Tasso's God: divine action in Gerusalemme Liberata *.

A POETICS OF FUSION AND REVISION

In the late 1560s, while in his early twenties, Tasso wrote a treatise on epic in three books entitled Discorsi dell'arte poetica. While it is misleading to assume a simple homology between poetic theory and practice, this text holds considerable value for students of Tasso's epic, for it provides a detailed sense of the literary issues on his mind in the years in which he began work on the poem we know as Gerusalemme liberata. (11) In his early poetics, as in his poetry, Tasso strove to reconcile chivalric romance, classical epic, and post-Tridentine Catholicism, and the arguments the poet offers in the early Discorsi (12) for a Christian supernatural participate in this balancing act. Tasso wrote with three audiences in mind: learned readers, who would judge a modern epic against the ancient models and with an eye to contemporary debates in literary theory; a wider reading public, who would respond to the pleasures of Ariostan romance; and finally, the enforcers of post-Tridentine orthodoxy, who Tasso feare d might censor his poem. One can understand his attempt to integrate epic, romance, and right religion as an attempt to satisfy each audience without falling afoul of the other two, and the tensions that generations of readers have observed in his poetry result in large measure from the difficulty of this project. In the early Discorsi Tasso proposes Christian divine machinery as the solution to a thorny narrative problem: how to furnish a heroic poem with supernatural maraviglie (wonders) without sacrificing verisimilitude. The heroic poet should not exclude wonders such as winged horses, enchanted shields, and ships converted to nymphs, Tasso claims, because such matter gives pleasure not only to the common reader but to the learned as well. (13) Ariosto and his romance predecessors had not overly troubled themselves with the provenance of their maraviglie; in Orlando furioso, for instance, the sorcerers Malagigi and Melissa assist the Christian knights by conjuring demons. (14) But this rough magic had bec ome theologically suspect in the post-Tridentine cultural climate, and the young Tasso found it necessary to specify the causes of his special effects and to argue for their use. The gods of classical epic, Tasso points out, are no longer available to the modern poet as the cause of supernatural events, for nobody now believes in them. But if one attributes miracles to God, angels, or to demons, people will believe them, for they are brought up to do so:

Let the poet attribute certain works, that greatly exceed the power of men, to God, to His angels, to demons, or to those granted such power by God or by demons, like saints and wizards and fairies. If considered by themselves, these works seem wondrous; in fact, common usage calls them miracles. These same works, if attention is given to the virtue and power that have wrought them, will be deemed verisimilar, since our people have imbibed this opinion in the cradle, along with their milk, and since it was confirmed in them by the masters of our blessed Faith: that is, that God and his ministers and demons and magicians, with his permission, can do things wondrous beyond the forces of nature. (15)

Tasso seeks to render the maraviglie of romance acceptable to orthodox opinion by focusing on their causes, the "virtue and power that have wrought them." To indicate such causes, let the poet provide a divine apparatus, not generally present in the chivalric tradition, which while heavy on magic is light on actual gods. Tasso's Aristotelian criterion of verisimilitude should be understood neither as mimesis in the ancient sense nor as realism in the modern sense, but as something closer to acceptability; in his argument "verisimilitude" represents the concerns of his more scrupulous readers. In this argument the young Tasso treats Christianity as a contemporary cultural fact which the modern poet must consider in writing for a Christian audience. He does not of course say that it is merely a cultural fact, but we may notice that anticipated reader response, not theology plays the active part in his reasoning. Tasso does not write "let heroic poetry be Christian because Christianity is true" but "let heroic p oetry be Christian because it needs maraviglie, and only Christian maraviglie will be accepted as verisimilar." What stands fast across the cultural divide between ancients and moderns is genre; Tasso describes his project as that of writing a poem in the classical tradition, adapted to contemporary tastes.

A few years later, in the course of revising his poem, Tasso defends his use of maraviglie with a similar cultural argument. Writing in March 1576 to the churchman Silvio Antoniano (1540-1603), one of the group of scholars in Rome to whom Tasso submitted a draft of his poem for criticism, Tasso explains:

I hold that in any heroic poem the miraculous, exceeding the customary actions and capabilities of men, is most necessary; be it the doing of the gods, as in the poems of the gentiles, or of angels, devils or magicians, as in all modern poems. Nor does this difference in the miraculous seem to me essential, sufficient to indicate different species of poem, but rather most accidental, that varies and should vary according to the change in religion and practices. (16)

Necessarissimo the miraculous, for any and all heroic poems, accidentalissima the differences in religion and customs -- the superlatives indicate that Tasso was concerned to hammer this point home to Antoniano, the most rigorously orthodox of his Roman revisors. Ancient and modern epic poets are working within the same genre; their literary common ground is essential, their differences of faith but historical contingencies. In emphasizing generic continuity with the ancients Tasso leaves ample space for deviation; "la mutazion de la religione e de' costumi" includes a great deal that is of consequence to a modern-day heroic poet. The one-genre argument, which Tasso had developed in the Discorsi, plays an important role in his attempt to reconcile the pleasures of Ariostan romance with the requirements of both Aristotelian literary theory and post-Tridentine religious orthodoxy. Defenders of romance such as Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio and Giovanni Battista Pigna had argued that romance and epic were distinct genres, and thus modern poems such as the Furioso should not be judged according to Aristotle's rules. By asserting the contrary, Tasso attempts to find a via media between ancients and the moderns and at the same time to find a via media between libertines and Licensors. He presents his poem as an improvement on the morally suspect romance tradition both by virtue of its adherence to right religion and to Aristotelian principles; but by including romance within the broader category of heroic poetry, the poet is also able to lay claim to its narrative and imaginative pleasures, the amori e incanti to which readers like Antoniano might object.

A poem that would stand with the ancients will include a divine apparatus, Christianized according to "la mutazion de la religione e de' costumi." So Tasso declares in the Discorsi, and so indeed his poem signals in its opening lines. Like the Iliad, like the Aeneid, unlike the Furioso, the Liberata includes divine forces in the proposition. When Tasso writes of Goffredo that "in van l'Inferno vi s'oppose ... Il Ciel gli die favore" (I 1) (in vain Hell opposed him ... Heaven granted him favor), (17) he simultaneously announces his revision of chivalric romance in the direction of classical epic, and his revision of both romance and epic in the direction of Christianity. The very choice to write in vernacular ottave, as opposed to Trissino's blank verse or the Latin of Petrarch, Jacopo Sannazaro and Marco Girolamo Vida, establishes romance as the air Tasso's poem breathes. The inclusion of the divine forces in the proposition simultaneously locates his poem in the tradition of Homeric-Virgilian epic and revise s the Homeric and Virgilian first causes -- the will of Zeus, the long-remembering wrath of Juno -- into the vain resistance of hell, the favor of heaven. Tasso's poetics of fusion and revision is evident from the outset.

