other military speeches in Marinella’s models are left to male characters, especially when sending their troops to battle; Marinella herself offers an example in canto 3.136 134. “Ma la guerriera à cui pietà commove / Il nobil petto, al popolo infelice / Promette, e chiama in testimonio Giove / Vendetta far” (15.87.1–4). 135. Sheila Cavanagh has identified speaking out as a significant trait of female characters in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania (1621): “In contrast to the ‘silent woman’ image often associated with early literature, these female characters provide considerable amounts of dialogue to the text, often offering outspoken opinions on issues involving both world events and domestic affairs.” Cavanagh, “Romancing the Epic: Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania and Literary Traditions,” in Approaches to the Anglo and American Female Epic, 1621–1982, ed. Bernard Schweizer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 20. 136. Such models might be “the addresses made to the troops by Scipio and Hannibal before the battle of Zama (Livy 30.32.6–11; Africa 7.1034–1103, 7.1149–1215), and from the speeches

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Maria Galli Stampino Meandra’s counterpart in the crusading camp is Claudia, an archer and warrior whom Marinella dubs as “beautiful” (“bella,” 19.49.2), a “maiden” (“Donzella,” 19.55.1), “proud woman” (“Donna altera,” 19.106.1), and “great woman warrior” (“gran Guerriera,” 24.33.7). Claudia does not appear as often as Meandra, but she is singled out early in the poem, when Marinella lists all the crusading warriors: 2.29. The last one is the proud Claudia, born of imperial Latin blood. As a young child she learned the great virtue of ancient heroes; she showed herself as magnanimous and generous both in peace and in war.137 Her position (the last one in Marinella’s list of crusading warriors) is a sign of excellence, further evidenced by her lineage, knowledge, and wisdom. In other episodes Claudia is always part of a group, consistent with the emphasis that Marinella places on harmony and solidarity within the crusading camp: “Elpidio, Claudia, Bonifacio, the count, Enrico and his valiant son strike the Thracians yelling loudly and going into their ranks; they break and throw them into chaos.”138 Like Sarrocchi’s Rosmonda, in battle Claudia is likened to a natural force. While Rosmonda is akin to a river,139 Claudia is similar to the wind: “she moves like a strong wind in the clouds: it shakes, thunders, produces lightning, and instills in people fear and terror because of its ever new shapes.”140 As an archer, Claudia is highly effective (see 19.50–55); she fights from a distance and is calm and collected, as the following simile emphasizes: 19.56. Like Delia from the clear brisk sky, she scattered hurting wounds and pain in the hearts of the Thebans. Her young face and her eyes were filled with stark scorn for them. Each arrow she threw of Caesar and Pompey before Pharsalus (Lucan, Civil War 7.250–329, 7.342–82).” Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide, ed. Russell, 331–32 n. 8, as well as Scanderbeide 20.20, 20.42–47, 21.70–75, and 21.7–17. 137. 2.29.1–6. L’ultima è Claudia altera, che discese / Dal gran sangue latin, progenie augusta; / Costei ne’ suoi primi anni avid’apprese / De’ prischi Heroi l’alta virtù vetusta; / E’n cheta pace, e’n militari offese / Si mostrò ogn’hor magnanima, e venusta. 138. “Elpidio, Claudia, Bonifatio, e’l Conte, / Enrico, e d’esso il generoso figlio. / Con alto grido, & empito à la fronte / Fiedono i Traci, e dan rotta, e scompiglio” (14.113.1–4). The same occurs in 17.43. 139. Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide, 3.86. 140. “[T]al si move, / Qual frà le nubi impetuoso il vento, / Che freme, tuona, fulmina, & in nove / Forme porge ad altrui tema, e spavento” (3.25.1–4).

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m let loose its anger in the Thessalians’ chests. Soon the best and most courageous were left lying and slow to go to their weapons because of her.141 This octave opens with the surprising and effective evocation of traits often attributed to the beloved woman in love poetry: a “young face” (“volto acerbetto”) expressing the emotion of “stark scorn” (“fero sdegno”) through her eyes. The associations with love poetry are further indicated through the images of “hearts” (“cori”) and “chests” (“seni”); yet here these are neither the seat of love nor the target for Cupid’s benign arrows, but the ending point for Claudia’s deadly ones. Marinella emphasizes here Claudia’s control over her emotions, which makes it possible for her arrows to strike their targets so accurately. Through her reference to Delia (one of the epithets for Diana, the virgin goddess of the moon and of hunting, born on the island of Delos), Marinella also reminds her readers that Claudia is a virgin woman warrior. Like Meandra, Claudia finds her voice in battle, but unlike her counterpart, she does not speak until a man addresses her, thus following the behavior prescribed to early modern women. During the battle narrative in canto 24, she confronts Oronte, one of the most valiant Byzantine warriors, and wounds him. Marinella depicts his reaction with a cleverly mocking tone: he “grieved that a weak and soft woman had the heart, the courage, and the strength to dare to oppose his haughty behavior—and even the most famous people fled the field to escape it!”142 Juxtaposing Oronte’s anger to Claudia’s calm demeanor, Marinella has him insult her openly and directly: 24.28. He said: “Enjoy it if you fall; dying is worthy of praise and of undying memory! You’re looking for honor, but you won’t scorn it if I give you death and eternal glory. It would have been better if you had stuck to womanly occupations rather than look for praise and victory 141. 19.56. Tal co’l volto acerbetto, e gli occhi pieni / Di fero sdegno ne’ Thebani cori / Delia dal Ciel tra i lucidi sereni / Aventava crudel piaghe, e dolori. / Quanti ella ne lanciò, tanti nei seni / De’ Tessali sfogaro ire, e furori. / Già per lei li megliori, e i più gagliardi / Giacciono, e sono à l’armi pigri, e tardi. 142. “S’attrista sì, che Donna inferma, e molle. / Habbia cor, habbia ardir, forza habbia tanta, / Ch’osi d’opporsi à i moti suoi sdegnosi / Da cui fuggon del campo i più famosi” (24.27.5–8). During the first pitched battle, a Byzantine warrior is said to regret dying by Claudia’s hand because she is a woman; but in that case we only have a comment by the narrator rather than a character’s reported speech: “he was aggrieved more by the fact that a woman’s hand was giving him death, than by the fact of dying itself” (“più, che’l morir, l’aggrava, / Che da man femenil morte riceva,” 3.53.7–8).

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Maria Galli Stampino among warriors! Unlike your sword, mine is not blunt or weak: when it wounds it knows how to wound and draw blood.”143 Oronte pointedly mocks Claudia’s failure to kill him with her sword, but the preceding lines make it clear that this is an angry repartee rather than an accurate description of Claudia’s fighting abilities. It is only then that her voice is heard: 24.31. She said: “Look, great warrior, if my cutting sword is as blunt and weak as yours! You now know from experience how well it cuts and shears, as you often handle one; it’s its nature!”144 Claudia emphasizes actions over words, thus distancing her behavior from Oronte’s and setting an example for her fellow crusaders.145 Virginia Cox has pointed out that Claudia is “living proof that ‘custom, not nature, instilled fear in one sex and valor in the other’ (‘l’uso, e non natura ha messo / Timor ne l’un, valor ne l’altro sesso,’ II.29.7–8).”146 Yet for all her fighting prowess, Claudia behaves more according to seventeenthcentury precepts of female conduct than her enemy counterpart Meandra; the latter is more daring, seizes the initiative more boldly, and inspires her troops without waiting to be spoken to first. Claudia’s modesty and reserve might be the price Marinella pays to create a female knight who fully belongs to “our” camp—unlike Tasso’s Clorinda and Sarrocchi’s Rosmonda and Silveria, Claudia is not a converted enemy.147 143. 24.28. Godi, se cadi, ei dice, il morir degno / Fia ben di lode, e d’immortal memoria; / Ne tu, che cerchi honor, prenderai sdegno, / S’io ti dò con la morte eterna gloria, / Me’ t’era star tra feminile ingegno; / Che cercar tra i guerrier pregio, o vittoria; / Ne’l mio, come il tuo ferro, è ottuso, o langue; / Ma ferendo sà far ferite, e sangue. 144. 24.31. Guata, ella dice, o gran Guerrier, s’ottuso / E’l debil di mia tagliente spada, / Come è quel de la tua? che sai per uso, / Quanto per sua natura tagli, e rada. 145. Claudia urges her fellow fighters on in canto 17; however, there is no reported speech in that episode but simply the sentence “altri à l’opra incita” (“she spurs others to that task,”17.32.2). 146. Virginia Cox, “Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy,” in Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari dalla Society for Italian Studies, ed. Zygmunt Baranski, Gino Bedani, Anna Laura Lepschy, and Brian Richardson (London: Society for Italian Studies, 1997), 138. 147. Russell attributes Rosmonda’s and Silveria’s confidence among the troops, their “comradery toward their fellow soldiers and . . . resentment and hostility when provoked or wronged” to Sarrocchi having “lived in circles where men of the cloth and aristocrats, females and males, artists and intellectuals of various social classes mingled, and, as exceptional as that may have been, the very authorities that had sponsored Margherita’s education allowed her a degree of

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m The characters of Claudia and Meandra are so clearly intertwined in the poem that their lives end in a one-to-one contest. Their correspondence is evident from the very beginning of this episode: 24.35. She [Claudia] recognized Meandra from her banners and clothes but even more from her valor. She had given our soldiers not just deep anguish but death and horror by her strong hand. In turn, the Greek woman recognized Claudia, and both felt happiness in their heart, as they hoped to show in a horrific battle who was braver with her weapons.148 True to their knightly calling, both women rejoice at the chance of proving their mettle; this is behavior that would have been fundamentally unacceptable for early modern women but one crucial for crusading knights. Yet even against this background, these heroines shy away from publicity, so to speak: 24.38. They picked a wide meadow quite close to the walls; a long row of marble seats stood along its sides, and it led to the royal palace and to the golden door. . . . Both women liked it for it was hidden.149 This latter feature goes against one aspect of tradition, since, as Russell reminds us, previous epics record the spectators’ reaction to combat;150 at the

freedom denied to her Venetian counterparts,” that is, Moderata Fonte and Marinella. Russell, “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 34. Still, the two characters she creates are inherently “different” from the rest of Scanderbeg’s camp by virtue of their gender as well as by their later conversion. 148. 24.35. Claudia quelli Meandra esser conosce / À l’insegne, al vestir; ma più al valore; / Ch’à nostri da non pur crudeli angosce; / Ma con la forte man morte, & horrore: / Ne men la Greca Claudia riconosce, / E per contezza tal fan lieto il core, / Che speran dar con horrida battaglia / Segno, qual più di lor ne l’armi vaglia. 149. 24.38. Sciegliono un largo prato assai vicino / À la muraglia, à cui di marmo aggira / Lungo ordine di seggi, ha’l suo camino / Verso la Reggia, e l’aurea porta mira. / . . . tal luoco piace / À l’una, e à l’altra, poi che occulto giace. 150. See “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 216 n. 21, where Russell cites Aeneid 5.148–50 and 181–82, Orlando innamorato 1.28.1–2, Orlando furioso 30.53.1–2, and Gerusalemme liberata 6.49 as antecedents of Scanderbeide 9.57. Furthermore, during the single combat between Giacinto and Oronte, they are urged to stop when night approaches, for “Generous and virtue-filled thinking abhors that the beauty of rare deeds be hidden” (“Generoso pensier, che’n virtù abonda, / Sdegna, che d’opre rare il bel s’asconda,” 9.95.7–8); male knights should display their feats to the world, while the women warriors like their fighting location precisely because it was hidden.

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Maria Galli Stampino same time, however, a knight had to show his (or her) valor and courage regardless of the presence of an audience. The tension between these two women warriors and the customs of Marinella’s times emerges in the incongruity of this location being “hidden” (“occulto,” 24.38.8) but at the same time set like a theater. Additionally, these two juxtaposed traits bestow a voyeuristic role on the implied reader, since s/he is immediately aware of the desires for both glory and for secrecy that pervade these women warriors. The voyeuristic undercurrent is also evident in the climax to the episode, when each woman mortally wounds the other: 24.47. The tenacious Greek woman had not forgotten the riskiest place. She pushed her sword where white ivory opened up a path to cold death, and the hit took off her [Claudia’s] helmet. The wound was such that the sword came out of her blonde neck, simultaneously cutting off her beautiful hair. The Italian damsel then moved again and inflicted a new wound on Meandra. 48. She tore her rich garment and mesh mail, sinking her fateful sword deep into her soft side: the anguished Thracian woman thus discovered the harsh ending to their battle, and the stunned world saw and knew their worth in battle. Both fell, and both enjoyed the honors of victory and praise.151 The profusion of terms borrowed from love poetry to describe the two warriors—“white ivory” (“candido avorio”), “blonde neck” (“bionda cervice”), and “beautiful hair” (“bel crin,” 24.47.3 and 6)—contributes to reinforce this effect, along with the emphasis on torn clothes and flesh being penetrated. This sensual language deepens the voyeuristic role in which the implied reader is cast by the absence of any public witness of the duel; moreover, it again echoes the mingling of the sexual and the mystical that Malpezzi Price identifies in most of Marinella’s religious writings. It also stands in stark contrast to the few details given of Meandra’s and Claudia’s physical appearance

151. 24.47. La pertinace Greca non oblia / Il luoco di periglio, e’l ferro caccia / Là, ve’l candido avorio il varco apria / À fredda morte, e l’Elmo il colpo slaccia; / Tal la ferita fù, che fuori uscia / Per la bionda cervice, e’l bel crin straccia, / À un tempo il ferro, l’Itala Donzella / Move, à Meandra fa piaga novella. 48. La ricca vesta, e l’innestata maglia / Rompe, e nel molle lato à pieno immerse / La fatal spada; tal de la Battaglia / La Tracia afflitta il duro fin scoperse. / E quanto l’una, e l’altra in armi vaglia, / Stupido il mondo riconobbe, e scerse; / Caggiono entrambe; e questa, e quella gode / L’honor de la vittoria e de la lode.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m 152

when they are first introduced in Enrico; in this way Marinella manages to instill sensuality while eschewing the Petrarch-derived clichés that abound even in Moderata Fonte’s Floridoro and Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide.153 Cox rightly points out that “Marinella is one of the few imitators of Tasso to resist the temptation to dispatch her ‘enemy’ heroine in a sexually charged duel with a male admirer from the opposing camp, having her Byzantine Meandra instead succumb, in a mutually fatal encounter, to her Venetian counterpart, Claudia.”154 While Tasso’s women warriors, Clorinda and Gildippe, die following the rules of chivalry,155 Marinella goes one step further. While no man tops either woman, sensual elements are still retained. Furthermore, and notably given the ideological and religious context of Enrico, the simultaneous death of the two heroines eliminates the need for the non-Western Christian warrior to convert to the winner’s creed: the issue of Christians fighting Christians is thus de-emphasized, as is the power of one gender over the other.156 In this episode, too, Marinella thus introduces distinctive features of her own without abandoning all those embedded in her texts of reference. There is a third woman warrior in Enrico, Emilia. Like Meandra, she belongs to the Byzantine camp, and like Claudia, she is an archer, one trained in hunting animals in the wild: 8.89. . . . Emilia [was] a pretty and lovely maiden endowed with rare beauty. She was a daughter of the woods and had no peer as a hunter 152. Meandra enters in medias res and no detail whatever is given about her appearance; see 9.12–13. Claudia is dubbed “beautiful” (see above) but no other physical detail is offered. 153. See the descriptions of Celsidea in Floridoro 4.14–16, which follows Petrarch’s short canon (Fonte, Floridoro, ed. Finucci, 148–49 and n. 6); and of Rosmonda and Silveria in Scanderbeide 3.79–87 and 13.14–20 (Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide, ed. Russell, 132–34 and 243–45). 154. Cox, “Fiction 1560–1650,” 61. 155. “In the GL [Gerusalemme liberata] those female deaths which do occur, namely of the female warriors Clorinda and Gildippe, take place according to the code, albeit masculine, of honour, i.e., in battle.” Maggie Günsberg, “ ‘Donna liberata’? The Portrayal of Women in the Italian Renaissance Epic,” The Italianist 7 (1987): 12. 156. Note that some conversions in early modern epics are not motivated by loss in single combat but by love: as Quint notes, in Gerusalemme liberata “the pagan heroines Armida and Erminia fall in love with Christian knights and become their obedient ‘handmaidens’—‘ancella’ (VI.71; XVI.48; XIX.101)—and, presumably, convert handmaidens to Christ (XX.136) as well.” Quint, “Political Allegory,” 243. In Scanderbeide, the woman warrior and regent Rosmonda falls in love with the Christian Vaconte, converts, and marries him (18.102–3), and has her companion Silveria convert as well (18.104), a unique example of a powerful woman requiring her maiden to change her religion. No similar example exists in Enrico.

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Maria Galli Stampino with bow and arrows; when she ran she was faster than air, her light and slim feet covered with buskins. She wore white clothes, and her unkempt hair was tied with a short golden ribbon. 90. This is perhaps how generous Aeneas saw the noble features and beautiful and clear eyes of his beloved mother and goddess, among the cruel Peni, in a big forest. She had a quiver and bow like a Spartan virgin who adorned the fields, or like cruel Harpalice pushing a fast horse along the Ebro with ferocious courage. 91. Presently she came from the woods, where she had been born of a king and a goddess of the forest, and where she used to show her admirable archery skills on deer, bucks, hares, and wild mountain animals.157 Emilia’s noble and semi-divine birth and her ability with bow and arrow justify Marinella’s rare simile at the beginning of octave 90, where she borrows an episode from Virgil’s Aeneid to compare Emilia to Aeneas’s mother, the goddess Venus.158 As if this simile were not enough, Marinella builds her stanza in a crescendo, continuing with a Spartan virgin,159 and ending with Harpalice, one of the Amazons, a mythological race of women warriors. Marinella underscores Emilia’s exceptional status from her very first appearance: she is “a pretty and lovely maiden endowed with rare beauty” (“Donzella / Vaga, leggiadra, e di bellezze rare,” 8.89.1–2),160 but also “a daughter of the woods and had no peer as a hunter with bow and arrows” (“Figlia de’ Boschi, d’Arco, e di Quadrella,” 8.89.3). She is both very beautiful 157. 8.89. . . . Emilia, una Donzella / Vaga, leggiadra, e di bellezze rare, / Figlia de’ Boschi, d’Arco, e di Quadrella / Armata Cacciatrice, uon hà pare: / Vince l’Aura col corso, lieve, e snella / La pianta di coturno avinta appare; / Succinta in bianchi panni, tien raccolta / In breve nastro d’or la chioma incolta. 90. Tal forse vide tra gli atroci Peni, / Ne l’ampia Selva il generoso Enea / L’alta sembianza, e’ begli occhi sereni / De la sua cara genitrice, e Dea; / Qual Vergine Spartana i Campi ameni / Ornar, tal la Faretra, e l’arco havea; / O qual per l’Hebro Harpalice feroce / Spinse con fero ardir corsier veloce. 91. Viene hor Costei da le sue Selve, dove: / Gia d’un Rè nacque, e d’una Dea silvestre / Quivi era avezza à far mirabil prove / In Cervi, in Daini, in Lepre, in Fera alpestre. 158. See Virgil, Eneide, trans. Rosa Calzecchi Onesti (Milan: Mondadori, 1971), 1.305ff. 159. In ancient times, citizens of Sparta were famous for their military prowess and courage, men and women alike. 160. She is also called “Vergine feroce” (“fierce virgin,” 8.95.2), “Vergin snella” (“slim virgin,” 27.58.7), “cruda, e bella / Giovane” (“cruel and beautiful young woman,” 27.65.1–2), “spietata figlia” (“merciless daughter,” 27.68.1), “Faretrata Donzella” (“maiden with a quiver,” 27.87.3), and lastly “Vinta Guerriera” (“Vanquished as a warrior,” 27.88.3). These epithets do not differ significantly from those Marinella uses for Claudia and Meandra.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m and somewhat wild: the phrase “Figlia de’ Boschi” is especially striking, since it posits an anonymous lineage that is quickly contradicted in octave 91. Marinella fashions Emilia with an eye to her survival beyond Byzantium’s fall, and, consequently, she proposes an alternative to the epic woman warrior that Claudia and Meandra embody, as well as to the archer prototypes in both Gerusalemme liberata (Clorinda) and Scanderbeide (Silveria). While Claudia (though an archer) engages in close battle, Emilia can exploit her abilities from within the relative safety of the city walls: she emerges from a crowd of “children, mothers, daughters, and defenseless old people” (“Fanciulli, Madri, figlie, e vecchi inermi,” 8.88.2) who observe the Byzantines’ attempt to burn the Venetian fleet during a truce. In the span of a few octaves (8.91–95), Emilia’s arrows kill Artemidoro, Caloro, Alfeo (who first falls in love with her, mistaking her arrows for Cupid’s, 8.93), Resin, and Cesio. Marinella never mentions that Emilia’s actions are as deceitful as those of the rest of the Byzantines since they occur during the truce. Her descriptions of the consequences of Emilia’s actions are direct and even crude,161 in keeping with the assessment that “now she turned her sling and moved her arrows with a manly face and skillful and dexterous hands, gaining much more praise among her friends as she used them against the Venetians and the Gauls, their harsh enemies.”162 Subtly, then, Marinella introduces a woman warrior who is strong yet sheltered as well as admired for manly virtues; this is truly a different kind of woman warrior. Emilia’s importance to the plot of Enrico emerges as she carries out a prophecy that drives the subplot linked to Erina: it is one of Emilia’s arrows that kills Venier in the last, decisive battle of the crusade (27.20–21). She is ultimately the Byzantine ruler’s last hope for military success: 27.57. Mirtillo considered whether he could bring any help to his land under those final circumstances, so that he could lift it out of that low insult and prevent the enemy from biting a chunk out of it. Though he was fully deprived of hope, still his heart harbored that

161. See, for example, 8.95.1–3, 5–8: “Con mirabil prestezza al nervo aggiunge / Dardo novel la Vergine feroce, / Et à Resin . . . / Tra le labbra, e tra i denti passa, e giunge / Al palato, e la lingua, e fuor veloce / Per la Nuca trapassa, e Cesio coglie / Ne l’occhio destro, e pene amare accoglie” (“The fierce virgin added another arrow to her bow with admirable speed. . . . Resin . . . [was hit] between the lips: the arrow went through his teeth, reaching his palate and tongue, finally exiting from the nape of his neck. Cesio was hit by the same arrow in his right eye, and was in harsh pain”). 162. “Con viril volto, e mani agili, e destre, / Con assai maggior lode in tra gli amici / Contra il Veneto, e’l Gallo aspri nemici” (8.91.6–8).

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Maria Galli Stampino new thought. He went where Emilia was, and he sweetly revealed to her the new desire that his chest enclosed. 58. “Daughter, glory of the woods, honor, and weapons, radiance of the field; Phoebus and the three-shaped goddess yield to you, and it seems to me that the sky doesn’t have as beautiful a light as you. I pray you that your hand pick up a weapon against the destroyer of our seat of power. Don’t let your bow launch horrible arrows in vain, slim virgin.”163 Mirtillo’s words to Emilia are both fatherly (or patronizing: he calls her “daughter” [“figlia,” 27.58.1]) and flattering, since he compares her favorably to the god of the sun, Phoebus, and the virgin goddess of the moon, Diana, Apollo’s twin sister. On the surface it might seem that Mirtillo is so desperate as to place his last hope in a woman; yet Emilia’s skills prove so fine that she only succumbs to angelic beings summoned to bestow the victory on Enrico (27.61–64). Notably, this is the only divine intervention on the crusaders’ behalf in the entire poem. Emilia’s arrows come back, but she is safe and is not harmed by them (27.65), though she and her side are stunned. 27.68. After that merciless daughter (who had thought she could send Adria’s ruler to the dead) was interrupted and vanquished, she was seized by horror and wonder that her arrows could come back to her. Who could say how much pain and amazement she felt, how her heart was troubled and discouraged, knowing that her blows were worthy of death and praise?164 Emilia’s feelings provide Marinella with an opportunity to bring her own poetic abilities into play, by referring to them in the rhetorical question at the end of this stanza. This is a tried and true strategy for early modern 163. 27.57. Mirtillo pensa, s’à l’estremo passo / Dar possa à la sua Patria alcun soccorso; / Per trarla fuor de l’improperio basso, / Ne lasciarle al nemico por il morso; / Benche del tutto sia di speme casso, / Pur novello pensier nel cor li è corso. / Và, dov’è Emilia, e con soave detto / Svele il novo desio, c’ha chiuso in petto. 58. Figlia, pompa de’ boschi, honor de l’armi, / Splendor del Campo, à cui gia Febo cede, / Cede, e la Vergin Trivia, e vero, e parmi, / Che’l Ciel lume più bel di te non vede. / Prego, che la tua man famosa s’armi. / Contra il gran struggitor di nostra sede: / Poiche non vibri indarno, o Vergin snella / Da l’arco tuo l’horribili quadrella. 164. 27.68. Sospesa, e vinta la spietata figlia, / Che d’Adria il Re credea gittar tra morti / S’inhorridisce, alto stupor ne piglia, / Chi sieno in lei gli strali suoi ritorti, / Chi diria quant’hà duolo, e meraviglia, / Quanto nel cor si turbi, e si sconforti / Pensando à ciò, che sà, quant’in altrui / Sien di morte, e di lode i colpi sui.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m poets, men and women alike, but it is particularly telling since it comes almost at the end of Enrico and as a commentary on an admittedly important event, even if it involves a seemingly minor character. It is yet another indication of the status that Marinella bestows on Emilia. The latter is also notable among the women warriors and the Byzantines in that she does not die, retreating instead back to the woods where she had spent her youth. While she is dubbed “vanquished as a warrior” (“Vinta Guerriera,” 27.88.3), she alone survives without the shame of escaping from her enemy: 27.87. Emilia, the maiden with a quiver, saw on that day the end of Greek greatness; she moved here and there, lifting great sighs from her heart. She wounded many, she sent many to Jove’s lap in the highest parts of heaven; but what good was that, when the camp was routed, the king of Mysia gone, and the Greek king in flight? 88. Vanquished as a warrior, she finally went back to the much-desired peace of her friendly woods, feeling pain and scorn. Still, she carried famous and shining spoils, and she was proud of them. She went back to dipping her flying weapons in the chests of quick animals, and at last she became a sylvan goddess by the same name, due to her famous chastity.165 Her chaste behavior lifts her to the divine rank of her mother, leaving behind war and, implicitly, the royal status of her father. Marinella simultaneously privileges a female lineage while following the rules of behavior imposed on women in patriarchal early modern times. Commenting on the women warriors in Enrico, Paola Malpezzi Price writes that Emilia “is last portrayed on an isolated beach [sic], after her vain attempt to kill the Christian leader. Death or failure seems to be the independent woman’s only possible fate in the paternalistic and militaristic society that Marinella describes here.”166 Emilia’s survival in war and return to

165. 27.87. Emilia, che quel giorno ultimo scerne / De le Achive grandezze, qua’ là move, / Faretrata Donzella, e da le interne / Parti sospiri altissimi rimove; / Molti ha feriti, e fece à le superne / Stanze del Ciel salire in sen di Giove; / Ma, che prò, se già rotto è’l Campo, e gito / Di Misia il Duce, e’l Greco Re fuggito? 88. Tarda dolente, e disdegnosa torna, / De’ boschi amici, à la bramata pace, / Vinta Guerriera; ma di spoglie adorna / Famose, e chiare, in cui pur si compiace, / E l’armi sue volanti anchor ritorna / Nel petto à tinger d’animal fugace, / Per castitade illustre al fin divenne / Diva Silvestre, e’l nome suo ritenne. 166. Malpezzi Price, “Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653),” 238.

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Maria Galli Stampino her domain do not qualify as “failure,” especially when we consider the very last words pertaining to Emilia in canto 27: “e’l nome suo ritenne” means that her name became divine when she became a goddess herself, a mark of distinction that is unique in the poem and that surpasses even Marinella’s own ability to inscribe her characters in immortality. The positive outcome of Emilia’s life emerges more strongly if we compare it to Idilia’s, a young woman who embodies the characteristics of the dutiful daughter and who is rescued from danger only to be left vulnerable to a greater one. Intended as a human sacrifice by Esone (the magician who advises Mirtillo), she is captured on her way to the Christian camp and her betrothed, Roberto (10.14–79). Giacinto, taking a break from his single combat with Oronte, chances upon her soon-to-occur sacrifice and rescues her; they fall in love. But as they are attacked by a group of Byzantines, Idilia flees and becomes lost, ultimately to arrive at the humble rustic dwelling of an old man, with whom she presumably spends the rest of her days. Giacinto returns to his companions to find that his delay has made it necessary for a replacement to fight Oronte in his stead: it is none other than Roberto (11.21–96). Idilia, whose epithets include “young woman” (“fanciulla,” 10.19.2), “maiden” (“Donzella,” 10.24.7, 10.29.1, 10.42.3, 10.49.70.3, 11.8.2, and 11.69.6), “royal virgin” (“Vergin regale,” 10.44.2), “beautiful virgin” (“Vergin bella,” 10.70.1), and “heavenly virgin” (“Vergine celeste,” 11.6.3), is first identified as “one of Artabano’s daughters . . . just married . . . to King Roberto” (“una figlia d’Artaban . . . / Fatta dal Padre al Re Roberto sposa,” 10.18.1–2). Her own name does not surface until octave 35 (10.35.6), but not before Marinella reminds her readers that she is “Artabano’s daughter” (“la figliuola d’Artabano,” 10.35.2). This term recurs (10.39.1, 10.58.2, and 11.25.1) as though to underscore the core of her being; even Esone calls her “only a daughter” (“semplice figlia,” 11.3.4), and the old country-dwelling man who takes her in regards her in much the same role (11.53 and 11.59). Idilia’s trust in heaven and her acceptance of her fate emerge at various points (see 10.25–26, 10.52–53), but not even Idilia is entirely passive: Marinella describes her as riddled by a tension between a desire for glory and an instinct toward self-preservation (and a feeling of self-pity: 10.55–58). The author sympathizes with her in another direct address to a female character: ” if only I could make you eternal at least with my song, O unvanquished one, to take you away from blind forgetfulness” (“Potess’io, Invitta, almen co’l canto mio / Eterna farti e torti al cieco oblio,” 10.72.7– 8). Faced with certain death, Idilia gathers enough courage to speak to the Byzantines assembled to witness her sacrifice (10.76–77); her remarks are

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m so effective that “she scattered [pity] among those convened people with her sigh-filled words” (“ella in sospirosi accenti / Spargea pietà tra l’adunate genti,” 10.75.7–8). Despite all their courage, Idilia and Giacinto fall in love (11.2 and 11.29), and thus are in danger of committing a grave (religious and social) sin, since her father has already married her to Roberto. It is not by happenstance that Giacinto finds himself battling Oronte with and against Roberto, who has taken his place temporarily in his single combat (11.92–96). For her part, Idilia simply disappears from the plot: in her wanderings after she becomes separated from Giacinto, she reaches “a wide country, with slopes, many meadows, thatched homes, and tilled fields” (“Ampio paese, piagge, e prati molti, / E pagliareschi alberghi, e luoghi colti,” 11.46.7–8), where an old man welcomes her (11.51). She lives there, still hoping for Giacinto to arrive (11.65–70). She never mentions either her father or her betrothed in her sigh-filled remembrances. In this manner Marinella is able to depict the promise of romantic love while implicitly recognizing its danger and the significance of the patriarchal order of society.167 A very different kind of daughter, although one whose ending is seemingly similar to Idilia’s, is Erina. She carries out a key ideological role in Enrico: as she attempts to save the Venetian knight Venier from his destiny, she explains to him the origins of Venice, its past, and its future, while offering an overview of the world that parallels Marinella’s canonical antecedents, that is, Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. In Erina, however, Marinella again gives us as strong a departure from her models (namely, Ariosto’s Alcina and Tasso’s Armida) as she does with Claudia and Meandra. As Virginia Cox has remarked, Erina is “represented as virginal” and a “guileless virgin,” immune to her prisoner Venier’s charms.168 This is evident from her first appearance in Enrico. 167. The danger of Idilia for Giacinto is made explicit in canto 19, when the attacking crusaders are victims of a phantom generated by Esone that takes on the appearance of each warrior’s beloved to distract them from the fight. Giacinto’s phantom takes on the appealing features of Idilia, and this is her last appearance in the entire poem (19.78–83). Thus I disagree with Malpezzi Price and Ristaino, who see Idilia, “like Erina, represent[ing] a noble and unsatisfied love”; instead she represents a considerable danger for herself and Giacinto. Malpezzi Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes,” 93. 168. See Cox, “Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy,” 143. She continues: “this transformation very effectively shortcircuits the implicitly misogynistic allegorical logic of more conventional versions of the episode, which ‘naturally’ turn to the literal and metaphorical enchantments of a sexually predatory woman as their [the enchantresses’] image for the deceptive allure of the senses.” Valeria Finucci concurs: “The Circe-cast

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Maria Galli Stampino 5.62. He saw a woman approaching whose appearance was worthy of reverence. She was of perfect age, beautiful, and without makeup. She had an unadorned beauty, white and simple clothes, and no shoes on her slim feet. Her blonde hair was burnished and looked like choice gold. Both her stars resembled a bright sun, and she held arrows in her hands. Her proud beauty was the honor of the woods, the terror for cruel, wild animals. 63. A nymph or Diana herself might share her clothes and her appearance when they go hunting in the woods. Her eyes were chaste, her manners saintly; her heart was firmly set against love. And yet her human face could make heaven fall in love with her, but that ruling virgin scorned even a heavenly lover. She followed handsome prey, disdained love, and caught and tamed wild animals. 64. As soon as she gazed at him, her heart trembled; her face paled. Then she became like a rose, red in the morning, and she stopped her steps with wise counsel.169 Marinella offers physical details that make up a flattering portrait of Erina (her blonde hair and sun-like eyes in particular come from the Petrarchan love lyric tradition, 5.62.5–6) while simultaneously emphasizing her simplicity, lack of adornment, chastity, and pride. Like Claudia and Emilia, she is a peerless hunter, devoted to Diana, as octave 63 underscores. Erina’s additional epithets are those that Marinella utilizes for other Erina goes . . . from sisterly and virginal [and], like Fonte’s Circetta, she becomes a contemplative type bent on doing only good.” Finucci, “Moderata Fonte and the Genre of Women’s Chivalric Romances,” in Floridoro, ed. Finucci (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 25. However, Malpezzi Price and Ristaino stress Erina’s “romantic interest in Veniero” that she nevertheless does not show, substituting instead “sisterly love;” they oppose her to Ariosto’s Alcina and Tasso’s Armida in that “by acknowledging Erina’s own attraction to Veniero, as well as Circetta’s to Silano, Marinella and Fonte recognize the part that both men and women play in the seduction game, while they accentuate the efforts of their female characters to abandon their individual sentimental wishes and needs in favor of love for their homeland.” Malpezzi Price and Ristaino, Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes,” 89. 169. 5.62. Vede venir di venerando aspetto / Donna d’età perfetta inculta, e bella; / Ma di grave beltà, candido, e schietto / Ha’l suo vestir, nuda la pianta snella; / Fiammeggia il biondo crin, com’oro eletto; / Qual sol lucente ha l’una, e l’altra stella; / Li dardi ha in man, son sue bellezze altere / De’ boschi honor, terror de l’empie fere. 63. Tal ne va forse à l’habito, al sembiante / Ne le selve à cacciar Ninfa, o Diana, / Con gli occhi casti, e con maniere sante, / Crudo ha’l cor contra amor; ma in volto humano, / Pur innamora il Ciel, celeste amante / Par disprezzar la Vergine sovrana; / Segue le vaghe Fere, Amor non cura, / Prende le Belve, e doma ancor sicura. 64. Come la Donna in lui fisa le ciglia / Tremò nel core, e impallidì nel viso. / Poi, com’è rosa nel matin vermiglia, / Venne, il passo fermò con saggio aviso[.]

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m female characters in the poem: she is a “nymph” (“Ninfa,” 21.6.7, 22.31.5, and 22.78.7), a “maiden” (“Donzella,” 5.88.7 and 6.18.2), and a “virgin” (“Vergine”), further qualified as “ruling” (“sovrana,” 5.63.6), “prudent” (“prudente,” 7.70.6), and “fateful” (“fatal,” 21.28.1). Above all, she is simply a “woman” (“Donna”)170 and yet a “goddess” (“Dea”) when Venier addresses her (5.66.1 and 4, 5.67.4, and 21.3.8, where the progression from woman to goddess is made explicit). Later on in the poem, as Erina’s role emerges more clearly, Marinella dubs her a “queen” (“Regina,” 21.16.1); moreover, she is a “celestial guide” (“celeste guida,” 21.61.2), and “my royal escort, my salvation, my life” (“mia / Sovrana scorta, o mia salute, e vita,” 22.38.1–2), the latter titles notably bestowed on her by Venier, recognizing her positive role in his life. Lastly, unlike Idilia, she is also a model daughter, for she is her father’s “dear daughter” (“cara figlia,” 6.6.4) and “wise daughter” (“saggia figlia,” 6.15.1), in that she longs for him and his wisdom,171 and she carries out his will even though she would rather not. As noted earlier, Erina unveils to Venier the origins and past and future history of Venice; her voice resounds authoritatively for much of canto 7 (7.1–47), outstripping the number of lines that Meandra utters in the poem. Erina explains the history of Venice with the help of images decorating her castle; she is in effect the link between historical knowledge and human beings, much as Marinella is the source of Venice’s own “story” of the Fourth Crusade. Erina’s crucial role is conveyed by the number of command forms that Marinella utilizes in canto 7, ostensibly directed to Venier but implicitly to any reader. The use of ekphrasis172 is not unprecedented in epic poems, but Marinella’s originality emerges here as well in assigning the device to a female voice. In the Aeneid, it is Aeneas (a man, and the poem’s namesake) who describes Juno’s temple in Carthage and the doors to Apollo’s temple.173 In Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, the third-person narrator describes Armida’s palace to the implied reader.174 In both Orlando furioso and Floridoro, no ex-

170. See 5.62.2, 5.64.1, 5.81.7, 5.97.1, 21.3.3, 21.16.1, 21.23.1, 22.12.2, 22.38.7, and 22.58.2. 171. See her reaction after his image disappears when she wakes up from her dream: 6.8–9. Panizza has incisively noted that “the figure of Fileno [Erina’s father] could well be a tribute to Marinella’s own father.” Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” 14 n. 33. Fileno is indeed described as steeped in science. See 5.81, 6.50 and 53. 172. In its simplest sense, ekphrasis is a “description of a work of art” through words. See William H. Race, “Ekphrasis,” in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 320. 173. Virgil, Eneide 1.446–93 and 6.20–30. 174. Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Turin: Einaudi, 1971), 16.2–6.

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Maria Galli Stampino ample of ekphrasis occurs, but anticipating Marinella’s use of Erina, we do find episodes wherein one woman reveals the future to another (Melissa to Bradamante, and the queen to Risamante).175 The seeming similarity of this element fades when one considers that in both instances the emphasis is on progeny (something wholly missing in Enrico); additionally, Marinella has a woman predict the future to a man, indicating that the former possesses more historical knowledge than the latter, and therefore more authority. Furthermore, Erina also acts as Venier’s guide in an overview of the world (21.41–62 and 22.1–60, 64–72). Marinella does not break new ground by having a female character carry out this important role. In Orlando furioso 15.10–37, Ariosto has the enchantress Logistilla order that Andronica and Sofrosina accompany Astolfo on his trip from India; Andronica explains what they see on their sea trip (Orlando furioso 15.19–35). In Gerusalemme liberata Carlo and Ubaldo board Fortuna’s ship in order to reach Armida’s palace and free the crusader Rinaldo from her prison of love (15.1–66). Here the female guide is not fully human, as she is the embodiment of an abstract idea. Additionally, the trip in Gerusalemme liberata is profoundly different from that taken by Erina and Venier. While Carlo and Ubaldo depart from Gaza, where the crusading army is gathered, and proceed to a mysterious and indefinite place, in Enrico Erina’s “shining chariot” (“carro lucente,” 21.26.2) departs her mysteriously located palace and then reaches then-known lands. This offers Marinella the opportunity to describe and name various seas, rivers, regions, and cities, indirectly casting the imperial glance of Venice over the entire world—through the eyes of a woman, no less. This dream of empire might explain the reference to the New World to be “discovered” in the future and to the Spanish empire that will rule over it. This feature, too, has an important precedent, namely the famous passage in Orlando furioso 15.21–26, where the Christianization of America and the establishing of an empire under Charles V (15.25.1–4) are explicitly mentioned. Marinella’s reference takes up far fewer lines (21.62.5–8); while it is strategically placed at the end of a canto, its ambiguity is underscored by her linking the Roman Empire to the Spanish one. What appears on the surface as positive turns out to be negative, since the entire poem is an indictment of the eastern Roman (i.e., Byzantine) Empire and a glorification of the Venetian republic. The reference to the Spanish empire is also linked to an element embed175. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Cesare Segre, 2 vols. (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1976), 3.7– 74; Fonte, Floridoro, 3.40–69.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m ded in the ideology of the epic: its prediction of the future. Erina articulates this theme within the context of her remarks on the history of Venice. 7.46. “You can know the future, the great deeds, palms of fame, large wealth, and well-regarded actions of these royal souls from the past, just like we know that the day rises to happiness if Dawn offers pleasure to flowers, to fruits, and to the world when she shines with luminous clothes and bejeweled ornaments.”176 The simple simile in the second half of the octave should not deceive us about the important claim contained in the first: through her knowledge of the past (knowledge that, we will recall, she discloses to a Venetian male warrior) Erina can foresee the future.177 Marinella hints at her own knowledge of the past and her ability—in her own time—to predict a bright future for Venice. Not only can Erina predict the future, she can set straight mistakes made long before and canonized in common knowledge: indeed, she corrects no less an authority than Homer in the Odyssey. In canto 21, during Erina and Venier’s flight over Europe, she remarks that 21.33. “After that wise man [Ulysses] took his revenge on the greedy Procians and crushed some evil women servants, he again unfurled his wide sails to the winds and put his ships back in the water. He was eager to see people, customs, and countries, so that’s what he chose: he sailed over the sparkling ocean waves, and he got to know other rites and other peoples. 34. “He didn’t interrupt his flight even when he saw a man approaching whose back was weighted down by a large sieve. But he stopped his oars as he realized that he was at the end of his journey, as Tiresias had predicted. There he offered incense and sacrifices to heaven, which had helped him on his momentous trip. His noble heart checked his pride and curiosity in Germany, as they had been satisfied. 176. 7.46. Da le passate, le future cose / Conoscer puoi di questi animi regi / Le magnanime imprese, e le famose / Palme, l’ampie ricchezze, e i fatti egregi, / Come da l’Alba se con luminose / Vesti risplende, e con gemmati fregi, / Conosciam, che felice il giorno sorge, / À fiori, à frutti, al mondo piacer porge. 177. Following Dante’s example of predicting what is future vis-à-vis the plot but what is past with respect to the time of writing, in 7.49–67 Erina “foresees” Venice’s future until the seventeenth century.

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Maria Galli Stampino 35. “There he built a city, and he lived happily, and that’s the truth. When he scorned being alive, laden with years, virtue, and praise, he was raised up among the gods, and was given temples and altars; perhaps now he enjoys his glory. However, many say that he died in beautiful Penelope’s arms in his old age.”178 Marinella seizes yet another opportunity to exhibit her knowledge of the canonical texts by summarizing the conclusion of the Odyssey; at the same time she has Erina propose an alternative version of Ulysses’ last voyage, one that is less domestic (and domesticated) and that, as the end of octave 35 states, contradicts directly what “molti” (“many”) state. Erina’s authority is such that she can rewrite the ending of a canonical epic despite the objections that “many” would raise. Ultimately, though, Erina does not have the power to change Venier’s fate: she accedes to his wish (and to her father’s command, 6.4–5) to return to the crusading camp. Her last words wish death away from him, and then, as Marinella simply puts it, “he left the noble nymph, turning his back on that building, friendly to his life” (“Lascia la nobil Ninfa, e volge il tergo / A quel di sua salute amico albergo,” 22.78.7–8). Readers are left to surmise Erina’s future in her secluded palace; however, her disappearance from the plot is a return to the occupations that Venier’s arrival disrupted, namely hunting and observing nature. The trajectory of her presence in Enrico is well defined and fully justified, contrary to Idilia’s. The last female counterpart to a male role in Enrico is Eudocia, a Byzantine enchantress who is as dear to Alessio as a daughter would be and also Mirtillo’s beloved. Since Marinella assigns a man (Esone) the negative role that enchantresses carry out in Orlando furioso and Gerusalemme liberata, Eudocia is a far more ordinary character for most of the poem: she is conven-

178. 21.33. Poscia, ch’aspra vendetta il saggio prese / De’ Proci avari, e l’empie serve oppresse, / Di nuovo à venti l’ampie Vele stese; / L’agili Navi in mar pronto rimesse: / Varie genti, e costumi, altro paese / Di veder desioso anchora elesse, / Varcò de l’Ocean l’onde spumanti, / Novi riti conobbe, altri habitanti. 34. Ne fermò il volo suo, che venir scorse / Huom, cui gravava un grande Vaglio il dorso, / Quivi il Remo fermò, ch’esser s’accorse, / Come disse Tiresia, il fin del corso. / Quivi gl’incensi, e i sacrifici porse / Al Ciel, che in tanta via li diè soccorso: / Pagò ne la Germania il nobil petto / Frenò l’audacia, e’l curioso affetto. 35. Quivi egli una Cittade eresse, e quivi / Visse felice, e tale il vero s’ode; / Ma poi, che disdegnò restar tra vivi, / D’etade, e di virtù carco, e di lode. / Hebbe tempi, & altari, e tra li Divi / Raccolto; hor di sua gloria forse gode: / Ma molti son, che dicon d’anni pieno, / Spirasse l’alma à Penelope in seno.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m 179

tionally beautiful, she observes Mirtillo from the ramparts (13.9–10), and then she celebrates with him after battle (13.61–62). It is only after Esone’s death, Alessio’s escape from Constantinople with his court (including Eudocia), and the news that the emperor’s palace has fallen, that Eudocia’s gift for divination comes into play. Marinella explicitly mentions that she has learned it from Esone (25.46), but her attempt at divination is in stark contrast with her demeanor, appearance, and behavior. 25.47. Now she wanted to see if she (like he) could find out the ending to those events, nothing short of the conclusion of the great war brought on by the Latin camp and what heaven had arranged. She quickly moved her beauty from there to a dark and scary place, where people in pain used to offer eternal rest to their weak bodies. 48. Though scornful, she moved her snowy white foot among dark tombs, gathering bones off dead corpses and wrapping them in a short tie with magical notations on it.180 Like the first line of octave 48, the opening of the spell scene is rife with contradictory terms that Marinella juxtaposes for the purpose of having Eudocia’s beauty, love, and innocence stand out more strongly (see in particular 25.51.1). Her success in calling Pluto forth from the underworld yields horrible news for Byzantium as well as for Eudocia personally: in a lengthy firstperson narrative (25.56–66), the infernal spirit gives details about Enrico’s victory and Mirtillo’s defeat and humiliating future. Eudocia’s reaction is vastly different from Clelia’s and Areta’s: she is not dumbfounded or forgiving, but instead she expresses her frustration. 25.70. “Mirtillo, these are the fruits and flowers of our sweet but unlucky love: escapes, shame, insults, and wrongs! In the past our love 179. She is introduced as the woman whom “Alessio ha quasi in figlia, / Bella, vezzosa, e vaga à maraviglia” (“Alessio almost holds as a daughter; she is wonderfully pretty, beautiful, and admirable,” 2.75.7–8). There was a historical Eudocia, daughter to Alexius III and betrothed to Alexius Mourtzouphlus; see Queller and Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 129, 189. 180. 25.47. Hor provar vuol, s’ella, com’egli, possa / Il fin saper de le successe cose, / Non men, che’l fin di tanta guerra mossa / Dal Latin campo, e quanto il Ciel dispose. / Tosto la sua beltà di là rimossa, / Portolla in parti oscure, e spaventose; / Ove solean l’addolorate genti / Porger riposo eterno à i corpi algenti. 48. Sdegnosetta; ma bella il pie di neve / Move tra l’atre Tombe, e l’ossa accoglie / De gli estinti cadaveri, & in breve / Fascia con note magiche raccoglie.

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Maria Galli Stampino gave us joy and comfort! Are these the victories and the true honors that we are handed, soul of my heart?”181 This outburst, too, is marked by verbal juxtapositions, namely the positive qualities usually associated with “fruits” (“frutti”) and “flowers” (“fiori”) and all the consequences negating a promising love. Eudocia’s words express what she feels for herself and for her now lost city; though she is a Byzantine, there seems to be some sympathy for her on Marinella’s part, a proud citizen in her own right. Ultimately, Eudocia is characterized far more as a woman in love than as an enchantress; indeed, Marinella builds this episode bracketing the spell with the language of Petrarchan love lyric. Marinella thus describes Eudocia’s behavior after her emotional outburst: 25.72. She added loud sighs to her groans, then like a madwoman she picked up a sword to kill herself; she pricked her chest, but her tired arm felt repentance, so that her anger didn’t reach inside her white ivory; it barely hurt her tender snow, but a little vermilion was shed, looking like roses among white lilies. 73. A burning ruby together with white pearls would be a base analogy for her beautiful chest pricked and wounded by that beautiful hand, once the noble dwelling place of a sweet love.182 Ivory, snow, and lilies are all recurrent metaphors in the Italian lyrical tradition for the whiteness of a (female) beloved’s skin; Marinella cleverly utilizes them while changing the referent of the roses from the lips to the blood shed during Eudocia’s aborted suicide attempt. The first three lines of octave 73 attract readers’ attention precisely to Marinella’s bold handling of the language of lyrical poetry, in case they might have missed its recurrent use in the previous stanza.

181. 25.70.1–6. Questi sono, o Mirtillo, i frutti, e i fiori, / Fugghe, ignominie, vituperi, e torti. / De’ dolci si; ma sfortunati amori; / Onde havessimo già gioie, e conforti? / Queste son le vittorie, e i veri honori, / Anima del mio cor, ch’à noi fien porti? 182. 25.72. À suoi lamenti alti sospiri aggiunse, / Indi, qual forsennata il ferro prese / Per uccidersi, e’l sen sdegnosa punse; / Ma lasso il braccio pentimento rese, / Che dentro il bianco avorio ira non giunse, / E la tenera neve à pena offese; / Ma però un poco i bei color vermigli / Sparse, e rose parean tra bianchi gigli. 73. Rubino acceso à bianche perle unito / Vil saria paragone à quel bel petto, / Da quella bella man punto, e ferito.

A S i n g u l a r Ve n e t i a n E p i c P o e m This episode ends with a unique octave in which Marinella seems to apologize for devoting so much space to Eudocia, a secondary character. 25.74. Is it not right that the tears, moans, sighs, and words of a woman stop me here, if they can stop the steps of the sun along the path of the sky for a long while? They will not persuade me to avoid turning my song to the heavy burden of a grave business: the business that weighed down on her dear beloved and all the others that were surrounded in the castle.183 Marinella insists that the tools belonging to a woman—“the tears, moans, sighs, and words” (“il pianto, / I gemiti, i sospiri, e le parole,” 25.74.1–2)—are not weak and ineffective, for they can prolong the duration of a day, and therefore they deserve her attention in the poem. Furthermore, by dubbing Eudocia “a woman” (“una Donna”) and Mirtillo “her dear beloved” (“suo caro Amante”), Marinella emphasizes the universal character of their predicament. This is especially remarkable given that Mirtillo is one of the crusaders’ fiercest and most traitorous enemies; it is thanks to Eudocia that he becomes more fully human. The number and variety of female characters in Enrico, as well as some of their individual traits, ultimately mark the distance between Marinella and her canonical predecessors. Her gift for creating women whose behavior goes beyond accepted roles in her time, her skill in balancing her devotion to her city with that to her fellow women, her aptitude in expressing both in a rhetorically dexterous manner, and her talent in showing her sympathy for these characters and in generating the same in her implied readers characterize Enrico throughout, making it an incisive pro-woman (or protofeminist) text. A N OT E ON T H E T EX T

A twenty-seven-canto, 2,471-octave poem defies the patience of any twenty-first-century translator and reader. In selecting the passages to translate, I have followed criteria largely linked to the female characters delineated above, without omitting various obligatory epic moments, namely

183. 25.74. Giusto non è, che d’una Donna il pianto, / I gemiti, i sospiri, e le parole / Fermino me, se pon fermare alquanto / Nel sentiero del Cielo i passi al Sole? / Far non potran, ch’io non rivolga il Canto / De’ gravi affari à la pesante mole, / Che del suo caro Amante il dorso preme, / Qual nel castello è chiuso, e gli altri insieme.

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Maria Galli Stampino battles, the “catalogue” of warriors, and single combats. I have also striven to give a sense of how the plot proceeds; additionally, I have summarized the passages omitted from the text. Establishing the text is relatively straightforward, as the only contemporary printing of Enrico is by Ghirardo Imberti in Venice in 1635. I have worked on a microfilm of the copy held at the Beineke Library at Yale University. I have also consulted the copy of the 1844 edition held at Duke University’s Perkins Library, which does not differ substantively from the original printing.184 I have limited interventions in the original text in the hope of preserving its seventeenth-century flavor. For example, I have copied the punctuation faithfully, and have maintained the use of “ij” when “ii” (or even “i”) would be common in contemporary Italian. I have, however, introduced the typographical differentiation between the letters “u” and “v,” where the original printing vacillates between them; I have normalized capital vowels bearing an accent, which often (but not regularly) appear as followed by an apostrophe in the original; lastly, I have standardized the inconsistent use of the grapheme “ƒ” for “s” in front of a consonant. The register Marinella utilizes is appropriate to the heroic poem she writes: a high-register, highly legible Tuscan-based Italian. I have shied away from colloquialisms but I have not sought to use too overwrought a language. I have explained obscure references and turns of phrases in the notes. Furthermore, I have introduced in the translation the punctuation that we commonly use in formal writing; I have tried not to break down Marinella’s long sentences too much, yet I have striven to preserve intelligibility above all. Redundancy is typical of seventeenth-century writing, and Enrico is no exception; I have therefore retained word repetitions that are in the original. When encountering geographic names, I have given the English equivalent of those that are commonly known but I have left the originals for the more obscure names, which are explained in footnotes. I have used the English names of deities (e.g., Jove, Dawn) and characters of widely read classic texts (e.g., Ulysses, Aeneas), but I have kept the Italian names of all Enrico characters; this allows them to be identified as characters in this particular poem rather than as the actual people who took part in the Fourth Crusade or as characters in other poems. Lastly, I have preserved gender references throughout to deities, embodied natural phenomena, and above all to Venice itself. 184. Volume 362 of the National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints lists a printing of Enrico in 1845, with no press mentioned; it specifices that a copy is held at Harvard University. I suspect that this is a later imprint of the 1844 Antonelli printing, but I have been unable to verify it in person.

VOLUME EDITOR’S BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s B i b l i o g r a p h y ———. L’Enrico ovvero Bisanzio acquistato. Venice: Giuseppe Antonelli, 1844. ———. The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men. Ed. Anne Dunhill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Ovid. Heroides and Amores. Trans. Grant Showerman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977. ———. Metamorphoses. Ed. Frank Justus Miller. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia città nobilissima et singolare . . . corretta, emendata, e più di un terzo di cose nuove ampliata dal M. R. D. Giovanni Stringa. Venetia: Altobello Salicato, 1604. Sarrocchi, Margherita. Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderberg, King of Epirus. Trans. and ed. Rinaldina Russell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Tasso, Torquato. “Discorsi del poema eroico.” In Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali, 487–729. Milan: Ricciardi, 1959. ———. “Discorsi dell’arte poetica e in particolare sopra il poema eroico.” In Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali, 349–410. Milan: Ricciardi, 1959. ———. Gerusalemme Liberata. Ed. Lanfranco Caretti. Turin: Einaudi, 1971. ———. Jerusalem Delivered. Ed. and trans. Ralph Nash. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987. Virgil. Eneide. Trans. Rosa Calzecchi Onesti. Milan: Mondadori, 1971. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend. Trans. William Granger Ryan. 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

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Altieri Biagi, Maria Luisa, Clemente Mazzotta, Angela Chiantera, and Paola Altieri. Medicina per le donne nel Cinquecento: Testi di Giovanni Marinello e di Girolamo Mercurio. Turin: Strenna UTET, 1992. Auzzas, Ginetta. “Le nuove esperienze della narrativa: il romanzo.” In Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, 1:249–95. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1984. Beeching, Jack. The Galleys at Lepanto. New York: Scribner’s, 1982. Belloni, Antonio. Il Seicento. Milan: Vallardi, 1929. Benedetti, Laura. “Saintes et guerrières: L’héroïsme féminin dans l’œuvre de Lucrezia Marinella.” Écritures 1 (2005): 94–109. Benson, Pamela Joseph, and Victoria Kirkham. “Introduction.” In Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. Benson and Kirkham, 1–13. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Bicheno, Hugh. Crescent and Cross: The Battle of Lepanto 1571. London: Cassell, 2003. Bradford, Ernle. The Great Betrayal: Constantinople 1204. London: Hoddon and Stroughton, 1967. Cavanagh, Sheila. “Romancing the Epic: Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania and Literary Traditions.” In Approaches to the Anglo and American Female Epic, 1621–1982, ed. Bernard Schweizer, 19–36. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cox, Virginia. “Fiction 1560–1650.” In A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. Leti-

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s B i b l i o g r a p h y zia Panizza and Sharon Wood, 52–64. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy.” In Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari dalla Society for Italian Studies, ed. Zygmunt Baranski, Gino Bedani, Anna Laura Lepschy, and Brian Richardson, 134–45. London: Society for Italian Studies, 1997. Cracco, Giorgio. “Dandolo, Enrico.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 32:450–58. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1986. Croce, Benedetto. Storia dell’età barocca in Italia. Bari: Laterza, 1957. Cropper, Elizabeth. “Life on the Edge: Artemisia Gentileschi, Famous Woman Painter.” In Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, ed. Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann, 262–81. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001. DeBellis, Daniela. “Attacking Sumptuary Laws in Seicento Venice.” In Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza, 227–42. Oxford, UK: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. Del Negro, Piero. “Forme e istituzioni del discorso politico veneziano.” In Storia della cultura veneta: Il Seicento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, 2:407– 36. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1984. Dionisotti, Carlo. “La guerra d’Oriente nella letteratura veneziana del Cinquecento.” In Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, 163–82. Turin: Einaudi, 1967. ———. “Lepanto nella cultura italiana del tempo.” Lettere italiane 23, no. 4 (1971): 473–92. The Ducal Palace in Venice. Venice: Ferrari, 1956. Finucci, Valeria. “Moderata Fonte and the Genre of Women’s Chivalric Romances.” In Moderata Fonte, Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance, ed. Valeria Finucci, trans. Julia Kisacky, 1–43. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Finotti, Fabio. “Women Writers in Renaissance Italy.” In Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, ed. Benson and Kirkham, 121–45. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Fogolari, Gino. The Ducal Palace of Venice. Milan: Treves, n.d. Godfrey, John. 1204: The Unholy Crusade. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Gullino, Giuseppe. “Erizzo, Francesco.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 43:162–67. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1993. Günsberg, Maggie. “ ‘Donna liberata’? The Portrayal of Women in the Italian Renaissance Epic.” The Italianist 7 (1987): 7–35. Harness, Kelley. Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Haskins, Susan. “Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? New Documents Concerning Her Life (Part One).” Nouvelles de la république des Lettres 25, no. 1 (2006): 80–128. ———. “Vexatious Litigant, or the Case of Lucrezia Marinella? (Part Two).” Nouvelles de la république des Lettres 26, nos. 1–2 (2007): 203–30. Huse, Norbert, and Wolfgang Wolters. The Art of Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, 1460–1590. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Kolsky, Stephen. “Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi: An Early Seventeenth-Century Feminist Controversy.” Modern Language Review 96 (2001): 973–89.

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G L O S S A RY O F P R I N C I PA L C H A R A C T E R S

Alessio (1.28, 1.46, 1.49–51, 1.54): Legitimate ruler of Byzantium, dethroned by the other Alessio and Mirtillo. He is Isaccio’s son and has a very limited role in the plot. Alessio (4.49, 4.52, 9.3–4, 9.11, 10.16–17, 15.1–5, 18.19, 18.40, 18.48–62, 20.1–23, 25.3–42): Illegitimate ruler of Byzantium and its empire, against whom the crusaders fight. He flees Byzantium under siege. Araspe (16.45–46): Fierce Byzantine warrior, killed in single combat by Rainiero, whom he severely wounds. Ardelio (9.14–17, 9.23–29, 12.39, 15.6, 15.8, 15.52–58): Son to the queen of Argos and Corinth. He is entrusted to Meandra and made prisoner by the crusaders. He is rescued by Meandra, Dione, and Ernesto. Areta (17.67–95, 18.1–47): Byzantine woman and Corradino’s wife. She bemoans his death and devotes her widowhood to burying slain family members. Baldovino (Baldwin) of Flanders (4.53, 25.64, 27.18–24, 27.94): One of the principal crusading knights. Strong and courageous, he is crowned emperor at the fall of Byzantium. Bonifatio (Boniface) of Monferrato (4.53, 8.115, 18.17, 25.65–66): One of the principal crusading knights. He amasses much booty from vanquished enemy fighters and is merciful toward them. Claudia (8.103, 24.26–49): Virgin crusading warrior, endowed with effective archery skills. She dies fighting Meandra in single combat. She is both Meandra’s and Emilia’s crusading counterpart. Clelia (4.63, 4.66–85, 5.2–4, 5.31–56): Noblewoman from Cyprus and Lucillo’s wife; fearful of his sea voyage to Byzantium. She turns to stone embracing him when she finds his corpse on the seashore. Corradino (17.66–95, 18.1–41): Byzantine warrior and Areta’s husband; he is ordered by Alessio into battle, and killed by Plautio when he tries to strike Bonifatio. Criso (16.26–98): Hermit who finds and nurses Rainiero back to health after his fight with Araspe. He also reassures him of the crusaders’ eventual success. Dione (15.6–69, 15.85–86): Ernesto’s companion and fellow knight of Meandra;

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Glossary of Principal Characters from Corinth. He accompanies Meandra on the sortie that rescues Ardelio from the crusading camp and cries over Ernesto’s fate. Elpidio (1.72–74, 4.3–4, 4.10–18, 4.53): Wise crusader, whose advice Enrico seeks and trusts. Emilia (8.90–96, 8.113–14, 27.52–54, 27.57–65, 27.87–88): Byzantine virgin warrior, whose skills with bow and arrow are unsurpassed. She kills Venier and Plautio and then attempts to kill Enrico, but a celestial intervention turns her arrows back. After the fall of Byzantium she retreats to her woods. Enrico Dandolo (1.13–15, 1.27, 1.29, 1.46, 1.51, 1.60–69, 1.77, 3.4–13, 3.37.39, 3.104–5, 4.2, 4.5–6, 4.8–9, 5.53, 8.31, 8.66–70, 8.118–19, 9.72–73, 12.102–3, 13.75–76, 14.11–15, 14.63–64, 19.1–8, 19.11–18, 27.59–68, 27.90–94): Doge of Venice and leader of the crusading fleet and army. He is wise and courageous as well as pious and undaunted. Erina (5.62–100, 6.1–70, 7.1–72, 21.1–62, 22.1–64): Virginal half-nymph who rescues Venier and reveals to him Venice’s past and future as well as his own future. She reluctantly allows him to return to Byzantium because her father has commanded her to do so. Ernesto (15.10–71): Fellow knight of Meandra, from Corinth, who dies at the end of the sortie that rescues Ardelio from the crusading camp. Esone (8.35–42, 8.45–61, 10.1–78, 11.14–16, 11.82–84, 19.57–70, 19.101, 19.111, 20.1–4, 20.7–9, 20.14–16): Magician and Alessio’s counselor. He utilizes evil spirits to try to repel the crusaders and save Byzantium. Left powerless, he jumps into a fire to his death. Eudocia (25.42–74): Byzantine woman and Mirtillo’s beloved. With Alessio she flees the city under siege. Curious to learn Mirtillo’s fate, she conjures hellish spirits only to find, to her dismay, how the war will end. Fileno (6.1–9): Erina’s father. He appears to her in a dream to reveal her lineage and his wishes pertaining to Venier. Giacinto (4.17–37, 9.74–99, 11.21–33, 11.71–92, 27.25–29): Crusading knight who scouts Byzantium to report back to Enrico’s camp after the first pitched battle. He then fights Oronte in single combat before saving Idilia from death, and falling in love with her. In battle he is fierce and merciless. Gilberto (15.6, 15.8, 15.49–50): King of Scotland and crusading knight who captures Ardelio. He is killed by Meandra during Ardelio’s rescue. Giovanissa (22.36–45, 25.64, 27.16–17, 27.55–86): King of Mysia, traditionally an enemy of Byzantium who nevertheless comes to Mirtillo’s help, but to no avail. He flees, plotting his revenge. Idilia (10.18–79, 11.21–70): Virgin betrothed to the crusading king Roberto. She is made prisoner by Esone and is to be sacrificed to hell’s ghosts; she is rescued by Giacinto, with whom she falls in love. On the way back to the crusading camp she gets lost and spends the rest of her life with farmers in the countryside. Isaccio (1.28, 1.46): Legitimate ruler of Byzantium and its empire. He is overthrown by Alessio twice, and his cause is defended and advanced by the crusading army. Lucillo (4.60–86, 5.2–4, 5.19–22, 5.27–30, 5.40–44, 5.49–55): Son of the king

Glossary of Principal Characters of Cyprus and Clelia’s husband. He perishes in a shipwreck on his way to fight alongside the crusaders, and his body reaches Cyprus’s shore. Meandra (9.12–22, 12.39–44, 15.5–10, 15.28–69, 15.87, 24.34–49): Courageous Byzantine woman warrior, niece of the queen of Argos and Corinth. She rescues her nephew Ardelio from the crusading camp and dies fighting Claudia in single combat. Mirtillo (1.49, 1.54, 1.60, 2.75–79, 9.50–51, 13.7–10, 13.16–21, 13.28–31, 13.41– 46, 14.57–58, 15.28–41, 15.73, 20.20, 20.24–26, 25.57–66, 27.1, 27.11–15, 27.57–59, 27.69–80): Byzantine military leader, in love with Eudocia. After Alessio’s flight, he is elevated to ruler of the city. He flees Byzantium at the end of the final battle, but his eventual capture and death are foreseen in the poem. Oronte (9.7–11, 9.64–97, 18.9, 24.20–33, 27.1–12, 27.30–53): Fighter from Hyrcania on the Byzantine side. He is cruel and merciless but also courageous; he has faith in nothing but his fighting ability. He battles Giacinto and then Roberto in single combat. After inflicting many casualities on the crusaders in the crucial battle, he is killed by Plautio. Plautio (8.103, 18.13–17, 27.34–54): Crusading knight from Vicenza, courageous and fearless. He enters the walls of Byzantium and sets the city on fire. He kills Corradino in battle, and after fighting Oronte he is killed by one of Emilia’s arrows. Rainiero (8.105, 16.35–38, 16.46–98, 27.16): Crusading knight who fights and kills Araspe. Severely wounded, he is nursed back to health by the hermit Criso. He recounts to him an apparition he had while on the brink of death of a lion (Saint Mark) and a virgin (Venice) appealing to the Virgin Mary for support in peace and war. Roberto (10.18): King, crusading knight, and Idilia’s betrothed husband. He replaces Giacinto in single combat against Oronte; when Giacinto returns, Roberto does not want to yield to him so they both fight Oronte together. Venier (4.53–60, 4.65, 5.17–18, 5.57–100, 6.13–70, 7.1–72, 21.1–62, 22.1– 64): Venetian crusading knight who is charged with sailing to Cyprus to gather more troops. Shipwrecked on the way to Byzantium, he is rescued by Erina. After pleading with her, he is returned to the crusading camp before the final battle, in which Emilia kills him with one of her arrows.

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Enrico; or Byzantium Conquered: A Heroic Poem



TO THE MOST SERENE PRINCE FRANCESCO ERIZZO1 AND MOST SERENE REPUBLIC OF VENICE. Printed with the permission of the authorities and privilege in Venice in 1635 by Ghirardo Imberti.

To the Readers I was searching my mind for an action by a valorous captain that could celebrate, ennoble, and sweeten the nature of my rough and lowly style with its magnitude and excellence. Among the many uncommon subjects that came to mind was the sublime and most notable feat by Enrico Dandolo, prince of Venice,2 when he stormed and conquered the very famous city of Constantinople, out of which came the subjugation of most of the Eastern Empire. This is undoubtedly the most magnificent, glorious, difficult, and dangerous feat ever carried out by any king or valiant captain. It is truly a feat that can make my poem illustrious and worthy of heroic majesty, through its sublime and splendid nature. I aimed to fashion my poem according to Aristotle’s directions in his Poetics, without straying far from Homer, whom Aristotle called the living and true ideal of heroic poetry. If anyone believes that I have followed modern poets in some respect, he will see where I gleaned my inventions if he reads the first true sources of Greek and Latin poetry;3 he will then find that thanks are due to the very first models, as we read in the first books of the Metaphysics. Aristotle prescribes that one single action should be the soul of the poem. Following this dictum, one action by this very fine captain was selected by me as the foundation and main subject matter of my poem: his subjection of old Byzantium, later called Constantinople after the name of its great restorer. As the same philosopher advocates, I resolved to tie other 1. Francesco Erizzo was the ninety-eighth doge of Venice; he ruled between 1631 and 1646. 2. The forty-first doge of Venice, who ruled from 1192 to 1205. 3. Marinella makes here what Virginia Cox calls her “hubristic claim” of not owing anything to “modern poets,” when Tasso and Sarrocchi are clearly models for her poem. See Cox, “Fiction 1560–1650,” in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 61.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d episodes and digressions to the main action in such a manner that one cannot easily remove a part without jumbling the whole. The same harmony and enjoyment come from the composition of the main action together with digressions as would arise from the sight of an animal that is perfect in all its parts, as the Philosopher says. Yet this is not the place to talk about poetics, so I will move on to summarize the plot to my wise and prudent readers. The holy pope had called for a crusade to prevent the infidels from troubling and burdening Christianity, and also to recover the holy sepulcher of Christ. From everywhere princes, dukes, counts, knights, and barons vied to come forth to carry out such an honorable operation; they gathered in the venerable city of Venice. For the same reason the most prudent prince Dandolo, set on fire by celestial love, had prepared a formidable fleet of unrivaled expense. The fleet included a wonderful multitude of galleys, ships, and other sorts of vessels that were terrifying for their number and size no less than for the amount of weapons and military equipment with which they were laden. Prince Dandolo himself boarded this fleet with a great multitude of nobles and subjects. Baldovino count of Flanders, Bonifatio marquis of Monferrato, Luigi count of Bles, and other princes and religious authorities left from the shores of the Adriatic, but they did not go far: they heard the cries of the son of Isaccio, the emperor of Constantinople, who had been deprived of the imperial seat and of the light of his eyes by his brother, Alessio Angelo Comneno. Dandolo and the other princes were vanquished by pity and mercy, and they returned Isaccio and his son to their previous position after removing the traitorous brother. Having carried out such a commendable deed, they again set sail for Palestine. When they heard that Mirtillo, nicknamed Murcifle,4 had killed the young emperor with a string and poison, again Dandolo and his companions disembarked in Scutari,5 where they fought a terrifying battle with the Greeks. The city was placed under siege. Many assaults were carried out on it by land and sea. The army was pushed back, tricks were overcome, enemy fires were put out, traps were avoided, the unassailable heights of the enemy fortresses of Thrace6 were vanquished. After countless sweat, trouble, labor, and setbacks suffered by such a glorious captain and powerful army, the acquisition of the greatest city in Europe revealed victorious Dandolo to be the supreme wonder in the eyes of God and the world. 4. A reference to Alexius Mourtzouphlus, that is, “endowed with bushy eyebrows,” who killed the rightful emperor, Alexius, and took power over the Eastern Empire. 5. Modern-day Üsküdar, a suburb of Istanbul on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. 6. Thrace is an area north of the Bosphorus (the body of water that links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and that divides the European from the Asian sides of Istanbul), hence identified with Constantinople and the powers who had their seat there.

CANTO 1 AND SUMMARIES OF CANTOS 2–3

S U M M A RY

Enrico launched thousands of ships to go to Palestine. Meanwhile, Alessio stole the throne from his brother, who had been faithful to him. Alessio’s brother’s son cried and yelped, but once in power the cruel and bitter duke Alessio killed him [his own brother].1 Captain Enrico disliked these events to such a degree that he wanted to head back to Greece [Byzantium]. He consulted his army, and they chose him as the leader who would give everybody rules to which to adhere. 1

Humble cithara, you dared sing about the weapons of heaven, the high queen,2 and holy heroes.3 Now transform such fire and Mars’s weapon into a superb trumpet, and with passion and furor sing about the great captain who with pious zeal defended what is right and gathered praise and just deserve.

1. Alexius Angelus was brother-in-law of the German ruler Philip of Swabia and son to “the former Byzantine Emperor Isaac II, who had been treacherously overthrown and blinded by his own brother, also named Alexius, in April 1195.” See Thomas F. Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 146. In 1201 he managed to escape from Alexius III’s nephew’s (himself named Alexius) watch, making his way to Germany. There he met Boniface of Monferrat, titular leader of the crusade, who was sympathetic to his cause, even though he “had been born before his father became emperor in 1185, so it was generally thought that he had no legitimate claim to the throne” (Madden, ibid.). In 1203 Alexius Angelus convinced the crusaders to help restore him to the Byzantine throne, rewarding them richly and returning “the Byzantine church under obedience to Rome” (Madden, ibid., 147). 2. That is, the Virgin Mary, Christ’s mother. This is presumably a reference to Marinella’s own La vita di Maria Vergine Imperatrice dell’universo (Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of the Universe) of 1602. 3. The reference is to epic poems with a religious topic, such as Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d Sing about how, in the moment of victory and glory, he bestowed the kingdom of Thrace4 to the undefeated Gaul.5 2

Muse, you inspire and dictate great praises from angelic crowds in heaven, so that beyond the eternal spheres you enjoy wearing an immortal crown of gold and jewels. Now inflame my soul, awaken my desires, and loosen what ties and stops my tongue, so that I can talk about the glory and the battles of the Venetian ruler with sublime song.6 3

Forgive me, Goddess, if I have written little until now, in prose or verse, to extol your obvious high merits. Forgive me if I tried to elicit human affections with my sweet song.7 Now I wish to bring famous deeds of my great land back from the distant past and to awaken great minds with these examples, so that they may pursue just work and glorious feats.8 4

Magnanimous Lion, you cast a shine of endless merits with your vast valor. Your dignified, loud roaring strikes unusual fear in Princes and Kings.9 Be-

4. Regarding Thrace, see “To the Reader,” note 6, above. “Thracians” is used to refer to the citizens of the Eastern Empire; see also note 73 to octave 55. 5. After the conquest of Byzantium, Baldovino (Baldwin) of Flanders was elected Latin emperor, with Venetian support, as Madden indicates (Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 177). From the beginning of her poem, Marinella gives the impression that Enrico Dandolo had the power to invest his French-speaking ally with the crown, which was not the case. 6. As Rinaldina Russell has pointed out, Marinella’s invocation here is closer to the cosmology in Dante’s Paradiso and to “Tasso’s Christianized muse” in Gerusalemme liberata 1.2. See “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” in Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus, ed. Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 39. 7. This is a puzzling assertion, given that eliciting human feelings was a core goal for writers in early modern Italy, and specifically most appropriate for epic poems, according to Torquato Tasso, a theoretical and practical point of reference for Marinella. See “Discorsi del poema eroico,” in Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959), 506–7, 537–38. 8. From the very beginning Marinella makes clear the pedagogical and exemplary nature and goals of her poem. She identifies with Venice immediately and acknowledges that the topic of this work differs from her previous ones. 9. The lion to whom Marinella refers here is the city of Venice itself as well as its patron saint, Mark the Evangelist, whose distinctive animal is prominently displayed on all Venetian flags

Canto 1 stow your presence onto my song, light my heart to these eminent feats with your valiant, feat-desiring spirit, so that my verse may be as worthy of you as your deeds and name are worthy. 5

Most Serene Erizzo, you freed Italy from war, pestilence,10 and danger; you opened the way to peace. You gained high honors for yourself.11 Now enjoy this smallest (but perhaps not unworthy) token of my desire, together with the unvanquished heroes whose counsel leads Adria’s kingdom,12 inextricably linked to the sea.13 6

High cries ascended from Christians all over, expressing great sorrow. The Moors14 and the untrustworthy Scythians15 were destroying homes, raiding coasts, pillaging cities, and laying waste everywhere. Almost the entire world was burned and destroyed. Through their strength and their cunning (see octave 26). Furthermore, the lion was regarded as the king of the jungle, and the pun on its roar marks its position of power and strength. A good overview of the presence of Saint Mark’s lion in Venice can be found in chapter 1 of Garry Wills, Venice: Lion City—The Religion of Empire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 27–36. Edward Muir provides a good example of the import of the patron saint for citizens: “Gabriele Fiamma, a fifteenth-century canon regular of San Marco, summarized the conventional Venetian attitude toward the cult when he said, ‘I was born a Venetian and live in this happy homeland, protected by the prayers and guardianship of Saint Mark, from whom that Most Serene Republic [i.e., Venice] acknowledges its greatness, its victories, and all its good fortune.’ ” See Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 91. 10. A reference to the plague of 1630–31 that felled about 30 percent of Venice’s population (see introduction). 11. Francesco Erizzo, the poem’s dedicatee and doge of Venice at the time of Enrico’s publication (1631–46). For more biographical and political information, see the entry by Giuseppe Gullino in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1993), 43:162–67. 12. That is, the Venetian senate. “Adria’s kingdom” designates an area that goes well beyond the Adriatic Sea, to which the city of Adria gave its name. Here and throughout the poem, it refers to the lands and seas subject to Venetian rule. 13. It is rather characteristic that the invocations at the beginning of an epic poem yield suddenly to the beginning to the plot. However, Enrico’s transition is more abrupt than most. 14. “Moor” is one of Marinella’s many designations for the Moslems who ruled over the Holy Land of Palestine—along with “Turk” (see octave 10). 15. Scythia is the classical name for an area in southern Russia from the Danube to the Don. In later times it became the generic name for the area north of the Black Sea. Marinella uses it to refer to the area inland from Constantinople, thus associating Orthodox Christians with Moslems in fighting against western Christians (i.e., Roman ones).

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d they had captured Jerusalem back, which had once been conquered and defended by Geoffrey of Bouillon.16 7

Peter17 cried in his holy palace, his heart sad and his brow furrowed by the hardships, damages, and insults that oppressed the Christian flock. But then he awoke his unvanquished and prompt wishes: great courage was needed against such evil. Therefore he called Christ’s faithful to war to offer some timely help to Christianity. 8

He asked and begged, and to his prayer he added the grace that leads souls to Heaven.18 He sent letters and messengers repeatedly, until each leader was willing to follow his wishes. Then the pious shepherd, whose soul was filled with zeal for his flock, went as far as to open the doors to Janus’s Temple to remove the unfaithful enemy from Palestine.19 9

Wearing his holy garment and surrounded by a holy crowd of the faithful, with his powerful hand he tore out that door, though it had been held in place by a hundred bars. He broke it up and scattered it around, with the sound of chains, and Furor (a quarrelsome, inhuman monster) was unleashed.20 The Father from on high [God the Father] started the horrible song of war, and set terror free.

16. In 1099, during the First Crusade (the topic of Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, Marinella’s unacknowledged exemplar for her poem). 17. “Peter” refers to the pope (in this case, Innocent III), as Peter was the apostle to whom Christ gave the responsibility of the Christian flock after his death. 18. This is a reference to the remission (forgiveness) of all sins promised to anyone who would join a crusade. 19. Janus’s temple doors in Roman times were open during war and closed during peace. We have here an early example of Marinella’s conflation of Roman and Christian symbols, customs, and designations, derived from medieval times when the papacy was explicitly considered the inheritor of the Roman Empire’s might and power (hence the designation of Holy Roman Empire). 20. Marinella embodies the fury of war in the monster Furor.

Canto 1 10

The great leader intoned the song of war from the fierce sound of rusty iron. He gave the sign to take the noble sign of Christ’s tomb away from the brutal Turks. An uproar started, and a voice was heard, going up to Heaven and descending to the underworld: everyone offered himself with happy heart and countenance, everyone was ready to take back what the enemy had taken away. 11

Such might have been the emotion and the clamor when Juno, upset and filled with cruel wishes, pushed, struck, broke, and opened the great doors of Janus’s pitiless temple using her lightning.21 By opening the enraged and angry door Furor was unleashed, and peace was banned. The young asked for weapons; the war songs of the trumpets asked for battle. 12

Italy, in fact all Europe, till then resignedly sitting and enjoying a troubled peace, became fired up that foul Mahomet’s daring rage should be destroyed. One could see everywhere subjects learning how to use weapons, and making themselves useful; Italy, Spain, France, and England bestowed arms on their leaders who in turn offered their wealth. 13

Among these worthy and famous heroes was Enrico, more illustrious and worthier than all the rest in fame, name, appearance, strength, famous deeds, and glorious feats. He gave courageous people hope for and confidence in a happy future. Perhaps he was the most notable among Adria’s sons in terms of knowledge, prudence, and wisdom.

21. A reference to the beginning of the war on Troy: Juno, upset at not having been chosen as the most beautiful goddess by Paris, was responsible for Helen’s abduction from Sparta by Paris’s hand and hence for the war between the Greek allies and Troy, as retold for example in Euripides’ tragedy Trojan Women.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 14

Glorified by thousands of honors, he was the leader of the Venetians. He ruled over the venerable Virgin of the sea,22 the coast, and the mainland with as much wisdom as piety. Consumed by the desire to devote his life to Christ as by fire, he deemed all other actions crazy. He hired smiths from all over, paying them a just salary, a fortune, or only love. 15

This he did so that a great host might be ready quickly, and that this force might be built to be strong, with craft and skill. Then it might remain undefeated, together with the Franks,23 their companions, and bring pain and tears to the enemy. Eager workers quickly and craftily ransacked open fields and thick dark woods to make oars and ropes and anything that the fleet needed. 16

Forests did not mind that their leafy, haughty canopy was cut back. In fact, they were happy to see this, and accepted that their high tops rested on humble grass. Trunks creaked under the strokes, the leaves on top let go, and the area became a plain; Turkey oaks, beeches, straight firs, and wild ashes fell under powerful knocks. 17

Hard pines and beautiful cypresses fell; flowering ashes and victory-signaling palms24 fell; holy oaks and elms, on which vines grew to the sky, fell under thick blows. The plain shuddered, the sky shivered at the sound of iron tools, at unmuffled yells, at heavy trunks falling; wild animals and birds fled their old haunts in every direction.

22. One of Venice’s most common names—reiterated yearly when the doge married her to the sea in a ceremony called lo sposalizio del mare, the marriage of the sea; see Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 119–34. 23. Generic name applied to all Christian fighters coming from north of the Alps. 24. Palms were a symbol of victory and martyrdom.