While Tasso theorized his deities as Christian to justify the maraviglie of Ariostan romance, when it came to imagining them as characters in his poem he used as models the gods of classical epic. This is not to say that Tasso's deities are any less Christian; it is rather to observe that the descriptions and topoi which he employed in creating his divine characters derive predominantly from Homer and Virgil, rather than from scripture or from the chivalric tradition. Gerusalemme liberata includes a range of divine action, nearly all of classical origin. God sends emissaries to earth, both of his own accord and in response to Christian prayer. He sends rain, sends dreams, infuses thoughts in the minds of men, and examines their consciences. Once he has set in motion the forces of hell, Plutone leaves the execution of his orders to his various demons who, like classical furies, send dreams, assume false shapes, slink inside human breasts, summon whirlwinds. The divine action of the Liberata is, to be sure, con siderably reduced with respect to the Iliad and the Aeneid, and Tasso's God is not furnished with the classical gods' range of human attributes, but he is as thoroughly anthropomorphized as Milton's, and considerably more so than Dante's. This is a deity who sits on a throne, looks down, gives orders, nods his head.

The poem bears indications that Tasso was unsure just how far he wanted to go with his Christian supernatural. At times the narrative voice hedges on the presence of supernatural characters, suggesting divine intervention as a possibility without asserting it outright. (18) The poem also contains moments of awkwardness, attributable perhaps to its incomplete revision, such as the notorious passage in canto X where Ismeno transports Solimano within the city walls first in a magic cloud and then by a secret tunnel. Then, too, Tasso employs figures of speech involving the classical supernatural which are clearly to be understood only as such. When Tasso writes of the enchanter Ismeno "Quinci veggendo omai ch'Apollo inaura / le rose che l'aurora ha colorite" (X. 14) (Then, seeing that Apollo is now gilding the roses that Aurora has painted) we surely want to say that the poet is employing a Virgilian periphrasis to say "Ismeno noticed the dawn," rather than that he is cluttering his poem by bringing the classical sun god across the stage in a cameo appearance. Tasso addressed this issue in the course of revising his poem. In a letter to Scipione Gonzaga of 4 October 1575, he writes "In the final canto appear the words "Fortune and Mars stand doubtful in their midst" (CL XX 72). It may perhaps appear to some that I am introducing pagan gods. If so, let this and other such words be removed: but I believe that these expressions have been sufficiently softened by use, that by now they will not register otherwise, nor suggest other meaning, than that the outcome of the battle was in doubt, on account of the equal valor of the opposed forces." (19) Tasso's point may appear obvious, but the issue was a live one in sixteenth-century literary debate; Tasso is concerned to distinguish himself from predecessors such as Sannazaro who had in fact mingled classical and Christian deities. (20) In laying claim to a stylistic register that includes figurative references to Fortune and Mars, Tasso makes manifest his own view of the po em's divine apparatus. References to classical deities are to be understood as figures of speech. Christian deities, by contrast, are real characters, as real as anything else in the poem.

THE PARTISAN DEITY OF THE LIBERATA

Gerusalemme liberata opens with a God's-eye view. Tasso's God is the first character introduced, the first to speak and act, the character from whose perspective we first view the world of the poem. The narrative proper brings readers in medias res in proper Iliadic fashion, opening in the sixth year of the stalled crusade:

E 'l fine omai di quel piovoso inverno,
che fea l'arme cessar, lunge non era;
quando da l'alto soglio il Padre eterno
ch'e ne la parte piu del ciel sincera,
e quanto e da le stelle al basso inferno
tanto e piu in su de la stellata spera,
gli occhi in giu volse, e in un sol punto e in una
vista miro cio ch' in se il mondo aduna.
Miro tutte le cose, e in Soria
s'affiso poi ne' principi cristiani;
e con quel guardo suo ch'a dentro spia
nel piu secreto lor gli affetti umani,
vide Goffredo che scacciar desia
de la santa citta gli empi pagani,
e pien di fe, di zelo, ogni mortale
gloria, imperio, tesor mette in non cale.
                                  (I 7-8)

(And now it was not long to the end of that rainy winter that made the armies pause, when from His lofty throne that lies in Heaven's purest realm [and as far as from the stars to lowly Hell, so far is it above the starry sphere] the eternal Father turned his eyes below and saw in one moment and in one glance whatever the world contains within itself. He looked at all its affairs and then in Syria he fixed his eyes upon the Christian princes, and [with that vision that spies out human passions in their most secret part within] He saw Godfrey, who longs to drive the wicked pagans from the holy city, and full of faith, of zeal, makes no account of any mortal glory, empire, treasure.)

From highest heaven the Eternal Father looks down, and perceives the world in its infinite variety as one. He takes in all -- "Miro tutte le cose" -- but zeroes in on the Christian camp in Palestine. The opening God's-eye view is something of an epic commonplace; it has precedents in Odyssey I and in Trissino's Italia liberata dai Goti, and evokes most closely Jupiter's first appearance in the Aeneid: (21)

Et iam finis erat, cum Iuppiter aethere summo
despiciens mare velivolum terrasque iacentis
litoraque et latos populos, sic vertice caeli
constitit et Libyae defixit lumina regnis.
                                   (Aeneid I 223-26)

(Now all was ended, when from the sky's summit Jupiter looked forth upon the sail-winged sea and outspread lands, the shores and peoples far and wide, and, looking, paused on heaven's height and cast his eyes on Libya's realm.)

In both cases, the omnipotent character focuses his gaze on the earthly theater, but there is a notable difference in what they see and how. Whereas Virgil's Jupiter views the seas, shores and people far and wide, Tasso's Eternal Father spies the innermost thoughts of the Christian captains: he looks into the "piu secreto di lor affetti umani," judges, and finds Goffredo alone worthy to lead the holy enterprise. God's all-penetrating gaze is reiterated a few stanzas later: "Poi ch'ebbe di questi e d'altri con / scorti gl' intimi sensi il Re del mondo" (I, 11) (When the Ruler of the world had made out the inmost feelings of these and other souls.) The reference to altri cori indicates that after finishing with the leaders God examines the Christian rank and file for good measure. Jupiter's gaze, we might say, takes in all that would be seen by a mortal eye of infinite power and scope. God's vision, however, is of another order, not only perfectly synthetic but wholly penetrating: it perceives all as one, and d iscovers even the deepest recesses of the soul. The divine gaze goes all the way down. (22) That God knows the minds of men is a Christian commonplace, but it is striking, and poignant, in light of the poet's own religious anxieties, that when he comes to imagine God Tasso begins by rendering this particular commonplace literally. (23) From his celestial panopticon, Tasso's God acts as supreme inquisitor, the one perfectly discerning examiner of conscience.

After God has examined the crusaders, he summons his messenger Gabriel, second only to Michael in the angelic hierarchy, and dispatches him to earth:

Disse al suo nunzio Dio: -- Goffredo trova,
e in mio nome di' lui: perche si cessa?
perche la guerra ormai non si rinova
a liberar Gierusalemme oppressa?
Chiami i duci al consiglio, e i tardi mova
a l'alta impresa: ei capitan fia d'essa.
Io qui l'eleggo; e 'l faran gli altri in terra,
gia suoi compagni, or suoi ministri in guerra. --
                                 (I, 12)

(God to His messenger spoke: "Find Godfrey, and ask him in My name: why is the war given over? Why is it not this moment renewed to liberate oppressed Jerusalem? Let him call the chiefs to council and stir up the sluggish to the lofty enterprise: he shall be its Captain. Thus I elect him here in heaven; and so shall they on earth, formerly his companions, henceforth his subordinates in war.")

With these words, the first direct discourse in the poem, God anoints Goffredo as sole commander of the Christian forces -- a conscious departure on Tasso's part from his chronicle sources, which indicate that the historical Godfrey of Bouillon was only so elevated after the Crusaders had taken the city. As Sergio Zatti observes, this hierarchy of command establishes a hierarchy of value that will operate throughout the poem. God's anointing of Goffredo privileges from the outset the values associated with the capitano over those of his compagni erranti; simultaneously, it privileges the mission of conquest, the unitary epic plot, over the various romance subplots. (24) As heaven is hierarchical, so shall be the Christian camp. Each of the other Christian champions has his weakness in a misdirected passion: love of woridy gain (Baldovino), love of a mortal woman (Tancredi), exclusive care for his new kingdom (Boemondo) or love of personal glory (Rinaldo). Goffredo, by contrast, loves God alone: "pien di fe, d i zelo, ogni mortale / gloria, imperio, tesor mette in non cale" (full of faith, of zeal, makes no account of any mortal glory, empire, treasure). Goffredo's faith and zeal manifest themselves to God in his single-minded focus on the epic mission of conquest, in his desire to "scacciar. . . de la santa citta gli empi pagani" (drive the impious pagans from the holy city). This charged language belongs to the narrative voice, but it occurs in describing what God sees, and God himself speaks of Gerusalemme oppressa; a phrase that one might expect to come from, perhaps, Pope Urban II, is here placed in the mouth of the Almighty himself. (25) It is thus evident from the start of the poem that Tasso's God, like the deities of Homer and Virgil, takes a partisan interest in the outcome of events on earth. This divine partisanship will be amply in evidence throughout the poem, in word as well as in deed: God describes the Christians as "il campo amato" (XIII 73) and "la mia fedel diletta greggia" (IX 58), speaks of th em with "parole amiche" (XIII 72) and turns to them "lo sguardo favorevole e giocondo" (XIV 2).

The next instance of heavenly intervention occurs in canto VII. As the elderly Christian knight Raimondo moves to meet the pagan champion Argante in single combat, he prays to God for victory. God hears him, and selects an angel from the heavenly ranks to whom he charges the Christian knight's defense. The guardian angel ascends to the celestial armory, takes up an immense diamond shield, and descends invisible to Raimondo's side. In the ensuing combat the divine action closely evokes the duel between Paris and Menelaos in Iliad III-IV. When Argante raises his sword to strike a heavy blow, the angel interposes his celestial shield, and Argante's sword breaks into fragments. (26) Both warriors are stupefied, since neither is aware of the angel's presence, but they fight on; the now swordless Argante stands at a grave disadvantage until the demon Beelzebub comes to his aid, taking the shape of Clorinda and convincing the pagan archer Oradin to break the cease-fire. (27) Oradino bends his bow, and his arrow pier ces Raimondo's hauberk and draws blood, but the guardian angel prevents it from going further: "'l celeste guerrier soffrir non volse / ch'oltra passasse, e forza al colpo tolse" (VII 102) (the heavenly warrior did nor wish to permit that it pass beyond, and took the force from the blow). Although not deadly, the arrow does its disruptive work. Both armies rush into battle, and in the following melee the Christians prevail, but are prevented from winning a decisive victory by the devils, who stir up hideous storms which drive them back to their tents:

E se non che non era il di che scritto
Dia ne gli eterni suoi decreti avea,
quest'era forse il dl che '1 campo invitto
de le sante fatiche al fin giungea.
Ma la schiera infernal, ch'in quel conflitto
La tirannide sua cader vedea,
sendole cio' permesso, in un momento
I'aria in nube ristrinse e mosse il vento.
                                     (VII 114)

(And had it not been that it was not the day that God had written in his eternal decrees, this had been perhaps the day that the invincible host arrived at the end of its holy labors. But the infernal rout, that saw their tyranny crumbling in that struggle, in a single moment [this being permitted them] gathered into clouds the air, and set the winds in motion.)