Canto 1 18

Wood was soon molded with strong-willed actions in many ways and with many sounds; thick trunks and knotty beams were transformed into instruments of war. The faces of the craftsmen were the color of fire, so hard did they work and breathe. No one rested in this activity, neither at dawn nor during the shadowy night. 19

In the forge, naked smiths soaked the ground and their faces with dark sweat. As they patched and renewed armors and durable shields, they competed with one another to make the best weapons, arrows, and bows on their resounding anvils. The loud sound of their hammers was in tune with that of the bellows and of the flames: a deafening roar! 20

Perhaps such were the commotion and the thunderous noise in the cave between Lipari and Sicily when the flaming god busied his hand to make the weapons that he would give to Aeneas as a gift.25 Flames shivered to the noise, iron emerged wrought, the sound of boiling materials and of pliers joined in with the din, and a somber harmony and song were born. 21

Plowshares, mattocks, and other tools, once busy with unworthy jobs and put to contemptible tasks, felt happy that craft, hammers, and dirty fire had reshaped them. Threads of silver and gold were added to hard iron as decoration, as a frieze. Some added mail; others fit golden hilts to swords; still others amended other people’s work. 22

Some adorned shiny, gold-decorated helmets with various feathers. Others inserted beautiful images of feats on shields, making them adorned and 25. Vulcan was the smith god, said to live on the volcanic island of Vulcano, the northernmost of the Aeolians (north of Sicily). In Aeneid 8, he is described as hammering special weapons and a shield for Aeneas, under orders of Aeneas’s mother, the goddess Venus.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d handsome. Still others fashioned long tips to arrows, so that they would better wound an armed enemy. Some others labored around spears and swords, making iron pliable on a dark flame. 23

Others quickly filled quivers with piercing arrows and fitted ropes to bows. More still talked about war, dissension, and evil deeds, happily or sadly, stating their arguments and ideas. Some trained to give fatal blows with their ferocious sword or their bow. Some more honed their weapon on a hard whetstone; those who were expert at and cunning in fighting thought about how to deploy the army. 24

Soon an infinite number of ships carved through the back of the rich Adriatic Sea. Xerxes did not cross the sea with as many ships when he went from Abydos to Sestos.26 Menelaos was not offered so many ships for help against the one who had stolen his heart.27 The noble Republic [Venice] was able to cover the sea with thousands upon thousands of vessels. 25

The whole world, amazed and bewildered, admired the naval achievement, art, and craft in amazement and confusion. It appreciated the various, rare shapes, beautiful and fitting above all those in existence, the product of noble spirits. Gold and colors had hidden the wood, indeed fully enclosed it, embellishing it with admirable decorations. This was the work of great masters, far more excellent than mere silver and gold. 26

Everybody understood the quality and quantity of the Venetian lion’s vast power, over what domain it ruled, and how far its glory exceeded that of any other ruler. It was clear that Venice was without equal in wealth and treasure:

26. According to Herodotus’s Histories, the Persian emperor Xerxes had a bridge built between Sestos (in Asia) and Abydos (on the Propontis) when he invaded Greece (see also below, 1.43). 27. A reference to Iliad 3; Menelaos was Helen’s scorned husband.

Canto 1 what other fleets carried, Venice’s could give as gifts. It was evident that Venice elicited a proud, magnificent feeling in the hearts of princes and leaders. 27

The preparations completed, the heroes coming together from France, Italy, England, Belgium and neighboring Gheldria, Holland, and Frisia, Spain, Castile, Switzerland, and vast Germany were ready for a much-praised war. Wise Enrico greeted each warrior with a cheerful face. 28

While busy in their honorable expedition to free Jerusalem from the angry Turks, they heard Alessio’s cries and learned of the harsh affront that his [father’s] brother had done to his father.28 They discovered that his father had been removed from power and killed through treason, without the possibility of a fight. This unjust event delayed the pious trip as every just heart became inflamed with anger.29 29

Glorious Enrico, you unfurled your banners to eradicate these sad events and to extinguish the pride of such an enemy. You moved your feared army; you promptly set your victorious foot on the ships along with your friendly crowd.30 Following your orders, your helmsmen spread the sails out to the winds and set the oars in motion. 28. The poem’s main storyline begins here, when the expedition takes a detour to Constantinople to avenge Alessio’s father overthrow and murder. See the note to the summary for a brief overview of the historical background. 29. In the original, the antithetical “ingiusto” and “giusto” are placed in rhyming position at the end of the octave, thus beginning the rhetorical process of juxtaposing enemies that lie outside the traditional Christian/non-Christian dichotomy. Thomas Madden has argued that the detour to Constantinople caused a change in command among the crusaders, especially after they were joined by Boniface of Monferrat in December 1202. Enrico Dandolo “took his place among the group of leaders, who would henceforth decide the course of the crusade” (Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 155). This contrasts radically with Marinella’s emphasis on Enrico’s power and wisdom. 30. This is the first of a handful of second-person addresses to a character (see 5.3, 8.107, 27.9, and 27.79 for male characters, and 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49 for female characters). While most tend to generate sympathy for the character in Marinella’s readers, this singles out Enrico Dandolo among the various participants in the crusade, indicating his importance to the implied reader.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 30

Neptune groaned under the great weight of such a fleet; the sea foamed, boiled, was entirely covered with waves. Such was the motion in the water that red sand was lifted from the sea bottom to the surface. The crews’ loud, cheerful yelling, their excitement and laughter rose so high that their impetuous glee filled the heavenly spheres with happiness. 31

The moment when the fleet left the shore was a sight to see and admire: each sail was stretched out, and each flag was unfurled. It was almost a floating kingdom, well liked by the heavens. Its majestic, orderly, ritual quality offered a frightful, warlike sight. Gold and iron reflecting the sun blinded the eye and made the light of day twice as strong. 32

Leaving the harbor, they passed on the left the noble ruins of Aquileia,31 the mouth of the Timavo,32 and a little further on the edge of the gulf of Illyria.33 They passed Grado34 and Pola,35 and saw quite nearby a plain of seaweeds and rushes. Then they saw the Iedere islands, surrounded and battered by the sea. 33

On the right they passed Clodia, whose name derived from the one who founded it; the sea encircles and adorns it. Between two mouths of the Po lay Adria, humble yet ancient,36 and near it the dark Erydanus.37 It raises its 31. Roman city to the northeast of Venice; it originally housed the religious leader (patriarca) who ruled Venice herself before the latter rose to prominence and was assigned that religious seat. 32. A river originating in modern-day Croatia that flows into the Adriatic Sea not far from Trieste; most of its course is subterranean. 33. Presumably the part of the Adriatic Sea between Albania and Puglia, given that in Roman times Illyria designated an area including modern-day Albania and extending to its north and south. 34. City built on a island that predates even Venice. 35. Italian name for Pula, a city in Croatia. 36. Adria (founded in the sixth century BCE) was a major center for commerce, culture, and politics from the fourth to the tenth century CE. It lies to the southwest of Venice. 37. Roman name for the river Po in northern Italy.

Canto 1 proud face and famous horns, threatening and waving as if it were a large sea, dumping a sea in the sea.38 34

They saw Iapigia,39 whose graceful gulf smiles with its sweet-smelling flowers and nourishes citron and orange trees as well as myrtles and bay laurels. They saw Taranto and Brindisi,40 almost destroyed by the poison of anger and rage. Facing them they saw Dubrovnik41 and Valona,42 filled with men expert at using weapons on the ground. 35

The Ceraun mountains43 rose to the sky, then formidable to behold. They suffered from Jupiter’s noisy thunder strokes inside, on their back and front; their thick hair was disheveled by strong tempests, and thus it instilled fear and terror in seafarers. Those who lived there made a living from theft and plagued mountains and woods, like wild animals. 36

After leaving the peaceful waters of the Adriatic, they entered the Ionian Sea. On the left the Phaeacians’ island appeared, where Alcinous was born, 38. Historically, this first part of the trip took place in 1202, before the fleet reached Zara (Croatian Zadar). Jonathan Phillips explains: “The fleet toured the coast of the northeastern Adriatic and used the muscle of the crusade to assert Venetian authority over the region.” See Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (New York: Viking, 2004), 114. By naming all these cities and regions, Marinella carries out a similar task, that is, asserting Venetian primacy (indeed, possession) over them. Interestingly, in canto 20 she devotes two octaves (22–23) to naming the seas and port cities that Alessio encounters while fleeing Byzantium; by doing so, she foreshadows Venetian (or at least, Western) primacy over the Eastern Empire through the victory in the crusade. Russell asserts that in “canto 1.1–18 [sic]” of Enrico “many geographical features on both sides of the Adriatic are described in a manner and progression similar to the ones followed by Sarrocchi in the first canto” of Scanderbeide. See “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 41 n. 80. Svarte’s trip from Albania to Naples, however, is only partially by sea, as he makes his way from Bari to Naples by land (see Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide 1.10–17); conversely, the crusaders and Venetians travel by sea, and they quickly leave the Adriatic Sea. 39. Modern-day Otranto in Puglia (southern Italy). 40. Cities in Puglia. While Brindisi is on the Adriatic coast, Taranto is on the Ionian Sea; thus the sailors could not have seen it on the trip from Venice to Jerusalem. 41. City in Croatia. 42. Port city in Albania. The reference to Albanian men’s expertise in land battle might be a nod to Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide, whose hero is an Albanian king fighting the Turks in forbidding terrain. 43. Mountains in Epirus, the northwesternmost region of Greece.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d famous for his illustrious and rare deeds.44 Most gifted land of lilies and beloved roses, Daunia was to the right, together with Messene that lay next to the angry, wavy harbor.45 37

On the left they recognized Cefalonia, triangular in the middle of the waves.46 Then they saw Zante,47 its sandy shore partly pebbly and partly pleasant. Further on they observed the Strophades,48 where the Harpies barely took refuge after being dislodged by the valorous and brave Zetes and Calais.49 Then the invincible fleet left the Ionian Sea. 38

They left Retimo and Crete to their back,50 then pressed on into the turbulent, proud Aegean Sea, whose horrible sound and motion makes all helmsmen lose all color in the face. As soon as those famous heroes appeared, the formidable and stern Aeolus gathered and enclosed all nasty winds and opened the door to the favorable ones.51 39

The heavens, nature, and the winds all were favorable to Enrico’s pious will; so all inconvenient winds stopped, the fury of the upset sea was assuaged, and the liquid silver was only rippled by a favorable breeze. It seemed as though Icaria52 and the Cyclades that surround Delos53 were just being discovered at that very moment. 44. Alcinous escorted Ulysses’ ship back to Ithaca after he and his companions were shipwrecked on his island Scheria. See Odyssey 6. 45. Marinella’s description here is unclear, as Daunia is the area around Foggia (to the north of the already mentioned Brindisi) in Puglia; and Messina (possibly confused for Messene) is in Sicily, hence off the knights’ route. Messene actually is in the Peloponnese, in Greece. Thus Marinella’s description is geographically imprecise. 46. Italian name for Kefalonia, the largest of the Ionian Islands. 47. Italian name for Zakynthos, one of the Ionian Islands. 48. Islands located between Zante and the Greek coast. 49. The story is told in Apollonius the Rhodian’s Argonautica 2. 50. Retimo is a city on the northern coast of the island of Crete. 51. Aeolus, god of the winds, ruled over them at will; he could therefore favor a trip (like the one described here) by freeing helpful breezes and retaining destructive winds. 52. Island in the eastern Aegean Sea. 53. An archipelago surrounding Delos in the central Aegean Sea.

Canto 1 40

Skyros54 then came into view, where the great Achilles lived a happy, carefree life dressed as a girl alongside Nicomedes’ own daughters and their servants.55 Skyros lies long and narrow among the numerous, fast sea waves. Then the fleet turned toward Boethia56 and neared Chalcide,57 queen and ruler of the Aegean. 41

The proud, splendid fleet passed Skyros and Mytilene,58 continuing on happy and joyful. It saw Tenedos that hid the Greek army and made Troy unhappy;59 then saw Lemnos60 that welcomed Vulcan falling from the sky, if that story is true. There is a burned-out mountain there, sacred to that god, holding the antidote for mortal poison in its bowels. 42

The ships went by Xanthos61 and Ximoenta,62 over which Troy once ruled, high and mighty; but then it was defeated by tricky deeds, and now it holds no marks of its past greatness. High towers and Jupiter’s tall temple, debased, were covered by base plants and grasses, though the latter had been the palace of a great king and the former the home of the king of the waves. 43

They finally left the foam-covered Aegean and entered the Hellespont, lying between narrow shores.63 There the young man from Abydos was

54. One of the Sporades, Greek islands north of Euboea. 55. One of the many versions of Achilles’ myth includes a stay at Lycomedes’ court (which Marinella incorrectly identifies as Nicomedes’ court). 56. Classical name for a Greek region bordering the Gulf of Corinth and the Aegean. 57. Main city of the island of Euboea. 58. Main city on the island of Lesbos, in the northeastern Aegean Sea. 59. Modern-day Bozcaada, island off the coast of Turkey. According to Virgil, it was on Tenedos that the Greeks hid their fleet to wait for the fighters hidden in the wooden horse to open the gates to the city of Troy (Aeneid 2). 60. Modern-day Lemnos, a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. 61. A river in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. 62. One of the eight rivers that flowed around Troy. 63. Greek name of the Dardanelles, a narrow strait linking the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean Sea.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d drowned and then covered by impious winds. Hero, in Sestos, did not cry for the adverse destiny of her faithful beloved but followed him into the sea.64 Here Xerxes built a bridge over which all whom he had led from Asia crossed into Greece.65 44

Sailing the Propontis,66 each one admired different mountains, hills, and slopes. Oxia, covered in green laurel trees, rose toward the friendly skies as a pyramid. One mountain wants to be in Asia, the other in Europe. Two wild rocks, called Cianee, appeared as if rising, getting nearer, then going further, at the entrance to the Bosphorus.67 45

The feared fleet entered the harbor as if pushed by a god’s burning lightning bolt; it broke all obstructions and impediments that stood in the way of the ruling minds of its great leaders. The Barbiese and the swift Cidaro flowed back to their source at that sight and motion. The beautiful slopes cried and Echo replied to the loud noise from far away, so that the plain shuddered. 46

Swiftly Enrico took the scepter from the unjust ruler thanks to his unvanquished glorious weapons. He removed the evil ruler from the Empire he had stolen from Isaccio, a wise and just king. With his heroic companions he lifted an august young man to his father’s throne. Then they left the Horn68 and unfurled their sails to the wind to bring war to the impious, cruel Moors.

64. The reference here is to the myth of Hero and Leander; the latter swam the Hellespont to visit his beloved nightly, until he drowned for lack of a guiding light in her tower. When Hero saw his dead body, she drowned herself. The myth is told by Ovid in Heroides 18 and 19. 65. This is according to Herodotus, Histories 7. 66. The historical name for the Sea of Marmara, the inland sea dividing the European and Asiatic parts of Turkey and of Istanbul, linked to the Black Sea to the north and to the Aegean to the south. 67. In mythology the Cianee were two moving rocks that made entrance to the otherworld more difficult. 68. A reference to the Haliç, or Golden Horn, one of the three bodies of salty water that surround Istanbul.

Canto 1 47

They had already left the Thracian Bosphorus, its rich slopes, delicate hills, cool valleys, soft and pleasant breezes, praised gardens, and smooth lawns. They could see the Propontis69 with its beautiful cities and full rivers tempering the salty bitter waves with their fresh water, making them more pleasant. 48

At that moment from a nearby mountain they heard a truly sad voice, faint and mournful. It said: “Enrico, go back, avenge not shameful acts, but Alessio’s death and his horrible coffin. Go back, great leader, point your quick weapons against a cruel homicide, I beg you; a traitor forced me, alas, to leave my life, and now I am an unhappy ghost. 49

“The unjust ruler is named Mirtillo;70 he betrayed, captured, chained, and jailed me. I experienced the heavy burden of a slave’s shackles. He tainted my meat with an ominous poison; then he made it so that I left my second Rome [Byzantium] with a noose, because that is how he killed me. He sent my father into perpetual exile through violence, and me, his son, through treason. 50

“If you have ever felt any love for the unhappy Alessio, if you have any memory of him, then recall it now. Turn your weapons, your ships, and your victorious banner against the impious, you unvanquished heroes. May your virtue overcome his proud pomp and his bragging, may it extinguish his unworthy life.” At this point it looked as if the voice had stopped, though its pain still hung in the air, among branches and leaves.

69. See note 66 to octave 44. 70. “Mirtillo” is a strange choice for the name of the evil antagonist; it usually finds its place in pastoral works, including Giovambattista Guarini’s Il pastor fido and Isabella Andreini’s La Mirtilla. However, it might simply indicate a “foreign” name, that is, one that is perceived as nonWestern and therefore potentially threatening.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 51

“I am Alessio, Enrico and all Franks, I am the one whom your high merit placed on the throne. Now I am a roving, unhappy ghost, and I place my throne in the horrible wilderness of these shady woods.”71 These gentle and sad words struck fear and terror in everything; everyone’s hair stood on end; and the Venetian leader and the others were left suspended, having heard this sad news. 52

The noble fleet stopped at the noise of that terrible voice, and breezes and winds stopped too. The seamen’s fierce chests filled with horror and deep fear, as they deemed what they had witnessed an incredible and horrific wonder, or a spirit come from the mouth of hell to shake their souls and deprive their faces of laughter with bad news. 53

While all were suspended and mute after hearing the dire news, a small boat sidled up to the trireme; the Italian Elio gave a humble salutation and started speaking: “I chalk Alessio’s death up to Mirtillo’s evil wishes. My pain is such that it pierces my heart. He killed an innocent one, and alas, my heart is filled with unusual torment. 54

“I heard that the wish to get back the empire from Alessio pushed Mirtillo to do this; he cruelly insisted that the young man be killed with much pain. Others say that the dreadful, wild ruler had started to claim the kingdom for himself and killed the unhappy Alessio.72 That guilty man dared and ventured so much 71. There is a long tradition of mysterious, disembodied voices in epic poems: in Aeneid 3, Polydorus is embodied in a myrtle bush that Aeneas inadvertently breaks; in the Divine Comedy Inferno 13, Dante talks to the suicide Pier della Vigna embodied in a large plum tree. Here the effect is to heighten the pervasive nature of God’s presence in the story. 72. Marinella is quite nebulous on the overthrow of the ruler installed on the throne by Enrico and the crusaders. This is far from surprising: for Marinella political maneuvers have little importance, while Enrico and the crusaders’ forced choice lies at the core of the plot as an example of valiant and pious behavior.

Canto 1 55

“that the ground does not swallow him nor the heavens deploy their pointed lightning against him out of disdain. The Greeks73 applaud him because he refuses to pay the tributes that you are rightfully owed.74 Part of them bows to the leader, part to the old emperor of the crafty Thracians.” This he said crying; then he fell silent, having spread pain in the hearts of that noble crowd. 56

That unjust daring struck just indignation in the wise chests of the Italians and the Franks. They cried over the young man’s premature death and the bitter offense that the proud man had inflicted on him. Enrico did not simply feel pain for all this, but rage and vexation for such impious acts. He thus determined to avenge them harshly; trembling, he said: “This is expected of me. 57

“It is reasonable that the love, justice, and faith that I bore that young Thracian man now kindle my heart and push me to take care of those who out of love feel scorn and pain for this display of cruelty. If the heavens look favorably upon my courage, I will deprive that harsh man of his unworthy soul and royal splendor; I will bring the spoils of that wicked and impious culprit to the holy temple.”75 58

While he was uttering these contemptuous words, his eyes filled with anger, shone with courage, and looked about. They pierced with much disdain; they were burning lightning bolts, as if they were his heart’s messengers. He could not stand that that evil murderer enjoyed his life among the living; so he invited to a council the Franks and all the others who were skilled with weapons and wise in their counsel.

73. Another way to refer to the subjects of the Eastern Empire. 74. Marinella introduces here another reason for the Venetian attack on Byzantium, one that implies the superiority of the Italian city to its opponent. 75. This could mean to Jerusalem, the city to which the crusaders were en route; or to Rome, center of Christianity; or to Saint Mark’s, which is what happened historically.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 59

Soon the noblest and wise heroic princes of that unvanquished army were gathered, a glorious assembly who did not find it hard to go after honors out of virtue: thanks, appreciation, and favors surely follow deserts. Among them Enrico, filled with kingly majesty, untied the harness to his angry tongue. 60

“I don’t need to relate the horrible, peculiar actions of the unfaithful duke [Mirtillo], since I know they are widely known. I do not need to tell you how, smoldering with unjust envy, he deprived the Greek Roman emperor76 of his life; or how, having kidnaped a young man with cunning and then killed him, either out of self-interest, or because the one who stole life and kingdom from his pious brother had encouraged him. 61

“The fact that he killed such a ruler proves that he was full of injustice and wild courage. He was not held back in his wickedness by our warring troops and our anger nor was he won over by pity. He fully knows that our swords can wound; he knows that our troops’ valor shed his soldiers’ blood, indeed painted their fields, slopes, and beaches with it. And yet he scorns and does not fear us, as he is unfaithful in his heart. 62

“Perhaps he believes he can block our way, build plots against us, or harm us. But we are on our way to Syria among hardships and privation, and valor is what sustains us. What opposition did Bouillon’s pious soul not encounter on his holy journey? They blocked his way, attacked him, made water poisonous, and deprived him of food.77

76. Far from being a contradiction in terms, “Greek Roman emperor” refers to the ruler of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire—the Western one constituted the Holy Roman Empire. 77. A reference to the First Crusade, the topic of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.

Canto 1 63

“Who can narrate the deceptions, damages, disgrace, hidden betrayals, and impious frauds that good Corrado had to suffer from the angel? The latter closed up his well, denied him passage, offended and affronted him in a thousand ways. He delayed his quick desire, eager to be praised. Like us, he was on his way with the Franks to free captive Jerusalem. 64

“Despite all this, in the end great Corrado triumphed over the hardships, murders, and deceptions of the unjust and impious Greeks.78 He wreaked havoc on the enemy Turks and brought about painful distress when he inflicted many damages and human losses on his proud enemy on the Meandros River,79 to make a stately example out of them. I myself saw mountains of bones and the ground still made red by their blood. 65

“Those among you who saw walls and high edges around fair gardens white with the bones of the Cimbrians, be quiet. Their hard fate earned Marius his laurel crown.80 It was worse yet when the Meandros brought purple waters to the sea, a horrible and dark sight; as a new and odd wonder, it brought fear and terror to humans. 66

“It is not right that we peacefully stand so many impious, shameful, and wrong actions brought by this bold Greek against man and God. It looks as though he was bringing death to the world. We will punish him if you think

78. Presumably, this is Corrado marquis of Monferrato, son to Emperor William V and supporter of Barbarossa. Married to a sister of the Eastern emperor Isaac Angelus, he led Christian troops against Tyros (1187) and helped conquer Saint John of Acri. 79. Greek name for a river in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. 80. Caius Marius, a Roman general and politician (second century BCE), is here mentioned as victor over the Cimbrians, a Northern European population who had attempted to invade the Italian peninsula and whom he defeated in 101.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d it right, as I do, and punish his evil allies with him. We are not depriving God of his right by doing this; in fact, everybody toils in his service.81 67

“I will not believe that God appreciates less that we reclaim his funeral cradle from the hands of the cruel Scythians than that we take a usurped kingdom and life away from an evil man: this saddens and infects the right and the pious. Let us remove all goodness from our heart, as the heavens move their swift weapon via our hands to inflict a harsh revenge. 68

“As soon as we tame this unfaithful people, enemy to the heavens and a heavy plague on men, a people who despise Christ’s shepherd, do not harbor true faith, and do not fear God, in victory we will turn our unfolded sails and well-caulked ships to the East.82 We will have more support in terms of people and gold against the Turks and the Moors after we vanquish Byzantium. 69

“We never felt that harsh dangers and insults were too much to endure for our faith and Jesus. We never felt that winning over the opposition, the anger, the strange damaging furor of the sea, the sky, and Acheron83 was too much for us to take. Our spirit will burn, our faces will show fierceness; our mind will always be set on this great goal. Threats, weapons, powerful wonders, and bewitching charms will not scare us.”

81. A quick reference on Enrico’s part to the detour from Jerusalem, the crusade’s intended target; in keeping with Marinella’s pro-Venice stance, his words emphasize the reasons in favor of going to Byzantium and avoid all the opposing reasons. 82. Laura Benedetti has underscored that Enrico stresses the religious difference between the crusaders and the dwellers of Constantinople, as the latter “despise Christ’s shepherd” (i.e., the pope) and hence they “do not harbor true faith.” See Benedetti, “Saintes et guerrières: L’héroïsme féminin dans l’œuvre de Lucrezia Marinella,” Écritures 1 (2005): 107. This is made necessary by the absence of the traditional juxtaposition between Christians and Moslems found in most epic poems. 83. In Greek mythology one of two rivers (the other is the Styx) that the dead crossed on their way to the netherworld. In Dante’s Divine Comedy it is the river that the damned cross on their way to hell.

Canto 1 70

Here Enrico stopped. A subdued whisper rose from the ranks of the princes and leaders, as sweet breezes are wont to do in shady woods on pleasant circumstances. Some said that the expedition should continue on to Syria, because that was what God wanted. Other supported first taking care of Byzantium and avenging the young man’s offense. 71

The majority of the warring heroes approved of Enrico’s words and substance: first drive out of Thrace its ruler and his followers, source of grief and cries; then, that done, address their goods, strength, and knowledge to Syria to free Jerusalem and remove from it a weight of slavery, abhorred by the soul. 72

Soon one could hear everyone praising the conquest of old Byzantium and then moving on to the noble city where Christ suffered bitter pain to save us. The mature and wise Elpidio, experienced in thought and deed, was the only one to look those strong heroes straight in their eyes, let his tongue free, and speak. 73

“Brawls, discord, and anger are born where one is not in charge and leading. If one wishes something, others will deny that one desire; little or nothing gets done, and even less is hoped for. Unjust, untamed, wild minds would dare mock and take up arms against each other. We would have different wishes, contrary opinions, and sundry goals established. 74

“It is suitable that the one who is not second to anybody and who passes all others in virtue and value take on this royal charge. He has to take on a heavy burden. He has to have the power and nature of a king. He must bestow punishment and rewards; he must strike fear and infuse courage with his wisdom, gravity, peacefulness, and happiness. The others must obey him and show their respect and love worthy of their leader.”

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 75

With that, he fell quiet. The rest grabbed onto his opinion: the camp must see one faith-inspiring prince. He would repel hatred from within the large warring family. He would temper offenses and complaints. He would know how to rein in haughty heads. He would mix sweet and bitter. The crowd looked around, but the majority stared at Dandolo’s face with their eyes and souls. 76

Who would deservingly take charge of such a great army? Who would set hearts on flame with heavenly love? Who would weigh and measure desserts and virtues? It seemed as though one voice made the will of many different people firm and certain. With happy and friendly yells they proclaimed glorious Enrico as their sovereign leader. 77

Enrico accepted the charge with high and sublime demeanor, his brow adorned with majesty and pride. Then he again addressed the closest part of the army: “Tomorrow, when the sun gilds the high tops of the mountains and gives the light of day to the blind world, this courageous army must show itself drawn up, in full armor, and ready to our eyes.” CA N T O 2

[After the introduction of the main Christian knights, the canto presents Enrico’s inspirational speech to his army. Meanwhile, the usurper Alessio returned to Byzantium, and Mirtillo became the commander of his army. Foreseeing an attack by the crusaders, Alessio burned fields and provisions outside the city, sent for help, prepared weapons, and gathered a mighty army. Enrico sent a messenger to Alessio’s camp asking for battle, and his challenge was accepted.] CA N T O 3

[Enrico led his troops into battle with a rousing speech. Seeing their attack, Alessio spurred his own soldiers to fight with an equally powerful speech. The ensuing bloody battle ended at sunset but without a clear winner.]

CANTO 4

S U M M A RY

The Latin1 army was saddened by the damages it had sustained. Giacinto went to the enemy city as a spy; he learned about the enemy’s condition, their losses, and their trouble; he comforted the Greeks and took their pain away. Meanwhile, Venier arrived on Cyprus. Clelia was afraid of the wiles of the sea, so she prayed and cried out loud. But Lucillo, greedy for eternal fame, did not bend to her plea, though he loved her. 1

Night was raining humid pearls from her hair as she silently and darkly hugged the world. Smiling stars showed us2 the lights decorating the starry sphere. Weary due to the day’s work, animals sweetened their bitter worries and too pungent feelings in their tired chests by lying asleep in the woods, in the forest, or on the shore.3 1. Marinella refers to the crusaders as the Latins in that they represent the Western part of the Roman Empire, as opposed to the Eastern (or Greek) portion, whose capital was Constantinople (or Byzantium). The juxtaposition with the Greeks also allows Marinella to cast the crusaders’ enemies in the same mold used by Virgil in the Aeneid: the Greeks are the enemy of all fighters destined for the Italian peninsula (such as Aeneas) or coming from there (such as Enrico and his army). 2. Marinella uses the first-person plural pronouns in two ways. In this case, “us” is exploited to bestow immediacy on her description and to build a sense of companionship and shared experience between the crusaders and the implied readers. In other cases (e.g., 8.108.2 and 8.109), “us” indicates that narrator and reader are on the side of the crusaders; put otherwise, this “us” is opposed to a “them,” the enemy. 3. There is a long tradition of descriptions of the night in epic poems: see Virgil, Aeneid 2.268– 69, 4.522–28, 8.26–27; Ariosto, Orlando furioso 8.79; Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata 3.71.1–4, 6.52.2; and Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide 2.10. Enrico is no exception: see 5.38, 9.22, 10.7, 10.54, 11.44, 15.45, and 18.27.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 2

The Captain’s [Enrico’s] chest was burdened by the number of the dead and wounded in such a way that he sighed and trembled with silent cries and tears originating from his heart of hearts. He feared the situation; he was afraid that the lack of success went against his high hopes. He believed that his side had sustained much higher losses than the cruel tyrant’s [Alessio’s]. 3

Elpidio heard the great leader as the latter was standing close to him. He rushed to him, and he saw that he was still in full armor and dress. He said: “Do not hide from me what pains you. Now that our people have quieted their souls, thanks to sleep, and have forgotten their ill, very prudent sire, you are the only one still awake; your heart feels for them, as you are the shepherd of the warring troops.4 4

“You do not rest after your labor; you do not sit quietly after battle; you do not want to lay down your armor, while every soul lies in sleep’s embrace. You alone, wise one, pay heed to dark storms ahead, a biting thought in the expanse of your heart. The chill of fear holds sway on you. Yet you know that human power does not rule over the heavens, don’t you?” 5

“Venerable Elpidio, you are an honor and an adornment to wisdom-rich old age; the excellent advice you put forth with your prudence leads my uncertain reason to act with certainty. Our pride and praise have fallen, and 4. It is noteworthy that the metaphor of the shepherd, derived from the Gospels (cf. Matt. 18:10–14 and Luke 15:3–7), is applied to enemy leaders as well: the emperor Alessio looking at his troops is likened to a “good shepherd” (“buon Pastore,” 13.3.5) guarding his pen; the Mysiac king Giovanissa trying to keep his troops from going astray is likewise equated to a shepherd who has just opened the gate to his pen (26.19.5). In canto 9, however, Alessio is compared to a “careless” (“incauto”) shepherd who has left his pen open only to find his sheep ravaged by a wolf (9.2.1–8, 9.3.1). See also octave 62 below. In contrast, in Scanderbeide the term is used in a more orthodox way, to refer to the Christian God, to whose faith Alexander/Scandbeg is urged to convert (2.25).

Canto 4 pain and grief are our friends, since so many of our troops were felled by the Roman people’s might.5 6

“As I look on so many of my dear soldiers wounded and killed, severe anguish takes over my chest. I imagine our enemies composed in their hearts and busy making fun of us as we used to be bold and strong. I fear nighttime assaults as well as the wrath and poison of those whose fortune has turned for the better. I wish one of ours would go among them and then report back to us what he would hear and see.” 7

Thus spoke Enrico. Parmeno, Tarso, courageous Ariadeno, and good Giacinto ran to his pavilion. Aramon did not go, for he rushed to gather up more troops along the Rhine. But Bonifatio, Rainiero, and Labieno (whose life in Liguria was in doubt), and many others came whose fame and worth shone on their cities and kingdoms. 8

As Adria’s [Venice’s] glorious leader saw many barons gathered in his presence, his eyes shined a light of calm that pierced the gloom and made him glad in his heart. Similarly, the lovely sight of a beautiful star burns and shines in the dark. He told them: “Your noble presence gives much reassurance to my fear. 9

“You are steady in your strength; you are unwavering in your warring soul. You, friends and heroes, are formidable in battle. Who among us then would have such a courageous and fierce soul and resolve to dare go among our enemies? Anyone who will bring us back even a small fraction of his good opinion will give us great help; he will be a great knight. Often, in fact, knowing your opponent makes a sad mind happy again.” 5. “Roman” in the sense of “belonging to the Empire,” rather than to Rome. This is especially important for Marinella and her Venetian readers (and dedicatee), proud of their republican state.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 10

He fell silent again. Wise Elpidio looked at them with clear eyes and serious expression, and said: “If anyone desires eternal fame and glory, then he should courageously go to the enemy camp. If he were to show the truth of the enemy’s condition to a now doubting soul, he would have eminent favors and royal gifts in addition to praise and well-deserved decorations. 11

“I have four great horses with white backs and black heads and hooves. They are adept at racing like flying winds, and no prize equals their worth, I believe. They have silk bridles and gold bits so finely wrought that they surpass anything else in excellence. They were born of heavenly seed; they are believed to be Eto’s issue,6 born on golden and red shores. 12

“Arnolfo gave them to me when we fought one on one and I won and vanquished him. Since he could not escape me, he gave himself to me as a prisoner, and I accepted him as such. After I took and bound him as my prisoner, he showed me these wonderfully handsome racehorses in a green open field; they are swift and nimble on a track, when they run and when they move. 13

“Arnolfo gave them as a magnificent present to me, while I was still stunned by their appearance. This gift was more valuable to me than castles and gold. So I granted him his freedom, dearer to him than any treasure, and a sword that I had received as booty. He became a dear guest in my family’s home. 14

“I intend to give such a noble prize to the one among us who will show his courageous heart by going to the Greek camp and coming back to tell us if 6. “Etos” is Greek for year; the Etesian winds were so named because of their yearly occurrence.

Canto 4 it’s happy or filled with sadness.” The good adviser stopped talking. Good Giacinto then stood, great in his actions and worthy in his appearance. He said: “I offer to go by myself and come back from the enemy multitude. 15

“I will go by night, and I hope to bring back to our camp most of their wishes and opinions. I will find out if the enemy army enjoys pleasures or lives in pain and sadness. I will try, and I will strive. I do not want any triumph or spoils; I make every effort because it is the right thing to do. I do not want any gift. It is enough for me that I do something that satisfies our leader and the rest.” 16

“Your outstanding valor does not pay attention to death or danger; nor does it fear them. You are a strong man among the strong. Brave youth, go forth; joy and comfort will come to you only through your actions.” Thus spoke Elpidio. A whisper started then: that he [Giacinto] wanted to risk his life to danger and death; he was not afraid, as he loved an enemy and he had gone to the enemy camp many times over as a lover. 17

As glorious Enrico wanted to put blind old Isaccio’s noble son back on the old throne, he used his weapons to remove the harsh and unfair tyrant. Giacinto went through the enemy camp silent and incognito. His chest was filled with fire; his heart was reassured by two emotions burning simultaneously: hope and love. 18

Beautiful Argea, beloved daughter to the great ruler of Pera,7 was in love with the lovely Giacinto. More than one arrow had landed in her heart from his eyes. He hoped to find her among the Greeks as she slept. He was not afraid of other people’s anger. No one asked him who he was, how and where he was going, his origin, his state, his name. 7. Modern-day Beyog˘lu; it was a Genoese-dependent suburb of Constantinople. Here it is used as a metonym for the entire city.

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Such was the grace of his beautiful face, of his manners, and of his lovely deportment, that they thought they saw an angel descended from Paradise to live in the barracks.8 And though some noticed him, not one was bothered by his going or his coming back. This is what he hoped and prepared for; as he got ready he meant to come back before the new day. 20

He removed from his chest and his blond hair his iron armor and his plentiful spoils. He put on his well-developed body humble and unrefined clothes; yet his sweet, admired appearance displayed such splendor of rare beauty that it was obvious he was not a forest dweller or an uncivilized animal hunter. 21

In fact, such clothes enhanced the brilliant shine of youth on his beautiful face. His eyes and curly hair showed his cultivated nature and his heavenly, divine honors. Similarly, the sun shows its lively splendor more among dense and crowded clouds than in a clear sky. Nobody could compare his sight, his motion, and his famous body to anything mortal. 22

The courageous warrior left, carrying only a knotty stick, like shepherds use. As he walked unrecognized and alone in the darkness, was he selfassured? Were his steps filed with boldness? He saw those killed by cruel fury in Mars’s horrible dance; he saw weapons, horses, foot soldiers, and knights steeped in blood, in a terrifying jumble.

8. Giacinto possesses two opposing traits: on the one hand, he is divinely handsome (he is perceived as an angel descended from heaven); on the other, he is a strong, courageous knight. When he is first presented, he is “handsome Giacinto” (“bel Giacinto,” 2.27.1) resembling “a sun surrounded by rays” (“un sol cinto / Di raggi,” 2.27.3–4). Not only is he the most handsome man who ever lived (2.91.3–4); he is described according to the Petrarchan canon of beauty associated with the beloved (woman): “If you’ve ever seen a young rose burning in the snow and ice, as a sweet smile, these are his cheeks, on which the first golden hairs barely have sprung” (“Se mai vedesti trà la neve, e’l gelo / Fiammeggiar nova rosa un dolce riso, / Tai son le guancie sue, ne anchor da loro / Spuntano à ornarle i primi fiori d’oro,” 3.91.5–8). While the topos of youth going hand in hand with courage is hardly original, Marinella utilizes the language of love poetry to describe it, and by doing so she casts a feminizing light over Giacinto. Indeed, in octave 31 below he is likened to Venus, star and goddess, the most beautiful and enticing of all goddesses.

Canto 4 23

He saw some who were silently removing choice or beloved clothes from lifeless bodies; they satisfied their greedy wishes among shredded bodies and coagulated blood. Others, weeping, were busy giving corpses burial, a prayer, and peace, before a pitiless wolf or an evil snake would transform a beloved brother’s helmeted face. 24

As the lazy chariot [of the moon] moved among the stars under a chilly sky, as night had taken over day, Giacinto moved about in darkness, without being recognized in the silence of that impure air. Though people saw him, he walked on wisely and with experience; fear did not pierce his heart. Already he could see fires and lit torches; already he could hear his enemies praise his grace. 25

Nobody asked who he was, where he had started on his trip, where he was going, or what he wanted; among those oppressed people, nobody thought he could be a spy, since he was so good at hiding his deceit. His noble face shone with piety; it seemed to offer a hint of peace to others and entice every heart. In addition, with kind words he mitigated those souls’ bitter feelings. 26

This noble pilgrim went through the dark shadows, passing wide pits and high fences. He entered the armed enemy’s cover with fearless, self-assured face, and saw very many engaged in taking kind care of the wounded and the injured. He observed both groups cry over the doomed destiny of their lives, sadly and desolately. 27

He roamed, went in, and poked his head everywhere. Shrewdly he observed and heard works and thoughts, what the king desired and whether he wanted to use new tactics; he noted what the king was afraid of trying and what he hoped to accomplish. He thoroughly observed manners and words that sad and tired knights utilized. He heard the cries of many and the weeping of the friends to the ill and wounded.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 28

Some called out the beloved name of their son, of their father, or of their dead brother; others called out to their uncle, killed and vanquished by enemy fury in a clash. Still others, close to the final hour of blind and dark death, cried out of harsh pain, and complained that they were forced to breathe their last away from their homes. 29

Giacinto rejoiced among the laments; he turned his careful eyes to the miserable choir of these loud complaints. Although he listened with happiness to all this, still his noble heart sighed for their harsh suffering. He noticed one who was lying peacefully, another who was upset at himself and at the heavens, and still another who was refusing the relief of friendly compassion, such was his desire to fling open the feared doors of the other world, unafraid to die. 30

Sadness was widespread. Giacinto consoled both with his gentle voice and wise words. As he turned his eyes and spoke, those lost souls were heartened. Those many people formed the same opinion: that he was a benign god descended from the heavens to make the causes of their extreme plight less deadly. 31

If he turned his eyes filled with calm and compassion to them, they thought they had seen beautiful Venus on her gracious orbit in the clear sky. It seemed to them that he would soothe their distressed hearts, temper their aches and their harsh pain. One could see a spirited desire for hope bubbling forth in their discouraged hearts under the effect of his splendor. 32

He learned what an enemy spy can learn within the opponent’s pen; he gave hope to the hopeless with his sweet voice; he managed to make some forget their plight. But he saw that humid night was turning its bejeweled wheels toward sunset, so he thought he should go back to avoid harm and injury; he feared the sun, given that the shadow had protected him.

Canto 4 33

On the way back, he could see that night was dying its dark hair white with each passing hour; that each star was about to turn off torches and lights on the heavenly stage set; that dawn in the sky was putting on her cloak and getting dressed with her calm demeanor; and that breezes were shaking from her cool hair chilly frost along with roses. 34

Its lively face wrapped in bright flames, day was about to come out of the East. At that moment the Italian heroes were anxious and in much pain about Giacinto’s return. Their leader, awake, though, looked around and saw a man coming toward him. He was in doubt about his identity, but from his clothes and face he understood that it was a warrior. 35

As he came closer, Enrico recognized for sure handsome Giacinto’s features and gait. He therefore reassured and cheered up his anxious soul and uncertain heart that feared him dead. The royal youth’s valor, virtue, faith, and worth pushed the entire camp to revere, love, and praise him. Enrico embraced him, and felt happiness for his return. 36

Giacinto laid out for courageous Enrico a faithful report of the things he had seen and heard. The latter’s heavy, bothersome worries were thus much soothed by this sweet liquor. After the noble shepherd told everything to the leaders and revealed the opponent’s damages, he took off his pastoral clothes and put his armor back on: he shone with it. 37

Before he looked like the one who grazed king Ameto’s beloved herd by the Amphrysus river.9 Now his sweet countenance and lovely face looked 9. Ameto is the namesake of Giovanni Boccaccio’s pastoral work; in it, however, Ameto is a hunter who chances upon some nymphs on the Mugnone River in Tuscany. Amphrysus is a river in Thessaly, mentioned by Ovid (Metamorphoses 7.229) in the context of the Jason and Medea story. It is likely that Marinella utilized these terms for their evocative nature, rather than as specific mythological, literary, or geographical references.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d like a graceful Love with weapons of hard iron. If he sat astride his horse, ferocious, and hurling darts from his irate heart through his eyes, then he looked like Mars when he comes down from heaven to destroy kingdoms and set cities on fire. 38

Among the Greeks, when Phoebus had barely spread the cloak of light around the world,10 the one who had led his people from Rodosto and Heraclea and was charged with them11 told their leader Alessio, in amazement: “I saw someone go by, serious and happy; not a man, but a god, who sweetly lifted pain from burdened minds. 39

“I was devoting myself to what we rightly owe to those who cry, to the sick, to the wounded, and I was tending to our dear friends’ cuts (love seems always to invite me to do this). Though dejected, I consoled those unhappy people. Then I heard loving salutations: ‘O poor soul, tell me, why to you vainly attempt to mitigate a cruel and strange fate with your tears?’ 40

“I lifted my head from my dutiful endeavor toward that happy herald of future joy, and I saw a graceful, handsome youth who seemed to drain from our chests all palpitations and to dispel in part the pain, the anger, and the trouble from our injured and sick squad. We felt that a sublime effect of the highest virtue was flowing from his divine countenance. 41

“He looked like a god, judging from the lively sun of his clear eyes (in which all that is good seemed gathered), from the smell emanating from him, from his words, and from his venerable face. His voice was louder than the one belonging even to a man who has great strength and much will—and through which such a man moves even the most cowardly to want to fight and to prove themselves with much distinction. 10. Phoebus is an epithet of Apollo, in his quality as the sun god, whose chariot was the shining disk of the sun. 11. That is, Ilione (see octave 49 below).

Canto 4 42

“The wounds sustained in that dreadful battle and my companions who had been killed were on my mind. He told me, in such a pleasant voice that he almost made me forget that biting pain: ‘Why are you in pain? Do not despair whenever fate is adverse; do not become haughty if fate shows you joys and laughter. It is all an appearance or a fiction; it takes away what it gives, then it gives back what it had taken, only to take it away again. 43

“ ‘Indeed, you should rejoice about it, since the positive always follows the negative. Don’t you know, you who are so skilled, that a cloudy cover is always followed by peaceful light and a calm clear sky? In the same manner we see clear, pure air get murky with vapor very often, and then vapor disappears. Therefore calm your weary spirit, and offer joy to your heart deprived of hope. 44

“ ‘If you have had considerable damage in war (and perhaps you fear worse to come), do not imagine that Enrico is resting and sleeping in his tent without any anxiety. Over there they expect a worse situation than what they have; your damages are less severe as I understand it; you have lost fewer people; and the Franks aren’t winners—they are defeated. 45

“ ‘When the daring Venetians and Gauls ready for cruel battle come back, each one of you should assault those numerous enemies with a manly heart, not with timidity or desire to escape. Glory lies hidden among dangers; peace comes out of war; and I think I can see victory springing from your valor and your Thessalian weapons.’ 46

“At this juncture he stopped talking, and he bid me farewell. As he was leaving, he breathed strength and generous courage in me, much like a god who is of help to a man he has befriended. I felt myself filling up with reassurance, with a new joy. I still think I can hear his wise words, such that they

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d could take cowardice out of any bosom; and as I remember I still feel my heart burn with warlike courage. 47

“I observed him, I bowed to him, I heard him, and I praised him to myself: I was overwhelmed with wonderment. I never took my hungry eyes off him—such was my eagerness to admire him. I saw him under the guise of an uncouth shepherd, due to the rough cloak that he was wearing. Divine will sometimes does not disdain that a lowly cloth may increase his beauty. 48

“I don’t know if he disappeared, or if he left, or how he removed himself from my eyes. I was amazed, though, as it seemed that he had eliminated a great weight from our military family. I don’t know if he’s an angel, but he richly deserves that name, as he resembled an angel in his every action. I will not call him a man, for my previously lost mind felt strength and vigor thanks to him.” 49

Here Ilione stopped talking. Alessio and his general were unsure. Their opinion was that this was a manifestation of divine favor, because they thought it impossible that no ray of good would shine in so much harsh pain. Otherwise, they thought, he was a friendly sprite who would fill previously hopeless hearts with hope and awaken and lead them to good deeds. They mulled over various and sundry possibilities; but they never imagined he could have been a spy. 50

The general was considering retreating inside the great city of Byzantium, for his troops were greatly reduced. Giovan was not bringing anybody from Moldova, nor was any warrior en route from Moncastro.12 He had no reason to hope, as nobody who cared for him was leading any fighters from any place. So with his friendly squad he turned silently and swiftly to the ancient city. 12. Presumably a generic name for a walled city, from the Latin “castrum.”

Canto 4 51

Then he had the sick and wounded sheltered. He observed doors and towers with care and had them reinforced, so that they would be safe from an enemy fury. He had the moat dug deeper, and he placed guards at the main gates and on the sublime walls. Everyone was ready to work; nobody shied away from toil, by day or night. 52

The haughty king provided his kingdom with walls inside and around. He feared a siege, so day and night he had plentiful supplies of food stored up. In his wicked soul and aggrieved chest he wanted to escape damage, ruin, and disdain. Meanwhile, Enrico reviewed his troops, fully knowing that many had been picked off by enemy weapons during battle. 53

That leader called to a council Elpidio, Bonifatio, Baldovino, Venier,13 the brave count of Pleia, and Alcino, a serious, wise man he liked and esteemed. He wanted to send someone to the gracious boundary of Cyprus and to the shore of Alba in order to gather men to replenish the camp with the same number as furious Mars had taken away. 54

They all decided that good Venier would go where the goddess of love at time retains the god of war among many pleasures, and makes him happy 13. Venier is the last name of a notable Venetian family. It is unclear why Marinella utilizes it as a first name in Enrico. Perhaps it pays an indirect (but no less clear, to her contemporary Venetian readers) homage to Sebastiano Venier, the Venetian commander at the naval battle of Lepanto (1571) and later (1577–78) doge. The victory at Lepanto, though not a crucial one, gave a psychological boost to those battling the Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it was often celebrated. Furthermore, like Enrico Dandolo, Sebastiano Venier (extolled in 7.54–56 and in Fonte’s Floridoro 13.13–16 and 13.28–30) was rather old when he fought at Lepanto; perhaps Marinella sought to bring back to her contemporaries’ minds a more recent example of military valor in old age. On the battle of Lepanto, see Jack Beeching, The Galleys at Lepanto (New York: Scribner’s, 1982), and on Sebastiano Venier, chapter 12 (“In Battle”), 205–27; and Hugh Bicheno, Crescent and Cross: The Battle of Lepanto 1571 (London: Cassell, 2003), especially chapter 10 (“Act III—The Battle”), 249–78. Excerpts from colorful nearcontemporary descriptions of Venier during the battle are in Dionisotti, “Lepanto nella cultura italiana del tempo,” Lettere italiane 23, no. 4 (1971): 479–80.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d with her graces.14 They willed that Tarso would gather people from the Cimero River, where the Alban people used to live, from the Camoli and Statei mountains, and then return to camp as fast as possible.15 55

As soon as Parmeno’s brother16 heard the leader of leaders’ wise will, he said his goodbyes and left, setting his foot quickly toward the Alban country. Good Venier unfurled his white sails and set out on the Aegean at the first glimpse of the morning rays; he hoped to crown his head with an illustrious crown. 56

The heavens looked propitiously on him. A pleasant wind filled the full sails of his flying ship; she hugged the coasts nearby, then took to the higher sea and cut across the salty silvery waters. Soon fair coasts disappeared from view; every appearance of land vanished from sight, and light airs took the ship to friendly shores across smooth surfaces. 57

On their wings those gracious winds carried the sweet smell of that beautiful, delightful place. Well before they could see laurel trees, adorned gardens, and the whole place filled with flowers, they knew that those existed as the smells wafted in the air far away from the land. When they landed from their happy ship, they saw that that noble kingdom was filled with every grace. 58

This was the fully worthy kingdom where in her triumph the most beautiful goddess used to take Love bound as her prisoner. They could take advan-

14. Venus, married to Vulcan, took Mars (the god of war) as her lover; they convened in a secret location, but the sun revealed it to Vulcan, who exposed them to all the other gods (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.169ff.). Marinella cleverly seems to designate a place that was left unknown in mythology. 15. Unknown river and mountains; thus the area they designate remains vague. 16. That is, Tarso. This is the only time in the poem when one of the brothers is mentioned without the other (see 2.13.5–6, 3.6.7, 9.75.1, 11.114.2, 14.40.2, 17.33.1, and 19.110.1).

Canto 4 tage of everything rare and excellent before anyone else. On this side there was a thicket of laurel trees;17 on the other a clear spring of nectar bubbled to the surface. Here you could hear a musical choir of birds, there you could see a singing swan. 59

It was the season [spring] when dry grass weaves a new cloak of meadow and flowers. It was the season when one observes the feet of rivers shimmer with silver everywhere. It was the season when the birds praised by the shepherds sing their pleasant songs in the branches. It was the season when Zephyr rains a large cloud of new, choice joys on us, out of his eyes. 60

It was then that the glory and the fame of the illustrious actions and famous deeds of the Venetians and the Gauls arrived at that happy shore, brought by good Venier. At that sound all souls awoke. Fame, with your loquacity you boost noteworthy deeds and put together and mix what is false with what is true.18 In this situation you made Lucillo’s illustrious and faithful chest burn with the envy that marks those who are generous! 61

If a courageous steed hears the sound of a singing trumpet, it burns up and stirs; it resembles thunder and lighting in its movements, it neighs loudly, and it runs through the plain. Lucillo’s features resembled those of such a horse; he felt in his chest similar yet previously unknown flames of valor; he wanted to be already where he was going, for true fame sang about someone else. 62

He was the son of the king who ruled over and oversaw the most beautiful goddess’s noble kingdom. He did so as an admired shepherd who leads his

17. This insistence on the laurel tree (twice in as many octaves) is remarkable especially if one considers that the tree was usually associated with Apollo rather than Venus. 18. The foundational description of Fame as a flying monster is in Aeneid 4.173–97; it also appears in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata 20.101.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d beloved herd with love, not as an unworthy ruler. The kingly youth, who was bound only by his own rules (rather than by the laws imposed on the subjects), became inflamed by the stories of the Italian and Frankish deeds. His proud mind, his soul, his unvanquished and honest desires burned. 63

Such was his anticipation that his excited heart wished to leave his father and his paternal land to bring war to the Romans; he was pushed by a hot, feverish, and generous valor. His sweet wife’s serene air had no power to prevent him from going; his beloved son’s wet tears, no matter how appreciated, did not make him change his mind. 64

He greeted and pampered the Venetian Venier with royal splendor; he welcomed him in the royal palace; he introduced him and invited him everywhere. He opened to Venier’s knowledge his warlike thoughts and generous desires. Through his appearance, his words, and even more his actions he unveiled to his dear guest how sublime, warrior-like, noble, and excellent his soul was. 65

As soon as the Venetian realized that Lucillo was burning up with the desire to go with him where Enrico unfurled his great flag and all of Europe moved against the unfair Thracian, he invited Atio, Camillo, and many other experienced warriors, famous for their deeds. He showed his love and honor for that handsome son, and he felt that the short time before his departure was too long. 66

On this side you could see the chosen knights who would leave with the king’s son. Though they fully mastered war, they still wanted to become more knowledgeable and thus strove for that. Although Lucillo felt the sting of Clelia’s loving affection, he did not mention his departure to her; he abhorred destroying her peace, so he pretended otherwise and didn’t say a word.19 19. It is noteworthy that it takes Marinella six octaves to reveal Lucillo’s wife’s name.

Canto 4 67

She lived happily, not knowing with what cruel misfortune heaven threatened her. She didn’t know that her beloved was looking for harsh, mortal war for himself, rather than peace. Yet among her joys an unknown pain beset her. It was as though a hidden fear froze her heart; at times she would sigh and scold herself for detecting a hint of bitterness in her sweetness. 68

She would say: “Why do such warm sighs, such harsh pain exhale from my chest? Why do I feel such pain? Is that beautiful soul for whom I live and breathe still as happy as he used to be? If so, why do I send painful breaths up to heaven? Why does it seem as though I died of pain? If this is a clue to an unhappy occurrence, I only care about my beloved, and about nothing else. 69

“I do not feel secure in his love even when he is far from any danger. If eyes are the messengers of one’s heart, then I enjoy him, I observe him happy and joyful all the time. So then, why do I feel this pain that inflicts a harsh and baleful ache on me? Heavens, why do I show the anguish and sorrow that my chest hides?” 70

As she spoke her beautiful lips let loose her life breath in sweet sighs; every little sound scared her, and it seemed as though her heart was pierced by mortal pangs. She wanted to get rid of sadness, to scatter that seed in sand, to throw away her worries. She feared uncertain evils, and this terror made her look as though she was ready for an inauspicious announcement of future pain. 71

Meanwhile, the moment arrived when Lucillo and the other selected heroes had to leave. Before he left his palace he wanted to reveal his mind and thoughts to Clelia. He found and blandished her. When she appeared, she pretended that what annoyed her did not bother her, and her appearance

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d reflected this. He admired and enjoyed that much desired countenance; he praised, commended, and extolled it. 72

But as soon as he revealed to you, his light, that his chest enclosed a desire for eternal honor, a stiff ice and sad affection filled your tired limbs and enveloped your heart. Your rose color fled, and on your face spread a horrible paleness, darker than boxwood. She tried to speak three times, and three times her voice broke; only tears covered her cheeks.20 73

Sweetly and meekly she turned her dead face and her eyes to her beloved knight. Frequent sobs and faint sighs constituted the most pleasing sounds of her pious laments. “Heavens, fate, which fault of mine—she said—has prepared for me such grave pains and pangs? So, you flee from me? And the horrible sea is dearer to you than my presence? 74

“The sea doesn’t fear the swaying or the glitter of your sword; it doesn’t fear derision, prayer, or cries. With stormy screeching it calls on the winds to fight with itself, as it is thundering and proud; then its angry, dark, and powerful waves jump all the way to the sky; land and shore are affected. In the end the fury of the waves leaves ships destroyed and sailors drowned and dead. 75

“If your way were by land, I would feel pains less harsh than those that make me faint. But the proud appearance of the humid waves shakes my soul and awakes horror in my chest. I have seen ships torn apart and tossed on dry land by stormy waters. It hasn’t been long since I saw the white bones of faithful lovers on the beach.

20. Marinella uncharacteristically (and inconsistently) switches to a direct address to Clelia. This increases the sympathy and empathy that readers feel for this character. The device is something Marinella largely reserves for female characters (see 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49).

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“My heart, do not be deceived by false hope, that is, by the fact that you know the craft and tricks of a helmsman. Any ability is in vain when the winds rush against each other and tremble and vent their anger and scorn. They break ships down; they make the waves roar. They upset the kingdoms of heaven and earth, while angry, fiery lightning strikes leap among the waves, in their malice struggling cruelly against each other. 77

“Who rules over them? Who tempers and restrains their boundless and their crazy fury? Turn your mind away from the sea; remove this pain from my heart; make my fear needless. But if you have resolved to go, take me along among the dangers and the rocks to a strange place. I will be blissful if we were to survive, and still fully happy if it were to pass that I die with you. 78

“If it happens that our unjust fate should plunge and kill us in those immense waves, neither one of us will fill the air crying for the other person’s cruel death; we would utter our last screams at the same time, and we would give each other the last kiss among the salty waves. We would give our souls back to the heavens, as we must, at the same time and place. 79

“May you show your mercy for the first sign of love and faithfulness that you showed me. May you show mercy for our beloved son, our common good. May you show mercy for the one who gave you such an illustrious heart and such a happy countenance. Have mercy for your father, for me, for your darling heir; do not go into such great danger! Alas, how could you spend long days away from us without running into some trouble?” 80

She said all this while pouring and letting flow a clear liquid from her vivacious stars. Her heart’s sad desires made her face sorrowful, yet beautiful. She stopped talking, but she didn’t stop crying; every hour her heart became more filled with harsh, stark pain. He was wrapped in thought; he observed

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d her, and saw in her tears the fire of her love, which burned her little by little. 81

After she pierced his chest, he kept his eyes to the ground. Then he smiled and locked his calm, clear eyes on her tender, teary face. He said: “Who provoked such pain in you? Stop sighing, rein your tears in. Dear, dry the tears from your sweet face that your beautiful eyes have let loose. 82

“My heart, do not deny me that my name be adorned by high praise with weapons on the field. I love, want, and desire this more than life itself—and you love and appreciate this yourself. Calm your harsh and dire pain; I know you have a soul and sense that are noble and queenly. For the love you bear me, make it so that your desire conforms to the will that shapes my heart.21 83

“Do not beg any longer: your words hit me like lightning strikes. What wets and soaks your beautiful cheeks with tears is my very blood. Do not deny me that I bring back to my stock immortal glory from faraway lands. Please bring such grief to an end, for it is the source of pain for you and of grave damage to me.”22 84

Then with kind manners and sweet prayers he convinced her not only to give up her cries and laments, but also that she could no longer criticize him or deny him his wish to unfurl his sails as he wanted. It seemed then as

21. It is precisely the love that Clelia bears Lucillo that should make her accept his will; a wife’s duty is to obey her husband, as Paul explained in his letter to the Colossians 3:18: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.” 22. In this octave Marinella has Lucillo refer to two important elements of a traditional (i.e., patriarchal) family structure: it is the husband’s stock that is important, for a wife becomes a part of it through marriage. Furthermore, excessive display of affections is unbecoming and to be avoided, particularly for a noblewoman such as Clelia. The narrator’s insistence on the proud and rushed nature of Lucillo’s desire for fame and glory (as well as her underscoring of war’s cruelty: see octave 86) makes it clear that her sympathies lie with Clelia.

Canto 4 though she still did not bend to trust him to the cruel and shifty sea. Her mind was filled with doubt and confusion, and it wavered; she did not know what she should do. 85

Then he left, and by leaving he inflicted a thousand wounds of love and pain on her. He was uncertain; her sad face and the words he had heard filled him with trouble and dejection. His pious love exhorted him to stay, but his courageous desires pushed him to leave. Ambitious wishes of honor proved more powerful than his love for that woman whom he loved so much. 86

Soon he ordered his companions to prepare the ships and the weapons by the first light of the new dawn: it was necessary to go to Enrico’s warrior horrors. “I will consider myself happy to give my life if I acquire eternal honor from fame.” After this he spoke no more: he got ready and enjoyed the moment. Yet the thought of leaving Clelia gnawed at his heart.23 23. The canto ends with a statement that echoes the uncertainty expressed in octave 86. No knight associated with Enrico shows a callous soul, and Lucillo is no exception to the rule.

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CANTO 5

S U M M A RY

Lucillo sailed off with Venier, leaving his sad wife concerned with a thousand worries. The ships sank. Lucillo was engulfed in a cold and lifeless worry. Venier in distress jumped off, clutching a cold, lifeless net. At that point he gave up all hope of living; death was right in front of him. But the wind and the sea with their friendly and saving motions tossed him alive on strange, unknown shores. 1

Morning breezes already were letting their soft sprite loose in the dewy grass; they made the laurel’s and the myrtle’s high and renowned branches tremble with a sweet sound. Meanwhile, young Dawn left her ugly, shaggy old man from among lilies and purple roses to go on her trip, calling the rays of the sun to herself.1 2

At that moment Venier and many others boarded a ship loaded with many riches. They waited only for Lucillo, who remained behind to console trembling and scared Clelia. Finally, he came out of his royal home. Her chest was oppressed by a sharp and heavy pain, and yet she showed happiness in her countenance so that her beloved would draw joy and happiness from it. 1. Tithonus was a Trojan prince with whom Dawn fell in love. She asked Zeus (Roman Jove or Jupiter) to grant Tithonus eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth—hence Marinella dubs him an “ugly, shaggy old man.” This image has many distinguished antecedents: Odyssey 5.1, Aeneid 4.584–85, Orlando furioso 34.61.5, Dante’s Purgatorio 9.1, and Scanderbeide 2.18 and 2.70.

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He embraced her and said his last goodbyes. He said: “Farewell, my life” and boarded the ship. Unlucky lover, did you not see her cries? Didn’t your heart take that as a sign of bad luck?2 Clelia could barely stand because of her pain; she barely responded to his goodbye. She stood as if stunned and unmoving—too much grief prevented her from forming syllables. 4

The helmsman unfurled the sail to the wind then sweetly and piously moving through the air; he called out the orders and lifted the anchor from the unmoving shore. As the ship moved away, Lucillo (whose heart was filled with harsh pain and from whose beautiful eyes a river of tears was raining) observed the fleeing shore. His pale, pained wife looked at him from afar. 5

Meanwhile, proud youth pulled the oars to their strong chests, so that the ship went far offshore. With regular hits and happy expressions they hit Nereus’s salty domain.3 The foamy waves had to groan, though they showed no sign of anger or hatred. The ship ran over the salty soil sweetly and with a happy flight. 6

The smiling bright day had already left Thetis’s wide breast four times,4 and as many star-laden nights had covered the lighted days with dark shadows since Lucillo had left Clelia sick and languishing in the dear fatherly land of his birth. The wind was sweet, the air was clear, the sea quiet, and the sky limpid all this time.

2. This second-person address to a male character (see also 1.29, 8.107, 27.9, and 27.79) stands in stark opposition to those to female characters (see 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49). While the latter tend to build sympathy for these women in Marinella’s readers (and, in one instance, also for a male enemy: see 27.79), this direct address is a rebuke to a man who does not pay heed to his wife’s plight and wisdom. 3. Nereus was a sea god in mythology; hence his “salty domain” is the sea. 4. Thetis was one of Nereus’s fifty daughters; therefore, her “wide breast” is the sea.

Canto 5 7

So everyone thought that they soon would check Alessio’s pride and bring much help to the Franks. Our crazy hope breaks against the rocks of a blind future! Against their belief and against everybody’s thinking, an African wind, alas, rose with sudden motion, together with a choir that confuses their peace and with Boreas5 screaming and shrieking among leafy forests. 8

The sea was quiet, the air joyful, and the sky clear; Phoebus spread lively rays from his hair.6 No wind shivered among tall flowers or shook the waves with violent efforts. But all of a sudden a blinding, dark veil hid the sun’s light and the sky’s blue hue; it covered the world in darkness darker than night; and it upset and roiled Neptune’s kingdom. 9

The sky roared, the sea bellowed, the earth shook. At that noise and great echo the mountains broke up. Mount Olympus gathered its weapons for a cruel war: lightning, whirls, thunder. Those winds sank ships, uprooted trees, ripped off roofs; they almost lowered the high throne.7 Rains flooded the plains, and every heart dreaded such uncommon and sudden fury. 10

Yelling, the pale helmsman ordered that the yards be lowered and that the sails be removed from the wind; still, heavy rains and the dense and dark horror kept people from seeing. In addition, voices could not be heard in the air, as thunder, shrieking sounds, and the ferocious wind prevented that. Still someone lowered the sails by himself; others lifted the oars from the incredible distress of the waves.8

5. A northern wind. 6. Regarding Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10. 7. Mount Olympus, considered the gods’ seat and dwelling place. 8. Commands that cannot be heard during a tempest at sea are a motif from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (11.484–85) to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (41.11) to Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide (19.28).

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The sea was against them; it tried to touch the blond stars with its hair, like a merciless giant, and it threatened the sailors in its errant pride. The sea was armed with scorn and horrible tempest: it broke the foamy shore and assaulted the ship with force and anger, cruelly, with lightning and sparks shedding light. It beat the ship and prevailed against the helmsman’s craft. 12

Perhaps a well-armored battering ram strikes and hits a high wall with less strength. Then the sea lifted itself so that it looked as though that unlucky ship rose to the heavenly spheres. From that height she fell into profound, unknown valleys. Then it looked as though she lifted herself to the sky and rose again. Such is the motion of a ball in the wind: now it’s up, then it’s down, and it doesn’t stay put anywhere for long. 13

The sea and its waves rose so high that they sprayed the thick clouds in the sky. The reddish sand burned, and the huge bottom of the sea showed itself in the water gathered up in mounds. The sea was white with its resounding motions. It seemed as if the night’s intense horror grew with every hour; the river Acheron9 is less blind than that, though neither a star nor the sun shows its smiling light there. 14

The high mountains and deep valleys of water (where hell seemed to burn with fire), the sound of the moving waves, the frequent thunder, the bright lightning, the people’s cries at the sound moving on the wavy fields through the surf—all they could see and hear managed to bring darkness, fear, and death to their eyes.

9. In Greek mythology one of two rivers (the other is the Styx) that the dead crossed on their way to the netherworld, adapted in Dante’s Divine Comedy as the river that the damned cross on their way to hell. The mention of its darkness (or blindness) makes reference to the Dante version particularly relevant in this case, as Dante emphasizes the absence of any light in hell, beginning with the crossing of Acheron.

Canto 5 15

Everywhere you saw ships fall prey to the water, vanquished and scattered around like one pushed and clashing between Syrtis10 and rocks that ends up yielding to the fury that shakes and hits her. You saw other ships buried in sand, low and vanquished. And still the sea did not placate its wrath. You saw men, tools, planks, and oars wander in the water in those dangerous circumstances.11 16

Then the wind pushed and hunted and encircled the ship where Lucillo and the Venetian [Venier] were. Already everyone cried and sighed for himself; even the most courageous heart trembled and was afraid. Everyone, heavy with anxiety, set their sight on the stars, though no star was visible; everyone asked for help with sorrowful words, so that their painful lives could be spared at sea. 17

Venier saw the great turmoil and the deep and tremendous motion of the angry sea. He foresaw the end of the sad ship. He said: “This is how I bring people to Enrico? This is how I help? Alas for me, this is how I shake and vanquish the Greek forces? This is how I attend to my weapons? Alas, will it be that I will fall without glory, far from the battlefield, and without using my sword? 18

“Heavens and fate, why oh why was I not felled in a ferocious battle by a Greek hand on the battlefield at Scutari?12 Why couldn’t I be put to death 10. Two inlets located in the Mediterranean off the coast of northern Africa, in Latin called Syrtis Major and Syrtis Minor, and corresponding respectively to the modern-day Gulfs of Sidra and Gabes. 11. Marinella addresses her readers directly in order to elicit their emotional response to her harrowing description of a shipwreck, an especially grim topic in a city such as Venice, dependent on seafaring for its prosperity. 12. Scutari was the Greek name for the district of Istanbul now known as Üsküdar, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d by you, cruel Licaone? Now I shall die without honor among the waves, and this death hurts more than death itself.” He spoke as he looked up at the sky and then down at the sea that rattled and dismayed him. 19

Sad Lucillo observed the unpropitious waves, the scornful sky, and the dark, indeed black air. He saw a pine tree dip in deep chasms, then float lightly on the water. He sighed gravely and did not hide the harsh, ferocious pain in his heart. He repented, too late alas; he felt sorry that he had not stayed as Clelia’s words asked him to do. 20

“Alas, why can’t I exhale my last breaths on my Clelia’s breast? Is it true, then, that the sea will be my tomb and bier, right now, among rocks and Syrtis?13 Why can’t I hear you, dear, my sweet one, consoling me in my extreme moments? I deserve this, my dear soul, since I could leave you in your pains, to risk my life in these vicious waves. 21

“I am not sad for myself, but for you, since you are left as a target for deep pain. I do not deny that my beastly heart was a hard rock against the sea of your many tears. Now a cruel pain pierces my heart, since I ran away from my kingdom and my land, toward death, and since I will use up my destiny without fighting, though I wanted to gain the light of a quick honor. 22

“What good is it to me that I have a happy kingdom? What good is it to me that I have a gentle father and an honest and grateful wife? I will lose forever my beloved life, alas, because of these waves and in a horrible ordeal. My tears will not sway evil Neptune’s ungrateful and unhappy mind.14 O fate! O enemy heaven! O cruel sea! You are turning everything good of mine into poison and bitterness.” 13. See note 10 to octave 15. 14. Neptune was the Roman god of water, who became identified with the Greek Poseidon and therefore assumed his role as god of the sea.

Canto 5 23

Then a cruel breath of air, fit to uproot and knock down entire forests and to lift and push down waters, pulled up the mast, the sail, and the helmsman, and tossed them in the water with terrible strength. He15 helped himself by swimming and grabbed a piece of wood. He had a propitious fate; he used his strength and knowledge to climb on this beat-up wood and to escape the salty waves. 24

The sky was lacking all light due to the clouds and the sea rising upward. Therefore, night spread such thick horror that the heart of anyone looking at it would freeze. Then in the shadows the wind awoke and picked up; a lighted weapon appeared in the rain and fog, and its swift flame burned and sparked so that that bad situation became visible, and the world was filled with light. 25

A thunderous arrow followed the luminous lightning, an arrow fit to split open the hard marble of the mountains. The shore echoed it, the plain trembled because of it, as the thunder opened its wings downward from its highest peak. It swiftly broke up all shelter: it caught the miserable helmsman, who died burned up amid the waters that he feared would give him death. 26

Then the ship was fatefully wounded: she was devoid of masts, ropes, and a guide; her steering was ripped out; and she listed and lay open on both sides. You could see people wander in the main, if lightning gave enough light. One stuck a foot out, another his head, yet another one his arms; those who could held the waves back by swimming.16

15. The identity of the man who escapes seems to be purposefully hidden for a few octaves. 16. See note 11 to octave 15.

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Lucillo at last grabbed onto the logs of the unlucky ship to fight the waves. He called out the beloved dignified name of his wife, who busied herself with her own grief. The gurgling sound of the scornful water made his voice faint. He wished that the enemy waves would push his body onto friendly shores. 28

He swam, and it looked like he was making some gains, that he wasn’t rushing to his death. But the horrible motion of those terrible waves swept and turned him in such a way that he was forced and compelled to let go of the log; simultaneously, his limbs became bloodless and the color of death. While he still could he opened his wet lips and said: “Clelia, Clelia, I die; farewell.” 29

That sweet name could sweeten the troubled and dark sea, it could hold back pride, and even humid, harsh Neptune17 could not make bitter the invocations of that dear name. His body was tossed here and there by the dense, impure sea among pebbles and tall rocks. What an unlucky lover, in whose noble chest the love for glory was more powerful than that for love! 30

I am astonished that the great fire and boundless courage in his noble heart did not set the waves on fire, that they did not melt away the horrible chill of harsh winter.18 But humans never fully understand the laws that Love imposes in his kingdom. Now water was inflamed, fire became icy, desires changed, and the ties holding the winds were tightened. 31

After the doomed ship left the immobile shore and unhappy Lucillo unfurled her sails, trusting his dear life to the impious and cruel sea, pale and cold Clelia spent each hour crying out continuously. She filled heaven with 17. See note 14 to octave 22. 18. One of a handful of first-person interventions in the narrator’s voice, offering a commentary on the situation or a more general opinion.

Canto 5 vows and laments. She cried him dead before he was dead; she saw with what sword pain kills the soul. 32

Abandoned and alone, she refused food; her heart was burdened by mortal thoughts. She fled and hid from other people’s company and nourished her heart with her heavy illness. No sweet consolation could comfort her; no reasoning could quiet her frail senses. She cried from under the weight of her burden and called out the name that was all her happiness. 33

If a wind moved through the air and rippled the sea or shook a leaf or a branch, Clelia trembled. It seemed to her that Jove made everything dark with lightning, that he troubled and mixed up the sea. When the harsh sky sent thunder and rain, the winds blew, and the waves jumped upward, she lay on her bed, moaning languidly, then falling silent while sighing. 34

As soon as she heard the sound of the wind coming from the mountains, she felt it as an arrow in her heart, harbinger of some ill. It seemed to her a shadow of anguish and terror, an unhappy vision, a horrible image. Her white cheeks were marked by a gloomy humor; her beautiful colors had fled her face. Her serene countenance’s sweet appearance was entirely changed into dark sadness. 35

If she heard steps, if she saw a page or a knight approaching her royal roof, pale and astounded she thought that he was a messenger sent to tell her: “Your beloved is under water.” Such a thought wounded her heart, and an ugly suspicion of loss made her despair of any salvation. Thus she watched the dense water and the dark black air. 36

She thought she could hear and see the movement and tumult of the angry sea and of the cruel, forbidding waves. She thought she could feel the sud-

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d den insult of the winds. She thought she could see the good helmsman deprived of all hope, and her beloved reduced to a disheveled, unkempt state calling out to heaven for help. What most increased the weight in her soul was that she thought he was calling Clelia’s name out loud. 37

Her troubled heart concentrated on such thoughts that it was already split open, and the pale roses on her face were already soaked by an icy cold sweat. If she had not had her servants’ pious help around her she would have fallen; but they kept her up with wise advice. The devoutness of their friendly goodness made it so that she would not fall. 38

Meanwhile, night fell; it held the world in the dull horror of its humid wings, calming the heavy burden of nagging worries in ailing and weak senses. Yet it did not give her a happy or joyful ending, as her heart was pierced by many painful arrows.19 Night and day harsh pain increased in that heart torn in a thousand different directions. 39

The night had already covered more than half of its way; it had already started to fly toward its setting, and the eastern light could be seen winning over the evil shadow. At that moment a horrible dream made her sleep sick, while she was crying for an unknown misfortune as was her want. The dream made what had been uncertain certain and true. 40

Handsome Lucillo showed himself to that anguished mind, his head hanging low, languid and pale. He didn’t look like he had when the desire for honor pushed him to leave his fatherly harbor to follow Enrico’s great flag (which caused him to be stuck in the sea, drowning and desperate). His hair was dripping with water, his face was horrible where it had been white as milk, dark, graceful, and educated.

19. Regarding the description of night, see canto 4, note 3.

Canto 5 41

He seemed to say to her: “My Clelia, do you recognize your beloved who was killed at sea? Look at me—it’s me. So now give burial to the body, and may your anguish end; be wise and pious. An unknown power and kind heaven are sending my poor corpse to your shore; do not be scared if you see it quite different from what I was. 42

“I pray you: if any of my prayers carried weight with you, let this be it. You know how much I loved you when I was alive; I don’t think any other love comes close to yours for me. I know your love is unchanged; let no new love assail you ever in the future. I love and adore you, and the flame of my love will not be extinguished, as it burns on among the dead.” 43

She replied to his tears with her tears, screamed, then as she opened her arms to hold him she said: “My soul will let you take sad me with sad you wherever you want; it is not possible that I live without you, it is not possible that I live when my Lucillo lies dead. This will not happen! Since I was your life, how could you leave despite me? 44

“If pain does not remove my sick and languishing soul with its impious hand or with a black poison or with a cruel and sharp sword, then my soul will wander far from me to follow you.” As she spoke, tired and anguished, he melted away in the air while saying farewell, as we sometimes see happen in the air when an angry and proud Aquilone20 blows. 45

She pushed away from herself pain, fear, dream, and sleep with a terrible scream, such as the one of someone who sees that his life has been given to a treacherous enemy. Reason’s sway could no longer hold her beautiful soul,

20. A cold and strong wind that blows from the north.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d though it once was its nest. Crazed, she tore her golden hair out, she hit her chest, and filled every place with her screams. 46

Gloomy and thoughtful, Dawn was then rising, cloaked in dark and with clouds. She wasn’t accompanied with purple or gold or colors; she was troubled, sad, and tearful. Sad roses drooped tired and colored with pallor out of pity for her.21 Birds in the woods cried for her burdensome pains and future anguish, rather than singing. 47

She emerged from the royal dwelling with her hair torn and her face pale and covered with tears. She saw the stormy sea and the sky all black and intent on its goal: bringing to her a day full of sighs by way of a strong, stupid wind. She feared finding the one she was looking for; she was afraid of seeing the one she wanted to see, the one she still wanted. 48

After she arrived at the angry seashore with a sad retinue of servants, that saddest woman observed and watched. Heaven, stars, sight, pain that pierced and martyred her heart! She saw the one for whom she had been sighing; he was limp, languishing, and cold on the beach. She saw her beloved; she recognized the loved dear face that conquered her heart. 49

She didn’t bend; she fell, attracted downward by the weight of the anguish that filled her heart. She saw that peaceful but not happy face that had provoked such bitter pain. She saw his blond hair entwined with seaweeds, rushes, and grains of sand. She observed him in silence, and it seemed as though she was engrossed in thought. Then she opened her lips to utter uncertain words.

21. Contrast this image of Dawn with the one in octave 1; a similarly sad image appears in 10.59.

Canto 5 50

“Alas, I see you again like this! Alas, is this the hair of pure gold that ensnared my heart? Heaven, are these the lights that made me laugh, and gave me joy, grace, and splendor? They are dark and sad! Are these the eyes that lighted my honest desire and strong flames? Now you come back dead, to bring death to the one who was your life? Ah, my husband, beautiful soul! 51

“What was the use, alas, that I sadly predicted the future, that I feared the anger of the proud sea, that my soul was trembling and my chest gripped by ice? I still was not able to prevent that evil that removed you, my faithful one, from my chaste embraces! Fate and the heavens were against us when your soft heart turned to jasper,22 and your sails were unfurled. 52

“I don’t accuse you, horrible and strange sight for my chest, my only hope. I feel that you’re wandering around me, chosen spirit, and that you hear and understand these final words of mine. Soon I will come to you.” Such words she mumbled to herself, softly moaning. She knelt and put her arms around her dear lover’s neck; she kissed his icy face with cold kisses. 53

Ivy does not encircle anything with as much greed as she adorned her beloved husband’s neck. Loving vines do not surround and squeeze with such desire a dear tree trunk as she did, about to die in a deathly embrace. O unhappy day, you witnessed the sadness of harsh and merciless pain, as well as a supreme example of love and faithfulness. 54

She no longer turned her tired eyes heavenward; she didn’t sigh; she didn’t hit her chest. Neither could one see bitter rivers flowing out of her eyes across her face to soak the ground. She didn’t tremble; she didn’t move. She 22. Jasper was reputed to be a hard mineral.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d made manifest her modest customs full of love: as she held him in her arms, she changed; she became cold and icy and similar to him. 55

Nobody could untie her beautiful and delicate arms from that loving knot. Her face was against his most beloved one, and it wasn’t possible to move it or separate it from it. What a miracle of love! Who could not talk about it? One must put this among love’s highest wonders: Love joined those that the wrath and furor of fate had separated. 56

Most pitiful heaven, you brought an end to her harsh anguish with her death, and you joined her with her dear and much loved beloved after so much pain. The kingdom was saddened by the horror of her death, and the elders were sad and grieving. The lovers’ bodies were joined in stone and were buried among sobs and cries. 57

After that unlucky ship was broken up, good Venier was utterly deprived of his hope to live. He was tossed here and there by the riotous and cruel sea. He was so shaken that he was barely alive, yet he helped himself with his arms and feet, while he blew away the dark waves, as they were harmful to him. All he could see around him was sea; he didn’t know where his feet would touch the ground again. 58

Tired and devoid of hope and stamina, he let himself go, believing he was already dead. But a wave took pity and tossed him out of the stormy sea and onto a beach. Desperate yet serene hope showed her joyous face among those losses; he was safe, and despite his tiredness he found himself out of mortal danger in a mere second. 59

This is how fate often acts for the good, though even a wise and smart man does not know how. So Venier rejoiced in his mind with silent words,

Canto 5 though he was in an abandoned and wild place. Right then the sun showed the rays of its brilliant face from among dark clouds, and it showered temperate arrows of sweet warmth from the heavenly fields. 60

The ship was torn up; living men left their souls among the waves, drowning in terror, and were deprived of tears and of a tomb: they became bait for killer whales and mean animals. Then the wind died down, the rivers calmed their anger, and the foam-capped mountains disappeared from the sea. The air and the sea quieted down, and the clear sky showed its smiling face to a wide gulf. 61

Stunned on that beach the weak young man wondered where he could be. He saw desert slopes, stones, and dirt. From his heart of hearts he sighed; he moved his gaze toward the clear sky, then he turned his eyes to the sea waves. He watched uncertain as the sea and the sky set aside their force and dark veil. 62

He saw a woman approaching whose appearance was worthy of reverence. She was of perfect age, beautiful, and without makeup. She had an unadorned beauty, white and simple clothes, and no shoes on her slim feet. Her blonde hair was burnished and looked like choice gold. Both her stars resembled a bright sun, and she held arrows in her hands. Her proud beauty was the honor of the woods, the terror for cruel, wild animals.23 63

A nymph or Diana herself might share her clothes and her appearance when they go hunting in the woods. Her eyes were chaste, her manners saintly; 23. From her first appearance Erina is described as beautiful but proud and strong, and with no insistence on her sexuality. Virginia Cox in fact underscores that she is “represented as virginal” and “innocently susceptible to the masculine charms of [her] ‘victim’ [i.e., the man subject to her charms].” See Cox, “Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy,” in Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villari, ed. Zygmunt Baranski et al. (London: Society for Italian Studies, 1997), 143.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d her heart was firmly set against love. And yet her human face could make heaven fall in love with her, but that ruling virgin scorned even a heavenly lover. She followed handsome prey, disdained love, and caught and tamed wild animals. 64

As soon as this woman gazed at him, her heart trembled; her face paled. Then she became like a rose, red in the morning, and she stopped her steps with wise counsel. With a sweet wounding voice she started talking to him who was sitting there pale and captivated: “Since I opened my eyes to the light of the sun I have never beheld a man on my shore. 65

“Who pushed and guided you here, where no mortal law has rule? Who directed your path? Tell me now, with what skill did you moor your bold ship to these shores? Where are you from? Why are you here? Unveil in part what your fate and your will are, worthy youth, since I see that you weren’t born among wild animals and rocks or in dark and horrific forests.” 66

He replied: “Goddess, you have come down from your heavenly abode to console my pains with your pity. You look like a goddess from your demeanor, your clothing, and your words; so I bow to you as a goddess, and as a goddess my heart accepts you. And if you’re a goddess help me: save my body, spared by the great sea, from wolves and monsters; take my life away from sorrows and losses, for it has survived the winds and the waves of the sea. 67

“A mere glance at me and at my sad appearance should tell you about my cruel fortune; still, I will tell it to you to lessen the pain in my soul and to satiate your soul, my goddess. Arriving at this beautiful sandy land from the stormy sea brings me some happiness and sweetens my sad heart; still the pain makes me bitter. 68

“I was born where a venerable city lies sublime and glorious on a gulf of a great sea. Her heart is full of love no less than of justice and faith. Her name

Canto 5 is Venice. Who would fully describe the many gifts that heaven has bestowed on her? A cloud of graces and virtues perennially rains them in her lap. 69

“My father was an angel, the first one in my great republic, if I dare to say so. His wife was the beautiful and honest Ifilia, who was his everything and who considered herself happy. Soon from her beautiful hips, thanks to friendly stars, I came forth, her firstborn; my father gave me the name Venier from her family, since he loved her more than himself.24 70

“As soon as I heard that the pious Dandolo was taking a courageous army against the Romans, when everybody’s face became pale as they heard that mighty name and saw those flags, when many wanted to crown their heads with glory through their noble, warrior-like actions, I myself felt the sting of generous envy and went to Enrico, to add myself to their number. 71

“After a hard battle against the furious Thracians, he saw his field depleted; so he determined to redo what war had undone. He sent me to gather choice and good people where the beautiful goddess [Venus] lies in peace among flowers and pleasure, where she tempts furious Mars and ties him with pleasant arts. 72

“I wanted to bring to him very many warriors, among the best. Some wanted to gain gold, others the highest glory, still more wanted to plunder Greece. The king’s own son [Lucillo], whose beautiful cheeks were covered by the golden flowers that mark a new stage in life, left his good land, his dear father, and his beloved wife, to follow me. 73

“The ships were waiting, ready, laden, indeed full of anything one might want. We boarded; the helmsman unfurled the sails to the wind with a happy coun24. Marinella here establishes a matrilinear lineage for Venier, evident in his very name, without erasing the traditional (patrilinear) one.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d tenance, and we left the shore. We were crossing the Pamphylian Sea,25 with no fear of shame, filled with hope, satisfied in our hearts. In my mind I was enjoying the fact that I was taking the king’s noble son to military danger. 74

“A peaceful sky gave joy to the heart and senses. The helmsman directed the stern ahead with assurance. Four times already had blonde dawn risen from the ocean’s wide bosom, as the sun (alight with lively flames) had sunk, its hair making the world golden, as many times since the day we left Cyprus and entrusted our too trusting sails to the cruel sea. 75

“Then all at once a cloudy veil darker than pitch spread out and unfolded. The air became troubled, and the god of Delos26 hid his face in that inopportune haze. Mumbling, the sky poured icy hail in the waves along with thick rain. Everything was flooded; the wind fought with the fields, the pastures, the flowers that it felled to the ground. 76

“The wind roiled and upset the wide gulf of the heretofore peaceful sea with more anger and disdain. With each passing hour it let out more wrath and venom. Our ship was shaken, our hearts filled with anguish. Borea27 and Austro28 filled with fury broke our wide sail and shattered our helm. Our sad ship wandered in the waters, and in the end the wind broke her up. Hence death came to us. 77

“After the ship sank, my beloved companions were with me in the water, prey to monsters. I tried to save myself from the winds and the angry motions of

25. Modern-day Gulf of Antalya, on the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean Sea. 26. That is, Apollo. Mythology has it that he was born on this floating island, which was one of his favorite retreats. 27. Another name for Aquilone, which, as noted earlier, is a cold and strong wind that blows from the north. 28. A southern wind.