Tasso follows Homer both in the outline of events and in the particulars of the divine intervention: the broken sword, the divine counsel to the archer, the turned arrow, the breaking of the truce and ensuing melee all are modelled on the Iliad. But Tasso adds an emphasis quite foreign to his Homeric model: that of the fundamental inequality of the rival supernatural powers. The omnipotence of heaven is carefully signalled throughout the scene. If Oradino's arrow pierces Raimondo's hauberk, the angel lets it go no further; if the Christians do not overrun the pagans that day, it is because God has not so decreed it; if the devils gather storm clouds and whirlwinds, the poet adds that they do so only "sendole cio permesso." Tasso thus keeps his battle theologically correct, avoiding any suggestion of a Manichean balance of power between heaven and hell. Theological correctness, however, comes at a price, as each iteration of heavenly control brings into sharper relief the unanswered and unanswerable question o f heavenly motives. If Raimondo's guardian angel can deaden the force of Oradino's shaft, why does he allow it to strike home at all? (28) If God can decree Christian victory on the day that he chooses, why would he prolong the struggle, at the cost of so much human life? The conspicuous phrase "sendole cio permesso preserves orthodoxy, but leaves readers wondering: why permit the devils even this much? Parallel questions of divine motives and timing may be posed for each of the infernal disturbances in the poem -- for instance at XIII 11 -- where the infernal spirits are permitted to haunt the forest of Saron even after Michele has chased them back to hell: "lenti e del gran divieto anco smarriti, / ch'impedi loro il trattar l'arme in guerra, / ma gia venirne qui lor non si toglie / e ne' tronchi albergare e tra la foglie." (They came still sluggish and dismayed from the great decree that enjoined them from bearing arms in battle; but yet it is not denied them to come here and dwell in the foliage and trunks of trees.) If God is always in control, as Tasso keeps reminding us that he is, and he loves the Christians, as Tasso keeps reminding us that he does, it remains obscure why he should suffer the forces of hell to wreak so much havoc for so long.

The narrative problem Tasso faces here is one that had exercised Christian epic poets from Petrarch forward: the powers of heaven and hell are not easily substituted into the narrative roles occupied in classical epic by the Olympian gods. This substitution occurred naturally to poets of the Renaissance, committed alike to Christianity and to classical epic form, and long accustomed to the hermeneutic practice of reading Christian allegories into classical myths. (29) In such readings the patriarch of Olympus was commonly equated with the first person of the Trinity; Zeus' golden chain, for example, could be understood as a symbol of God's omnipotence. (30) But allegoresis is one thing and narrative another, and when poets substituted the Christian God for the classical Jove (the Virgilian Jupiter, the Homeric Zeus) as divine overseer of epic action they encountered structural issues for which their classical models provided no guidance.

In Homeric and Virgilian epic, the community of Olympians provides an infinitely variable framework for storytelling, a sophisticated narrative mechanism by which the poet may generate, extend and eventually resolve epic conflict. The Olympian gods are a family, and like many a mortal family they quarrel, form factions, and bear grudges, but are not fundamentally at odds. The supreme power of Zeus is never in question, but the patriarch of Olympus is susceptible to influence -- Zeus can be lobbied, supplicated, and even, in one notorious episode in the Iliad, tricked. (31) Furthermore, Zeus grants his fellow gods wide latitude, and is often willing to make concessions to them in the interests of pan-Olympian harmony. The lesser Olympians recognize that they cannot countervail destiny, or moira (a shadowy force sometimes identified with the will of Zeus, sometimes described as independent of him) (32) but they can delay it, and the space in which destiny is delayed is the space in which epic plot unfolds. In t he Iliad, Zeus will eventually allow Athena and Hera to bring about Troy's destruction, but not before he has honored the request of Thetis that the Trojans might enjoy temporary victory. In the Odyssey, Polyphemos' curse, honored by his father Poseidon, condemns Odysseus to a long and rough journey home, loss of his companions, and a troubled return. So it comes to pass, and Zeus does not prevent it, though he favors Odysseus and will not allow his death. In the Aeneid, Jupiter reassures Venus in Book I that her son's destiny to found a city will not go unfulfilled; nonetheless he allows Juno to delay the Trojans' arrival in Italy in the first half of the poem, and then to make the Trojan settlement as bloody as possible in the second.

The gods know, the epic narrator knows, the reader knows how the story will end, but the mortal protagonists do not know, and the resulting dramatic irony heightens rather than detracts from the heroic action. Gods seek to delay the destined course of events; Zeus lets them do it, and the poem transpires within this space of postponement. An alternative way of putting the point is that Zeus wills not only the outcome of the epic action but also its duration. We may accordingly offer two accounts of the duration of conflict in classical epic. We can attribute it to the multiple, conflicting and temporarily balanced wills of the various Olympian gods who operate for their own reasons on opposite sides of a mortal struggle. We can also describe the entire unfolding of events in terms of the will of Zeus, as does the poet in the opening lines of the Iliad. Such a description allows that Zeus is of different minds at different moments, and that his will is shaped by a multitude of factors, involving a balance of h is own inclination, the causally ambiguous forces of fate, and the special interests of his supporting cast.

In the monotheistic divine scheme, however, the notion of destiny or moira is replaced by the more theologically precise concept of God's will, and a supporting cast for the Almighty is not readily available. An omnipotent deity lacks by definition involuntary constraints on his will, and it is not easy to introduce voluntary ones. If God is sufficiently distanced from the mortal action, the problem does not emerge -- as it does not, for instance, in Dante's Commedia, where God remains the poem's all-pervasive governing force without making a direct appearance in the narrative. But if the poet introduces the Christian First Person, Jove-like, as an actor in an epic, he faces a delicate task in reconciling the theological requirement of God's omnipotence with the narrative requirement that the epic conflict endure long enough to move the reader and ennoble the winning side. As a causal force in a narrative poem, "God's will" has notable explanatory poverty; it accounts for everything and so nothing. If God is understood to favor one side, there is no avoiding the structural difficulty that lurks behind phrases like "sendole cio permesso": if one side enjoys the support of an omnipotent deity; why does the conflict endure for the length of the poem? The question can be answered readily enough on the level of mortal action: it takes twenty cantos for Tasso's crusaders to take Jerusalem because Goffredo's compagni erranti are not as focused as he on the epic mission, because key warriors are temporarily diverted from battle, because the army lacks wood to repair its siege-engines, and because the city's Islamic garrison includes some formidable adversaries. It can also be answered in terms of the allegory Tasso provided when the poem was already largely complete: the conquest of Jerusalem by the army represents the attainment of civic happiness by the mature man, and this achievement requires the subordination to reason, represented by Goffredo, of the other faculties of the soul, represented by the compagni erranti. But the difficulty will re-emerge as soon as one considers the conflict on the level of divine action -- that is, as soon as one treats God the Father not merely as metaphor but as a genuine presence in the narrative. What counterbalances the will of the Almighty for twenty cantos? What dilatory forces can the Christian poet provide equivalent to "Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long / Perplexed the Greek and Cytherea's Son"? (33)

When the young Tasso began work on his epic of the first crusade, he had before him a recent example of how not to handle the problem of divine counterbalance in the L'Italia liberata dai Gotthi of Giovan Giorgio Trissino. (34) Published in 1547, Trissino's epic on the sixth-century Roman general Belisarius' wars against the Goths features a neo-Homeric heaven in which ostensibly Christian deities appear in roles most transparently based on those of the Olympian gods: Jupiter and Juno become God and the Virgin. The population of heaven is rounded out by numerous angels, whom Trissino divides into pro-Italian and pro-Goth factions on analogy with the secondary Olympians. Over the course of the poem Belisarius' campaigns proceed back and forth across Italy, with alternating victories and defeats as the partisan angels intervene on both sides, turning the tide of battle by means of disguised appearances, magic mists, and similar Homeric devices. (35) God is petitioned by an angel to pity the poor Italians in the poem's opening scene, and his motives in witholding the final Italian triumph for twenty-seven books remain wholly (and necessarily) inscrutable. The infelicities of Trissino's neo-Homeric poetics are the more striking in that they occur by design. Trissino sets out his theoretical program in the poem's dedicatory epistle, where he announces his intent to "follow in the footsteps" of the divino Poeta, and his systematic imitation extends from the structural to the stylistic level; L'Italia liberata even reproduces the Homeric oral formulae. The poem attracted a quantity of contemporary critical scorn -- as Thomas Greene observes, Trissino "did not enjoy the good fortune accorded to most bad poets of seeing their blunders pass unnoticed" (36) -- and so L'Italia Ziberata contributed to the history of Renaissance epic by demonstrating the excesses of overly literal imitatio.

Tasso learned from Trissino's failure, and in place of the neo-Homeric heaven of the Italia liberata adopts a mechanism of counterbalance native to the Christian tradition. Rather than divide his angels into pro-Crusader and pro-Islamic factions, Tasso frames the epic action of the Liberata as a chapter in the ongoing contest between heaven and hell. His tactic is to show heaven conceding certain limited powers of disturbance to the devils, enough to prolong the mortal conflict but not so much that God's omnipotence ever comes in question. The devils can rescue Argante from danger; they can stir up storms to keep the Christians from overrunning the pagan army; they can fill the forest of Saron with enchantments to prevent the Christians from rebuilding their siege engines. In short, they can buy time -- the time in which the poem takes place. (37) This tactic serves to extend the epic plot to sufficiently heroic length, but it cannot provide an account of this extension analogous to Zeus' accommodation of The tis in the Iliad or Jupiter's accommodation of Juno in the Aeneid. Zeus responds to the wishes of the other gods not because he is compelled but because he chooses to, and his reasons for choosing to are perspicuous enough: the other Olympians are neither his creatures nor his enemies, but his family, and he cares about preserving familial harmony. Far otherwise is the situation with God and Satan, creator and rebellious creature who resists from hell in eternal futility. Since Satan is the permanent, irreconcilable adversary of God and man, it is scarcely possible for a poet to show God granting him the liberal temporary indulgence Jupiter grants Juno in the Aeneid, the indulgence which opens the space within which the epic plot unfolds. In the Liberata God allows the forces of hell a certain amount of room to create disturbance, but it is futile to ask why.

The Olympian gods are not represented as ubiquitous presences, nor are they omniscient in practice; there are temporal gaps in which the gods are unaware of what is happening on earth, or not paying attention. In Odyssey I, for instance, Athena petitions Zeus on Odysseus' behalf while Poseidon is off enjoying a sacrificial banquet in Ethiopia; in Aeneid VII Juno spies the Trojans while she is flying back from Argos. Such details render tangible the occasion of the god's intervention, and provide implicit indications as to the question of divine timing: why now, and not at some other point. Like indications are scarcely possible for the Christian God, however, without appearing to compromise his omniscience; to speak of God noticing something at a certain temporal point would appear blasphemously limiting. As a consequence, the question of divine timing must remain mysterious. The problem stems not from lack of artistry on Tasso's part, but inheres in the monotheistic divine scheme.

God makes his next appearance in canto IX, while a fierce nocturnal battle is in progress. As the fighting rages, the scene shifts suddenly to highest heaven:

Cost si combatteva, e 'l sangue in rivi
correa egualmente in questo lato e in quello.
Gli occhi fra tanto a la battaglia rea
dal suo gran seggio il Re del Ciel volgea.

Sedea cola dond'Egli e buono e giusto
da legge al tutto e 'l tutto orna e produce
sovra i bassi confin del mondo angusto,
ove senso o ragion non si conduce;
e de l'Eternita nel trono augusto
risplendea con tre lumi in una luce.
Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura,
ministri umili, e 'l Moto e Chi 'l misura,

e'l Loco e Quella che, qual fumo o polve,
la gloria di qua giuso e l'oro e i regni,
come piace la su, disperde e volve,
ne, diva, cura i nostri umani sdegni.
Quivi ei cost nel suo splendor s'involve,
che v'abbaglian la vista anco i piu degni,
d'intorno ha innumerabili immortali,
disegualmente in lor letizia eguali.
                                   (IX 55-57)

(So the fighting went, and the blood ran equally in streams on both sides. Meanwhile from His mighty throne the King of Heaven turned His eyes upon the sad carnage. He was seated there where He both good and just pronounces laws for every thing, and every thing creates and elaborates, beyond the base limits of our narrow world, where sense or reason does not reach. And upon the majestic throne of eternity He shone with three lights in a single blaze. Beneath His feet He holds Necessity and Nature, His humble ministers, and Motion, and He who measures it, and Space, and She who eddies and dissipates like dust or smoke the glory of things down here below and gold and realms, as it pleases on high, and being a goddess makes no account of our mortal indignations. There He is so enwrapped in His own splendor that the vision of even the worthiest is bedazzled: about Him He has innumerable immortals, unequally equal in their bliss.)