Canto 5 the sea, although the sea hit and wounded me. My courage, the strength of my icy limbs, my senses gave way; therefore, I myself gave way to the water, to the atrocious storm that would have tired a far stronger man than me. 78

“Since I could no longer repel the bitter waves with my breaths or with my arms I fully believed that I would die, as I did not see a safe harbor or a shore in that great sea where I could find refuge from the storm. In my heart I called on my dear ancestors for my last comfort. Then I let myself go. I don’t know how I climbed onto this shore; it seems a dream. 79

“It is either that heaven is keeping me for my torment (and that would be why it didn’t separate my soul from my body in the sea), or that it destines this life of mine to blissful fame (and that would be why it snatched me from a bitter death). Otherwise it willed to disrupt my noble and superb desires with such a misfortune; it would rather that I purge my desires and my unwise wishes here and now, among these pines, cypresses, and beeches.”29 80

As he spoke, tears soaked his afflicted chest and his sunken cheeks. She said: “Be peaceful; end the trouble and pain that shake your heart. Do not be in pain if your very evil destiny pushed you to wild and far-off places; it is possible to live happy, joyful, and blessed here among wild animals and trees. 81

“Man becomes divine by pondering the main principles of hidden causes and wonderful deeds. This is how his glorious desires are quelled: he opens to view what is hidden and unknown and discovers it. Come to my home: great knowledge has created the highest beauty there; it veiled and covered it with gold. I am merely a mortal woman; I live in a beautiful but flimsy home, where I polish my soul and clean my arrows. 29. These deciduous trees are typical of Italian poetry but hardly make sense in the context of this unknown island in the Mediterranean. Clearly they appear because they belong to the canon of nature in lyrical, pastoral, and epic poetry; there is no attempt at “realism” here.

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“There I praise him who rules eternally among the stars and the sun in his eternal beauty. He made me worthy that I would stay away from tricks and illusion when I look around in the fog. Even a mortal mind does not scorn being part of the heaven that God rules so well.” She spoke these words; and these sweet remarks made the bitter feelings in his heart less harsh. 83

Finally, they reached her palace. Inside the mountain it had loggias, wide balconies, rooms, and halls, all noble and skillful work of a well-trained chisel: the sun had not seen anything like it, and it never will again. A clear spring let its water out by thousands of holes above it—so much water that it came down from the mountain with such fury that it bothered the ears almost like a new Nile.30 84

Then one hundred virgins born in the woods sacred to the three-shaped goddess31 arrived. One removed from the warrior’s body his handsome clothes and his golden laces, wet from the sea. Another one drew a bath, decorating it with young fronds, so that it was all nicer. Yet another took some clothes out of a closed receptacle to cover the champion’s tired limbs.32 85

One washed him, another dried him, a third applied oil and kindly clothed him with delicate clothes. Another decorated the bed, so that the pain that held him in its thrall would dissipate, and that his unlucky anguish would be forgotten. One lit the fire, another skewered meat onto spits. One carried wheat in golden baskets, a second one lay a white tablecloth, and a third one set precious wines on the table.

30. The African river that was famed for its large (but fertile) floods. 31. Apollo’s twin sister Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt (hence at home in the woods), moon goddess in heaven, and identified with Hecate in the underworld. 32. “Champion” is used here in the pre- and early-modern meaning of a knight fighting in a tournament to defend a person, ideal, or assertion.

Canto 5 86

Cyrene, a mother, welcomed her dear son to her home with royal pomp when she cried with sad eyes over her beloved dead, killed by sweet bees.33 The activities, the thoughts, the splendid setting, and the happy results with which Erina honored her new friend occurred in the same manner in that lonely, wild, mountainous place.34 87

After all that was finished, Altea swiftly arrived with a sweet cithara and her siren-like voice.35 Beautiful Erina then with a gracious voice invited her dear guest to dinner. Venier could not believe that he had just survived the cruel sea, all alone. He was barely alive. He looked more than human, wrapped in a royal mantle, wise in his speech, and handsome in his appearance. 88

The color that had turned to pallor in his almost dead face was back, more beautiful than ever; it was a sure sign of the nobility of his heart, displayed in his face adorned with greatness. It seems that he made Erina’s great home more beautiful with his good manners and temperate smile. The maiden was astonished; she observed quietly and often she turned to him her eyes and her heart. 89

Meanwhile, Altea pleased their hearts with her golden cithara and sweet song. Earth and Aethra36 enjoyed the rays, the grass, and the flowers while 33. Aristaeus was the son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene. A benevolent deity, he introduced the cultivation of bees and the vine and olive and was the protector of herdsmen and hunters. It is unclear why Marinella states that he was killed by bees, but her simile is meant to evoke the love of a mother for a long-lost family member. 34. Another case (similar to 4.66) in which the name of the female character emerges after quite a few octaves. 35. Altea is that rare secondary character whose name receives emphasis in the poem. It is possible to imagine that Marinella saw some parallels between this poetry-singing, music-playing virgin and herself as writer. 36. Aethra, wife of King Aegeus of Athens, gave birth to Theseus (either by her husband or by Poseidon). After Helen was abducted from Sparta by Poseidon, Aethra guarded her, eventually becoming her slave and following her to Troy. It is unclear why Marinella mentions her here.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d the song, the words, and music played. She sang about how the harsh cold condenses air in an enclosed stone and how lively humors are born of it, so that a sparkling silvery river bubbles forth filling a cavern, producing rivers and torrents above ground. 90

She sang about thick vapors, heavy in the air, that look to most people like a comet or a star, but that threaten servitude and cruel and painful death to an unjust tyrant via their unlucky light. She sang about earth-like vapor, laden with ice, wandering through here and there tossing ships about, uprooting trees, troubling and messing up short days by bringing ice and snow. 91

She sang about how earth turns into water, how water turns into air, and how air turns into fire and ascends lightly. She sang about how fire turns into air, how air turns into water, and how water takes the shape of lowly earth. She sang about the reasons why sea water rises and falls every six hours, following the motion of the moon. She sang about why rivers flowing into the salty main have different characteristics and flavors. 92

She sang about a cruel wind shut in the bowels of the earth that shakes high buildings. She sang about the reasons why the sky is clear and bright when the anxious plain is shaken and hit. She sang about the reasons why the light of the sun dims when it shines the most in the sky, eclipsing the moon; and why the moon appears round or missing a part to our eyes. 93

She sang about the unified light of many stars that is reflected and constitutes a white way, similar to spilt milk, that directs the gods to Jupiter’s palace. She made clear why a vapor born and risen from these stars at times makes a silver ring around Phoebus’s blond hair.37

37. Regarding Phoebus, see canto 4, note 3.

Canto 5 94

She stopped at that point, and as she stopped the beautiful music emanating from her resounding instrument stopped too. The soft sound of the winds had stopped to let the harmony of high, supreme things resound more clearly. Choirs, the heavens, and the elements enjoyed her singing about these highest marvels. Thanks to these sweet songs, our hero forgot the tempest at sea and his love for fighting. 95

With tasty food and good wine he sated his natural desires. As he was far from the sea, he no longer feared its proud strength that had troubled and pushed him. Though he liked everything, he was bothered and upset that he had reached an unknown mountainous place. Still, he showed a happy face, though his doubt-filled heart wavered between happiness and sadness. 96

Meanwhile, with her right hand Night painted various wild animals in the sky with golden stars, and she hid everything beautiful on earth under a wide, dark cloak. From her long hair Delia wrung icy liquid,38 passing through the chaste maids and showing them the pomp and adornment of the plains in the sky. 97

That wise woman gave the courageous warrior a beautiful room, richly appointed. There was a statue cast in marble showing Pan lift his horns high with proud looks. Not far there was an image of Syrinx wearing light clothes and with reeds on her head.39 It looked at though the god was observing and admiring her stealthily, wounded with love, burning and sighing for her.

38. Delia is an epithet of Diana, who was born on the island of Delos; as the moon goddess, she is represented here as wringing the dew of night from her hair. 39. Syrinx is an Arcadian nymph who, pursued by Pan, took refuge in a river and prayed to be turned into a reed. Pan then made his pipes of that reed. See Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.701ff.

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On one side a high and impressive bed stood; it positively burned and sparkled with purple and gold! Venier lay down on that, giving rest to his tired limbs; he fell asleep. Erina left; she stretched her body on her usual bed with anguish in her heart. She thought about that hero going back to his honors, his fight, and his camp in a few days. 99

She did not know why, but these worrisome thoughts got into her heart, already filled with anguish. Yet sleep slowed their sad progress; it canceled her anxiety. With its sweet blandishing sleep took charge of her waking senses and calmed her heart. Her eyes then were closed, and her worldly senses were asleep, though her inner spirits were still at work. 100

The less human powers are distracted and attracted to various things, the more the soul shows itself the enemy of laziness and endowed with high, powerful, and sovereign virtues. It is rare that a mind opens itself to the senses and that the heart shakes off useless images, unless a false worry covers up the image of what is beautiful and sheds light on what is true.

CANTO 6

S U M M A RY

Fileno comforted his beloved daughter in a dream and revealed her lineage to her. She in turn told Venier about the fate and family of her father, a wise man who had accomplished much. By the light of a diamond they explored the great wonder that was his palace. The warrior looked on the rich tomb of Erina’s father, illustriously and handsomely appointed. 1

As soon as her troubled heart and vigilant eyes were enveloped in a peaceful sleep, her father’s noble face, voice, and demeanor offered themselves to her awakened mind. With clear and free voice he asked her: “Why are you upset? Why are you in pain over nothing? Why are you consumed with anguish? Soul of my soul, dearest heart of my heart, tell me: I feel pain for your pain. 2

“Perhaps the young hero’s arrival bothers you because it doesn’t fit with your wishes? A divine power protected him, removed him from the waves, and led him to safety, snatching him from death and anguish. His coming might be strange to you, but it gave my spirit the happiness and joy that are tied to one’s fatherland. He is an illustrious son of the same place I come from; he is famous for his military prowess and his wisdom. 3

“His ancestors were related to ours with bonds of love and of blood;1 so some affinity existed and still exists between you two, although you were 1. That is, Erina and Venier share both blood relatives and those acquired by marriage.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d separated by many seas and shores. Yes, many years have passed, and yet you are tied to the same lineage. Don’t let our shores be deprived of him; don’t agree to that; keep him in an honorable and wise manner. 4

“But if you notice that a noble desire pushes him to resume his journey, though he is not able to do so—his intense desire for warrior glory will not allow him to remain among pines and beeches—then you should act so that he cannot go far from our door and go back to the Latin camp unless he begs you first, my daughter, and explains his thought to you while in tears. 5

“It’s not that I want this out of hatred for him; in fact, I love him and I rejoice in everything good that befalls him. I would like to take him from Adria: the latter took our kingdom from us, so we’ll take her son! And if you cannot oppose his will, then in the end you will give him a good piece of advice, even under duress. It is not good to restrain a heart that doesn’t think peace is sweet, or a heart that harbors unclear emotions.” 6

Just as night’s fears disappear at the appearance of Phoebus’s rays,2 so at that moment her father’s beloved face disappeared. His dear daughter kept his words and their meaning in her beautiful bosom. When the bright sun came back to take sleep back where it belongs, she opened her beautiful eyes to see if she could see the beloved face of her great father. 7

Erina turned her eyes everywhere to see that fleeing shadow, if it was possible. Then she rested her gaze, and her soul was clear of all anguish and desire. O you wise woman, are you crying because your father’s appearance dwells in your home? Since he hid himself from your senses, you show your face wet with tears.3 2. See canto 4, note 10. 3. Another direct address to a female character (see 2.72, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49). Marinella creates a sense of proximity and affection for Erina in her readers.

Canto 6 8

The anguish that killed her heart pushed her to exhale a loving breath with a sigh. Then she said: “Father, who took you from me? Who separated your image from my blind eyes? Thanks to you I am; thanks to you I live. You gave to my face its lilies and its purple roses. You opened rays of clear beauty for my mind’s benefit, and now you disappear from its light;4 you vanish. 9

“I know that you used to like my eyes; I know that you often kissed them sweetly and with much enjoyment. You created at the same time my simple spirit and my wise, learned, prudent mind. So why do you flee, dear? Why do you suddenly make my feelings sad and unhappy? If you love me, why do you flee? Why do you remove yourself from me, who love you? Why do you not comfort me?”5 10

Perhaps it was with such sad words that blonde Daphnis called her beloved father from the handsome waves, when she had captured and ensnared Phoebus’s heart with her bright hair.6 Like her, she expressed the deep affection of her will in peaceful laments. Meanwhile, the sun rising with its morning warmth quieted her tears and pain. 11

When she went back and thought again about what he had revealed and explained to her, she understood that he had unveiled something that almost could not be believed; and this brought joy back to her. She turned her dewy stars toward the noble seat in the sky with such sweetness that she could set it on fire. Laughing, she thanked him for taking care of her. 4. That is, the eyes (the light of the mind). 5. Commenting on octave 53, Letizia Panizza writes that “one is . . . tempted to read as autobiographical the sentiments expressed by a motherless, only daughter Erina regarding her beloved father Fileno, a natural philosopher.” See Panizza, “Introduction to the Translation,” in The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, ed. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 4. These lines, addressed to the absent Fileno, are equally poignant. 6. The story of Apollo and Daphnis is recounted by Ovid in Metamorphoses 1.486–89.

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The vivid memory of her father elicited pious tears from her loving eyes; they carved humid paths down her virgin cheeks and snowy chest. She was like a white lily receiving shiny pearls [dew] in its bosom when the day appears, pearls that beautiful Dawn pours from her apron when she revives the core of all beautiful flowers. 13

Meanwhile, the noble pilgrim [Venier] rose from his soft down. He looked and observed; he was dazzled by the beauty of the great palace, now illuminated by the sun; he admired its structure. When the thought entered his mind that he did not know how or did not have the courage to go back to his camp, his heart shrunk; he didn’t think that what was very beautiful was beautiful at all, because a forbidden wish seems harsh. 14

Then he devoutly offered praise and prayers up to kind heaven with desirous heart. He asked that it would not deny him a safe path back to his land, his father, or worthy deeds. He asked that it would quiet the anger that deep hatred had lit up in him. He asked that it would change harshness into tenderness. He asked that it would show the way, be favorable to him, and give help to his anguish, so that his honor and his life would be safe. 15

Then he quickly went where Fileno’s wise daughter sat silently and calmly. She looked like a white and red rose that gathers the morning rain in a beautiful garden.7 When he arrived, she lifted her dear eyes, and her brow became happier and more joyful. She got up, and out of her eyes the chaste rays of love shone for a family member. 16

She took him by the hand, with friendly words and sweet smiles. Sweetly she told him: “Trunk of my noble family tree, happily endowed with immor7. The image of the rose is a cliché of Petrarchan and lyrical poetry, usually applied to the (male) poet’s (female) beloved. Here Marinella utilizes it to emphasize Erina’s beauty, but the context evokes paternal and familiar love rather than the erotic kind.

Canto 6 tal glory and ensconced in heaven, I recognize your appearance and your face! I saw you among the pitiless, unhappy crowd of the evil Thracians. Your deeds live on in Albin’s paintings! 17

“You are my cousin, though many times removed. Still I love you much more than a beloved and dear brother, as you are the supreme and the most rare ornament of good Venetian and Latin blood. I can explain and lay out for you your glories, your virtues, and your fate. But the time hasn’t yet come for me to unveil all this, if fate covers and hides this knowledge from you.” 18

The youth was astonished and speechless at the young maiden’s words. He did not know how he was related to her or how she knew his name and face. “Tell me your origin, and may the heaven fill your handsome dwelling with your graces and free it from bothersome irks. I am astounded, and your words comfort my senses and my heart.” 19

Venier spoke in that manner. With pleasant and smiling eyes and peaceful words she replied: “Beloved son to father Neptune,8 your motionless destiny is here with us, and so are your distinguished virtues. Your danger is here depicted by not unheard-of hands.9 I do not want to deny you anything you wish, nor do I want to keep the events of the future hidden from you. 20

“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Pietro Candiano’s genius and desires. I don’t know if you know who he was, how he lived, and where he was from. After a long while time erases our memories, and fame has become very old and so she keeps her feathers close to her, gathered around her body.10 So I

8. A reference to Venier’s being saved from the wreck by the motion of the waves that lifted him onto Erina’s shore. 9. That is, by a famous painter; the use of the rhetorical figure of litotes (or understatement) is well suited to the topos of modesty, standard for artists in general. 10. Virgil describes Fame as a flying monster whose body is covered by feathers, each hiding an eye (Aeneid 4.173–88); similar imagery also appears in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata 20.101.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d will tell you how he arrived here and how he spent happy years after many harsh pains. 21

“My father, to whom I was dearer than his eyes or life, told me: ‘I want you to know the esteemed royal stock of your ancestors. Phoebus11 has lifted his brow crowned with rays from Eos’s shore longer than two ages since Pietro hopelessly left his kingdom and his well-deserved punishment.’ 22

“I know that what I am telling you is still hidden. It lies like an unknown story: the fact that Candiano was a leader and that his sole hungry desire was to rule; the fact that your Venice tried to make him die. Discussions by learned pens do not keep quiet; his highest glory shines forth in these writings, and other people’s shame is there too.12 23

“He, named Pietro and well liked by the people, succeeded his father as ruler. After he became leader13 he ruled over your beautiful country, your sea, and your shore with such love that it seemed certain that the choir of sacred virtues dwelled in his chest. Alas, his immoderate desire to rule swayed him from what is right and just. 24

“You are aware that a dignified will to rule simmers incessantly in noble bosoms. Such faith and justice were lost from my great ancestor’s sincere heart. So in his arrogance he valued only his mind, despised the world, and esteemed God but little. He was full of himself and of self-love; he was satisfied only by being king.14

11. See canto 4, note 10. 12. Readers could imagine that Erina is pointing at some books nearby, but the most obvious referent is to the words they are reading, that is, Enrico itself. 13. The Italian “duca” comes from the Latin verb “duce˘re,” “to lead.” From the same term comes the Venetian “doge,” the term designating the elected ruler of the republic. 14. In other words, Pietro tried to acquire all power for himself, turning Venice from an oligarchy into a monarchy—nothing short of the cardinal sin in Venetian politics. Venetian history

Canto 6 25

“He nourished in his bosom a dangerous daring that an irksome desire had generated in him: he wanted to make the Venetian state his subject and be free from all duty to it. Soon the signs were unmistakable: you could see him puffed and inflated; it seemed as though he was stripping all power to rule from others, as he believed that he was superior to that much honored group. 26

“Though he kept his thought hidden and didn’t share his secret with anyone, the heavens didn’t approve such a foul wish being carried out, or that it remain hidden and mute. So a whisper, a mere quiet sound, was heard, and soon one was blamed for it and another one threatened. Quickly he became known for his wish, he was scorned, and his contemptuous land prepared to give him a bitter death. 27

“Knowing that he wanted to lift himself beyond what was right in order to satisfy his desire, the offended and angry people called their leader evil, cruel, wicked, and unjust. They wanted to remove him from the noble throne, to deprive him completely of what he loved; they wanted to torture

includes one such doge: the notorious Marin Falier (1285–1355), fifty-fifth doge, who was beheaded for conspiring to acquire absolute power. The portrait sequence on three walls of the Hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo ducale is interrupted where Falier’s image should be; a black cloth is painted instead, carrying the inscription “Hic est locus Marini Faletri, decapitati pro criminibus” (“This is Marin Falier’s place: he was beheaded for his crimes”). See The Ducal Palace in Venice (Venice: Ferrari, 1956), 79. Gino Fogolari further explains that originally “it was proposed to cancel the head of his portrait and to write his sentence in its place; but the [Council of] Ten insisted on having [the portrait] destroyed.” See Fogolari, The Ducal Palace of Venice (Milan: Treves, n.d.), 47. Marinella’s implicit reference is rather bold, as a descendant of this renegade Venetian is given the important role of disclosing the past and the future of the city to Venier. However, Marinella is also asserting that the republic was able to recognize any danger—even the most insidious one coming from within itself, and at the highest level of government—and face it, defeat it, and continue. Unlike Marin Falier on the walls of the Hall of the Great Council, the presence of Erina’s forefather is not erased but showcased as an example, though a negative one, from which viewers and readers can draw a valuable lesson. Indeed, the paintings on the walls of the Hall of the Great Council are meant to link the sitting doge with Rome and the papacy on one side and with Byzantium (and Enrico’s achievement) on the other; Falier serves as the exception to a long-lasting rule of powerful, just, and courageous leaders.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d him with torments and harsh punishment so as to make him an example for all wicked people. 28

“Pietro knew what his sin required, what punishment his foolish plan deserved; his conscience bit at him. So with great art and shrewd skill he reinforced all doors, blinds, windows, bastions, and open fields against the people’s scorn. He was sure that an enemy army could only in vain hope to enter. 29

“More than a thousand armed men were outside; they occupied all entrances so that he wouldn’t leave. The rebelling people set the royal palace afire, so that he wouldn’t be able to stay.15 A crude man similarly sets fire little by little so that sweet bees leave their bait, their beloved hive, and their dear nests where they gather the happy manna of blossoming fields.16 30

“Flames shot up horribly; the noble palace hid fire in its bosom, then suddenly it lit up some spacious buildings nearby. They were consumed in its deep chasm, and everything was reduced to dust. He paced, turned, and was agitated and confounded in the pyre of his own making that shone all around him. My ancestor could foresee the murder of himself and of his son, and he moved around crazily. 31

“Pain pushed him to run like a madman to where his unlucky child lay.17 He hugged and kissed him; as hurt and pain racked him, he said: ‘My reckless will saw that your birth coincided with the end of my life. This palace burns, and you, mistake-free and innocent child, pay the price for my mistake. 15. The apparent metaphor in the preceding octave is also concrete, as Pietro buttressed the physical defenses to what Marinella terms (perhaps ironically) his “royal palace.” 16. To this day, in order to remove bees so as to extract combs from a hive, smoke is used to trick the bees into believing that the hive is in danger. While they are busy engorging themselves with honey, the hive can be safely opened and the combs removed. 17. It is noteworthy that Marinella stresses the irrationality not of an enemy in single battle (a topos of epic poems: see Sarrocchi, Scanderbeide 9.24) but of Erina’s ancestor, who committed the cardinal sin for the republic of Venice: the desire for absolute power.

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“ ‘This is how you enjoy the royal palace! I crown your head with imperial honors, my beloved; I envelop your limbs with a royal cloak, and I cover you with riches. O pitiful child! I force you to die in mortal flames as a culprit, but it is for me that the fire is designated; I was the one who made a mistake and who has to erase it with my death.’

33

“At that very moment, wise Armano (who had nourished Pietro’s son in his infancy) came to his rescue. He saw him and held him. Like one who could move mountains far with enchanted words and elicit strong rains though the sky was clear, in the same manner with his knowledge he repressed fiery Vulcan’s fury; he smothered what hurt and replaced it with the freshness of roses.

34

“He ran with Pietro’s son into the fire, among the fiery sparks that infested and coursed through the city; he didn’t feel any pain caused by those horrible, ravaging flames. Then Armano caused a hellish spirit to take on the appearance of Candiano’s face. While the wretched man took off from his palace, they killed his shadow instead.

35

“Those spiteful people wounded and killed the fake king and the fake image of his gentle son; they kept at it until the fire of their anger died down and their hearts were satisfied. They buried those bodies in the flames. Meanwhile, the magician took the escapees to a safe place; he saved his dear charges from a bitter fate.

36

“Then he made a ship appear; it moved faster than air. It only took the three of them on board, because Candiano’s aggrieved wife had died out of fear and pain. The ship left the fatherland encircled with tall flames and prey to other people’s voracious desires; but it didn’t leave those magnanimous souls with the royal insignia of a generous heart.

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“Your Venice believed that he had been pierced by weapons and burned to death with his son; yet he moved the oars on a flying ship through the ocean into an eternal exile. When he saw this rock, he removed a veil from his heart and cleared his brow, as he thought he had found a quiet harbor to his tempest, as was indeed the case. 38

“That rock was naked, filled only with seaweed, sand, and shells; it was lonely and burned by the sun. Perhaps a group of Nymphs came to dry their scattered hair with the warmth of the hot sun! As the banished king observed the plain devoid of any goods (or with very few), he was happy, and yet he exhaled sighs of repentance and anger to the sky. 39

“The magician asked him: ‘Are you sighing? What are you afraid of? Is your heart pressed by the new fear of future distress? Is it because you see no fruit or leaf, or because you have little hope to see any? We will go in a little while, in fact let’s go together now, and we’ll see the presence of an illustrious door. We’ll walk, and we’ll see a great and glorious home. Let’s go together.’ They went on a little, and the beauty of this magnificent roof showed itself, giving them peace and happiness. 40

“Pietro was confused at such a sight, and in amazement said: ‘What a marvel, wise Armano! If one were to travel the entire world looking for such valor, one would do that in vain. My own royal palace, in which I and my most just and human father lived, does not shine as much as this one! I don’t know where you’re leading me—perhaps to heaven, next to Jupiter?’ 41

“Blond ears proclaimed the value of their heavy hair18 throughout the fields. Nearby, fecund grapevines were green and loaded with their happy weight. 18. That is, they displayed the wealth of grains each carried.

Canto 6 One could see swift fish frolic among clear waves in schools. All this seemed to show how fruitful, rich, and happy that land was, where everything good was present and ready for the plucking. 42

“Pietro enjoyed everything: happy places, tall palace, pleasant waters, green meadows, and his time there. He spent it in woods and forests with fauns19 and gods. [At night] he observed the motion and shine of moving stars in their heavenly garden. In that manner he suppressed his disquiet, enjoyed sublime nature, and reassured his soul. 43

“Meanwhile the leader’s son grew in age and beauty; he grew to that beautiful age when it is natural that one feel the happiness (not the pain) of sweet love. A daughter born, not of a man but of a god, would be fit to marry him—and such a virgin he saw, dressed in white, mirroring herself in clear water; and he liked her. 44

“She was the issue of a forest god and of a goddess; her name was Eonide. With a lively flame love hurled arrows and darts into his heart from her beautiful eyes. A light shone on her virginal face, a serene air more beautiful than any other that fueled that young man. He never laughed unless her fair face was present. 45

“Pietro realized all this; he wanted a marriage and heirs, so he wed him to this desired and much beloved daughter, adding new joy to his own noble heart. The happy lady was bearer of good news: before the year was finished, she gave birth to a beautiful child, and satisfied her ancestor’s wish. 46

“What hugs, kisses, and cuddles on this newborn son did the leader Pietro bestow! Happily it occurred that the latter disdained ruling and liked his 19. Roman minor deities whose body was half man, half goat.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d perpetual exile. Pietro’s brow was cheerful and peaceful as his noble senses became accustomed to safety; he loved that dear infant, and his present goodness sweetened his sour and unhappy mind. 47

“The beautiful, beloved heir had barely reached his fifteenth year, when his great ancestor (already more than mature in age) felt he had reached the moment when he would leave this world and go to God. His wise heart felt a sweet pain for his son; he hugged him and said: ‘Now I’m going on a much feared road, one that nature believes horrible and that the stupid world finds obscure. 48

“ ‘But I stared directly at that great sun after I removed all fog from my mind. I recognized my mistake, and I feel that all my passionate desire for fame (which is but shadows and smoke) is utterly extinguished. I happily give my chilly body back to earth and cross the black river of Acheron.’20 As he spoke he disclosed to him his ancestry, his dangers, and his wishes. 49

“In the middle of uttering those words and their meaning, the cold Parca21 suddenly picked his life and spirit; she left the area around sad and lonely, and laughter turned to tears. It is not in this manner that oblivion steals memory, names, and deeds, for fathers tell their successors their lives, what came before, and what will come after. 50

“Pietro learned famous sciences from Armano, his son from him, and his successor and so on across generations; so each one lit for the other great torches of knowledge, ultimately lit by him [Pietro]. Fileno enjoyed them more than any other, and I am his only daughter and heir of his valor. Without any young companions he was lord and owner of these enchanted homes.

20. Regarding Acheron, see canto 5, note 9. 21. In Greek and Roman mythology any one of the three goddesses who determine a person’s destiny; in this case the reference is to the goddess who controls one’s death, who is therefore dubbed “cold.”

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“He spent the green April of his noble life (that is, the most serene days of his happy age) learning virtue. He was handsome and kind, adorned with grace and good manners. There is a mountain taller than all others; that’s where he would happily stay, observing the appearance, motions, courses, and rotations of the stars in the starry heavens. 52

“His sharp mind went not from effect to hidden reasons, but from causes to manifest signs. Your arts are rough and unpolished; your brains are useless, since they are barely fit to go from effect to buried causes with much study.22 I dare say that he progressed in knowledge to such an extent that he was the only one on earth to be equal to the gods in the heavens. 53

“Very often he would take me to that mountain when I was still a child, at the time when night, thanks to her black hand, makes the blind air golden with stars. Then he would share the good and the beautiful of what he knew.23 As a new Dawn, I would grow in my wisdom with the sun, under the dear influx of the sky, and a friend to the god of Delos.24 54

“These virgins of mine that you see here are the daughters of these woods; they issued from that forest. They are a present of my dear father, who gave them to me as companions and servants. Some hunt, some play the cithara, some fish among the quick waves; more still take care of the palace, and some weave gold and make decorations of pearls to my clothes.” 55

That courageous warrior liked and enjoyed the sweet words of that beautiful young woman; it seemed as though it took a heavy weight from his chest and made his youthful thoughts happy. He said: “If it is not a nuisance or a bother 22. A reference not to Venier specifically but to humanity in general, as both adjectives have a plural referent in the original. 23. See note 5 above. 24. That is, Apollo. See canto 5, note 26.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d that you see the true future in your heart, then do not deny me the knowledge of the peaceful and warlike times of my famous fatherland, noble woman.” 56

“See, the shadows are short, and the sun has placed the light of its chariot in the middle of the sky; flocks gather in hidden caverns, and light birds stop their feathers in the branches. Look, Altea has placed on the table well-liked foods, as is her wont, so that our natural discomfort may get nourishment with happiness and ease. 57

“As soon as we have assuaged what our modest want and necessity require” Erina said “we will go to Fileno’s beloved threshold.” After lunch she moved from where she was sitting, and she asked the young man to follow her; they went around wide halls adorned with statues and choice works. 58

While walking he carefully observed the majestic marvels, and she unveiled the intent of that sublime palace. The wondrous works of various decorations made him look up many times. He said to himself: “I can hardly believe this, but to me it resembles the worthiest building that the sun unveils; maybe this is equal to the royal palace of the heavens, and like that one, perhaps, this too is immortal.” 59

With wise words and graceful manners she took him by the hand and led him to a door that gave off a great light because of the gold and precious stones that glittered in it. After it opened, he went in; he looked around but could not see anything, as there was no torch or other light. He could not see what he wished to see, and believed that everything had been covered and swallowed by darkness. 60

But quickly that noble daughter tore up a veil that closed up the flames and lightning of a diamond, and she lit everything up. A sudden chill seemed

Canto 6 to take hold of his chest as a consequence: even when all vapor unveils the fields, the sky never sheds as much light as that one, which then made visible for him so many generals, horses, horsemen, and footmen. 61

In a similar manner images and intelligible forms dwell in our intellect, but they would remain obscure (along with the beautiful rules of the ideal species fixed in it) if the agent faculty, which never sleeps, did not illuminate them in handsome ways; it acts so that it becomes evident what was and what was not, and it shows its own honor in action. 62

There he observed the nice work of rubies, emeralds, and hyacinths thanks to golden rays and the shining sun; his mind and noble brain were confused and vanquished. In the middle of the building sat the large and fateful tomb. Erina cried, as her eyes filled with pity; then with a tired voice she said, pointing at that precious rock: 63

“The venerable bones and holy ashes of my good parent, who in my opinion could boast his knowledge of everything, find here a tranquil peace and a calm rest; his high spirit lies hidden among these illustrious marbles, and it will until my soul leaves my mortal, bodily spoil in our lonely woods. 64

“At that time this mountain, this richly appointed palace, this excellent wealth (gold, jewels, and paintings) will all disappear like smoke or fog disappear from our view when a breath blows from the sky. Woods, untamed forests, dens and homes to wild animals and to cruel monsters will replace them; and we will go where glorious spirits find their happy and noble rest.” 65

The wise young man then said: “You are the noble source of and the only hope for my salvation! Is it possible that our soul can join the saved without baptism?” This is not true unless water first wash her hair, for only water’s

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d virtues are great and sublime.25 She moved the sweet air among lively roses and replied thus. 66

“We follow the faith and worship of him who gave us eternity through the treasure of his blood; we hold and believe that my Christ lives among dead souls. I hold that he accepts our vows, our altars, and our prayers; I hold that he despises a merciless heart and ugly thoughts. Do not abhor the faith and piety of my father, since he surpassed everyone in goodness. 67

“Salvation-giving waters do not cleanse and wash away our original sin; still, through the great faith that is abundant in our hearts we have no fear of the infernal dragon. Our souls live so pure and innocent here that no human crime can soil it. If a soul is devout, heaven does not hold it a sin when something is denied by necessity. 68

“Perhaps we won’t have that eternal, high beauty that the happiest will enjoy, but the comfort, the clear sky, the sweetness that his goodness bestows on his first friends. On the great day when his highness will render his mighty judgment on souls (good or bad, happy or unhappy), the most perfect will see God and will draw happiness and delight from that.” 69

As she spoke her clear eyes shed tears of pain for such harm.26 It always occurs that an ill-conceived fear of future anguish extinguishes hope in the

25. The reference is to the water of baptism. Notice how Marinella insists on water being sprinkled on the faithful’s head, thereby acknowledging the Catholic position and rejecting the tradition of baptism by immersion practiced in some Protestant “sects.” Interestingly, Marinella provides this rare commentary in a strong authorial voice to clarify the orthodox doctrine of the Catholic Church; another instance of this occurs in 16.29. 26. Erina’s humanity is accentuated by the tears she sheds thinking about the impossibility of her spiritual salvation, invoked by the reference to baptism in octave 65. Erina is simultaneously the source for Venier’s physical salvation yet deprived of her own eternal life. Unlike the lukewarm in Dante’s Limbo (Inferno 3), who are rejected by God, the saved, the damned in

Canto 6 heart; but as long as heaven’s ruler enlightens the soul, the latter needn’t be afraid of the tyrant of hell. He [heaven’s ruler] is quite just, and yet faithful thought doesn’t push away all craven fears. 70

The Venetian athlete27 saw the great tomb adorned by beautiful works, sculpted in one single emerald; he discovered that it was adorned with gold, flowers, and other gifts. Erina turned her beautiful face to him (who was motionless because of a new feeling) and said: “Venier, turn, turn your eyes over here, where you can see even greater excellence.” hell, and even by Dante’s guide, Virgil (3.51), Erina is depicted as aware of and pained by her singular situation; it is another way in which Marinella draws her readers close to this pivotal character. 27. In the etymological sense of “one who fights for something or on behalf of someone.”

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CANTO 7

S U M M A RY

Beautiful Erina unveiled Adria’s noble beginnings to good Venier, how she grew taking advantage of other people’s losses and deaths (not of their just deeds), and how she increased her wealth and glory hand in hand.1 They observed how each leader tended to the common good, how some did better than others in war, with armies and weapons. Then the noble couple went back to her well-adorned palace. 1

“Have a seat, warrior, if you care to see the famous actions of your noblemen; I’ll sit, too, as I know how a well-rested soul can rise to virtue. Look at wise Neptune’s wavy fields outside this shining wall;2 on those rocks you’ll see rough hovels and roofs of hay, almost united and hugging together.”3 2

As she said this, he turned his eyes to a majestic balcony that he believed open; but a craftsman had placed one single clear crystal from floor to high ceiling. A lively, most sublime diamond does not hold within itself as much transparency as one could see in that crystal: the eyes believed it to be pure air, and its beauty surpassed all belief.

1. Here and everywhere else in the poem, Adria is used as a synonym for Venice, which (consistently with the Italian linguistic habit) is always gendered feminine. 2. Regarding Neptune, see canto 5, note 14. 3. For another version of the history of Venice penned by a Venetian woman writer, see Fonte, Floridoro 12.2–84 and 13.5–20.

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Many people gathered in those hovels, as if coming from an annoying wind and a stormy cloud into a peaceful harbor. An unvanquished people had escaped wars and their native homes; they settled their hopes of excellence on those rocks on a salty shore, built temples, raised palaces, and worshiped a king who observed them work well. 4

While barbarian crowds set all Italy on fire and ravaged it with their weapons, everyday people had to flee such fury, brought to the same point by the destruction of old cities and high towers. They ran to establish themselves there. While Etruria4 cried over its own destruction and death, only she5 enjoyed good fortune. 5

As he turned his eyes, he seemed to see a small city surrounded by waves; she burned like clear lightning in his eyes, as she was adorned with jewels and crowns of victory. Over her beauty the heavens breathed stable and happy winds of peace. A virgin and praised wife to Neptune,6 she lay among sand, waves, and stark bushes. 6

“Look how your glorious fatherland grows famous and great all the way to heaven among shells, reeds, and rocks; she doesn’t fear the pride of others, and she spreads thousands of gifts. It is as though her majesty removes the boast of invincible and memorable deeds from all others.” A learned hand will in vain attempt to narrate her beauty with a printed pen!7 4. An area including what are now southern Tuscany and northern Latium. One could infer here a swipe at Florence and Tuscany. See the introduction for the political undertones of this statement. 5. A subtle but important grammatical change (“its” to “she”) signifies that the hovels at the edge of the sea are the precursors of Venice, the queen of the sea. 6. The paradox of “virgin” and “wife” is reminiscent of the Christian juxtaposition of “virgin” and “mother” with respect to Mary, Jesus’s mother. See Marinella’s own use in 16.63. 7. This self-referential hint is pervaded by modesty, a topos for artists in general (see 6.19). At the same time, it draws attention to the work at hand, and even to the fact of its printing.

Canto 7 7

He could see her grow in a fashion similar to a dear daughter in the womb of a sweet mother when fate and all elements are propitious to her, destiny is her dear friend, and the sky is clear. “Her shining hair is crowned with jewels; her lap is full of gifts and riches! Dukes, emperors, and kings are already taken with her rich virtue, one pitted against the other. 8

“This wise virgin spurns and despises the allure and praise by other rulers; she is happy and satisfied with her beauty and lives sublime in a crystal seat. She knows that the world doesn’t have anyone equal to her in terms of extension of domain and riches. She depends upon God and doesn’t derive anything from anyone else; one must ascribe her strength to heaven independently of anything else. 9

“Observe how cruel Attila leads the strong army of the Huns and others. He retreats angrily after being badly beaten by Etio, returning to Hungary with few people.8 He drags behind him all the way to Hungary a disloyal crowd, crosses the Alps, and turns the world into a grievous state; he descends into Italy: O the cruel one brings along so much anguish, so many deaths, so much damage. 10

“He then lies siege to Aquileia,9 plunders it, and sets Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan on fire. He destroys and dismantles Ausonia’s proud buildings and fertile plains.10 Now he’s at the city of flowers;11 he captures it in a sweet manner, so he seems courteous and humane. But look, soon all her people lay on the ground, killed by him. 8. Roman general who tried to negotiate with the Huns but eventually fought against them when they invaded Gaul (modern-day France). 9. Roman city to the northeast of Venice. 10. A poetic name for Italy; perhaps Marinella is following Ovid’s example, who used the name in his Metamorphoses. 11. Florence, whose symbol is a lily, and whose name is related to Flora, the goddess of plants.

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“Here is one that leaves his beloved home and rests his steps among the Venetian reeds. He abandons the learned and pompous city to Attila’s merciless greed and faithless heart. His name is Magno, and his deeds are equal to it;12 he is a faithful friend to heaven, on which he keeps his eyes. With pity-filled wishes he lifts the poor and adorns Venice with beautiful temples and offers sublime examples. 12

“Do you discern that? Amid a horrible tempest, one that batters not just flowers, but woods and trees, this famous motherland rises like a new marvel, royal in her appearance. While the cruel barbarians infest all Esperya [Italy] with their constant evil, she becomes more beautiful, adorns herself, and grows heavenward through her illustrious virtue and her renowned riches. 13

“It is difficult to understand how a peaceful people with the highest customs were born out of such great war, a people that didn’t feel the bite (or the painful sting) of ambitious desire in kingly hearts. So it was believed that the much loved and praised was reborn in her, and that happiness and high and divine glory were born out of other people’s poverty, death, and ruin. 14

“This is what happens when we admire a smiling pretty flower among thorns, bushes, and rocks in a dry field. The sky is laden with clouds, cold winter rains horrible iciness from its white hair, and still this flower stops a passerby’s steps in his tracks and invites him to pluck it; then each heart is rich of shimmering white, and each is filled with sweet wonder. 15

“As Italy could no longer stand the tyrannical rule of the king of the Longobards, Clefi,13 it conceived the thought of removing that heavy yoke from 12. A reference to Pope Leo I, whose nickname is Leo the Great—“magno” means “great.” 13. The second king of the Longobardi, he reigned from 572 to 574. The Longobardi were one of the many peoples who invaded the Italian peninsula, putting pressure on Roman institu-

Canto 7 its neck; a noble, just band silently fled from a thousand places; many ships arrived where there was a solid rampart against the impious’s fury. 16

“This rampart had its start not by lowly beings but by the most noble and praised ones. Many glorious families, endowed with courageous and magnanimous hearts and holy and valued manners and thoughts, gathered there to flee from injury and avoid the offenses, plunder, fires, and armed struggle of the barbarians. 17

“Since it is obvious that the best issue from the best, as a wise man said (that wise man who lifted Stagira to the highest honors, taught the learned, and wrote),14 then it is not surprising that your republic gained value; she lived and still lives in such a manner that Phoebus has never seen and will never see anything similar on earth, wherever he spreads his rays.15 18

“This lucky place and dear gulf grew in number and power every hour. First a consul and tribune ruled the Venetian land with just scales. Then in Eraclea16 they elected their first leader, Paulino, a just man full of goodness and praiseworthiness, endowed with the best habits, and very far from luxury, ambition, and unsubstantial goods.17 19

“After him that fierce people elected fierce Orso to be doge; that was his name.18 Then they got irritated with him as if he were guilty of something (sometimes ruling has negative consequences!); so they vented their anger tions. They had lived on the south side of the Elbe River, in the modern-day Czech Republic and Germany. 14. A reference to the philosopher Aristotle, who was born in Stagira in 384 BCE. 15. Regarding Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10. 16. It is impossible to determine which city this might be, as there are numerous ancient cities named Eraclea in Italy. 17. A reference to the first doge, Paoluccio Anafesto, who ruled from 697 to 717. 18. Orso means “bear.” Orso Ipato was the third, not the second, doge, who ruled from 726 to 737.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d against him: they attacked, overpowered, and killed him. Then they gave the burden of Venice to Marcello Eracliano, a peaceful and eloquent man.19 20

“Ipato was his successor, followed by Teodato, who was the slain doge’s son.20 Ruling was only a little less hard on him than on his father, who was vanquished by it: his own citizens feared that in the end he was turning into a tyrant, so they deprived him of his eyes and his position, then they expelled him as someone forsaken and unworthy. 21

“Soon after Galba took on the highest honor,21 but his luck wasn’t any better than the others: the people’s anger and fury took from him life and power. Then Giovanni sat on the great golden throne, at the mercy of the peaceful favors of fate; he didn’t stay there long: he lived without light22 and despised himself. 22

“That one is prince Mauritio, who struck and killed Giovanni. There’s Fortunato, who came up with plots against the new doge with unheard-of craft; but the doge found out, so he left the lands he knew and went with his son to France. Here then is Obelerio resting on the abandoned seat with harsh and trying fate.23 23

“The city rioted and rebelled against him, armed with scorn and anger. Like a spiteful snake that gives a venomous wound to a passerby with his sharp tooth, the people stripped him of his title and saw him out of his paternal 19. Presumably a reference to Marcello Tegalliano, Venice’s second doge (717–726). 20. Orso Ipato was indeed followed by his son Teodato Ipato, who was doge from 742 to 755. 21. A reference to the Galbaio family; Maurizio and Giovanni Galbaio were doge from 764 to 787 and from 787 to 804, respectively. In this and the following octave Marinella mistakes the order in which they ruled. 22. That is, he was blinded. 23. Obelerio Antenoreo was doge from 804 to 811.

Canto 7 home and of the graces bestowed on him. He unveiled to King Pipin his hatred for his own fatherland and for his destiny.24 24

“That friendly king heard him and regretted this affront, so he quickly gathered a big army and went to war against your Venetians. He copied his enemy’s tactic and came to terms with them: Obelerio and his royal wife were restored to their old throne. But Venice abhorred him, so she settled on a harsh death for that unhappy man and his consort. 25

“That one is Pietro Cian,25 who ruled and led his faithful people with goodness and wisdom. The other one is Tiepolo,26 who with strength and courage beat the Liburnici27 and gave them laws. That one is Contaren, whose voyage goes right to heaven: he expelled and corrected evil people, and though he was worthier of the throne than others he fled the scepter and disdained all greatness.28 26

“Over there is Venerio, a just man with stern and harsh heart, like Torquatus29 and Brutus.30 He had rather deprive himself of a son (and deprive his son of life and love) than bend his mind to evil and have justice be unjust to other people’s pleas.31 His son, a wily mind, had stolen from a virgin her modest honor.

24. Pipin was king of the Franks from 751 to 768. It is therefore impossible that Obelerio Antenoreo could find refuge at his court. 25. Pietro Ziani followed Enrico Dandolo as doge, ruling from 1205 to 1229. 26. Presumably Giacomo Tiepolo, doge from 1229 to 1249. 27. Ancient people who lived along the Adriatic coast. 28. Jacopo Contarini, doge from 1275 to 1280. 29. A reference to Titus Manlius Torquatus, a fourth-century BCE general who provoked his son’s suicide by banning him from Rome for having received money from some of Rome’s allies, and who refused to attend his funeral. 30. A reference to Marcus Junius Brutus, who led conspirators to assassinate Julius Caesar in March 44 BCE, despite having been pardoned by him a few years before. 31. Antonio Venier, sixty-second doge from 1382 to 1400; he did not pardon his son, who had been condemned to six months in jail for dishonoring a noble family.

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“The one wearing a golden cloak and sitting in the great palace is Domenico Silvio, who took fateful arms against the Normans.32 Yet that took place in a way opposite his wishes; his strange and annoying misfortunes caused unhappiness to return to the great palace. He was deposed from his height, and another one, very lucky in battle, was lifted up. 28

“This one is Orlafo Falier,33 in this image receiving a royal mark from the lady of the sea.34 His warrior spirit made it so that Zara35 quickly went back to Venice as a much-appreciated possession. While battling the Liburnici36 he received a deep wound from a disdainful barbarian; so here he comes back to his customary dwelling as a dead winner adorned with beautiful wounds. 29

“Here is Pietro Tradonico,37 who came to Adria’s womb leaving behind Pola,38 Equilio’s anger, and the Frankish fury that bloodied the sandy shores. So Istria39 sighed out loud! Still he was elected doge and held the cloak and crown. He was like lightning among those honorable breathing spirits: here he gives help to the emperor of Thrace; there he sees a new army in Apulia.

32. Domenico Selvo, thirty-first doge of Venice, ruled from 1071 to 1084. 33. Ordelaffo Falier, doge from 1102 to 1118. 34. One of the many circumlocutions Marinella utilizes to indicate Venice. The term used in the original, “donna,” means both “lady” and “ruler,” coming as it does from the Latin “domina.” 35. Modern-day Zadar, in Croatia. A Venetian vassal, it rebelled in 1186 and was recaptured after a siege in 1202 by Enrico and his crusaders. It was the first siege on a Christian city by a Christian army, one that had been expressly prohibited by the papal nuncio Peter Capuano, resulting in the excommunication of all warriors (see Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 142–45). John Godfrey further points out that Pope Innocent III gave permission for the excommunication to be lifted for the crusaders but not for the Venetians. See Godfrey, 1204: The Unholy Crusade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 81. On this issue, see also Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 115–25. 36. See note 27 to octave 25. 37. He was doge from 836 to 864. 38. Italian name for Pula, a city in Croatia. 39. A peninsula in the northeastern Adriatic Sea; its northern portion now belongs to Slovenia, while the southern portion belongs to Croatia.

Canto 7 30

“Observe Domenico Michel,40 who led two hundred equipped ships to Palestine to give succor to the brave leader of the faithful people in a fateful juncture. He shines thanks to his many victories and his faith, but even more thanks to what he did on the sea: he gathered Spalato41 and Modon42 into his empire, an unvanquished king and warrior. 31

“That one is Giovanni Patriciaco,43 whose great father’s deeds he imitated; he was indeed a worthy son to a great father, and you couldn’t see another like him on earth. Unjust fate, you dared to link his noble thoughts with a grave handicap and to cut the noble flow of illustrious desire at its beginning, muzzling the senses. 32

“Another Giovanni44 abandoned the golden lilies45 and, ready again, went back to his country. The wise consistory gave him back the royal symbols and his abandoned throne. But when he least expected it, his enemies and their misdeeds brought about evil: they deprived him of his hair-adorned head; they cut off that noble ornament of nature at the chin. 33

“Look, a new marvel: someone who refuses the pomp and lavishness that others look for! But then he changed to revolting wishes, won over by entreaties. He seemed to like what he once hated; he was venerable, great, and endowed with a wise mind, desirous of pain and a harsh life for God’s sake. Orseolo built monasteries and churches, then left behind the hated throne and this dark world.46 40. Doge from 1118 to 1130. 41. Modern-day Split, in Croatia. 42. A Venetian stronghold whose Greek name is Methone, in the region of Messenia. 43. Giovanni Partecipazio was doge from 829 to 836. 44. Perhaps a reference to Giovanni Partecipazio II, doge from 881 to 887. 45. An obscure reference; lilies are symbols for Florence and France, but this would imply chronological primacy of either over Venice. 46. Pietro Orseolo II, doge from 991 to 1008, usually considered as the first great leader of Venice.

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“This doge fled to Aquitaine and happily wrapped his royal limbs in a sacred habit. While Adria’s dejected and sad people cried over his departure, he turned his eyes, voice, and soul to his celestial homeland, wholly satisfied, and he melted his sweet heart in tears. Meanwhile, the no less just Vital47 took scepter and crown, and soon he gave it to someone else. 35

“His son Ottone succeeded him; girded with beautiful weapons, he burned like a new fire. He oppressed the people of the Adriatic, and not one escaped: observe the shores and the sea dyed with blood! He subdued Croatia and stamped many marks of his value on it, pushed by what’s right. What’s the use of fate or virtue, when spite takes over and blinds an evil heart?48 36

“He was hurled down from the great throne and pushed into exile without reason, unless we want to call his merits and the wonderful strength that he demonstrated among weapons and anger a reason for these acts. Certainly we cannot think that it is a mistake to fight with those who cannot be trusted, to gain victory, and to be ready to suffer! Alas, unhappy century: you give torments and misfortune to merits and virtues! 37

“Here’s Candiano: he was a pious father, who sent into exile (against his will) his own beloved son, who had a dark heart and inflexible behavior. It’s normal that a devoted father would die out of grief for this; and he died. The senate at that point decided to call back that haughty soul; he came back at their call, and this time they gave him the state, not as a doge but as a tyrant. 38

“This is the one who, while he was in flight, drew from Armano’s knowledge in these strange parts; when he was here he threw aside his ambitions in 47. Perhaps a reference to Vitale Candiano, doge from 978 to 979. 48. Ottone Orseolo was indeed Pietro’s godson; he ruled from 1008 (when he was only fifteen) to 1026, and was overthrown and exiled to Constantinople, as the following octave indicates.

Canto 7 favor of more modest and wise desires. He spent his days happier and closer to the heavens here than with the highest honors living in a palace—which is nothing but a den of flattering and evil people. 39

“I cannot talk about all who ruled over your beautiful, gracious city, but only about some, as the sun is close to making its usual departure. See over there, amid the furious sea, another Candiano, who invited an army and fought against the Narentani.49 He died and went back to his shores famous. 40

“Here is Orso laying at the foot of the great senate the honored weight of royal insignia, his rich scepter, and every good he owned. He nourished noble thoughts and a lively spirit; he was wounded and taken with love for heaven; so his wish, desire, and belief were to consecrate himself to God and to approximate one who flees worldly anguish through coarse food and rough clothes. 41

“He lived happily and didn’t feel any hardship among harsh alpine rocks. His love-filled mind contemplated God from dens and horrible dark caves. His innocence didn’t fear the jagged nails and teeth of bears and wolves. He sat happy and enjoyed heaven on earth, harboring no grudge nor feeling too much heat or cold. 42

“Admire one Patriciaco with a similar name ruling prudently and wisely over the kingdom; in the end he breathed out his soul to God, satisfied with his rule, and his spirit was touched by a divine ray. Here he is longing for heaven, courageously and almost beside himself. Here he is living happy among the happy ones, and spending his days in the peaceful sojourn of heaven. 43

“This one who shines and steals golden praise and the highest honor from the most eminent and famous—as if he were dawn bringing us the sun on 49. A population who lived on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea by the river Narenta (in Serbo-Croatian Neretva).

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d a rosy chariot at the earliest light—is Michele, a great leader.50 He took the high tower of Ioppe51 from the furious barbarians, as well as Samos, Mytilene, Rhodes, and Chios52 from the Greeks and their evil and ill king. 44

“Afterward your patricians created doge one whose name was Domenico and who came from the Contareno family.53 With rare valor he took land from the furious Macedonians. Andrea from the same family, dear to the people, nevertheless escaped the lucky brake of the water: he was banished and left the paternal shore, looking for a new land and a strange coast.54 45

“You have seen part of the noble beginning, the wars, and the glory of your ancestors, but only a few of them. If you want to know more, if you want to hear the noble history of their virtue, I shall unveil some that came later, their great souls and wonderful deeds that the future hides and veils in its bosom: there is no sign or memory of them yet.55 46

“You can know the future, the great deeds, palms of fame, large wealth, and well-regarded actions of these royal souls from the past, just like we know that the day rises to happiness if Dawn offers pleasure to flowers, to fruits, and to the world when she shines with luminous clothes and bejeweled ornaments.

50. Vitale Michiel (or Michele), doge from 1096 to 1102, who sent Venetian ships and men to fight in the First Crusade. 51. Palestinian city along the Mediterranean Sea; modern-day Jaffa. 52. Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. 53. Domenico Contarini ruled as doge from 1043 to 1071. During his rule Venice conquered the port city of Zara (or Zadar; see note 35 to octave 28). 54. Andrea Contarini was doge from 1368 to 1382; during his rule Venice scored important victories against Genoa, one of its main trade competitors. 55. Marinella’s list is far from inclusive or coherent. Presumably it was meant to instill pride in her readers and to indicate the depth of her historical knowledge.

Canto 7 47

“If I wanted to tell you the knowledge, works, customs, and value of each of them I wouldn’t have enough time: each of them shines forth rays of virtue, and none of them was ever oppressed by a cloud. Weak energy and a faint voice cannot reveal immense greatness; so I decided that a reverent silence better praises him who enjoys the highest praise.” 48

As she spoke thus, a dark shadow thick like a haze appeared, removing and veiling those various actions and rare features from their cupid eyes; it fully blinded them, covering up the formerly happy fields and clear waters. At that point the woman and the good warrior stood up and left that shadowy dark appearance. 49

The beautiful nymph56 told him: “Given that an annoying cloud removed such a glorious view from our eyes (and its horrors partly took away the peace we were enjoying), we’ll turn our heads and eyes to the other side of the room.” As she spoke she headed toward where the diamond shed light and seemingly lit everything up. 50

He saw crowns, scepters, purple robes, treasures, courageous armies, armed crowds, unfurled banners, clothes, colors that inspired courage, and haughty faces and expressions. He saw lightning and radiance and such rays from the weapons that his eyes were wounded, and the previously transparent waters one could now see were red, as swords, lances, and spears swam in it. 51

Among the enemies with their arrows and swords they saw a group of kidnaped newlywed women. With it they saw sad Love, sick Beauty, tired Hymen,57 and teary Graces, tearing their golden hair; at the same time the 56. Erina descends from the nymph Eonide (as she explained in 6.44), so she is one herself. 57. The Greek god of marriage.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d liveliness of their faces changed into purple roses. “Here they are taken from impious people; here your Venice already returns with their kidnaped preys. 52

“Apelles or Zeuxis58 did not show man or heaven such a sure sign of their ability as Albino’s brush shows the anger and disdain of their hearts on this thin canvas. One can see iron shine, weapons burn, and great Neptune’s kingdom be roiled. Everything seems real, including the steaming blood flowing from the wound of a warrior lying and growing weak. 53

“It seems as though one can hear the sighs and the noises of those who fight, of their crossbows and bows. Arrows shriek when bows are bent and released by quick hands; bows aren’t slow or parsimonious in darkening the light in the sky, an admirable gift. Sulfur-laden powder drives out balls with fire, and it breaks and changes everything. 54

“Look over there, among the foamy waves: the huge Ionian Sea59 is set on fire by the light of weapons! The sea is hit by the oars and the weight of many ships, and its back is heavy and swarming with them. Observe the order and manner and well-regulated forces of the proud field, and the burning chest of the swollen dragon that vomits and expels black poisonous smoke and angry lightning. 55

“Not far from that, turn your eyes to those ferocious people who are fighting and quarreling, their quick galleys and thin ships broken up and in part burning in erring waves. See cowardly crowds of soldiers and warriors jumping in the water to flee from attack; they move on the waves made frothy by their motion and disturb Proteus’s60 scaly palace. 58. Two Greek painters, Apelles from the fourth century BCE and Zeuxis from the fifth. Both were considered the best Greek painters, though no work of either is known to have survived. 59. A part of the Mediterranean to the south of the Adriatic. 60. In Greek mythology Proteus was a prophet who lived on an island and shepherded seals.

Canto 7 56

“You discover bloody waves, the sea scattered with cut-off limbs, and some men trying to save themselves through their torn mail. You see the highest pines scorched and burned, and how high fire can reach. You observe air and sea and heaven troubled by the terror of this horrible battle. Over there is great Sebastian, who heartens his men, knocks down the moon,61 and bleeds the Thracians. 57

“Look at that knight: he rushes toward the courageous and strong barbarians with his sword alone. He surpasses himself in courageous valor, wounds many, and kills others. Admire him made prisoner: what an unhappy, pitiful occurrence, and sad news. Then it’s heard that Bragadin stood with unshakable heart and was happy being martyred for god’s sake.62 58

“See how he suffers and is quiet in his pain and torment, motionless and silent, a most invincible hero! An evil hand pierces and kills him, removing the skin he was born in from his limbs; high virtue and topmost courage reach heavenly peace carrying his soul with them, and heaven prepared for this illustrious and kingly head a famous prize for his victory and martyrdom. 59

“Glory of the world, of your land, and of your honored family, famous son, go in the heavens as a new star, fed up with this world’s deceptions.” That chaste and beautiful virgin devoted to Apollo said all this addressing him, while pointing out future wars, victories, and glory to his descendent.

61. The crescent is a symbol of the Islamic faith, and thus here of Moslem armies. “Sebastian” is Sebastiano Venier, the Venetian commander at the naval battle of Lepanto (1571) and later doge (1577–78). See canto 4, note 13. 62. Marcantonio Bragadin was the Venetian governor of Cyprus when that island was under siege by the Turks (1569); in 1571 he was killed (indeed, as octave 58 mentions, he was skinned alive) along with all defenders of Famagosta, despite a false promise that their lives would be spared.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 60

He admired his own feats, illustrated and explained in the paintings, though they were partially known to him. Those paintings did not keep other people’s eyes from drawing lively examples from the heart of unknown future events; they opened up to view and displayed the fights and beautiful triumphs by the leader Enrico and other heroes far away. Then he saw himself ward off an armed group of knights in Byzantium almost single-handedly. 61

He saw himself display his immortal valor on the high walls of that great city. He saw how ladders were raised, with wisdom and care, so that other people might climb on them and not be attacked. He saw how his people became self-assured, how they scattered and dispersed the slow and frail Thracians. Finally, he saw the great winning banner tremble among the towers in the tranquil air. 62

Good Venier saw the glorious standard wave at the breaths of a gentle breeze. He saw that in a short time great works were carried out with skill, and that the path was freed. Then as he watched himself, he thought he fell heavily on the ground because of a painful and cruel blow. He laughed and told Erina: “It matters little that the body dies, if honor lives.” 63

She replied: “Venier, you’ll never see your much praised country or your dear friends again. You will be vanquished by an unjust and brutal wound, and you’ll fall in your enemy’s city. Admire that woman dispensing horrible arrows from towers and slopes; by her hand you will die while fighting, a strong and formidable warrior. 64

“Then admire the Latin army stripping prizes from the second Rome,63 and Adria’s doge’s hair crowned with holy laurel because such is heaven’s wish. 63. That is, Byzantium. Theodosius I (379–395) was the last emperor to rule over a unified Roman Empire. The decline of Rome was furthered when Constantine moved his capital to

Canto 7 See how he offers vanquished Greece to the Frank Baldovino with a thousand other trophies, and how he displays merciful goodness and a just soul toward the unjust Thracians.64 65

“Look at triumphant Adria offering thanks and holy incense to heaven for this triumph; see how she gives the noble cloth of conquered banners and spoils to the temple, as is fit. Look at a learned swan sing the glorious meaning, conquered provinces, Greek tricks, taken glories, and enemies’ damage by the cold stream of a beautiful river.65 66

“Turn your eyes, warrior, toward the Menzo,66 and observe what weapons, what threats, and what people encircle famous Mantua;67 observe how the new doge sighs, turning fully to tears. But the highest motor [God] turns his eyes from the highest heaven and observes such slaughter and fury that he removes possession from them due to their unbridled desire for injustice. 67

“Now you’ve seen the luminous lights that will make not just Italy proud, but every place where the pure rays of the sun make the air glitter. Your future valor will be such that it will surpass any other no matter how illustrious and glorious. Let’s be satisfied with what we’ve seen; destiny doesn’t allow me to show anything else of your beloved kingdom. Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (early fifth century CE). The transfer of the capital meant a real division of the empire. The Western Empire was weak after suffering repeated invasions into Italy by Visigoths and other groups; the Eastern half of the Roman Empire was much wealthier with direct access to trading with the Far East. The fall of the Western Empire was completed in 476 when the German chieftain Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus. 64. After the conquest of Byzantium, Baldovino (Baldwin) of Flanders was elected Latin emperor, with Venetian support, as Madden indicates (Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 177). Marinella gives the impression that Enrico Dandolo had the power to invest his Frenchspeaking ally with the crown, which was not the case. 65. A reference to Marinella’s own writing, dubbed “singing” according to a long-lasting tradition of epic and lyrical poetry. 66. Modern-day Mincio, a river in northern Italy. 67. City in northern Italy on the river Mincio.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 68

“Let’s go, since evening has darkened everything, and already a good portion of the night has gone by. Here you’ve seen more than one army put together, and how yours put the bit on their enemies.” She was silent, and they left that noble place. Soon four maidens ran to them, gave light with burning torches, and banished those cold shadows. 69

Delicate cloths and flavorful food covered the tables in the great hall. I don’t think that Crete68 offers such precious wines or that one could taste and enjoy better food in heaven. Mined diamonds and beautiful rubies hid their food, so that one could then relish the wonders that earth contains and that rivers hide between their banks or sea among the waves. 70

The hour of day and their tiredness invited sleep to give rest to those distracted minds. Yet the gentle youth’s valorous soul didn’t allow him to rest in such sweet comfort; he liked a cold and solitary room far better. However, the prudent virgin wanted goose down for him, so that he could go back to peace until the day came back with new rays. 71

Still he slept little, mulling the admired deeds of past heroes in his chest. Though reduced to a small amount of dust, they shone brightly; he had their untouched glory impressed in his heart. So he determined and decided to leave that quiet place, and with haste, to go back to where his enemy oppressed and beat the powerful Enrico. 72

Sweet sleep didn’t bestow rest on his wondering spirit for the entire night. Already Dawn was lifting her head from the waves,69 gilding the leaves to 68. The fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. 69. Since Erina lives on an island, Dawn would appear from the sea no matter where this island lay. The “humid” quality of this goddess recurs in Enrico, however, as she usually emerges

Canto 7 ashes, beeches, and myrtles. Like water moves in the sea, boiling when Borea70 pushes around the hard Syrtis,71 a warm desire for much-desired honor waved in the sea of his heart. from the Ganges, a river in India (hence to the East of Byzantium): see 11.45, 16.55, and 16.95. 70. Another name for Aquilone, a cold and strong wind that blows from the North. See also canto 5, note 20. 71. See canto 5, note 10.

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FROM CANTO 8

[1–87: After crying over Venier’s death at sea and receiving more troops rounded up by Tarso, the crusaders defeated the Byzantines in a naval battle. Esone, a magician and Alessio’s counselor, proposed to burn the Venetian fleet. Alessio agreed, and Esone conjured demons from hell to give him inextinguishable fire. In the middle of a truce the Byzantines attempted to set the enemy fleet on fire; the crusaders then fought to protect their ships.] 88

On the shore where Byzantium stood there were children, mothers, daughters, and defenseless old people; they wanted to know and see what would come in the end to their tricks and fallacious plans. Though such people didn’t move their feet, and many had weak and sick hearts, still they took harsh revenge on those who extinguished that fire, with rocks and arrows. 89

Among these was Emilia, a pretty and lovely maiden endowed with rare beauty. She was a daughter of the woods and had no peer as a hunter with bow and arrows; when she ran she was faster than air, her light and slim feet covered with buskins. She wore white clothes, and her unkempt hair was tied with a short golden ribbon.1

1. According to Russell, the “introductory description of . . . Claudia [is] modeled on Silveria” in Scanderbeide 13.14–20. See “Margherita Sarrocchi and the Writing of the Scanderbeide,” 41 n. 80. The only common element, in fact, are the buskins and their ability with arrows, as Silveria is a product of the woods, while Claudia is first shown in a city setting; furthermore, Silveria is described in far richer detail than Claudia is in Enrico.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 90

This is perhaps how generous Aeneas saw the noble features and beautiful and clear eyes of his beloved mother and goddess, among the cruel Peni, in a big forest.2 She had a quiver and bow like a Spartan virgin who adorned the fields, or like cruel Harpalice3 pushing a fast horse along the Ebro4 with ferocious courage. 91

Presently she came from the woods, where she had been born of a king and a goddess of the forest, and where she used to show her admirable archery skills on deer, bucks, hares, and wild mountain animals. Now she turned her sling and moved her arrows with a manly face and skillful and dexterous hands, gaining much more praise among her friends as she used them against the Venetians and the Gauls, their harsh enemies. 92

Beautiful Emilia shot from her golden bow; its string whirred and the fiery arrow whistled as it passed Artemidoro’s head from one temple to the other: he fell because of this dark, fatal blow. While the Sicilian Caloro took charge of the ships, climbing on top of them, the cruel virgin shot her second arrow, affixing him helpless and naked to the mast. 93

Stunned and vanquished, the noble warrior Alfeo admired her superior beauty and her proud face on the opposite side of the Golden Horn:5 her bowstring slowed one down and wounded another. He bowed to his beautiful enemy’s harsh domination, captured and wounded. Does Love shoot his arrow into hearts amid Mars’s weapons and the horrors of war?6 2. Aeneas was the son of the goddess Venus; the Peni (from the Latin “Poeni”) are the Phoenicians dwelling in Carthage. The episode of the encounter of Aeneas with his (unrecognized) mother in a wood outside Carthage appears in Aeneid 1.305ff. 3. An amazon, that is, a member of a race of women warriors. 4. A river in Thrace mentioned in the Aeneid (12.331) in the context of a simile concerning Mars at battle. 5. See canto 1, note 68. 6. This rhetorical question clarifies what precedes it: Alfeo is a metaphorical prisoner of Emilia, in the sense that Cupid’s arrow has wounded his heart; he is in love with his enemy.

Canto 8 94

From her well-reinforced and strong bow an arrow came whirring and screeching to bring more pain; it carried a harsh wound and inevitable death on its point and wings. That fateful feather brought him who was observing a cruel ending, coming from an unexpected door. It just so happened that it wounded him precisely in the middle of his chest: his hand held on to the arrow of her beautiful eyes. 95

The fierce virgin added another arrow to her bow with admirable speed. It taught Resin how to muffle his counterproductive ardor by hitting him between the lips: the arrow went through his teeth, reaching his palate and tongue, finally exiting from the nape of his neck.7 Cesio was hit by the same arrow in his right eye, and was in harsh pain. 96

Meanwhile, a wind blew breaking and uprooting that strange fire; it tossed and transported it in part to the high path of the stars, in part among grass and flowers, in part on the knights’ beautiful armor. No mind or skilled hand was capable of then removing it: it held on to the iron, warming it, so that one had to die or take off that hard covering. 97

Unaware of the evil king’s intentions and hostile wishes, the blowing winds blew the evil hellish flames also on the iron armor of the unjust Thracians. It cruelly ruled over friends and foes; wherever it sat and stopped and settled it burned blond [wheat] crops and all other plants. Everything looked on fire. 98

Strimone, though courageous, fled to his own spring on Mount Ismaro, with a pale face: he feared a bitter end when he saw such spectacle, so he put his 7. Marinella’s insistence on the effect of the arrows on Resin serves to underscore the implicit pun between the figurative arrow of love that hits Resin and the literal one, shot by Emilia, that kills him. This is reminiscent of the literalization of the erotic metaphors of fire and binding that Tasso employs in the episode of Olindo and Sofronia. See Gerusalemme liberata 2.14–55, especially octaves 33–36.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d salvation only in fleeing. The Barbiese and the Cidaro flowed back to where they had left. Somewhere else Flora8 and Pomona9 cried over the fruits and flowers burned and consumed by those lethal flames. 99

The goddess that brings us sweet sleep10 feared that Phoebus had broken his own laws; so she hurried like an arrow to the Cimmerian grottoes,11 leaving the splendor of that huge light. She did not dare to give shadows to night on the following day, after the god who brings day had left, as long as she didn’t see the lame god12 devoted to these evil works extinguished. 100

The winds broke the flames and carried them to the Aegean Sea, where a caulked ship was. She had been sailing safely among curly waves, laden with precious goods; her sailors had enjoyed the passage, comforted at the thought that they weren’t afraid of the water or of the sky. But fire fell on her, consumed, and destroyed her, and the sea obliterated and absorbed what was left. 101

Alas, our vain hopes! Alas, our blind minds! The crew was happy and joyful, the sea calm, but the most enraged winds swooped down into Lethe’s dark bosom.13 What a pitiful occurrence! Meanwhile, the Latins and Franks, exceeding everyone’s valor, made such slaughter of their enemies that the sun would forever shine on their eternal destruction.

8. The Roman goddess of the flowering of plants. 9. The Roman goddess of fruits. 10. In all likelihood this is a reference to Nox, the goddess of night, juxtaposed here to Phoebus, the sun god. 11. The Cimmerians lived in an imaginary country at the end of the ocean, where the light of the sun never shone, and where fog and sleep resided. 12. A reference to Vulcan or Hephaestus (known as the lame god), husband of Venus or Aphrodite, and god of fire and the working of metals. 13. In ancient mythology one of the rivers of Hades (the underworld), whose waters the souls of all the dead would taste so they could forget everything they said or did while alive.

Canto 8 102

Plautio aimed at Arnasette, encircling him as much as he could, then he tossed him in the fire, saying: “Lying Thessalian, learn now the worth of tricks and betrayal!” Then he whirled his shining iron, slaughtering, trampling, wounding, killing, and cutting up. The Gauls and the Italians gave vent to their heart’s anger and pain over the unfortunate Greeks. 103

Helms seemed weak under Claudia’s blows; strong armor seemed made of fragile glass; swords seemed dull, and arrows aimed for her lost their natural direction.14 If she touched another person she made a harsh, fateful gash, so that the wounded would descend to the dark kingdom [hell]. In vain did Apelles15 show his craft and knowledge where she wounded and made all his deeds useless. 104

She cut through armors like wax. Her lightning-fast sword cut through proud Costante’s brow, at the same time that he offended our field with threats, insults, and shame. The courageous Rainiero saw Irmonte, whose limbs and height were a giant’s; he had come from the Cimmerian people to give help to the Greek together with his soldiers. 105

That knight’s spear passed through his lips and into his brain; then with a strong arm he lifted him off his saddle and tossed him far from his steed. 14. Claudia is Emilia’s Christian counterpart. When she is first introduced Marinella writes that she “shows that habit, and not nature, put fear in one sex and valor in the other” (“Mostra, che l’uso, e non natura ha messo / Timor ne l’un, valor ne l’altro sesso,” 2.29.7–8). Virginia Cox has pointed out that this assertion is a response “to the representations of female military valour which have such a prominent place in the chivalric fictions of this period, and which serve as the trigger for Ariosto’s meditations on women’s potential for ‘virile’ achievement in the proemi to cantos 20 and 27” of Orlando furioso (Cox, “Women as Readers and Writers,” 137); specifically, Marinella follows Ariosto’s lead as “the female knight’s prowess is read as indicative of the capacities of women in general” (ibid., 138). In the first battle she is likened to “a strong wind in the clouds: it shivers, thunders, sheds lightning, and gives people fear and terror in novel ways” (“frà le nubi impetuoso il vento, / Che freme, tuona, fulmina, & in nove / Forme porge ad altrui tema, e spavento,” 3.25.2–4). Additionally, she is endowed with “feroce beltà” (“fierce beauty,” 3.25.8), a singular juxtaposition of male and female characteristics. 15. Unknown healer or doctor.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d This is how we observe a careful young shepherd, who spent time and care hunting, carry a lifeless hare or rabbit to a tree, a dear weight, caught with hard work. 106

The incredible weight of the huge giant’s body broke the spear, and when he fell caves echoed very far away; it was as if the earth shook. The Thracian lord cried over his strange fate and sighed from his heart of hearts; he shook horribly, like an angry sea. Irmonte was dead; all his hopes were vain. 107

Courageous Dibrese, how many lay [dead] because of you! How many at your hand, valiant Rainiero! How many through your valor, Count of Blese! How many because of Balnavilla and Ruggiero! You see that a wide river of blood opened a path among cut-off limbs and broken weapons. The Thessalians yielded, filled with fear; they let the Franks and Italians go by.16 108

Then the courageous and unvanquished band of ours entered among smoke, fire, and sparks. They tried to quench that harsh fire with humid drops of water, but everything was in vain, though thousands spread water over it without stopping. So they devised a plan to take the ships that were set on fire by the Greeks out of the Horn, with much damage and shame. 109

Ours threw pontoons and quickly went to extinguish that much damaging fire. But Plautio, who didn’t fear wounds or damage, jumped into the ships from the shore, and strove to push them out of the water with much toil, wisdom, and craft. He yelled, ordered, and above all worked himself to put horses and footmen in place.

16. This is a remarkable string of second-person addresses to crusading warriors. Structurally, it differs from all the others in the poem (see 1.29, 5.3, 27.9, and 27.79 for addresses to male characters, and 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49 for addresses to female characters) because it singles out three characters in succession. Rhetorically, it is an expression of wonder not unlike 1.29, rather than a device to elicit sympathy in the readers.

Canto 8 110

Among those flames Elvetio died, hit by a furious sling; quickly wrapped by the chill of death, he had at the same time a coffin, a pyre, and a tomb. Orioso fell half-burnt, black, and singed: he had run when the loud bugles called, and was hit by an arrow in the salty water; so he died because of fire, iron, and water. 111

Others were killed by this great fire. Some who were on the pontoon to help out were hit by a rock or an evil arrow; they left this world falling while dying. Others again lowered their head, confused and blinded by that light that only bothered the rest; their bodies found rest among embers and in the water, since they didn’t find it with their companions. 112

While Enea crossed the river17 aboard a ship to lure the enemy fleet, Emilia swung and moved a sling loaded with a sharp rock around her arm. She hit and wounded him in the head; and though he believed he would display himself marvelously aboard a small ship, he fell in the water. She slaughtered and took revenge on still others too. 113

Good Filerto died by her hand; he had been born within the walls of Antenor,18 and was a learned, wise man, to whom Minerva had taught her arts with care and zeal.19 Artemio, courageous and well-deserving man, followed him, hit in his brow by a hard rock from a mountain. While he was falling he was hit by an arrow, and his death gave sorrow to the Italian group. 114

Bonifatio safely went with his people among thousands of rocks, arrows, irons, and swords that darkened the sun, among smoke, fire, and smelly 17. This refers to the Golden Horn, which is not, however, a river. See also canto 1, note 68. 18. A Trojan hero who escaped Troy and reached the Italian peninsula, where he founded the city of Padua. The “walls of Antenor,” therefore, refer to Padua’s walls. 19. Roman goddess of wisdom and patroness of the arts and trades.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d sparks. They tried to turn back the flames and the sparks with their bloody and impure humor from the Horn. Finally, they removed the burning ships with toil, strength, wiles, and sweat. 115

Giacinto, Rainiero, and many other Adriatic heroes offered help, advice, and knowledge so that our ships might be saved from the impious trick against them. They didn’t care if they lost their lives to recover the fleet, as they aspired toward the highest honor. They believed that life was only worthy if it was spent in the honoring and defending of their land. 116

Dawn was starting to open the doors to the sky and to leave her beautiful home, bringing along the shining archer from Delos20 to banish shadows and make the day clear, when the Venetian heroes led the burning ships out of the Horn on cold salty water. They left them for the Greeks in the Bosphorus,21 poor remains of their tricks. 117

Glorious Enrico, filled with joy, turned his heart to eternal theaters [heaven], and gave thanks to him [God] who willed that he gained the palm and triumph against the evil enemy. Then he gathered the formidable host that had been scattered and confused in the open sea and in the Horn to escape from angry Vulcan’s threats and rage. 118

He rearranged, ordered, and took care of everything. He praised his warriors and gave them heart. He blamed Alessio’s and the king’s broken promises that had looked like true love. After he did all this, he turned his satisfied steps toward his tent, followed by the most important leaders. There he rested his body, but his mind gathered its rest from heaven. 20. A reference to Apollo. See canto 5, note 26. 21. For the Bosphorus, see “To the Reader,” note 6.

FROM CANTO 9

S U M M A RY

Oronte arrived to help the Thracians, alongside Meandra with her nephew and others. Icete threw the statue of the learned goddess on the ground, entirely blind to his own fortune. Meanwhile, Enrico arrived at the Greeks’ haughty shore with his great host. Oronte defied the Franks and fought with Giacinto, but night put an end to that day. 1

The great captain took off his weapons and his scorn, and gave rest to his tired body. The Italians and the Franks condemned the huge and undignified trick of the Thracians. At the same time pain and confusion roiled the Achaian kingdom,1 all pale and white. They didn’t know how to defend themselves or how to cause damage or nuisance to the winner. 2

A careless shepherd leaves the door to his precious sheepfold improperly closed; a famished wolf pushes it open or even just ajar and tears apart and kills the humble flock. Wounded, timid, and confused in his heart, the shepherd observes what’s left by that hostile fury: bones and blood only. He’s stupefied and tired; he doesn’t turn his eyes, breathe, or move his feet.2

1. Achaia is a small Greek region within the Peloponnesus; however, its name was commonly applied to Greece as a whole. 2. Contrast this image of the careless shepherd applied to Alessio with the positive, Gospelderived one found in 4.3.

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This was how the emperor was: motionless after the night fire and a great battle. He had believed that the Gauls wouldn’t see his trick or foresee or believe in his crime.3 Great pain and a horrible storm of repentance beat inside his afflicted chest; a greedy vulture doesn’t eat away Tityos’s heart born to new suffering with less eagerness.4 4

So the king, having lost all hope of burning the tall triremes in the middle of the sea, grieved, deceived and sad, crying in his heart’s darkest and most hidden part. Now he truly did fear the Venetians’ valor! Still, he hid and concealed his travail and fear. Whoever puts his hope in tricks, scorning what’s right, true, and reasonable, is crazy! 5

New foreign warriors and new help arrived to assist the evil king every day. The prince of Bithynia5 detailed a thousand warriors to him, his most valiant and knowledgeable. A group of footmen and knights held in high esteem arrived from the king of Walachia.6 Sternier led the Bithynians; he was laden with years and wisdom, and accustomed to military toil. 6

Those from Walachia were under the aegis of blond Flavio, still a young man: his age had not yet reached the dawn of the sixteenth year of life. He had royal blood, and his banner marked the way with glory, while the light of his virtue honored his path. The Greek leader had great hopes, now that Flavio had joined them.

3. That is, he had attacked during a truce. 4. Tityos was a giant who attempted to rape Latona; according to Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4.457– 58), he languished in the underworld with a vulture continually picking at his perennially regrowing heart (or liver). 5. An ancient district in northwestern Anatolia, adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea. 6. A region in modern-day Romania, bounded on the north and northeast by the Transylvanian Alps, on the west, south, and east by the Danube River, and again on the northeast by the Seret River.