Here for the first time Tasso provides a glimpse of the celestial court. The poem's opening scene in heaven mentioned only "gli angelici splendori," but now we encounter the allegorical figures of Fate, Nature, Motion, Time, Space and Fortune, as well as the immortals in bliss arrayed in Dantesque hierarchy. This is a distant, abstract heaven, infinitely remote from the broils of earthly combat; the contrast between mortal and divine is established by the quick movement within a single stanza from the streams of blood on the battlefield to heaven's high seat, and it is emphasized throughout the passage. From the "bassi confin del mondo angusto" (base limits of our narrow world) human reason cannot conceive of heaven; mortal deeds and aspirations pale beneath the inscrutable dictates of Fortune. In this scene and the subsequent celestial descent mortals are uninvolved; God intervenes not in response to Christian prayer but spontaneously, and Michele makes no appearance to the Christian warriors as he drives th e devils back to hell. But while the remoteness of heaven is the dominant note in this passage, we may observe that Tasso's God is no less partisan for all his distance. The theme of humanity's insignificance is counterpoised by God's indications in word and deed that he is concerned to ensure Christian victory. These two principles stand in implicit tension throughout the Liberata. On the one hand, the poem underscores the insignificance of earthly endeavor and the folly of mortal pride; on the other, it both asserts and represents the power of prayer to bring about earthly triumph. The former discourse places at no account the concerns of this ephemeral world, an island encircled by a low swamp and narrow pond ("bassa palude e breve stagno," XIV 10); the latter discourse emphasizes that those, like Goffredo, who possess the faith that stems rivers and moves mountains ("la fede / che faria stare i fiumi a gir i monti," XIII 80) can accomplish great things in this world, as well as the next. In the universe o f Tasso's poem Christian piety is entirely compatible with earthly conquest; we are a long way from Milton's redefinition of epic heroism as "the better fortitude / Of patience and heroic martyrdom" (Paradise Lost, IX 31-32). The promises which Michael makes to Adam at the conclusion of Paradise Lost are eschatological in nature, and we are led to understand that Satan, Sin and Death will largely have the run of the planet until the Second Coming. In the Liberata God permits the devils only so much disturbance until he dispatches Michele to drive them back to hell, smoothing the way for the "fedel diletta greggia" to put the put the pagans to the sword. The clash between archangel Michele and the devils takes place entirely at the level of divine action -- no mortals are involved on either side -- and so unsurprisingly it rakes little time and generates little dramatic energy. As Dryden observed, it is only too easy for Michele to drive the forces of hell back to their eternal torments, prodding the laggards with his lance. (38)

The devils are banished halfway through the poem, but the Crusaders have yet to overcome the obstacles Hell has placed in their path, and God intervenes again at a juncture at which Goffredo's forces find themselves effectively stymied. Ismeno's enchantments in the forest of Saron have prevented them from cutting wood to repair their siege engines, and now a great drought afflicts the camp, causing whispers of mutiny and even desertion. Goffredo prays for rain, God hears him and declares the turning point of the poem:

Abbia sin qui sue dure e perigliose
aversita sofferte il campo amato,
e contra lui con armi ed arti ascose
siasi l'inferno e siasi il mondo armato.
Or cominci novello ordin di cose,
e gli si volga prospero e beato.
Piova; e ritorni il suo guerriero invitto,
e venga a gloria sua l'oste d'Egitto.
                                    (XIII 73)

(To this point let it be that our beloved host has endured its harsh and perilous adversities, and against it Hell has been arrayed with arms and hidden arts, and the world in arms has been arrayed. Now let a new order of things begin, and let it be turned to prosperous and blessed. Let it rain; and let their invincible warrior return, and for their glory the host from Egypt come.)

Thus far, but no further. As Satan in one octave (IV 17) sets in motion the romance digressions of the following ten cantos, so with even greater economy God reasserts the epic plot, dictating in two lines the action of the rest of the poem. (39) Let it rain; and the rains come, spectacularly, in the next seven stanzas. Let Rinaldo return; the voyage of his recovery occupies the following three cantos. And let the Egyptian forces arrive, to the glory of the Christian warriors; thus the events of cantos 17-20. The word of God is the performative utterance par excellence, elegant in its conciseness and chilling in its implications. The Egyptian host will arrive, God declares, so that the Christian forces may triumph with glory (the possessive adjective in "a gloria sua" refers back to "il campo amato"). God does not make specific reference to the bloodbath that this triumph will involve, but it is difficult to see what else the Almighty could have in mind by gloria; the Christians will not only take Jerusalem, but they will do so with maximum slaughter of the infidel. Such, anyway, is the explanation of God's motives which Goffredo offers to his troops before the final battle: "Ne senza alta cagion ch'il suo rubello / popolo or si raccolga il Ciel consente: / ogni vostro nimico ha qui congiunto / per fornir molte guerre in un sol punto." (XX 14) (And not without deep cause does Heaven consent that His rebel people be now assembled here: Heaven has united here your every enemy to finish many wars at a single blow.) In having the Egyptians take part in the final battle Tasso departs from his chronicle sources, which indicate that the Egyptian host arrived only after the city had already fallen to the Crusaders. One can readily justify the poet's choice to exercise his artistic license on this point; it makes a dramatic ending, and makes the Christians greater heroes. The arrival of the immense pagan army enables Tasso to end his poem with a climactic battle of appropriately epic proportions, and the Crusaders' victor y over a more numerous force amply demonstrates the superior organization and morale of Goffredo's army and the valor of the individual Christian champions. But Tasso's decision to include the Egyptians in the final battle for Jerusalem is more readily justifiable than God's. It is hard to think of reasons other than vengeance why the Almighty should delay the Christian triumph until the Egyptian host should arrive, and send so many souls to violent death followed by eternal damnation so that the Christians should gain maximum glory. The poet, understandably enough, keeps such glimpses of Old Testament vengefulness to a minimum by giving the Almighty few lines, though it emerges in phrases like a gloria sua.

Tasso eschews Trissino's neo-Homeric heaven, and also foregoes Milton's device of introducing the Second Person, who provides the Almighty with a conversation partner; Tasso's God speaks only to issue decrees and give orders to angels. While the Liberata avoids such infelicitous casting as the Blessed Virgin in the part of Juno, Tasso has no alternative solution to the narrative problem of divine counterbalance that faced Trissino. Il padre eterno holds all the cards, and as a result the reasons for the duration of the epic conflict must remain mysterious. To the question "Why does the Almighty allow the devils to create such disturbance for so long?" the best answer available is simple narrative necessity: if he didn't, we wouldn't have a poem. The devils neither induce God's voluntary accommodation nor pose a genuine threat. But in their vain resistance they do offer a voice of opposition to Tasso's God, and it is to this voice of opposition that we now turn.