Canto 9 7

Strong Oronte left Hyrcania7 and came to help the unjust Thracian. The sun, source of all light, never saw a fiercer or stronger warrior than him. He believed that Strava8 was too small and limited for his valor after he filled it with wars and shame and upset its peace: he vented the cruelty of his heart and his disdain in his own kingdom. 8

He unjustly put many to death for silly reasons or due to false utterances. Consequently, afterward his followers hated him too, and their feelings turned to cruelty. He prevailed against poison, conjurers, and assaults that his subjects rightly brought against him. In the end he was almost banished and left his country to save his life. 9

His heart didn’t harbor our true faith but neither did that faithless man believe in Mohammed. He believed neither one nor the other; he had no hope for either. His only law and reason was his sword, to which he had entrusted all his goods. He was more impatient, cruel, bold, and fierce than a leader or a warrior had ever been or is. 10

After Fame spread her feathers9 and told him that a harsh contest was under way among the Greeks and the Franks, he quickly went to Alessio’s great court to put his weapons and his soul to use to defend him. Since Oronte offered himself readily to this noble enterprise, Alessio gave a clear indication of his approval: he raised Oronte to the most desired, the richest, and the best honors that his empire had. 11

The king rejoiced at this new help; he was happy that such a strong and powerful champion had arrived at his kingly court as a friend and compan7. The name of a satrapy (administrative unit) of the Persian Empire, bound by the Caspian Sea and the Amudarja River. 8. Evidently, the capital city of Hyrcania. 9. See canto 6, note 10.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d ion, and with many warriors too. So he hoped to muzzle his enemy and have success with such weaponry. The brazen audacity of his priests bolstered this wish of his. 12

In those days an admirable woman ruled over Argos and Corinth;10 she had reached old age and was her kingdom’s base and column after the king had died and the kingdom was in danger of ruin. She had used a sword on the field; but then she gave it up to wear hitherto neglected women’s clothes. She admired her Meandra, whom she loved like a daughter, issued from a noble branch of her royal family. 13

She looked at Meandra preparing her weapons and warriors to go against Enrico: Meandra hoped to sweeten the bitter fate that had pierced and shaken Alessio’s heart. The valor that had made her [the queen] famous and unvanquished in war had awakened in her, so her thoughts were moved; but her strength and age didn’t correspond to her fleeting wish, so she was troubled and confused. 14

She was mother to but one son, whom she loved as much as her soul and the life in her chest. Her desires were exceptional, so she eagerly wished that he would ascend to worthy praise for his honor and that he would learn virtues and shine for his fame. She hoped that his heart would become audacious and his mind bold. So she had the thought of sending her gracious son into the dangers of battle with that woman warrior. 15

She approached the maiden and held her gilt, beautiful helmet, admiring its craft and quality. Then, almost in jest, she adorned her son’s brow with it; he looked at such pomp, then quickly stretched his hand toward his sword and turned and spun it in the air skillfully. He wanted to fight, but his mother

10. Argos and Corinth are cities in the Greek region of the Peloponnesus.

Canto 9 didn’t let him, though she had discovered her own value alongside strong companions. 16

His mother looked at him half-happy and half-sad; she enjoyed it [the trappings of battle] but she wanted and denied her own wishes at the same time. At that moment Ardelio opened his arms and praised his mother, uttering the following: “Allow that I too show clear signs of my courageous spirit; do not decree that I forever remain a nice knight but obscure and vile.” 17

She always feared that her dear son would be crushed by the proud Franks, so she had always been like a hard rock to his prayers and had never given her consent to his going: “I don’t want to deny you glory, or to take it away, since heaven maybe bestowed it on you. Go happy, then, and come back a victor to comfort your mother’s heart. 18

“Virgin, my niece, daughter by blood and by affection, dear and beloved to me, you are the pride to all my glories and a sublime and rare marvel to our sex and our age. Do not deny me: take this son of mine as a companion. Defend him in bitter fight and repel the hostile blows that enemy hands will direct against him. 19

“You know, my faithful niece, that after the great damage and the harsh death of my husband I live in sadness, and that I spend my days in black garb wishing for death. Only Ardelio seems to bring much sweetness and peace to my trying anxiety. What would I do, alas, if he were to die there? I don’t dare to say that.” She stopped and spoke no more. 20

Meandra replied: “You defended me like a mother when I was young, when you readied my hand to pick up weapons and glory among cruel warriors. So it is right that I guard him from painful and harsh wounds and that I re-

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d move him from bitter and unhappy blows in battle. Let him come into his own so that he may be strong and courageous and look like a worthy son to you both in war and in peace. 21

“And if it is—heaven forbid—that the fury of lively battle steals him from us, I pray that the certain hope of a cruel revenge may comfort your heart in pain: my glance alone will send that enemy’s soul flying to blind horror [hell]! By God, let’s banish that promise; he’s alive, and others will die by his hand.” 22

Meandra spoke thus. That mother prepared for her son weapons and a steed for that great danger, as well as clothes woven with gold and vermilion, so that he might shine in a dignified manner. Then she gave him some good advice born out of her mature love. Meanwhile, night spread her black veil around, and sweet sleep arose to offer nourishing rest to tired spirits.11 23

The growing light presented her clear face surrounded by rays rising out of the Indian Ocean when each knight had gathered under his banner, goaded by glory. Then that noble son took up his arms, and soon wearing his armor he showed himself light and nimble. The queen rejoiced watching him in his gear, a noble warrior in her beautiful palace. 24

Sometimes the sky looks similar to him, when it partly darkens and flashes with lightning, while the beautiful light of the sun burns and flames without any veil not far away. Lightning terrorizes and chills the heart, but the clear light reassures it, so vile fear disappears. In that manner Ardelio’s happy and threatening appearance gave fear, peace, and enjoyment. 25

When that famous land saw its ready and brave young men go to an uncertain end, fearful mothers kissed their sons and gave offerings and vows to 11. Regarding descriptions of the night, see canto 4, note 3.

Canto 9 the temples. The queen, whose heart burned with motherly lights, was filled with anxiety. Her face was wet and her eyes teary; she hugged and kissed her son, and spoke to him thus: 26

“If I still were of the age when I could crush and win over previous victors and reduce strong kings to servitude, when I could pull down high walls and push rivers of blood to the sea winning over arrogant hearts, when I could stand alone against a whole camp and make them flee like shy deer flee dogs, covering myself with thousands of trophies and spoils, bringing pain to my enemy! 27

“If at least I had the strength of a younger person, if not her age, then I’d follow you. I would protect you by taking on myself every sword that’s aimed at you. I would bring you back safe from the enemies—their irons and their blows—and victorious. But my age and my changed body disallow me, so I am forced to be slow.” 28

She stopped talking, and dampened (or rather soaked) her old chest and wrinkled cheeks with her sad tears. Then she choked her pain and stopped her tears within the dark and deep parts of her heart. Meanwhile, those courageous warriors spread out in the countryside and on well-trodden and well-known paths. Among them Meandra and that royal young man beat everybody else in ornaments and appearance. 29

As the beautiful goddess of love raises her clear and pure head from the vast sea and, laughing and blushing, removes the fog that enveloped a humid and dark sky,12 that woman warrior gathered them in one squad using her peaceful and slack muzzle as well as her wise and mature knowledge. Once they were together she lit their souls with her words and made them more ferocious.

12. A reference to Venus as the morning star.

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Pale and with fearful hearts, chaste mothers and beloved wives observed their sons and much-loved men from the top of the walls. They were sad and full of sighs. They could see their sweet features shine in their clear and radiant armor among the bushes and thorns. When they went further their eyes didn’t help any longer, so they looked onto the dust that went up.

[31–63: Meandra, Ardelio, and their troops arrived in Byzantium, where Icete regarded a statue of the goddess Minerva atop a column as the source of the city’s ills. As he pushed it to the ground, a voice foretold the city’s demise at the hands of the Venetians. Then a dragon emerged and dragged Icete to his death and then underground. People looked on in dismay, then they turned to preparations for a siege.] 64

While the Latins and the Franks were busy getting weapons and works ready for their future attack (things that the previously clear air enveloped and covered up in the thick horror of dark night), Oronte was like an angry, impatient, and stupid beast that lives in sloth as it doesn’t have anything to do. He was almost like a dog wanting to break the harsh obstacle of too strong a leash. 65

As a ferocious lion roars horribly inasmuch as it can hardly take a sturdy cage as his prison, awakening his pride and anger and throbbing and nourishing rage in his wild heart, turning his inflamed eyes without being able to find a way out and breathing fire and anger at the same time, in the same manner the pent-up Hyrcanian [Oronte] burned with disdain, walked up and down, and could not stand still. 66

He complained and felt sorry that he had brought the king some strong but lazy help. His haughty mind despised going slowly, as he wanted to put his life in danger and couldn’t restrain that burning feeling in his heart or keep his courageous desire at bay. If he did that, he looked like a pent-up fire that shows up in more than one place due to its strength.

Canto 9 67

That indomitable warrior, who wanted to have the highest honors of fame and praise, stayed away from rest and said: “Let it not be true that I temper my fury in undignified boredom! Will my valor, my strength, my talents, and my military prowess be unutilized? Noble warriors have become sluggish and craven out of lack of activity. 68

“Let it not be true, by God, that human will may keep me pent up here, restraining me. If I still am what I was, if I do what I’m accustomed to doing, then my heart, hold on to your customary loftiness. Could it be true that I will close my days as a shy and disappointed man, devoid of glory and reputation?” This he said to himself, thinking that he would leave a splendid mark of his name thanks to his sword. 69

Such was his arrogant and savage will. That knight despised Alessio and the gates he had closed. From his eyes he beamed horrible lightning filled with terrible death. He asked with dark glances and stern words that someone bring his wish to the enemy camp. Ermen arrived and waited to hear what the knight wanted to command. 70

“Go where the unjust pillager of Thrace is in his large camp, to our damage. You will say that Oronte is inside the royal palace, laden with the great praise of a pent-up land. He wants to show his value to someone else. He knows that you, undignified princes, did not come to torment the kingdom of Greece out of desire for fame or anything else that’s right, but out of greed. 71

“He challenges anyone who has strength and courage, whether Latin or Frank, to stand against him. He can pick the weapon, and he shouldn’t fear anger, scorn, or shame from our side. The good king will readily promise what you desire; and if one is not enough to fight against me, then let more than one come, if the Frankish army dares.”

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This is how the courageous and furious Hyrcanian spoke to him. He put on his purple cloak and went where Enrico was gaining valor by talking eloquently. There he uncovered his stern and peaceful features to knights and footmen, fierce and joyful at the same time. “Great lord,” he said, “may I have permission to freely express the meaning in my heart before you?” 73

He who ruled over Adria’s sublime greatness and large seas [Enrico] answered: “You may.” With proud appearance Ermen unveiled the words and meaning of his haughty message. Wise Enrico and his noble crowd lit up with kingly feelings and the light of anger: “Go back to your king, messenger, and tell him that we’re ready and accept his challenge.” 74

So the messenger went back and laid out the answer to him, to whom every waiting minute seemed long. In a short time he wore his helmet and the rest of his choice and excellent armor, with his servants’ help. Meanwhile, Giacinto, an honor for his land and for the camp, was getting ready for the fight. Though many volunteered for that fight with an uncertain outcome, he attained it, for he deserved it as much as anyone else. 75

Tarso, Parmeno, the marquis, Rainiero, Orseolo, and the count all begged to fight. Each one wanted to throw back to furious Oronte’s breast his strange pride. The Venetian lord showed on his ample brow the sunny joy coming from his serene heart and caused by his people’s great valor; he rejoiced in his heart seeing their merits and valor. 76

Followed by his retinue, Enrico led and escorted Adria’s hero to the fight. Meanwhile, the Hyrcanian lord appeared covered in mail and armor plate, coming out of the wall with Alessio like Orion’s unlucky light.13 The Italians 13. A giant famous for his hunting skills; according to mythology, he is set as a constellation in the sky, with his two hunting dogs nearby and a sword dangling from his waist. It is unclear why Marinella dubs this star’s light “unlucky.”

Canto 9 and the Greeks stopped their good horses in the space between Rome and her ramparts.14 77

Both sides swore that nobody would disturb the fight, or give help, or be in the way, until fate might give victory to one and the other might die in disgrace. Once this was over, each went back to his side. Fear for handsome Giacinto was in the chests of our fighters, for it seemed to them that Oronte was stronger and bigger. 78

Those two famous warriors were left in the middle of the field; everybody else had forgotten himself and turned his eyes to them and to their swaying crests, while admiring their shields. The Venetian champion15 said: “Your haughtiness and your swelling anger push you, Hyrcanian, to look for death; you’re crazy! You should have had better luck. 79

“If luck is enemy to my wish and shakes and smothers me with her annoying hand in such a way that I reach my last hour and bump my face against our ancient mother,16 I will not keep my weapons and my steed from you. But if I am like I usually am, then there’s no reason for me to fear. If you are vanquished, then let your weapons and steed be mine, and I will give your corpse to your family: this is what I hope to do. 80

“And this is what you’ll do too.” The other was satisfied with that; then both retreated. Oronte took in what he had said and his courage; he didn’t reply to his words and stood silent. Then in a mere moment you could see them move around, as if wind were carrying them; air hissed, shrieked, and lit up around them, due to their quick motion; it opened and tore around them.

14. That is, Byzantium. See canto 7, note 63. 15. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 34. 16. That is, the earth—he might die dismounted off his horse, his face in the dirt.

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Like two arrows or breathing whirlwinds closing in on each other from opposite sides, submerging people, tall masts, and ropes in errant waves with their fury, while old forests and many flowers and gracious fields are uprooted and scattered around, in the same fashion the courageous knights ran against each other with cruelty, rage, and anger. 82

They hit each other’s helmets, their spears flew toward the sky broken in a thousand chips, and each hit produced sparks and lightning, but neither fell from his saddle or even bent down. Both seemed to burn in their faces, and at their motion and deep noises forests, hills, and fields trembled and echoed. Then they drew their proud irons and charged to wound and damage each other. 83

Like two wolves that burn up with anger as they have to share a prey that they peacefully captured together and therefore they attack each other harshly and fight horribly, making the woods echo with their shrieks while the winds light up in the air at those evil beasts’ burning souls; in the same manner the fighters shrieked at the earliest blows. Sublime Echo17 and highest heaven responded. 84

Their naked swords rang at times with a high pitch, at time with a low one, moved around by skillful and strong arms. A blacksmith doesn’t hit and strike the anvil with his mallet so fast and quickly! Those harsh warriors removed themselves carefully and quickly from heavy blows, and I truly believe that their swords were among those that Vulcan crafted for Thetis to give to the highest warrior.18 17. A nymph of Diana who faded to nothing but a voice. Juno punished her because Echo’s prattling had prevented Juno from surprising her husband Jupiter in the company of nymphs. Echo was condemned to never speak first and to never be silent when anyone else spoke. Her story is presented in Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.358ff. 18. In the Aeneid, Virgil recounts how Venus begged Vulcan (who made thunderbolts for Jove) to make weapons for her son Aeneas: see 8.369ff. Perhaps Marinella confuses this episode with the gift of weapons to Achilles from his mother, the nymph Thetis.

Canto 9 85

Angry Giacinto twirled his shining sword in front of arrogant Oronte’s eyes; the latter used his shield against it and to protect his brow. He [Giacinto] wanted to wound his enemy, but the latter retreated, so he turned his sword and his quick and ready hands looking intently to pierce his throat. Again the Hyrcanian offered his shield as a defense, but it didn’t stand up to such a cruel blow. 86

He couldn’t remove his sword, now stuck in the shield, so Oronte, even angrier, threw it away: at the same time one was deprived of his shield and the other one of his sword. Giacinto was able to take his shield to the Thracian’s arm, hitting and stunning him, so that he was forced to drop his dangerous sword out of his hand and onto the ground. 87

Both then were without shield and sword. They rushed against each other in their atrocious fury, like burning snakes in Scythia that turn dark and black out of wrath. Each tried to make his enemy fall, and turned his attention, actions, and thoughts to that end. They did so much that in the end it happened that Adria’s son ripped Oronte from his saddle. 88

Oronte then clung and gripped him with his strong arms, so Giacinto was forced to hit their common mother’s face19 himself. Like an eagle holding a snake in its claws, with the snake binding the eagle’s wings with its body, similarly Oronte grabbed Giacinto and twisted himself around him, so that Giacinto was forced to fall to the ground. 89

So they both fell bound together on the grass. The Frank grabbed the other by the helmet and tried to pry it from his haughty and superb head to hit

19. The common mother is the earth; her face is dirt. In other words, Giacinto’s face hit the ground.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d him harshly. He pulled and shook it, but its ties held it strongly in place even against those strong tugs. But in the end he removed it, having broken its ties, and tossed it toward the stars. 90

The godless one cursed the happy minds of the eternal heavens, the world, hidden deities, and the elements, horrible Pluto,20 and profound hell. Then both those valorous and strong men disengaged from his enemy’s weight. Oronte looked at the Latin one with a cruel face, but he was without a sword and a shield too. 91

While he was looking, Giacinto turned his eyes and saw his sharp sword on the ground: it had entered the shield and exited on the other side into the dirt. So he picked sword and shield up when Oronte picked up and wore his helmet as well as sword and shield, all the while looking at his hated enemy, to see if he could find a way, strength, or a new skill to outdo him. 92

Now that both had their iron and shield they attacked with quickness and lightness. In the same manner we sometimes see two courageous dogs going at each other with daring and haughtiness, without stopping their fight at just barks, but moving on to scratches, horrible and wild bites, and severe wounds. Caves and dark and unknown places roared. 93

They seemed to wound each other here and there, then their blows landed and hurt somewhere else. Their rage, anger, and scorn grew. They tried to pry open each other’s armor-plate and mail. They applied all their knowledge, strength, and brains so that one’s valor prevailed against the other’s. Craft clashed against craft, at times beaten, sometimes winning, now showing itself, now hidden.

20. Also called Hades and Dis, Pluto was the ruler of the underworld in ancient mythology.

Canto 9 94

They fought thus until night put an end to that mortal work, laying out the shadows and placing its peaceful hand between their hatred and mortal offenses. Armano and Arasso then settled those upset spirits, those burning souls, saying: “Knights, you have well shown the virtue and substance of your power. 95

“Your virtues are equally high, and the well-deserved honor of your high value emerges clearly. Stop your struggle now that night offers sweetness and brings us the peace and favors that it annoyingly hides in its black shadows when glory and valor rise. Generous and virtue-filled thinking abhors that the beauty of rare deeds be hidden.”21 96

Both were unmoved by their prayers and refused to quit their fight. Still they were quiet when Phoebus went to sleep in the sea,22 and the stars came out in the sky. One could see their beautiful armor embellished with many red decorations that came out warm from little wounds: they looked like burning roses beautifully joined to silver. 97

They stopped their fight until the sun had shown itself out of the Ganges and the sea five times. The Hyrcanian went back to Byzantium (which cried out loud out of fear for him), to his usual place. Giacinto went back to his men, who also were worried that he would show some mortal wound; so they rejoiced much when they understood that he was hardly scratched by a few small wounds.

21. The assertion that it is necessary, according to the codes of knighthood, to have observers witnessing single combat goes directly against Claudia and Meandra’s choice of a location for their fight: see 24.38 and the introduction. 22. For Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10.

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The following dawn beautiful Giacinto mounted his horse to leave camp with only two grooms, and wearing his military armor as was his wont. He was moved, or rather pushed, by a pleasant desire to know the great country of Thrace; he wanted to see cities, towns, and castles until the sun brought that appointed day. 99

He wanted to go until the day came when haughty Mars would decide who the stronger man was, when one would be vanquished and dead, and the other would enjoy benign fate and favorable luck. He spurred his horse, as the heavens pushed and led him to take a beautiful virgin from cruel death: Clotos was already close and ready to cut the shining thread of her life.23 23. In Greek and Roman mythology one of the three goddesses who determined a person’s destiny by picking up, spinning, and cutting a thread.

CANTO 10

S U M M A RY

Full of anger, Esone tore his hair out because he had in vain lit fire in the night. That cruel man waited for Artabano’s daughter, kidnapped her, and killed her choice squad. She cried over her bad luck and strange affronts; she feared harsh death’s fierce appearance. The evil magician wanted to sacrifice her as a victim to Pluto1 before the sun died.2 1

As the evil magician Esone realized, indeed saw that the craft, art, and wish of his thinking were vain against actual occurrences, he had no pity for the fire [the burning of the fleet] and for wandering flames. He turned sour and hit the ground with his foot: the earth bellowed and shook right there as if a wounded lion had exhaled a bitter feeling from his chest by roaring and sighing. 2

“Isn’t it true that at the sound of my voice thousands and thousands of hellish souls came up from their Tartarean tomb?3 My voice still reverberates there, Pluto turned pale,4 and hell trembled . . . I did that so that the noise from the Italian bugle would no longer be heard mocking us. But what use 1. For Pluto, see canto 9, note 20. 2. That is, before the end of the day. 3. In Greek mythology Tartarus is the lowest region of the world, where Zeus confined the Titans after defeating them. Often (as in this case) used synonymously with “hell.” 4. See canto 9, note 20.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d was all this? I carried out my actions and wishes well, but God was against them. 3

“I believed that the entire world would be but a small piece of tinder for that immense flame, for that raging, high, and consuming fire. I believed that the enemy’s bold army would burn. He’s a winner and shrewdly thinks that he can severely damage us while being lazy and at peace. He’s thinking about how he could conquer Thrace and bring death to the old leader: what a fierce enemy!” 4

This is what he said, shrieking with swollen lips and teeth infected with poison. Like an offended mastiff who’s full of rage and rushes to bite a passerby, he looked at the sky with disdain: how could envious heaven turn his fun into bitterness? With horrible deeds and words he upset the air and wrapped the sun in fog. 5

His eyes seemed lit in the dark flames of Phlegethon;5 his face was dark and black. This is how Aeneas saw bleak Charon, the strange helmsman of the ferry to hell.6 When the horizon became dark and black, and murky shadows covered the hemisphere, he cried and yelped against the cruel king of lost people7 with fearful sounds. 6

He complained about heaven, the faith of the gods of the netherworld, and the fate that awakened the Frankish camp. He complained that the wind didn’t help and that he had seen the ships poorly. Anger and pain fought in 5. A circular ditch of boiling blood that separates the seventh circle of Dante’s hell (where those guilty of violence are damned for eternity) from the previous one: see Dante, Inferno 12– 14. Like Acheron (cited in Enrico in 5.13 and 6.48), it was part of the classical mythology of the underworld; for example, Phlegethon also appears in Virgil’s Aeneid 6.265 and 551. 6. Charon is described in Aeneid 6.299–304. 7. That is, the king of hell.

Canto 10 his heart, wounded by the night’s kill and deaths. He also bemoaned many dear friends’ harsh and bitter end in black death. 7

As soon as Phoebus8 plunged his chariot in the waves, slow and tired after his long work, and night turned her slippery steps toward us from mountains and deep and craggy valleys,9 the moon started in the clear sky with her blonde hair scattering a dewy cloud of lively pearls below: on grass, on flowers, and in the earth’s lap. 8

The magician realized that silence and shadows (favorable to his wish) had taken hold of the world, and that calm and cheerful sleep filled minds and souls with sweet peace. He confined himself to a lonely grotto without anybody else, and said harshly and with conviction: “You, prince of hell, who rule over the buried people from a throne with curled and evil snakes, 9

“leave quickly your dark circles, your dim and old places, as my prayers and my voice call you forth! May the king leave his Dis,10 and may your arrival bring truth with it! I want to know how this great war, fight, weapons, and warriors will end.” Then he saw a demon, or he thought he saw a demon, in the blackest part of that cave. 10

It was a shadow among the shadows whose bleak complexion had a color similar to troubled fire. Like a huge whirlwind it circled all around that low place, and it replied to those questions. Meanwhile, the magician, more an-

8. For Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10. 9. Regarding descriptions of the night, see canto 4, note 3. 10. The city of Dis is, according to Dante, lower hell (i.e., from circle six downward), where those guilty of the most heinous crimes (heresy, violence, deceit, and treachery) are condemned to spend eternity. See the chart in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles S. Singleton, 6 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 2.43–44.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d noyed and upset than happy at that fearful game, awaited his answer. That evil spirit opened up the ground and descended to its pain. 11

While the sky mumbled and quivered, buffeted by noisy winds, he opened up the ground and treaded on it, offering burning lightning to someone else. That evil one cursed the fact that guilty silence fought with him over what he hoped to know; so with threatening demeanor and dreadful expression he again raised his voice. 12

“I cut open a mother’s womb, taking a not-yet-born baby out of it. I consecrated it as a victim to the princes of the lower kingdom and to the gods of the people who live in the Tartarus.11 After I removed his little limbs and killed him, I devoutly tossed him in a burning fire as a holy sacrifice to you; then I gathered his ashes and carried them with me. 13

“You have the power to bend a stubborn demon’s thoughts to our will; you have not prevented the horrible doors to your atrocious palace from opening when someone knocks on them annoyingly. So let your strong and stubborn will yield to our great power and accede to our prayer: we know how to defeat and tame the forces of hell, using a fearful name.” 14

The shining torches that adorn and light the nocturnal cloak of the sky fled. At those words Delia wrapped her horns, until then clear and shiny, in dark cloth.12 Those strong and effective words turned burning Phlegethon into ice;13 and the enemy demon sent an outrageous answer from his dark throne with these words:

11. See note 3 to octave 2. 12. Delia is an epithet of Diana, who was born on the island of Delos; as the moon goddess, she shines but cannot be seen clearly from earth. 13. See note 5 to octave 5.

Canto 10 15

“Only the chaste blood of a noble virgin can appease those scornful souls in Avernus,14 calm Erine’s cruel motion and fight, and placate those annoying wishes. This is how the advance and pomp of Italians and Franks will be repelled.” Here he stopped talking, leaving Esone’s heart heavy with fear, pain, and doubts. 16

When Esone heard this, he quickly moved his foot from that solitary threshold and went as his evil counselor where leader Alessio was in anxiety and pain. He said: “Rejoice, king; your famed attempts will vanquish Enrico and bring pain to the Franks as long as a royal virgin is killed as a sacred victim to infernal lands.” 17

The king loved what the magician told him, but asked: “Where are we going to get a chaste and royal virgin to pay the emperor of the eternal terror?” He answered: “My heart foresees that we’ll have what we need; crafts and tricks will be necessary to save the kingdom and to repel barbarian anger.15 18

“I know that one of Artabano’s daughters is on a trip; her father just married her to King Roberto. She is as beautiful as a smiling rose at the end of April. Her hair is golden, her chest is white as snow, and her eyes are clear; she is filled, indeed brimming, with all graces and virtues. Barons and knights go with her, the most important of the state and her true friends. 19

“I believe she’s perfect for our needs: she’s a king’s daughter, she’s an honest and beautiful young woman, she’s the bride of an enemy of yours—worse,

14. Lake Avernus in southern Italy was believed to be the entrance to the underworld in classical times, and often (as in this case) used synonymously with “hell.” 15. Here the term “barbarian” designates the Venetian and Frankish armies; Marinella uses it to refer to enemies and to foreigners, essentially in its etymological sense of an outsider who does not share a recognized culture or language with the speaker.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d the first one to manifest to you his harsh and malicious mind. I will take our revenge for that affront, and I will instill in your heart his evil and rebellious desires. I will have thousands of hellish angels to find out where she is. 20

“And since I know that we won’t be able to take her without blood and death, please let me have one hundred of your strong and courageous warriors on horseback, and one hundred on foot.” The king replied: “You know how much the king cares about this, so ask and make requests without fear.” That worthless emperor foolishly believed that he would receive a noble reward for an unjust deed. 21

Esone set a thousand traps and ambushes to catch that much-desired daughter. He took a group of armed men with him to carry out his evil secrets. While she and her men were happy and joyful, there was a whirlwind that scattered and dispersed them. This was the Greek magician’s doing. Many were knocked off and killed during that assault. 22

Melted snow doesn’t come down from mountains in torrents with such fury, nor does the blowing of the most enraged winds knock down and demolish forests and houses with such wrath. Lightning comes down from the sky to terrify people with less strength than the Thracians used to harm and injure those faithful keepers with their tricks and ploys. 23

The Thracians caught them unaware: they were hiding among the dark trees of a wood. Nor did they realize that many were wounded and killed in one moment: the Greeks lowered their spears and wounded those noble knights with courage and resolve in their faces. They did with them what a wolf usually does to a sheep herd where the sun is not shining. 24

The Thracian squad was so numerous and courageous that everybody was crushed and vanquished: they fled or were wounded or on the ground close to death or already dead. The maiden’s noble heart was hit with fear and

Canto 10 pain, swallowed by icy and horrible terror as she watched the horrifying slaughter in utter confusion, sighing out of fear. 25

Like a white dove trembles, is horrified, wanders, and raves seeing a hawk (which is a bird of prey) above its head, she didn’t know what she should do; she went here and there like a madwoman. She saw her guards fall to the ground, so she beat her chest and vainly lifted her beautiful eyes and both her hands to heaven. 26

In a sweet voice that, upon my word, would have made marble shed tears she said: “What did my people do? How can these men’s hearts be so cruel? But these aren’t men: they are wild animals come from the unknown forest in Etolia or on Erimanto.16 In fact, you have come from hell, and it is there that you learned the manners and crafts of your utter lack of mercy.” 27

As she spoke the beautiful olive-like paleness of her sweet face shed painfilled waters where the lively image of her laughter shone like that of the sun. Perhaps sweet dew falls on mountains or shores in paradise to adorn with pearly decorations dawn’s roses and royal cloaks—though I don’t know if it happens in the same or in a similar way. 28

Only her guardian, named Asiareo, was left, stunned by the mortal slaughter, the horrible end, and the miserable death of his companions. His heart was assailed by great pity and scorn; that just pain convinced him that he should kill those disgraceful people himself or be dead next to his dear friends. 29

Though he was sad at the thought that the maiden might be made prisoner by strange and unjust people, he brandished his spear, settled in his saddle, 16. Etolia is a region in western Greece. Erimanto was a mountain in the Greek region of Arcadia, covered in thick woods.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d and awakened his spirits, ready for the highest honor. Then he went forward with fury and daring that instilled much fear in the Greeks, like a bear attacking a dog that has run toward him and has bitten him hard and with poison. 30

He was filled with scorn, so he knocked down the big group of unjust Thracians. Then he took up his sword and brought harsh slaughter and war against them: he cut off arms, opened up chests, removed heads. Cold earth was covered with their bodies, and their blood already was flowing in rivers and whirls. He didn’t care for risks, for a desperate courage increased his strength and awakened the fire of his anger. 31

Then the man who seemed to be the Greeks’ bold captain (his fierce face indicated that) attacked him and gave him a nasty wound: he hit him in such a way that he fell to the ground dead. Everyone turned his back to him out of fear of his unvanquished hand. Still he beat that evil group left with few weapons and utterly alone. 32

The evil magician [Esone] could foresee the doubtful ending and feared damage and ridicule from the killing and the ruin brought by that warrior laden with praise. So with a dark brow and disheveled hair he invoked the gods of the fateful domain; with a humble heart and pleading voice he uttered the following words to the king of the horrible kingdom: 33

“Powerful god of Avernus,17 you know that I didn’t lead a life unworthy of your just deserts. I often gave sacrifices of sheep and oxen to you, god, in the night; in the dark I went looking for the fateful feathers of the owl to devote them to you, the god of my heart, so that you would then be inclined to listen to my prayers.

17. See note 14 above.

Canto 10 34

“You, terrible one, always bring the evil arrows of eternal death to damned souls and tricky hearts from the dark center and the horrors of the depth of hell. So hold up and direct the harsh fury of my arrow through the air, so that it may place that man among the dead.” He heard the prayer, held up the arrow in flight, and pushed it in the warrior’s chest; he fell and died. 35

Soon the women who served as companions and servants to Artabano’s daughter fled here and there, like shy does when they see a lion not far away. Idilia fell in Esone’s arrogant hands. Immediately with human demeanor she asked our world and the heavenly spheres for mercy and help against the Thracian monsters. 36

The magician was so delighted and happy! He already believed that the king would win and that he himself would be happy. He foresaw evil but wanted to see the Franks wretched and more unhappy than the rest. He wanted the Greek empire to stretch to the Ganges, the starry Chariots, the Tagus, and even further if possible; in order to be satisfied and happy, he wanted the world united under the Thracian domination. 37

With a horrible face (such that he could have scared the dark ruler of hell himself) he went to her. She was shedding a spring of tears from both eyes and hitting her chest and chaste face, in such a way that a lively color spread in both, as we see when someone smartly places blazing roses among lilies. 38

She saw that horrible face, colored with dark horror and paleness. Even if some happiness were found in it, its shine would be surrounded by darkness, like a stroke of lightning among thick and heavy clouds that looks partly alive and partly extinguished. At that sight she trembled, was stunned, became as cold as snow, and couldn’t stand on her feet.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 39

That daughter fell to the ground like a plant uprooted by adverse winds. Her face, a sun shining with beauty, languished and was wet with cold sweat; her burning red cheeks became flush with the beautiful color of pale violets, so that her sweet face made bitter pain sweet, since in it smiles still looked happy, though it was dead. 40

That proud man tried to bring back her lost spirit with water on her icy brow; he couldn’t do anything else in that hidden valley, among the mountains, far from any city and among alders and myrtles. He muttered some unintelligible complaint, he shrieked like the sea around rocks; still the distressed young woman wouldn’t come to, feeling a certain pleasure in being more dead than alive. 41

So he had a soft wind come out of the Tartarean gate of the depth of Avernus;18 it lifted her, who still looked as though pain had killed her, and quickly transported her to Byzantium. Once there a beautiful crowd of women called, or rather invited, back her fled soul sweetly, with waters and flowers comforting her senses, already in the throes of a deep sleep. 42

Against all her wishes she went back to the unwished-for duties of her tired body. That shy maiden couldn’t see her beloved companions and dear friends any longer, but understood she was a servant in an unknown place, surrounded by Greek weapons and among enemies. She lamented, cried, complained, and expressed her sorrow about the heavens and the world in mute words.19 43

She vented the anger and pain of her heart with many tears and sad utterances; the beauty and charm of her smooth cheeks were wet with tears, but 18. Ibid. 19. That is, she expressed all these emotions silently.

Canto 10 her pain was not abated. At that very moment Esone returned, hiding his harsh soul as much as possible under a peaceful countenance. He tried to mellow that embittered heart with unmoved mind and sweet words. 44

“Royal virgin, brighten your brow and soothe your pain; you have been chosen for great things and the highest honors: you will save someone else. Who will be equal to you? As long as the sky shimmers with clear rays you will shine for your high and immortal fame. Your praise will fly from king’s mouth to king’s mouth, and you will be adorned with eternal admiration. 45

“If Polyxena offered her head to appease great Achilles’ soul,20 and thousands upon thousands of ships turned to her shores because of her death, in the same manner if after drying your cheeks wet with tears, you happily offer your soul for all of Greece, to save her cities and towns, what trophies, what glory, what victory will be yours? 46

“Who knows in what beautiful verses and in what lively poems your famous valor will be ensconced, or in what pages, bronze, or lasting marble your sublime heart will be sculpted or carved!21 It seems to me that you will be counted among the blessed goddesses in heaven. I already see devout souls building temples and making vows to your famous name. 47

“Life is short, and if you accept the bitter drink of giving your life voluntarily on someone else’s behalf a great virtue will stem from that: Thessalia and all her neighbors will be saved.” At his comforting words her soul and feelings took courage; then she realized that the harbor to her bad luck and to her adverse fate was death.

20. One of the daughters of king Priam, wooed by Achilles, who was fatally wounded by her brother Paris in the temple of Apollo. Polyxena was later sacrificed to Achilles to appease his shade. 21. Another indirect, but no less clear, reference to Marinella’s own poem.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 48

At his words she dried her teary river and her wet face with her veil. Her manly heart, devoid of hope, placed all of itself in a beautiful death; so her eyes became beautifully shiny and lively, and her eyebrows wrapped in shadows seemed like a star that lifts her blonde hair from the waves, still shedding water. 49

Similarly, we see a white flower open up in spring such that the sky smiles with grace and splendor in its beauty and splendor, without a cloud or any mist; it seems as though winds, water, and air come to honor it with reverence and zeal. This gentle maiden looked the same, more beautiful than anyone else, after that announcement. 50

The magician was cruel; his soul was accustomed to the spirits and darkness of hell. Still her manners and beauty ruled sweetly over his feelings; a noble fire warmed up his dry harshness and the nature of his frozen winter. But he rejected that, and he instead awakened and invited back his innate cruelty against that innocent life. 51

The enchanter forbade the pleasant flame of sweet mercy from entering his heart; indeed, he extinguished it with the water of a lethal poison without leaving a single spark. He roused that courageous woman to her death with a false tongue filled with deception; his spell forced her to be satisfied with death so that she might show piety toward Thrace. 52

She said: “Friend, I gather all fateful scorn for heavenly storms in my heart. I gladly give up and renounce my youthful age to save cities and this kingdom. I am happy that my death will be the foundation and support for Achaia,22 stop its enemies’ pride, and make these people and this quiet and pretty land safe and happy. 22. For Achaia, see canto 9, note 1.

Canto 10 53

“If this is your wish, I will willingly shed my soul and my blood with feelings of compassion. Go ahead, wound me where you’d like: on the neck, on the breast, I will consider it a grace to lose my life for you all, as our mind wishes to die nobly, because it knows that while the body languishes and dies, one’s name rises instead of the fallen body, with fame and glory.” 54

Meanwhile, the sun plunged its burning chariot in the middle of the waves and extinguished its warm light. Night left its profound and deep caves and wrapped and dyed everything visible in black.23 That magician left her, hiding and disappearing from everyone and taking up his evil deeds and evil works. Left alone, she cried in pain over the extinguished wishes for her life. 55

Her heart was torn between two opposite feelings: terror for her impending death, and fear that her anger and fury for a negative fate would mar its greatness. She scorned the proud thought that her manifest virtues might be neglected and that her cowardice might bring reproach. So a desire to escape out of infamy and a greater desire for honor fought to conquer her royal heart. 56

The well-known yet rare wish for praise showed that death does not damage great virtue. On the other hand, nature, abhorring a bitter fate, discovered to her that it’s the most atrocious evil of all evils. So her timid thoughts spoke up expressing her doubt and uncertainty along these lines: “What are you doing? What are you thinking about? Alas, you miserable woman, don’t you see that you give up your life before its time? 57

“I will fall an unlucky victim to holy altars in the prime of my life, in my best days, in my first serene age! This will be the last hope for my wedding! Stars, 23. Regarding descriptions of night, see canto 4, note 3.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d you conspire against me; mean heavens, is such an awful end appropriate for me? What misdeed or mistake am I guilty of that men and God hate me? 58

“Where and when was such a merciless act carried out against an innocent daughter? Who ever carried so much insanity in his chest? Who teaches it, encourages it, or advises it? Who allows such iniquity, so that the Thracians might follow this cruel example? Alas, my soul fails me; will it be that the beautiful sun’s birth will bring my death?” 59

As she stopped talking, her mute silence seemed to be endowed with meaning and prayers, and it awakened pity. She thought that her life would soon be taken from her; so she turned her pained and sad eyes to the sky. In the same manner pale Dawn seems languidly to cast her beautiful eyes when she’s wearing dark clothes, spreading a humid veil and removing beautiful clarity from the sky.24 60

“What do you think? What do you wish for? What do you rave about? Will you be a servant to unfaithful people, just to be alive? Are you not tempering and correcting this wish that guides you to do something unworthy? Bring back your dead courage, hold on to your wishes, because it looks as though luck smiles even in bad situations: you will lose your life to give help to all of Greece with much praise. 61

“Could it be that you love life? You’re an exile, deprived of your dear father and of your royal palace, an anxious prey and a prisoner to an evil enemy. Your foot is already bound by the chains of servitude! I was well worthy of love (a love that opened up great mercy of thanks and treasures) when dear and loving hearts adorned me with the highest honors, since I was the daughter of a great king. 24. This image of a dark and sad goddess of early morning also appears in canto 5.46, and contrasts with the more common one of a goddess who brings light, life, and happiness.

Canto 10 62

“A person born to a great lineage, filled with virtue and noble thoughts, must either live happy and honored, or leave this life with its low qualities. So a noble heart adorned with the ornaments of noble desires would rather leave all pomp and the beauty of the sky to become cold ground and motionless ice. 63

“How many unvanquished maidens offered their chests to a sword or to a poison in order to escape degrading service and one without mercy? Theirs will not be the dark, black experience of being forgotten; rather theirs will be a light to their glory and lasting fame. And as I think of it my soul doesn’t get embittered. I myself have the vigor, courage, and strength to sate my wishes with cruel suffering. 64

“Our life is like a beautiful treasure: we must not spend it on contemptible stuff. If a debt or propriety asks for it, we must give it with quick and manly heart. What palms, what laurel, are then due to someone like that?25 His fame would echo in Battro and Tile,26 as when he’s dead he breathes more than when he was alive; the people’s praise lifts him and brings him admiration.” 65

Two opposing thoughts perplexed her, one grand and brave, the other shameful and distressing. It was like when the wind blows and waves rise high and then drop closer to the icy bottom; her doubting mind was at one moment enticed, at another strongly repelled by harsh and deep wounds. At times she wanted death; at others she shyly fled it as a horrible ending that destroys all hope.

25. Palms were a symbol of victory and martyrdom, and crowns of laurel adorned the heads of victors in various contexts in ancient times. 26. That is, to the furthest corners of the earth.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 66

At one point the fear of death turned the blush of her face into icy and horrible paleness. At another a generous thought removed the heart from the ice and lit a magnanimous flame in her heart, so that her face was inflamed and showed that proud honor was back in her breast: a noble desire made her happy to die not once but a thousand times. 67

Already the carrier of day was emerging from the wide sea with his light, chasing the shadows away. Dripping dew lit by it put the best pearls to shame. At that moment Esone emerged from the intense darkness of his cave, his usual dwelling place, where he had spent the night in council with the gods of the netherworld among sulphurous smoke. 68

It already was time to leave. He took the young woman, courageous in the face of death. He led a good number of people, since he feared that someone might disturb his quiet. Meanwhile, in the light of the new day they built altars to be consumed by a hungry flame. The magician took with him a priest who would kill the beautiful woman at the right time. 69

A green valley showed its delicate and tender slopes not far from Strimon, among mountains and hills. This valley was filled with fruit trees and flowers, a floral delight. It contained rivers and springs of clear water that made its meadows lush and beautiful. The magician chose that very valley to carry out that unjust sacrifice with just blood.27 70

That impious man led the beautiful virgin to those holy altars as a victim, and pity didn’t move him. Still the maiden’s young age, beauty, and pleasant 27. In the original the antithetical “ingiusto” and “giusto” are placed in rhyming position at the end of the octave to underscore the difference between the evil Greek magician and the innocent young woman he wants to sacrifice.

Canto 10 love moved many hearts: one cursed Alessio; another called him a cruel Lestrigone28 and an enemy to Jove. Many, however, liked the magician’s tricks and believed that this was useful and positive to their leader. 71

People bound by love stood alongside the king of the netherworld, so that they might be worthy of his grace and favor in their lives. They were certain that, if that virgin died, enemy weapons, actions, and scorn would be repelled. Already the bellows called forth clear burning flames along with spirits around the altars. 72

She looked at the pyre in which her life was going to turn to ashes because of someone else. She didn’t abhor or flee it; instead, she welcomed it: she wanted death to avoid blame. You were more than a manly spirit, O courageous soul; you gave little thought to glory and praise [for yourself]. If only I could make you eternal at least with my song, O unvanquished one, to take you away from blind forgetfulness.29 73

The end to all her hopes was near; she was without help or comfort. Nevertheless, virtue and a desire for honor brought some sweetness to her great heart. Even in her great valor she felt pain when she considered she was wrongly afflicted. She couldn’t not fear death, even if her heart was great, strong, even ironclad. 74

Her virtues gathered, clothed, and made beautiful both her spirit and her heart with noble courage; they tried to strengthen and arm her wishes with holy ardor against those vexing flames. She lifted her mind as well as her sad 28. A mythical giant, occurring in Odyssey 10 and also in Italian epic poems such as Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato (libro secondo 18.40) and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (36.9). 29. Another direct address to a female character (see 2.72, 6.7, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49). This increases the sympathy and empathy that readers feel for Idilia, and underscores the reference to the writer’s own role in preserving the memory of Idilia’s sacrifice (see 10.46).

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d eyes to the eternal love of high Olympus.30 She tried to vanquish her fear, indeed her terror of the ultimate moment, with the highest valor. 75

In her face and chaste countenance she showed the grace and propriety of royal majesty. A singing swan doesn’t give more enjoyment to a longing heart with its song when it opens up a treasure of corals and pearls in order to banish any sad thought from someone’s heart, than the pity she scattered among those convened people with her sigh-filled words. 76

She said: “Sun, you revive, adorn, and restore the world with your shining rays; you light up the eternal and lower fields31 with bright flames. Did you ever see the same harshness, anger, and fury in any man as those that took over these people? From your high temple did you ever see a sadder example of harsh fate than this one? 77

“Ungrateful sky, why do you grant that a single heart might contain so much wickedness? Why don’t you open it up first and wound it with a mortal stroke of your lightning? You do not see that the heart of Megara32 holds as horrible a power in a wild animal as the jasper that arms the heart of this man, so full of anger and poison.”33 78

Neither her face adorned with rare beauty nor her wise and sweet words helped her. Her valor did not elicit pity or mercy in that wild crowd, on that sad day. And even if she were to find pity around her, pity is in vain if

30. A tall mountain in Greece, believed to be the dwelling place of the gods with Zeus or Jupiter/Jove as their ruler. 31. That is, the sky (and heaven) and earth. 32. One of three avenging spirits (Furies) of retributive justice, whose task was to punish crimes that were not within the reach of human justice. 33. Jasper refers to translucent and brightly colored stones. Medicinal values were long attributed to jasper, including a belief that wearing it strengthened the stomach.

Canto 10 it doesn’t remove cruelty, if it doesn’t stir virtue, or if it remains unknown. A man is uncertain if he languishes and is quiet about his virtue. 79

Although Idilia wished for her death and longed for that ending that would remove her from blame and pain, although she wanted a friendly Parca34 to cut and remove the precious ties of her life, she still pleaded and appreciated those who cried and ached for her misery. Soon flames screeched, iron glittered, and that illustrious virgin awaited her blow.35 34. In Greek and Roman mythology any one of the three goddesses who determined a person’s destiny. 35. Borrowing a characteristic often found in epic poems and romances (especially Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, where expectations, however, are usually frustrated), Marinella builds up her readers’ suspense just as she concludes her canto to increase the tension leading to Giacinto’s appearance at the beginning of the following canto.

227

FROM CANTO 11, FROM CANTO 12, AND SUMMARIES OF CANTOS 13–14

[1–20: Giacinto chanced upon Idilia, soon to be sacrificed by Esone. He immediately fell in love with her. He learned of the circumstances leading to her imprisonment and impending death, and he ordered Esone to free Idilia. When Esone refused to comply, Giacinto attacked him and his cohort, laying waste to them. Esone fled on a magical wind that took him back to his cave. Alessio, hearing of this setback, was profoundly upset.] 21

Meanwhile, Giacinto went to the woman he had simultaneously saved from sword, fire, and a harsh death not an hour before. When she saw him, she cast her eyes downward, and her white face blushed with the color of roses.1 He begged her to tell him why that evil man wanted an innocent young woman to die wrongly. She unveiled the knotty tangle of her misfortunes with sweet words and in a gentle manner. 22

She then added: “If a humble prisoner’s prayer ever had any effect on a winning lord, I appeal to your goodness, which is one of the thousands of crowns gracing your hair. Since heaven hates me, let me be given to their gods through this torment; courteous knight, let me be extinguished, for I will be happy in death.”

1. Idilia’s manners are fit for a noble unwed virgin in early modern times; Marinella borrows the language of lyrical poetry to express them.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 23

“Alas, what are you saying? So I wagered my life to keep you alive and from death, and you dare wish to leave me through death? Heaven doesn’t hate you; on the contrary it loves you, and it admires your courageous deeds and your blossoming beauty adorned by much virtue,” he said. She added, turning her beautiful face to him: 24

“Since it pleases you that I live, since you want me to enjoy the world and the sun thanks to your glory, then what thanks are worthy of you? What words can I say to praise you? You are Mars’s pomp, an honor to strong heroes! While this devoted heart adores and worships you, let the wondrous deeds of your valor echo wherever the sky opens its beauty to view.” 25

While that beautiful daughter unveiled the anxiety in her heart and the bitter reasons for it, he kept his ears attentive and his eyes transfixed at her words and exceptional manners. He thought to himself: “She resembles a divine spirit; never does such light shine from a mortal body! Even her appearance reveals the forms veiled by her beautiful body.” 26

He added: “I did nothing; I did what a knight should do for those who are wrongly made to suffer. I should have done what I did especially in such a heinous case, even if that would have meant death for me! The world, previously bothered, gets joy and comfort from a victory against a hellish soul. I must not have thanks or gifts: if one is good, one does what’s good without any prize because it is good. 27

“Because it is good one should always do what’s good; that is the goal and the objective of any gentle soul, since we were born not to benefit ourselves but to benefit others and remove tangles and thorns from the world. Indeed, if I could do something else to your advantage (even if it entailed exposing

Canto 11 myself to danger and risk), I wouldn’t be less ready than I was: I don’t fear death if it benefits someone else. 28

“And if there were nothing else, your beautiful eyes that stole my heart, your sweet face that wounded my heart, and your pleasant and dear manner that were born in paradise would be enough for me to be in your service. I would spend my life and soul for you, and if my soul were divided from my body, at least it would go wandering amid your golden hair and on your white chest.” 29

By saying this that powerful knight showed himself ready for risks and danger. Idilia’s mind became happy at those words; and her cloudy brow became clear. She started burning with love and decided to follow that knight, as she didn’t think his heart’s beauty any smaller than the one that love placed in his beautiful face.2 30

Just then his provident groom picked the most courageous and the strongest among those steeds, one of those that Death had cut loose with her scythe for her own reasons.3 He wanted that horse to carry that young woman’s exceptional beauty back to camp. She sat astride it and turned her back on that fatal valley with her Giacinto. 31

After a short while a light appeared in the distance burning like a new flame that made the customary fog in the air shining and exceptional in those places. Then they made out people walking quickly toward them, in the direction of a river. In his heart he heard a mute voice say, silently but heatedly:

2. Many elements in this episode evoke Giacinto’s description during his spying mission in canto 4, including his divine appearance, and indicate further how well suited these two young people are to each other according to early modern principles. 3. Death’s sudden arrival was traditionally taken as a sign that she rode the fastest horses.

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“What are you thinking about? Why are you motionless? Why do you look on and do nothing? Why don’t you make your way to new glory? Judging from their standards these are Greeks, so why are you so slow in turning your step and your strength against them? You burn too little at such a great fire; you’re weak and tired due to your recent love. But if you love, say, why don’t you show her what valor you possess and what you are? 33

He told her: “These are Thessalians, coming to take you away from me, my love and dear great prize to my many travails. I will go and I will bring them an inescapable and harsh end.” He spoke, he started on his way, he left, and it seems to me that a hawk swoops less fast on a nest where foreseeing birds had brought food to their beloved offspring to their dear content. 34

That wretched woman saw her beloved knight far away and surrounded by Greek weapons. She truly feared that he might be vanquished, and he might see his fate, the end of his life. Her soul trembled, and her beautiful face, hospitable to love, was painted over with anguish. She would gladly put her life, her spirit, and her chest in the way to spare a direct hit against him. 35

She wanted her steed to take off. It was so shaken that it seemed possessed by a new fury. It didn’t obey signs, spurs, or bit, and in fact it acted worse when it was beaten or hit. An arrow doesn’t go with such fury when it is cast from a bent bow! It didn’t stop its legs, carrying her away from all paths, where no sign of man was visible. 36

She tried and tried, but she couldn’t find the known path again. She was filled with anguish, and therefore she soaked her beautiful and lively red cheeks with a river streaming from her eyes. With aggrieved sighs and sad words she vented the pains in her heart, so intense that, in my opinion, they could have started a fire in cold marble or stopped the wind in the air.

Canto 11 37

“Alas, why did that strong knight run the risk of an almost certain and doubtless death to remove me from those binds, from that iron, from that harsh fire if a greater evil than all evils was to happen to me? If he was to sate those horrible wild animals in the middle of unknown forests with no glory? Abusive fate! His grace and valor have entered my heart.

38

“Esone, why couldn’t I be killed by your hand on your altars, placating the pride and anger of your evil and unholy gods in a more praiseful manner? I would have hoped to gain fame from your Romans4 such that it would always be with me, since fame is the only thing that can remove a man from his dark tomb, making his name echo for all time.”5

39

After repeatedly expressing her sadness in pain-filled cries, at the time when the sun turned his fast steeds toward sunset and darkened his beautiful features she discerned unknown paths and fires, but not the roads that she had already walked on in her tiredness. She sighed, felt much pain, and had no more hope to see her beloved knight again.

40

“What can I do? What should I do, alas? I’m noble offspring, accustomed to the highest honors! And yet I don’t see my father’s palace or royal signs or decorations or splendor. Plus, I lost the person who dearly kindled my first flame, and that is much worse! His valor took me away from dark flames and from a greedy killer, that strong and dear man!

4. That is, the Byzantines. Marinella again emphasizes the imperial pretensions of Byzantium, which had in fact been the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire since early in the fifth century CE. This contrasts with the republican principles espoused by Marinella and her Venetian readers. 5. Even in twenty-first-century Italian, “uomo” (“man”) is still the common shorthand for “human being.” It is unsurprising, then, that Marinella uses it here. The irony, however, is palpable: it is as if Edilia recognized that, as a woman, fame is precluded from her.

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“Perhaps my courageous champion still calls me and looks for me,6 but all is in vain. O treacherous and cruel fate, may I at least die, since my soul7 is so far away!”8 As she said this she complained and was in pain; her own hand, turned into an enemy, beat her chest, and pitiful Echo answered from the caves and dens in which she hides.9 42

Like a lily, privet, or young rose that one sees bent in a garden, whose head is hanging down and bowing so that it seems to be thoughtful and tired from too much heat, in the same manner Idilia was languid, afflicted, and full of sighs for her fiery destiny. She saw the sky become dark and become adorned by golden flowers and pearly cold. 43

Nocturnal Phoebus [the moon] emerged from the great ocean, vying with the light of day, moving his ivory foot with ginger steps among the torches of the camp. The goddess from Cyprus, who marks spirits with love, was fleeing from horrible Saturn in all haste, scattering sweet delight all over the world from her face and blonde hair.10 44

Blonde stars were laughing, Delia scattered shining rays from her hazy features,11 and the forest, the air, and the cold waves were silent. All animals 6. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 34. 7. That is, my beloved; although a common term in lyrical poetry, it is usually attributed to a woman by a male poet. 8. The two direct speeches (octaves 37–38 and 40–41) express Idilia’s love for Giacinto in the language typical of lyrical love poetry. What is remarkable here is that Marinella attributes such utterances to a female character, whereas the conventions of love poetry would usually imply a male poet singing about a female beloved. 9. For Echo, see canto 9, note 17. 10. That is, Venus, the Roman goddess of love, identified with the Greek Aphrodite, born from the white foam produced by the severed genitals of Uranus after being thrown into the sea. Perhaps because she was first worshiped on Cyprus, the event of her birth is at times located in the waters around that Aegean Sea island. It is unclear why she would flee from Saturn. 11. For Delia, see canto 10, note 12.

Canto 11 12

quieted their wandering spirits. You alone, Idilia, quietly spent your hours in pain and crying, sad and tormented. Soft sleep could not take charge of your weak senses after vanquishing your pains.13 45

When she saw Dawn rising out of the clear Ganges crowned with rays,14 she started to find a path again, while her mind (still full of doubts and fears) was sad and tearful. She hoped that luck would change the scorn and anger it harbored so powerfully against her. She moved her feet like a lost she-lamb; she didn’t know where she was, and she could only see what was bad. 46

She wandered here and there, filled with uncertainty in fearful forests and horror-provoking darkness. She didn’t know where she would exit that maze, if ever, or where she would find the known way. After many turns and missteps in the sun and in the shade, she at length found a wide country, with slopes, many meadows, thatched homes, and tilled fields. 47

Blossoming plants offered welcome breezes and sweet relief to her sad heart; she saw Ceres travel those pleasant fields,15 and leafy vine rest on an elm tree. The fog lifted, and she was overcome by this unknown and remote beauty. Then she heard the winds stop at the sound of country reeds and at songs sung in unrefined accents. 48

That concert from the woods stopped her tears in their tracks, her sighs, her languishing and plaintive spirit, and her complaints. It seemed as though it

12. Regarding descriptions of the night, see canto 4, note 3. 13. Another direct address to a female character (see 2.72, 6.7, 10.72, 18.26, and 24.49). This increases the sympathy and empathy that readers feel for this character. 14. In Enrico, Dawn usually emerges from the Ganges, a river in India (hence to the east of Byzantium); see 16.55 and 16.95. 15. Ceres is goddess of the growth of food-bearing plants. She is connected with the Greek goddess Demeter.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d inspired a sweetness greater than honey in her tired heart. She wanted to calm her intense desire for her beloved until a friendly fate would take her from those wild spaces, so she said to herself, turning her beautiful eyes toward them: 49

“Lucky countryside, beloved homes, clear waters that are alive and friendly to my wishes; thick forests, tall trees, green meadows, beautiful hills, sweet airs, and sunny slopes: in your kindness welcome this woman. Kind shepherds dear to heaven, chaste nymphs, welcome her, who hopes to find pity in you and peace among trees and wild animals. 50

“Do not scorn her: she’s already been the toy and the butt of enemy fate and of wicked luck. May her weak heart enjoy some of the beauty your goodness offers in this place. May the burning fire that love gathers in my chest at all times diminish little by little; may my heart be restored though your gratefully refreshing airs.” 51

As she said these words, she saw a man laden with years come out of a humble hut. His goodness was attested with certainty by his courteous face and sweet reasoning. She then turned her feet toward him, with a friendly look; in her innocence she didn’t fear him. She addressed him kindly, and soon he bowed to her divine appearance and beautiful eyes. 52

She said: “Father,16 may heaven adorn your large herd with many graces. It seems to me that they are happier here among grass and leaves than anybody can be under a royal roof. Once I believed that happiness was where gold was abundant inside a sublime royal palace. Now I see that my thought was wrong when I believed that.”

16. As Idilia is always identified as “daughter” (see 10.18, 10.19, 10.21, 10.35, 10.39, 10.58, 11.25, 11.53, and 11.59), the male figure who protects her is a “father” (see also 11.58 below), though not biologically related to her.

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The old man answered: “Daughter, we spend our hours happily and without anxiety in the woods and in the forests; blind wishes for haughtiness and luxury are far from here. When harsh skies threaten or become dark and black, we don’t fear death, difficult servitude, or any damage. In our rich poverty, our hearts only serve the sweet empire of gentle love. 54

“I have spent my life in loneliness among the trees, thanks to the highest favor of friendly heaven. I have spent serene nights and joyful days here in happiness and much-loved freedom. I never felt envy for those who climbed on other people as stepping-stones among enemies. The greatest fall that you can find occurs from a greedy height and to a daring spirit. 55

“I think it’s good to have red apples from grafted branches and to run on golden slopes. There is nothing that a wise man wishes for that cannot be found here: birds fly into traps and fish swim to hooks, hares and deer do not shun our ties, the sky rains manna on us,17 and rivers run filled with sweet waters. This is the golden age and these are golden ways. 56

“We don’t envy the happy age of Saturn18 or the beautiful Elysian gardens.19 The kindness of a good God gives us roses and beautiful narcissus here, and in addition thick ears sing here and there announcing their rich abundance. Shepherds enjoy their happiness here among their woolly herds. 57

“You look like a royal woman. So if you want to rest your high thoughts in such low places, then let a humble life condition and happy days seem dear

17. A reference to the food the Hebrews found in an arid desert on their flight from Egypt (Exod. 16). They gathered manna and ate it for forty years. 18. In Roman mythology the age of Saturn was a golden age. 19. In Greek mythology the Elysian gardens were the paradise to which heroes who had been granted immortality by the gods were sent.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d to you as they are to us. You remember what’s good about kingly power, but that is unhappy, unstable, and unquiet.” The fresh roses adorning her face were covered in tears. She replied to his words: 58

“Father, neither my fate nor heaven allows that my heart be adorned with high and noble wishes; I will be grateful that you mercifully welcome me in your dear dwelling. If it ever happens that the burning desire in my chest is granted and I go back to my royal palace, then you won’t be less rich than I in my dwelling, since you show such mercy now.” 59

His face was flush with peace and love as he welcomed her into his country family; at the sight of that find they felt wonderment, happiness, joy, and marvel. That noble daughter briefly explained the good and the bad part of what had happened to her. She was by turns happy and sad; she told them how her guard was vanquished and how she was made prisoner and bound by that magician. 60

She went on to tell how lying Esone took her as a victim to Avernus’s gods,20 and how strong and courageous Giacinto removed her from his fury as she was waiting for death. As she uttered that dear name she turned her eyes to the ground, not because it bothered her, but because she could ill disguise the desire burning in her chest that love breathed in her. 61

Harsh necessity pushed or rather forced her to enter gladly in that humble dwelling; a wise counsel quieted her will, dried her eyes, and reduced her burning fire. But Love could not take that—so he deepened the wound with a hard spur reinforcing his power, so that the flame that looked extinguished recovered, and new ties were added to the old ones.

20. Regarding the association of Lake Avernus with the underworld, see canto 10, note 14.

Canto 11 62

“Ungrateful woman, did you perhaps forget that noble knight who took you from those altars? Do you no longer keep his beloved face, beautiful deeds, and valor in your thoughts? Perhaps he ended his life for you at the hands of rebellious men. Alas, why do I still hope? I cannot think that: he’s alive and wants to show me the sun of his virtues.” 63

In her sadness she often sat on the blossoming banks and by the clear water of a river, listening to the birds singing and looking at the beautiful turns of fish in the lively water. Yet banks, flowers, fresh springs, or summer breezes did not offer solace to her pains; in fact, by offering joy to others they seemed to increase the pain in her troubled chest. 64

In the same manner good food and good sweet wine seem bitter to a sick person’s taste. What made other people happy seemed a burden to her. All she did was to remember her lost beloved, and what harbored pleasure and happiness seemed dark to her affected thoughts. She scorned what everybody else appreciated and only longed for her tears. 65

At times her royal hand would cut blond spikes with a scythe in a large field; at times she would cut grass in open meadows, spreading and scattering it to the warm sun. She often carved his dear name with a hooked scythe in the trunks of old trees, and then she expressed to them her sad love and unhappy occurrences in words similar to these:21 66

“If a harsh fate divides us two, alive and in love and perhaps burning with the same flame, let my name be close to his beloved name, despite fate, and

21. A reference to the carvings made by Angelica and Medoro in Orlando furioso (23.100–36) expressing their love for each other, which provoked Orlando’s madness. Idilia’s expressions of love, however, have no such consequences; they remain unseen. Marinella signals the danger of bold assertions of romantic love by a young woman betrothed to someone else.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d let my heart rejoice. And if by chance the noble pilgrim from whom my soul awaits life were to get here, then grow, plants, and may our loves and my dear hope grow with you.” 67

As she said this she let loose from her beautiful eyes falling rains, harbinger of her pains. These soaked hard trunks and inanimate objects. Then she complained silently: “If your life gathers from my tears not just water, but warm nourishment, if these humors made of tears offer life, grace, and beauty to grass and flowers, 68

“then it is right that you show courtesy to my words and you keep these loving notes in you. If that knight who opens and shakes my heart were to arrive among your silence, he will show pity when reading my verses and he will know the unknown flames of my heart. In the meantime I will wander under the beautiful shade of your branches, myself a naked spirit and a pale shadow. 69

“And as you grow and offer your noble and beautiful foliage to the sky, beautiful trees, may excessive heat from the summer or cold or an enemy and mean hand never offend you. May the raw love of a miserable maiden be forever ensconced in your green trunk; may it awaken pity and tender feelings of love in the hearts of those who read about it.” 70

Her warm sighs lit up the air as she spoke thus; she consumed and burned up like a noble flower that you see weaken when it stays too long under a burning sky. She cried and reread her pain, and this gave some peace to her harsh suffering; at times she toasted his sweet name with kisses that were tender but too light a burden. 71

Meanwhile, courageous Giacinto had gone against the crowd that he had seen at a distance from her. Burning with a generous ardor that pushed him,

Canto 11 he engaged them in a dangerous and harsh battle. Although he saw himself surrounded by an enemy band, he was fearless and fierce. He had no fear or terror. His sword shone high and low in that cruel assault. 72

Giacinto lifted his sword and thought he had cut the head off the one who was leading the group as his sword fell heavy and wounded him. Yet no lesion or hurt appeared! Giacinto was stunned. His sword wasn’t red, and the Greek didn’t fall dead to the ground. As he inflicted wounds, he seemed like a craven boy rather than the fierce and manly warrior that he was. 73

Bodies and weapons fell under his blows as if wind or watery waves hit them. This was something to behold, as it seemed that the enemy group was hiding and didn’t bring weapons or attack him. But then the darkest of fogs covered up the clear air, and he heard a horrible song that went: “Abandon any hope to ever see the clear air of the sky.” 74

No human shape or sign appeared nearby as these threatening words moved about and were heard. This was an unknown loneliness: the lights were extinguished from the sky, lightning shone around, the earth bellowed, the winds grew more arrogant, and the trees in that fateful world trembled. He didn’t know what that was or what it meant; it was a novel occurrence that was annoying to his wishes. 75

Still he proceeded through that dense shadow; he wandered here and there in vain, wasting time and effort. He couldn’t imagine where that beautiful human face could be, where that dear countenance might hide and veil itself. He called out that beloved name, and faraway Echo took pains to repeat that beloved name.22 So he despaired of finding that face that had plucked his heart with the hand of love. 22. For Echo, see canto 9, note 17. Marinella utilizes the repetition of a phrase to place an echo in her very words.

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How he complained and lamented, how harsh it was to him that fate removed him from his beloved! Still he courageously proceeded through the dark air, not knowing where he was going or where his steed took him. His face was unmoved, his spirit assured; he didn’t want cowardliness to crush and steal his heart. In the end he yielded to the shadows and found himself in the middle of thick forests, where he heard angry wild animals roar. 77

A wide river ran around this horrible wood; its shores were dry and its waters black. The sun’s shining light didn’t dare to enter its deepest and most profound parts. No beautiful bird spread its wings here; a pious cave didn’t respond to Procne’s cry;23 no blossoming bush, green grass, spring, or clear river soothed the senses. 78

Full of sighs and pain, that strong warrior wanted to go back to glorious Enrico, since he had lost the woman he had snatched from the claws of death and from a magician, a harsh enemy. He feared that she had encountered a fate similar to his or that she wandered in some strange maze in a large forest. He was on the lookout for a wild animal that might sate its hunger with the beauty of her beautiful face. 79

His good steed had continued on for many, many miles, goaded on by his spurs; around there were twisted branches, thick trees, loud bears, and roaring lions. Then a troubled and foamy torrent cut off his path, flowing with low mumbles and harsh sounds. Alas, he didn’t see how he could get his feet to the other shore. 23. In Metamorphoses 6.412ff., Ovid tells the story of Procne, married to Tereus, with whom she had a son, Itys. Tereus one day raped Procne’s sister Philomela and cut out her tongue, so she could not expose his deeds, but she created an embroidery of what had happened, thus revealing everything to Procne. The sisters conspired to wreak a terrible revenge: they killed Itys and served him as stew to his father. Outraged with horror when he realized the truth, Tereus chased the two sisters with an axe. The gods took mercy on them, however: Procne was turned into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale.

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But here was a boat coming on that impure water running around that fateful wood. It didn’t have oars or a helmsman to steer her. Rather, water pushed and moved her. It looked to him like Cimba, which safely carried Aeneas to the black kingdom.24 Through small fissures she took in water that filled and soaked her. 81

He so wished to escape that thicket full of snakes and other wild animals that he took a branch to use as an oar and jumped in. He didn’t think about the danger and the cruelty of the waves: the river ran swiftly and was full of water. That knight strove, but the boat looked as though it would open up in more than one place, and he couldn’t stop her with his oar. 82

Nor could he stop its furious and strange flow from descending headlong into the Aegean. Careless Esone, made crazy by pain, was threatening that careless youth with this danger: he wanted to drown him in the sea, but he tried in vain, as the help of heaven defended him against it. Heaven lets its people suffer, but it doesn’t allow them to die. 83

After he was dragged by that infernal fury and could be seen in the Aegean waves, a ship going by gave him most necessary help in his worst danger. That ship plucked the warrior, who thought he had been swallowed in a deep abyss. Cimba was empty and showed itself so to his eyes; maybe he dismounted where he had boarded. 84

Soon an enemy fury stirred and set off a storm and clouds in the clear sky. A dark tempest thundered, lit lightning, shook, and roiled that shore of placid sea. Finally, that unholy and ruinous rage fell into the womb of the

24. The ship that carried Aeneas in his trip to the underworld in Aeneid 6.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d sea among its vortices, and Esone’s charm against that strong and accepting ship ended. 85

That great storm quieted down and a sweet breeze came up, breaking high clouds up and apart. It drove away the strong and heavy vapor from the air, brightening it with light and beauty. The sky and the earth laughed, no longer fearful of the storm’s terrible strength and fury. Phoebus’s flower lifted its humid face to that sweet and temperate heat.25 86

Though fearless and unvanquished, though his mind and heart were ready and fierce, Giacinto couldn’t say that fear of dying hadn’t affected him, for it was harsh and strong. Now that some diabolical audacity was not touching or damaging her, the ship went on a straight path toward where she knew that the whole camp and good Enrico were distressed by their dear friend’s absence. 87

Her helmsman made everybody happy with good graces and his mercy; then he moved his foot on blossoming slopes. He knew everything on the river and on the path. After much pain beautiful Idilia came back to the knight’s mind; he was still sorry that he didn’t know how or where that beautiful face, a nest of love, was. 88

Shadows were short, and the clear sun shone its lively rays at the center of the sky.26 Languid and tired roses leaned toward the ground from their dear and beloved branches. Just then he reached the crystal-clear waters of a river quietly flowing to the sea; he stopped and took his weapons off, chasing away and removing the heat from his veins in the cool shade. 25. Hyacinthus was killed while playing at quoits with Apollo. Apollo caused Hyacinthus to be reborn every year as the flower hyacinth (i.e., “giacinto”). 26. That is, it was noontime.

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He soaked and extinguished the warm burns of his dry thirst with his quick hand. Then he sat on the shore amid grass and flowers, wailing and moaning his love. Wild animals, rocks, woods, indeed the entire countryside, felt sorry for his pains expressed in his tears; he tiredly joined the sound of his sad words to babbling waters and whispering winds.

90

But his warrior mind chased that soft feeling away, awakening in his chest the courageous flame of a noble desire for glory. He knew that he neither wanted nor could forget that in two days the chosen time to conclude the ugly fight with Oronte would be upon him. So he awoke his love-wounded, love-pained soul and made sure that something other than love would occupy it.

91

He decided to quickly go back to his camp to conclude his harsh fight with the Hyrcanian: he was afraid that his honor would be marred if he didn’t show up on the day agreed upon. He put on his armor and weapons quickly: his face was burning like his soul. Soon he took the path toward camp, never dismounting from his steed in order to get there on time.

92

He didn’t stop for dark shadows, for clear skies, or for cloudy ones, nor did he pay any mind to those. No steep path, river, or wood stopped him. He spurred his steed on in such a way that it seemed to have wings. He feared that Oronte would deliver a mortal wound to his boasts out of disdain and poison; he was pained and indignant that a hidden trick had taken him in with danger and damage.

[93–130: Oronte was indeed ready to resume his duel, but on the appointed day Giacinto was nowhere to be seen. Enrico therefore told Oronte’s messenger that another Christian knight would fight in Giacinto’s stead. So many vied for that honor that one was randomly chosen: Roberto. He and Oronte battled valiantly, trading sharp blows.]

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[1–38: In the middle of Oronte and Roberto’s fight, Giacinto returned, immediately engaging Oronte in battle. But Roberto did not want to give up his fight, so Oronte battled the two simultaneously. Soon that one-on-two fight turned to all-out struggle between the two armies. One of the first to show his prowess on the field was young Ardelio.] 39

Happy victories and famous deeds gave him strength and pushed him to perform great feats; every hour his courage and boldness grew greater and with them the desire to surpass himself. Not far from him Meandra brought wounds and fear to her opponents; she was looking for noble glory, and many people died in many different ways and were swept up in the foul Lethe River.27 40

That ferocious virgin seemed like a terrible wolf who slaughters lambs when it is pained and pushed by great hunger. Latins and Gauls fell to the ground, dead, while she showed her sword dyed with blood, stating the following: “Friends, this is the way to bring peace to Greece and to bring freedom back. 41

“Act in such a way that the valor you harbor will eternally shine in Sparta and Corinth.28 May the queen and those close to her enjoy it and may Fame open its golden feathers to you!29 And as we show our quality we will chase these presumptuous and evil people away. Learn from me how you kill, how you win, and how fate is propitious.” 42

With those words she strengthened, reinforced, and reassured their disheartened and hesitant spirits. Among cut-off limbs and dead bodies she 27. For Lethe, see canto 8, note 13. 28. Sparta and Corinth are cities in the Greek region of the Peloponnesus. 29. For Fame, see canto 6, note 10.

Canto 12 found a surefire way to go to heaven. With such an example her troops became more courageous: the greatest courage combined with fate had prepared them, and virtue opened up the passage to their victory, as base and low hearts were lifted to an immortal goal. 43

She ran ahead of her band and wounded Clodio with her spear; she felled him from his steed, but he wasn’t wounded or injured, for his armor, made of choice metal, held up. That noble warrior woman was contemptuous of the idea of wounding him on the ground and taking her revenge thus: she thought that a man on the ground whom someone else could pick up was an unworthy trophy and a valueless spoil. 44

So she left him lying there and went after Esmon, who was pursuing the noble brother of Pera’s leader.30 She wanted him dead and didn’t want peace or respite for herself. She quickly caught up with him and brandished her weapon, but he seemed to disappear from her eyes, like smoke or fog in the air. She knew well the quality of his valor and fame!

[45–104: Affranio managed to wound Oronte’s right hand with an arrow, but Oronte fought on, taking a brief moment to take care of his injury. Many other warriors distinguished themselves in battle on both sides, such as Alvide, Bonifatio, Affranio, and the handsome adolescent Ati. The Byzantines pushed the crusaders back to their camp, and thus the battle came to an end.] S U M M A RY OF CA N T O 1 3

[Alessio rejoiced in his victory, already imagining that the crusaders would soon leave. Mirtillo and his beloved Eudocia joined in the celebrations of the victory, which included a fight against a devilish beast. Mirtillo killed it, dedicating his feat to his beloved. That creature was not dead, however, for it disappeared, leaving everybody stunned and afraid. Then a voice was heard foretelling that the crusaders would soon disappear as that beast had. Everybody was relieved, and the celebration continued. Esone’s son, Hermete, predicted Byzantium’s fall, filling Alessio’s heart with worry, while the rest continued to celebrate. Meanwhile, Enrico was busy plotting his next move, confident of his eventual victory.] 30. Regarding Pera, see canto 4, note 7.

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[Enrico’s preparations for battle included machinery to attack the city walls, fitted to resist a counterattack. Alessio heard about these preparations and was stunned. Enrico told his troops that an assault was imminent; with ramps, ladders, and other pieces the crusaders attacked, though under a shower of arrows and rocks. Mirtillo advised Alessio to counterattack; this move surprised the crusaders, but it gave Plautio a way into the city, where he killed many and set as much as he could ablaze to avenge the fire set to the crusaders’ ships. Many more Greeks than crusaders died. Young Ardelio was made prisoner, and Meandra was forced back inside the city walls after a foray, following Alessio’s orders. Night fell, bringing the battle to a close.]

CANTO 15

S U M M A RY

Meandra went to the enemy encampment with Dione and Ernesto; they freed Ardelio and laid waste to the Latin camp, stealing decorations and rich spoils. But on their way back, Ernesto was hit by an unlucky arrow that killed him. His shaken and inconsolable mother mourned his death among sad troops. 1

Inside Byzantium the evil tyrant [Alessio] turned his eyes burning with anger and hatred on his men. But he could no longer see the number of his noblemen who had been killed in battle. The harsh occurrences and unlucky events caused him desperate pain, to the point that he almost wounded himself again to the point of death. 2

But the duke, Michael, Breno, Gerniero, Aradino, and Bessan, with many kind prayers, together managed to lure that fierce soul to the royal palace. Those warriors worked to untie his armor in order to relieve the pressure on his heart, even though many among those courageous heroes hated him and his demeanor.1 3

Although the cruel tip of a sharp arrow had wounded his chest, his brow was motionless and ferocious, harboring a thousand conflicting thoughts. 1. The lack of common goals and feelings in the Byzantine camp is always underscored, even though in this case it also emphasizes the selflessness of some of the Greek fighters.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d He heard sighs and lamenting voices; he heard cries and complaints from each home. That sad music so troubled his twisted mind that he didn’t feel his own pain. 4

After his wound had healed and he was certain of his good health, though he was still very tired he didn’t avoid or refuse any task, whether harsh or easy, that was fit for a tyrant or a leader. He was filled with suspicion and feared his mute guards; he didn’t forget that they had divulged his misdeeds to his sad empire, so he feared that at any moment a vengeful sword might fall on him. 5

He set watchful sentinels at the ready on the wide walls and by the closed gates. Also, he placed courageous young men good with their weapons here and there to defend the royal court. At that time Meandra realized that Ardelio’s features were nowhere to be seen among those there; so she thought he might be dead, and in her doubt she anxiously inquired of her friendly squad. 6

She looked around, searched, and asked people and armed squads about him; she went here and there in haste without finding his beloved countenance. Then the trustworthy Dione, from Corinth,2 whom she already knew because of his noble qualities, told her that Ardelio had been captured by Gilberto; he was his prisoner but hadn’t been wounded on the field. 7

That woman warrior sighed with much relief, as she believed that he had been killed on the battlefield. Her beautiful face seemed to clear up as her deep anguish found some comfort. She said: “When night lights up more than one star in the sky and the sun is swallowed by the sea, I will go among the enemy and bring back that distressed knight. 2. As noted earlier, Corinth is a city in the Greek region of the Peloponnesus; it is also Ardelio’s city.

Canto 15 8

“If heaven is not against my wish and fate doesn’t feel envy for praiseworthy deeds, I’ll kill Gilberto and bring my nephew back to safety: I will do what’s necessary.” Dione added: “I will come with you: I will at least show you the way faithfully, generous woman; you know how much I love him and how much I am in pain and cry for him.

9

“You know that I left my beloved land of Corinth and my adored fields only out of true love for no one else, pushed by your Ardelio’s virtue and by my adverse fate. I will come with you, and I don’t care if I’m caught, vanquished, wounded, or killed by angry enemies; I think I won’t spend my life better than if I were to spend it for him.”

10

That noble woman left, and good Dione went where Ernesto was sitting among many. The latter was a young man worthy of much esteem, endowed with reason, and never vanquished in war. He was Dione’s companion and the keeper of all he had; they were never apart. It was something seldom seen; both were kind and similar in age, provenance, and virtue.

11

Dione looked straight at his beloved companion’s face, his own already filled with daring. His troubled heart was filled with desire for fame. He said gravely: “I don’t know if this wish is good or bad, if it’s favorable or not to my still uncertain state, or if it will bring me something useful or damaging; I don’t know if it reveals blame or honor to me.

12

“Scorn, love, anger, hatred, and a deep desire wound my heart with a sharp sting, since miserable Ardelio languishes as a prisoner within the enemy camp. Meandra is right to be much in pain and to feel the dark poison of resentment within herself: such a hero’s honor, fame, and merit are great and of supreme value.

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“She has decided to leave our camp when night has placed her dark face in the middle of the sky, in order to go stealthily and hidden under the cloak of darkness among the enemy. That woman warrior is ready to free the leader for whom I am in pain: she wants to come back here with him or lie dead for him among the enemy squads. 14

“I volunteered as her companion; I will go with her at least as a faithful escort, if not as a warrior. I’m not afraid of human courage, nor am I terrified by cruel phantoms nor anything more terrible that a man can conjure. I don’t want my courage to die in me. I know what a man can accomplish, and I know how much courage the Latins have, who are making us weep. 15

“I want to go by way of bows and swords and be safe from the fury of our enemy. I want to bring back my lord to freedom. If I can do that, I don’t care about my life, for when our life ends to benefit someone else it will revive in the next life and resurrect like the Phoenix, whose death always amazes people.”3 16

Ernesto was still; his spurs and the courageous wishes for honor were no less swift than Dione’s, though his burning thoughts of glory and his desire were hidden under an inexperienced appearance. He said: “You are getting ready to attempt great deeds; but perhaps you are preparing anguish and pain, since the desired goal doesn’t always follow a lofty will: goals might not be commensurate in greatness. 17

“If the royal virgin doesn’t fear to go among enemy people under dark shadows, she has much ability and courage. Today her lofty strength soaked the

3. A mythical bird, living five hundred years, that then died in a pyre from which a new phoenix would be born. Here Marinella does not locate this event precisely, while in 21.54 she locates it in Arabia (one of two places where mythology placed the Phoenix’s rebirth by fire; the other is Egypt).

Canto 15 streets with blood; when the great king, devoid of hope, was wounded, she did not bow to the Frankish vow, and when we were almost in flight, she alone resisted the Italian camp and gave much help.

18

“Since the same luck has followed both our lives, with the same fate and virtue, I want the same Parca to cut the fatal thread of our lives with her deadly hand.4 Without you, Dione, joys and even my considerable power are unpalatable and unhappy; without you, no glory would be dear to me; without you, the sky would be dark and my life bitter.

19

“Calm your heart, stifle this proud wish that pushes you too much toward what’s bad. Remain here, and I will go where Enrico’s army is, that army that hates us so. Perhaps that great woman warrior will not spurn me running into danger in your stead, since my heart is as courageous as yours. This is what I dare say, but only if you agree with it.

20

“If you carry on alone the pure rites of our friendship, keeping them holy and inviolate, in happy or dark and uncertain days opening up in front of you, then I want to be your companion; I want to welcome hard-won successes, glory, and boasts with you. Friend, do you want me to remain alone and humble, disdained and helpless, in a vile crowd?

21

“So will my Dione go with her into the thick and murky air, as he wants, despising and spurning me, because he loathes having Ernesto with him to claim that glory? And as for me, will I endure your going by yourself where much hatred reigns without my being with you? No: if I ever shared anything with you, I will share this too, and I will follow in the path of your righteous wish.”

4. As noted earlier, in Greek and Roman mythology any one of the three goddesses who determined a person’s destiny by picking up, spinning, and cutting a thread.

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Dione answered: “But if that noble woman takes me as her friend and as a servant in her danger, my heart will follow her counsel with loneliness and sadness, since it never sleeps in the search for honor. If your wish is so strong that you don’t fear the Franks’ cruel claws and that you despise living, this is the virtue that a great man values. 23

“Do what you think is right. I certainly wish for you to stay, since we run toward an almost certain death. Do not risk your unvanquished soul for greater fame and high desert! And remember how much your mother has suffered for you; her spirit is noble and strong, and she alone has followed you [to our camp], with those sweet feelings that she holds for you in her wise chest. 24

“The risk is great, and it may easily happen that I fall pierced and vanquished by enemy soldiers. If that happens, please talk about my love, and may my honor live on if my body dies. Pity will push you to recover my corpse with gold, prayer, or sword; then honor your much-loved Dione with a tomb, a funeral, and tears. 25

“For this sky, for this shining sun that gives life to the world, nourishing and keeping it alive, our heart is in much pain for our king [Ardelio]! The thought of him no longer a prisoner alleviates our anguish. Perhaps fear, normal to humans, doesn’t hold us any longer so that he may win; the evil enemy camp must be left weakened and broken up after all guards are killed. 26

“It is easy to attack, vanquish, and kill people who have death on their minds! I want to add bitter absinthe to their sweetness; I want to make a lake of blood! Stay here, don’t expose yourself to any risk, and don’t show yourself ready for your ending, since life is dearer than any happy kingdom, when a man is worthy of life.”

Canto 15 27

Ernesto added, still talking to him: “In vain you’re injecting a faulty reasoning to deflect my resolute will! I don’t care for my estate: I would run a greater risk to attract garrulous Fame!5 I deem blessed, great, and superior one who lives eternally even though he’s dead.” This is what those two faithful friends told each other, thinking only about noble and happy, famous people. 28

That praiseworthy and faithful pair, led only by their desire for admiration, went to where Meandra, proud Mirtillo, and the highest leader [Alessio] were sitting; the two shared the same wish. Ernesto started talking: “Do not scorn what love pushes me to say, although, great sire, someone might think it a crazy hope and a rash imprudence. 29

“Since the warrior Ardelio was vanquished and captured by the king of Scotland, whose prisoner and servant he now is, Meandra’s illustrious heart and sublime and fierce spirit are rightfully lit with anger. She wants to go among the Latins and take her revenge for that offended son, then she wants to come back with him. We beg her to leave that task to us, so that she can be useful in other difficult circumstances. 30

“We will go where lucky Enrico sleeps and rests as a contented winner. We will bring back our friend the knight in the silence of shadowy night. She should stay here; that famous woman should not have to put her feet among the enemy army, where her end would be certain, and where dear life and death are one and the same. 31

“The death of two wouldn’t damage our camp and our sad city much. But if she falls—may heaven have pity on us and remove such unjust fate from our 5. Although Fame is the personification of Rumor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (12.43ff.) and in Virgil’s Aeneid (4.173–88), in some cases (such as the present one) Marinella refers to it in a positive sense as the goddess who spreads news of valor and courage to the entire world.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d thoughts!—who would be so courageous, strong, firm of hand and of virtue, and powerful enough to resist the Italian squads and to give clear and beautiful demonstrations of one’s virtues? 32

“We carry with us a wonderful herb that will make shackles and chains fall from around that unvanquished young man; we’ve been carrying it from the farthest reaches of the south. Thanks to it the king of Troy opened Achilles’ great palace and filled it with pain when he sadly went to bargain over the beloved corpse of his gentle son.”6 33

The duke was cheerless and sad over the battle and the warrior made prisoner. As soon as he heard this, he woke up like a man just rising from his sleep; he consoled himself from his hopelessness and kissed many on their faces praising the eternal and divine spirit of heaven. He said: “I rejoice that the old valor that seems dead still appears alive. 34

“What glory equal to my wish can I give you so that it may come close to your merits, generous champions?7 May God now offer you a prize worthy of your virtues. I believe that such courageous valor is a gift only worthy of itself. May every trumpet extol your deeds, so that beautiful daytime might unveil your praiseworthy feat to the world. 35

“If you want to get some land or a castle from me, you’ll have the authority over it and its treasures. Yet I know that a worthy soul doesn’t value ruling over a kingdom or over gold.” Ernesto answered: “The virtue that dares to risk everything to bring solace to another doesn’t want a reward. I pray you: listen to my prayers and make your will well inclined toward mine.