DEVILISH RESISTANCE

Tasso's Satan, whose name is classicized as Plutone, makes his single but memorable appearance in the infernal council which opens canto IV. Plutone is described physically, as God is not:

Siede Pluton nel mezzo, e con la destra
sostien lo scettro ruvido e pesante;
ne tanto scoglio in mar, ne rupe alpestra,
ne pur Calpe s'inalza o 'l magno Atlante,
ch'anzi lui non paresse un picciol colle,
si la gran fronte e le gran corna estolle.

Orrida maesta nel fero aspetto
terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende:
rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
come infausta cometa il guardo splende,
gl'involve il mento e su l'irsuto petto
ispida e folta la gran barba scende,
e in guisa di voragine profonda
s'apre la bocca d'atro sangue immonda.
                                 (IV 6-7)

(Pluto sits in the middle, and with his right hand wields the rude and massy scepter; and not so high does rocky cliff by the sea or alpine bluff, nor yet does Calpe raise itself so high or mighty Atlas, that compared to him it would not seem a little hill: so he holds high his massive head and massive horns. A fearsome majesty in his fierce countenance increases the terror and makes him even more proud: his eyes burn red, and his gaze glowers, infected with poison like an ill-omened comet; his huge beard envelops his chin and shaggy and thick comes down over his hairy chest, and like a deep-yawning maelstrom his mouth stands open, filthy with black blood.)

In his representation of the "gran nemico de l'umane genti" Tasso draws on an extensive tradition of literary devils, notably those of the Inferno and of Vida's Christiad. All are monstrous, but we may observe from Dante to Vida to Tasso a progressive "humanization" of the arch-adversary. Dante's Lucifer is a meat-grinding monster with three faces, no horns, and wings like a giant bat, and Vida's "regnator mundi opaci" is possessed of one hundred bodies and belches flames from one hundred jaws. Tasso's Plutone bears something like human shape, with acknowledged regal presence, however ghastly: orrida maesta. Lucifer is planted mute and motionless for eternity in the ice of nethermost hell, but Tasso's Plutone, like Vida's Satan, sits regnant amidst the infernal council, holding his crude scepter in his right hand. The dei d'Abisso Plurone addresses, however, are classical monsters, closely evocative of those seen by Aeneas in the underworld: harpies, centaurs, gorgons, even Cerberus, who stops barking while h is master speaks (IV 8).

While Tasso's hell fuses classical and Christian literary tradition, his characterization of Plutone points the way toward the intricately psychologized Satan of Paradise Lost. (40) Plutone gives voice to a striking discourse of resistance that accuses God of imperialism and describes Christianity the official truth of the poem, as merely the version of the winning side. (41) Addressing his devils, Plutone refers to God nor as the prime mover of the universe, but simply as the ruler who now happens to be on top, to their degradation: "or Colui regge a suo voler le stelle, / e noi siam giudicate alme rubelle" (IV 9) (Now He rules the stars according to His will, and we are adjudged as rebel souls.) (42) The temporal adverb or suggests that Plutone does not recognize God's eternal omnipotence; presumably God always has ruled the heavens a suo voter, nor just since the war in heaven. Although he admits that God cast them to the abyss in defeat, Plutone speaks of hell as an independent state where the Tartarei nu mi hold sway -- a kingdom parallel to heaven, though undeniably less pleasant. And like the ruler of a minor sixteenth-century stare, Plutone is acutely conscious of slights to his authority. The indignity that stings him most is God's elevation of man, after the devus' fall, to the blessed celestial sears, "l'uom vile e di vil fango in terra nato (Man, vile Man, and born on earth of vile mud.) Earth-born Man raised to heaven, without even celestial ancestry! Here Plutone's accents are reminiscent of Tasso's patron Alfonso d'Este, furious at the Pope for having elevated the parvenu Medici to the title of grand Duke. (43) There exists, Plutone implies, a division of sovereignty between hell and heaven, whereby each is entitled to the souls of its earthly worshipers. With the harrowing of hell God has violated the devils' sovereignty, and now He seeks to do so again by backing the Crusaders:

Deh! non vedete omai com'egli tenti
tutte a suo culto richiamar le genti?

Noi trarrem neghittosi i giorni e l'ore,
ne degna cura fia che 'l cor n'accenda?
e soffrirem che forza ognor maggiore
il suo popol fede in Asia prenda?
e che Giudea soggioghi? e che 'l suo onore,
che 'l nome suo piu si dilati e stenda?
che suoni in altre lingue, e in altri carmi
si scriva, e incida in novi bronzi e marmi?

Che sian l'idoli nostri a terra sparsi?
ch'i nostri altari il mondo a lui converta?
ch'a lui sospesi i voti, a lui sol arsi
siano gl'incensi, ed auro e mirra offerta?
ch'ove a noi tempio non solea serrarsi,
or via non resti a l'arti nostre aperta?
che di tant'alme il solito tributo
ne manchi, e in voto regno alberghi Pluto?
                                 (IV 12-14)

(Ah, do you not see how even now He is trying to call back all the peoples to His religion? Shall we draw out in idleness our days and hours, and shall there be no worthy task to kindle our hearts? and shall we suffer that His faithful gather in Asia daily a greater power? and that they bring Judea under the yoke? and that His honor, His name be the more extended and spread abroad? that it resound in other tongues, and be written in other oracles, and cut in new bronzes and marbles? That our idols be scattered on the ground? that the world convert our altars to Him? that for Him the trophies be hung up, for Him alone the incense burned, and gold and myrrh be offered? that where no temple was wont to be closed against us, now there should be no avenue open to our arts? that the customary tribute of so many souls be withdrawn, and Pluto have his dwelling in an empty kingdom?)

Tasso imagines the devil as a cross between Virgil's Juno, jealous of her earthly tribute, and an Italian Renaissance prince, outraged and fearful at the incursions of a greater power. In complaining about his altars, Plutone sounds most like Juno enraged at the movement of the Trojans towards Italy: "et quisquam numen Iunonis adorat / praeterea aut supplex aris imponet honorem?" (Aeneid I 48-49) (And will any still worship Juno's godhead or humbly lay sacrifice upon her altars?) Like Juno, Plutone has a long memory, viewing the present in light of outrages endured in the past. Like a minor prince under threat, he is enraged at God's encroachment upon his territory and fears loss of earthly prestige. In rallying his troops, Plutone appeals to infernal nationalist spirit: shall we allow God to extend his dominions into our sphere of influence, to rob us of our revenue, our solito tributo of souls?