6. After Achilles killed Hector, Priam’s oldest son, Priam had to ransom his corpse: Iliad 24. 7. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 32.

Canto 15 36

“If it were to happen that the spirit that breathes in me remained extinguished there, in the enemy camp, I leave you, Mirtillo, the weight of my mother, whose love is and perhaps has always been unequaled. You are wise, kind, and endowed with a great soul and noble deeds; may your kindness comfort her if I’m missing. 37

“It is right that such a great mother, such love, and her heavy and burdensome age, find some sweetness. It is right that her great tears find pity in other people. Do this for God: it is a just and holy undertaking, and man never regrets acting rightly. Then you will give my sad spirit some comfort, though I will be dead. 38

“Have pity on this abandoned, lonely, tearful, and anguished woman wearing black; my lord, support and console her, give her comfort and relief in her great torment. I didn’t say a word to her about my and her possibly imminent pain, because I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the sight or her prayers to me. 39

“Instead of the gifts and honors with which you want to adorn and reward me, I would rather you temper her cries and pain in my stead. When we were at peace she took motions and fury from earth and sea, as well as their dreadful anger; she left all comfort and ease and exposed herself to danger, just to follow me, her son.” 40

The duke cried at his tender words that were completely full of pity and loving affection. He said: “Make your brow happy, and place all your hope in me: upon my life, upon the planet that rushes the hours on and produces serene shadows, I am obliged to you, and be certain that I will never hesitate to serve her.

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“Enraged rivers will sweetly flow from the sea to their springs, waters will become hard and mountains soft, and the sky will be without its starry lights before I break my word. Such is my wish, and time or pain will never change it: this is what will happen.” He stopped talking and at the same time offered his right hand to him as a token of friendship and trust. 42

“I pray to the other Jupiter that victory may rise for you out of the enemy camp. May heaven (which, I know, hears me) bestow on you perennial glory for such a feat.” As Meandra listened, her anguish for her nephew returned. She wanted to achieve that glory, as that deed and its pain were expected of her, so that she could take her revenge. 43

She didn’t want them to risk their lives for that; she wanted to go alone, without companions or guides, without followers or helpers: she trusted her own valor. She thanked them and started to leave without them following her among faithless people. Both men were troubled by her words; Dione answered and showed his pain by what he said. 44

“We will follow your glorious steps, noble woman warrior, display of all greatness. We’re your faithful servants and your companions: you’ll never see us tired of killing that unjust host. We’ll follow you where the enemy lies in the black shadow of the horrors of death.” Finally, won over by their prayers, she welcomed both friends and turned to leave. 45

The beautiful moon had already displayed to the world her hair, soaked with pearly ice; the starry chariot had traveled to the middle of the sky, equidistant from both ends.8 Silence and sleep had quieted all anguish under

8. Regarding descriptions of the night, see canto 4, note 3.

Canto 15 a dark veil. At that time the woman took to the known path toward the enemy tents with the two friends. 46

A crafty thief goes on an uncertain and silent path in the shadow of night much as did she and both knights. While air and the sky were calm, at last they saw many steeds and tired people asleep and silent. Their weapons were scattered about, still wet and stained with the enemy’s blood. 47

Having left behind ditches and fences, they went through the enemies quietly and silently: almost all fires were out on all sides, and nobody was around to bar their progress. They saw warriors wearing armor and warriors without it, some on the ground, some on hay, and some more on carpets; they snored loudly in their weakness and drunkenness—not just the vilest ones but the greatest and the most famous. 48

They were deep in sleep among bags, carriages, and goatskins full of sweet wine. They didn’t believe that their calm enjoyment would turn so quickly to foul games! O vain human thinking, how what’s good gets scattered by the blowing of fate! The more they thought themselves safe, the closer they were to a harsh and nasty fate. 49

They entered where the army had raised their tents; the camp was engulfed in sleep. They saw the place where Gilberto was languorously sleeping on soft hay; at that sight her manly heart lit up like lightning burns fanned by the wind. Happy and courageous, she turned her steps to where he lay— while he didn’t believe or think that that could happen. 50

Her hand, which had dared resist alone against the power of a fierce army, didn’t scorn slitting the great duke of Scotland’s throat. While she robbed him of sleep, senses, and voice, the anger, wrath, haughtiness, and honor

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d steaming in her heart fled and disappeared. Then she opened up Frontino’s heart with her sword; in it Love reigned, indeed triumphed. 51

She saw Iro lying between two steeds; he had been born in Adria’s womb, where the stormy and angry sea gnaws at and hits the seaweed-covered shore at all times. She pierced his throat, and a cloud of black blood gushed from his neck and mouth while like a madman he hit the great mother’s face with his scornful feet.9 52

That strong woman arrived where Ardelio, robbed of his weapons, was on the ground wrapped in thought. This knight, once so splendid, was then deprived of his dear freedom and of hope; he bemoaned and mourned his unhappy and tear-worthy fate and his accident. He only waited for death to remove him from such an evil fate, his feet in shackles. 53

Along with her companions the royal maiden observed the king of Corinth, still noble and illustrious in such a nasty situation, and she shed bitter tears from her beautiful eyes. Soon he recognized her friendly features and her beloved and dear face, as well as those of her companions; but he thought he was hallucinating out of intense pain and didn’t believe his senses. 54

His mind thought what the eyes showed him to be impossible, though it was something certain; so he didn’t believe he saw what he was seeing, because he thought first and was uncertain in his thinking. But careful Dione brought it about that the truth impressed itself on his doubtful mind and became manifest, as he removed him from the ties that bound his noble Ethiopian virtue.10

9. That is, he kicked the ground with his feet. 10. It is unclear why Marinella utilizes this adjective to refer to a Corinthian, that is, to a Greek. The canonical example of an Ethiopian is the woman warrior Clorinda in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.

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Dione had barely touched the chains of slavery that bound Ardelio with his fated herb than they fell to the ground; that knight rose in astonishment from the ground. Then he lifted his hands to the clear and serene sky, moved to do so by sweetness, and he praised him that moves the high spheres and makes the impossible possible [God]. 56

The young hero was happy but confused and had a hard time believing what he saw; he stood there like one who’s doubtful and thinks he’s deceived by the tricks of sleep. Then, filled with love, he turned his freed feet to his beloved aunt; his face was suffused with deep respect. He hugged her and then the other two famous knights who gave themselves over to danger. 57

Then they exchanged a short welcome and a sweet and much-appreciated salutation, as silence allowed. Each showed his or her happiness. They could do this as the armed hosts were all lying down, and if one was awake, perhaps fear struck his heart when he saw the hated armors, so he stayed quiet and pretended not to see them, trying to see if his being quiet would prevent his quick death. 58

The young king quickly donned some weapons scattered around him on the ground. Now that he was in full armor and holding a sword in his hand, he didn’t fear the offense of servitude or disdain. He wished to choke all those in the Venetian camp and to dye the plain with their blood, but then he saw so many here and there that his hand was frozen in mid-air and his mind was riddled with doubt. 59

A Hyrcanian tiger acts in the same way when it is pushed and spurred by hunger: it tries to extinguish its desires by assailing a weak herd, and it hears cows bellowing and sheep bleating on both sides, and it is pushed here and

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d there to sate its hunger. But the time the tiger took to consider what to do caused it to delay carrying out its wishes. 60

Ardelio saw Cherso lying asleep weak and tired amid food and wine. He was dreaming that he wanted to drink, and his arm was extended to grab a cup, but all he caught was a rock! Ardelio’s sword wounded him in such a way that he was deprived of blood and his soul: he fell to blend the wine he had drunk with the waves of dark Lethe.11 61

Happy Dione cut off Salio’s and Filemone’s heads and killed them with one blow; they left dear children and beloved and faithful wives in Liburnia12 and in Crotone.13 Then he killed the great champion14 Amintore, who looked like he challenged Mars even as he died; while he lived he boasted that he would destroy vain Alessio’s empire and faith. 62

He was still holding in his ferocious right hand his unsheathed sword covered with Greek blood; still, his disdainful and cruel spirit left its haughty earthly home. I cannot remove or shield Glauco and Laomedon from the impious hand of death that provoked them to leave what’s good in this world, their young age, and the happy sky. 63

You see Ernesto wreak no smaller havoc; he was furious with rage and burning hatred. He slaughtered people without names lying in fateful sleep whose souls were taken. The names of some of them were Dalio, Fernesto from Clodia, Decio, and Volscente from Palestrina. The soul (which used to lead them) escaped from their bodies, clad in red veils and a purple gown. 11. 12. 13. 14.

For Lethe, see canto 8, note 13. An area along the Adriatic coast where the Liburnici lived. City on the Ionian Sea in Calabria. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 32.

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Dione listened and looked around with care to see or hear if any one was awake in the entire army. He didn’t see or hear a single one free from sleep, which was a wonder, since he looked everywhere! This cheered him up: he turned his sword against Albasen, lying on the ground; he pierced his chest, as well as Ilio’s and Diamante’s (the former an enemy to Phoebus,15 the other his friend). 65

Then he pierced Pelion’s wise chest: he was a master in the arts of magic, and when he was alive he boasted that he could move the moon to the ground and cover it with a dark cloak, that he could move mountains and hills, and that he could make the earth bellow and crumble in more than one place. Now he couldn’t prevent that knight from giving him a horrible and black death. 66

It would take too long to tell how many men angry Dione and his strong companion killed, or how many Meandra offered to death with her cruel sword in many strange ways, or how many Ardelio cut off from their soul. Still, he feared an unlucky fate, and fear in great danger is not cowardice but a sign of prudent care and of wise counsel. 67

So he told the woman warrior: “We’ve slaughtered a lot already, so let’s go back before the shining rays of the sun bring us harm by bringing the light of day. Here’s a steed with a saddle and reins ready for my use as I wished; it’s the one that used to carry the king of Scotland when he would leave for war looking like a god wearing his weapons.” 68

As he spoke he grabbed it by its beautiful reins and offered it to that great woman. She saw the rarest stars shine in the sky as she killed that cowardly 15. For Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d crowd, whose fate was sealed by a merciless luck. She saw the sky open up with light in the east, and said: “Let’s leave; don’t let anyone refuse to go before the enemy accuse us of our deeds.” 69

This is what Meandra said. Then Ernesto gave the sign to Dione that they were to leave, and he joined the rest, though with sadness in his face because he hadn’t fully vented his heart’s anger. They left the fateful Latin camp (which was unworthy of such evil) laden with prey. They went silent like wolves that tread lightly after visiting anguish and death on a herd. 70

They were equidistant from Byzantium and the Italian tents when Aramon went to see if the guards in charge of that area were carrying out their duty. In the lightening shadow he saw some motion that made the intruders manifest to him. Fearful, he called out, thinking them spies; he wanted to stop them, and he expressed his anger with words. 71

Since he knew that a sword or a spear or a saber would not reach them, he quickly went for his bow and placed the most piercing arrow on the string, bending and shooting it. When the arrow left him screeching it followed a worrisome path through the air, and it pierced Ernesto’s chest and soul. O cruel pain! It felled him to the ground. 72

Similarly, sometimes a ship pushed on by sweet winds comes back from the dangerous motions and harsh anger of sky and sea, carrying rich goods back to her land, only to dash and break against hidden and dangerous rocks not far from home. Then her noble goals are crushed, and her silks, gold, and colors become prey of the waters and of marine monsters. 73

Mirtillo and Niso, who were unhappy and jealous at having been left behind, went toward them. When they were told that Ernesto had gone to his final rest, they became very sad. His compassionate companions were weak-

Canto 15 ened and anguished, and they carried his corpse as a dear and renowned burden; then they buried the warrior in the ground, not without tears. 74

Bloody victory, sad and sick return, tearful and weak joy! Unlucky spoils! Desolate and ill-fated triumph, filled with pain and anguish! The sad news was heard, and every soul became gloomy and every heart anguished over Ernesto’s death. Finally, it reached his mother’s dwelling, and it pierced her. 75

A chill colder than death ran through that wretched woman’s bones; a harsh horror placed much dread in her soul. Her heart became almost like ice; her life became a question mark, and it almost fled her because of her enormous pain. Yet the Greek host knew that it is only too true that one doesn’t die from pain. 76

She tore out her gray hair and beat her chest as well as her pale, old, and creased face. She clapped her hands and turned to the clear sky, almost an enemy to her rest, and her voice failed, unable even to moan. All she did was tremble, sadly and tearfully. Everybody admired such a sight, an unequaled spectacle of pity. 77

Then she ran in a crazed manner to where her son lay in his pallor. She saw his wound and his neck and chest that used to be white and were now covered in dried-up dark blood. She fell to the ground, pulled down by her own weight. All feelings were squeezed out of her heart by this unhappy occurrence, and she couldn’t speak or move out of appalling pain. 78

As soon as she came to, she hugged and held that body filled with glory but devoid of a soul. She kissed his face, once colored with purple and now dyed by death, then she soaked it with a river of tears. She called his name and cried: “Alas, where did death push the live flash of your beautiful eyes? Who silenced your notes? Who hid your beautiful smile from my eyes?

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“Why didn’t death kill my heart first with her arrow rather than bring the news of your death? My heart is now the nest not simply of pain but also of a harsh death in pitiless ways. My bones should not be apart from yours, so I’ll follow you down to the shores of Tartarus;16 I’ll untie my soul from its frail veil [the body], if heaven doesn’t remove my pain. 80

“Heaven kept my unhappy soul attached to my chest so that now I can get angry with it in my old age, and so that my old age might look at my dead son. Alas, who will take enough pity on me to wound my heart, already on its way to its end? Alas, who will put an end to this torment that I feel is ripping my soul from my chest? 81

“I died already when the dear and beloved life of my heart died. So let me die! But the harsh and ugly pain of my soul still keeps me alive, against my own will. Since there’s no compassionate man among so many troops to put an end to my harsh and never-ending pain, then if I cannot have that, may earth at least accept this weak body in its mercy. 82

“Annoyances, difficulties, and steep and winding paths were sweet to me when I followed you. Following your soul away from comforts to death will also be dear to me. Your uncle awaits you in Corinth with a happy destiny in his great palaces; he loves his children, and he’s readying a royal wedding and a famous and noble bride for you. 83

“You lie there, son, and I live on and breathe? My sick body should have gone in a bier, in a tomb! O cruel, evil star! O fate, set against my wishes! Alas for me, my foreseeing heart feared this occurrence. What strength or shield can one use against fate?” As she said this, she tore out her hair and wounded her chest. 16. For Tartarus, see canto 10, note 3.

Canto 15 84

She moaned as unhappy Procne did17 in a thick wood with her pitiful sound, when a pitiless ploughman took away her children, nature’s lovely gift. It seemed as though that wild place moaned as she sighed; wild animals paid attention to her cries, and the plains and unknown fields around her felt pity due to her faint sounds. 85

Pain, terror, and sadness developed among those armed men and in those cruel chests because of such a mother’s cries. Even the most burning feelings were chilled. Dione, Mirtillo, and Filocaio led that pain-filled woman to her sad home with compassion, and gave sweet help to her failing life with whatever comfort they could offer. 86

Among those crying over Ernesto’s bitter fate with great pain was good Dione, who honored his faithful and dear friend with intense weeping. The king himself was not stingy with tears, agreeing with everybody’s opinion that much virtue had died. He made his pain known with shivers and sighs. 87

That woman warrior’s noble heart was stirred by pity. She promised the unhappy people that she would take her revenge according to their wishes, and she called Jove as her witness: “May it be that haughty Aramon be prey to dogs and wild animals.” She added nothing to that. Since he had killed Ernesto, she wanted to kill him, so that his blood might feed her scorn. 88

A burning hope for sweet revenge blunted those troubled hearts’ pain, and soothed their deep ache, deepest anguish, and grief expressed in sighs. While people gave the last rites and funerary honors to the dead warrior, Fame worked so that his valor lived eternally in her loud trumpet’s noise.18 17. For Procne, see canto 11, note 23. Here Marinella utilizes “Procne” as synonymous with “swallow.” 18. See note 5 above.

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From C A N T O 1 6

[1–25: Meanwhile, Araspe and Rainiero fought at night; as dawn appeared, Araspe died and Rainiero fell, badly wounded.] 26

In a hollow cave inside a hidden and ragged mountain there lived Criso, devoted to his lord [God]. He clothed what naturally gives us shame with a rough, torn, and worn cloth, and he found his noble rest away from comfort as well as some sweet peace for his noble heart; water and flavorless herbs fully sated his hunger for good food. 27

He put the tired body that accompanied his soul on rustic hay or on the bare ground, if sleep invited him to rest in the silence of the night in that harsh air. His good heart found more safety among strange wild animals, obscure woods, and lonely forests than in a leather or an iron shield. 28

There he contemplated with holy ardor the inscrutable and sovereign being of divine essence and his noble and never-understood presence. He knew the compassion, love, and providence with which a heavenly hand rules us. He found his center, happiness, and wonderment in this eternal marvel. 29

The father has lived since all times, and produced his eternal son sharing his own eternal essence; in their eternity both breathed the spirit in the same

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d manner. Then the Son of God was sent to vanquish hell with his favor: he became a weak and mortal man, as the faithful friends of heaven clearly and happily foresaw.1 30

Sometimes an eagle opens the flying feathers of its nimble wings so fully that it cannot keep from gazing into the sun’s blazing light because it is close to heaven. Similarly, when he [Criso] gazed on him, praised him, and prayed to him, he saw how the eternal deity in high heaven does well by the discordant parts of the world and how he gives and shares his sweet love. 31

He discerned, knew, and understood the hidden causes of events before they occurred. He knew and recognized that our mind comprehends hidden and invisible things made of an eternal substance as if the blind eyes of a sight-impaired mole that is accustomed to thick shadows and black smoke were to observe the bright flames of the sun, sparkling with pure light. 32

That holy hermit offered humble prayers to God like fragrant incense: may he, with waters of compassion, succeed in dampening the raging fire of weapons; and may he direct victory toward Enrico, whom he saw anguished for serious reasons. Wings carried his devout prayers and sighs up to the most sublime heaven. 33

The one who gives light to the god of Delos2 then lent an understanding ear to the pleas of that faithful servant and granted him all: he appreciated the love, faith, and pure zeal that shone and adorned that just man. So he conformed his holy will to the hermit’s wishes. 1. Marinella provides a rare commentary in a strong authorial voice to clarify the orthodox doctrine of the Catholic Church; another instance appears in 6.66. 2. In mythological terms the “one” is Jupiter, the highest of the gods. The “god of Delos” is Apollo. Mythology has it that he was born on this floating island, which was one of his favorite retreats. As the following octave makes clear, however, the Christian God as ruler of all natural occurrences is also implied.

Canto 16 34

God turned his eyes to those troubled roofs from his starry seat that is surrounded by the divine countenances of honor and love. He looked at Enrico’s military encampment and perceived the most hidden feelings in those soldiers’ souls; he saw the strong champion3 of his faith [Rainiero] close to death, on the ground. 35

He was pained and said: “May it not be true that my good defender remain without help! Let an earthly deed bring comfort to his fleeing life. May celestial spirits talk to the pure heart of that simple hermit and disclose to him my will and that great Rainiero lies on a path close to death.” 36

It seemed as though a soft sound and a muffled whisper could be heard by the ears in the heart.4 At that all senses stopped, eyes were lifted, and tongues were bridled: “The glorious son of Adria’s leader still enjoys the world and heaven; he languishes not far from you, close to death; as he sighs he exhales his last breaths and his blood. 37

“Get up, leave your cave, and go tend your dear friend’s deep and fateful wounds. His soul is spreading its wings to leave him in this cruel air down on the ground.” These words silently resounded in Criso’s sinless and modest chest. He bemoaned that pious warrior’s fate, expressing himself in these words: 38

“Lord, direct your servant’s steps, and may your goodness support his deeds and his thoughts, like a helmsman steers his ship away from cliffs and rocks with his strength. Show me where in your great land that knight lies dying, 3. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 32. 4. Not the ears of the body, but the metaphorical ones in the soul prompting a “feeling” of an occurrence before the senses become aware of it.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d so that I may lend him the help that your compassionate love inspires and displays to me.” 39

He didn’t know whether he should climb or come down to find him, or what to utilize to give sweet life back to the almost dead warrior. Still his wishes were ready to obey God, whom he loved so much. His faith was such that it could have moved mountains made of marble, so he didn’t look for anything: faith alone would confirm and strengthen his hope and weak senses. 40

When he left his cave he saw a young man, not older than fifteen judging from his face. He looked sweet and peaceful; his arms were only partially covered, and he wore no shoes; the golden curls of his hair were tousled if a soft breeze blew, and they gave out lightning and shone when the sun touched them, its wanton rays playing tricks with his hair. 41

In his hand he was holding a small, beautiful vessel of shining crystal decorated with stones. Its bottom was red with either coral or rubies, and it pleased the eye. It looked so splendid that anyone who wanted to know what it held inside could not make a mistake. It seemed to hold a small, lively flame, like a drink that would revive a dead spirit. 42

That young man sweetly greeted Criso, who reciprocated as dearly; then he asked the hermit where he was going. The latter didn’t hide what was on his mind: “I go spurred by God to tend to the deep wounds of a warrior. My feet are filled with doubt, but I have faith that he will direct my steps and that I will heal. So I go to give health.”5

5. The original “salute” means both “health” and “salvation.” Criso has both a physical and a spiritual goal.

Canto 16 43

Criso spoke with noble words full of hope. It was the hour when the sun goes to visit the sands of Mauritania with a red veil.6 They saw the river Cidaro go quickly, as is its wont, to soak beautiful fields; they saw the mountain that witnessed the cruel duel between those two warriors.7 44

Whether beneficial nature placed those delicate hills randomly in a circle, as if joking, or art situated them following comfortable and soft ideas, as soon as they reached them they saw red weapons on the ground and blood congealed in many pools; they saw bodies dead from fatal fighting take up most of the meadow. 45

Araspe, killed in that mortal assault, presented himself to their eyes, stretched on the ground. You would say that while dead he still threatened death and that his fiery and noble heart was still filled with wrath! Not far away they saw the glorious son of the Latin leader lying on the ground on the grass in a purple pool, close to the ultimate danger [death]. 46

That strict hermit clearly saw them both. He was anguished that an envious Parca had almost untied the string to Rainiero’s honored life.8 With holy words and heavenly help he tied and gathered the wandering soul to his chest, then spread on his wounds the ointment that the divine youth held in his vessel to that end. 47

While he worked thus the heavenly messenger with serene and beautiful countenance disappeared. At the same time the horrible death and cold iciness that had gripped the handsome youth left too. He rose, no longer feel6. As Mauritania is in the southwest of Africa, this circumlocution could refer to noon or to sunset. 7. That is, Araspe and Rainiero. 8. For Parca, see canto 15, note 4.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d ing any damage from enemy weapons and from his many wounds: what power and virtue highest love pours and spreads in human hearts! 48

As soon as he opened his eyes he saw Criso, whom he deeply loved; he looked at him and knew from his demeanor and face that he was the one who had removed him from deathly iciness. But he wasn’t happy to be back: he felt as if he had been vanquished, and life seemed a heavy burden to him. So with a sad voice he said: “Alas, poor me! Where am I now? I once lived in happy heaven in the past.9 49

“Father, what are you doing? Do you want me back in this dark valley of death and misery? Do you want me to stop enjoying the pure and clear air of heaven, or to come to the terror of this horrible place? If that is life, then this is death! Dear friend, let me go back there; separate the knot that ties this body to my soul, as it bothers me.” 50

This is what he said, sighing. The man who dwelled in a lonely place replied: “What are you saying? Who do you think offered a prize for our deeds and peace for our furors? The highest motor10 doesn’t offer them (or gold or purple, for that matter) as compensation to lazy people! He offers them to those who suffer and work in his vineyard in the heat of the day.11 51

“If you must know, those who move slowly or lie down tired get no prize. Instead, it goes to those filled with noble feelings who run ahead and melt in

9. The waking-up of a hero knight who thought he had been in heaven is another topos of early modern Italian epic poems utilized by Marinella: see Goffredo in Gerusalemme liberata 1.17– 18 and Alexander in Scanderbeide 9.1. 10. That is, God, the motor that (in Aristotelian terms, later reprised by Thomas Aquinas) moves everything without ever moving itself. 11. This image of the faithful as sent by God to the vineyard to gather fruit derives from the parable recounted in the New Testament by Matthew (21:33–44), where the evil fruit gatherers turn against the son of the field’s owner and kill him. Here the gospel is used for a much more positive meaning.

Canto 16 sweat! This is how a royal soul will gain heaven and find eternal peace for its struggles. Live on: this is what the lord wants from you. Shape your desires after his, warrior. 52

“If man exposes himself to hardships, adversities, and death in order to gain an earthly kingdom, then how strong should a courageous soul be to rightfully gain an immortal kingdom? Heaven invites you to pain and toils to give glory to its unvanquished name. One who only has faith without deeds cannot find a place above the stars.”12 53

This is how that wise man spoke to him. Rainiero turned his thoughts to his leader, to whom he wished to return; he bowed to true reason, wishing to sweat before resting. He felt happiness as his heart turned to human deeds to please his king, and as he observed the nest of the saved [heaven], he said: “Lord, I call and invoke you. 54

“Come, light of heaven that awakens and rouses lazy, slow, and sleepy hearts! Come, you who kindle, lead, exalt, and value glory and noble and celestial prayers! Ignite the dark fog and unfavorable motions of my heart with your lively ardor. Bring it about that my wishes yield to your will: cover the old man with new clothes. 55

“Dispel the horror that I harbor; divine Dawn, please come out of the Ganges,13 if I can call you Dawn since you bring light to the air, grow flowers in the meadows, adorn squares, and bring gold to the hills in paradise! Call this mind and this soul to work, since they’re now covered and hidden under pitch black.”

12. That is, in heaven. This sentence reaffirms Marinella’s Catholic belief in salvation by deeds, one of the main controversies during the Reformation—as Luther and other reformers believed that salvation was based only on an individual’s faith. 13. Regarding Dawn and its emergence from the Ganges, see canto 11, note 14.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 56

Thus he spoke as he looked up to that dear and happy place where souls born in happiness dwell who fed a holy fire in their breasts, even if they were burdened with earthly bodies. Then with sadness on his face he slowly turned his eyes to his beloved Criso. He thought about the triumphs and palms14 in heaven and said the following, expressing the great grace he had received and the heavenly vision he had witnessed: 57

“While I lay weak in a death-like haze, almost deprived of the ability to move, my heart saw a rippling river almost of flames. What a favor from heaven! From this river all beauty had its source. As I observed this river I heard a clear and lively sound that soothed my alert spirit with a most sweet and noble concert. 58

“There I admired a wide and spacious place where more than one light shone to light up movement and laughter. Its floor was more beautiful and clear, and carved with more stars than sapphire. Then I saw a great knight sitting on a lion come closer. His chest gave off rays like a shining star; he was happy and with a pleasant and serene face. 59

“That lion wore shining golden cloths, and its face was lit with a noble courage; its eyes shone, and it revealed claws (white as pearls) on its beautiful feet. It had wings on its back, and it moved about the eternal heaven concentrating on itself. Its proud and noble features revealed that it was an immortal wild animal out of a heavenly wood.15 60

“It stopped next to me and with sweet voice it said: ‘Warrior, I think my heart is burning; know that I am the protector and defender of your land. 14. See note 17 to octave 62. 15. This is a rather detailed description of Saint Mark, patron saint of the city of Venice, and his lion.

Canto 16 Through me your republic received many a great gift from my lord. I won’t ever stop adorning your land’s hair with new glory, thanks to divine grace.’ 61

“It seemed to me that I said: ‘Only hope of my native land, courteous lord, you are our salvation, our happiness, our good; what praise can one give you? Through you we have happy days and serene hours, sweet wakefulness and tranquil sleep. You, faithful protector, you awaken and move a lazy spirit and rain sweetness in it.’ 62

“While I humbly expressed these true words to the holy evangelist, I saw a gentle virgin come on a heavenly path.16 She had a royal appearance and pious countenance, and her eyes showed a wise and manly heart that put most of her hope in God. His power wove palms, myrtles, and green laurels in her golden cloak.17 63

“She came to him, who had written the holy gospel revealed by truth in Aquileia.18 He welcomed her and bowed to her, gazing at her as if burning with loving zeal. She said: ‘Though I’m not worthy, I want to worship the august face of that heavenly goddess who was virgin and mother and who gave the world the son of the eternal father.’ 64

“The saint answered: ‘I will lead and escort you on the path of light, O beautiful virgin, toward her who is the sweet and faithful star and port to the sailors in their sea of anguish.19 Let’s go: follow my steps, and give up your

16. Venice is embodied not just as a woman but as a saintly and devout virgin. 17. Palms were a symbol of victory and martyrdom, myrtle was sacred to Venus, and crowns of laurel adorned the heads of victors of various contexts in ancient times. 18. Roman city to the northeast of Venice. Marinella adds to the local lore by having Mark write his gospel in the city where Venice’s own religious leader (the patriarch) resided. 19. Choosing from the very many attributes of Mary mother of Jesus, Marinella mentions specifically those that would have been more familiar to (and resonated the most with) seafarers, like those among her Venetian readers.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d soul, wise and prudent maiden, to that highest place where the goddess will bestow and share with you gifts and favors.’ 65

“That daughter followed the trace and steps of the hero dear to God who led her to where she shone among a thousand rays and a thousand forms of angelic beauty. She elicited holy cheer in other hearts among the great crowd of daughters similar to her. She lived among them, almost as if in the lap of the sun, honored and worshiped by humble minds. 66

“The peaceful countenances of goodness and love were next to her as she stood with her chaste feet on clear and calm stars: chosen angels, white faith, holy love, and lively hope. All these were closely huddled around her, singing her highest praises, adorning with their wings and faces the chair in which she sat eternally. 67

“Empires, provinces, and kingdoms, land and sea served and obeyed her and her gestures, as well as the noblest and humblest in the world and the dark rulers of hell. She exceeded all in authority and power, yielding only to him whose high power created the world and the heavens [God]. 68

“Her face was completely meek, and her hands were clasped at her chest when she humbly bowed at those holy feet. Her eyes were modest, her countenance beseeching, and her manners discreet and uncommon. She was quiet, didn’t presume, feared, and trembled in front of the highest queen; but hope heartened her fear, and her guide and escort encouraged her. 69

“ ‘Virgin, whose great eternal name spreads glories and splendor through wide heaven, and whose sweet compassion prays to our lord so that he might forgive our mistakes, I am a woman who bows to you, great goddess.

Canto 16 I sit in the middle of the salty waters of Adria. Perhaps you recognize me, as my chest is full and adorned by your treasures. 70

“ ‘From your beautiful face clouds of grace rain on us mortals. I come to you to ask for mercy: I ask for that dear and beloved virtue that in paradise lifts its wings above all the rest; may I live happily in my Neptune’s lap, far away from evil, wearing the perennial badge of my virginity to your glory and to my praised good quality.’ 71

“Here that woman stopped her chaste speech that revealed the high valor of her heart. Her soul and warm feelings were all focused on an answer; she hoped for and feared at the same time. But the one who takes pride away from fiery winds and stops storms at sea hid her heart under the appearance of uncertainty and didn’t answer, though she liked her request. 72

“She didn’t bestow or withhold that grace: she thought on in silence, as if too much had been asked. One similarly sees a noble face in doubt, wavering in thought. She wanted greater prayer and faith to show greater love and desire; so she didn’t give an answer and was quiet and suspended, though she liked that request. 73

“As thirsty and dry earth awaits the dear drops of wished-for and longdenied rain to adorn its meadows and slopes that are now devoid of flowers and young grass, so great Neptune’s chosen daughter awaited the noble goddess’s voice. At last she moved her spirit like life among lively roses and she answered: 74

“ ‘You want something great, and you ask for something even greater than being utterly untouched by enemies. You also believe that I can bestow a greater grace than what human hearts can comprehend. Rome was great,

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d and though it is still standing, it was wounded and crushed by enemy fury. Sparta was left among its great ruins, and Carthage saw the end of its glory.’ 75

“Then the noble queen was silent. At those words the petitioner shed tears that looked on her bejeweled cheeks like pretty flowers when clear waves cover them in the good season and Dawn shakes shining pearls off her blonde hair. She sighed and moaned, waiting for a kinder answer, while fearing and trembling. 76

“Her sad eyes expressed her anguish: they manifested loudly but silently her aggrieved heart’s boundless wish and warm desire. She faintly gazed at the heavenly lady’s honest face with teary eyes, and she followed her motions and manners, through which one understood her closed heart’s will. 77

“Motionless, she admired that mother and virgin, observing her actions and her glorious countenance. She wavered as to whether she should repeat her plea; her eyes gave forth tears, and her beautiful chest exhaled sighs. Mark the evangelist admired her, and feeling the flames of paternal love within himself, he compassionately told her who was in anguish and pain: 78

“ ‘Double your tears, royal virgin, exhale sad sighs, make your prayers more passionate! Vanquish weak senses with burning feelings so that she may not refuse you such a noble gift. I believe that she will turn to you and grant your pleas if a weak voice engages her heart with goodness and piety. I myself will pray to her with my devout soul that she may grant your wish.’ 79

“God, how she prayed, and what torrent came out of her eyes! The firm and constant mind of the higher ruler moved rightfully and granted us our gift:

Canto 16 heaven is immortal, and yet it feels the strength and power of just prayers; it doesn’t embrace various wills, but it bends, changes, and turns according to other wishes. 80

“Her renewed prayers and soft tears gave the goddess’s inner senses more harmony than the cithara and the songs of heavenly mermaids to the eternal spirits. So in her face one could perceive her heart’s sweetness and holy feelings; she opened her arms and dearly hugged her, who seemed to pass out. 81

“She said: ‘I tested your love, your greatness, and your constancy! You know that God doesn’t bestow grace upon those who don’t make progress in worthy virtues. I want you to remain untouched as long as the sun of your world (which is your eye and your hope) has light and rays. Before you asked for this mercy, I had already acceded to your wish. 82

“ ‘If at times I left you with no help, in the throes of anguish, and scorn, I acted like a mother with her beloved son: she lets him go alone, she cries and moans so that he might learn to go, since she wants him to go; but if he threatens to fall she rushes to him, hugs and kisses him, offering him the nectar that the sources in her chest offer again, sweetly. 83

“ ‘I want the world to admire you as the friend of all valor and virtues, thanks to me. I want you to remain a chaste virgin while giving birth from your fecund womb. I want the hated weight of servitude never to burden you and that no enemy, godless hand or army ever pluck the noble glory and wished-for honor of your chaste flower. 84

“ ‘Venice, virgin, live until the world dies hidden by a lightning-bearing hand, or until it (along with those full of vanity) is consumed from its depth

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d by an avenging fire. When mountains and plains laugh showing their beautiful faces and happy countenances, show yourself to our eyes in the highest palace as the emulator of all virtues.’ 85

“She stopped talking; then musical mermaids plucked the sweetest sounds from their eternal lyres, and songs and joy permeated the slopes up there, filled with happiness. One could see my dear land turn her marsh reed into a golden trumpet to praise the gift granted to that admirable daughter, along with her loving family. 86

“ ‘How will my humble spirit that bows to you thank you, O queen of angels, God’s adornment, calm peace? It is sick and unfit for the task. May a divine voice praise you in my stead, O goddess, may earth and sea talk for me, and may all the lights in heaven turn as many voices to extol you, quickly and readily.’ 87

“She added new words to these that unveiled how much she owed her; wisely she expressed high, indeed sublime meanings in short utterances, as was her goal. At this point that vision vanished from the soul’s eyes like fog to wind or young snow to the sun, while I admired the merits of my land in God’s lap. 88

“I will say more: I saw superlative and divine wonders in that eternal mirror, as what is and what perhaps future centuries enclose inside themselves live immutable there. I discovered the noble intentions of that unchangeable mind, how a heavenly air fills faithful souls with holy flames, and how it spurs and awakens dead spirits in the world. 89

“Up there I saw you, father, offering divine incense up to heaven with a golden thurible. I saw a light coming out of your prayers and eyes that shed light on incomprehensible meanings. The eternal lord enjoyed you

Canto 16 and scattered a thousand virtues on your beautiful soul, as is fit. O lucky me, that heaven allowed me to see this much!” 90

The one who dwelled among forests and horrors heard all these wonderful things from the warrior, and felt sweetness and an uncommon wonderment; he rejoiced in his king’s eternal glories. So for these many and other numberless favors he offered to the just giver the highest praise, as he well knew that only faith can give what one wants when one asks with pious desire. 91

His face and color changed, as did his countenance; he showed himself great and venerable to the other. At that very moment it appeared as if the eye of the sun were shining in his brow, as when it parts the clouds. Then, almost outside himself, with holy and resounding words he revealed what was hidden: he described the lady of the sea’s empire and weapons in new prognostications and songs. 92

He narrated how she defeated the Scythians with an unvanquished host and subjugated the haughty pride of the Thracians, the Dalmatians,20 and the Liburnici;21 how she dyed the waters with Sicilian blood, on whom she inflicted pain; how she won over the Ligurians and the Narentans, who infested the seas like hidden rocks. In that manner she would have the scepter of Italy, indeed of the world, as her future burden. 93

He told of Enrico’s victories and famous trophies that he was to have in great Byzantium, and then he said: “I will be quiet, Rainiero, as your seas don’t have as many waves as she [Venice] has virtues. Your land will live without peers! Rome, don’t boast about your quirites [citizens] any longer!” Then he added: “Let’s go, as nighttime arrives: the sun won’t wait for us.” 20. Inhabitants of Dalmatia, a region corresponding to the coastal area of modern-day Croatia. 21. For the Liburnici, see canto 7, note 27.

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The hermit took a steep and rugged path with Rainiero, all the while reasoning with him. He aimed for his hidden grotto where his thoughts were always turned to God. They reached it when the sun, fallen from our hemisphere, gave way to night in the clear air. There he didn’t find a set table or a soft bed to calm stimulated senses. 95

Rugged, country-like food quelled the natural stimuli of hunger; hard rock or hay was his resting place until Dawn came out of the clear Ganges.22 He [Criso] lit his friend’s soul ablaze with his holy and saintly example in praying to heaven, and after they finished praying, Criso told him with gentle countenance and sweet expression: 96

“Now you’ll be able to go back to your camp and give solace to your father Enrico’s heart: he fears and trembles that your valor may have been vanquished by your fiery enemy. Go back to your dear and beloved army, remove them from anguish and dread; then send away the tyrants and conquer evil Byzantium in your role as warrior for Christ. 97

“Don’t ever forget the great gifts that heaven’s noble right hand offers you every hour. Close the ears of your senses to the sounds of wicked sirens, who rise in our evil nature all the time. Don’t abandon virtue when the day comes: it leads a blessed soul to God. Go happy, may God lead you, and I will help your deeds with my prayers.” 98

He said goodbye honoring and praising the devout hermit’s life and words. True love tied that pious man’s mind with the holy and perfect bonds of virtue. Then the camp and its captain enjoyed the happy countenance of that son who had come back; he told what had happened, what he saw, how he saved himself, and how he tamed other forces. 22. See canto 11, note 14.

FROM CANTO 17

[1–65: Hell, upset at Araspe’s demise, decided to take revenge on the crusaders. A spirit took on Araspe’s semblance, appearing to Oronte in his dreams. Oronte then proposed a night attack on the crusaders’ camp. A furious battle ensued in the trenches, on the walls, and at the gates of the Venetian and Frankish camp. Meandra tried to take her revenge on the crusading knight Aramon, but Plautio’s fury forced the Greeks to retreat. Mirtillo tried rallying the troops with a speech, to no avail; Alessio vowed to fight on.] 66

The speech1 reached that sad city faster than a bird with few friends. Quickly the king armed a firm squad of men from the city, and he picked as their leader young Corradino, a wise and prudent man, bold in duel and fierce in battle among those who ever used a sword or rode a steed. 67

Corradino was more affable and kinder than anyone else; he had been born of a royal family in a royal palace, and he was courageous, vigorous, and possessed of a manly spirit. He was handsome in appearance and endowed with many virtues. He was in love with a peerless face and noble demeanor, so he was called a lover and a husband, enjoying the grace and the praise that come to a lover and a husband. 68

Areta was his woman; she was a dear and beloved cousin to the queen, famous and renowned for her great beauty, royal manners, virtue, and in1. Mirtillo’s speech to rally his troops to the defense of Byzantium.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d telligence. She was known also for her holy and pure love, for her sincere faith, and for her splendid and rare chaste nobility. She loved that young man more than her own soul and heart; indeed, they loved each other with the same ardor. 69

As soon as this warrior heard of his lord’s needs, thoughts, and wishes, he took up his weapons more happily than usual, burning with desire for new fame. He put them on and arranged them, then he went to see the woman he loved so. Clothed in iron this young man’s face looked even nobler, and his limbs seemed more powerful. 70

As soon as his wife saw her dear lover approach wrapped in his shining armor, she recognized a warrior heart and a fine spirit in his dear face. She was startled and showed her puzzlement in her beautiful demeanor, because that sight had filled her heart with great pain. She expressed the great fear that made her heart flutter with these precious words coming out of her lips: 71

“My heart, where are you going? Tell me, for what do you leave me? Will you go among spears, and experience dangerous and risky trials without me, leaving Areta moaning in pain? Have pity on me and yourself! What good would this do for my anguish? You well know that wounds, death, sighs, scorn, and disdain are Mars’s handsome adornments! 72

“You are to me a dear father and a venerable mother, a sweet brother and a beloved husband, now that my good father has exhaled his soul to heaven in devotion and service to his warriors. My brother fell to a cruel destiny in his prime among courageous warriors on the day that Enrico took Pera2 and painted the ground with our soldiers’ blood.

2. Regarding Pera, see canto 4, note 7.

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“My mother then ended her painful days moaning, vanquished by pain. So I was left alone to cry over my land’s unhappy events, damages, and disdain. You’re the only one to support me, instead of those many; you make my days happy and full; you make my air serene and the sky joyful: you are my father, my mother, my brother, my companion, and my husband. 74

“I thought that this great anguish would be the end of much anger: fire, blood, a wicked and wild destiny that I myself witnessed with great injury, the slopes made white by our bones! But the duke’s trick killed the king to carry out his unwise wishes, and the warm feelings that seemed dead in Frankish hearts were rekindled. 75

“Who prevents me from following you in the thick of battle and among weapons and death, my beloved hope? I would offer my heart and my head both if they were necessary to rescue you from a harsh death. Our home fears and trembles for you: our doors will be locked after your departure, since your life is the soul that gives me breath, and your face is the sun that I adore and admire.” 76

She said this as she soaked the blossoming roses of her beautiful face with copious tears; perhaps this is how morning shows its dewy cheeks from paradise! The warrior paid close attention and concentrated on her words, then he answered his great love thus: “This is what the king wants, and I have to obey him, since we’re in his domain and rules govern everyone. 77

“My sweetest heart, you’d be right in moaning if my wish weren’t tied to yours by love. But my desire only draws pleasure from pleasing you. I would remove myself from the harsh consequences of war to avoid troubling your beautiful heart. But the wise emperor added his plea to his command, so that I may not keep from carrying out his wish.

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“He sweetly told me: ‘Corradino, valorous youth, my only friend, look at my famous kingdom reduced to oppression, bowing to the worst damage, and heaven is our enemy. Cruel Enrico is favored by destiny, so he can and dares to do anything. Roman valor seems to have escaped from here, the place where we worship it;3 there no longer is as much as there used to be. 79

“ ‘If you want to please me and do what a courageous warrior who values his leader does, put on your armor, take to the field. If your valor has grown, then let it be heard in all climates. Perhaps your ardor will embolden those worn out and whittled away by inaction and drowsiness, to the point that a light might be born among the thick horror of my pain, so that my heart might breathe again.’ 80

“This prudent king, who never errs, hopes for the end of such a devastating fight; he is burdened by his old age and by many thoughts of slaughter and damages. He fears his enemies and his straying friends, and he lets out deep sighs from his heart. At times he even cries tears of pain for the loss of his men. 81

“Life leading my life to what’s good, do you not see this land burned by the damage that the courage of their leader Plautio scattered around on that sad and unlucky day?4 If the omnipotent light of heaven hadn’t turned its eyes to this weak place, the city would have been consumed, and we would have been vanquished and captured, then quickly killed by the fury of our enemy. 82

“Don’t you see with what craft and skill, and with what people, the Franks hit those in the city? Don’t you see how friendly fortune besieges us every-

3. That is, Byzantine valor. Marinella again emphasizes the imperial pretensions of Byzantium, which had in fact been the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire since early in the fifth century CE. This contrasts with the republican principles espoused by Marinella and her Venetian readers. 4. A reference to the fire set to Byzantium by Plautio in canto 14.

Canto 17 where, making its power known? Look at the city, look at the fields all around: the former is empty of inhabitants, and the latter are devoid of farmers. And in the mountains wide torrents of blood flow, drawn from our people. 83

“So I cannot escape, though my heart is filled with the dire premonition of an unhappy destiny. I see Greece a servant; I see my lord deprived of his domain and glad to die. I see cruel servitude and sad horror. I see my Byzantium turned into a lake of blood. What good is it if the soul can foresee all this? One cannot avoid the future or believe it. 84

“May heaven strike me with lightning, may earth open up and offer a tomb to this sad body before I see you as a teary, sad prey and servant to faithless, evil people! Or before you are burdened with lowly, harsh, troublesome servitude that would bring you death! I know that what I foresee will become reality, and I’m telling you; may I see heaven and God! 85

“My heart, what good is it? Awareness of shame pushes me to take up my weapons, and it tears me away from you. I fear the king’s reprimand; I fear that he will conceive scorn for me. A strong and valiant desire pines for that glory that I follow all the time, and it seems right to me to do so. So give thought to quell your wishes, and may you like what the king wants; and stop your cries. 86

“Let us not spread this news; cover your soul with happiness and show a calm face. If you’ve ever seen me in a great army wrapped in a thousand spears and swords, if it’s not the day set by the gods above, then you mustn’t fear that I will be taken from this world: we cannot hurry the Parca!5 Now make your demeanor happier to give me joy.”

5. That is, you cannot hurry your destiny. For the Parcae, see canto 15, note 4.

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As when proud Aquilone6 exhales a breath of bothersome chill from its deep cave, repelling and dissolving the veil of dark clouds that shadowed the sky and the somber air (so that the world was without sun), and everything goes back to being clear and happy, so she chased away her cloudy feelings to please her beloved, after he spoke. 88

The reasons she had just heard and the high necessity that invited him to war happened to stifle that pain in her that pointed to bad luck—she was indeed a magnanimous woman. Though she was in anguish, full of fear, and anxious, and though she trembled in alarm for his beloved life, still she managed to wrest from her sweet lips these words: 89

“May the high power of heaven second your noble and sovereign will, since it moves you to it. May this power guide your right hand, directing it to high and memorable deeds. May the Franks and the Italians lie dead because of you, may Jove’s lightning be less than your terror and power, and may dear palms be born out of your sublime and nourishing virtues.7 90

“Since our present need and your valor require and beg that you go, keep your love for me and your faith in your lord in your heart. May the heads of the Franks, authors of so much damage and pain, be a big enough reward for your arm; may you be saved, may I be happy, and may our pledge of love be unchanged.” 91

She stopped talking and was quiet; her chest was filled with lively hope and future glory, as she already anticipated praise for her beloved. She promised herself triumph, a noble victory, and glory, as she didn’t know what accident 6. For Aquilone, see canto 5, note 20. 7. As noted earlier, palms were a symbol of victory and martyrdom.

Canto 17 and what pains fate had in store for her. She served her courageous husband in the following capacity since he wasn’t fully covered with his armor. 92

She tied his helmet, then she admired and gazed upon him with a sweet smile. Then she soaked his beautiful, splendid, and noble face with bitter tears, and she looked sadder and more pained than any other woman. Then it looked again as though her eyes shone and cleared up with loving looks and a beautiful smile. She seemed like the sun when it’s wrapped up by fog, and so it appears at times clear, at times cloudy. 93

Never was a rose dyed with such purple smile in the middle of spring, such as the one that prettily painted her beautiful face. At times she gazed at him with a sweet brow, inspired by chaste love, and she plucked beauty and kisses from his handsome face, mixing sadness with loving desires. 94

“Be at peace: I’m leaving. Don’t let your tears be a bad omen for me,” he said taking his leave. He smiled and at the same time his dignified eyes twinkled sweetly; then in order to show her how much he loved her, he offered her his right hand as a sign of his great love. Finally, he said his last goodbyes to his beloved wife with a peaceful and joyful voice. 95

He left the city to face great danger with a thousand ferocious and strong warriors from the city: their hearts were unafraid to go among swords and dead bodies. He regretted having saved few men for his land. Who will have the most to boast about? Whose virtue will grow and rise to true virtue, if not that belonging to those who fight for their walls and save their people and their penates?8 8. The Roman gods of the household.

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FROM CANTO 18 AND SUMMARIES OF CANTOS 19–20

S U M M A RY

Anxious Areta awaited her dear beloved, but she heard the message of his death instead. She looked for him, crying, then she found him; she bound her head in dark bandages, and she herself wore lowly and discarded clothes. Alessio held a council, wanting to send women, those too young, and those whose advanced age was accustomed to harsh anguish away from the city. 1

A high tower rose next to the wall, surpassing all others in height. It looked as if it had stolen its name and appearance from a German queen, because it bore the name Irene and when the sun hadn’t yet shown its face it already shone on it, or when the sun disappeared in the water it was still lit in its hair.1 2

From its top one could see mountains, fields, and everything lying far away: enemy trenches, the enemy camp, and the masts and ropes of the enemy fleet as it held its horrible warlike exercises not far from the Golden Horn.2 Beautiful Areta climbed up there to gaze upon assaults that might occur, and she sighed to herself in her doubts. 3

Tindaro’s daughter [Areta] ascended that tower and looked at the furious battle and at the fierce clash between the two enemy camps with her noble 1. That is, the top of the tower was shining like the blonde hair of a German queen. 2. See canto 1, note 68.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d father-in-law, sighing.3 Similarly, if a sword, a spear, or an arrow went in the direction of the one she loved so, apprehensive and sad Areta felt a harsh pain in her heart, even if he wasn’t wounded. 4

In the middle of heated and cruel battles she never took her eyes off his dear and beloved actions, as she feared the enemy’s weapons and warrior-like, formidable, and proud appearance. Often she turned to the Italian squads and told them things from the most hidden part of her heart; if weapons had minds and senses, their burning desire for death would be extinguished. 5

“Famous warriors, you who have sweet kingdoms in happy Ausonia,4 you Franks who made your names illustrious and dignified thanks to your noble virtues, keep your hands, your swords, your anger, and your scorn away from my beloved limbs; forgive him alone among the many strong youth who came out to battle. 6

“What is it to you if you grant life and soul to one only? You mustn’t fear one, even if he’s fierce. May my faithful husband’s beloved voice come back to give joy to my lost soul!” This is what the dismayed woman said as she looked from on high at the furious battle. When she saw an iron lifted against him, she wanted to interpose her heart, her soul, and her chest. 7

The weapons, their motions, and the shadows they cast were so thick that eyes couldn’t perceive things properly or hearts feel worried; murky dust made the air darker than it already was. So she left the tower and retreated to her rooms, where she felt quite safe for his fate; she awaited the moment when he would return from the field, ahead of everybody else in honor.

3. Tindarus was Helen of Troy’s father; her father-in-law was Priam, king of Troy. This is perhaps an imperfect reference to Iliad 3.139–244, where Helen observes the Greek warriors and identifies them to Priam. 4. For Ausonia, see canto 7, note 10.

Canto 18 8

Alas, unjust fate and loving desire agree but little: the latter tends to the sky, the former pushes to the bottom; the latter wants enjoyment, the former carries pain. So she rashly waited for him, filled with hope; she thought about how she would welcome him, and how she would caress him. She prayed and made vows for his salvation with pure and devout feelings in her heart. 9

Both sides had gotten close and were carrying out a great slaughter underscored by proud cries. Everyone shared the same destiny: they wounded each other and went to their death. Although Oronte was killing and slaughtering the Latin people, he felt great anguish: it seemed to him that he was violating them too little, and he feared and believed that the enemy fury kept his glory down. 10

Yet he and his men left many cruel signs of their fury on our army. At this moment the bloodied and scornful Corradino, who had entered the great battle, arrived amid the blood and violence. He had shown himself among the most courageous and dignified, and the boldest of all. Fate denied his going home but still he could be satisfied in that day of suffering. 11

All around, an embankment made of cut-off and wounded limbs was quickly coming into being; in between, a purple river flowed with quite a bit of force, born out of those limbs. He [Corradino] lowered his heavy, weighty sword on the strongest enemies with much might but not without craft and toil. He felled Olindo to the ground, who was the just ruler and the king of Ireland. 12

This is what happens when the wind howls in the fog or when it shakes once it’s bottled up: it chases, hits, and strikes, since all its great fury is gathered in one place, and finally it becomes fire and comes down and stirs the world— letting loose the unknown rage of its motion in the highest spheres. This is how Corradino felled and wounded the greatest in the Frankish squads, like a bothersome wind.

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Fewer golden spikes are felled by a strong hand during the dog days of summer, and fewer blades of grass and flowers are born on happy and serene days to make the plain prettier, than the men lying moaning and groaning because of Plautio’s sword. It didn’t wound in vain, and it didn’t fell only one with each hit: it struck and gave pain to many at once. 14

His muscular arms were uncovered by iron and exposed to other weapons and wounds. His spiky hair was covered by a helmet that resembled a tower. He scared people with his horrible face. And yet many, many people ran toward him, competing against each other; he wounded some and repelled others, because his sword was worth one hundred, and thus he could cut off and mow people down. 15

Though he was far away, he saw how many Corradino felled alive, and how many he sent dead to the ground. He saw how he inflamed those who didn’t know about war to a cruel and dangerous fight. He saw how, and with what scorn, he grabbed Eveno and strangled and smothered him and many others. He observed him, marked him, and looked for a time when he could kill him with a simple blow. 16

He was like a hunter who lies in wait for a boar descending a mountain in its fury: it breaks, tears, destroys, and fells many tall trees in an ancient forest, it strikes stones and makes sparks, and it destroys wherever it turns its feet and its horrible snout. It’s as if the world was in ruin, or the sky fell, and fear turned all hearts icy cold. 17

Courageous Corradino tried to cut off Bonifatio’s head in the fight: already he had grabbed him by his helmet and placed his sword close to his throat. But the good Latin Plautio didn’t waste any time: he yelled and extinguished his life, piercing him from chest to back; his soul left its dear dwelling.

Canto 18 18

He fell like a round rock falls from a high hill after a strong hand has pulled it up. He fell, but his fame raised its head thanks to his valor, though he was deprived of life. His squad showed their cheeks wet; fierce hearts turned weak and tired. They feared even the vilest of enemies (and before they had scorned all fighters, even those most esteemed). 19

A dark cloud of pain covered the Greek king’s [Alessio’s] eyes when he heard of that death. Pain turned to tears that soaked his hairy chest and all the way to his feet. His heart was wounded by great pain for him but also for many other dear men who had died. He observed and thought, astonished at how Plautio was able to deliver death to each of them. 20

When he saw this he had great fear that his entire army might be destroyed, and that he would gather a very bitter fruit born of his unchecked pride, much to his damage. But the Italians heard cries and moans, so they feared that the whole camp was ruined and sounded the retreat: they went back to their tents; others went back to their paternal homes. 21

Careful Areta, meanwhile, was attentive to hear if her dear beloved was back from the fight. She was impatient for him to return, so she rose and walked here and there, then she sat, but the unhappy woman never realized her bad luck. Then there arrived a messenger, panting, his pale face covered in blood and wet with sweat. 22

His pain for his sad and strange announcement was painted in his face. He sadly said: “Corradino, your husband, is dead on the field. The one you loved so much is now lying on the ground. The man vanquished by your beauty in such a way that all other loves were meaningless and useless to him, whose peace and comfort you were all the time, now lies mortally wounded among the others.”

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Like the setting sun deprives the world of many beautiful and dear elements, so that the world seems cold, dark, horrible, and barren, filled with fear, without light, and icy, in the same manner the happiness, joy, and the dear, royal, and praised parts of her disappeared at those fateful words; only sadness, pallor, and pain remained in her. 24

She was left like one hit by an enemy hand with a cruel sword that takes his spirit away, and who now feels the pain of a mortal wound. She was silent and motionless, as it was no use moaning, for the weight of her pain was too great. Her feelings of grief were not expressed in tears, nor was her pain let loose in deep sighs. 25

When she came to she stripped herself of the hated weight of the pomp (gold, jewels, and purple) that she used to appreciate; she covered her hair with a black veil; and she filled the royal palace with cries and moans. She never stopped her grief, and when compassionate Phoebus5 left our world she clothed her tired limbs in rough cloth, a clear sign of her deep anguish. 26

She left her land with two faithful noblewomen who were at all times ready in her service; she had no fear that someone would confront her. Such was the courage that love gave her. She went here and there in the shadows, to find the source of her hope. Who can I compare to you, soaked in tears?6 Perhaps Niobe who was turned to tears?7 5. For Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10. 6. Another direct address to a female character (see 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, and 24.49). Marinella creates a sense of proximity and affection for Areta in her readers, precisely at the moment she would need it most. 7. In ancient mythology Niobe elicited the goddess Artemis’s wrath for boasting of her many sons and daughters. The latter were killed and left unburied for several days, while Niobe cried over their fate. Ultimately she was transformed into a tear-shedding stone and carried to her native Mount Sipylus. The story appears in Iliad 24.600–22 and in Metamorphoses 6.165ff.

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The day fled, and night spread her dark veil, so that everything was wrapped in blackness. The moon appeared to make the sky more beautiful with her handsome foot and white face; she spread clear rays and dewy cold from her chest and blonde well-kept hair. Dark shadows seemed to emulate the day, though they were filled with horror and fear.8 28

She saw the field covered everywhere with cut-up, naked, and dead bodies: one had his arms cut off, another a foot. One couldn’t tell the strong from the weak. She heard some close to death asking for some last comforts for their sick souls. One had his helmet deep in the dirt, and though alive he couldn’t move and hadn’t any help. 29

There that unhappy woman looked for her dear beloved among that mix of dead people. Finally, she found his weak countenance among pale faces and cold features: she recognized his eyes and his coloring, though horrible and dulled by death, by the light of the moving moon. She fell on top of him, while cold sweat enhanced the pale flowers of her face. 30

Alas, what tears, sighs, anxiety, and moans! She called upon the stars and the harsh and unyielding world, upon her destiny and her merciless and cruel fate, as she gazed at the eyes of her faithful man: they used to shine and now were almost a dark sky. Air itself felt pity, as it paid close attention to the motions of that noble face. 31

From her rainy suns [eyes brimming with tears] she shed a cloud and a rain of pain-filled tears. She had no pity for her white chest or her blonde hair, and tore at both of them, though innocent. In her weakness she mixed words

8. Regarding descriptions of the night, see canto 4, note 3.

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“My heart’s chosen and dear soul, better part of my life, where is the faith you promised? Stingy fate! You scattered your words to your wife; you swore to take care of yourself in horrible Mars’s bitter war and fight,9 so that I wouldn’t hurt—me, the noble shelter of the chaste love in your heart. 33

“How is it possible that I live on and breathe if the one who was my soul lies here dead? I’m not alive, as my soul was pushed alive from this body by a cruel and harsh pain. Now it unhappily wanders and roams in the twists of Herebus [hell], driven on by pain. Alas, how much my mind drifts and raves! He’s dead, and I am alive, so that I can see him! 34

“Still, I’m alive, and you look like you did when you were alive, when you gave life to my sweet senses, even now that I see you dead, your beloved and handsome face bleak and devoid of all beauty. Where’s the light in your eyes? Where is the lively gold of your hair? Where are the beautiful privets and vermilion roses of your young age that love placed in your beautiful cheeks? 35

“A deathly anguish pervaded my heart when the Venetian masts appeared; my soul was shaken, and my foreseeing heart gave a sad indication of future harm. Alas, I guessed too much! Alas, what a gloomy year, what an evil season, what an unlucky day! My heart tolerated such a dire encounter, as the presence of my beloved sweetened the bitterness of my sad mind. 36

“Why do I live on? I accepted life when I was luckier and I breathed and was loved by my lord. Why do I pay attention to the world now that air and the 9. The Roman god Mars, son of Jove and Juno, was god of war.

Canto 18 sun are for me horror and shadow? I cannot persuade my sad heart to no longer admire his grace and his splendor. Will he be torn by dogs? Will my love remain unburied, covered in blood? 37

“This will never occur. I’d rather my own hated limbs be prey to a thousand wild animals! This breast will provide a chair for his beautiful and sad limbs so that he will lean and sit on it.” As she spoke she started her dark and unlucky work, so that what she wanted might take place: she lifted him with her hands, and soon her compassionate handmaids were helping her. 38

They were laden with that sweet weight, and they turned their feet toward their customary dear dwelling. No yell or bark or steep rocks could delay the trip they had started. Finally, they placed him on the couple’s wedding bed, sighing and moaning. There she again turned to wailing, almost melting her beautiful body in water. 39

In this manner we see the warm rays of the sun melt the snow in happy days when the sun smiles, and the birds flatter the branches on a leafy tree with jokes and songs; we see the condensed ice melt in an abundant wave that floods the plains and bestows its favor on beautiful and charming meadows. 40

The king’s clemency was conquered by her tears and moans; so the king ordered that the merit and valor of that dead warrior be carved in valuable marble, as he believed that her deep anguish would be partially dulled in this manner. He willed that he [Corradino] be honored with spoils and trophies and that he be placed in heaven with the gods. 41

The tearful cadence of a hoarse trumpet followed that dead man; a thousand tongues of flames were lit ahead of him, and another thousand past him, all in a row, along with armed squads and weapons hung on poles. After his

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d horrible coffin came women, their hair disheveled, intent on crying. They buried him and Areta’s heart as she moaned and wailed. 42

The white snow of her beautiful cheeks was wet, indeed soaked by continuous gushing from her eyes. Then she turned against all pleasures and converted to the holiest God. She expressed her wishes to him: she cleansed the desires of her senses with the spur of harsh penance; and she wrapped the delicate limbs of her soul [her body] in rough gray cloth. 43

She eschewed welcome praise, pomp, and boasts that her faithful chest once liked so much. With noble scorn, she hated what the faithless world loved and held dear. Like a pure dove with an unsullied coat she spread her wings looking for a more stable nest: she wanted to enjoy the lively ray of the eternal sun, as eagles are wont to do. 44

She was accustomed to hundreds of servants, to great palaces filled with purple cloths and gold, with valuables, delight, beauty, and treasure; she used to be the great lady of a castle. Now she retreated to a dark and lowly life of poverty, looking for beauty in it; she lived in a lowly cell, in a humble place, and she despised the world and deemed its glories as trifles. 45

While night spread her dark veil, and the sea was silent and each animal rested, dead Corradino’s beloved wife would go out, filled with compassionate zeal. In the doubtful light that the sky offered, in the bleak darkness of that shadowy hour, she looked for the bloodless and unhappy corpses of her family members and of her friends. 46

She would then pick up a hoe with her hand that scorned a royal scepter, she would move the dirt, and then with sad but praiseworthy face she would bury her dear dead. She devoutly prayed for their eternal peace, and that an

Canto 18 everlasting light might shine on them, with her soul under the sway of holy love and a desire for pity toward those killed heroes. 47

She lived on with fasts and prayers, feeling contentment that she was devoting her soul to her God. In order to prevail over the cruel battles of her enemy she tormented her body with chains and a hair shirt. This wise woman vanquished false joys and desires inspired by the senses; she forgot the world; now enjoy the noble beauty of the great king and the graces and manners of your dear love.10

[48–79: Meanwhile, Alessio called some knights to a meeting. He feared that the besieged Byzantium would soon run out of food, so he proposed that the women and children be sent away. Costanzo objected, citing the importance of families for the morale and well-being of all fighters. Aristide replied that it would be worse for morale to see one’s family starve to death. This settled the matter; Filocaio then gathered all who had to leave under the cover of night.11] S U M M A RY OF CA N T O 1 9

[Enrico with his peers decided to reinforce the camp’s defenses and then to attack Byzantium again. When they did, the crusaders managed to breach the city walls; they also set fire to the city with flaming bombs. Claudia proved her valor as an archer, killing many of the enemy. Seeing the Greeks’ difficulties, Esone invoked hell to come to their aid. A spirit appeared that took the semblance of each Christian knight’s beloved in order to distract them from the fight. A heavenly tune could be heard spurring the warriors to enjoy their youth rather than fight. Only Elpidio and Enrico escaped that lure, but their words had no power against such a spell. All the Christian warriors ran from Byzantium back to camp, which they saw as an earthly paradise; the Greeks followed them and killed many. Once the spell disappeared, Enrico scolded his troops, who were ashamed. They turned to salvage their war machines, and they learned from their mistake.]

10. See note 6 to octave 26. Through Areta, Marinella offers a shining example of the virtuous life of a widow. 11. Both Costanzo’s and Aristide’s speeches include references to women’s behavior in war situations. Costanzo mentions Giovanna (who saved the Gauls) and the Sabine women (octave 69); Aristide counters that for one courageous woman many can be found who would cry and moan incessantly (octave 73). The deciding element in Aristide’s speech, however, is the pain that seeing family members starve would cause in each warrior.

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[Oronte warned Alessio that their victory would be short-lived; he advised him to leave the city. Finally, Oronte’s pleas prevailed; Alessio, his wife, and Mirtillo’s beloved Eudocia left by boat, at night, along with many women and children. Mirtillo then convened his peers: Asterusio proposed that they yield to the crusaders, offering them treasure and gold; then Sindosio laid the blame for the situation on Mirtillo. The latter then spoke, urging that they reject Asterusio’s proposal, as Giovanissa’s help was near. Sindosio suggested that a new leader be chosen, and Mirtillo was elected. The wise Crispo urged him to be a champion of Byzantium and to lead them to victory. Mirtillo immediately turned to preparing the city and his troops for a new assault.]

CANTO 21

S U M M A RY

Since Venier could not quiet his noble spirit, Erina prepared for him a decorated chariot with light wheels that glided through the air, and they took off together. Sweetly she showed to him many lands and provinces; he paid careful attention, admiring the kingdoms of Asia and of dry Africa, stunned, silent, and barely breathing. 1

While Enrico hurt and cried over the offense and the magic insult done by magic to his ranks,1 good Venier didn’t know how he could travel and find his way back. He still lived with Erina in stately pomp, though they were in a rough and wild land. He didn’t have feathers that he might spread to leave and go back to his camp. 2

He put on the noble clothes that were a gift from that admirable daughter. His desire to go back to his friends urged him, so he found the courage to plead with her: he sought her out, greeted her, and started to talk about the great wonder they had shared.2 When he stopped, the silent expression on his face was more telling.

1. A reference to the spell cast by Esone on the crusaders in canto 19. 2. The past and future of Venice as described by Erina in cantos 6 and 7.

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Then he modestly cast his eyes down, craftily repressing his heart’s wish:3 “Divine lady, tell me if a ship will bring me back safely to my land, so that I can share your goodness and my ruin with the entire world,” he said; “I will let everybody know how a woman rules here, indeed a goddess worthy of a large domain.” 4

She replied: “Since I opened my eyes to the sky, I never saw a man who arrived here driven to these shores by the harsh cold of a stormy winter. Let me reveal this to you: no person ever crossed the treacherous seas around here; you passed through the columns4 and into the ocean through a long and strange path. 5

“Don’t expect that a bold ship might arrive here and take you back to your camp; you’d wait in vain! So appease your eager fancy to walk among weapons and the tangles of war: you’ll stay happily in my appealing kingdom, far away from dangers and enemies; and if your heart finds it pleasant you’ll see many great works made by admirable nature.” 6

Like one who’s sick in bed but hopes to recover fully, who then hears the doctor say: “Alas, the flame of your life is becoming extinguished, the ship of your life is reaching its destination,” trembling in confusion, horrified and quiet, with his heart chilled by fear and his tongue in knots, so Venier’s face became sad and his heart chilly at the nymph’s words.

3. To obtain the fulfillment of his wish, Venier acts in a humble manner that is more consonant with a woman’s behavior than a man’s; Marinella’s remark that he was “craftily repressing his heart’s wish” serves as an indication that he is putting on a show, that is, that he is exploiting the situation to his advantage. 4. That is, the columns or pillars of Hercules, modern-day Gibraltar, separating the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and, by implication, the familiar from the unknown.

Canto 21 7

A passion and a wish to go lit up his burning heart more fiercely with every passing hour: as his wish was denied his desire grew, and his servitude seemed a great impediment. Still he pretended and seemed to accept her opposing wish, abandoning his original resolution; he seemed to appreciate and love what his wish made him not want, and all that to please her. 8

Sometimes she hung thin nets to catch naïve birds in their quick flights; for fun she would catch blackbirds, partridges, larks, and nightingales all at once. Sometimes she opened a delicate web in liquid silver, and the fish would run to it in droves, leaving their dances in the wide expanse of clear crystal. 9

She used hooks, ties, lime, and spirited dogs to catch mullets, birds, or hares. She let harsh and pointy arrows fly among oaks, elms, ivies, beeches, ashes, and junipers, driving wild animals away from thorny grasses, thistles, nettles, and sharp bushes with her yells and wild cries. She followed in the tracks of wild animals and in the footsteps of nature in its various virtues and forms. 10

Nets, hooks, dogs, arrows, ties, lime, and darts didn’t remove his unlucky wishes from his heart; neither did quick does, multicolored leopards, beautiful woods, large coppices, tall forests, or the quick and slow harmonies and notes of a musical cithara, or celestial tunes, or blonde Dawn’s pink and white arrival in good weather, when she placed stars in her hair. 11

Nothing could temper or change his burning desire: not beautiful lilies or the sight of lively roses, jasmines, or violets; not the shining cheeks of the golden sun; not the songs or dances of nymphs or birds; not cold caves, sweet water, grassy meadows, tall mountains, impenetrable valleys, high peaks, the sound of the waves, or the whisper of the wind.

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As a raving man he fled, despising what showed itself good to his life; he didn’t care for or appreciate what was pretty, happy, and beautiful that art or nature unveiled in front of him. His mind was focused on and accustomed to weapons, so pomp and pleasing things didn’t hold any sway over him, and the safety and peace of his life didn’t compel his lively soul to stay put. 13

Noble virtues and the beautiful and wise Erina smiled upon him; a hundred nimble and ready maidens were there; his room was well appointed. Still, his miserable spirit kept going back to the thought that he lived as a prisoner on a lonely mountain, away from his camp and from his beloved land; so he was forced to tears, and said to himself: 14

“Evil and cruel fortune, you have drawn me to these lonely woods, far away from the glory of battle, among rocks, trunks, and wild animals that have no senses and no human brain. Is it heaven’s will, then, that my valor may become wild? The world believes it to be noble and superior! Is it heaven’s will that I content my heart on a deserted rock in my youthful age that pines for honor?” 15

This is what he said because he didn’t care for or appreciate any life that didn’t look for fame for itself, and because he scorned any man who didn’t try to live for eternity through his vengeful sword. Though an unvanquished heart may die fighting or looking for knowledge all over the world, still it doesn’t die when it dies gathering immortal strength through the death of its mortal being. 16

The woman who was queen in that great and rich palace felt great pain knowing that he wanted to go back to battle against her wish. She saw that fishing, hunting, resting, and flowery garlands didn’t break his intense de-

Canto 21 sire. She wanted to make him happy while carrying out her father’s wishes that foresaw his end. 17

She could clearly see the most hidden feelings inside his soul, so she told him: “You can give orders to leave or to stay, whenever you want. But look: there are no ships for that here, and strong waves beat all around. Will you be able to leave? I don’t know how you’ll leave here and go to Greece. 18

“I didn’t bring you here, nor can I lead you anywhere else, my Venier. And if you leave, don’t find it hard to go back to where you were when you left to come here (without my invitation). I cannot hold you here; go away then!” A cloud of tears rained down from the young man’s eyes because he couldn’t see his land, his leader, and the Latin army. 19

She continued: “Banish those dark clouds from your brow and from your heart; stop your sighs and moans, my friend; change your worries into good thoughts and your harsh wishes into sweet ones. I’ll make it so that you’ll be able to see your Venice, in the same manner in which you saw the future, and perhaps, if I can do it, even your dear camp and its courageous leader Enrico.” 20

Just as the sky changes its troubled demeanor to a happy one when mild winds blow and break up black clouds (one can see thunder, lightning, and blowing whirlwinds calm down), in the same manner this knight pushed aside his pain and tears at the wind of hope and those wise words. His dark appearance became more serene and dispelled his sad worries from his troubled heart. 21

They waited until the sun brought its light from the Indus and woke up the new day; they waited until Dawn shook her gold clothes on the balcony of

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d the celestial dome. Before that Erina left her soft bed to become colder and prayed to her gods. Venier too rose from his rest: he didn’t care for sleep as he wanted something else! 22

Already the dear breaths of those wandering winds that are harbingers of the new sun were shaking up the flowers, and birds lifted their exceptional songs to greet the earliest light of morning. Then Dawn generously scattered her happy and nourishing treasures over land and sea, where hills, meadows, and fields showed themselves adorned with lively pearls and shining flashes. 23

At that point the woman and Venier climbed some steep stairs and turned their backs on the plain, on which a maker had spread his divine work of beautiful enamel that gave it grace and value. The palace roof was golden and painted with noble deeds, and covered a long area. Over one hundred steps led them up onto wide and precious stones. 24

On top of that beautiful palace there was a wide open space, almost a large circle; one could see that it was entirely paved with burning rubies separated by gold. “Stop here, and observe all around this great theater images that are works of art worthy of your admiration—princes and heroes who calmly and strictly ruled and will rule over Adria’s empires. 25

“For now I won’t tell you their names or the virtues that will make the world happy: virtues will indeed adorn Venice’s fertile gulf in greater number than there are stars! Instead, we’ll admire the sky’s handsome forces, the deep ocean’s movements, currents, and shivers as it embraces and hugs the lands.” 26

As she spoke a shining chariot came down through the air, or rather from heaven’s womb; it burned and shone far more than the one that brings us morning from the east. Two pairs of lions were at its yoke; gold and burning

Canto 21 diamonds decorated it. Those lions had wings on their back, blond fur, and their eyes looked like sapphires when the lively sun touches them. 27

The chariot’s wheels were red as a rose’s deep color at the moment of its blossoming. The rudder and helm, once unveiled, were like shining pearls, covered by beautiful jewels. The sun’s chariot (the noble reason why Phaeton fell into that famous river with singed feathers)5 never showed itself so clear and magnificent in its high sphere. 28

Laughing, the fateful virgin took up the flying mounts’ golden bridles, after that fiery young man had sat next to her; with her pleasant voice she urged them to fly. They stirred, spread their wings, and, O wonder, that marvelous quadriga was lifted above the clouds, going as fast as a feathered arrow carrying no weight on its bow. 29

Moving, the purple wheels of the chariot made a sound similar to the one we’re accustomed to hearing when a hand with a cane strikes the air with great strength: the air is sore and whistles in pain. She didn’t shake her golden whip too high, as she feared the heat; she also didn’t want to go too low, so that the large amount of moisture rising from the sea wouldn’t weigh on those fast steeds’ wings. 30

They then saw the muddy ocean, quite remarkable in its horrible motions. It drew fire from the waves, and though they were far away their souls were shaken and their faces turned white as snow. She said: “What’s dark and useless on earth fills that spot, and as it enters that space it wanders and melts. This is the element that pervades all limbs of the earth down below.

5. In ancient mythology Phaeton was Phoebus’s son, who was granted his wish to drive the chariot of the sun for one day. During his course he was hurled from the chariot and killed by a thunderbolt from Jove, falling to the banks of the Po River in northern Italy, where Naiads buried him. His story is told in Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.35ff.

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“As in a body blood flows to all its other parts from the large vein in which it’s gathered, so water flows in subterranean roads, forming a great sea and a river, with such a center that when one places humid steps on top of an alpine rock, a river, a jet, a brook, or a spring comes to life inside the mountain. 32

“That sound that could have charmed Ulysses6 in the great ocean was powerless; his smart mind passed the boundaries that Hercules had placed for our human intellect.7 As I said, fame gave you mortals false news. I will tell you the truth about him and the manner and place in which he died after his famous deeds. 33

“After that wise man took his revenge on the greedy Procians and crushed some evil women servants, he again unfurled his wide sails to the winds and put his ships back in the water. He was eager to see people, customs, and countries, so that’s what he chose: he sailed over the sparkling ocean waves, and he got to know other rites and other peoples. 34

“He didn’t interrupt his flight even when he saw a man approaching whose back was weighed down by a large sieve. But he stopped his oars as he realized that he was at the end of his journey, as Tiresias had predicted.8 There he offered incense and sacrifices to heaven, which had helped him on his momentous trip. His noble heart restrained his pride and curiosity in Germany, as they had been satisfied.

6. Ulysses, or Odysseus, was the hero of the epic poem Odyssey. He was the king of Ithaca, who after participating in the Trojan War wandered the seas for many years, while the Procians tried to take over his kingdom and his home. In the Odyssey he is portrayed as a man of outstanding wisdom, shrewdness, eloquence, resourcefulness, courage, and endurance. The episode of the sirens is told in Odyssey 12. 7. See canto 21, note 4. 8. In Greek mythology, a blind Theban seer. In Odyssey 11 he is described as having retained his prophetic gifts in the underworld, where Odysseus was sent to consult him in order to escape Poseidon’s wrath.

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“There he built a city, and he lived happily, and that’s the truth. When he scorned being alive, laden with years, virtue, and praise, he was raised up among the gods, and was given temples and altars; perhaps now he enjoys his glory. However, many say that he died in beautiful Penelope’s arms in his old age. 36

“Now, my friend, turn your eyes to observe where weak mortals find their joys and tears, where benign heaven’s right hand showers courteous good will and gifts or thunder and lightning. See to what extent its miserable dwellers seem worthy to eternal Jove’s heart. See where our sick and delicate world is born and is troubled between long wars and short peaces. 37

“Though our chariot travels in pure air, we’re not in heaven or in the burning sphere.9 Nevertheless, admire how weak earth is small and surrounded by sea! Though it is small, human minds elicited and now harbor a war and troubles to human minds: the ambition for and praise of ruling prepare tricks and death for friends and brothers. 38

“Not only does an enemy prepare tricks (or death or exile) against his cruel enemy, but friends betray their true friends, brothers betray each other, and fathers betray their sons. If a man doesn’t harbor a new or an old hatred, then he marks his sword with his own blood. O unhappy century! You show clearly that ruling is far dearer than living. 39

“It would be much better to keep one’s wishes within the boundaries of good reason! If only one knew that with the rule one takes on hell and pain and a devouring grief and resentment! There are conspiracies, deceptions, cloth-

9. That is, they are lower than that, and still quite far from earth.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d ing marred by poison, nooses, swords, and torches. The names of devourer of people and of tyrant circulate with contempt and damage. 40

“It is much more beneficial to enjoy one’s herd and make souls happy with sweet oats under a cool shade or by the pleasant waves of a lively river! Or to listen to birds sing prettily and humbly, and to breezes whisper among leaves and fronds! A wise man likes round apples and grass for food and water better than wine. 41

“I don’t want our long trip to make this road heavy for your lively mind. Still, we’ll see many mountains, places, and cities, and more than one kingdom. I will only point out a few of those, as that’s not my goal; rather, I want you to see your fatherland before death triumphs over you, a brave and strong man. 42

“That’s the Arabian Sea. Within it there are many small islands and rocks; it is partly navigable, but partly it denies seafarers their trips. Its coasts are without leaves, and there are few dwellers between the sea and the Nile; the land lies untilled and barren, as there are no rivers or springs, though it is crowded by craggy mountains. 43

“You can hear all the way up here the roar and the howl that the fruitful waters of the Nile make as they flow; they give a brown color to the shore and make the Egyptian countryside bountiful. There are sandy deserts and harsh places that the waves of the great river don’t reach. That’s Alexandria,10 the other Damietta,11 and many more nourished and cultivated cities over there.

10. City on the Mediterranean Sea, famed in history for its lighthouse (Pharos) and the first library. 11. Modern-day Dumyat, about ten miles (fifteen kilometers) from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

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“This area was once the depository and temple of all noble knowledge; tall columns stood here in which all examples of learning were engraved, and rivers of wisdom flowed from there. There lived those who tore vice apart; those weren’t human but godlike! Plato and Pythagoras, who never tired of virtue, lived there. 45

“Memphis12 and Caria13 to the west are the highest wonders in whose glory Egypt basks: see horrible caves and the sphinx’s noble gift that displays their clear memory. And I’m not even talking about its craggy mountains, or about Thebes,14 whose divine history boasts of many nests to famous men (not to wild animals!) through its many secluded places and woods. 46

“Over there is Ethiopia, whose castles and cities are spread from the east all to way to where the sun hides and loses its color, after extinguishing its wonderful light in the sea. Nubia and Meroe,15 living in between the waters of the Nile, produce palms of victory, gold, and silver out of their womb— things that people enjoyed and still enjoy. 47

“Those are called the mountains of the moon, because they offer their shoulders to support her; they rise so high that their paths lead to the starry sky, or maybe above it. Not far from them the warrior amazons16 roam squares, hills, and valleys in their armor, looking fierce; they serve as faithful guard to their beloved prince, their defense and guide. 12. City now in ruins on the Nile, the earliest capital of a unified kingdom of Egypt. 13. It is unclear to which area or city in Egypt Marinella refers, as Caria was a region in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). 14. Thebes was the seat of the legendary king Oedipus and the locale of most of the ancient Greek tragedies; it is located northwest of Athens. 15. Meroe is a city in Nubia, a region south of Egypt in modern-day Sudan. 16. In Greek mythology amazons were a race of women warriors. They mated with men of another people, kept the resulting female children, and sent the male children away to their fathers.

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“Between Libya and the Atlas mountains lies famous Carthage,17 the land of Massile, Filene’s altars, and the boastful Bona, made noble by Augustine.18 Over there, hidden among steep cliffs, is Cirra; then Acarnan, not low or humble in learning. That’s the kingdom of Fessa, the Numidians’ own;19 over there is Algiers—both favorable nests to evil people. 49

“Over there are Mauritania and Tremisene, whose womb is rich thanks to four cities. Then there’s the kingdom of Morocco, whose slopes are filled with handsome fruit, and whose banks are rich in small rocks and sand, washed at all times by the continuous cloud of the sea. Over here, as well as in Tingi, Tingitana, and Cesarea, one can see black people.20 50

“More than other parts of Africa this one is open to the sun that sits in the tropics. On one side there’s our sea [the Mediterranean], on the other there are ocean waves that hit and shriek, and on the third side the great river marks the boundary that opens up, divides, and fertilizes Egypt. So it has a triangular shape, and as you can see in many parts, its land is left fallow and untilled. 51

“When my good father occasionally took me on this high path, there was no mountain, valley, or lake whose true name he couldn’t point out to me! Not just of those whose names I mentioned to you. But I won’t do it, as I ardently wish to quickly go back whence we left.

17. Situated not far from modern-day Tunis (the capital of Tunisia), Carthage is dubbed “famous” as it played a crucial role in the foundational myth of Rome (see Virgil, Aeneid) and in its history—as Rome’s earliest enemy. 18. Augustine (354–430 CE) was born at Tagaste but lived most of his adult life in Ippona, in Numidia. 19. Numidia is an area in North Africa more or less corresponding to modern-day Algeria. Fessa is modern-day Fez, one of its largest cities. 20. These references are to various parts of Africa, a continent that Marinella does not describe in detail in this overview of the world.

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“That’s Asia, where the one who gave their souls back to the dead [Jesus] was born and lived. There also John wrote his great gospel that gnaws at the heretics’ hearts; then in Patmos21 he wrote his Revelations that cross the path of human knowledge. Heaven gave Asia these and many more graces, but since you perhaps know them, I won’t mention them. 53

“I will say little about that area surrounded by Imavo’s tall rocks and alpine cliffs, whose bosom is filled with one hundred cities; it is divided into many parts, and it is called Cataio.22 On the one hand it is evil, but on the other it is rich in renown and arts. Here people worship various gods and have many faiths. 54

“Observe barren and unhappy Arabia, rich only in wild animals and sterile sand. That other one is bedecked with beautiful meadows and holds amomo and myrrh23 in its lap, so it is rightly happy. The phoenix, unique bird, goes to renew itself there: it takes off its old appearance, it lights itself and burns among prized wood, and it shines with new beauty after being born again.”24 55

They saw the waters with which the Volga25 soaks the Scythian lands26 and the Caspian Sea. Then Sur came into view,27 surrounded by a horrible countryside and adorned with many statues: they say that Tartarians were ob-

21. A Greek island in the Dodecanese, on the eastern end of the Aegean Sea. 22. An ancient name for China. 23. Two fragrant herbs. 24. As noted earlier, a mythical bird, living five hundred years and then dying in a pyre from which a new phoenix is born. Here Marinella locates this event in Arabia (one of two places where mythology placed the Phoenix’s rebirth by fire; the other is Egypt), while in 15.15 she is not precise about it. 25. River in western Russia; it is the longest river in Europe. 26. For Scythia, see canto 1, note 15. 27. There are two cities named Sur on the Arabian Peninsula, one in modern-day United Arab Emirates, the other the easternmost settlement in Oman. Either way, Marinella refers to a barren land whose habits differ greatly from hers and her readers’.

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They saw Bengal and Cambaia, great kingdoms, and everything lying between the Indus and the sea. They saw more than one mountain that never felt heaven’s scorn, so high do they lift their bold tops. They saw rivers that are beyond furious flow all the way to boundless seas. High, solitary places and horrible ones attracted their eyes as well as their feelings. 57

Armenia came into view; on its left the Euphrates flowed, on its right the Medians lived. There is Mesopotamia, where the Austro28 is born cold and then becomes burning hot on its course. Taurus and Niphate were seen, and the noble and swift Tigris that is born out of the Gordian rock. The wise father who kept the human race safe at sea landed on its top!29 58

Then they saw Gaza and Idumea, Cilicia,30 Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, Samaria, and Judea, which is near the waves of the Dead Sea and the temple of that being who is named wise and divine in his virtue.31 The holy waters of the heavenly Jordan flow from two sources in Lebanon. 59

They watched the kingdoms in India, diverse in rites, faith, and customs. The best ones spend their days in caves and among rocks and thorny bushes, like hermits. The Aryan Antioch32 and Ormuz33 are filled with graces due to their good location, though they have few springs and rivers. Then Persia 28. A warm and humid wind that blows from the south. 29. That is, Noah, the hero of the Great Flood story in the biblical book of Genesis. In that story (Gen. 6:11–9:19) he was chosen by God because of his blameless piety to perpetuate the human race after the rest had perished in the flood. 30. District on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), north of the island of Cyprus. 31. That is, Solomon, traditionally regarded as the greatest king of Israel. 32. One of two cities by this name, both located in modern-day Turkey. 33. Island in the strait by the same name that lies between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

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offered itself to their view, along with the Hyrcanian province and Media that’s not far away from the latter. 60

Sidon and Tyre35 appeared: they offer us the purple for sublime and famous kings. From Tyre to the Gulf of Laiazzo36 there is Syria with Tortosa37 and other cities its equal: beautiful Damascus, Laodicea38 with its graceful boundaries, lakes, gorges, and seas (Oronte is born out of them), and Celesira. They saw all that Asia holds within itself. 61

Adria’s great son turned to Erina and said to her: “This is wonderful! My celestial guide, who gave names to all these places and areas? Who explored them so that we know about them? Who went to discover all these unknown and treacherous lands?” With sweet voice and pious face, she partly answered his question. 62

“Tunisian people clearly told the world about the southern areas. The Macedonian leader and knight39 made the kingdoms and places in the East known. The proud Roman Empire unveiled to others the harsh foggy places to the north. May it be that new Spain with a propitious destiny show the world a new world.”40

34. The name of a satrapy (administrative unit) of the Persian Empire, bound by the Caspian Sea and the Amudarja River. 35. Cities on the shores of the Mediterranean in modern-day Lebanon. 36. Modern-day Gulf of Iskenderun, also called the Gulf of Alexandretta, in southeastern Turkey. 37. It is unclear to which Syrian city Marinella is making reference. 38. City now in ruins in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). 39. That is, Alexander III or the Great, king of Macedonia from 336 to 323 BCE. His empire stretched from Greece all the way to India and southward into Egypt. He overthrew the Persian Empire, carried Macedonian armies to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. 40. In the Dante tradition of foreseeing future events that were already past by the time the writing takes place, here Marinella has Erina announce the discovery of the Americas by the Spaniards. This would have been unknown in the early twelfth century CE, when the siege of Byzantium took place, but of course it wasn’t news for seventeenth-century readers of Marinella’s poem. Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata also includes a similar prophecy of the discovery of the Americas (15.31– 32), in the context of Carlo and Ubaldo’s flight to Armida’s palace, with the help of Fortuna.

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F R O M C A N T O 2 2 A N D S U M M A RY O F C A N T O 2 3

S U M M A RY

Erina showed the warrior the happy cities and kingdoms in Europe’s bosom; then she pointed out Adria’s gulf, its wonderful deeds, sublime palaces, and worthy events. Lastly she presented Giovanissa filling the plain with his army to bring the unworthy Thracians back to the kingdom. Venier returned to his camp, and all fierce hearts rejoiced because of it. 1

“Turn your eyes to the most beautiful and the merriest part that the sky looks down upon and the sea encircles with its waters: it has the handsome name and the cheerful manners of Europe. There minds and art flourish, and I couldn’t tell you what an abundance of riches and hard work there is! Sources of deep knowledge run there in a thousand brooks.” 2

He saw Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, and Vienna, all rich with comforts and well-set villas; then she pointed out Styria,1 Carinthia,2 and Dacia,3 glimmering richly with precious stones and gold. They saw Rascia4 and Walachia,5 with its wings lifted to excel over others. The humid drops of the Dniester6 flow by until it reaches the sandy shores of the Black Sea. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

A region in central Austria. A region in southern Austria. Ancient name of the European region corresponding roughly to modern-day Romania. A central region of modern-day Serbia. For Walachia, see canto 9, note 6. A river flowing from the Carpathians to the Black Sea.

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She unveiled Lagaro, the Adda, and the Ticino,7 then the fruitful and pretty plains of the Swiss, and the County of Tyrol. The Valais8 showed shapeless and wild animals. Between the Rhine and the lake was Swabia,9 and the island of Lindani in the Acronio,10 where piety manifested itself in good deeds. Then Thuringia11 appeared, and Denmark, adorned with pretty grass. 4

The land that at that point they could see right below their feet was happier than any other place in the world.12 On its right the Adriatic Sea lapped its shores, on its left the Tyrrhenian showed its great size; over there were Sicily and the foot of Calabria; then Vulcano and Vulcanello13 let the fire enclosed in their innards show, while their outside revealed their love for rocks. 5

Far away they saw the Ximoenta14 and Xantos15 rivers, whose waters were on fire in the past, and Troy lying extinguished amid its pomp—though even in that state, it didn’t hide its glories! Then Phrygia,16 Izmir,17 and Rhodes18 presented themselves as islands and shores of the Mediterranean Sea, then the sandy shores of Pamphylia19 and various lands and places along the sea.

7. Rivers in northern Italy. 8. A region of Switzerland. 9. A region in southern Germany that in the Middle Ages extended into Switzerland and Alsace. 10. Modern-day Lindau Island in Lake Constance (“Acronius” in Latin), formed by the Rhine and on the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. 11. A region in central Germany. 12. The happiest land of Europe is, needless to say, Italy. 13. The two northernmost islands in the Aeolian archipelago, in the Tyrrhenian Sea facing Calabria. 14. One of the eight rivers that flowed around Troy. 15. A river in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. 16. A region in the west central part of the Anatolian highlands, part of modern-day Turkey. 17. A coastal city in Turkey. 18. A Greek island in the eastern Mediterranean. 19. A region in the south of Asia Minor, part of modern-day Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast.

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“Scylla and Charybdis, horrible and huge, lived within those craggy caves; they killed Ulysses’ friends and made him very fearful with the barking of their enraged dogs.20 Under that marble the giant trembled strangely who devised a plot to steal Jove’s empire;21 now he burns with fire, since he didn’t capture that holy place.” 7

Italy showed all her famous cities, adorned and beautiful lands, and the ringing, slender waters running to the sea in wide or steep rivers that she holds in her bosom. She revealed tilled fields, tall woods, inviting shores, and beautiful gardens on which myrtles bestow prettiness, adorned with grass and flowers, where one can rest peacefully. 8

Liguria, stretching from the Alps to the sea, gathers great souls and great minds. Its people devote themselves to gain and goods, which they revere: they are sharp and hardworking. Also they spent decades endlessly engaged in sea wars. Over there is Mount Gargano22 and a temple for worship protected by a heavenly guard. 9

They saw Genoa’s gardens, the roses of the Tyrrhenian and of Paestum. They admired the painted Riviera and the pretty shores of beautiful, sapphireladen Sebeto.23 Nature wants all the graces that it placed in the world to be

20. According to mythology, these two monsters lived on either side of the Strait of Messina, and sailors tried to steer a course in the middle to avoid them. Book 12 of the Odyssey recounts how Ulysses successfully avoided both monsters. 21. Tifeus, who attempted to overthrow Jove, was buried under Mount Etna (and in other versions of the myth under the island of Ischia), where he continued to spout flames. 22. The “spur” of Italy, on the Adriatic coast. According to Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, the first apparition of Saint Michael the Evangelist is linked to an event occurring on Mount Gargano. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2.101–2. It is unclear why Marinella lists it here alongside Liguria (which sits on the opposite coast). 23. A river in Campania, the region around Naples.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d admired there, and rich Italy to be the seat of all beautiful art, of every kind of cultivation of the land, and of all knowledge. 10

Not far away is the place where Achelous’s24 descendants sing and invite unaware sailors to sweet sleep, then deprive them of their lives, turning clear days into dark ones. Only Ulysses’ wise and courageous mind heard that voice and those enticing and compelling sounds, and saw their most beautiful countenances, and escaped unharmed, though wounded and captured by love.25 11

“Admire that city whose head is encircled by seven hills: Romulus gave it its name.26 See the much-praised Tiber and the wet fields where people fought and were vanquished. Now stop those crazy thoughts in your mind! There is Peter, laden with rich and holy charges: he leads his flock to the holy meadows of heaven, away from pain and tears.27 12

“Turn your gaze to the right, courageous knight,” the woman continued, “and you’ll see Venice’s gulf and great empire: I am all excited to show it to you! Admire with what care and wisdom heaven founded it. The same heaven protects and repels from her any nuisance and obstacle with its strong arm.” 13

She pulled her winged steeds’ golden reins toward the Euganean hills,28 then she turned those horses’ beautiful heads toward Venice’s happy shore. 24. In Greek mythology the divinity of the river by the same name. 25. Book 12 of the Odyssey recounts how Ulysses, curious to hear the fatal singing of the sirens, had himself tied to the mast of his ship, while he ordered that his crew stuff their ears so that they wouldn’t hear them and be led astray. 26. The city referred to is Rome. 27. A reference to the popes, whose seat is in Rome, and who follow in the lineage of the apostle Peter. 28. An area not far to the east of Venice.

Canto 22 They saw the Aegean move its angry waves, then its warm gulf, and many rivers and springs that adorned the land. Finally, they saw Adria lie, content, where she was born and lived. 14

“This city is surrounded by greatness; her clothes are entwined and adorned with laurel,29 and divine grace flows from her eyes. However, she removes nuisances and thorns from her people. May she always be revered, as long as a heavenly hand moves earth and sky, and until everything declines and a new, strong, stable, and joyful world renews our own. 15

“Over there are small islands lying among the waves where people live in peace and laden with art and praise. The biggest one hides plentiful crystal in long lodes; learned craftsmen boil and melt and reshape it in many ways.30 When the sun sees that great treasure, it is amazed by such handsome work. 16

“Here are tall domes; there are the temples and other places consecrated to a great God; then superb buildings, huge and admirable bridges, and lavish homes: neither Rhodes31 nor Memphis32 hold such noble and large miracles! Neither of them can compare to the rarest buildings that dazzle in Venice, which excite royal hearts. 17

“So it’s no wonder that the most powerful princes in Europe burn with love for such a daughter, whose eyes forever send arrows into their hearts! They observe her happiness from far away, and rage and pain gnaw at their en29. Crowns of laurel adorned the heads of winners of various contests in ancient times. 30. A reference to the island of Murano, one of the largest in the lagoon and still renowned for its skillful glassmakers. 31. The easternmost Greek island in the Aegean Sea. 32. For Memphis, see canto 21, note 12.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d vious hearts: they are like a dog that sees a much-desired wild animal all bound up, but it cannot hope to have it. 18

“Here is the famous temple built in Mark’s honor; he is the loving father to the bride of the sea! This church has very high columns and a huge roof, made rich and lavish by decorations and gold; marble, porphyry, and the choicest crystal make it great and fill it with light. Various images in mosaic are as many depictions of the future, almost alive. 19

“Those who praise the holy temple at Ephesus33 or the king that had it built should hold their tongues: this one stands with no peer and no comparable example. It is a lofty building that Adria built to the great king of the stars. If he were to decide to live among sinful human beings, then only this product of an excellent mind would be a worthy dwelling place for him—assuming that there is such a place on earth! 20

“Admire that other huge and massive structure: it looks as if it wants to reach beyond the stars! It seems as though it supports and defends Venice as high in the sky as a bird can fly. There is nothing similar to it anywhere the sun turns the day on with the light from its rays! Here bells devoutly remind us to give thanks to the eternal kingdom.”34 21

As she spoke their chariot descended not far from that holy place; it stood there while a veil hid it from the wide space around, almost like a white cloud. From there, in comfort and in no hurry, they could admire the works and precious buildings of that great square, the noble royal palaces and their rich decorations.

33. A city on the Mediterranean shore of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) where the temple of Artemis (Roman Diana) stood. 34. This building is the bell tower of Saint Mark’s; it lies across the piazza from the church, and it stands 324 feet (99 meters) tall.

Canto 22 22

After it [the chariot] had stopped its flying wheels in an ample and comfortable corner of that wide area,35 [at first] they took little notice of a noble crowd that was coming out of the grand doors to the holy vestibule.36 Their hair and clothes seemed to express to everyone their greatness and majesty: one, a leader, wore purple robes; another, a warrior, shone with steel and gold. 23

One held a scepter, the other carried lightning wrapped in iron. This was akin to Mars with his formidable face shining in the sky and spurring spirits to give their blood in battle. They brought together wisdom and valor, and victory walked alongside them. Indeed, risk and sweat came before, and glory and honors followed their steps.37 24

Another crowd, with noble and serious faces, were symbols of the ruling presence of justice. They struck violently against unjust and evil deeds, cleansing Venice and teaching all how to live justly. They honored whoever was good and wise with their grace and with sweet looks and words. Everyone could therefore see with what rites and laws a perfect leader would correct his faithful. 25

“Never did Rome witness as much knowledge or prudence in her greatest and noblest citizens as your land reveals all the time in her famous heroes: the

35. Marinella underscores time and time again the dimensions of Saint Mark’s Square, which were indeed uncommon for a square in Venice, a city where building land was in extremely short supply. 36. The sanctuary of Saint Mark’s cathedral is fronted by a vestibule, a hall common to mosques as well as Byzantine churches. 37. Processions were a staple of Venetian life; however, the one that Erina and Venier observe is atypical in that two people appear to share authority: one holding a scepter, the other a sword (metaphorically dubbed a bolt of lightning). A detailed description of ducal processions and of the order of precedence within them can be found in chapter 5 of Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, 185–211, esp. 190–200.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d majesty of their faces, their royal presence and noble demeanor, and, what’s worthiest and most splendid in them, their power and valor, fit for heaven. 26

“If I wanted to show someone else the famous deeds, virtues, and pride of the magnanimous Venetians, as well as their supreme actions and royal and holy thoughts, dear Venier, Phoebus (life of the earth)38 would hide his features from you many times.39 So we need to stop our praise of Venice and set boundaries to our speech. 27

“Her wonders, honors, and arms remain in her astonishing womb. May Fame talk about them;40 may they be gathered in heaven and celebrated in more eloquent songs. Her many rare virtues give light to the sun! Marbles bearing the name of Venice breathe with the spirit of eternity: her name surpasses in greatness that of every other city. 28

“Look at a beautiful mermaid come out of the waves; she’s pretty and still young, and she emits beautiful and joyful notes from her learned cithara that gild the seaweeds and shores all around. See some green laurel entwined in her blonde hair:41 it honors her merits. Here nymphs and Adria’s swans run to listen to her music and song. 29

“The world will marvel at the sound of her words; she might deserve more honor than anyone else. The sacred muses woo her,42 and Phoebus bestows

38. For Phoebus, see canto 4, note 10. 39. That is, I would have to spend many days on this task. 40. For representation of Fame in a positive sense, see canto 15, note 5. 41. As noted above, crowns of laurel adorned the heads of winners of various contests in ancient times. The siren emerging from the water is undoubtedly Marinella, singing the praises of her city. She is nameless (like Fonte in Floridoro 10.36–37), as befitting a respectable early modern woman. The metaphor of the siren as woman poet is not unprecedented: see Cesare Simonetti’s laudatory poem to Fonte preceding Floridoro (Moderata Fonte, Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance, trans. Julia Kisacky, ed. Valeria Finucci [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006], 52–53). 42. In classical mythology the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each protecting and fostering an art or a science.

Canto 22 his glory on her. I’m not going to talk about her much praised learning, as the lady who rules as heaven’s queen will sing about the noble land’s valor and arms with eloquent and mature songs. 30

“Be at peace, friendly land! May heaven scatter its graces on your hair during sweet days, and may it repel enemy invasions and stormy coldness from your bosom. May justice, love, faith, and zeal raise you beyond heaven. Live happy, always together with those who offered their lives to help others.” 31–35: After leaving Venice, Erina showed Venier Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Macedonia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. 36

In that area43 a great fire became visible: one would say that flames went all around and that the more one observed the more appeared, clear and shaking in the light of the sun. In the middle of this fire, something that zigzagged and turned onto itself came into sight. It seemed to get closer as they continued on, and in the end they saw helmets, banners, footmen, and knights. 37

They saw red, blue, and yellow banners, and the countryside, the hills, and the mountains covered by a forest of spears, swords, and horses. They saw steeds covered in iron on their chests and sides; wherever they crossed fields, meadows, or valleys, they destroyed everything, drank up all the springs, and made those fertile and tilled places poor, such that they could not be plowed for a long time. 38

The young man, stunned, asked: “My royal escort, my salvation, my life, what’s this crowd? Where are they going? Where is this infinite swarm armed with weapons and courage headed? Who calls it together and sends it on its way? By now the whole road is crawling with dispatched people!” With a friendly voice, that wise woman said, observing that ferocious army: 43. Where the Bulgarians warriors were.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 39

“In order to grant your wish I will reveal to you their names and places of birth, why they are here, who leads them, and how they are getting ready for noble deeds from the time when night hastens its shadows onto us to the moment when beautiful Dawn lights the day. These people are running to a king; they’re still far away, but already they cover mountains and plains. 40

“Giovanissa is gathering all these squads to take them to Byzantium to give help to the Greeks and to repel the courageous fleet of the Venetian lion from that seashore. When Phoebus laughing leaves the waves,44 he doesn’t let loose as many rays from his hair as the courageous soldiers that this leader gathers and sends to their final fate. 41

“He does this despite having inherited, along with his kingdom, an old fight and untiring hatred for the Thracians: they never made peace, or friendship, or even nonhostile treaties. Instead, they nurtured unruly wars, harsh exertion, insults, and scorn in their violent souls. He took over the reign after his brother Azan, and with the kingdom its wars and disputes. 42

“From tall Mount Emo he ran, indeed he bolted to make war with the Scythians;45 then, after looting them, he ran over the countryside of Thessaly46 and the shores of Greece. He felled, subjugated, and instilled fear in the strongest and fastest in battle. Everything from the Black Sea to the Hellespont47 was bloodied and mourning because of him.

44. See canto 4, note 10. 45. For Scythia, see canto 1, note 15. It is unclear whether Marinella here refers to a specific region or if she only wants to evoke a faraway land. 46. A region of northern Greece, south of Macedonia, lying between upland Epirus and the Aegean Sea. 47. Greek name of the Dardanelles, a narrow strait linking the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean Sea.

Canto 22 43

“This is the captain of the highest leaders: he has never stopped, indeed he has always been trouble to the Greek, and as I said, with his weapons in his hand he has fought bloody battles. This fierce and inhuman man was at times lucky, at times out of luck, but he always proved a grave nuisance to his neighboring kings. Nevertheless, now you see him generously helping the vanquished Greeks.

44

“This proud king now leads armies from upper and lower Mysia,48 from the closest to the furthest parts of his kingdom, and from the most unknown shores. So dear to him is the Greeks’ fate that for their salvation he risks his life, honor, people, and gold! In the past he gloated over their bad luck, and now he feels sorry for it.

45

“Human minds are so dimmed by fog! Our desire is so worthless! This king brings together neighbors and foreign people in order to restore a false and evil man to his kingdom. Mad thoughts cannot pierce what God alone has determined. He hopes for greatness, and so he gathers together a fruitless toil and a useless hope.

46

“That one is Podalamio, who sternly leads his Ruthenians49 into cruel battle. They have left the sweet bosom of their beloved land to show how much they care about fighting. Russian nobility has filled the fields with swords and spears to attack the Latins: the highest leader of these many people is Calisirio, who is bringing more from Chiovia.50

48. In ancient times a region in modern-day Turkey bordering the Sea of Marmara to the north and the Aegean Sea to the west. The city of Troy lay in Mysia. 49. Inhabitants of Ruthenia, a region in Eastern Europe now lying in the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, northeastern Slovakia, and eastern Poland. 50. Modern-day Kuïe, a city in the Ukraine.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 47

“Arunte used to be a servant, but now he comes as a leader, showing off many courageous youths. These left the sands of the Black Sea to prevent their appearing slow and cowardly to their king. They exchanged the harsh chains of servitude for spears, swords, and quick arrows; they fled the unworthy estate of servants, as even lowly hearts can rise to a noble mark. 48

“There comes one who follows the Neeme River and sees all the men going against the famous Enrico. Those are people endowed with little daring and much fear; their souls are cowardly and they are accustomed to begging. His name is Polidio; he’s a subject to the kingdom of Poland, and a true friend to Giovanissa. Most of his men are from Lithuania and Vilnius and from other places besides. 49

“Ision gathered a squad of Tartarians51 and Livonians52 between the Vistula53 and the Broristene,54 from Norway, from Sweden, and from the pleasant meadows of Lithuania. These men are strong and good-natured. Frisio instead holds under his bridles people brought together by the enticement of hope and gifts. Courageous Girton escorts yet more; he was born by the clear waters of the Drina.55 50

“Alan held his father’s kingdom not far from the lagoon of Meotia;56 he has left his beloved and his comforts to display himself and his virtues. His companion is Norandin, who hides his desire for prey in his heart; his thought is to annihilate the true nobility of France and those who hold titles and esteem in Italy.

51. Inhabitants of Tartaria, a name that for Italians evoked a mythical and faraway region in the Far East (see, e.g., Ariosto, Orlando furioso 1.5). 52. Inhabitants of Livonia, a Baltic region around the Gulf of Riga. 53. The longest river in Poland. 54. An unknown river. 55. A river that marks the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia and Montenegro. 56. Modern-day Sea of Azov, the northern section of the Black Sea.

Canto 22 51

“Rosmondo is the one whose back and chest are wrapped in the harsh fur of a bristly boar. He gathered a wild, green, stubbly group from in between the Danube57 and the Termes;58 it’s a bountiful, happy, and tilled country, rich with herds and grains. Both earth and heaven look propitiously upon it. Now this courageous leader is guiding these people from their villages to Greece. 52

“Walachians59 and Saxons pour out of Severino, from the Carpathians,60 from noble Dacia.61 The Sicilians aren’t less ready, though they are wild mountain people; they live by the clear source of the Marisio, true remains of the Huns. They follow Emero, an augur and soothsayer, whose land was Albagiulia.62 53

“Although under his capacious banner he gathers ferocious and faithless squads, he knows heaven’s hidden wish, so he foresees his end, the ruin and deaths, and the pain that will pierce his very heart. He is more prescient than their leader, Giovanissa, and still he goads and gathers people to a horrible fate. 54

“Other people come from Strigonia,63 Buda,64 and Alba.65 From Belgrade66 (where the Sava flows into the Danube, joining it to go to salty shores) there 57. The second longest river in Europe, flowing through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and the Ukraine. 58. An unknown river. 59. See canto 9, note 6. 60. Mountain range running through the modern-day Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and Romania. 61. See note 3 to octave 2. 62. Romanian city in the region of Transylvania. 63. Perhaps the city of Esztergom in Hungary. 64. The Western part of the Hungarian city and capital Budapest. 65. Perhaps a reference to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, known in Latin as “Rhutenia Alba.” 66. The capital of Serbia.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d come people who are greedy, unstable, yet courageous with their hands and soul. Nester leads and rules over them; he confuses Christ’s and Mohammad’s laws in his mind. 55

“Many have joined the king who left Byzantium before, when the Frankish leader entered it; also many who fled their army when it failed due to Enrico’s deeds. These have joined up with Giovanissa to go back to Greece with him, to renew their fight, to harm the Gauls and take revenge for their past anguish.”67 56

She continued: “Now he’s [Giovanissa] getting ready, believing that he’s bringing help to that lying Greek in his many dangers. In the past he hated him so much, but now he loves and is faithful to him to the point that he wants to share his glory with him. He thinks he can shore up that tottering royal seat, but his eyes are blind to the future. He fears Frankish and Italian armies, so he wants to have them far away. 57

“After reviewing his troops he will quickly start on his trip, either by land or by sea, depending on what he will like better or see more fitting to his wishes and to their progress. You must know that he won’t arrive, that the Latin winners will by then have entered the great city, after putting to flight (or to death) their enemies and capturing shores and ports.” 58

He said: “Through your knowledge, divine woman, I have seen all the world contains. Then please show me where Enrico’s handsome throne is, so that I can see if it’s happy or sad. I ask this great favor of you, so that I may become aware of the hard weight of his dangers, sweat, and toil, as well as of his glory and honor.” 67. As Thomas Madden explains, “around February 1205 Ioannitsa, long of the Vlachs and Bulgarians, struck an alliance with Byzantine lords in Thrace aimed at overthrowing the Latins” already ruling over the city. See Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice, 191. Marinella again manipulates the chronology of events in order to increase the valor and strength of the crusading armies.

Canto 22 59

She said: “Rejoice: soon you will see the Latin people getting ready for the ultimate fight—the one in which you will be vanquished, killed, and forever cursed, unjust king! You [Venice] won’t be able to protect your unvanquished body during the fight on that great day either: you will quickly die among those weapons, glorious and immortal, yet mortal and dead. 60

“See, Mysia68 and Moldova aren’t far from the Danube;69 their lands take up everything from that shore to the sea, to the sweet waves of the Dniester.70 Those rivers flow to the sea filled with gold, making fields fertile and plentiful with fruits. There is Greece, Thrace, and the Hellespont,71 whose shore is filled with beautiful flowers.” 61

The warrior recognized Barbiese, the running and low Cidaro River, the Propontis,72 and the Hellespont (which extinguished flames and warm desire of love).73 He saw the field where he had carried out famous deeds and made the Greeks pay a harsh penalty; he saw the proud towers and the seven tilled and soft hills that adorn Byzantium.74 62

Then he saw the white tents of his friends. He observed footmen and knights in full armor waiting impatiently, and their leader busy preparing those fierce souls for the ultimate battle. His generous heart lit up as fire takes to tinder; his warrior spirit burned with enthusiasm, and he wanted to jump directly from on high into that crowd. 68. See note 48 above. 69. See note 57 above. 70. See note 6 to octave 2. 71. See note 47 to octave 42. 72. For the Propontis, see canto 1, note 66. 73. A reference to the myth of Hero and Leander; see canto 1, note 64. 74. Istanbul is indeed built on several hills. Here Marinella refers to both the seven hills of Rome and to Byzantium as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire since early in the fifth century CE. It is yet another way in which Marinella contrasts this imperial feature with the republican principles espoused by her Venetian readers.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 63

She saw his fierce soul ablaze in his martial countenance, and she smiled broadly; then with a kind voice she uttered the following words with her beautiful mouth: “That fire of honor burns tears in you and eats at you to such a degree that you don’t care for what’s dear and beautiful (and there’s plenty of that in my royal home). 64

“Therefore, you’ll go among spears, swords, and well-reinforced shields where fierce Mars teaches the art of killing to hearts deprived of love and pity. Will you follow them on that path? Will you change your tender feelings into harsh and cruel ones? Will you deprive yourself of your humanity, and make your heart happy for other people’s pain?” [65–82: Erina showed Venier Greece, Germany, Sweden, Lapland, Finland, and Muscovy. Once back in her palace, she praised him and he thanked her; then he left on the same lion-drawn chariot. The Christian camp greeted his return with disbelief and joy.] S U M M A RY OF CA N T O 2 3

[The hermit Criso reassured Enrico of God’s support, explaining that trials and tribulations would make the ultimate success sweeter. Enrico and the entire army sent prayers to Mary to secure God’s good will and to resist hell. The crusaders then saw signs of God’s benevolence. They placed war machinery on their ships in order to attack by sea as well as by land. Meanwhile, the Byzantines too got ready for battle while waiting for Giovanissa’s troops. On the day of battle Enrico bestowed command of part of the army to his son Rainiero. The latter then offered prizes to the first three warriors to set foot inside the city. Wave upon wave of Christian soldiers attacked the walls, though many perished.]

FROM CANTO 24, FROM CANTO 25, A N D S U M M A RY O F C A N T O 2 6

[1–25: Finally, a new and more powerful ram managed to open a gate. Oronte and Venier and their men fought harshly until Venier was killed by one of Emilia’s arrows, leaving his men without a leader.] 26

Claudia went where furious Oronte was mangling and bloodying Venier’s squad; with a fearless heart filled with great boldness, she turned her courageous brow against him. With courage she prepared both her hands and her soul for battle, and now she delivered a harsh blow—so powerful that it made that cruel man bow his haughty head astride his horse. 27

He raised his head as fast as a tall tree lifts its wide foliage when roiled by a whirlwind. He seethed with rage, as the unparalleled and highly praised virtues in his heart grieved that a weak and soft woman had the heart, the courage, and the strength to dare to oppose his haughty behavior—and even the most famous people fled the field to escape it! 28

He said: “Enjoy it if you fall; dying is worthy of praise and of undying memory! You’re looking for honor, but you won’t scorn it if I give you death and eternal glory. It would have been better if you had stuck to womanly occupations rather than look for praise and victory among warriors! Unlike your sword, mine is not blunt or weak: when it wounds it knows how to wound and draw blood.”

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 29

After he stopped talking a sudden blow followed that echoed and resounded on her helmet, like roaring thunder follows lively and shining lightning among ragged clouds. At that powerful blow she lowered her head and fell, almost knocked out. But soon she rose; shame kindled a thousand fires of anger in her heart, if not more. 30

Fired by wrath she lifted her unsheathed sword, which came down with strength and speed. The Hyrcanian put up his shield against that blow, but it was too weak for her force, so it broke. Her cruel sword didn’t lose its force at that point; it came down hard, though it was losing strength; it wounded his thigh, a small cut that shed little blood on his handsome armor. 31

She said: “Look, great warrior, if my cutting sword is as blunt and weak as yours! You now know from experience how well it cuts and shears, as you often handle one; it’s its nature.” Like a fire pent up in a small space that cannot find an outlet and room for its fury, but in the end roars and shudders and opens up a way to turn any place to ruin, 32

similarly the disdainful fire that lay hidden and fierce in his heart came out of his eyes as she spoke with a trembling and hoarse voice. He quivered deeply like a famished wolf when he saw his armor and that spot become red with his blood, something he wasn’t accustomed to. He was close to going crazy as he knew that he had been wounded not by a man but by a woman warrior. 33

Maybe it was his good fortune, or that the duel was disturbed by the people fleeing about them; or maybe Claudia saw that the marquis’ life was in extreme danger in the burning battle, so that, regretfully, she turned and fled like a deer. However the case was, the great woman warrior could justly claim victory over a champion of his worth.1 1. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 32.

Canto 24 34

Meanwhile, people saw the Italians and the Franks flee a single warrior, covered in blood. Some died from many wounds; others raised their voices to ask for mercy; still others were fearful, pale, and vanquished, running about like crazed madmen. Claudia didn’t know who that warrior was, so she looked and observed to see who it was in that thick crowd. 35

She recognized Meandra from her banners and clothes but even more from her valor. She had given our soldiers not just deep anguish but death and horror by her strong hand. In turn, the Greek woman recognized Claudia, and both felt happiness in their heart, as they hoped to show in a horrific battle who was braver with her weapons.2 36

Claudia got closer to the place where that valiant woman was felling our warriors to the ground, and she hit her strongly; but her helmet, put together by a famous craftsman, protected her: she bent all the way to her steed’s neck and descended from it as that terrible and unexpected blow forced her to do. Stunned, she saw a hundred wandering lights and burning fires in that fateful place. 37

Like branches shoot up that a shepherd has bent into the ground for fun or to build something, similarly that woman got up and attacked her like a snake against one who has wrongly struck it. Claudia yelled: “Let’s leave everybody’s fight! I plead with you, let’s go somewhere else so that we can test each other with ease until victory or death.” 38

They picked a wide meadow quite close to the walls; a long row of marble seats stood along its sides, and it led to the royal palace and to the golden 2. True to their knightly calling, both women pine for a chance to show off their valor. This flies in the face of most preferred behaviors for early modern women, which prescribed a silent and self-effacing conduct, similarly to Ariosto’s Marfisa and Tasso’s Clorinda.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d door. They say that Constantine the Great, after extinguishing Massentius’s horrible anger,3 displayed his trophies in that very place. Both women liked it for it was hidden.4 39

A torrent leaves subterranean caves with less horrible fury when it steals herds, woods, and seeds in more than one place, all dark and gloomy. Fiery lightning encircled with clouds doesn’t come as fast as those two women,

3. In 312 CE, Constantine defeated the Roman emperor Massentius at the Battle of Ponte Milvio outside Rome. This battle is of cultural import as Constantine was a Christian and Massentius a pagan, so the former’s victory meant that Christianity was soon to become the prevalent religion in the Roman Empire. 4. As knights, Marinella’s two women warriors need to demonstrate their valor even when they are not observed. Clorinda and Tancredi’s battle in Gerusalemme liberata 12 also takes place in a secluded place. The most pertinent antecedent is undoubtedly the fight between Tancredi and Argante in canto 19 of the same poem, which takes place in a “narrow shaded valley lying among several hills, not otherwise than it were a theater, or had been enclosed for tournaments and hunts.” See Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, ed. and trans. Ralph Nash (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 410 (“ombrosa angusta valle / tra più colli giacer, non altrimenti / che se fosse un teatro o fosse ad uso / di battaglie e di caccie intorno chiuso,” 19.8.5–8). The combination of seclusion and display is akin to Marinella’s as it invokes the reader in his/her role as viewer. This chivalric notion of honor is explained by one speaker, Lodovico Canossa, in book 1 of The Courtier: addressing the issue of fighting, the courtier’s “first and true profession,” he notes that those who, even when they are sure they are not being observed or seen or recognized by anyone, are full of ardor and avoid doing anything, no matter how trivial, for which they would incur reproach, . . . possess the temper and quality we are looking for in our courtier. See Baldassar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1967), 58 (“quelli che ancor quanto pensano non dover essere d’alcuno né mirati, né veduti, né conosciuti, mostrano ardire e non lascian passar cosa, per minima ch’ella sia, che possa loro essere carico, hanno quella virtù d’animo che noi ricerchiamo nel nostro cortegiano”; Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, ed. Giulio Carnazzi [Milan: Rizoli, 1994], 73). The opposite view, asserting the need to be seen, equally finds its place in The Courtier. According to Federigo Fregoso, another interlocutor: Whenever the Courtier chances to be engaged in a skirmish or an action or a battle in the field, or the like, he should discreetly withdraw from the crowds, and do the outstanding and daring things that he has to do in as small a company as possible and in the sight of all the noblest and most respected men in the army, and especially in the presence of and, if possible, before the very eyes of his king or the prince he is serving. See Fabio Finotti, “Women Writers in Renaissance Italy,” in Strong Voices, Weak History, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 122 (“ritrovandosi il cortigiano nella scaramuzza o fatto d’arme o battaglia di terra o in altre cose tali, dee discretamente procurar di appartarsi dalla moltitudine e quelle cose segnalate ed ardite che ha da fare, farle con minor compagnia che po ed al conspetto de tutti i più nobili ed

Canto 24 now moving their hands and swords to take their revenge against each other. 40

With the courageous brow and fury of two lions burning with wrath and falling upon each other, they raised their visors; their clothes fluttered, their eyes shone with fiery courage, and their mouths foamed. Those two great souls went on the attack with perhaps more heart than Eremon when he cries scornfully, stirring the seas, when the winds have deprived him of his rest. 41

Their fierce swords rang here and there, now hitting to the right, then to the left; they tried to open a large path in the opponent’s mail or to take apart her plate. Swords aimed here, wounded there, going for a proud head, a chest, or the cheeks. Skill contested skill, and it was careful not to be separated from its shrewd actions. 42

Not seeing any of her enemy’s blood, Claudia was upset, stung, burning with scorn. Meandra meanwhile was pained at not seeing her sword leaving a memorable mark anywhere. With those thoughts fire and rage breathed into her, her strength increased, and her quick mind raced on, so she was crueler than ever before, and she moved her arms in novel and hateful manners. 43

Both women wished to send the other to Orcus’s dark kingdom.5 Neither one fled, avoided, or took a step back from that harsh rain of blows. Both women observed proudly and with care where their weapons could tear or penetrate, where the least defenses were, or where the armor was weakest in order to inflict a mortal wound. estimati omini che siano nell’esercito, e massimamente alla presentia e, se possibil è, inanzi agli occhi proprii del suo re o di quel signore a cui serve”; Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, 123). Marinella’s hidden location, like Tasso’s theater, are excellent equivalents of the ambiguous rules governing knights as well as courtiers in general. What Marinella does in this episode, however, is to extend the rules of knighthood to women. 5. In ancient mythology Orcus was another name for the underworld.

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While each one looked around to see if any place would open up to the sword, the Greek woman observed that her opponent’s white throat was poorly guarded, hidden, and covered. So she started directing her armed hand there all the time, exploiting every trick to catch it unguarded. Whether Claudia noticed this or not, she defended herself well from her enemy’s blows and indeed struck her back.

45

She hit her in the eyes and chest, but Corinth’s virgin [Meandra] pushed her sword especially where she saw warm snow throb. Nor did she give her time to breathe: such was her pursuit and chase! But the other one wasn’t any less impetuous: she sketched and faked her hits, trying in a thousand different ways to untie the famous knots of her life.

46

A wolf anguished, indeed vanquished, by hunger plagues a herd at night, plotting against it, going around it ready for slaughter; it howls, and its noise awakens its hunger even more. In the same manner this woman, whose heart was bound with iron, rained blows on her cruel enemy, causing her pain, trying and attempting here and there to find an opening into her armored cover with her sharp sword.

47

The tenacious Greek woman had not forgotten the riskiest place. She pushed her sword where white ivory opened up a path to cold death, and the hit took off her [Claudia’s] helmet. The wound was such that the sword came out of her blonde neck, simultaneously cutting off her beautiful hair. The Italian damsel then moved again and inflicted a new wound on Meandra.

48

She tore her rich garment and mesh mail, sinking her fateful sword deep into her soft side: the anguished Thracian woman thus discovered the harsh

Canto 24 ending to their battle, and the stunned world saw and knew their worth in battle. Both fell, and both enjoyed the honors of victory and praise.6 49

If fate does not envy your valor, if heaven is not enemy to your clear merits, a rough pen and lowly ink will lead you to the open field of immortality. Yet the clarity of your light doesn’t need that, so I work in vain: you, highest damsels, shine by yourselves, and the sun is dark next to you.7 [50–102: Meanwhile, several gates gave way, and the crusaders rushed into Byzantium, plundering it and killing many citizens. Enrico planted the Venetian standard onto the wall. Mirtillo tried rallying his troops, so the battle continued until, seeing no other way out, Mirtillo took refuge in a fortified tower. Baldovino and Bonifatio wanted to pursue him and vanquish him as soon as possible, but Enrico showed mercy and ordered that all fighting stop. Then he went back to camp and cried over Venier’s body. That night the Christian army banqueted to celebrate their impending victory. The following day a funeral was held for Venier, and Enrico and his peers deliberated how to proceed.] F R OM CA N T O 25

[1–41: Esone jumped into a fire and to his death. Ermete appeared to Alessio in a dream, unveiling the crusaders’ victory and urging him to flee further away. As dawn approached, carts filled with dead and wounded soldiers entered the town to which Alessio had fled; he saw them and believed his dream. While he was stunned and unable to decide what to do, a fleeing soldier came announcing that Alessio’s palace had fallen. He then took off with a small entourage.]

6. Virginia Cox points out that unlike Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (where in canto 12 Clorinda is defeated and killed by Tancredi), Marinella has the two women warriors battle each other and find death at each other’s hands, so that no male warrior can vanquish either of them. See Cox, “Fiction 1560–1650,” 61. 7. In a rhetorical move common to both men and women writers in the early modern period, in this octave Marinella denigrates the worth of her writing skills and declares her inadequacy measured against her heroines’ innate valor. Indirectly, however, she is also drawing attention to her role as writer and immortalizer of these women warriors’ deeds. Additionally, we have yet another example of direct address to a female character (see 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, and 18.26); this time it involves two characters at once, and pays homage to their courage and fame-worthy deeds.

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. . . Like a crazed and shameless woman, Eudocia harbored fear and love in her heart. She didn’t see the messenger, so she didn’t know about that unhappy triumph of death. She said to herself: 43

“I have no news of you, my dear, but I left the dearest part of my soul with you when I left my beloved land in my native Greece. The light has disappeared from these eyes without you, my sun. What power or craft will I be able to utilize so that I can see the state of my Mirtillo, be it troubled or quiet? 44

“When will it be? When will the day come that I see your serene air, adorned with grace and beauty, and even more full of high praise and valor? When will my soul come back to my anguished heart?” While she moaned, someone else unveiled to her the unhappy occurrences, feeling sorry for her. 45

She heard about the extreme danger of Thrace, how its squads were wounded and killed, how Byzantium was captured, and how the king took his old bones into exile elsewhere. To be absolutely certain, she decided to call a thousand or more spirits out of the Tartarean court8—those who harshly rule over dead souls in the eternal fire of hell. 46

She knew how to, because she had seen the dark deities of hell appear at Esone’s words, while a dark veil hid the sun’s face and thus took away from the world the beauty that it sheds on it. At the same time the golden songs of the stars came to a halt, mountains moved, and rivers flowed together. She became so enamored that in a short while she studied that craft and became as learned in it as he was.

8. That is, the kingdom of Tartarus. See canto 10, note 3.

Canto 25 47

Now she wanted to see if she (like he) could learn the ending to those events, nothing short of the conclusion of the great war brought on by the Latin camp and what heaven had arranged. She quickly moved her beauty from there to a dark and scary place,9 where people in pain used to offer eternal rest to their weak bodies. 48

Though scornful, she moved her snowy white foot among dark tombs, gathering bones off dead corpses and wrapping them in a short tie with magical notations on it. Soon afterward she untied her soft blonde hair so that it fell over her white shoulders. Then she rode on a white steed, going from mountain to mountain, with sadness in her heart and darkness over her brow.10 49

By the light of a cold moon and the stars she dug up with a sacred scythe an evil herb that sprouts on goatskins and on the Pindos.11 She moved her hand swiftly to carry out this evil action, scattering ashes from inauspicious fires to complete what she wished to do. Then she went back to Elopis, and prepared to carry out her charm in a solitary place. 50

She chose a wide cave deep inside a mountain. It was large and capacious, with little and faint light coming in from only one side; above and around its edge was rough marble, and a river of bitter and sulphur-rich water flowed nearby. A cloud of vapor almost wafted from its black foam only to fall back down in the thick air, to make the Stygian wave12 larger by flowing into it. 9. That is, she went there; her “beauty” is her body. 10. The whiteness of her skin, a typical attribute of the beloved woman in lyrical poetry in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, contrasts here with Eudocia’s role as magician and enemy. 11. A mountain range in Greece. 12. One of the four rivers of the underworld in ancient mythology (with Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegeton). It also recurs in Dante’s Inferno 8; there it is the river that separates Upper from Lower Hell.

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She washed her beautiful body with that foul water, then she gathered all that was necessary to her charm in that cave where the air made the place dark and dull. When night gathered a noble crowd of stars to start new dances, she went into that dark place, urging hell with her words and prayers to explain what was hidden. 52

With her words she fastened magic knots by the fast-flowing river. With her terrible voice she soiled and troubled the clear and serene face of the sky. She moved her feet around the bones and herbs that she had gathered, wearing no shoes, all troubled, naked, dark, and wild. She called spirits accustomed to an eternal night out of the Tartarean grottoes.13 53

With terrible countenance she invoked and called forth an unjust spirit from the darkest and deepest recess. She made many sacrifices and called it out time and time again so that it might not hide the truth, so that her sad heart might know what she wanted to know about Thrace, and so that it might finally answer her prayers. Though the spirit didn’t comply with Pluto’s vows,14 still, because of her tears, it made known to her what happened. 54

“What do you ask for, daughter of a king? The love that burns in your soul compels you to force me from the cave of hell, so that I may grant your wish with my words. But it’s far better that I go back where I belong and keep silent, so that I won’t wound your beautiful heart with bad news.” As it spoke thus, it turned its back to her to return to its sorrowful dwelling. 55

She held it back, catching its hand, saying: “Stop friend, stop; make known to me what happened to Thrace and to my lord, be it good or bad! Tell me 13. See canto 10, note 3. 14. For Pluto, see canto 9, note 20.

Canto 25 if he defended his beloved land, and have no fear that bad news will cause my heart anguish: not knowing one’s misfortune helps little, while knowing it, although a source of anguish, makes us wiser.” 56

“I speak, forced by your pleading prayers and the welcome sacrifices that you made. I don’t want to tell you, but the Greeks are wounded and killed, and Enrico is the winner. The land is laid to waste, plaintive cries are heard, the friendly wall is captured, the duke [Mirtillo] is under siege inside the tower, and the Mysian leader [Giovanissa] still hasn’t come to his rescue. 57

“When he arrives to help your side and to bring his great efforts for gold, he will be wounded in battle, all his soldiers will die on the field, and he will flee covered with scorn. Mirtillo, after seeing all this, will leave the Roman shore fearing the Franks, walking incognito and in pain for the great damage that he will witness. 58

“His secret escape will then become known, when terrified of the Venetian armies he looks for another country in which to hide, after his own has overthrown him. He will be banished everywhere, and he will flee the Italian offense he fears so, finally retiring to the most hidden parts of Mysia,15 hidden and unknown to all human knowledge. 59

“What good is it to hide in the most remote and solitary parts of Egypt, or among jagged rocks where Borea16 sheds a white veil over its bleak cheeks, if a great God has decided to punish one’s mistakes openly and resoundingly? God will make him known with his finger, wherever he’s enclosed, holed up, and hidden.

15. For Mysia, see canto 22, note 48. 16. For Borea, see canto 5, note 27.

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“Terris de Los17 follows him, spies on his comings and goings, and observes his steps. Finally, he approaches him, captures him, and binds him. Already he’s destined to a harsh penance and to his ultimate ruin, having lost all hope for his kingdom and for a reprieve. You see over there how the traitor leads him to Baldovino, the Frankish leader: he has reached the end of his miserable and ugly days. 61

“You know where the square of the bull lies in Byzantium; there a winding column rises tall and sublime, such that it dares to reach for the sky with its uppermost part. It is Theodosius’s pomp,18 but his statue doesn’t sit on its top any longer, as the wind toppled it to the ground. Its center is empty now, and the sides are covered with reliefs of an unknown story. 62

“A foreseeing soul to whom the gods bestowed knowledge of the future must have carved those images! I believe, and you might remember, perhaps, that among those figures you could see a king with a crown fall from the height of the column to the ground. Alas, Mirtillo is that very one who falls precipitously and strikes the ground below.19 63

“Wearing the humblest of clothes and bound like a vile thief, he will be made to ascend to the top of that column; from there he will be forced to leap from it. How much the Venetians and the Gauls will rejoice at his 17. There is no known crusading fighter by this name, nor is this character mentioned previously in the poem. “De los,” however, was a Flemish name; the abbot Simon de Loos was a follower of Baldwin of Flanders. See Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 85–86. 18. Theodosius the Great was emperor of the eastern Roman Empire from 379 to 392, then of both its eastern and western parts from 392 to his death in 395. 19. The obelisk of emperor Theodosius stands in Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, built on the site of the ancient hippodrome. It is similar to Rome’s Trajan column as it narrates the deeds of its namesake in bas-reliefs that unfold diagonally around it. Historically, it was Alexius who was made to jump to his death, not the fictional Mirtillo. See Godfrey, 1204, 138; Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, 286; and Ernle Bradford, The Great Betrayal: Constantinople 1204 (London: Hoddon and Stroughton, 1967), 190.

Canto 25 death! This will be the end of a powerful king who led empires and ruled over many people. 64

“His noble limbs will then be shameful food and bait for dogs and birds of prey; it will be a toy for those enemies who won’t mind such evil games. But the king of Mysia [Giovanissa] will return against those Latin armies that rebelled against us and whose haughtiness grew all the time; he will take away Baldovino’s peace. 65

“If you want to find out about that miserable man who deprived his brother of his life,20 he will fall prey to Bonifatio. The latter will lead him to Baldovino not as a king, captain, or leader, but as an enemy, deprived of royal emblems and of his sword, and as a servant. With Baldovino he will be subject to trials and tribulations. 66

“He will then be led to Monferrato,21 where he will spend his days weaker and more unhappy than anyone else, anguished and chained. No happy Dawn will shed light on that black darkness; he will never see the sky again, forever in a dungeon! The dark root of all his discomfort will be his betrayal of his careless brother and his stealing of his kingdom.” 67

A hellish spirit explained thus the unknown future; it granted her wish but in doing so it troubled her sad heart. As it produced what the future hid in its bosom, she quickly paced the whole dark and deep cave without any hope. With silent tears and moans she tied her wings to swift winds. 68

She didn’t cry, but her graceful face that was once pretty and adorned with a comely smile suddenly turned into a horrible, cruel, dark, and fearful 20. That is, Alessio, the cause of the Venetian and Frankish intervention (see canto 1, note 1). 21. An area in the region of Piedmont in northwestern Italy.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d image. Her eyes used to be a sweet, much-beloved dwelling place for happy Love, where he lived satisfied; now they were more terrible than the fateful, cloudy, and black flame of Megara.22 69

Phineus wasn’t as lost and astonished in the great palace of the Ethiopian king when Minerva persuaded him to unveil to Perseus Medusa’s grim appearance as Eudocia was.23 When she reached her customary dwelling place, she tore out her hair and scratched her chest, yelling all the way to the stars and upsetting the air around her with tears—but none of this healed her pain. 70

“Mirtillo, these are the fruits and flowers of our sweet but unlucky love: escapes, shame, insults, and wrongs! In the past our love gave us joy and comfort! Are these the victories and the true honors that we are handed, soul of my heart? Damned be the day when the faithless Italians and their weapons reached our shores!” 71

Then she was quiet, lying on her bed cold, pierced, and vanquished by an intense pain. She didn’t moan or sigh, she was immobile and silent, and her eyes were closed: she looked completely dead. But fury and scorn awakened her lively spirit; her oppressed and anguished soul didn’t want to go on living, since bitter fate gave her dear lover such a bitter end. 72

She added loud sighs to her groans, then like a madwoman she picked up a sword to kill herself; she pricked her chest, but her tired arm felt repentance, so that her anger didn’t reach inside her white ivory; it barely hurt her tender snow, but a little vermilion was shed, looking like roses among white lilies.24 22. For Megara, see canto 10, note 32. 23. Phineus was brother of the Ethiopian king Cepheus, originally betrothed to Andromeda before she was given in marriage to Perseus. He attacked Perseus’s wedding feast and was petrified by the sight of Medusa’s head. The story is recounted in Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.1ff. 24. The whiteness of Eudocia’s skin (likening her to ivory and snow, in keeping with the topoi of lyrical poetry) is contrasted with the redness of her blood; the color and the simile (roses) that usually pertain to the beloved’s lips and cheeks are here ascribed to her blood.

Canto 25 73

A burning ruby together with white pearls would be a base analogy for her beautiful chest pricked and wounded by that beautiful hand, once the noble dwelling place of a sweet love. She was anguished that heaven had put her in such a place, so far away from her beloved. She would only be content to live with him or to die happy. 74

Is it not right that the tears, moans, sighs, and words of a woman stop me here, if they can stop the steps of the sun along the path of the sky for a long while? They will not persuade me to avoid turning my song to the heavy burden of a grave business: the business that weighed down on her dear beloved and all the others that were surrounded in the castle.25 [75–78: Mirtillo hoped for little, but he tried to rally his men by invoking Giovanissa’s help, thought to be close at hand.] S U M M A RY OF CA N T O 2 6

[At the break of dawn, the Byzantines who had taken refuge in the tower rejoiced, seeing Giovanissa and his army approaching. Enrico held the crusaders back from an immediate battle: he wanted them to fight during the day and in a well-organized manner. He prepared his troops for battle with a rousing speech. Meanwhile, Giovanissa readied his own army and gave them heart with his own speech. An eagle carrying a mangled poisonous snake in its beak appeared; the Mysians took it as a bad omen. Emero told them to disregard it and to fight valiantly. During the battle Enrico was wounded but fought on. Elpidio was in turn gravely wounded, then taken back to camp, while Giacinto tried to avenge him. Baldovino and many other knights on both sides showed their prowess and courage; many also died on both sides.] 25. In this transitional octave Marinella seems to apologize for the relatively lengthy attention accorded to a woman, and an enemy to boot, before moving on to the weightier matter, the Greeks under siege in the citadel. In so doing, she underscores the power of women’s weapons, usually considered weak and ineffective: “tears, moans, sighs, and words.”

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S U M M A RY

The horrendous fight continued. Plautio fell, killed in a close struggle. Strong Oronte believed that Mysia’s camp was beaten, and he feared being paralyzed when facing the Latins. Emilia directed her arrows against Enrico but in vain. Mirtillo and Giovanissa feared servitude and shame. Finally, Enrico gained victory as well as glory in fighting. 1

Until then Oronte had observed the horrible fight enclosed in that tall castle. That proud man wished to be in it, but Mirtillo opposed his going. Oronte was upset with heaven and his king, upbraiding himself because he couldn’t take someone else’s rule or having his wishes denied. 2

He quit procrastinating, put on his armor, and wore his sharp sword on his strong hip. His eyes showed the fire he felt in his heart, and it seemed as though he had terror in his gaze when he showed himself to others in the dark of night. His eyes were terrible torches, shedding rays or lightning death; in their anger and disdain they troubled souls and transformed kingdoms and states. 3

Like a courageous lion that’s been taken from its native woods, enclosed in a cage, and mocked by children, his inborn anger awoke, and he shook like he was wont to do. He haughtily walked around, wishing to break the

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d strong chains that held him. He didn’t want freedom but only to extinguish his anger in other people’s tears. 4

Like a brave dog that wants to attack a careless bull and struggles, writhes, barks, roars, wails, tries to undo strong knots, and raises angry yells, similarly Oronte was bound by the ties of his king’s wish. He seemingly couldn’t find peace or rest, as his hot spirits burned with anger and disdain and he couldn’t be still. 5

He came down from the castle in a hurry, driven by a wish that guided him to his goal; he resembled a hunted boar that gives the world fear and terror. When he reached the field of battle and looked around, his natural fury boiled and spilled out even more; he swam in the blood and among those with weapons, looking like a new terror among the torn-off limbs.1 6

A desperate wish carried him onward: he wanted to repel the Franks from that land before the sun hid its face, sweaty and tired for its toil, in the sea. Otherwise Oronte wished that a cruel hand might take his soul with a sword, so that he would fall and die, leaving behind at least the eternal prize of glory for his generosity and ardor. 7

Never has a wolf attacked with such anger a simple herd of goats or oxen! Wherever Oronte arrived, there he inflicted mortal wounds, racked, rent, wounded, opened up, and damaged. No power equaled his own, no rage came close to his fury, and no cruelty was on a par with his own after his arrival. Already a river of blood had started flowing.

1. The numerous and singularly concentrated animal-based similes, along with the adjective “natural,” underscore Oronte’s wild and untamed character, ready to go against his ruler’s wishes. This is in contrast to the rational and obedient nature of Venetian fighters, who implicitly recognize the wisdom of Enrico’s counsel and decisions and follow them. In this Oronte is similar to Agrismeta in Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide (see 9.47 and 9.58).

Canto 27 8

He saw Giovanni di Neel throwing the king of the Cicons2 on the ground; so he dropped everything and hurried to reach him, spurring his fast steed. But he couldn’t catch him, so he took his revenge on Giovanni’s brother, Armano, whom he killed. With two wounds he removed that dear soul from the body of one who wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps. 9

You, Giovanni, would be lying next to your much-beloved brother Armano dead by his [Oronte’s] hand; you’d be a vanquished trophy for his unvanquished hand. Except that the faithful Deulichio saved you from that strange hovering blow by deflecting it onto himself: he fell for you and now he enjoys having gained the true praise of true affection.3 10

Like a large ball that’s tossed and moved about by strong and muscled arms—bouncing and rebounding and going around people’s feet that hit and tumble it looking for a new direction—in the same manner the man from Hyrcania4 spent his insurmountable strength. He wounded cruelly here, and he threatened there, leaving everywhere a new law for his cruel wishes and inhuman shapes. 11

From the highest part of the great castle Mirtillo turned his eyes to the armed squads. He saw that wretched game of battle, wounded people, and pitiless actions. He also saw fire burning in the city, as well as craziness and cruelty in the neighborhoods. He realized that his own death was to be found among that misery, and he cried to heaven.

2. According to book 4 of the Odyssey, the Cicons were a tribe in eastern Thrace. 3. This second-person address (one of a handful to a male character: see 1.29, 5.3, 8.107, and 27.79) stands out because, rather than eliciting sympathy for the character with Marinella’s readers, it sternly reminds Giovanni of Deulichio’s selfless sacrifice and of Giovanni’s need to be thankful and to honor his companion as well as his own dead brother Armano. 4. That is, Oronte. Hyrcania is a satrapy (administrative unit) of the Persian Empire, bound by the Caspian Sea and the Amudarja River.

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Then he saw Oronte handle and maneuver his weapons in the middle of spears and swords. Few came close to him; he was filling the streets with dead bodies, making room around himself as one was wounded, another one hit, a third one dead in that horrible dwelling place of death. His chest was pierced by noble envy as he wished to be among those dangers. 13

So he quickly left the castle with Brana, with Emanuel’s nephew, and with Ismael’s son. He wanted to do what wise advice from nature and virtue allowed him in that final circumstance. He cared little for himself, as he advanced shaking his tall spear. Soon he made the ground red with Flemish blood and he felled many, going in precisely where the enemies were thicker. 14

He thought he’d do what Jove’s lightning does: the closer it is to a cloud, the fiercer and crueler it is in the damage it wreaks. He really believed in this! Twirling his sword about, he got rid of many people, including Olivier Roccaforte, Hervil (son of Gualtier Grandoville), one Guido, and one Polo. 15

With one movement of his sword he felled Guglielmo, cutting the thread of his life.5 He killed Novellone from the Island of France, that is, the center of the kingdom;6 Novellone was sacred to God, and thanks to a divine fire he had foreseen the ending of Greece as well as the day of his death. Still, he came to war instead of staying away from it. 16

Elsewhere Rainiero hit a delicate and handsome youth in his chest. He was a cousin of Giovanissa who had gathered a double squad of knights. He [Rainiero] was so angry that he broke his knots and hit him in the middle 5. This is a reference to the mythological metaphor of a person’s destiny as a thread that was picked up, spun, and cut by the three Parcae. 6. The area around Paris is indeed called Île de France.

Canto 27 of his chest; the other fell unconscious, a dark cloud over his eyes, and he died prematurely. 17

The cruel news reached the king’s ear that his friend and relative had died, how, and by whose hand. He was speechless, caught in that fatal tangle of death. Sad tears flowed from his eyes on his distressed face, then he called out to his Italian enemy, following their steps, almost crazed. But the enemy didn’t hear him, busy as it was destroying his camp far away. 18

One could see a cruel and fearsome fight born between Torrismondo7 and Baldovino; the air hissed and shrieked close to their spears engaged in quick strikes. Both eluded their mortal destiny by moving sideways and protecting themselves with their shields against the twirling motion of those sharp swords. One would only seldom see them deprived of shield or weapons. 19

But the Frank had had enough of his cover, and he struck Torrismondo next to his eyes in such a way that he hit his steed with his head, his eyes deprived of all ability to see: all he could see were dark circles. While he was getting up, Baldovino hit him with a deadly wound in the belly. Young wolf that he was, neither his spoils nor his hard armor protected him from the greedy wishes of his ultimate fate. 20

His people, in the clutches of blind fear, went fleeing here and there, without a reason, amid the blood, among weapons and ruined equipment—nothing could delay their flight! But they fell on bloodless corpses and wounded limbs, one on top of the other; not one out of twenty could get up again, and they were left there to be kicked and bitten by horses. 7. The namesake of Torquato Tasso’s tragedy (1573–86), where he hails from Norway. Marinella presumably utilizes it here as an exotic name for a strong enemy, as Sarrocchi does in Scanderbeide 9.19.

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Fausto saw that the man from Monferrato8 was fighting in the crowd without his steed, so he thought he could send him tumbling on the ground by bumping him with his horse. But the other one took a step back and avoided his attack, grabbing the horse by its bridle, jumping on it, and sitting in Fausto’s saddle. Fausto was shaken by that stealthy move and said: “I only ask for my life; I yield to you, let my voice be heard. 22

“My beloved father’s gold and silver will be your reward and recompense for my life; I give myself to you as a servant, and in your generosity and grace give this miserable prisoner your steadfast trust.” As he said this he willingly gave up the iron that his strong arm held. So the other one eased his anger and lost the scorn he felt for one worthy of his pity. 23

He added: “I readily give up to you, the greatest light of virtue in all Italy. I don’t want to fight (a warrior who’s been vanquished knows that he doesn’t have a right to that); I’m not even defending myself.” The other one magnanimously replied: “I don’t have such evil desires or customs; I won’t harm one who asks for his soul; you can have your life, and you’ll lead it serenely with me, though you’ll be a prisoner.” 24

Fear of death and the sight of such a large army coming to such an end deprived Fausto of all haughtiness, and he yielded to the winner. The kind marquis added him to the other Greeks, then he turned to chase after other weak and sad people on the run. He captured all those and led them to his tents. 25

Meanwhile, Giacinto gave ample proof of his valor among enemy throngs. Siface saw him and turned his sword against him. But his actions weren’t up 8. An area in the region of Piedmont in northwestern Italy. The man from Monferrato is Baldovino.

Canto 27 to his wishes: he only scattered the crest above the helmet on the Latin’s head! So the latter turned angrily against that evil man, who fled. 26

But his escape, though quick, was too slow vis-à-vis the flight of the fast Italian! The latter broke his weapons with his sword and with strong hands; not one blow was in vain! Giacinto’s anger burned; he took him down from his saddle with his strong hands, laid him on the ground, and separated his head from his shoulders with the same sword with which he had killed so many before. 27

Giacinto then lightly jumped on the opponent’s steed that perhaps was awaiting a nobler weight; he laid the Serbians to the ground, and they exhaled their souls in the already red dirt. Everyone fled him, as they didn’t want to test the fierce assault of his sword. He then saw someone getting ready to kill Enrico, who hid from other people’s eyes almost like wind. 28

“The time has come for me to tear you to pieces mercilessly, and my heart rejoices” he said. “Neither your quick feet nor your tricks will be of use to you, deceptive and impious Greek. I will hang your weapons in a temple for my perpetual praise and your shame,9 and I will free the world of a pest, so it will be prettier and happier than before. 29

“Having pity on you is a grave sin!” That evil man foresaw his destiny, trembled, and asked for mercy; he prayed, he feared, he hugged his knees, and he kissed his foot. But Giacinto had closed all paths to clemency, and he pierced his chest with cruelty, bothered by Greek tricks and by the many outrages and damages they had done.

9. Enemy weapons were offered to churches as thanks to the deity for being propitious in battle, and they were displayed there temporarily or permanently.

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The camp was routed; only Oronte maintained spirit and strength in a body that was weak and dying. Through his example he caused others to revive, as he offered hope and comfort to those without hope. Tired Amair from Orliens10 realized that the Hyrcanian [Oronte] was close to him; passing out with fear, he the winner asked the vanquished for his life, but the latter pierced him with his spear, so he moaned and died. 31

That courageous warrior fell to the ground, almost dead and already vanquished. What a terrible fate, alas! He lifted his arm three times, and he placed his hand on his head, saying: “A cruel iron belonging to a luckier and more ferocious hand is not far from you; it will pluck you and kill you, and you will march to that victory with little pride, Godless warrior.” 32

The other replied: “I have my doubts that I’ll fall down, but you, on the other hand, will certainly lie and become food for hungry birds. The future is uncertain, and only God knows it; you are talking to me like an idiot. May the shadow of death come over you now; I’ll go looking for some among your brothers to keep you company on the ground, so that a disloyal Frank may not lie by himself.” 33

He took off, intending to stop only when he had found Armento; he was like an angry tiger that fills the air with high shrieks in a leafy wood or in the shadows of an enclosed valley. I couldn’t say how many he stepped or walked on, or how he freed up the path around himself; the tireless work of a pitiless man is beyond belief. 34

That good man from Vicenza11 saw that the king of Strava [Oronte] was tearing apart and conquering the Latin camp. With a fearful and wicked blow 10. That is, Orléans, city in north central France. 11. City in northeast Italy, not far inland from Venice. As the rest of the octave make clear, the man from Vicenza is Plautio.

Canto 27 to the head Oronte felled Alcon from his steed, and while Alcon was falling he heaped insults and bitter words on him. He didn’t realize, though, that Plautio was right above him with his indignant brow and harsh manner. 35

He said: “Give up, you famous one, to our valor: you defend this city and kingdom in vain. May your fury yield to our reasons! You’ll gain glory if you agree to become my prisoner.” When Aquilone12 and Ostro13 blow, you don’t see dry harvests burn as quickly in the hidden fire set by an enemy and an envious hand 36

as the scorn and spite burning in the Hyrcanian’s face in a quick moment: “What are you offering to me, you idiot? Greece would sooner see me dead than cowardly and useless! If the world and heaven are my enemies, if my wishes are met with the opposite result, at least I’ll see your head on the ground, a little revenge for all these deaths and this war. 37

“Your cheekiness, your haughty brow (encircled by battlements and defensive works like a fortress) will show Oronte’s glory and valor when they lie under his feet! The rest of your limbs (like the mountain on which that fortress stands) will not be covered by dirt or mercy; they will become food for dogs! You’ll pay the price for your impudence with your death.” 38

When the sky bends a poor tiller’s entire hope for harvest to the ground and then kills it with a hard freeze and lightning, while a whole host of boisterous winds joust with each other with sharp weapons drawn, it doesn’t roar with such burning resentment as that Latin man trembled at Oronte’s proud voice. His fearful chest lit up.

12. For Aquilone, see canto 5, note 20. 13. A warm and humid wind that blows from the south (also called “Austro”: see 21.57).

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Fate pushed those two warriors into battle; their strength was even and their valor similar. Their hearts harbored cruelty, courage, and wildness; their bodies were huge, and their hearts more than manly. Lightning and tall plumage sat on their helmets, their souls never bent to humble deeds, and both were called scourges and fear of armies. 40

Two thick bears burning with anger approach each other ready for a great battle; standing on their hind legs they roar and take turns grabbing each other with their open claws. Many valleys echo with their shrieks; wide woods lie down humbly to the moving winds in the air; then you see the ground covered with blood and fur—and that’s just the beginning of a horrible and uncertain fight. 41

Those two looked like that. When they started clashing, caves and mountains echoed their noise, the sun lost its much-recounted beauty, and the icy bears tried to slip into the ocean.14 As soon as they stopped their threats and mutual name-calling, their hands went for their weapons; the air around roared, and their swords looked like lightning as they fell. 42

Resentment, wrath, and envy moved their swords. Their shields proved useless and their craft powerless, for their fearless display of crazed passion broke into and tore up their armor and their bodies. Swords echoed here and there, and wherever they hit they were soiled with blood, as was the ground around them. Few weapons could put up any defense against such enemy hatred. 43

They never struck in vain: their swords got more red with each blow. The knight from Hyrcania raised his sword and pushed it in the Latin’s right side. 14. This is a reference to the Great and Little Bears (or “Ursa major” and “Ursa minor”), constellations in the northern hemisphere. Since the tail of the Little Bear is the polestar (a star that is nearly vertical to the North Pole), Marinella uses the term “icy.”

Canto 27 It wasn’t a mortal blow, but still it was severe and unexpected, and it painted red the grass all around. Who will say how his anger grew even greater, and how he bit his hands and lips in pain? 44

On the sandy beach of Libya, under a warm sun, a pitiless snake with his mouth full of fateful poison looks around him with horrible harm; it bites into the foot of a careless passerby, adding its poison to another recent one and its hatred to another’s, getting his death ready in its bites and in its eyes. 45

Similarly that man, led by the fury that fierce nature instilled in him since birth, lifted his naked arm immeasurably high, then he struck a lethal blow. It shattered and split the other’s helmet, which was protecting his head. That mortal wound shed all his haughty pomp, and yet his resentment held his soul attached to his heart and veins. 46

If it hadn’t been for that, he would have fallen to the ground, vanquished by that mortal blow. The man from Vicenza was stunned as he saw that he hadn’t been killed by such a blow. Oronte noticed his hesitation, and he quickly threw his shield at his face with great strength. He messed up his face, took out his left eye, and turned his nose inward. 47

That courageous hero didn’t lose his valor; he repressed his bitter pain inside his chest. His bravery overcame that moment of distress, and his firm will overcame that cruel occurrence. He shot an arrow, and it pierced through the iron armor that wrapped and defended his [Oronte’s] chest, so that its purple tip showed in the back, warm with blood. 48

He fell like a huge tower on which Jupiter hurls a triple dose of his fiery thunder: it comes down and pulls down from its high top, lifting a ruinous noise, a rough and harsh sound, in the air. When that happens, the area

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d on which the tower stands shakes for quite a while. Similarly, when the famous mortal remains of that champion15 fell, a great space rightly welcomed them. 49

He hit the ground with great pain, cursing the ruler of the highest sphere [God] and what his goodness had done, and threatening that cruel Latin. His harsh and warrior-like mind didn’t yield, and it was obvious that it didn’t, even though someone else had vanquished him. While he [Oronte] was falling, Plautio’s chest was pierced by a sharp arrow that delivered a mortal wound. 50

That high hero tumbled down because of that blow and many other merciless and inhuman blows; the seven hills around and even some further away echoed with his fall. That wound, inflicted by unknown hands, brought about his last day. Scornful Oronte, himself almost at his end, lay next to him with a furrowed brow. 51

When he was alive he showed himself impatient, implacable, and haughty all the time. He also proved himself no less strong or superb or wild than any other warrior. Similarly, when he was breathing his last he showed himself formidable, severe, threatening, cruel, and filled with pride as he was pushing his ferocious soul to the threshold to hell. 52

The great valor of the lord of Strava didn’t vanquish Plautio, nor did it remove him from his steed. Conversely, Plautio’s valor brought about his victory against Oronte and his famous army. It was Emilia who vanquished Plautio. She had picked an arrow among many sharp ones in order to gain sweet praise for taking a noble revenge on that sublime man.

15. For “champion,” see canto 5, note 32.

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Both lay down like huge oak trees pulled up from the Hircinian or Erimanto’s woods16 killed by a sudden gust of Aquilone17—what a grievous boast for it! Among the thick crowds in the two armed camps one could hear some shriek and others cry for those two warriors, who (when alive) were the salvation and rescue of their men. 54

That fierce virgin [Emilia] took the great honor of killing that man, more courageous and stronger than the others; but she didn’t want the unhappy fate of the man from Hyrcania to gain her some praise. Meanwhile, Fame went to the king, bringing news of Oronte’s atrocious death;18 he cried for the irreparable death of that famous and worthy man as well as of that kingdom. 55

Then he saw the royal banner on the ground, and Tarconte was next to it with downcast face. Because his king had no faith in victory, he seemed to bite his mother’s limbs19 in his pain. Giovanissa’s strong army lay on the ground, and the French army killed and took apart others, so that the greatest in the field were deprived of all salvation. 56

Victory flew happy throughout the Latin camp, handing laurels and crowns to the winners as signs of their valor;20 Victory saw that those unvanquished souls were the salvation of the kingdom. On the other side the captain saw

16. Mount Eryx in Sicily, where Venus (Erycinia) had a temple, was famed for its woods (see Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.363); perhaps Marinella refers to it here in slightly different form. Erimanto was a mountain in the Greek region of Arcadia, covered in thick woods. 17. For Aquilone, see canto 5, note 20. 18. Yet another use of Fame not as Rumor or as the goddess who ensures eternal life to glorious deeds; here she is simply the announcer of bad news. 19. As our “mother,” in Marinella’s vocabulary, is earth, Tarconte is face down on the ground. 20. Regarding crowns of laurel, see canto 22, note 29.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d that his best support was dead; he felt pain for his loss and regretted that he hadn’t followed Emero’s advice.21 57

Mirtillo considered whether he could bring any help to his land under those final circumstances, so that he might lift it out of that low insult and prevent the enemy from biting a chunk out of it. Though he was fully deprived of hope, still his heart harbored that new thought. He went where Emilia was, and he sweetly revealed to her the new desire that his chest enclosed. 58

“Daughter, glory of the woods, honor, and weapons, radiance of the field; Phoebus22 and the three-shaped goddess23 yield to you, and it seems to me that the sky doesn’t have as beautiful a light as you. I pray you that your hand pick up a weapon against the destroyer of our seat of power. Don’t let your bow launch horrible arrows in vain, slim virgin. 59

“If you do this, if we see haughty Enrico fall to the ground thanks to your sharp and swift arrows, you’ll have prizes and glory from unvanquished peoples and courageous armies. If he dies, his people will flee, and our side will recover its strength and power.” She heard him and prepared her arrow, awaiting that leader who was defending the Greeks with his shrewd strategy. 60

The one who is motionless as he moves everything, who rules over the senses and choirs of eternal hosts, and who holds the humid ocean’s movement and fury within its boundaries [God], didn’t let Adria’s ruler, the one giving laws to warriors and defenders in his temple, be deprived of his life.

21. Leader of Albaiulia in Transylvania and soothsayer, introduced in 22.52, who urged the Byzantine leaders to eschew further fighting with the crusaders (26.28–30). 22. For Phoebus as an epithet for Apollo, see canto 4, note 10. 23. For Diana, twin sister of Apollo, as the “three-shaped goddess,” see canto 5, note 31.

Canto 27 He didn’t let the Thracians take advantage of Enrico’s damage or draw glory and praise from it. 61

He turned his blessed eyes around the space of light, and he saw infinite divine and angelic shapes, born of his will. They had eternal life, and white light and shining sapphire clung to them almost like a golden garment, their lights were rays, and in the back they had wings that made them go faster than wind or arrows. 62

He motioned to one with sweet command; on this particular one he wanted to impose the weight of his order. It quickly turned its golden feathers to the world’s creator, like a light flame. “Faithful one, take your flight to where Emilia is sharpening and preparing her arrow tip; she lies in wait for my beloved [Enrico] in order to wound his chest with her pointed dart. 63

“Let that dear captain come back from the battle victorious and safe. Let the toil end, let the great city be captured, and let a river of enemy blood flow, while he sits as the glorious victor who has scorned the evil ones. Let happy Adria enjoy such a leader, since such grace is appropriate to her valor.” 64

The one who sets the time for the celestial citharas stopped talking. Humbled and bowed, that spirit left and gave that dear gift of protection to the Latin victor: no matter how many cruel arrows that Godless woman sent toward that divine man, his hand or his clothing opposed their sharp tips, taking their edge off as if they had struck marble. 65

Many of the arrows that that cruel and beautiful young woman cast against glorious Enrico turned back and brought to her their danger and enemy fury. Still, those horrible arrows didn’t inflict wounds or give death to her

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d chaste heart. It was enough for the Greeks to see that Enrico was defended by a heavenly hand and couldn’t be violated. 66

This is how people on the Gargano saw those rash arrows come back to the young shepherd who wanted to kill an ox with twisted horns in a dark cave.24 In the same manner and with the same speed those arrows came back to the nymph’s pretty face, but she wasn’t wounded by her own flying weapon, as it fell right before her beautiful eyes. 67

It is right that such a famous and great captain be protected by heaven: he was a wise and merciful warrior, and his burning fame shone all around him clearer than the dazzling rays of the sun. It is right that heaven adorn him with admirable crowns and that it gain advantage from him: he passed everyone in valor; he ruled over his warrior herd25 with justice and mercy. 68

After that merciless daughter (who had thought she could send Adria’s ruler to the dead) was interrupted and vanquished, she was seized by horror and wonder that her arrows could come back to her. Who could say how much pain and amazement she felt, how her heart was troubled and discouraged, knowing that her blows were worthy of death and praise? 69

The false emperor could see in the distance; he stood like a hard rock to the wind and the waves. When he saw that omen he clearly understood under

24. In Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, the first apparition of Saint Michael the Evangelist is linked to an event occurring on Mount Gargano: the owner of a bull that had wandered away from the herd shot a poisoned arrow at it, “but the arrow came back, as if turned about by the wind, and struck the one who had launched it.” See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 2.101. I thank the anonymous reader of the manuscript for pointing me in the right direction to identify this reference. 25. A seemingly contradictory expression, “warrior herd” establishes a strong link between Enrico and his army on the one hand, and Jesus and his faithful on the other, as presented in the New Testament. See canto 4, note 4 for additional recurrences of this metaphor in the poem.

Canto 27 26

whose arm the winner was hiding. A desperate pain gnawed at his innards, and he plunged into the deepest pain, moaning and shrieking and tearing his royal cloak; still he avoided tears in order to hide his cowardice. 70

The pain he felt for his fate and his scorn for heaven drove his inborn valor to take his soul (accustomed to the dangers of death) to the terror of war. He showed that he didn’t care for life, and that if he were to die, he’d die willingly. He stood in the middle of battle, fighting the enemies along with very few sad companions. 71

On a summer day, when the sky is overcast, and enemy sulphur flames come down on a field of dry spikes from angry Jove’s powerful hand, destroying everything, then friendly people cry over the sad occurrence to their harvest. In the same manner Mirtillo took out all those around him, but for what? 72

A noble destiny and the firm will of heaven lifted Enrico elsewhere, and the army from Mysia27 was close to their ruin and greatest pain. The most famous among them lay killed by Latin valor, and their hearts felt great pain. He [Mirtillo] did what courageous and strong men have always done, and indeed he passed this mark by far. 73

He breeched the squad arriving from Bordeaux28 and Toulouse,29 escorted by Irenio; he turned around more than once, and they mostly lay dead by his hand. Anger, disdain, and shame took common sense away from Irenio,

26. That is, Enrico was protected by God. Note, however, Marinella’s rhetorical and verbal skill that enables her to present the situation from Mirtillo’s standpoint (Enrico is “hiding”—i.e., he’s not fighting openly as he should). 27. That is, Giovanissa’s army. 28. City in southwestern France. 29. City in southern France.

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d and as anger moved him he stepped against that Greek man, not noticing (alas!) how much more accomplished and powerful the latter was. 74

He [Irenio] struck him on the helmet that bore the haughty sign of imperial greatness all around it; he hit him in such a way that that day could have been the end of that king as well as of his kingdom. But the golden frieze that adorned it saved that unworthy man’s life; the latter turned against his assailant and with a single blow he sent him dead to the ground. 75

Irenio did what sometimes a loving shepherd does for his dear herd if a wild wolf takes and removes it. He feels bitter, and he feels pain and anguish as he defends it. Still there is no cover against such courage, and his desperate pain pushes him into that hungry mouth, thus quickening a sad ending. 76

Mirtillo perceived the luck and valor of our soldiers; he had only a few warriors and no hope left. A new source of anguish surfaced in his heart, so he sighed and moaned in an unusual way: if he turned his feet to flee he feared that he wouldn’t be able to leave a sure sign of his noble virtues; he’d rather be killed than hide or be caught or vanquished. 77

His proud heart aspired to greatness and disdained a lowly state and a humble seat. It behaved like a flame that whirls and rises, and the bigger it is, the more it wishes to reach high; but if a bothersome wind blows against it and bends it sideways, it yields and dies. In the same manner in the end Mirtillo vanished, fleeing his land and death. 78

He saw rich temples and noble houses lit up and burned by a devouring fire. He saw that all powers yielded to Enrico and that the walls and gates were taken. Luck and time granted that he could go with comfort and ease and without a fight; he fled dangers by taking a horse that ran as if it had wings on its back.

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Soon a time will come when the feathers on your steed will not help you, because that courageous soul who was killed by your tricks follows you all the time; he follows your steps until you reach to the top of that high column, as he indicated when you took the breath of life away from his noble chest with a noose and poison.30 80

He was like a preying wolf who has killed part of a herd in a full stable; it harbors a dark desire for greedy loot, but its senses are on edge as it fears the dogs’ rage. When it comes out it seems to fear air itself and the sky; its burning eyes and blood-stained lips indicate that it expects a harsh revenge for that devoured herd, unless it quickly goes into a wood. 81

Meanwhile, the Franks felicitously killed the few who were left of the enemy. Teio, confused and deprived of courage, hated his life and looked as if he were defying death; but since there was no one to give him death, he willingly removed his soul from himself. One of his brothers, understanding that he was dead, took his sword and wounded himself. 82

First he tore off or untied the fastenings of the armor that he had put on to protect himself from a thousand blows; then he cast it away, crying, and he wounded his own chest, sending his sad spirit and his last life breaths elsewhere. Still, he died happy that no one else could boast of his tears and of his death.

30. In this second-person address to one of her characters, Marinella’s narrator ties the future demise of one of the main villains (Mirtillo’s suicide by jumping from a high column; see 25.62) to the origin of the Byzantine Venetian adventure (Alessio’s dethroning at the hand of his kin; see canto 1, note 7). This is one of a handful of direct addresses to a male character (see 1.29, 8.107, 27.9), as most are to females (see 4.72, 6.7, 10.72, 11.44, 18.26, and 24.49); as with the others, this direct address also invites readers to sympathize with the character, but remarkably in this instance the sympathy is directed to a Byzantine (not a crusader), indeed one of the worst enemies that the Venetians and Franks faced.

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The king of Mysia [Giovanissa] turned his eyes all around, surveying his famous and courageous army; he saw them lying down to their ultimate sacrifice in their blood, now deprived of honor and praise. With a very sad sigh he said: “What good can I do?” As he felt anguish gnaw at him, he changed his banners and his steed, so that he was now a humble, incompetent, and lowly warrior. 84

His shield was broken, he saw his sword shattered, and he felt that his arm and hand were tired and limp. He realized his helmet and armor were all banged up, and he saw that blood was gushing out of more than one wound. His side and chest heaved as he breathed frequently and he looked pale. His heart was pressed not by fear or cowardice but by scorn, anger, wrath, and pain. 85

He fled incognito with his most faithful men, and he quickly escaped the winners, leaving his royal pavilion, friendly tent, food, gold, and spoils behind. He used all his ingenuity and power to return alive to his father’s home, not because he loved life so, but rather to turn other people’s peace into tears in the future.31 86

In the most horrific storms, when the sea promises death and the sky threatens, the best bet is to fold one’s sails quickly and, if possible, to look for a safe haven. That king fled in the same manner, leaving behind death and his sad people; though he was undone by pain inside, he said: “I fought and won against the Greeks; how do I now find that my strength is vanquished among the Greeks?”32 87

Emilia, the maiden with a quiver, saw on that day the end of Greek greatness; she moved here and there, lifting great sighs from her heart. She wounded many, she sent many to Jove’s lap in the highest parts of heaven; but what 31. That is, to take revenge for his defeat. 32. As Erina explained to Venier, Giovanissa’s people were traditional enemies of the Greeks, but in this case they had come to help them (see 22.43).

Canto 27 good was that, when the camp was routed, the king of Mysia gone, and the Greek king in flight? 88

Vanquished as a warrior, she finally went back to the much-desired peace of her friendly woods, feeling pain and scorn. Still, she carried rich and shining spoils, and she was proud of them. She went back to dipping her flying weapons in the chests of quick animals, and at last she became a sylvan goddess by the same name, due to her famous chastity.33 89

Among such a courageous and large army very few were healthy: some were wounded, others had their limbs severed, others still shed their blood and their soul on the shore nearby. Some were still alive among the dead; others wanted to carry out admirable deeds but didn’t have any help: What is one against many? And what can one do, if heaven and its highest spheres are against him? 90

They were subjugated, vanquished, and captured; their haughtiness, their pomp, their boasts were put down. Some had fled, some had died, and others on the ground asked for mercy, all tired and trembling. The strong walls were broken, buildings were on fire, and everywhere was horror, terror, fear, and tears. Vanquished Greece lay at Enrico’s feet; once loquacious in its rule, now it was silent in its oppression. 91

Those who were held inside the rich temple named by its founders for Sophia34 saw the strange and pitiful massacre of their people, captured, tamed, and killed. They gave up their superb hearts and Godless will, and they took on themselves the heavy burden of servitude, giving up to the captain [Enrico] and asking for an end to so many deaths and to their great devastation. 33. Of all enemy warriors, only Emilia, a woman, avoids the shame of escape; indeed, by virtue of her chastity, she gains divine status. It is an indication of Marinella’s pro-woman position, on the one hand, and of her adhering to early modern (patriarchal) standards of conduct for women on the other. 34. Ayasophia or Hagia Sophia, built by Constantine the Great in the fourth century as a basilica, reconstructed by Justinian in the sixth, later becoming a mosque and now a museum. Enrico

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E n r i c o ; o r, B y z a n t i u m C o n q u e r e d 92

He kept his soul’s eyes on the eternal principle [God], admiring his beauty and trying to emulate him. Inside his heart sweet mercy breathed, so he defended and welcomed the noble matrons and noble and wise young people, among the best in the land, with a father’s love; he cried and sighed over their fatal misfortunes. 93

Then the people inside the walls of that tall fortress humbly surrendered to Bonifatio. Inside him sweet love held firm sway, and this was reason for boasting. Not only did he not bother them, but he gave some comfort to those unhappy people and he forgave them. How nicely do mercy and love shine in one’s eyes among horrible weapons! 94

Enrico elevated the pious Frank Baldovino to be the great leader of the empire, with the support of the best heroes; he wanted that courageous warrior to carry the weight of such responsibility. Then he divided the goods of the proud Greeks, and he justly took his own part. Glorious and worthy in victory, he granted that illustrious Gaul the kingdom of Thrace.35 The most illustrious and noblest Alessandro Gatti To the most illustrious lady Lucretia Marinella, most excellent woman poet. In the presence of the Muses, noble Apollo was struck dumb after hearing your verses, Marinella. At once he said: “This woman poet surpasses my poets, particularly Tasso, by name.” At that time he bestowed on you his very own golden cithara as well as his rays. Dandolo was buried there, and a marble slab bearing his name is still embedded in the gallery floor. 35. After the conquest of Byzantium, Baldovino (Baldwin) of Flanders was elected Latin emperor with Venetian support, as Thomas Madden indicates in Enrico Dandalo and the Rise of Venice, 177. Marinella claims, instead, that Enrico Dandolo had the power to invest his Frenchspeaking ally with the crown. Rhetorically, she ends her magnum opus with resounding praise for the Venetians and their leader.

APPENDIX CANTOS 6 AND 7 AND EXCERPTS FROM CANTOS 8 , 1 2 , 2 2 , 2 4 , A N D 2 7 I N I TA L I A N

CA N T O S ES T O

Argomento Fileno in sogno la gradita figlia Consola, e le fa noto il suo lignaggio; Al Venier ella i casi, e la famiglia Narra de l’Avo, e’l grand’oprar del saggio: Del suo Palagio l’alta meraviglia Veggono, e’l tutto di un Carbonchio al raggio; Guata il Guerriero in sasso illustre e bello Del genitor d’Erina il ricco Avello. 1

Ne la pace del sonno à pena involto Fu’l cor turbato, e i vigilanti lumi, Ch’à la mente svegliata il nobil volto S’offri del Padre suo, voce, e costumi: Qual disse à lei con dir distinto, e sciolto, À che t’affliggi, e’n van t’angi, e consumi? Dimmi alma di quest’alma, o del mio core Più caro cor, c’ho del tuo duol dolore. 2

Il giovinetto Heroe col giunger forse Importuno à tue voglie hora t’annoia? Divin poter serbollo, il trasse, e scorse Sicur per l’onde, e’l tolse à morte, à noia: Il suo venir; benche à te strano, porse À lo spirito mio contento, e gioia, De la Patria; ond’io vengo, è illustre figlio, Chiaro per virtù d’arme, e per consiglio.

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Appendix 3

Gli antichi d’esso à i nostri fur congiunti E d’amor, e di sangue; e visse, e vive L’Affinità tra voi; benche disgiunti Siate per tanti mari, e tante rive: E se scorsi son gli anni; anchor aggiunti Voi due stimo di stirpe; ah non sien prive Di lui, ne’l consentir, le nostre piagge, Trattienlo con maniere honeste, e sagge. 4

Ma se vedrai, ch’alto desio lo’nvoglia Di tornar non potendo al suo viaggio, Che di guerriero honor la intensa voglia Negherà di restar tra’l Pino, e’l Faggio. Sappia, ch’andar non può da questa soglia Lungi, e nel Latin campo far passaggio; Se prima à te mia figlia non dia preghi, E à te con pianto il suo pensier dispieghi. 5

Non bramo questo; perche l’odia, ch’io L’amo, e d’ogni suo ben contento piglio; Tor ad Adria il vorrei, che se rapio Il Regno à i nostri; privi lei del figlio: Se non puoi contrastare al suo desio, Sforzata al fin darai fedel consiglio. Buon non è ritener cor, che non sente Dolce la pace, e torbid’ha la mente. 6

Come l’horror noturno sparir suole Di Febo à i rai, cosi l’amato aspetto Del Padre in questo; il senso, e le parole Serba la cara figlia entro il bel petto. De’ cui vaghi occhi il lampeggiante sole Lasciò tornando il sonno al suo Ricetto. Lor apre, e se veder potesse guata Del suo gran Genitor la faccia grata. 7

E d’ogni parte gira i lumi intorno Per mirar se può anchor la fuggit’ombra. Ferma Erina de gli occhi il guardo adorno, Di dolor, di desio l’animo sgombra: O saggia, piangi; perche il tuo soggiorno La sembianza paterna non ingombra?

Excerpts in Italian E perche al senso tuo celossi, mostri Molli del pianto tuo del volto gli ostri. 8

Spinta dal duol, che l’havea il core ucciso Sciolse con un sospir l’aure amorose. E disse, ah Padre, à me chi t’ha diviso Chi lo tuo aspetto à le mie luci ascose? Per te son, per te vivo, à questo viso Tu i gigli desti, e le purpuree rose; De la mia fronte apristi in bel sereno Raggi, al cui lume fuggi, e vieni hor meno. 9

Pur già cari ti fur, pur già sovente Dolci baci godendo à lor porgesti? Tu lo semplice spirto, e questa mente Saggia, dotta, e prudente à un tempo festi? Perche fuggi, o bramato? e si repente Rendi gli affetti miei scontenti, e mesti; Se m’ami? perche fuggi, à che t’involi À me, che t’amo, e me non riconsoli? 10

Forse chiamò già in cosi lassi accenti Da le bell’onde il genitore amato La bionda Dafne, qual co’i crin lucenti Havea di Febo il cor preso, e legato. Come Costei, che in placidi lamenti Sfoga del suo desio l’affetto grato; Ma intanto il Sol co i matutini ardori Sorgendo acchetò in lei pianti, e dolori. 11

Ma come adagio à ripensar si diede, Quanto, ch’à lei commise, e che l’espose; Conosce, che svelò cosa, ch’eccede Ogni credenza, e’n gioia la ripose. In si dolce maniera à l’alta sede Volse del Ciel le stelle rugiadose, Ch’accender lo potèo, ridente rese Gratie à lui, che di lei già cura prese. 12

Trasse del Padre la memoria greve Da gli amorosi rai lacrime pie; Che le Verginee guancie, e’l sen di neve

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Appendix Rigando fer pe’l volto humide vie. Qual bianco giglio, che nel sen riceve Lucide perle à l’apparir del die, Quai la bell’Alba dal raccolto lembo Versa mentre à’ bei fior rinfresca il grembo. 13

Intanto sorse da le molli piume Il nobil peregrino, e guata, e mira. S’abbaglia di ricchezze al chiaro lume De la gran Mole, e la struttura ammira; Ma come pensa, che non sà, o presume D’andar al campo amico, il cor ritira; Ne bel ciò ch’è bellissimo, li sembra, Tanto un desio vietato aspro rassembra. 14

Poi con modi devoti al Ciel cortese Porse col cor bramoso, e lodi, e preghi; Perche à la Patria, al Padre, à degne imprese À lui sentier sicuro dar non nieghi; E che l’ire c’ha in se d’alt’odio accese Plachi, e l’asprezza in tenerezza pieghi; Mostri via, dia favore, e porga aita Al suo patir, salui l’honor, la vita. 15

Poi tosto andò, dove la saggia figlia Di Fileno era in se tacita, e queta Parea in vago giardin bianca, e vermiglia Rosa, che del mattin le pioggie mieta. Al cui venir alzò le care ciglia, E la fronte assai più gioiosa, e lieta. E sorse, e scintillò per gli occhi fuore Gli honesti rai di consanguineo amore. 16

E con amiche note, e dolce riso Per man lo prende; e dolcemente dice, O del mio nobil Ceppo in Cielo assiso D’alta gloria immortal tronco felice, Di te conosco la sembianza, e’l viso, Ti vidi tra la schiera empia, infelice, De’ Tessali malvagi, e l’opre tue Vivon d’Albin ne le pitture sue.

Excerpts in Italian 17

Benche lontano, pur mi sei Cugino; Ma ben più assai, che frate amato, e caro, Tu del buon sangue Veneto, e Latino, Pompa suprema, & ornamento raro: Le tue glorie, i tuoi pregi, il tuo destino, Quando ti piaccia fièti aperto, e chiaro; Ma tempo anchor non è, ch’io questo svela, Se’l Fato al tuo saper ricopre, e cela. 18

Stupido, e immoto il giovinetto al detto De la gentil Donzella, ne sà come Le sia di caro parentado astretto, E già di lui conosca, e faccia, e nome. Se’l Ciel de le tue gratie il tuo bel tetto Colmi, e lo sgravi di noiose some, Dimmi l’origin tua, grand’ho stupore; Perche’l tuo dir ristora i sensi, e’l core. 19

Cosi dicea il Veniero, essa col ciglio Caro, ridente; e mansuete note; O del Padre Nettun gradito figlio Appresso noi stan le tue sorti immote: Quà tue belle virtudi; e’l tuo periglio Pinto si vede, e non da mani ignote; Ne negar ti vogli’io cosa, che brami, E sciorti del futuro anco i legami. 20

Non sò, s’à le tue orecchie unqua pervenne Di Pietro Candiano ingegno, e voglie, Qual fù, qual visse, quale Patria il tenne: Che’l tempo ogni memoria à lungo toglie, Per molta età la fama anchor le penne Lasse già fatte, à se stringe, e raccoglie, Io dirò, come quà venisse, e gli anni Passasse lieto doppo gravi affanni. 21

Il Padre mio, che più de gli occhi suoi, Più de la propria vita era à lui grata, Voglio (dicea) che de gli antichi tuoi Conosci la regal stirpe honorata. Due etadi, e più tolse da i liti Eoi Febo di rai la fronte incoronata,

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Appendix Dal di, che Pietro lasciò fuor di spene Il Regno, e in un le meritate pene. 22

Sò, che quanto à te dico, occulto è anchora, È quasi Historia isconosciuta giace, Come già Candian, fu Duce, e allhora Hebbe di regnar sol desio vorace; Come Vinegia tua tentò, ch’ei mora, Di dotta penna il ragionar non tace; Che risuonar fa ne gli scritti sui La gloria somma, e’l vituperio altrui. 23

Al Padre Prence allhor Costui successe Pietro di nome al popolo gradito, Creato Duce con amor poi resse Le tue belle contrade, i mari, e’l lito, Che parea certo, che nel seno havesse De le sacre virtudi il choro unito; Ahi d’imperar troppo sfrenata voglia Dal dritto, e da ragion lo torce, e svoglia. 24

Tu sai, che del regnar continuo bolle Ne’ magnanimi petti alto desio, Questo la Fede, e la giustitia tolle Dal cor sincero del grand’Avol mio. Cosi superbo l’alta mente estolle, Che’l mondo sprezza, e poco apprezza Dio; Ma di se stesso, e del suo affetto pago, E di farsi sol Rè divenne pago. 25

Nutre nel seno il periglioso ardire, In lui già nato d’importuna voglia, Farsi il Veneto stato hebbe desire Soggetto; ond’egli ogni dever dispoglia. Già mostra i segni; già’l vedi apparire Tumido, e gonfio; e par, che à gli altri toglia Del comandare ogni possanza, e solo Sovrastar crede à l’honorato stuolo. 26

Benche tenesse il suo pensier nascosto, E del secreto suo parte non faccia; Al Ciel non piace, che sia in opra posto

Excerpts in Italian Voler si reo, ne si nascondi, e taccia, S’ode un bisbiglio, un suon tacito, e tosto Un di ciò si querela, altri il minaccia; Già è noto, già è sprezzato, già il prepara La Patria disdegnosa à morte amara. 27

Già conoscendo, ch’inalzarsi brama Oltre sua voglia à i termini del giusto, D’ira il popolo offeso il Duce chiama Scelerato, crudel, perfido, e ingiusto; E per privarlo affatto di quant’ama, Voglion gittarlo da lo soglio augusto; E con mille tormenti, e crudo scempio Stracciarlo, e darne à gli altri iniqui essempio. 28

Pietro, che sà, che cheggion suoi demerti; Qual pena deasi al sciocco suo dissegno, (Morde la conscienza) usci, e coperti Rinforza, con grand’arte, e scaltro ingegno: Le fenestre, gli spaldi, e i luochi aperti Forti assai rende al popolar disdegno; E s’assicura sì, che indarno spera Lui por entro il piè nemica schiera. 29

Mille, e più armati fuora stanno, e’l loco Occupano de’ passi; acciò non esca, Pone tumultuaria gente il foco Nel Palagio real, ch’à star l’incresca. Tal pon crud’huom lo incendio à poco, à poco; Perche l’Api soavi l’amat’esca Lascino, e i cari Favi, e i nidi grati Felici manne de’ fioriti Prati. 30

Sorge horribil la fiamma, e’n sen nasconde L’eccelso albergo, e intorno à un tratto accende Gli ampi edifici, e dona à le profonde Sue voragini, e’l tutto in polve rende; S’aggira, e volve, e freme, e si confonde Nel Rogo suo, che d’ogni intorno splende L’Avolo mio, di se, del figlio vede L’ultimo eccidio, e move insano il piede.

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Spinto dal duol, qual forsenato corse, Ove giacea sua sventurata prole, Tra le braccia l’accolse, e’l bacio porse, Dicendo, mentre in van si stratia, e duole. Un voler temerario al suo fin scorse Nel nascer la tua vita, questa mole Arde; e tu senz’error per l’error mio Innocente fanciul ne paghi il fio. 32

Cosi godi la Reggia, e’l crin ti cingo, Diletto mio, d’imperiali honori; Cosi in manto regal tue membra stringo, E t’orno di ricchezze, e di tesori? Miserabil Bambin; ma ben t’astringo Morir, qual empio tra mortali ardori, À me quel foco deasi, il fallo havendo Commesso, e quello cancellar morendo. 33

In questo, ecco in su’ aita il saggio Armano, Che nudril picciolin, lo scorse, e resse, Qual con versi incantati assai lontano Transferia i monti, e movea pioggie spesse; Benche sereno il Cielo; al fier Volcano Col suo saper così il furor ripresse, Che depose il nocivo, e qual di rose È la freschezza, tale in esso pose. 34

Tra’l foco, e le faville, che già accese Imperversando la Cittade infesta, Passò col figlio, non sentendo offese Da quella fiamma horribile, e funesta. Arman fe allhor, che spirto infernal prese Di Candian la faccia manifesta. Mentre de lo suo albergo il miser sgombra; Stratiaro in vece sua la pallid’ombra. 35

Le genti infellonite il falso Sire, E del figlio gentil la finta imago Feriro, e trucidar, fin che de l’ire S’estinse il foco, e fa’l lor petto pago: E lor corpi infelici à sepelire Mandaron tra le fiamme. intanto il Mago

Excerpts in Italian In sicur trasse il fuggitivo, e’l caro Pegno per sua cagion dal caso amaro. 36

Poi fa un legno apparir, da cui fu vinta L’aura nel moto, e lor sol tre raccoglie, Solo raccoglie lor; perche fu estinta Dal timor, dal dolor l’afflitta moglie. Lasciò la Patria d’alto incendio cinta À la voracità de l’altrui voglie; Ma non lasciò già coi regali fregi Del magnanimo cor gli spirti egregi. 37

Quando credea Vinegia tua, ch’ei fosse Gia traffitto con l’armi, arso col figlio, Sopra Nave volante i remi mosse Per l’Oceano in sempiterno essiglio. Veduto questo scoglio; il vel rimosse Da la fronte del cor, serenò il ciglio. Pensando ritrovar, come il ver fue Tranquillo porto à le tempeste sue. 38

Nudo è lo scoglio, e sol d’alghe, e d’arene, E di conchilie pieno, horrido, & arso. Forse, di Ninfe il choro à sciugar viene Al calor di un bel Sole il crine sparso, Mentre, che’l Re sbandito fiso tiene Le luci al pian d’ogni ben privo, e scarso, Lieto è sì; ma però dolente spira Sospiri al Ciel di pentimento, e d’ira. 39

Sospiri? di che temi? nova doglia Di futuro disagio il cor ti preme? (Diceali il Mago) perche frutto, o foglia Non vedi; e di vederne hai poca speme? Ma poco anderem, c’haverem d’Illustre soglia Le grandezze presenti, andiamo insieme. Processer poco, e dì si eccelso tetto Si offerse il bello, e diè pace, e diletto. 40

Confuso Pietro à tanta vista disse Con suon di meraviglia, o saggio Armano. Chi ricercando tutto il mondo gisse,

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Appendix Per trovar tanto pregio, andrebbe in vano: Ne la mia Reggia, in cui gia vissi, e visse Il Padre mio giustissimo, & humano, Risplende à par di questa, io non sò dove Mi guidi, forse in Ciel vicino à Giove? 41

Cantan per le campagne ampie le bionde Spiche il valor de le lor gravi chiome; Verdeggiano appo i sposi le feconde Viti gia onuste di gradite some; Vedi in schiera scherzar tra lucid’onde Gli agili pesci, par che mostrin come, È la terra abbondante, e ricca, e lieta; Ov’ogn’agio, ogni ben s’accoglia, e mieta. 42

I vaghi siti, l’alta Mole, e queste Piacevoli acque, i verdi prati, e l’ore Godeva Pietro, in boschi, ed in foreste Con Fauni, e Dei traheva in pace l’hore: Hor contemplava del Giardin celeste De’ lumi erranti il moto, e lo splendore; Cosi premea gli affanni, e di natura Desi sublime, e al ben l’alma assicura. 43

D’etade intanto, e di bellezza crebbe Del Duce il figlio, e giunse à que’ begli anni, Cui per natural termine si debbe Provar di dolce amor gaudio, e non danni; Cui non d’huom: ma di un Dio sposa sarebbe Degna la figlia; e tale in bianchi panni Vergine vide, che le lucide acque Specchio faceàsi, e d’essa si compiacque. 44

Di un Dio silvestre prole, e d’una Diva Era costei, ch’Eonide s’appella, Da’ cui begl’occhi amor con fiamma viva Aventolli nel cor dardi, e quadrella; Nel suo virgineo volto un lume apriva, Aria serena più d’ogn’altra bella, Che reggea’l giovinetto, ne mai riso Movea, se non presente il chiaro viso.

Excerpts in Italian 45

Ma Pietro, che di ciò s’avede, e brama Gia le nozze, e i Nepoti, à lui congiunse La desiata figlia, che tant’ama, E novo gaudio al nobil petto giunse; Con destro aviso la felice Dama, Ne anchora intiero à l’anno il fine aggiunse; À la luce del Sol diede, e fè pago À l’Avo il sen con pargoletto vago. 46

Quali amplessi, quai baci, o Dio, quai vezzi Pietro, il duce non fece al nato figlio; Per contento si grande avien, che sprezzi I regni, e apprezzi il suo perpetuo essiglio; Li sensi alteri in sicurezza avezzi, Hor mansueti à lui fan lieto il ciglio; Vagheggia il caro Infante, e col presente Bene addolcisse il fel de l’egra mente. 47

Era il bel Germe amato à pena giunto Al quintodecimo anno, che’l gran zio D’anni più, che maturo, estremo il punto Senti per torlo al mondo, e darlo à Dio. Di dolce cura il saggio petto punto Abbracciò il figlio, e disse, hora m’invio Per via tanto temuta, à la Natura Horribil tanto, al sciocco mondo oscura. 48

Io poi, che nel gran Sol, da la mia mente Tolta ogni nebbia, affissai pronto i lumi, E conobbi il mio, error, gia in tutto spente Calde voglie di fama, ed’ombre, e fumi. Lieto rendo al terren la spoglia algente, E varco d’Acheronte i negri fiumi, Cosi dicendo fece noto à lui La progenie, i perigli, e i voler sui. 49

Del dire al mezo il senso e le parole, E la vita, e lo spirto à un tratto colse La fredda Parca; e lasciò meste, e sole Le piagge intorno, e’l riso in pianto volse. Cosi non è, che la memoria invole Oblivione, o i nomi, o l’opre tolse;

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Appendix Perche li Padri à i successori suoi Dicèan de la lor vita, e l’ante, e’l poi. 50

Pietro d’Arman chiare scienze apprese, Dal Padre il figlio, e’l successor da lui, Cosi di un gran saper le faci accese L’un da l’altro hebbe, e questi da Colui: Più d’ogn’altro Filen gradille, e prese Del cui valore unica figlia fui: Egli privo de’ suoi giovin rimase Donno, e Signor de l’incantate Case. 51

De la sua nobil vita il verde Aprile; D’età felice i più sereni giorni, Spese in mercar virtù, vago, e gentile Era di gratie, e di costumi adorni: V’è quel Monte, che s’alza oltre ogni stile. Colà faceva i grati suoi soggiorni; Gli aspetti osserva, i moti, i corsi, e i giri Scherzo de gli Astri ne’ stellanti Giri. 52

Non da gli effetti à le cagioni occulte; Ma da le cause à manifesti segni Passò l’acuto spirto; roze, e inculte Son le vostr’arti, e vani i vostri ingegni; Che da gli effetti à le cagion sepulte Con studio à pena di salir son degni; Oso dir, che in virtù sì s’avanzasse, Che’n terra i Dei del Ciel solo agguagliasse. 53

Ei spessissime volte me con seco Condusse al monte pargoletta anchora. Mentre con nera man ne l’aere cieco À le stelle la notte il crine indora; E di quanto sapea, ne partia meco Il buono, e’l bello; & io qual nova Aurora Crescea di virtù al Sole, e anchor del Cielo À i cari influssi, amica al Dio di Delo. 54

Queste Vergini mie, che miri, sono Figlie di questi Boschi, e uscir da quelle Selve; del Padre mio son caro dono,

Excerpts in Italian Lor mi diè per compagne, e per Ancelle. Altre à la caccia, altre di Cetra al suono, Altre à le pescaggion trà l’onde snelle; Altre al Palagio attendono, altre intesti D’oro, e di perle fan fregi à le vesti. 55

Alletta, e piace il ragionar soave De la vaga Donzella al pro guerriero, Par, che del petto il duro affanno sgrave; E lieto renda il giovinil pensiero. S’à te (dicea) non è noioso, e grave, Che nel cor scerna del futuro il vero, Non negar, nobil Donna noto farmi De la mia inclita Patria paci, & armi. 56

Guata picciole l’ombre, e’l Sol riposto À mezo il Cielo ha del suo carro il lume; Hor s’accoglie la Greggia in Antro ascosto; Tra rami affrena il lieve Augel le piume. Mira, ch’Altea sopra le mense ha posto Cibi assai grati al solito costume; Perche ne prenda il natural disagio Dolce alimento con contento, & agio. 57

Ma com’havrem concesso, quanto chiede De la necessità modesta voglia, Diceva Erina, moveremo il piede Del mio Fileno à la gradita soglia, Finito il pranso di là, donde siede, Si toglie, e vuol, che seco i passi scioglia Il giovinetto, e van per gli ampi tetti Di statue adorni, e di lavori eletti. 58

Mentre passava l’alta meraviglia Del sublime Palagio intento scopre. À lui più volte fero alzar le ciglia De’ vari fregi le mirabil’opre. Tra se dicea, non sia, ch’io l’assomiglia, À qual più degna mole il Sol discopre; Forse del Ciel la Reggia è à questa eguale; E come quella forse anco è immortale.

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Ella con saggio dir per man lo prende Con grati modi, e seco lo conduce À un Uscio, che gran lume intorno rende Per le gemme, e per l’or, che in lui riluce. Aperto, v’entra, il guardo intorno stende Nulla vi scerne, non v’è face, o luce; Ne i desiati aspetti vede, accolto Il tutto stima, e’n tenebre sepolto. 60

Tosto la nobil figlia squarcia il Velo, Ch’ad un Carbonchio chiude fiamme, e lampi, E’l tutto alluma; un improviso gelo Par che nel petto à lui per ciò s’accampi; Non tanto lume mai diffonde il Cielo, Quando d’ogni vapor svelato hà i campi, Quanto quest’è, c’hor fà, ch’ei scerna tanti Duci, Cavalli, Cavallieri, e Fanti. 61

Cosi ne lo’ntelletto nostro assise Imagin sono, e intelligibil forme; Ma rimarrièno oscure, e’n quello affise De le spetie Ideal le belle norme; Se non l’illustra in gratiose guise L’Agente facoltà, che mai non dorme, E quel, ch’era, e non era, fà, che fuori Appaia, e mostri in atto i propri honori. 62

Quivi à i raggi de l’oro, al Sol lucente Di Rubin, di Smerardi, e di Giacinti Artificio gentil guata, e la mente Rende confusa, e gli alti ingegni vinti: Nel mezo al ricco Hostel siede eminente La gran Tomba fatale. Erina tinti Di pietà gli occhi pianse, indi in suon lasso Disse additando il pretioso sasso. 63

Han qui tranquilla pace, almo riposo Le venerabil ossa, e’l cener santo Del mio buon Genitor, che glorioso Portò (cred’io) d’ogni sapere il vanto: Fra questi illustri marmi giace ascoso Lo spirto eletto, e vi starà fin tanto,

Excerpts in Italian Che tra que’ boschi solitari l’alma Lasci la mia mortal corporea salma. 64

Allhora il monte, il tetto adorno, e queste Eccellenti ricchezze, or gemme, & ostri, Come fumo al soffiar d’aura celeste Spariranno, o qual nebbia à gli occhi nostri: Rimaran Selve, & horride foreste Tane, e stanze di Fere, & empi mostri, Noi lieti andremo dove i gloriosi Spirti havranno felici, alti riposi. 65

Deh disse il giovin saggio, o de la mia Salute, alto principio, unica speme. Dunque senza Batesmo andar potrìa L’anima nostra co i Beati insieme? Ma questo ver non è, se l’acqua pria À lei non lava il crine; ampie, e supreme Son le sue doti; ella tra vive rose Mosse l’aure soavi, à lui rispose. 66

Fede, e culto di Lui, che per noi fece Col tesor del suo sangue eterno acquisto Seguimo, havemo, & honoriam, che lece Viver tra le mort’ombre ancho al mio Christo. E credo, che di noi voti, Are, e prece Gradisca, empio cor sprezzi, e pensier tristo; Ne del mio Genitor, la Fè, la pieta Abhorri, che in bontà passò ogni meta. 67

Benche di noi la salutifer’onda La colpa original non purghi, e lave Tant’è la Fede; onde il cor nostro abbonda, Che del Drago Infernal timor non have; E l’alma quì vive si pura, e monda, Che non è, che dilitto human l’aggrave; Ne stima error il Ciel, quel che ci nega Necessità, se l’alma à lui si piega. 68

Ma forse quella eterna, alta bellezza Non havrem noi, che serba à i più felici, Ma gli agi, il Ciel sereno, e la dolcezza,

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Appendix Che sua bontà concesse à i primi amici, Allhor che nel gran dì la somma Altezza À l’alme, o buone, o ree, liete, o infelici Darà la gran sentenza, i più perfetti Vedranno Dio, n’havran gioie, e diletti. 69

In questo ella stillò da i chiari lumi Lagrime di dolor per tanto danno. Sempre avien, che la speme al cor consumi Tema mal nata di futuro affanno, Mentre il Rettor del Ciel quest’alma allumi Tema non hà de l’Infernal Tiranno: Perche giustissim’è, ne spinge’ fuore Confidente pensiero il vil Timore. 70

Il Venetiano Athleta il grande Avello Vede di bel lavoro ornato, e sculto In un solo smeraldo, e scopre quello D’oro, di fiori, e d’altri doni culto. Erina à lui volgendo il viso bello, (Ch’immoto stà per novo affetto occulto,) Volgi (dicea) Venier? Volgi quà i rai, Ch’eccellenze maggior mirar potrai.

CA N T O S ET T I M O

Argomento La bella Erina al buon Venier discopre D’Adria gli alti principij; e come cresca Per gli altrui danni; e morti; e non giust’opre, E l’oro insieme, e la sua gloria accresca. Vede, come ogni Duce al ben s’addopre; E come altri sormonti, altri discresca; Guerre, esserciti armati: poi ritorna La nobil coppia à sua magione adorna. 1

Siedi, o Guerrier, se di veder ti caglia De gli Patritij tuoi gesti famosi, Che’ seggo anch’io; perche sò quanto saglia À virtù l’alma ne’ suoi bei riposi. Guata fuor de la lucida muraglia Del sagace Nettuno i prati ondosi;

Excerpts in Italian E sù que’ scogli, quasi uniti, e stretti Rozi Tuguri, e Pagliareschi tetti. 2

Ella ciò dice, & ei gli occhi rivolse Ad un sovran balcon, ch’aperto stima, Ma un chiaro, e sol Christallo il Fabro accolse Dal pavimento à la suprema cima; Non tanta trasparenza in se raccolse Vivo Diamante, qual più si sublima, Quanto vedeasi in quel, che l’occhio crede Puro aere, e di beltà vince ogni fede. 3

Ò quanta gente à lor correa nel grembo; Quasi in porto di pace si raccoglia, Vento importuno, e procelloso nembo Fuggon di guerre, e la paterna soglia, E de que’ sassi su’l salato lembo Ferma popolo invitto eccelsa voglia, Alza delubri, fa Palagi, e porge Lodi à quel Rè, ch’al ben oprar lo scorge. 4

Mentre barbara Torma Italia tutta Con ferro, e foco intorno arde, e trascorre, Per fuggir furor tanto; onde distrutta Era ogn’antica terra, ogn’alta torre, Di giorno, in giorno gente in un ridutta: Correva in quelle parti il piede à porre. Mentre Etruria piangea suo stratio, e morte, Essa sol gode fortunata sorte. 5

Volgendo gli occhi à lui veder parea Pargoletta Città, cui cingon l’onde, Che qual chiaro folgor ne gli occhi ardea. Di gemme ornata, e di vittrici fronde: Sopra là cui bellezza il Ciel scotea Aure di pace stabili, e gioconde, Tra sabbia, e flutti, ed Apio amaro posa Vergin del gran Nettun lodata sposa. 6

E guata tra Conchilie, e giunchi, e scogli, Ch’ogn’hor più sorge al Ciel famosa, e grande La patria gloriosa, che gli orgogli

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Appendix D’altrui non teme, e mille gratie spande; Par che sua maestade à l’altre togli Il vanto d’opre invitte, e memorande, Indarno dotta man tenterà d’essa Narrar con penna la beltade impressa. 7

E crescer la vedea non altrimenti, Che cara figlia à dolce Madre in seno, C’habbia propitio il fato, e gli Elementi, Cara amica la sorte, e’l Ciel sereno: O di quai fregi cinge i crin lucenti, Di quai doni, e quai pompe ha’l grembo pieno. Già s’invaghiscon de’ suoi ricchi pregi À gara Duci, Imperatori, e Regi. 8

Sdegna Vergine saggia, abhorre, e sprezza, Ch’altro Rè la lusinghi, o la vezzeggi; Lieta, e contenta de la sua bellezza Vive sublime in Christallini seggi; Nè in ampiezza di Regno, nè in ricchezza Sà, che’l mondo non hà, chi lei pareggi. Da Dio dipende, nè d’altrui deriva, Sua forza independente al Ciel s’ascriva. 9

Come conduca il crudo Atila mira De gli Hunni, e d’altri essercito possente Rotto da Etio irato si ritira; Torna ne l’Ungheria con poca gente; Colà schiera sleal dietro si tira; Là passa l’Alpi, e’l mondo fa dolente; Escende ne l’Italia, ahi quanti affanni Porta il crudel, quanti homicidi, e danni. 10

Ecco assedia Aquilea, saccheggia, e accende Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, e Milano; E de la bella Ausonia strugge, e stende Gli edifici superbi, e’l fertil piano. Ecco de’ fiori la Città, ch’ei prende Con dolci modi, e par cortese, e humano; Ma tosto guata, ahi miserabil sorte, Per lui tutte sue genti à terra morte.

Excerpts in Italian 11

Ecco Colui, che lascia il caro nido, E tra Veneti Giunchi il pie riposa, Lascia à l’empia ingordiggia, al petto infido D’Atila la Città culta, e pomposa, Magno di nome, e d’opre, amico fido Del Cielo, à cui tien gli occhi, e con pietosa Voglia il miser solleva, e di bei Tempi Orna Vinegia, e da sublimi essempi. 12

Scerni? tra quella horribile tempesta Che non pur batte i fior; ma boschi, e piante, Qual nova meraviglia sorger questa Patria famosa di real sembiante. E mentre, che’l crudel Barbaro infesta L’Esperia tutta in tanto mal costante; S’abbellisca, s’adorni, al Ciel sormonte Per virtù illustre, e per ricchezze conte. 13

Come dal sen di tanta guerra sorga Popol di pace, e di costumi egregi; À cui non voglia ambitiosa porga Morso, o punta di duolo à i petti regi: Onde creduto fù, che’n lei risorga Quell’aurea età qual par, che s’ami, e pregi: Da l’altrui povertà, morti, e ruine, Nascan contenti, e glorie, alte, e divine. 14

Cosi Miriam tra spine, Vepri, e sassi, In arsiccia campagna allhor, che’l Cielo Cinto è di nubi, e’l verno freddo stassi Stillando dal crin bianco horrido gelo; Rider vezzoso fior, ch’arresta i passi Al viandante à corlo dal suo stelo, E ricco il sen di lucido candore Di dolce stupidezza empie ogni core. 15

Nè più potendo il tirannesco impero Di Clefi Rè de’ Longobardi ingiusto Soffrir l’Italia, allhor fermò il pensiero Sottrar il collo suo dal giogo onusto: Prese fuggendo tacito sentiero Da mille parti stuol nobile, e giusto,

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Appendix Onde legni infiniti ivi approdaro, Ch’era al furor de gli empi alto riparo. 16

Che non da plebe vil principio prese; Ma da più generosi, e più lodati, Di magnanimo cor prode, e cortese, Di modi, e di pensier santi, e pregiati, Per fuggir danni, per schifar offese, Le rapine, gl’incendi, e i campi armati: Di nation Barbariche, là molte Gloriose famiglie s’han raccolte. 17

E perche ragion è, che da megliori Nascan megliori, come il Saggio disse, Quel saggio, che di gloria à i primi honori Alzò Stagira, insegnò à’ dotti, e scrisse, Però stupor non è, che s’avvalori La Republica tua, che vive, e visse, Tal che Febo non vide, o vedrà mai Simile in terra, ovunque spiega i rai. 18

In numero, e in potenza ogn’hor crescea La fortunata parte, e’l caro seno, Il Consolo, e’l Tribuno allhor reggea Con giusta Lance il Veneto terreno, Poscia elessero il primo in Eraclea Duce, d’ogni bontà, di laude pieno, Paulin’huom giusto, e d’ottimi costumi Lontan da fasti, ambitioni, e fumi. 19

À Costui dopò, il popolo feroce Orso di nome nel Ducato elesse; Poi contra lui sdegnato. (ahi quanto noce Talhora il Regno) come colpa havesse, Nel misero sfogò l’animo atroce, E col ferro assaltollo, il vinse, e oppresse. Dopò à Marcello Eracliano il pondo Dier di Vinegia, huom placido, e facondo. 20

À cui successe Ipato, & à costui Teodato, il figliuol del Duca ucciso; E poco men del Padre duro à lui

Excerpts in Italian Il regger fù, che ne restò conquiso; Perche temendo i Cittadini sui, Che di Tiranno al fin non dasse aviso, De gli occhi privarono, e del Regno, E lo scacciar, come negletto, e indegno. 21

Galba tosto s’ornò de primi honori, Nè più de gli altri hebbe propitio il fato, Che del popol lo strepito, e i furori Lo spogliaron del giorno, e de lo stato. Poi di Fortuna à’ placidi favori Siede Giovanni nel bel seggio aurato, Nè guari stette, che di lume privo Al mondo visse, e à se medesmo à schivo. 22

Quel è’l Prence Mauritio, che percote Giovanni sì, ch’à morte lo conduce: V’è Fortunato, qual con arti ignote Trama congiure contra il novo Duce; Ei se ne accorge, e le contrade note Lascia, e co’l figlio in Francia si riduce; Nel soglio abbandonato ecco riposa Obelerio con sorte aspra, e noiosa. 23

Che la Città tumultuando sorge Contra di lui di sdegno, e d’ira armata. Qual serpe rio, ch’al Viandante porge Col dente acuto piaga avenenata: Del Titolo lo spoglia, e fuor lo scorge Del regal tetto, e de la gratia data: Esso dolente scopre al Rè Pipino L’odio in se de la Patria, e’l suo destino. 24

L’ode, e si duole de l’oltraggio, e accoglie Grand’essercito in fretta il Rege amico, Con li veneti tuoi guerreggia, e toglie Modi, e patti formò col suo nemico, Onde Obelerio con la regia moglie Occupano di nuovo il seggio antico. Ma Venegia l’abhorre, à cruda morte Lo’nfelice destina, e la Consorte.

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Appendix 25

Quegli è Pietro Cian, che buono, e saggio Il popol suo fedel governa, e regge; Tiepolo è l’altro, c’hà forza, e coraggio Li Liburnici vince, e lor da legge: È quegli il Contaren, che’l suo viaggio Tien dritto al Cielo, e i rei scaccia, e corregge; Benche del solio sia più, ch’altri degno, Fugge lo Scettro, hà le grandezze à sdegno. 26

Venerio è là, che qual Torquato, o Bruto, Severo giusto, e d’efferato core. Ei privarsi del figlio ha pria voluto, E’l figlio de la vita, e de l’amore; (Perche rapito ha quel d’ingegno astuto À Vergin figlia il suo pudico honore) Che far, che la sua mente al mal si pieghi, E giustitia sia ingiusta à gli altrui preghi. 27

È Domenico Silvio quel, che veste Aurato manto, e nel gran tetto siede, Và de’ Normandi contra l’armi infeste; Ma contraria al voler l’opra succede; Che le sventure sue strane, e moleste Fan, che scontento al gran palagio riede. Ecco è deposto da l’altezza è accolto Altri ne l’armi fortunato molto. 28

Questi è Orlafo Falier, che là riceve De la Donna del Mare il regal segno, Spirto guerriero fa, che Zara in breve Al Leon torni assai gradito pegno: Ne’ Liburnici Campi piaga greve Hà nel pugnar da barbaro disdegno. Ecco di belle piaghe torna adorno Vincitor morto al solito soggiorno. 29

Ecco Pietro Tradonico, che viene Ad Adria in grembo, e lascia Pola, e l’ira D’Equilio, e’l furor Franco, che l’arene Bagna di sangue; ond’Istria alto sospira, Duce, Manto, e Diadema eletto tiene, V’è quai spirti d’honor folgora, e spira:

Excerpts in Italian Quà al Trace Imperator aiuto porge; Là ne l’Apulia nova Armata scorge. 30

Domenico Michel guata, che adduce Ducento Legni armati in Palestina, Per dar soccorso il valoroso Duce Del popol fido à la fatal ruina: Gia per molte vittorie, e fè riluce: Ma più per quel, ch’oprò ne la Marina, Che Spalatro, e Modon sotto il suo impero Raccolse, Rege invitto, e Cavalliero. 31

Giovanni Patriciaco è Colui, Che del gran Genitore imita i gesti, Ben di gran Padre degno figlio, à cui Simile haver la terra non vedresti, Iniqua sorte, gli alti pensier sui Con dura infirmità legar potesti, E troncar nel principio il nobil corso Di brame illustri, e porre à’ sensi il morso. 32

Lascia un altro Giovanni i gigli d’oro, Di nuovo pronto à la sua Patria riede, À lui ridona il saggio Concistoro Le regie insegne, e la lasciata sede: Da’ suoi nemici, e da’ misfatti loro, Quando, che men stimava, il mal succede. Li privar de la chioma il capo, al mento Troncar quel di Natura alto ornamento. 33

Mira novo prodigio, un, che rifiuta Le cercate d’altrui pompe, e grandezze. Ecco le voglie repugnanti muta, Vinto da’ preghi; e par, quant’odia, apprezze, Venerabile, grande, e di canuta Mente, brama per Dio pene, ed asprezze; Cenobi, e chiese inalza Orseolo, à dietro Poi lascia il seggio odiato, e’l mondo tetro. 34

Là fugge in Aquitania, e’n sacra veste Lieto le regie membra il Duce involve. Mentre le genti d’Adria afflitte, e meste

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Appendix Piangon la sua partenza, ei pago volve Gli occhi, la voce, e l’alma à la celeste Patria, e’l cor dolce in lagrime dissolve. Intanto non men giusto Vital prende Scettro, e Diadema, e tosto altrui lor rende. 35

Ottone il figlio à quel succede, avampa, Qual novo incendio di bell’armi cinto; Gli Adriatici oprime, ne un sol scampa, Rimira i liti, e’l mar di sangue tinto. La Crovatia debella, e’n essa stampa Segni del suo valor dal giusto spinto, Che val sorte, o virtù, quando il livore Piglia, & accieca scelerato core? 36

Precipitato è dal gran soglio, e in bando Spint’è senza cagion, se cagion dire Non vogliam li suoi pregi, e l’ammirando Vigor, che dimostrò tra ferri, & ire; S’error non è con gl’infidi pugnando Le vittorie acquistar, pronto al soffrire. Ah secolo infelice; poiche dai À i merti, a le virtù supplici, e guai. 37

V’è Candian, come l’amato figlio Di cor protervo, e rigida maniera, Contro il proprio voler spinge in essiglio, Genitor pio, di duol convien, che pera. Morto. Il Senato allhor prese consiglio Di richiamar à se quell’alma altera, Venuto à i suoi richiami, ecco, che danno Lo stato à lui, non Duce; ma Tiranno. 38

Quest’è Colui, che in queste strane piagge Per lo saper d’Arman fuggendo attinse; Ove con brame poi modeste, e sagge Pensiero ambitioso oppresse, e vinse: E più tra queste parti erme, e selvagge Passò contento i giorni, e al Ciel si strinse, Che tra sublimi honori, e tra Palagi, Nidi d’Adulatori, e di malvagi.

Excerpts in Italian 39

Di tutti non dirò, c’hebber Domino Sopra la bella tua Città gradita; Solo d’alcuni; perche è già vicino Il Sole à far la solita partita: Mira colà trà quel furor marino Un’altro Candian, che l’hoste invita, E pugna contra i Narentani, e poi Morto; ma chiaro torna à i liti suoi. 40

Ecco con pensier alto, e spirto acceso Orso ripor del gran Senato al piede Di regia insegna l’honorato peso; Il ricco scettro, e quanto ben possiede: E’ de l’amor del Ciel piagato, e preso, Sacrarsi à Dio, che brama, spera, e crede: Come con duri cibi, e rozi panni S’appressi à quel, fugga mondani affanni 41

Tra l’asprezza colà d’alpestri Rupi Vive contento, ne disagio sente; E da gli Antri, e da spechi horridi, e cupi Vagheggia Dio l’innamorata mente: E l’innocenza sua d’Orsi, e di Lupi Non teme innacerbiti l’ugna, o’l dente: Siede giocondo, e gode in terra il Cielo Ne sente astio, o rigor di caldo, o gelo. 42

Con simil nome un Patriciaco mira Reggere il Regno suo prudente, e saggio Al fin satio d’impero à Dio sospira, Tocco lo spirto suo da divin raggio. Ecco, come animoso al Cielo aspira, Quasi fuori di se, con qual coraggio Felice con Felice vive, e i giorni Passa del Ciel ne’ placidi soggiorni. 43

Quel, che quasi Alba, ch’à noi porti il Sole Sopra il carro di rose à i primi Albori, Risplende, e avien, che l’auree lodi invole À i più chiari, e famosi, e i primi honori, È Michele, il gran Sir, che l’alta mole Di Ioppe toglie à i barbari furori,

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Appendix E Samo, e Mitilene, e Rodi, e Scio De’ Greci e toglie al Re malvagio, e rio. 44

Dopo i Patritij tuoi pronti crearo Domenico di nome, e Contareno Di stirpe, egli espugnò con valor raro Del furor Macedonico il terreno: Andrea del sangue istesso al popol caro Fugge de l’acque il fortunato freno; Onde sbandito lascia i Patrij nidi, E nove terre cerca, e strani lidi. 45

Veduto in parte hai de’ Quiriti tuoi Gli alti principi lor, l’armi, e la gloria; Ma pochi fur, s’oltre saper ne vuoi Suona di lor virtù nobile istoria; Ti scoprirò d’alcun, che verran poi, (Non è, ne fù di lor segno, o memoria,) Gli animi grandi, e le mirabil opre, Ch’anco il futuro in sen nasconde, e copre. 46

Da le passate, le future cose Conoscer puoi di questi animi regi Le magnanime imprese, e le famose Palme, l’ampie ricchezze, e i fatti egregi, Come da l’Alba se con luminose Vesti risplende, e con gemmati fregi, Conosciam, che felice il giorno sorge, À fiori, à frutti, al mondo piacer porge. 47

Se di ciascun di lor lo studio, e l’opre, Li costumi, e’l valor narrar volessi, Mancherebbono l’hore; ogn’un discopre Rai di virtù; non mai da nube oppressi. Non debil lena, o picciol voce scopre Grandezze immense; onde partire elessi, Che più un silentio riverente loda Colui, che’l sommo de le glorie goda. 48

Mentr’ella ciò diceva, oscura un ombra, Quasi Caligin densa intorno appare, Da gli occhi desiosi toglie, e sgombra

Excerpts in Italian Gli atti diversi, e le sembianze rare: E pienissimamente accieca, e adombra Le Campagne già liete, e l’acque chiare. Allhor sorse la Donna, e’l buon Guerriero, E lasciar quell’aspetto ombroso, e nero. 49

Poiche (dicea la vaga Ninfa à lui,) Si gloriosa vista à i lumi tolse, Nube importuna, e con gli horrori sui La pace; onde godiamo, in parte colse: La fronte, e gli occhi volgeremo nui À l’altra parte de la stanza, e volse À questo dire i passi, dove il lume Porge il Carbonchio, e par, che’l tutto allume. 50

Corone, Scettri, Porpore, e Tesori, Esserciti animosi, armate schiere; Spiegate insegne, & habiti, e colori, Spirar ardir, faccie, e sembianze altere; Vede, e da l’armi uscir lampi, e fulgori, E raggio tal, che gli occhi, e l’acque fere, Gia Christalline; hor rosseggianti vedi, E tra quelle natar spad’, aste, e spiedi. 51

Veggon là tra nemici, e dardi, e spade Drappel rapito di novelle spose, Seco amor mesto, & egra la beltade, Lasso Himeneo, le gratie lagrimose: Si stratiano il crin d’oro; à un tempo cade Dei volti il vivo à le purpuree rose. Ecco son tolte à gli Empi; ecco che riede Vinegia tua con le’nvolate prede. 52

Non Appelle, ne Zeusi à l’huomo, o al Cielo Scoprì del lor saper si chiaro segno, Quanto il pennel d’Albin nel sottil velo Mostra del cor gli affetti ira, e disdegno; Vede splender il ferro, ardere il Telo, Sosopra gir del gran Nettuno il Regno; Par tutto vero, e uscir fumante il sangue Da piaga di guerrier, che geme, e langue.

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Appendix 53

Par, che i sospiri s’odano; & il suono De’ Combattenti, e di Baliste, e d’archi. Mentre stridono i dardi, e spinti sono Da sollecite man curvati, e scarchi; E la luce del Ciel mirabil dono Ad oscurar, non sono lenti, o parchi. Quando col foco la sulfurea polve Caccia la Palla, e’l tutto spezza, e volve. 54

Là tra l’onde spumanti guata, come Arde al fulgor de l’armi il Ionio immenso, Che percosso da’ Remi, e da le some Di tanti legni ha’l dorso grave, e denso: L’ordine, i modi; fien le forze dome De l’orgoglioso Campo, e’l petto accenso Del tumido Dragon, che vome, e spira Fumo d’atro venen, fulmini d’ira. 55

Poco discosto volgi gli occhi à quelle Genti feroci à far pugne, e contese, Le veloci Galee, le Navi snelle Rotte tra l’onde erranti, e parte accese; De’ soldati, e guerrier la torma imbelle Saltar ne l’acqua, per fuggir l’offese, Qual dal moto spumante fatta, ondeggia Turbando à Proteo la squamosa greggia. 56

Scopri il flutto purpureo, e i mari sparsi Di tronche membra, e di squarciata maglia Altri tentar salvarsi; adusti, & arsi Gli eccelsi Pini, e quanto il foco saglia; Vedi l’aria, & il mar, e’l Ciel turbarsi Pe’l terror de l’horribile battaglia; V’è’l gran Sebastian, che i suoi rincora La Luna abbatte, e i Traci discolora. 57

Guata quel Cavallier, che sol col brando Tra barbari si scaglia, e feri, e forti, Se stesso di valor prode avanzando Gitta molti feriti, & altri morti: Miralo (ahi caso infausto, e miserando) Prigion restarne (ahi miseri riporti)

Excerpts in Italian S’ode, che’l Bragadin con fermo petto Del martirio per Dio prende diletto. 58

Come immobile, e cheto soffre, e tace, Invittissimo Heroe tra pene, e doglie. Mentre rea mano lo traffigge, e sface; À le sue membra trahe native spoglie; Con l’alma in grembo à la superna Pace Alta virtù, sommo vigor raccoglie, Ilqual prepara al capo illustre, e regio Di vittoria, e martirio illustre fregio. 59

Gloria del mondo, e de la Patria, e della Stirpe honorata tua, chiaro Rampollo, Vattene sù nel Ciel novella Stella, De gli inganni del mondo hormai satollo, Cosi ver quel dicea la casta, e bella Vergine consecrata al divo Appollo; Additando le guerre, e le vittorie Vegnenti al figlio, e le future glorie. 60

Di se mira i successi, e in parte noti Li son, che la pittura segna, e spiega, Qual dal cor de’ venturi arcani ignoti Trar vivi essempi à gli occhi altrui non nega: D’Enrico il Duce, e d’altri Heroi remoti Le pugne, e i bei trionfi apre, e dispiega, Poi se vede in Bisantio, quasi solo Fugar di Cavallieri armato stuolo. 61

Vide se stesso, sopra l’alte mura De la gran terra far prove immortali; Come inalzi le scale, e senno, e cura Ponga; perch’altri invitto ascenda, e sali, Come la gente sua faccia sicura, Sparga, e disperga i Traci lenti, e frali, E tra le Torri à l’aere più tranquillo Tremolar vede in preda il gran Vessillo. 62

Ondeggiar vede à i soffi d’aura leve La gloriosa insegna il buon Veniero; E far con virtù molta in tempo breve

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Appendix Grand’opre, e render libero il sentiero. Ne’l veder poi se stesso li par greve Cader al pian per colpo acerbo, e fero. Ride, e dice ad Erina, poco importa Pur, che viva l’honor, la spoglia morta. 63

Non più vedrai Venier, diss’ella, quella Patria tanto lodata, o i cari amici, Sopravinto da piaga ingiusta, e fella Ne la Città cadrai de’ tuoi nemici. Mira colei, che l’horride Quadrella Da le Torri dispensa, e da pendici, Per le sue mani, tu pugnando, o Forte, Formidabil guerriero, havrai la morte. 64

Ammira poi l’essercito latino Spogliar di pregi la seconda Roma; E d’Adria il Duce per voler divino Di sacro lauro incoronar la chioma: E come porge al franco Baldovino Con mille alti trofei la Grecia Doma, Come si mostri con il Trace ingiusto Di pietosa bontà, d’animo giusto. 65

Ved’Adria già vittrice offrire al Cielo Gratie per tal trionfo, e sacri incensi; E de’ tolti stendardi il nobil velo Donar al Tempio, e spoglie, qual conviensi; E cantar dotto Cigno al freddo gelo Di un bel Rigagno gloriosi sensi; L’acquistate Provincie, e i Greci inganni, Le tolte glorie, e de’ nemici i danni. 66

Volgi gli occhi, o guerriero al Menzo, e mira Quali armi cingon la famosa Manto, Quai minaccie; quai genti, e qual sospira Il novo Duce, e’l tutto volto in pianto. Ma dal soglio di stelle il guardo gira Il Motor Sommo, e tanta strage, e tanto Furor riguarda; e d’ingiustitia toglie Del posseder l’altrui sfrenate voglie.

Excerpts in Italian 67

Hor vedut’hai de’ secoli futuri I chiari lumi; onde n’andrà pomposa Non pur l’Italia; ma dovunque i puri Raggi del Sol fan l’aria luminosa: Cosi la virtù vostra fia, ch’oscuri Qual altra fia più illustre, e gloriosa, Bastaci del veduto, nega il fato, Ch’oltre ti mostri del tuo regno amato. 68

Andiam, che sera ottenebrato ha’l tutto; E buona pezza de la notte è scorso: Quivi più d’un essercito construtto Vedesti, e tuoi por à nemici il morso. Tacque essa, e fuor del nobile ridutto N’andar, tosto con fretta fer ricorso Quattro Donzelle, con le faci ardenti Rallumar l’aria, e scacciar l’ombre algenti. 69

Ne la gran Sala i delicati Lini Copron le Mense, e i saporiti cibi, Creta non dà si pretiosi Vini, Nè meglior credo in Ciel si gusti, e libi: Li cavati Diamanti, ei bei Rubini Serban vivande; onde poi si delibi Quant’ha di pregio in se la terra, e asconde Fiume tra le sue Rive, e’l mar tra l’onde. 70

Già l’hora, e la stanchezza il sonno invita Per dar riposo alla sviata mente; Ma del giovin gentil l’anima ardita Star tra gli agi si dolci non consente; Ch’assai più stanza rigida, e romita Li piace; ma la Vergine prudente Vuol de le piume, ch’à la pace torni Fin che co’ novi raggi il dì s’aggiorni. 71

Ma poco dorme, nel gran petto volve De’ prischi Heroi le rimirate imprese, Quai; benche sien ridotti in poca polve, Risplendon chiari, e le lor glorie illese, Fermo hà nel cor, determina, e risolve Lasciare, e tosto il placido paese;

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Appendix E ritornar là, dove il suo nemico Opprime, e abbatte il poderoso Enrico. 72

Nè per tutta la notte il sonno molle Dona al riposo i suoi vaganti spirti; Ma già da l’onde il capo, L’Alba estolle, E’l crine indora à gli Orni, à’ Faggi, à i Mirti; Come ondeggia nel mar l’acqua, che bolle Spinta da Borea intorno à l’aspre sirti: Cosi ondeggiando và nel mar del core Caldo voler di desiato honore.

EX CER PT F R OM CA N T O O TTAV O 89

Tra Costoro era Emilia, una Donzella Vaga, leggiadra, e di bellezze rare, Figlia de’ Boschi, d’Arco, e di Quadrella Armata Cacciatrice, uon1 hà pare: Vince l’Aura col corso, lieve, e snella La pianta di coturno avinta appare; Succinta in bianchi panni, tien raccolta In breve nastro d’or la chioma incolta. 90

Tal forse vide tra gli atroci Peni, Ne l’ampia Selva il generoso Enea L’alta sembianza, e’ begli occhi sereni De la sua cara genitrice, e Dea; Qual Vergine Spartana i Campi ameni Ornar, tal la Faretra, e l’arco havea; O qual per l’Hebro Harpalice feroce Spinse con fero ardir corsier veloce. 91

Viene hor Costei da le sue Selve, dove: Gia d’un Rè nacque, e d’una Dea silvestre Quivi era avezza à far mirabil prove In Cervi, in Daini, in Lepre, in Fera alpestre, Hor lo strale, e la Fromba aggira, e move, Con viril volto, e mani agili, e destre,

1. Meaning indicates that this is a typo for “non.”

Excerpts in Italian Con assai maggior lode in tra gli amici Contra il Veneto, e’l Gallo aspri nemici. 92

Scocca la bella Emilia l’arco d’oro, Suona la corda, fischia il fiero strale, Da l’una tempia à l’altra Artemidoro Passa, ei cade pe’l colpo atro, e mortale. Mentre le Navi il Sicilian Caloro Con mano prende, e’n esse s’alza, e sale; Spinge il secondo stral la Vergin cruda, Et al legno la figge inerme, e nuda. 93

Mira del Corno sù l’opposta riva Le soprane bellezze, e’l volto altero, Qual rallentava il nervo, e qual feriva Stupido, e vinto Alfeo, nobil guerriero: Già pregion, già ferito egli serviva De la bella nemica al duro impero, Tra l’armi anchor di marte, e tra l’horrore Vibra ne’ petti altrui suoi strali Amore? 94

Vien ronzando, e stridendo à novo male Frezzia da l’arco ben ferrato, e forte, Che porta sù la punta, e sopra l’ale, Piaga crudele, irreparabil morte; À lui, che mira, il Calamo fatale Porta reo fin per non usate porte, E avien, ch’à punto à mezo il petto tocchi, Serbò la man lo stil de’ suoi begli occhi. 95

Con mirabil prestezza al nervo aggiunge Dardo novel la Vergine feroce, Et à Resin, che i modi insegna, e punge Gli animi ad ammorzar l’ardor, che noce, Tra le labbra, e tra i denti passa, e giunge Al palato, e la lingua, e fuor veloce Per la Nuca trapassa, e Cesio coglie Ne l’occhio destro, e pene amare accoglie. 96

Il vento soffia, e rompe, e spezza, e svelle Lo strano incendio, il gitta, e lo trasporta Parte à le vie superne de le stelle;

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Appendix Parte tra l’herbe, e i fior raggira, e porta; Parte de’ Cavallier su l’armi belle, Nè vale à trarlo ingegno, o mano accorta; S’addata al ferro, e scalda; ond’è pur forza O perire, o spogliar la dura scorza. 97

L’aure spiranti, che non san lo’nterno Del Re malvagio, e sue nemiche voglie, Portan la trista fiamma de lo’nferno De’ Traci ingiusti su le ferree spoglie; Fà d’amici, e nemici aspro governo, Ove s’asside, e ferma; ove s’accoglie; Arde la bionda Messe, e l’altre piante, E’l tutto d’uno incendio hà un sol sembiante. 98

Al proprio fonte, ch’è nel Monte Ismaro Pallido in volto fuggi’l fier Strimone, Temendo à tanta vista un fin amaro Sol ne la fugga sua salute pone. E’l Barbiese, e’l Cidaro tornaro Donde partiro, in altra regione Pianse Flora, e Pomona, i frutti, e i Fiori Arsi, e consunti da’ letali ardori. 99

La Dea, che’l dolce sonno à noi conduce, Teme, che Febo habbia sue leggi rotte, Da lo splendor di quella immensa luce Gì saettata à le Cimerie grotte: Nè ardì partito il Dio, che’l giorno adduce; Nel dì seguente dar l’ombre à la Notte, Fin, che non vide rimaner estinto Il zoppo Dio, ch’era à mal opre accinto. 10 0

Tronca il vento la fiamma, e seco porta, Ove’è nel mar Egeo spalmata Nave. Mentre sicura gia per l’onda torta Di Merci pretiose onusta, e grave: E gode il Navigante, e si conforta, Che de l’acque, o del Ciel timor non have, Cade sovra essa, e la consuma, e strugge, E ciò, che avanza il mar sorbe, e distrugge.

Excerpts in Italian 10 1

O vano sperar nostro, o cieche menti, Mentre le ciurme gian contente, e liete, E’l mar riposa, e i più rabbiosi venti Scende, o pietà, nel cupo sen di Lete, Ma in tanto le Latine, e franche genti, Che passan di valor tutto le mete, Cotal Tragedia de’ nemici fanno, C’havran fin, che’l Sol giri eterno danno. 10 2

Plautio piglia Arnasette, e quanto puote L’aggira, e tra lo’ncendio indi lo scaglia; Dicendo falso Tessalo, hor fa note, L’insidie, e quanto il tradimento vaglia, Poi volge il ferro in rilucenti rote, Stratia, calpesta, svena, uccide, e taglia, Sfogano i Galli, e gl’Itali del core Sopra i Greci mal nati ira, e dolore. 10 3

Sembra di Claudia à i colpi ogn’elmo frale; Ogni forte Corazza un debil vetro; Sembra ogni brando ottuso, & ogni strale Perde in lei volto il suo natural metro: Se tocca altrui fa piaga aspra, e mortale; Onde scende il ferito al Regno tetro: E indarno Appello, ove ella fere spende L’arte, e’l sapere, e vana ogn’opra rende 10 4

Fende l’armi, qual cera, tra la fronte Passa il fulmineo ferro al fier Costante, Che di minaccie, d’improperi, e d’onte Offendea’l campo nostro in quello istante. E Rainier coraggioso vede, Irmonte C’ha membra, e la statura di Gigante, Ei da Cimerij popoli è venuto Per dare co’ suoi soldati à’ greci aiuto 10 5

Tra le labbia lo passa, indi al Cervello Penetra co’ la lancia il Cavalliero: Poscia con forte man solleva quello Fuor da l’arcion lontan dal suo destriero. Cosi veggiam l’accorto Pastorello, Che spese ne la Caccia opra, e pensiero

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Appendix Portar pendente à un tronco, caro peso, Lepre, o Coniglio con sudor già preso. 10 6

Spezzò la lancia del Gigante immane Del corpo suo lo smisurato pondo, Al suo cader, da parti assai lontane Risuonar gli Antri, e quasi scosse il mondo: Pianse il Tracio Signor sue sorti strane; E fuor trasse sosprir dal cor profondo; E quasi mar irato horibil freme, Morto è già Irmonte, vana è ogni sua speme. 10 7

Quanti per te giaciono, o fier Dibrese, Quanti per le tue man prode Rainiero? Quanti pe’l tuo valor Conte di Blese? Quanti per Balnavilla, e per Ruggiero? Vedi tra tronche membra, e tronco arnese, Ch’ampio fiume di sangue apre il sentiero. Già di spavento pieno il Tessal cede, E’l passo à i Franchi, e à gl’Itali concede. 10 8

Allhor tra’l fumo, il foco, e le faville, Lo stuolo entra de’ nostri invitto, e audace; Tentan de l’acque con l’humide stille Quel ardor far perir crudo, e vorace; Ma’l tutto in vano; benche mille, e mille Lo spargan d’acque senza posa, o pace. Si consiglian di trar con danno, e scorno De’ Greci i legni accesi fuor del corno. 10 9

Gittano i Ponti i nostri, e’n fretta vanno Per estinguer Volcan, che tanto offende; Ma Plautio non temendo oltraggio, o danno, Ne le Navi dal lito un salto prende: Si sforza spinger lor con grave affanno Fuori de l’acque, e senno, & arte spende; Grida, e comanda, e più se stesso adopra, E pon Cavalli, e Fanti e il tutto in opra. 11 0

Riman tra quelle fiamme Elvetio estinto Dal colpo reo d’impetuosa Fromba; Già dal ghiaccio di morte è intorno cinto; Ha Feretro ad un tempo, e Rogo, e Tomba:

Excerpts in Italian Mezo arsicciato Orosio, e nero, e tinto, (Che corse al suon di strepitosa tromba,) Cade, tocco da stral nel salso humore, E di foco, e di ferro, e d’acqua more. 11 1

Altri tra’l grand’incendio morto resta; Alcun, ch’à dar aita il ponte passa, Tocco da sasso, o da saetta infesta, Moribondo caggendo il mondo lassa: Altri da quella luce altrui molesta Abbagliato, e confuso il capo abbassa, E tra le bragie, e giù ne l’acque trova Riposo al corpo, se tra suoi no’l prova. 11 2

Mentre Enea con un legno il fiume varca Per volger l’inimica Classe altrove. La Fionda, c’hà d’acuta selce carca Emilia al braccio suo travolve, e move, E nel capo à Colui, che’n picciol Barca Crede di far meravigliose prove, Coglie, & impiaga, e giù nel’acque getta, E anchor de gli altri fà strage, e vendetta. 11 3

Caddè per le sue mani il buon Filerto, Che nacque già tra l’Antenoree mura, Huom dotto, e saggio, e da Minerva esperto Ne l’arti sue con diligenza, e cura. Lo segue Artemio, huom prode e d’alto merto Colto in fronte da Pietra alpestre, e dura, Caggendo punto è di saetta, e duolo Diede morendo à l’Italiano stuolo. 11 4

Tra mille sassi, mille Dardi, e mille E ferri, e Spade; ond’era il Cielo oscuro, Tra’l fumo, il foco, e fetide scintille Bonifatio co i suoi ne và sicuro; Tentan volger le fiamme, e le faville Del Corno per l’humor sanguigno, e impuro, Con fatica, con forza, e con ingegni Traggouo,2 e con sudor gli accesi legni.

2. Meaning indicates that this is a typo for “Traggono.”

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Appendix 11 5

E Giacinto, e Rainiero, & altri molti Adriatici Heroi, porgono aita, E consiglio, e saper; perche sièn tolti Li nostri legni à l’empia fraude ordita, À lor non cale, à sommo honor rivolti Per l’armata serbar, perder la vita; Laqual credon sol degna, quando è spesa Per l’honor de la Patria, e’n sua difesa. 11 6

Gia incominciava aprir gli Usci del Cielo L’Aurora, e usciva del suo bel soggiorno, Portando il luminoso Arcier di Delo À scacciar l’ombre, à far sereno il giorno, Quando i Veneti Heroi pe’l salso gelo Guidan le navi ardenti fuor del Corno. E lascian quelle à Greci nel Bosforo Misero avanzo de gl’inganni loro. 11 7

À gli eterni Teatri il cor rivolse, Di gioia pieno il glorioso Enrico, E rese gratie à lui, che dar li volse Palma, e trionfo contro il reo nemico, L’Armata formidabil poi raccolse, Che dispersa, e confusa per l’aprico Già del mare, e del Corno per fuggire De l’irato Volcan minaccie, & ire. 11 8

Rassetta il tutto, & ordina, e provede Al tutto, e porge à i suoi lode, e baldanza; Biasma d’Alessio, il Re, la rotta fede, C’havea di vero amor faccia, e sembianza; Fornito il tutto, volge pago il piede Da’ maggiori seguito à la sua stanza; E da riposo al corpo; ma la mente, C’ha del celeste riposar non sente.

EX CER PT S F R OM CA N T O D U O D E C I MO 39

Le vittorie felici, il chiaro evento Lo’nvigorisce, a grand’oprar lo spinge Più ogn’hor desta l’audacia, e l’ardimento

Excerpts in Italian Desio, che d’avanzar se anchor sospinge, Poco lungi da lui piaghe, e spavento Porta Meandra, à gloria alta s’accinge, E genti molte con diversa morte Restan di Lete nel reo fiume absorte. 40

Qual fa stratio d’Agnelle il lupo atroce, Se da gran fame è travagliato, e spinto. Tal parea far la Vergine feroce, Cade il latino, e’l Gallo à terra estinto: E con baldanza à suoi porgea tal voce, Mostrando il ferro suo di sangue tinto, Amici, per tal via dobbiam noi porre La pace in Grecia, e in libertà riporre. 41

Oprate sì, che del valor, ch’è in voi, Splenda in Sparta, è in Corinto eterno lume; Goda la sua Regina, e i vicin suoi; Spieghi per voi la fama aurate piume: Che scoprendo virtù scaccierem noi, Lontano il reo, che tanto si presume; Imparate da me, come s’uccida, Come si vinca, e come il fato arrida. 42

Cosi dicendo i cor depressi, e lenti Rinforza, rinvalora, e rassicura, Essa tra membra tronche, e corpi spenti Scopre per gir al Ciel strada sicura: Fansi ad essempio tanto i suoi più ardenti; Li prepara ardir sommo, alta ventura; Gli apre virtude à la vittoria il passo; Alza à meta immortal cor vile, e basso. 43

Lo suo stuol precorrendo a piagar viene Clodio con l’asta, e dal Corsier lo getta, No’l ferì, non l’offese, che sostiene L’usbergo il colpo, ch’è di tempra eletta: Ma disprezza ferirlo sù l’arene L’alta guerriera, e farne essa vendetta; Trofeo non degno, e non pregiate spoglie Stima, che d’huom, che giaccia, altri raccoglie

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Appendix 44

Disteso il lascia, e segue Esmon, che segue Del già Rettor di Pera il gran Germano, Morto il desia, ne seco paci, o tregue Cura, già sopra li è con l’armi in mano: Ma quelli tosto par, che si dilegue Da gli occhi suoi, qual suol ne l’aere vano O Fumo, o nebbia, che sapea ben quanto Suo valor fosse, e come chiaro il vanto.

EXC ER PT S F R OM CA N T O VI G ES I MO S E C O N D O 1

À La più bella, e più gioconda parte, Che’l Ciel vagheggi, e’l mar bagni, e circondi; Che’l nome vago, e insieme anchor comparte Europa il bello, e i modi suoi giocondi; Volgi lo sguardo: là gl’ingegni, e l’arte Fioriscon, ne saprei dir; quanto abbondi Di ricchezze, è d’industria, corron quivi Fonti d’alto saper per mille Rivi. 2

Vede Prussia, Boemia, Austria, e Vienna D’agi abbondanti, e di ben culte Ville, Stiria, Carintia, e Dacia, che le accenna, Come di gemme, e d’or, ricca sfaville; Rascia, e la Vallachia, che l’ali impenna Per salir sopra l’altre. humide stille Del Nestere la bagnan fin, che arriva Del mare Eusino à l’arenosa riva. 3

Lagaro, l’Ada & il Ticino, e i piani Fertili, e ameni de gli Helvetij scopre: Di Tirol la Contea; defformi, e sbrani La Vallea Animali altrui discopre; Tra’l Reno, e’l Lecco è Svevia; e di Lindani L’Isola ne l’Acronio, ove bell’opre S’usano di pietà; Turingia appare, E Dania c’ha l’herbette ornate, e care. 4

La terra là, c’hor sotto i pie si vede Del mondo è sito più, ch’altro felice; A destra d’Adria il mar suoi liti fiede;

Excerpts in Italian À sinistra il Tirren suoi vanti indice; Colà Sicilia, e la Calabria ha’l piede; Colà Volcano, e Volcanello elice Del petto il chiuso incendio, e de suo’ amori Mostra de’ sassi per l’aperto fuori. 5

Veggono lunge i fiumi Simoenta, E Xanto, c’hebber già di fiamme l’onde, Troia giacer tra le sue pompe spenta; E benche tal, sue glorie non asconde: E Frigia, e Smirna, e Rodi, s’appresenta Del mar Mediterraneo e scoglio, e sponde; E di Panfilia gli arenosi liti; E del mar varie terre, e vari siti. 6

Dentro quell’aspre Grotte horrendi, e immani Cariddi, e Scilla stà, ch’à Ulisse uccise Gli amici, e in lui co’ suoi rabbiosi Cani Abbaiando altamente il timor mise: Sotto quel marmo con singulti strani Freme il Gigante, che tra se divise Rapir lo’mpero à Giove; hora co’l foco Vuol arder, se non prese, il santo loco. 7

Apre l’Italia quante in grembo tiene Cittadi illustri, e terre ornate, e belle, E per quant’ampie, e procellose vene Corrono al mar l’acque sonanti; e snelle; Colti campi, alti boschi, e rive amene; Vaghi Giardini, in cui Mirti, e Mirtelle Porgon vaghezza, e d’herbe, e fiori adorni Sono, & intesti i placidi soggiorni. 8

Genti accoglie d’ingegni, e d’alma illustri Liguria, che tra l’Alpi, e’l mar si stende; Il suo popol di spirti acuti, e industri A guadagni lodati à merci attende; Nulla dimeno i giorni, gli anni, e i lustri Tra le guerre del mar famoso spende. Colà e’l monte Gargano; e’l Tempio colto, Da celeste guerriero in guardia tolto.

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Appendix 9

Là di Genova gli Horti, quà le rose Scernon di Pesto, e del Tirreno; e miri Le dipinte Riviere, e le vezzose Sponde del bel Sebeto, e i suoi Zafiri; E quante gratie la natura pose Nel mondo tutto, la vuol, che s’ammiri, Che ne la ricca Italia ogni bell’arte, Ogni culto, e sapere ha seggio, e parte. 10

Vicino e’l mar, dove cantando invita Al dolce sonno i Naviganti ignari La stirpe d’Acheloo; poi de la vita Lor priva, e in tetri volge i giorni chiari, D’Ulisse sol la mente saggia, e ardita N’udì la voce, i suoni eletti, e cari; E i bellissimi aspetti vide; e illeso Fuggì, benche d’amor ferito, e preso. 11

Mira quella Città, cui sette colli Cingono il crin, le die Romulo il nome; Et il Tebro lodato, i Prati molli: Ove fur genti travagliate, e dome: Hor con ragion raffrena i pensier folli Di ricche carco, e sacrosante some Pietro, che la sua Greggia à i Paschi Santi Guida del Cielo, e trahe di doglie; e pianti, 12

Volgi à la destra, o prode Cavalliero, Dicea la Donna, de’ tuoi lumi il guardo, Che di Vinegia il Golfo, e’l grand’impero Vedrai, e di scopirtelo3 già n’ardo: Mira con quanto studio, e magistero Fondolla il ciel, che non è lento, o tardo, A custodirla; e con possente braccio Da lei scacciare ogni nocivo impaccio. 13

Mentre ella volge à i suoi destrieri alati L’aurate briglie ver gli Euganei monti; Poi di Vinegia à i liti fortunati

3. This term is missing an “r”; it should read “scoprirtelo.”

Excerpts in Italian Piega di suoi Corsier le belle fronti; Scorgon mover l’Egeo suoi flutti irati; E’l Termatico seno; e Fiumi, e Fonti Molti fregiar la terra, Adria tra l’acque Paga posar, ove già visse; e nacque. 14

Quest’è Colei, che di grandezze cinta. Qual del suo popol svelle intoppi, e spine; C’ha la vesta di lauro intesta, e pinta; Versa da gli occhi suoi gratie divine; Riverita sia ogn’hor fin, che sospinta Sia terra, e Cielo, e’l tutto al fin decline Celeste mano, e novo mondo al mondo Rinovi, fermo, stabile, e giocondo. 15

V’è là quell’isolette, quai tra l’onde Giaccion con pace popolate, e piene D’arti, e di lodi, la maggior nasconde Christallo in copia, quasi in lunghe vene, Il qual poi dotto mastro bolle, e infonde, E’n varie forme riformato viene. Quanto il Sol vede di si gran tesoro Gode, e stupisce di si bel lavoro. 16

Ecco l’eccelse Moli, e i venerandi Tempi, e gli altri al gran Dio sacrati hostelli, Li superbi edifici, o gli ammirandi Ponti le moli, e i sontuosi Avelli: Nè Rodi, o Menfi han cosi eccelsi, e grandi Li miracoli suoi; nè questi, o quelli Ponno agguagliarsi a i rari; onde risplende La Patria tua, che i regi petti accende. 17

Però stupor non, è se i più potenti Principi de l’Europa ardon d’amore Per figlia tal; da i cui begli occhi ardenti Portan per sempre saettato il core: Contemplan; benche à lunghi i suoi contenti; Rode l’invido cor rabbia, e dolore; Stan, come il Can, che la bramata Fera Vede allacciato, ne d’haverla spera.

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Appendix 18

Quivi e’l Tempio famoso à Marco eretto; De la sposa del mar Padre amoroso; L’altissime Colonne, e l’ampio tetto, Cui fregi, ed oro fan ricco, e pomposo. Il serpentino, e’l Perfido,4 e l’eletto Christallo il rendon grande, e luminoso. Quivi à Mosaico varie di sembianti Son del futuro imagini spiranti. 19

Taccia, chi, già d’Efeso il sacro Tempio Loda, o quel già, che’l Rè saputo pose; Che questo senza pari, e senza essempio Stassi, Machina eccelsa Adria compose Al gran Rè de le stelle, e se tra l’empio Genere humano ei d’albergar dispose, Questo è sol di lui degno, se pur degno Luoco è quà in terra, opra di chiaro ingegno. 20

Mira quell’alta, e smisurata Mole, Che par, che oltre le stelle andar contenda; Sopra cui par del Ciel, ch’un augel vole, E di Venetia il patrocinio prenda, Simil non è, ovunque intorno il Sole Con lume de’ suoi raggi il giorno accenda: Ivi le Squille dan devoto segno Di render gratie al sempiterno Regno. 21

In questo dir discese lungi poco Dal Vestibolo santo, e fermo stassi Il Carro, alqual d’intorno, e à l’ampio loco, Quasi di bianca nube un velo fassi: Da cui possono ad agio a poco, a poco L’opre ammirare, e i pretiosi sassi De la gran piazza, e li superbi, e regi Palagi, e d’essi i sontuosi fregi. 22

Poi, c’hebbe ferme le volanti Rote Del largo spatio in ben agiato canto, Poco badò, che uscì de le devote

4. Meaning indicates that this should read “Porfido.”

Excerpts in Italian Porte sublimi del Vestibol santo, Nobile stuol, che par, ch’altrui dinote Grandezza, e maestà nel crin, nel manto. Questi porpora veste; quel riluce Per l’acciaio, e per l’or guerriero, e Duce. 23

L’uno hà lo scettro, e l’altro in ferro avolto Folgora, qual nel Ciel splender si vede Marte, qualhor con formidabil volto Gli animi al sangue, à la battaglia chiede; Senno, e valor tra quelli sta raccolto; La vittoria con essi move il piede; Procedon anzi à lor rischi, e sudori: Seguono i passi suoi glorie, & honori. 24

L’altro drappel di faccia honesta, e grave Tra cui retta Giustizia alberga, e regna, Dà colpi enormi, e da ingiust’opre, e prave Purga Vinegia, e’l viver giusto insegna; E con la fronte, e con parlar soave Il buono, e’l saggio di sue gratie degna; Onde ogn’un scerne con qual riti, e leggi Perfetto Duce i fidi suoi correggi. 25

Non mai tanto saper, tanta prudenza Roma mirò ne’ gran Quiriti suoi; Quanto la Patria tua senno, e clemenza Ammira ogn’hor ne’ suoi famosi Heroi, La maestà del volto, la presenza Regale, e gli alti portamenti, e poi Quello, che in lor più vale, e in lor più splende. E’l poter, e’l valor, che tanto ascende. 26

Ma s’io volessi, ò gran Veniero, altrui Mostrar l’opre preclare, e i pregi, e i vanti, De’ magnanimi Veneti, e li sui Fatti sovrani, e i pensier regi, e santi; Asconderia più volte à gli occhi tui Del chiaro volto i lucidi sembianti Febo, vita del mondo; ma diam fine A le sue lodi, al nostro dir confine.

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Appendix 27

Restan nel grembo de stupori accolte Le meraviglie sue, gli honori, e l’armi, Parli d’essi la fama, e sien raccolte Del Ciel nel lembo, e in più sonori carmi. Dan luce al Sol sue virtù rare, e molte; Spirto d’Eternità spirano i marmi; In cui si legge di Venetia il nome, Ch’à le grandezze altrui scote le chiome. 28

Mira vaga Sirena uscir de l’onde Bella, leggiadra, e pargoletta anchora; Temprar con dotta Cettra alte, e gioconde Note; onde l’alghe intorno, e i liti indora: Guata serpir tra le sue chiome bionde Il verde Lauro, che i suoi pregi honora. Ecco, come ad udir corrono intanto Le Ninfe, e i Cigni d’Adria il suono, e’l canto. 29

Stupirà il mondo de suoi detti al suono; E fia d’honor forse più, ch’altra degna: Le sacre Muse à corteggiarla sono; À quella Febo la sua gloria assegna. De’ suoi lodati studi non ragiono; Canterà lei, che in Ciel Regina regna; Matura fatta con sonori carmi De la sua nobil Patria i pregi, e l’armi. 30

Rimanti in pace, o terra amica; il Cielo Del dolce dì sue gratie il crin t’asperga; Turbo nemico, o procelloso gelo D’aversa voglia dal tuo sen disperga; La giustitia, l’amor, la fede, e’l zelo Oltre le vie del Ciel t’inalzi, ed erga: Vivi felice, sempre à quegli unita, Che per salvar altrui porse la vita. . . . 36

Ne la qual parte un grand’incendio appare, Qual diresti, che fiamme intorno aggiri, Ch’à le luci del Sol tremule, e chiare Tanto appariscon più, quanto più miri: Nel mezo à quegli ardori, à gli occhi pare Un non sò, che, che si volteggi, e giri,

Excerpts in Italian Quanto van, par s’appressi, al fin Cimieri Veggono insegne, e fanti, e Cavallieri. 37

Selve d’Aste, e di spade, e di Cavalli Le Campagne coperte, e i colli, e i monti Veggon stendardi rossi, Azuri, e gialli; Destrier cinti di ferro, e petto, e fronti: Dove passan pe’ Campi, prati, e Valli, Distruggono ogni ben; suggono i fonti: Impoveriscon gli abbondanti, e colti Luochi, quai poi staran gran tempo incolti. 38

Stupido il giovinetto dice, o mia Sovrana scorta, o mia salute, e vita; Che concorso, che moto, ove s’invia Questa d’armi, e d’ardir schiera infinita, Chi l’aduna, e incamina? ecco la via Tutta ricopre hormai gente spedita: La saggia Donna con amica voce Disse, e mirò l’essercito feroce. 39

Per compiacere al tuo desio farotte I nomi, e i natij luochi anchor palese; Perche quà son, da chi fur già condotte, Come s’accingan hora ad alte imprese: Di donde l’ombre à noi guida la notte, Fin dove la bell’Alba il lume accese. Corron popoli al Re; benche lontani, E copron di se stessi, e monti, e piani. 40

Tutte le squadre Giovanissa accoglie Per portar à Bisantio, e al Greco aita; Per discacciar da le Pelasghe soglie Del Veneto Leon la Classe ardita: Non tanti rai dal crin Febo discioglie, Quando de l’onde fa ridente uscita; Quanti soldati hor coraggiosi aduna Il Duce, e move à l’ultima fortuna. 41

Costui co’l Regno hereditò l’antiche Risse, e l’odio instancabile ne’ Traci; Onde non mai conventioni amiche

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Appendix Seguir tra loro, od amicitie, e paci: Ma turbolenti guerre, aspre fatiche; Onte, e dispregi à gli animi mordaci; Dopo Azan suo fratello il Regno prese, E col Regno le guerre, e le contese. 42

Da l’altezze de l’Emo ei tosto corse; Non corse nò, precipitò co’ Sciti, Guerreggiò, depredò, con l’armi scorse Le Tessale Campagne, e i greci liti: Atterrò, soggiogò, temenza porse A i più forti in battaglia; e più spediti. Dal negro mare à l’Hellesponto il tutto Andò per sua cagion di sangue, e lutto. 43

De’ più gran Duci questi è capitano; Ma non cessò giamai, fù sempre infesto À Greci, e come dissi, armò la mano, Fè pugne sanguinose, hor lieto, hor mesto, Fù’l successo de l’huom fero, e inhumano À i Rè vicini ogn’hor grave, e molesto; Nulla di meno hora lo miri quivi Mover cortese aita à i vinti Achivi. 44

Hor da l’inferior, da la suprema Misia il superbo Rè guida le schiere, Da la prossime sue fin da l’estrema Parte, e da le più incognite riviere; Tanto il fato de’ Greci avien, che’l prema; Se godde del suo male, hor n’ha spiacere; Che la vita, l’honor; le genti, e l’oro, Mette in non cale, per salute loro. 45

O di qual nebbia gl’intelletti humani Sono offuscati; o van nostro desio, Congrega insieme il Re prossimi, e strani, Per ritornar nel Regno huom falso, e rio: Ma penetrar non pon pensieri insani Ciò, c’ha in se sol determinato Dio. Gran cose spera; onde raduna insieme Fatica infruttuosa, e inutil speme.

Excerpts in Italian 46

Podalamio è quel là, che i suoi Rutheni Severo adduce à la crudel Battaglia; Lascian di Patria amata i dolci seni Per mostrar del pugnar quanto à lor caglia, La nobiltà di Russia i Campi hà pieni Di spade, e d’aste; onde il Latino assaglia; Di tante genti egli è supremo Duce Calisirio, è di Chiovia altre conduce. 47

Arunte, che già servo, hor capo viene Con molti in mostra giovani gagliardi, Costor lasciar del Negro Mar l’arene Per non mostrarsi al Re lenti, e codardi; Essi di servitù l’aspre catene Cangiaro in lancie, in spade, in presti dardi, Fuggono del servir lo stato indegno, Ch’anco humil cor s’inalza à nobil segno. 48

Vien quel, che segue da fiume Neeme, E scorge quei contra il famoso Enrico; Gente di poco ardir, cu’l timor preme, D’animo vile, e d’habito mendico: Polidio e’l nome suo ch’à le Diademe Di Polonia è soggetto: hor vero amico Di Giovanissa, son per lo più i suoi Di Lituania, e Vilna, & altri poi. 49

Tra la Vistola tolse, e’l Broristene Squadra Ision di Tartari, e Livoni, Da Norvegia, da Svetia, e da le amene Piagge di Lituania, e forti, e buoni: Frisio sotto il suo fren raccolte tiene Genti allettate da speranze, e doni: Ad altri è scorta il fier Girton, che nacque Del fiume Drino appresso à le chiar’acque. 50

Alan da la Meotide Palude Non lungi il Regno suo Patrio tenea; Per far prova di se, di sua virtude Gli agi, e più cari suoi lasciato havea; E seco Norandin, che in sen rinchiude Desio di preda, e gran pensier volgea,

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Appendix D’annullar de la Francia i veri honori, E de l’Italia titoli, e favori. 51

Rosmondo è quel, c’ha’l tergo, e’l petto avolto Di un sannuto Cinghial del duro velo Tra’l Danubio, e’l Termes ha stuolo tolto Selvaggio, acerbo, e di setoso pelo: Il Paese è fecondo, e lieto, e colto Di greggia, e biade, amic’ha terra, e Cielo: Popoli tali il coraggioso Duce Da’ suoi Villaggi in Grecia hora conduce. 52

Da Severino, e da Carpatij monti, E da la nobil Dacia escono à schiere E Vallachi, e sassoni, ne men pronti Li siculi, pur genti alpestre, e fere. Intorno del Marisio à i chiari fonti Vivon, de gli Hunni son reliquie vere. Seguon Costor Emero, il cui Domino Era Albagiulia, Augre,5 & indovino. 53

Ei benche spieghi ampia bandiera, e accoglia Sotto di se squadre feroci, e infide: Nulla dimen del Ciel l’occulta voglia Conosce, e di se stesso il fin previde: Le ruine, le morti, e da qual doglia Havrà traffitto il petto, egli antivide Giovanissa lor capo, e pur s’aduna Da lui sforzato à pessima fortuna. 54

Da Strigonia, da Buda, e d’Alba viene Gente altra, e da Belgrado altri infiniti Là, ve la Sava entra il Danubio, e tiene Seco la via per gir tra salsi liti: Hancor, ch’ogni periglio aspro sostiene: Popoli avari, instabili, & arditi D’alma, e di mano; Nester lor guida, e regge, C’ha di Christo, e Macon confusa legge.

5. Metrical demands indicate that this should read “Augure.”

Excerpts in Italian 55

Molti al Re s’accoppiar, che prima usciro Di Bisantio à l’entrar del Duce franco: Molti, che da l’essercito fuggiro, Quando per man d’Enrico venne manco: Costor con Giovanissa poi s’uniro, Per poter seco in Grecia tornar anco, À rinfrescar la guerra, e portar danni À Galli, e vendicar gli scorsi affanni. 56

Diceva hor si prepara, e dar si crede Aiuto in tanti rischi al falso Greco: Quanto l’odiò, tant’hora amor, e fede Li porta, e parte ogni sua gloria seco: Stima fermar la titubante sede: Ma nel sen del futuro ha’l guardo cieco, Teme l’armi francesche, e l’Italiane: E queste, e quelle brama haver lontane. 57

Veduti in mostra i suoi moverà tosto Per terra il suo viaggio, o per l’Eusino: Come li parrà meglio, e più disposto À le sue voglie, e facile il camino: Sappi, non giungerà, c’havrà il pie posto Nella gran terra il vincitor latino, E li nemici suoi fuggati, e morti: Li lidi presi, e soggiogati i Porti. 58

Poi, che pe’l tuo saper, ei disse, veggio, Donna divina, quanto abbraccia il mondo: Piacciati anchor mostrarmi, ov’è il bel seggio D’Enrico, e scorga s’è mesto, o giocondo: Essere anch’io per somma gratia cheggio De’ suoi perigli al malagevol pondo; De le fatiche à parte, e de’ sudori. Non men, che de le glorie, e degli honori. 59

Godi, il popol latin tosto vedrai, Pararsi (disse) à l’ultimo conflitto, Da cui vinto, e disfatto rimarrai, O Rege ingiusto, e per mai sempre afflitto: Ne tu l’invitto fianco sottrerai, Da quella pugna nel gran di prescritto;

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Appendix Che cadrai tra quell’armi in tempo corto Glorioso, e immortal: mortale, e morto. 60

La Misia, e la Moldavia (guata) stanno Dal Danubio non lungi: occupan tutto Con le lor terre il lito al mare, e vanno Fin de l’acque Nesteree al dolce flutto: D’oro scorrono i fiumi àl mare, & hanno Opimi i Campi, e d’abbondante frutto. V’è la Grecia, la Tracia, e d’Helle il seno, Cui cinge il margin di bei fior ripieno. 61

Riconosce il Guerriero il Barbiese: E’l Cidaro corrente, e basso Rio: La Propontide, & Helle, che le accese Fiamme spense, e d’amor caldo desio. E’l Campo, dove già famose imprese Fece, e pagare à Greci acerbo il fio: E le Torri superbe, e i sette colli, Ch’ornan Bisantio coltivati, e molli. 62

Vede poi biancheggiar l’amiche tende: Arder nel ferro fanti, e Cavallieri; E come il Duce à preparare attende À l’estreme battaglie animi feri: Il generoso cor non men s’accende, Che l’esca al foco: in lui spirti guerrieri S’infiammansi, che far bramava d’alto Tra quelle schiere memorabil salto. 63

Essa, che vede l’animo feroce, Tutto avampare al martiale aspetto: Sorrise alquanto: e con benigna voce Apre la bella bocca à simil detto, Quell’incendio d’honor, che t’arde, e coce, Ti lacera cosi, ti rode il petto: Che’l caro, e’l bel non curi: onde si mostra Ricca, e abbondante la mia regia chiostra. 64

Dunque n’andrai là, dove il fero Marte Tra lancie, e spade, e ben ferrati scudi: D’uccider, e ferire in segna l’arte

Excerpts in Italian À i cor d’amore, e di pietade ignudi, Tù coloro imitando in quella parte Li tuoi teneri affetti acerbi, e crudi Farai, d’humanità spogliato, e’l core Potrai far lieto ne l’altrui dolore? . . . 76

Fuggito il Sol, rinchiuse avaro il Cielo Ne l’ombre immense à gli occhi i vaghi aspetti; E sorgendo la notte in fosco velo Sparse gli alti di gemme, azuri tetti, Quand’egli tocco il cor da dolce zelo, Da sant’amor, da consanguinei affetti, Lodò la bella Erina, e rese à lei Gratie, e in modo gentil tre volte, e sei. 77

Colui, che stando in Cielo al mondo nostro Con paterna pietà da legge, e vita, Gli tuoi spirti feroci al nobil chiostro D’Enrico accheti, à te magion gradita: Di dura morte lo spietato mostro Scacci da te ch’à te s’appressa, e invita; Vanne, secondi il Ciel tue voglie; e porga Merto a tuoi rischi; onde tua gloria sorga. 78

Cosi diss’ella, e del guerriero audace Essaltò l’alte voglie, e’l petto regio; Poiche per fama haver cambiar li piace La vita in morte, e’n glorioso pregio: D’indugio ogni momento il cor li sface; Turba, e travaglia assai l’animo egregio; Lascia la nobil Ninfa, e volge il tergo A quel di sua salute amico albergo. 79

Lasciò à pena il Palagio, ch’uscir mira Con lui noti Leoni il Carro ardente; Lieto l’ascende il giovinetto; e ammira Ogni suo fregio più del Sol lucente; L’Auriga à i bei Corsier la sferza gira, Quai, come vento, ò fiamma andar repente, Ne si fermar, che’ giunse, ove nel piano Era attendato il popolo Italiano.

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Appendix 80

E perche anchor stendeva il manto intorno Tenebrosa la notte à l’otio intesa, Taceano i venti, e l’aure, e’l Cielo adorno Temeva anchora ogni sua face accesa; Tra l’herbe rugiadose almo soggiorno Prese, quel cor rivolto à grande impresa; Chetò i suoi moti, e in languido sopore Addolcì l’egre membra, i sensi, e’l core. 81

Ne’l sonno il sciolse dal suo fren, che’l Sole Vago di luce folgorò di Lampi, Gli occhi aprì allhora à i canti, à le carole Degli augelletti ne gli aperti Campi; Sparir le stelle in Ciel, rose, e viole Vede far belli i luochi ornati, & ampi; E vede Lampeggiar nel ferro poi De l’essercito invitto i prodi Heroi. 82

O con quanto stupore il Campo tutto Il guerrier sospirato accoglie, e vede; Colui, che già credea morto, e ridutto In polve, il guata, à pena d’esso il crede. Poscia al prode Rainier s’hà ricondutto, Che di là sorge, ove pensoso siede; E l’abbraccia, e lo bacia, e’l nobil volto Riga di pianto, e’l tiene al petto accolto.

EXCER PT F R OM CA N T O VI G ESI MO Q U ARTO 26

Claudia và, dove il furioso Oronte Calpesta del Venier la schiera, e svena, Con intrepido cor l’audace fronte Volge ver lui di vivo ardir ripiena; E coraggiosa à la battaglia hà pronte Le mani, e l’alma, un colpo acerbo mena, Drizza ella un colpo tal, che sù’l destriero Fà Piegar à l’huom crudo il capo altero. 27

Con quel furor, che l’ampia chioma estolle Da turbine agitata eccelsa pianta; Si ratto il capo inalza, d’ira bolle,

Excerpts in Italian E nel cor sua virtù sublima, e vanta, S’attrista sì, che Donna inferma, e molle. Habbia cor, habbia ardir, forza habbia tanta, Ch’osi d’opporsi à i moti suoi sdegnosi Da cui fuggon del campo i più famosi. 28

Godi, se cadi, ei dice, il morir degno Fia ben di lode, e d’immortal memoria; Ne tu, che cerchi honor, prenderai sdegno, S’io ti dò con la morte eterna gloria, Me’ t’era star tra feminile ingegno; Che cercar tra i guerrier pregio, o vittoria; Ne’l mio, come il tuo ferro, è ottuso, o langue; Ma ferendo sà far ferite, e sangue. 29

Tacque à i detti seguì colpo repente, Che fà sù l’elmo à lei rimbombo, e suono, Come segue al balen vivo, e lucente Tra rotte nubi strepitoso il tuono, China à quella percossa assai possente Il capo, e cade, quasi in abbandono, Tosto si drizza, e l’onta al cor le gira Mille fiaccole, e più d’incendio d’ira. 30

E spinta da la rabbia il brando ignudo Alza, e quel ruinando cala, e scende. L’Ircano à pondo tale oppon lo scudo, Debole al gran ferir, si spezza, e fende: Ne quì ferma sua forza il ferro crudo; Ma perdendo il vigor più in giù discende. E ne la coscia il fiede, è picciol piaga, Poco di sangue le belle armi allaga. 31

Guata, ella dice, o gran Guerrier, s’ottuso E’l debil di mia tagliente spada, Come è quel de la tua? che sai per uso, Quanto per sua natura tagli, e rada, Come gran foco in loco angusto chiuso, Ch’al suo furor non trovi aperta strada, Mormorando, e fremendo s’apre al fine Via facendo de l’Antro alte ruine.

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Appendix 32

Cosi per gli occhi il disdegnoso foco, Ch’inacerbito ascoso in sen tenea, N’uscì à que’ detti, e’n suon tremante, e roco, Qual famelico Lupo alto fremea, Quando del proprio sangue l’armi, e’l loco, Cosa insolita à lui, tinto vedea; E fù per impazzar, che sà, che leso Non da guerrier; ma da guerriera è offeso. 33

O fosse sua ventura, o che la gente Sturbasse, loro essendo in fugga volta; O che vedesse ne la pugna ardente La vita del Marchese d’armi avolta, E’n estremo periglio; onde dolente, Qual Daino al corso andasse agile, e sciolta, Sia, qual si vuol, potea la gran Guerriera Portar di un tal Campion la Palma intiera. 34

Parte à lungi vedea l’Italo, e’l franco Fuggir da un sol guerrier, di sangue molle, Alcun per molte piaghe venir manco; Altri à chieder pietade il grido estolle. Altri conquiso, timoroso, e bianco Correr quà là, qual forsennato, e folle, Non sà, chi sia Colui, guata, e s’appressa, Chi sia s’avede tra la turba spessa. 35

Claudia quelli Meandra esser conosce À l’insegne, al vestir; ma più al valore; Ch’à nostri da non pur crudeli angosce; Ma con la forte man morte, & horrore: Ne men la Greca Claudia riconosce, E per contezza tal fan lieto il core, Che speran dar con horrida battaglia Segno, qual più di lor ne l’armi vaglia. 36

Claudia poi s’avicina là, ve stende La valorosa i guerrier nostri al piano, La fiede horribil sì; ma la difende L’Elmo composto da famosa mano: Fin su’l collo al destrier s’inchina, e scende, Sforzata da quel colpo horrendo, e strano.

Excerpts in Italian Vide abbagliata in que’ funesti lochi Cento erranti facelle, e accesi fochi. 37

Come s’ergono i rami, che à la terra Piegò’l Pastor per opra, o per diporto, Tal levossi la Donna, in lei si sferra, Qual serpe contra, chi l’oppresse à torto. Grida Claudia lascian la commun guerra, E’n altra parte si ritriam, t’essorto, Dove possiam con agio io te, tu anchora Me riprovar; fin che si vinca, o mora. 38

Sciegliono un largo prato assai vicino À la muraglia, à cui di marmo aggira Lungo ordine di seggi, ha’l suo camino Verso la Reggia, e l’aurea porta mira. Quivi si dice il magno Constantino; Poiche’n Mesentio atroce estinse l’ira, Spiegasse i suoi trofei, tal luoco piace À l’una, e à l’altra, poi che occulto giace. 39

Non con si horrenda vista, ò furor tanto Da sotterranei spechi esce il Torrente, Quando torvo, e cruccioso in più d’un Canto Rapisce il gregge, il bosco, e la semente; Ne venir con più fretta si dà vanto Stretto da nubi il fulmine cocente, Che con più assai non movano le due Le mani, e’l ferro à le vendette sue. 40

Con quel ardir di fronte, e co’l furore, Che due Leon s’assaglion d’ira ardenti, Rizzano i veli, e d’un focoso ardore Infiamman gli occhi, e fan spumosi i denti. Con tal n’andaro, e forse con più core Ad assalirsi gli animi possenti, Fremon, qual freme il mar, quando sdegnoso Piange, tolto da venti il suo riposo. 41

Hor quinci, hor quindi suona il brando fero, C’hor la manca, hor la destra alto percote; Cerca s’aprir si possa ampio sentiero

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Appendix Ne la maglia, o schiodar se piastra puote. Qui accenna, altrove fere, al capo altero Corre il ferro, hor al petto, hora à le gote, L’arte à l’arte contrasta, e cauta l’arte Da le scaltrite industrie sue non parte. 42

Claudia; perche non vede; onde s’adira, Sangue nemico, s’ange, arde di sdegno, Si duol Meandra, che restar non mira De la sua spada memorabil segno. Mentre à ciò pensa, foco, e rabbia spira, Crescon le forze, ferve il caldo ingegno; Onde più, che mai cruda il braccio move Con modi, e con maniere odiose, e nove. 43

E questa, e quella cupida desia Mandar l’altra de l’Orco à i Regni tetri; E de que’ colpi à la tempesta ria Non è, chi fugga, si ritiri, o arretri, Superba l’una, e l’altra, accorta spia U’stratiar possa l’armi, ove penetri, Ov’è manco difesa; ov’è più frale L’armatura per far piaga mortale. 44

Mentre, ch’ogn’una d’esse intorno guata, Se parte alcuna al ferro si discopra, Scerne la bianca gola esser guardata La Greca poco, e mal s’ascondi, e copra Ogn’hor drizza cola la mano armata, E per coglierla incauta n’usa ogn’opra, S’avegga Claudia, o nò, ben si difende Da i colpi aversi, è la nemica offende. 45

À gli occhi, al petto; ma più, dove vede Palpitar calda neve, il ferro spinge La Vergin di Corinto, ne concede Tempo à spirar, tanto l’incalza, e stringe; Ne L’altra meno impetuosa fiede, E i colpi accenna, li mentisce, e finge, E tenta per vie mille, e mille modi Scior de la vita degna i chiari nodi.

Excerpts in Italian 46

Come Lupo da fame afflitto, e vinto, Notturno Insidiator la Mandra infesta, Urla, intorno s’aggira, à strage accinto, E’l muggito più in lui la brama desta, Cosi costei, c’ha il cor di ferro avinto, La nemica crudel batte, e molesta, Quà, là tenta d’aprir, studia, e si sforza Co’l brando acuto la ferrata scorza. 47

La pertinace Greca non oblia Il luoco di periglio, e’l ferro caccia Là, ve’l candido avorio il varco apria À fredda morte, e l’Elmo il colpo slaccia; Tal la ferita fù, che fuori uscia Per la bionda cervice, e’l bel crin straccia, À un tempo il ferro, l’Itala Donzella Move, à Meandra fa piaga novella. 48

La ricca vesta, e l’innestata maglia Rompe, e nel molle lato à pieno immerse La fatal spada; tal de la Battaglia La Tracia afflitta il duro fin scoperse. E quanto l’una, e l’altra in armi vaglia, Stupido il mondo riconobbe, e scerse; Caggiono entrambe; e questa, e quella gode L’honor de la vittoria e de la lode. 49

S’invida non è sorte al valor vostro; E à vostri chiari pregi il Ciel nemico, Vi trarrà roza penna, e basso inchiostro D’alta immortalità nel campo aprico; Ma il vostro bel seren del lume vostro Uopo non ha, gia indarno m’affatico, Altissime Donzelle, per voi sole Splendete sì, ch’appo voi tetro è’l Sole.

EXCER PT F R OM CA N T O VI G ES I M O S E TTI MO 57

Mirtillo pensa, s’à l’estremo passo Dar possa à la sua Patria alcun soccorso; Per trarla fuor de l’improperio basso,

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Appendix Ne lasciarle al nemico por il morso; Benche del tutto sia di speme casso, Pur novello pensier nel cor li è corso. Và, dov’è Emilia, e con soave detto Svele il novo desio, c’ha chiuso in petto. 58

Figlia, pompa de’ boschi, honor de l’armi, Splendor del Campo, à cui gia Febo cede, Cede, e la Vergin Trivia, e vero, e parmi, Che’l Ciel lume più bel di te non vede. Prego, che la tua man famosa s’armi. Contra il gran struggitor di nostra sede: Poiche non vibri indarno, o Vergin snella Da l’arco tuo l’horribili quadrella. 59

Se’l farai, premio, e gloria havrai da questi Popoli invitti, e coraggiose schiere, Se vedrem pe’ tuoi strali acuti, e presti Morto il superbo Enrico al pian cadere. Estinto lui, li suoi fuggir vedresti, Li nostri ripigliar forza, e potere; L’ode, lo stral prepara, il Duce attende, Qual con cauto consiglio i Greci offende. 60

Colui, che stando il tutto move, e regge De gli esserciti eterni i sensi, e i cori, Che tra i termini suoi frena, e corregge Del tumido Ocean moti, e furori, Nega, che d’Adria il sir, ch’allhor da legge Del suo Tempio à guerrieri, e difensori. Resti di vita privo, e’l Trace goda De gli suoi danni, e’n habbia gloria, e loda. 61

Per gli spatij di luce volse in giro Gli occhi beati, & infinite scorse Forme divine, e angeliche, che usciro Dal suo voler, cui vita eterna porse, Candida Luce, e splendido Zafiro, Quasi aurea veste intorno à quelli attorse, Han raggi i crini, altergo pronte l’ali, À l’andar ratte più, che venti, o strali.

Excerpts in Italian 62

Con dolcezza d’Impero ad uno accenna, Cui piace impor de’ suoi comandi il pondo, Qual lieve fiamma la dorata penna Pronto rivolse al Creator del mondo: Drizza, o mio fido, dove aguzza, e impenna Emilia il ferro, il volo tuo secondo, Ch’al varco aspetta per ferir nel petto Con l’acute saette il mio Diletto. 63

Fà, che vittorioso, e sano rieda Da la battaglia il Capitan gradito; Cessi da le fatiche, e resti preda La gran Città, scorra, di sangue il lito: Scorri il sangue inimico, ei lieto sieda Vincitor glorioso il Reo schernito; E goda di un tal Duce Adria felice; Ch’al suo valor ben tanta gratia lice. 64

Tacque Colui, che da le tempre al suono De le Cetre celesti, humile, e chino Partì lo spirto, e fece il caro dono Di sua difesa al vincitor Latino. Di quante da quell’empia volte sono Crudelissime frezzie à l’huom divino, Hor la mano, hor la veste à l’aspra punta Oppose, e quasi in marmo il ferro spunta. 65

Molti de’ strali, che la cruda, e bella Giovane spinse al glorioso Enrico, Rivolti à dietro riportaro à quella I lor perigli con furor nemico; Ma non già sì, che l’horride Quadrella Dasser ferita, o morte al cor pudico. Basta, che veggia il Greco, ch’è difeso Da man celeste, ne restar può offeso. 66

Cosi si vide dal Gargano à dietro L’aventate saette far ritorno Al pastorello, il qual ne l’Antro tetro Uccider volea il Bue dal torto corno. Con l’istesso costume, in simil metro Ritornan de la Ninfa al viso adorno,

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Appendix E non riman del ferro suo volante Offesa in lei, cade à begli occhi innante. 67

E dritto ben, che si famoso, e grande Capitano, e guerrier clemente, e saggio, Il cui lume di fama intorno spande, Chiaro via più del Sol, lucente raggio, Sia dal Ciel costodito; e d’ammirande Corone il fregi, habbia da lui vantaggio; Poiche in virtù supera ogn’altro, e regge Con giustitia, e pietà guerriero Gregge. 68

Sospesa, e vinta la spietata figlia, Che d’Adria il Re credea gittar tra morti S’inhorridisce, alto stupor ne piglia, Chi sieno in lei gli strali suoi ritorti, Chi diria quant’hà duolo, e meraviglia, Quanto nel cor si turbi, e si sconforti Pensando à ciò, che sà, quant’in altrui Sien di morte, e di lode i colpi sui.

SERIES EDITORS’ BIBLIOGRAPHY

PR I M A RY S OU R CES

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women. Ed. David Booy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Barbaro, Francesco. On Wifely Duties. Trans. Benjamin Kohl. In Kohl and R. G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic, 179–228: translation of the Preface and Book 2. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978. Battiferra degli Ammannati, Laura. Laura Battiferra and Her Literary Circle. Ed. and trans. Victoria Kirkham. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Behn, Aphra. Love Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Penguin, 1996. ———. Oroonoko. Ed. Joanna Lipking. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. ———. The Rover. Ed. Anne Russell. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994; 2nd ed., 1999. ———. The Rover, The Feigned Courtesans, The Lucky Chance, and The Emperor of the Moon. Ed. and introd. Jane Spencer. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ———. The Works of Aphra Behn. 7 vols. Ed. Janet Todd. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992–96. Bigolina, Giulia. Urania: A Romance. Ed. and trans. Valeria Finucci. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Blamires, Alcuin, ed. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Corbaccio or the Labyrinth of Love. Trans. Anthony K. Cassell. 2nd rev. ed. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993. ———. Famous Women. Ed. and trans. Virginia Brown. The I Tatti Renaissance Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Booy, David, ed. Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Bradstreet, Anne. The Tenth Muse (1650) and, from the Manuscripts, Meditations Divine and Morall, together with Letters and Occasional Prose. Comp. and introd. Josephine K. Piercy. Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1978. ———. The Works of Anne Bradstreet. Ed. Jeannine Hensley. Foreword by Adrienne Rich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Brown, Sylvia, ed. Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mother’s Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin, and Elizabeth Richardson. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucester: Sutton, 1999. Bruni, Leonardo. “On the Study of Literature to Lady Battista Malatesta of Moltefeltro.” In The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts, 240–51. Trans. and introd. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Texts, 1987. Caminer Turra, Elisabetta. Selected Writings of an Eighteenth-Century Venetian Woman of Letters. Ed. and trans. Catherine M. Sama. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Campiglia, Maddalena. Flori: A Pastoral Drama. A Bilingual Edition. Ed., introd., and notes by Virginia Cox and Lisa Sampson. Trans. Virginia Cox. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Cary, Elizabeth, Lady Falkland. The Life and Letters. Ed. Heather Wolfe. Renaissance Texts from Manuscript. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2001. ———. The Tragedy of Mariam (1613). Ed. A. C. Dunstan. Supplement to the introd. Marta Straznicki and Richard Roland. Malone Society Reprints. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. ———. The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry. Ed. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Literary Texts, 2000. ———. The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry. With The Lady Falkland: Her Life, by One of Her Daughters. Ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. New York: Penguin, 1967. ———. The Book of the Courtier. Ed. Daniel Javitch. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002. Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Bell in Campo and The Sociable Companions. Ed. Alexandra G. Bennett. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002. ———. The Blazing World and Other Writings. Ed. Kate Lilley. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1992; repr., London: Penguin, 1994. ———.The Convent of Pleasure and Other Plays. Ed. Anne Shaver. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ———. Observations upon Experimental Philosophy. Ed. Eileen O’Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ———. Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader. Ed. Sylvia Bowerbank and Sara Mendelson. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 1999. ———. Poems and Fancies, 1653. Menston: Scolar Press, 1972. ———. Political Writings. Ed. Susan James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ———. Sociable Letters, 1664. Scolar Press Facsimile. Menston: Scolar Press, 1969. Celeste, Sister Maria. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Trans. Dava Sobel. New York: Penguin, 1999. ———. Sister Maria Celeste’s Letters to Her Father, Galileo. Ed. and trans. Rinaldina Russell. New York: Writers Club Press, 2000. Cerasano, S. P., and Marion Wynne-Davies, eds. Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents. New York: Routledge, 1996. Cereta, Laura. Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist. Ed. and trans. Diana Robin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Christine de Pizan. The Book of the City of Ladies. Trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards. Foreword by Marina Warner. New York: Persea Books, 1982. ———. The Book of the City of Ladies. Trans., introd., and notes by Rosalind BrownGrant. New York: Penguin, 1999. ———. Epistre au dieu d’Amours. Ed. and trans. Thelma S. Fenster. In Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler, eds., Poems of Cupid, God of Love. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990. ———. A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies. Trans. and introd. Charity Cannon Willard. Ed. and introd. Madeleine P. Cosman. New York: Persea Books, 1989 ———. The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Trans. Sarah Lawson. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Clarke, Danielle, ed. Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney, and Aemilia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets. New York: Penguin, 2000. Clifford, Lady Anne. The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford. Ed. D. J. H. Clifford. Phoenix Mill: Alan Sutton, 1990. ———. Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616–1619. Ed. Katherine O. Acheson. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2007. de Coignard, Gabrielle. Spiritual Sonnets. A Bilingual Edition. Ed. and trans. Melanie E. Gregg. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Collins, An. Divine Songs and Meditacions. Ed. Sidney Gottlieb. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1996. Colonna, Vittoria. Sonnets for Michelangelo. A Bilingual Edition. Ed. and trans. Abigail Brundin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany. Ed. and introd. Merry Wiesner-Hanks. Trans. Joan Skocir and Merry Wiesner-Hanks. Women of the Reformation. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1996. Crawford, Patricia, and Laura Gowing, eds. Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Source Book. New York: Routledge, 2000. ”Custome Is an Idiot”: Jacobean Pamphlet Literature on Women. Ed. Susan Gushee O’Malley. Afterword by Ann Rosalind Jones. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2004. Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500– 1640. Ed. Joan Larsen Klein. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Davies, Lady Eleanor. Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies. Ed. Esther S. Cope. Women Writers in English, 1350–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Dentière, Marie. Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin. Ed. and trans. Mary B. McKinley. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Domestic Politics and Family Absence: The Correspondence (1588–1621) of Robert Sidney, First Earl of Leicester, and Barbara Gamage Sidney, Countess of Leicester. Ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan. The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. DuGard, Lydia. The Letters of Lydia DuGard, 1665–1672: With a New Edition of The Marriages of Cousin Germans by Samuel DuGard. Ed. Nancy Taylor. Tempe, AZ: MRTS and Renaissance English Text Society, 2003. Eighteenth-Century Women: An Anthology. Ed. Bridget Hill. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess, and René Descartes. The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. Ed. and trans. Lisa Shapiro. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals. Ed. Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ———. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ———. Elizabeth’s Glass: With “The Glass of the Sinful Soul” (1544) by Elizabeth I and “Epistle Dedicatory” and “Conclusion” (1548) by John Bale. Ed. Marc Shell. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Series Editors’ Bibliography ———. The Letters of Queen Elizabeth I. Ed. G. B. Harrison. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1935. ———. Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works. Ed. Steven W. May. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004. Elyot, Thomas. Defence of Good Women: The Feminist Controversy of the Renaissance. Ed. Diane Bornstein. Facsimile Reproductions. New York: Delmar, 1980. English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700. Ed. Charlotte Otten. Miami: Florida International University Press, 1992. Erasmus, Desiderius. Erasmus on Women. Ed. Erika Rummel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. de Erauso, Catalina. Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. Trans. Michele Stepto and Gabriel Stepto. Foreword by Marjorie Garber. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Family Life in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Contemporary Accounts, 1576-1716. Ed. Ralph Houlbrooke. London: Blackwells, 1988. Fedele, Cassandra. Letters and Orations. Ed. and trans. Diana Robin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Female and Male Voices in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing. Ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Anne Lake Prescott. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Female Playwrights of the Restoration: Five Comedies. Ed. Paddy Lyons and Fidelis Morgan. London: Everyman, 1994. The Female Spectator: English Women Writers before 1800. Ed. Mary R. Mahl and Helene Koon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977; Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1977. Ferguson, Moira, ed. First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578–1799. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Ferrazzi, Cecilia. Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint. Ed. and trans. Anne Jacobson Schutte. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Fettiplace, Elinor. Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking. Ed. Hilary Spurling. London: Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1986. The Fifteen Joys of Marriage. Trans. Elizabeth Abbott. New York: Orion Press, 1959. First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578–1799. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Fitzmaurice, James, Josephine A. Roberts, Carol L. Barash, Eugine R. Cunnar, and Nancy A. Gutierrez, eds. Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Folger Collective on Early Women Critics, eds. Women Critics, 1660–1820: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Fonte, Moderata (Modesta Pozzo). Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance. Ed. and introd. Valeria Finucci. Trans. Julia Kisacky. Annot. Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ———. The Worth of Women. Ed. and trans. Virginia Cox. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Francisca de los Apóstoles. The Inquisition of Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Trial. Ed. and trans. Gillian T. W. Ahlgren. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Franco, Veronica. Poems and Selected Letters. Ed. and trans. Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Galilei, Maria Celeste. Sister Maria Celeste’s Letters to Her Father, Galileo. Ed. and trans. Rinaldina Russell. Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press of Universe.com, 2000. ———. To Father: The Letters of Sister Maria Celeste to Galileo, 1623–1633. Trans. Dava Sobel. London: Fourth Estate, 2001. Gethner, Perry, ed. The Lunatic Lover and Other Plays by French Women of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Glückel of Hameln. The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. Trans. Marvin Lowenthal. New introd. Robert Rosen. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. de Gournay, Marie le Jars. Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works. Introd. Richard Hillman. Ed. and trans. Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Graham, Elspeth, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby, and Helen Wilcox, eds. Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen. New York: Routledge, 1989. Grimmelshausen, Johann. The Life of Courage: The Notorious Thief, Whore and Vagabond. Trans. and introd. Mike Mitchell. Gardena, CA: SCB Distributors, 2001. Guasco, Annibal. Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter. Ed. and trans. Peggy Osborn. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. de Guevara, María. Warnings to the Kings and Advice on Restoring Spain. A Bilingual Edition. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Harline, Craig, ed. The Burdens of Sister Margaret: Inside a Seventeenth-Century Convent. Abr. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Henderson, Katherine Usher, and Barbara F. McManus, eds. Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640. Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1985. Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Ed., introd., and notes by Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ———. Selected Works. Ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2005. Herman, Peter C. Reading Monarchs Writing: The Poetry of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2002. Hill, Bridget, ed. Eighteenth-Century Women: An Anthology. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. Hoby, Lady Margaret. The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605. Ed. Joanna Moody. Phoenix Mill, Great Britain: Sutton, 1998. Humanist Educational Treatises. Ed. and trans. Craig W. Kallendorf. The I Tatti Renaissance Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Hunter, Lynette, ed. The Letters of Dorothy Moore, 1612–64: The Friendships, Marriage and

Series Editors’ Bibliography Intellectual Life of a Seventeenth-Century Woman. The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Inés, Juana de la Cruz, Sister. The Answer / La Respuesta: Including a Selection of Poems. Ed. and trans. Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell. New York: The Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1994. ———. Poems, Protest, and a Dream. Trans. and notes by Margaret Sayers Peden. Introd. Ilan Stavans. New York: Penguin, 1997. ———. A Sor Juana Anthology. Trans. Alan Trublood. Foreword by Octavio Paz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney, and Aemilia Lanyer: Renaissance Women Poets. Ed. Danielle Clarke. New York: Penguin, 2000. Joscelin, Elizabeth. The Mothers Legacy to Her Unborn Childe. Ed. Jean LeDrew Metcalfe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Trans. Elizabeth Spearing. Introd. and notes by A. C. Spearing. New York: Penguin, 1998. de Jussie, Jeanne. The Short Chronicle. Ed. and trans. Carrie F. Klaus. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Kaminsky, Amy Katz, ed. Water Lilies, Flores del agua: An Anthology of Spanish Women Writers from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. B. A. Windeatt. New York: Penguin, 1985. ———. The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. and introd. John Skinner. New York: Doubleday, 1998. ———.The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. and trans. Lynn Staley. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. King, Margaret L., and Albert Rabil, Jr., eds. Her Immaculate Hand: Selected Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983; 2nd rev. paperback ed., 1991. Klein, Joan Larsen, ed. Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500–1640. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Knox, John. The Political Writings of John Knox: The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women and Other Selected Works. Ed. Marvin A. Breslow. Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985. Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters, eds. Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Kottanner, Helene. The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner, 1439–1440. Trans. Maya B. Williamson. Library of Medieval Women. Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 1998. Krämer, Heinrich, and Jacob Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum (ca. 1487). Trans. Montague Summers. London: Pushkin Press, 1928; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1971. Labé, Louise. Complete Poetry and Prose. A Bilingual Edition. Ed. and introd. Deborah Lesko Baker. Trans. Annie Finch. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ———. Sonnets. Introd. and commentary by Peter Sharratt. Trans. Graham Dunstan Martin. Edinburgh Bilingual Library. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1972.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography de Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, Comtesse. Zayde: A Spanish Romance. Ed. and trans. Nicholas D. Paige. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Lanyer, Aemilia. The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judæorum. Ed. Susanne Woods. Women Writers in English, 1350–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Larsen, Anne R., and Colette H. Winn, eds. Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women: From Marie de France to Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun. New York: Garland, 2000. Lay by Your Needles Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women in England, 1500–1700. Ed. Susanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy, and Melanie Osborne. New York: Arnold, 1997. Lock, Anne Vaughan. The Collected Works of Anne Vaughan Lock. Ed. Susan M. Felch. Renaissance English Text Society. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1999. de Lorris, William, and Jean de Meun. The Romance of the Rose. Trans. Charles Dahlbert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971; reprinted, University Press of New England, 1983. Lyons, Paddy, and Fidelis Morgan, eds. Female Playwrights of the Restoration: Five Comedies. London: Everyman, 1994. Mahl, Mary R., and Helene Koon, eds. The Female Spectator: English Women Writers before 1800. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, and Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1977. de Maintenon, Madame. Dialogues and Addresses. Ed. and trans. John J. Conley, S.J. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century England. Ed. James Fitzmaurice, Josephine A. Roberts, Carol L. Barash, Eugine R. Cunnar, and Nancy A. Gutierrez. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Makin, Bathsua. Woman of Learning. Ed. Frances Teague. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1998. Marcus, Leah S., Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, eds. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Marguerite d’Angoulême, Queen of Navarre. The Heptameron. Trans. P. A. Chilton. New York: Viking Penguin, 1984. Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife: Containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a complete woman; as her skill in physic, cookery, banqueting-stuff, distillation, perfumes, wool, hemp, flax, dairies, brewing, baking, and all other things belonging to a household. Ed. Michael R. Best. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986. Marinella, Lucrezia. The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men. Ed. and trans. Anne Dunhill. Introd. Letizia Panizza. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Mary of Agreda. The Divine Life of the Most Holy Virgin. Abridgment of The Mystical City of God. Abr. Fr. Bonaventure Amedeo de Caesarea, M.C. Trans. Abbé Joseph A. Boullan. Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1997. Mary, Queen of Scots. Bittersweet within My Heart: The Collected Poems of Mary, Queen of Scots. Trans. and ed. Robin Bell. London: Pavilion Books, 1992. Matraini, Chiara. Selected Poetry and Prose. A Bilingual Edition. Ed. and trans. Elaine Maclachlan. Introd. Giovanna Rabitti. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Series Editors’ Bibliography de’ Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni. Sacred Narratives. Ed. and trans. Jane Tylus. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Medieval Women Writers. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984. The Meridian Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Plays by Women. Ed. Katharine M. Rogers. New York: Penguin, 1994. Millman, Jill Seal, and Gillian Wright, eds. Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry. Introd. Elizabeth Clarke and Jonathon Gibson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. de Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse. Against Marriage: The Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle. Ed. and trans. Joan DeJean. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Moore, Dorothy. The Letters of Dorothy Moore, 1612–64: The Friendships, Marriage and Intellectual Life of a Seventeenth-Century Woman. Ed. Lynette Hunter. The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Morata, Olympia. The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic. Ed. and trans. Holt N. Parker. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Moulsworth, Martha. ”My Name Was Martha”: A Renaissance Woman’s Autobiographical Poem. Ed. and commentary by Robert C. Evans and Barbara Wiedemann. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press, 1993. Mullan, David George, ed. Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland: Writing the Evangelical Self, c. 1670–c. 1730. The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Myers, Kathleen A., and Amanda Powell, eds. A Wild Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Nogarola, Isotta. Complete Writings: Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations. Ed. and trans. Margaret L. King and Diana Robin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Osborne, Dorothy. Letters to Sir William Temple. Ed., introd., and notes by Kenneth Parker. New York: Penguin, 1987. Ostovich, Helen, and Elizabeth Sauer, eds. Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700. New York: Routledge, 2004. Otten, Charlotte F., ed. English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700. Miami: Florida International University Press, 1992. Ozment, Steven. Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th-Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986; paperback, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Parr, Katherine. Prayers or Medytacions and The Lamentation of a Synner. Ed. Janel Mueller. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Part 1: Printed Writings, 1500–1640. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 1996. Pascal, Jacqueline. A Rule for Children and Other Writings. Ed. and trans. John J. Conley, S.J. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Petersen, Johanna Eleonora. The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself. Ed. and trans. Barbara Becker-Cantarino. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Poullain de la Barre, François. Three Cartesian Feminist Treatises. Introd. and notes by Marcelle Maistre Welch. Trans. Vivien Bosley. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pulci, Antonia. Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival. Ed. and trans. James Wyatt Cook. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700. Ed. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer. New York: Routledge, 2004. Reading Monarchs Writing: The Poetry of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I. Ed. Peter C. Herman. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2002. Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents. Ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies. New York: Routledge, 1996. The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon. Ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Renaissance Woman: Constructions of Femininity in England—A Source Book. Ed. Kate Aughterson. New York: Routledge, 1995. Riccoboni, Sister Bartolomea. Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1436. Ed. and trans. Daniel Bornstein. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. des Roches, Madeleine and Catherine. From Mother and Daughter. Ed. and trans. Anne R. Larsen. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Rogers, Katharine M., ed. The Meridian Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Plays by Women. New York: Penguin, 1994. Rosen, Barbara, ed. Witchcraft in England, 1558–1618. 1969; reprinted with a new preface, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Russian Women, 1698–1917: Experience and Expression, An Anthology of Sources. Comp., ed., annot., and introd. Robin Bisha, Jehanne M. Gheith, Christine Holden, and William G. Wagner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Salazar, María de San José. Book for the Hour of Recreation. Introd. and notes by Alison Weber. Trans. Amanda Powell. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Salter, Thomas. A Critical Edition of Thomas Salter’s The Mirrhor of Modestie. Ed. Janis Butler Holm. The Renaissance Imagination. New York: Garland, 1987. Sarrocchi, Margherita. Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus. Ed. and trans. Rinaldina Russell. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. van Schurman, Anna Maria. Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle. Ed. and trans. Joyce L. Irwin. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Schütz Zell, Katharina. Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in SixteenthCentury Germany. Ed. and trans. Elsie McKee. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. de Scudéry, Madeleine. Selected Letters, Orations and Rhetorical Dialogues. Ed. and trans.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Jane Donawerth and Julie Strongson. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. The Story of Sappho. Ed. and trans. Karen Newman. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Shepherd, Simon, ed. The Woman’s Sharp Revenge: Five Women’s Pamphlets from the Renaissance. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. Siegemund, Justine. The Court Midwife. Ed. and trans. Lynne Tatlock. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book, Folger MS. V.b.198. Ed. Jean Klene, C.S.C. Renaissance English Text Society. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1997. Speght, Rachel. The Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght. Ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Women Writers in English, 1350–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Stampa, Gaspara. Selected Poems. Ed. and trans. Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie. New York: Italica Press, 1994. Stortoni, Laura Anna, ed. Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. Trans. Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie. New York: Italica Press, 1997. Stuart, Lady Arbella. The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart. Ed. Sara Jayne Steen. Women Writers in English, 1350–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Tarabotti, Arcangela. Paternal Tyranny. Ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Teresa of Avila, Saint. The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila. Volume One: 1546–1577. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2001. ———. The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila. Volume Two: 1578–1582. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2007. ———.The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself. Trans. J. M. Cohen. New York: Viking Penguin, 1957. Tilney, Edmund. The Flower of Friendship: A Renaissance Dialogue Contesting Marriage. Ed. and introd. Valerie Wayne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Trapnel, Anna. The Cry of a Stone. Ed. and introd. Hilary Hinds. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2000. Travitsky, Betty, ed. The Paradise of Women: Writings by Englishwomen of the Renaissance. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981. The Trial of Joan of Arc. Trans. and introd. Daniel Hobbins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Trill, Susanne, Kate Chedgzoy, and Melanie Osborne, eds. Lay by Your Needles Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women in England, 1500–1700. New York: Arnold, 1997. de Villedieu, Madame. Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Molière: A Novel. Ed. and trans. Donna Kuizenga. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vives, Juan Luis. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual. Ed. and trans. Charles Fantazzi. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ———. The Instruction of a Christen Woman. Ed. Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Margaret Mikesell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Weamys, Anna. A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Ed. Patrick Colborn Cullen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Weston, Elizabeth Jane. Collected Writings. Ed. and trans. Donald Cheney and Brenda M. Hosington. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Weyer, Johann. Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum. Ed. George Mora with Benjamin G. Kohl, Erik Midelfort, and Helen Bacon. Trans. John Shea. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991. Wilson, Katharina M., ed. Medieval Women Writers. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984. Wilson, Katharina M., ed. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Wilson, Katharina M., and Frank J. Warnke, eds. Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Witchcraft in England, 1558–1619. Ed. Barbara Rosen. 1969; reprinted with a new preface, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Witchcraft in Europe, 1100–1700: A Documentary History. Ed. Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Women. Ed. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. The Vindications of the Rights of Men, the Rights of Women. Ed. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1997. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Ed. Alcuin Blamires. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. The Woman’s Sharp Revenge: Five Women’s Pamphlets from the Renaissance. Ed. Simon Shepherd. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. Women Critics, 1660–1820: An Anthology. Ed. the Folger Collective on Early Women Critics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Ed. Margaret Atherton. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994. Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. Ed. Laura Anna Stortoni. Trans. Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie. New York: Italica Press, 1997. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Warnke. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern Scotland: Writing the Evangelical Self, c. 1670–c. 1730. Ed. David G. Mullan. The Early Modern Englishwoman 1500–1750: Contemporary Editions. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Source Book. Ed. Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing. New York: Routledge, 2000. Women’s Writing in Stuart England: The Mother’s Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin and Elizabeth Richardson. Ed. Sylvia Brown. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucester: Sutton, 1999. Wroth, Lady Mary. The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. Ed. Josephine A. Roberts. Renaissance English Text Society. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1995. ———. The Second Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. Ed. Josephine R. Roberts,

Series Editors’ Bibliography Suzanne Gossett, and Janel Mueller. Renaissance English Text Society. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1999. ———. Lady Mary Wroth’s “Love’s Victory”: The Penshurst Manuscript. Ed. Michael G. Brennan. London: Roxburghe Club, 1988. ———. Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Ed. G. F. Waller. Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur Universität Salzburg, 1977. ———. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. Ed. Josephine A. Roberts. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. de Zayas, Maria. The Disenchantments of Love. Trans. H. Patsy Boyer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. ———. The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels. Trans. H. Patsy Boyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

S ECON D A RY S OU R CE S

Abate, Corinne S., ed. Privacy, Domesticity, and Women in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon. Ed. Marshall Grossman. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. Ahlgren, Gillian. Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Åkerman, Susanna. Queen Christina of Sweden: The Transformation of a Seventeenth-Century Philosophical Libertine. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. Akkerman, Tjitske, and Siep Sturman, eds. Feminist Thought in European History, 1400– 2000. New York: Routledge, 1997. Allen, Sister Prudence, R.S.M. The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C. – A.D. 1250. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997. ———. The Concept of Woman, Volume II: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250–1500. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. Altmann, Barbara K., and Deborah L. McGrady, eds. Christine de Pizan: A Casebook. New York: Routledge, 2003. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Carole Levin and Jeanie Watson. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987. Amussen, Susan D. An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Amussen, Susan D., and Adele Seeff, eds. Attending to Early Modern Women. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998. Anderson, Karen. Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Women in Seventeenth-Century New France. New York: Routledge, 1991. Andreadis, Harriette. Sappho in Early Modern England: Female Same-Sex Literary Erotics, 1550–1714. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice. Ed. Elissa B. Weaver. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2006. Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Helen Hills. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Armon, Shifra. Picking Wedlock: Women and the Courtship Novel in Spain. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Atkinson, Clarissa W. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Attending to Early Modern Women. Ed. Susan D. Amussen and Adele Seeff. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1998. Attending to Women in Early Modern England. Ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1994. Backer, Anne Liot. Precious Women. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Bainton, Roland H. Women of the Reformation in France and England. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1973. ———. Women of the Reformation in Germany and Italy. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1971. Ballaster, Ros. Seductive Forms. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Barash, Carol. English Women’s Poetry, 1649–1714: Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Bardsley, Sandy. Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Barker, Alele Marie, and Jehanne M. Gheith, eds. A History of Women’s Writing in Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Barroll, Leeds. Anna of Denmark: A Cultural Biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Barstow, Anne L. Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986. Battigelli, Anna. Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998. Beasley, Faith. Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. ———. Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Becker, Lucinda M. Death and the Early Modern Englishwoman. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Bell, Rudolph M. Holy Anorexia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Bennett, Judith M., and Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250– 1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Bennett, Lyn. Women Writing of Divinest Things: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Pembroke, Wroth, and Lanyer. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2004. Benson, Pamela Joseph. The Invention of Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Benson, Pamela Joseph, and Victoria Kirkham, eds. Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Berry, Helen. Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Berry, Philippa. Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen. New York: Routledge, 1989. Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Ed. Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001. Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. Ed. Patricia A. Labalme. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Bicks, Caroline. Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Bilinkoff, Jodi. The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. ———. Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. Bissell, R. Ward. Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Blain, Virginia, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Blamires, Alcuin. The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Bogucka, Maria. Women in Early Modern Polish Society, against the European Background. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Bornstein, Daniel, and Roberto Rusconi, eds. Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Trans. Margery J. Schneider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Brant, Clare, and Diane Purkiss, eds. Women, Texts and Histories, 1575–1760. New York: Routledge, 1992. Breisach, Ernst. Caterina Sforza: A Renaissance Virago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Bridenthal, Renate, Claudia Koonz, and Susan M. Stuard. Becoming Visible: Women in European History. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Briggs, Robin. Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. New York: HarperCollins, 1995; Viking Penguin, 1996. Brink, Jean R., ed. Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women before 1800. Montreal: Eden Press Women’s Publications, 1980. Brink, Jean R., Allison Coudert, and Maryanne Cline Horowitz, eds. The Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe. Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 12. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1989. Broad, Jacqueline S. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; paperback, 2007. Broad, Jacqueline S., and Karen Green. A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ——— , eds. Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1700. Dordrecht: Springer, 2007.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Brodsky, Vivien. Mobility and Marriage: The Family and Kinship in Early Modern London. London: Blackwells, 1988. Broude, Norma, and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Brown, Judith C., and Robert C. Davis, eds. Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy. London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998. Brown-Grant, Rosalind. Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Brucker, Gene. Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Burke, Mary E., Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove, and Karen Nelson, eds. Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Burns, Jane E., ed. Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Cloth Work, and Other Cultural Imaginings. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1992. ———. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. ———. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Cahn, Susan. Industry of Devotion: The Transformation of Women’s Work in England, 1500– 1660. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Callaghan, Dympna, ed. The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Campbell, Julie DeLynn. “Renaissance Women Writers: The Beloved Speaks Her Part.” Ph.D diss., Texas A&M University, 1997 (UMI#: 9729168). Catling, Jo, ed. A History of Women’s Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cavallo, Sandra, and Lyndan Warner. Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. New York: Longman, 1999. Cavanagh, Sheila T. Cherished Torment: The Emotional Geography of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001. Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections. Ed. and introd. Katherine Romack and James Fitzmaurice. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Cerasano, S. P., and Marion Wynne-Davies, eds. Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992. ———. Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama: Criticism, History, and Performance, 1594– 1998. New York: Routledge, 1998. Cervigni, Dino S., ed. Women Mystic Writers. Annali d’Italianistica 13 (1995) (entire issue). Cervigni, Dino S., and Rebecca West, eds. Women’s Voices in Italian Literature. Annali d’Italianistica 7 (1989) (entire issue). Chambers, Anne. Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley, c. 1530–1603. Rev. ed. Dublin, Ireland: Wolfhound Press, 1998.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Charlton, Kenneth. Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 1999. Chedgzoy, Kate, Melanie Hansen, and Suzanne Trill, eds. Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Writing. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996. Chojnacka, Monica. Working Women of Early Modern Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cholakian, Patricia Francis. Rape and Writing in the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. ———. Women and the Politics of Self-Representation in Seventeenth-Century France. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. Cholakian, Patricia Francis, and Rouben Charles Cholakian. Marguerite De Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Christine de Pizan: A Casebook. Ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady. New York: Routledge, 2003. Clogan, Paul Maurice, ed. Medievali et Humanistica: Literacy and the Lay Reader. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Clubb, Louise George. Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Clucas, Stephen, ed. A Princely Brave Woman: Essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Coakley, John W. Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Conley, John J., S.J. The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Cook, Ann Jennalie. Making a Match: Courtship in Shakespeare and His Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Couchman, Jane, and Ann Crabb. Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Cox, Virginia. Women’s Writing in Italy, 1400–1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Crabb, Ann. The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Craig A. Monson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Crawford, Patricia. Women and Religion in England, 1500–1750. New York: Routledge, 1993. Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. Ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. (Sequel to the collection, The Crannied Wall, ed. C. A. Monson.) Crowston, Clare Haru. Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675– 1791. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Cruz, Anne J., and Mary Elizabeth Perry, eds. Culture and Control in Counter-Reformation Spain. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Datta, Satya. Women and Men in Early Modern Venice. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France, espec. chaps. 3 and 5. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975. ———. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Daybell, James, ed. Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Dean, Trevor, and K. J. P. Lowe, eds. Marriage in Italy 1300–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. DeJean, Joan. Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ———. Fictions of Sappho, 1546–1937. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ———. The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. ———. Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. D’Elia, Anthony F. The Renaissance of Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Demers, Patricia. Women’s Writing in English: Early Modern England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Dictionary of Russian Women Writers. Ed. Marina Ledkovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Mary Zirin. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Diefendorf, Barbara. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Dinan, Susan E. Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana. Ed. Julia M. Walker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Dixon, Laurinda S. Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Dolan, Frances E. Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Donovan, Josephine. Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405–1726. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Dreher, Diane Elizabeth. Domination and Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986. Dyan, Elliott. Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Early [English] Women Writers: 1600–1720. Ed. Anita Pacheco. New York: Longman, 1998. Eccles, Audrey. Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1982. Eigler, Friederike, and Susanne Kord, eds. The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Elizabeth I: Then and Now. Ed. Georgianna Ziegler. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2003. Emerson, Kathy Lynn. Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth-Century England. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1984.

Series Editors’ Bibliography An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. Ed. Katharina Wilson. New York: Garland, 1991. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. Ed. Diana Robin, Anne R. Larsen, and Carole Levin. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2007. Engendering the Early Modern Stage: Women Playwrights in the Spanish Empire. Ed. Valeria (Oakey) Hegstrom and Amy R. Williamsen. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1999. Erdmann, Axel. My Gracious Silence: Women in the Mirror of Sixteenth-Century Printing in Western Europe. Luzern: Gilhofer and Rauschberg, 1999. Erickson, Amy Louise. Women and Property in Early Modern England. New York: Routledge, 1993. Evangelisti, Silvia. Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450–1700. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary. Ed. Carole Levin et al. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Ezell, Margaret J. M. The Patriarch’s Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. ———. Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ———. Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Farrell, Kirby, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur F. Kinney, eds. Women in the Renaissance: Selections from English Literary Renaissance. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Farrell, Kirby, and Kathleen Swain, eds. The Mysteries of Elizabeth I: Selections from English Literary Renaissance. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. Farrell, Michèle Longino. Performing Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991. Feminism and Renaissance Studies. Ed. Lorna Hutson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Ed. Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature. Ed. Rinaldina Russell. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Ed. Stephanie Merrim. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Feminist Thought in European History, 1400–2000. Ed. Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Sturman. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ferguson, Margaret W. Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early Modern England and France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Ferguson, Margaret W., Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, eds. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Feroli, Teresa. Political Speaking Justified: Women Prophets and the English Revolution. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2006. Ferraro, Joanne M. Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Fisher, Sheila, and Janet E. Halley, eds. Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989. Fisher, Will. Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Flandrin, Jean-Louis. Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality in Early Modern France. Trans. Richard Southern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Fletcher, Anthony. Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Franklin, Margaret. Boccaccio’s Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. French Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book. Ed. Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991. Froide, Amy M. Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Frye, Susan, and Karen Robertson, eds. Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Garrard, Mary D. Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Gelbart, Nina Rattner. The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Gent, Lucy, and Nigel Llewellyn, eds. Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540–1660. London: Reaktion Books, 1990. George, Margaret. Women in the First Capitalist Society: Experiences in Seventeenth-Century England. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Gibson, Wendy. Women in Seventeenth-Century France. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Gies, Frances. Joan of Arc: The Legend and the Reality. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Giles, Mary E., ed. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Gill, Catie. Women in the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Community. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. Gloriana’s Face: Women, Public and Private, in the English Renaissance. Ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Goffen, Rona. Titian’s Women. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Dena Goodman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Goldberg, Jonathan. Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance Examples. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., ed. Writing the Female Voice. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Goldsmith, Elizabeth C., and Dena Goodman, eds. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Grafton, Anthony, and Lisa Jardine. From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Grant, Douglas. Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623–1673. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957. The Graph of Sex and the German Text: Gendered Culture in Early Modern Germany, 1500–1700. Ed. Lynne Tatlock and Christiane Bohnert. Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 1994. Grassby, Richard. Kinship and Capitalism: Marriage, Family, and Business in the EnglishSpeaking World, 1580–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Gray, Catharine. Women Writers and Public Debate in 17th-Century Britain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Greer, Margaret Rich. Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Grossman, Avraham. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe. Trans. Jonathan Chipman. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004. Grossman, Marshall, ed. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. Gutierrez, Nancy A. ”Shall She Famish Then?” Female Food Refusal in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Habermann, Ina. Staging Slander and Gender in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Hacke, Daniela. Women, Sex, and Marriage in Early Modern Venice. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Hackel, Heidi Brayman. Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hackett, Helen. Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hageman, Elizabeth H., and Katherine Conway, eds. Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-Century England. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007. Hageman, Elizabeth H., and Sara Jayne Steen, eds. Teaching Judith Shakespeare. Special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly 47 (1996). Haigh, Christopher. Elizabeth I. New York: Longman, 1988. Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Hamburger, Jeffrey. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Hampton, Timothy. Literature and the Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Hanawalt, Barbara A. Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Hannay, Margaret P. Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Hannay, Margaret P., ed. Silent but for the Word. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985. Hardwick, Julie. The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority

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Series Editors’ Bibliography in Early Modern France. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Harness, Kelley Ann. Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Harris, Barbara J. English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. ———. Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Harvey, Elizabeth D. Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts. New York: Routledge, 1992. Haselkorn, Anne M., and Betty Travitsky, eds. The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Hawkesworth, Celia, ed. A History of Central European Women’s Writing. New York: Palgrave Press, 2001. Hegstrom (Oakey), Valerie, and Amy R. Williamsen, eds. Engendering the Early Modern Stage: Women Playwrights in the Spanish Empire. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1999. Heller, Wendy. Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Hendricks, Margo, and Patricia Parker, eds. Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period. New York: Routledge, 1994. Herlihy, David. “Did Women Have a Renaissance? A Reconsideration.” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 13 (1985), 1–22. Hibbert, Christopher. The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991. Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hills, Helen, ed. Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Hinds, Hillary. God’s Englishwoman: Seventeenth-Century Radical Sectarian Writing and Feminist Criticism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Hirst, Jilie. Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. A History of Central European Women’s Writing. Ed. Celia Hawkesworth. New York: Palgrave Press, 2001. A History of Women in the West. Volume I: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints. Ed. Pauline Schmitt Pantel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Volume 2: Silences of the Middle Ages. Ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Volume 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes. Ed. Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. A History of Women Philosophers. 3 vols. Ed. Mary Ellen Waithe. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.

Series Editors’ Bibliography A History of Women’s Writing in France. Ed. Sonya Stephens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A History of Women’s Writing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Ed. Jo Catling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A History of Women’s Writing in Italy. Ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A History of Women’s Writing in Russia. Ed. Alele Marie Barker and Jehanne M. Gheith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hobby, Elaine. Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1646–1688. London: Virago Press, 1988. Hogrefe, Pearl. Women of Action in Tudor England: Nine Biographical Sketches. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1977. Hopkins, Lisa. Women Who Would Be Kings: Female Rulers of the Sixteenth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Horowitz, Maryanne Cline. “Aristotle and Women.” Journal of the History of Biology 9 (1976): 183–213. Houlbrooke, Ralph A. Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480–1760. Oxford Studies in Social History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Howe, Elizabeth. The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Howell, Martha C. The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ———. Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Hufton, Olwen H. The Prospect before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1: 1500– 1800. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Hull, Suzanne W. Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982. Hulse, Clark. Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500– 1800. New York: Zone Books, 1996. Hunter, Lynette, and Sarah Hutton, eds. Women, Science, and Medicine, 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1997. Hurlburt, Holly S. The Dogaressa of Venice, 1200-1500: Wife and Icon. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Hutner, Heidi, ed. Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Hutson, Lorna, ed. Feminism and Renaissance Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ———. The Usurer’s Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England. New York: Routledge, 1994. The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Studies. Ed. Dympna Callaghan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Ingram, Martin. Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800. Ed. Lynn Hunt. New York: Zone Books, 1996.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Ed. Rinaldina Russell. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Ives, E. W. Anne Boleyn. London: Blackwells, 1988. Jaffe, Irma B., with Gernando Colombardo. Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves of Italian Renaissance Women Poets. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. James, Susan E. Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 1999. Jankowski, Theodora A. Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Jansen, Katherine Ludwig. The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983. Jed, Stephanie H. Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Jones, Ann Rosalind. The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Jones, Ann Rosalind, and Peter Stallybrass. Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Jones, Michael K., and Malcolm G. Underwood. The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richymond and Derby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Kagan, Richard L. Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Kehler, Dorothea, and Laurel Amtower, eds. The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2002. Kelly, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Also in Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan M. Stuard, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. ———. “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes.” In Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. ———. Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Women in Culture and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Foreword by Katharine M. Rogers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956, 1978. Kendrick, Robert L. Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Kennedy, Gwynne. Just Anger: Representing Women’s Anger in Early Modern England. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Kermode, Jenny, and Garthine Walker, eds. Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. King, Catherine E. Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy, c. 1300–1550. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance. Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. King, Thomas A. The Gendering of Men, 1600–1700: The English Phallus. Vol. 1. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Kleiman, Ruth. Anne of Austria, Queen of France. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985. Knott, Sarah, and Barbara Taylor. Women, Gender, and Enlightenment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Kolsky, Stephen. The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Krontiris, Tina. Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance. New York: Routledge, 1992. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Labalme, Patricia A., ed. Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Lalande, Roxanne Decker, ed. A Labor of Love: Critical Reflections on the Writings of MarieCatherine Desjardina (Mme de Villedieu). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. Lamb, Mary Ellen. Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Larsen, Anne R., and Colette H. Winn, eds. Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts/ American Contexts. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994. Laven, Mary. Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent. New York: Viking, 2003. Ledkovsky, Marina, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Mary Zirin, eds. Dictionary of Russian Women Writers. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A. Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Leonard, Amy. Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany. Women in Culture and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy and Creation of Feminist Consciousness, 1000–1870. 2-vol. history of women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 1994. Levack, Brian P. The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe. London: Longman, 1987. Levin, Carole, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves, eds. Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Levin, Carole, et al. Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Levin, Carole, and Patricia A. Sullivan, eds. Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Levin, Carole, and Jeanie Watson, eds. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987. Levy, Allison, ed. Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Writing Women in Jacobean England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Lewis, Gertrud Jaron. By Women for Women about Women: The Sister-Books of FourteenthCentury Germany. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Lewis, Jayne Elizabeth. Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation. London: Routledge, 1998. Lindenauer, Leslie J. Piety and Power: Gender and Religious Culture in the American Colonies, 1630–1700. New York: Routledge, 2002. Lindsey, Karen. Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Liss, Peggy K. Isabel the Queen: Life and Times. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Loades, David. Mary Tudor: A Life. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Lochrie, Karma. Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Longfellow, Ewrica. Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Lougee, Carolyn C. Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Love, Harold. The Culture and Commerce of Texts: Scribal Publication in Seventeenth- Century England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. Lowe, K. J. P. Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Luther on Women: A Sourcebook. Ed. Susan C. Karant-Nunn and Merry E. WiesnerHanks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Lux-Sterritt, Laurence. Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. MacCarthy, Bridget G. The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists 1621–1818. Preface by Janet Todd. New York: New York University Press, 1994. (Originally published by Cork University Press, 1946–47.) MacCurtain, Margaret, and Mary O’Dowd, eds. Women in Early Modern Ireland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991. Macfarlane, Alan. Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Mack, Phyllis. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study of the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. ———. Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. MacNeil, Anne. Music and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte in the Late Sixteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Maggi, Armando. Uttering the Word: The Mystical Performances of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a Renaissance Visionary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998. Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England. Ed. Susan Frye and Karen Robertson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Mann, David D., Susan Garland Mann, with Camille Garnier. Women Playwrights in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1660–1823. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Marriage in Italy 1300–1650. Ed. Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Marshall, Sherrin, ed. Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Masten, Jeffrey. Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000. Matter, E. Ann, and John Coakley, eds. Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. (Sequel to the collection, The Crannied Wall, ed. C. A. Monson.) McGrath, Lynette. Subjectivity and Women’s Poetry in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002. McIver, Katherine A. Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580: Negotiating Power. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. McLeod, Glenda. Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991. McManus, Clare. Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590–1619. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. McSheffrey, Shannon. Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420– 1530. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. McTavish, Lianne. Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature. Ed. Elizabeth A. Petroff. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Medwick, Cathleen. Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Meek, Christine, ed. Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. Dublin-Portland: Four Courts Press, 2000. Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Mendelson, Sara, and Patricia Crawford. Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1980. Merrim, Stephanie. Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999. Merrim, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Messbarger, Rebecca. The Century of Women: The Representations of Women in EighteenthCentury Italian Public Discourse. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Midelfort, Erik H. C. Witchhunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972. Migiel, Marilyn, and Juliana Schiesari. Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Miller, Nancy K. The Heroine’s Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Miller, Naomi J. Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Miller, Naomi J., and Gary Waller, eds. Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. Knoxville,University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Miller, Naomi J., and Naomi Yavneh. Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World: Sisters, Brothers and Others. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. ———. Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000. Monson, Craig A. Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Monson, Craig A., ed. The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Monter, E. William. Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. Montrose, Louis Adrian. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Mooney, Catherine M. Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Moore, Cornelia Niekus. The Maiden’s Mirror: Reading Material for German Girls in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987. Moore, Mary B. Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Morgan, Fidelis. The Female Wits: Women Playwrights of the Restoration. London: Virago Press, 1981. Mujica, Bárbara. Women Writers of Early Modern Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Murphy, Caroline. The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Musacchio, Jacqueline Marie. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. The Mysteries of Elizabeth I: Selections from English Literary Renaissance. Ed. Kirby Farrell and Kathleen Swain. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. Nader, Helen, ed. Power and Gender in Renaissance Spain: Eight Women of the Mendoza Family, 1450–1650. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England. Ed. Amy M. Froide. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Nevitt, Marcus. Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640–1660. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Newman, Barbara. God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Novy, Marianne. Love’s Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. O’Donnell, Mary Ann. Aphra Behn: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. 2nd ed. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Okin, Susan Moller. Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Ozment, Steven. The Bürgermeister’s Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. ———. Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999. ———. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pacheco, Anita, ed. Early [English] Women Writers: 1600–1720. New York: Longman, 1998. Pagels, Elaine. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. New York: Harper Collins, 1988. Panizza, Letizia, ed. Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. Panizza, Letizia, and Sharon Wood, eds. A History of Women’s Writing in Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pardailhé-Galabrun, Annik. The Birth of Intimacy: Privacy and Domestic Life in Early Modern Paris. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Park, Katharine. The Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection. New York: Zone Books, 2006. Parker, Patricia. Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender and Property. New York: Methuen, 1987. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s Press, 1986; reprinted, 1989. Paulissen, May Nelson. The Love Sonnets of Lady Mary Wroth: A Critical Introduction. Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1982. Perlingieri, Ilya Sandra. Sofonisba Anguissola: The First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance. New York: Rizzoli, 1992. Pernoud, Regine, and Marie-Veronique Clin. Joan of Arc: Her Story. Rev. and trans. Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams. 1986 (French original); New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980. ———. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. ———. The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Peters, Christine. Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Petroff, Elizabeth A., ed. Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Phillippy, Patricia Berrahou. Painting Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Plowden, Alison. Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners. Rev. ed. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women. Ed. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Pollock, Linda. With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552–1620. London: Collins and Brown, 1993. Poor, Sara S., and Jana K. Schulman. Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Ed. James Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Price, Paola Malpezzi, and Christine Ristaino. Lucrezia Marinella and the “Querelle des Femmes” in Seventeenth-Century Italy. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008. Prior, Mary, ed. Women in English Society, 1500–1800. New York: Methuen, 1985. Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s “Cité des Dames.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. ———. Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Rabil, Albert. Laura Cereta: Quattrocento Humanist. Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1981. Ranft, Patricia. Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600–1500. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Rapley, Elizabeth. The Devotés: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989. ———. A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001. Raven, James, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor, eds. The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. Ed. Naomi Miller and Gary Waller. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. Reardon, Colleen. Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Recovering Spain’s Feminist Tradition. Ed. Lisa Vollendorf. New York: MLA, 2001. Reid, Jonathan Andrew. “King’s Sister—Queen of Dissent: Marguerite of Navarre (1492–1549) and Her Evangelical Network.” Ph.D diss., University of Arizona, 2001 (UMI #: 3033623). Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan. Ed. Earl Jeffrey Richards, with Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Reiss, Sheryl E., and David G. Wilkins, eds. Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Kirksville, MO: Turman State University Press, 2001. Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture, c.1540–1660. Ed. Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn. London: Reaktion Books, 1990. The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon. Ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty Travitsky. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts/American Contexts. Ed. Anne R. Larsen and Colette H. Winn. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994. Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Ed. Heidi Hutner. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-Century England. Ed. Elizabeth H. Hageman and Katherine Conway. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Rheubottom, David. Age, Marriage, and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Ragusa. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Richards, Earl Jeffrey, ed., with Joan Williamson, Nadia Margolis, and Christine Reno. Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Richardson, Brian. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. ———. Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Robin, Diana. Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in SixteenthCentury Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Roelker, Nancy L. Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, 1528–1572. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. Romack, Katherine, and James Fitzmaurice, eds. Cavendish and Shakespeare: Interconnections. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Rose, Mary Beth. The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. ———. Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Rose, Mary Beth, ed. Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in SixteenthCentury Venice. Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Rublack, Ulinka, ed. Gender in Early Modern German History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Ruggiero, Guido. Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ———. The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Russell, Rinaldina, ed. Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. ———. Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Sackville-West, Vita. Daughter of France: The Life of La Grande Mademoiselle. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. Safley, Thomas Max. Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest—A Comparative Study, 1550–1600. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1984. Sage, Lorna, ed. Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Sánchez, Magdalena S. The Empress, the Queen, and the Nun: Women and Power at the Court of Philip III of Spain. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Sanders, Eve Rachele. Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sankovitch, Tilde A. French Women Writers and the Book: Myths of Access and Desire. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1988. Sartori, Eva Martin, and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman, eds. French Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991. Scaraffia, Lucetta, and Gabriella Zarri. Women and Faith: Catholic Religious Life in Italy from Late Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Scheepsma, Wybren. Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries: The “Modern Devotion,” the Canonesses of Windesheim, and Their Writings. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2004. Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex?: Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Schleiner, Louise. Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. ———. Tudor and Stuart Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Schofield, Mary Anne, and Cecilia Macheski, eds. Fetter’d or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670–1815. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986. Schroeder, Joy A. Dinah’s Lament: The Biblical Legacy of Sexual Violence in Christian Interpretation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2007. Schutte, Anne Jacobson. Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Schutte, Anne Jacobson, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi, eds. Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001. Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings: Essays in Feminist Contextual Criticism. Ed. Sheila Fisher and Janet E. Halley. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989. Seelig, Sharon Cadman. Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives, 1600–1680. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Seifert, Lewis C. Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France 1690–1715: Nostalgic Utopias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Shannon, Laurie. Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Shemek, Deanna. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Shepherd, Simon. Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Drama. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World: Sisters, Brothers and Others. Ed. Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. Silent but for the Word. Ed. Margaret Hannay. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985. Simon, Linda. Of Virtue Rare: Margaret Beaufort, Matriarch of the House of Tudor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982. The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation. Ed. Dorothea Kehler and Laurel Amtower. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 2002.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Slater, Miriam. Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. Smarr, Janet L. Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Smith, Hilda L. Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982. ———. Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Snook, Edith. Women, Reading, and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Sommerville, Margaret R. Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society. London: Arnold, 1995. Soufas, Teresa Scott. Dramas of Distinction: A Study of Plays by Golden Age Women. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Spender, Dale. Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers before Jane Austen. New York: Routledge, 1986. Sperling, Jutta Gisela. Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice. Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Staley, Lynn. Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Steinbrügge, Lieselotte. The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment. Trans. Pamela E. Selwyn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Stephens, Sonya, ed. A History of Women’s Writing in France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Stephenson, Barbara. The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Stevenson, Jane. Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 Stocker, Margarita. Judith, Sexual Warrior: Women and Power in Western Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Stone, Lawrence. Family, Marriage and Sex in England, 1500–1800. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977; abr. ed., New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Straznicky, Marta. Privacy, Playreading, and Women’s Closet Drama, 1550–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Stretton, Timothy. Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Strinati, Claudio M., Carole Collier Frick, Elizabeth S. G. Nicholson, Vera Fortunati Pietrantonio, and Jordana Pomeroy. Italian Women Artists: From Renaissance to Baroque. Ed. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Sylvestre Verger Art Organization. New York: Skira, 2007. Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy. Ed. Pamela J. Benson and Victoria Kirkham. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Stuard, Susan Mosher. Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Summit, Jennifer. Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Surtz, Ronald E. The Guitar of God: Gender, Power, and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. ———. Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Suzuki, Mihoko. Subordinate Subjects: Gender, the Political Nation, and Literary Form in England, 1588–1688. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Tatlock, Lynne, and Christiane Bohnert, eds. The Graph of Sex and the German Text: Gendered Culture in Early Modern Germany, 1500–1700. Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 1994. Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers. Ed. Susanne Woods and Margaret P. Hannay. New York: MLA, 2000. Teague, Frances. Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999. Thomas, Anabel. Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Italy: Iconography, Space, and the Religious Woman’s Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Thompson, John Lee. John Calvin and the Daughters of Sarah: Women in Regular and Exceptional Roles in the Exegesis of Calvin, His Predecessors, and His Contemporaries. Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 259. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1992. Tinagli, Paola. Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Todd, Janet. The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. London: Pandora, 2000. ———. The Sign of Angelica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660–1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Tomas, Natalie R. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004. Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Travitsky, Betty S., and Adele F. Seeff, eds. Attending to Women in Early Modern England. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1994. Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Van Dijk, Susan, Lia van Gemert, and Sheila Ottway, eds. Writing the History of Women’s Writing: Toward an International Approach. Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, 9–11 September. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001. Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modern Writing. Ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Melanie Hansen, and Suzanne Trill. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1996, 1998. Vollendorf, Lisa. The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Walker, Claire. Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Walker, Julia M. Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Walker, Kim. Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Twayne’s English Author Series. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996. Wall, Wendy. The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Waller, G. F. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke: A Critical Study of Her Writings and Literary Milieu. Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1979. Walsh, William T. St. Teresa of Avila: A Biography. Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1987. Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York: Knopf, 1976. ———. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Warnicke, Retha M. The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Mary Queen of Scots. Routledge Historical Biographies. New York: Routledge, 2006. ———. The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ———. Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983. Warren, Nancy Bradley. Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Watt, Diane. Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Weaver, Elissa B. Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Weaver, Elissa B., ed. Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2006. Weber, Alison. Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Weinstein, Donald, and Rudolph M. Bell. Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Welles, Marcia L. Persephone’s Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Whitaker, Katie. Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by Her Pen. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Whitehead, Barbara J., ed. Women’s Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500– 1800. New York: Garland, 1999. Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Allison Levy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003. Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Sandra Cavallo and Lydan Warner. New York: Longman, 1999. Wiesner, Merry E. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice. New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. Gender, Church, and State in Early Modern Germany: Essays. New York: Longman, 1998. ———. Gender in History. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. ———. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Wilcox, Helen, ed. Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984. Williamson, Marilyn L. Raising Their Voices: British Women Writers, 1650–1750. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1990. Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Wilson, Elkin Calhoun. England’s Eliza: A Study of the Idealization of Queen Elizabeth in the Poetry of Her Age. Harvard Studies in English. London: Frank Cass, 1966. Wilson, Katharina, ed. Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. 2 vols. New York: Garland, 1991. Wiltenburg, Joy. Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1992. Winn, Colette, and Donna Kuizenga, eds. Women Writers in Pre-Revolutionary France. New York: Garland, 1997. Winston-Allen, Anne. Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700. Ed. Helen Wilcox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity. Ed. Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Schulman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Women and Monasticism in Medieval Europe: Sisters and Patrons of the Cistercian Reform. Ed. Constance H. Berman. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, 2002. Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England. Ed. Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Women in English Society, 1500–1800. Ed. Mary Prior. New York: Methuen, 1985. Women in Early Modern Ireland. Ed. Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991. Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Ed. Letizia Panizza. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds. Ed. Sherrin Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Christine Meek. Dublin-Portland: Four Courts Press, 2000. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World. Ed. Mary E. Giles. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives. Ed. Mary Beth Rose. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Women in the Renaissance: Selections from English Literary Renaissance. Ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur F. Kinney. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Women Players in England, 1500–1660: Beyond the All-Male Stage. Ed. Pamela Allen Brown and Peter Parolin. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker. New York: Routledge, 1994. Women, Science, and Medicine, 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society. Ed. Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1997. Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. Ed. Mary E. Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove, and Karen Nelson. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion. Ed. Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Woodbridge, Linda. Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Woodford, Charlotte. Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Woods, Susanne. Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Woods, Susanne, and Margaret P. Hannay, eds. Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers. New York: MLA, 2000. Wormald, Jenny. Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure. London: George Philip Press, 1988. Writing the Female Voice. Ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989. Writing the History of Women’s Writing: Toward an International Approach. Ed. Susan Van Dijk, Lia van Gemert, and Sheila Ottway. Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, 9–11 September. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001. Ziegler, Georgianna, ed. Elizabeth I: Then and Now. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Zinsser, Judith P. Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005.

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INDEX

Andreini, Isabella, 93n Apollonius Rhodius, 90n Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando furioso, 2, 31n, 32, 49n, 57, 58n, 59–60, 62, 101n, 123n, 125n, 189n, 225n, 227n, 239n, 332n, 339n Aristotle, 77 Auzzas, Ginetta, 3n

Constantinople. See Byzantium Cox, Virginia, 2n, 12n, 48, 51, 57, 77n, 137n, 189n, 343n Crete, 12n, 1 3n Croce, Benedetto, 2 Cropper, Elizabeth, 5n Crusades, 3, 82n, 96n Cyprus, 11, 179n

Beeching, Jack, 113n Belloni, Antonio, 12n Benedetti, Laura, 4, 98n Benson, Pamela, 4n Bicheno, Hugh, 113n Boccaccio, Giovanni, Ameto, 109n Boiardo, Matteo Orlando innamorato, 2, 31n, 32, 49n, 225n Bonarelli, Guidubaldo, 29n Bradford, Ernle, 26n, 27n, 348n Bronzini, Cristofano, 1n Byzantium, 3, 15, 26–27, 180–81n, 233n, 288n, 335n

Dandolo, Enrico, 26–27, 77 Dante, Divine Comedy, 22, 61n, 80 n, 94 n, 98 n, 123 n, 126n, 162n, 210n, 211n, 319n, 345n daughters, 33–34, 56–59 DeBellis, Daniela, 10n Del Negro, Piero, 13n Dionisotti, Carlo, 12n, 13n, 113n ducal palace of Venice, 27

Candia, 12n, 13n Castiglione, Baldassar, 340–41n Caterina de’ Medici, 7, 8n Catholic Church, 4, 7, 21, 22–23, 39, 16 2n, 270n, 275n Cavanagh, Sheila, 45n Chojnacki, Stanley, 36n Ciotti, G. B., 6

Eleonora de’ Medici, 8 epic poetry, 2; by early modern women writers, 2; and empire, 10–11, 21, 60–61 Erizzo, Francesco, 77, 81n Euripides, Trojan Women, 83n excommunication, 19–20 Ferrazzi, Cecilia, 5n Finotti, Fabio, 340n Finucci, Valeria, 57–58n Florence, 19, 167n

475

476

Index Fogolari, Gino, 153n Fonte, Moderata (Modesta Pozzo), Floridoro, 2n, 3n, 51n, 59-60, 113n, 165n, 328n Fourth Crusade, 13n, 19–20, 25–27 Gentileschi, Artemisia, 5n Giraldi Cinzio, Giovambattista, 24n, 29n Godfrey, John, 13n, 20, 26n, 172n, 348n Gonzaga, Margherita, 7 Guarini, Giovambattista, Il pastor fido, 93n Günsberg, Maggie, 51n Harness, Kelley, 9n Haskins, Susan, 5, 6, 10n, 12n Herodotus Histories, 86n, 92n Homer, 77 Iliad, 40, 86n, 256n, 294n, 298n Innocent III (pope), 20, 21, 82n

The Heroic Deeds and Marvelous Life of the Seraphic Saint Catherine of Siena, 9; Holy Dove, 4, 7, 9; Holy Verses, 8; involvement in Venetian politics, 3, 4, 13, 23; life, 6; Life of Saint Justine, 8; Life of the Seraphic and Glorious Saint Francis, 7, 8, 9; Life of the Virgin Mary, The Love Sacrifice of the Virgin Saint Justine, 10; The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 1, 7, 9, 13; Victories of the Seraphic Saint Francis and Glorious Steps of Saint Clare, 10 Marinelli, Curzio (Lucrezia’s brother), 5 Marinelli, Giovanni (Lucrezia’s father), 5, 6 Mark (Venice’s patron saint), 4, 17, 80n, 276n, 277n Mary (Virgin and Jesus’s mother), 7, 12, 16, 21, 23, 79n, 277n mothers, 33–34, 40–44 Muir, Edward, 2n, 4n, 14n, 16, 17, 19n, 21n, 81n, 84n, 327n Niero, Antonio, 10n

Jacobus de Voragine, 323n, 368n Kirkham, Victoria, 4n Kolsky, Stephen, 6n, 10 Kuehn, Thomas, 36n Lavocat, Françoise, 3n, 5n, 8n love poetry, 28–29, 50–51n, 52–53, 56, 64, 106n, 150n, 229n, 234n, 345n, 350n Madden, Thomas, 13n, 20n, 26n, 27n, 63n, 79n, 80n, 87n, 166n, 181n, 334n, 348n, 374n Magno, Celio, 12n Malmignani, Giulio, 3n Malpezzi-Price, Paola, 1n, 9, 10, 33, 34n, 40, 50, 55, 57n, 58n Maria Maddalena d’Austria, 9 Marinella, Lucrezia: Cupid in Love and Driven Mad, 7; Empress of the Universe, 7; An Exhortation of Women and to Others, 9–10; Happy Arcadia, 8;

Odyssey, 61–62, 90n, 123n, 225n, 312n, 323n, 324n, 355n Ovid, Heroides, 92n; Metamorphoses, 35, 40, 109n, 113n, 125n, 145n, 149n, 167n, 194n, 204n, 242n, 255n, 298n, 311n, 350n, 365n Panizza, Letizia, 1, 10n, 59n, 149n Passi, Giuseppe, 1, 7 Pastore Stocchi, Manlio, 20 Paul V (Pope) 22 Phillips, Jonathan, 26n, 27, 89n, 172n, 348n Preto, Paolo, 3n, 11n, 12n Queller, Donald, 26n, 63n, 348n Quint, David, 21n, 51n Ravegnani, Giorgio, 13n, 17n Ricci, Giovanni, 21n Ristaino, Christine, 10, 34n, 40, 57n, 58n

Index Russell, Rinaldina, 3, 24, 31n, 46n, 48n, 49, 80n, 89n, 185n Sarrocchi, Margherita, Scanderbeide, 2n, 3–4, 20, 23, 24–25, 31n, 32, 46n, 48, 49n, 51n, 53, 89n, 101n, 102n, 123n, 125n, 154n, 185n, 274n, 354n, 357n Scarano, Lucio, 6, 12n Schweizer, Bernard, 2n Stringa, Giovanni, 6n Tassi, Agostino, 5n Tasso, Torquato, Gerusalemme liberata, 3, 12, 15, 20, 21n, 23, 29n, 31n, 32, 48, 49n, 51, 53, 5 8n, 59, 60, 62, 79n, 82n, 96n, 101n, 115n, 151n, 187n, 260n, 274n, 319n, 339n, 340n, 343n; Torrismondo, 357n Trissino, Gian Giorgio, L’Italia liberata dai Goti, 24

Vacca, Girolamo, 6 Venice, 11, 14, 15–17, 277n; mythical origin, 17–19, 21, 165n; as Republic, 2, 103n, 152–53n Verdizzotti, Giovan Maria, 3n Virgil, Aeneid, 20–21, 22, 39n, 49n, 52, 59, 85n, 91n, 94n, 101n, 115n, 151n, 185n, 204n, 210n, 243n, 255n, 316n wars against Moslems and the Ottoman Empire, 2–3, 11–12, 12–13, 81n widows, 38–39, 303n Wills, Gary, 14, 81n wives, 33–39, 120n, 239n women warriors, 30, 42–56, 339n, 340–41n, 373n Zatti, Sergio, 10, 11n, 12, 24

477