Barely has Plutone finished when his devils surge up out of hell, and the following five cantos are dominated by the disturbances they cause. Once in circulation about the earth, the alme a Dio rubelle no longer appear as monsters, but as Furies; chief among them is Aletto, in classical mythology the daughter of Pluto and minister of the Olympian gods' vengeance, who serves as Juno's agent in stirring up strife between the Trojans and the Latins in Aeneid VII. The devils' classicism is not uniform, however; we also encounter Beelzebub, a Fury with the non-classical name of Astragorre, and an unnamed angelo iniquo. (44) Whereas God and the angels he dispatches do what they want, the devils do what they can; their actions are limited, circumscribed by the will of heaven. They are granted occasional power over the weather (witness their storm at the conclusion of canto VII), but the infernal spirits operate mostly by suggestion and deceit, sowing dissension among the Christians and spurring on the pagans. They c an shape-shift, appearing to mortals in assumed forms. (45) But the devils' preferred tactic is to infiltrate directly into the minds of selected mortals.

The devils choose their human agents carefully. Like the Olympian gods, they appear to mortals already fit to serve their purposes. While Idraote, pagan astrologer and ruler of Damascus, is considering how best to weaken the Christian army, the angelo iniquo comes to him, and inspires him to unleash the erotic powers of his niece Armida upon the Crusaders. Likewise, Aletto takes advantage of a pre-existing streak of pride in the Norwegian prince Gernando: "'l maligno spirito d'Averno, ch'in lui strada si larga aprir si vede / tacito in sen gli serpe ed al governo / de' suoi pensieri lusingando siede" (V 18) (the wicked spirit of Avernus, which sees so broad a highway opened in him, silently glides within his breast and deceitfully gains the governing seat of his thoughts). The most interesting case of devilish possession is that of Argillano. He is described (VIII 58) as an Ascolano bandit who plundered and pillaged his native countryside before joining the Crusade. (46) Aletto infuses within him an evil drea m, in which the mutilated corpse of Rinaldo urges Argillano to mutiny -- and here we cannot think of the Fury as only metaphorical, for Tasso tells us specifically that Argillano's faculties are deceived, that he receives false sense-data: "sono le interne sue virtu deluse" (VIII 59). Inspired with a new spirit of madness ("spirito novo di furor ripieno," VIII 62) Argillano stirs up the Italian troops in revolt against Goffredo. As his oration nears its climax, Argillano swears that his dream vision was sent by heaven: "Il Ciel io giuro / (il Ciel che n'ode e ch'ingannar non lice), ch'allor che si rischiara il mondo oscuro, / spirito errante il vidi ed infelice" (VIII 68) (I swear by heaven [by heaven that hears and may not deceive] that at the hour when the darkened world is growing light, I saw his wandering and unhappy ghost.) Perhaps heaven may not deceive, but hell may, and its deception may consist precisely in suggesting that the vision granted the deceived comes from heaven. Argillano is mistaken -- R inaldo is alive and well -- but the poem indicates no way in which he could have been expected to know that his dream was false. To Argillano's deluded senses the dream appeared real enough, and indeed as a dream it was real; it simply represented a counter-factual state of affairs, like the evil dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon in Iliad II. (47) Argillano's declaration is no lie, but an infernally inspired mistake. While in terms of the poem's official values Argillano's rebellion is clearly to be condemned, the presence of the supernatural complicates our response.

Since Tasso shows each mortal through whom the devils operate as predisposed to do hell's work, it comes naturally to readers to allegorize the devils, to understand them as personifying the centrifugal forces that threaten the unity of the Christian camp. So they do. But that one can provide a description of the action without reference to the devils does not mean that the devils are not really present as characters in the poem. Rather, their presence contributes to a complex narrative texture wherein both deities and mortals count as causal agents. Argillano is a bandit, disposed to violence against legitimate authority; we may say, following Quint, that he is an apt vehicle for figuring schismatic Italian resistance to the papal power represented by Goffredo. So readers may, if they wish, understand Argillano's actions in terms of who he is, independent of Aletto's intervention. On the other hand, Argillano acts on the basis of false sensory information planted by Aletto; he incites the Italians to revolt in the genuine belief (the poem makes this quite clear) that heaven has called him to oppose Goffredo's tyranny. Is Argillano responsible, or Aletto? We can, and should, have it both ways.

Divine intervention does not reduce mortals to puppets, and mortal responsibility does not render the divine characters superfluous, or force us to understand them as merely metaphorical. This interpretative line is known by Homeric scholars as the "theory of double motivation," wherein gods and mortals are considered jointly responsible for mortal actions; (48) it provides a subtle and non-reductive means of thinking about divine action. It may come naturally to modern readers to want to allegorize the gods, to treat the divine action in the poem as a poetic means of lending emphasis to actions best understood as taking place on the mortal plane alone. This naturalizing impulse stems from habits of reading shaped by the conventions of realist fiction; when applied to epic it flattens out the narrative, and renders important passages unintelligible. What, for instance, do we make of the scene in hell (IV 1-19) if the devils are not every bit as real as Armida or Argillano? (49) Furthermore, a non-allegorical explanation of the devils' preferred tactics is readily available: they pick easy targets, because they need to. The devils, it is clear, recognize the limits of their power, if nor the final futility of their cause. (50) Whereas God can bring about the deathbed conversion of even so intransigent a pagan as Clorinda, the weaker devils slip in where the way is smoothest. (51) Their propensity to use predisposed mortals to their ends points once again to the disparity between celestial and infernal power.

The devils' efforts to prevent the Christian conquest of Jerusalem are doomed to failure, of course. Plutone's attempts to challenge heaven were never other than self-delusion, as indeed the narrative voice has proclaimed before the arch-enemy even began to speak: "come sia pur leggiera impresa, ahi stolto! / il repugnare a la divina voglia: / stolto, ch'al Ciel s'agguaglia, e in oblio pone / come di Dio la destra irata tuone" (IV 2) (as if [ah fool!] it should be but a trifling thing to take up arms against the divine will; fool, who holds himself equal to Heaven, and consigns to oblivion how the wrathful hand of God launches thunder). The events of the poem will bear out these words, and discredit Plutone's. God is omnipotent, whether Plutone admits it or not, and hell is not a rival independent kingdom, but only God's prison. The devils cause just so much trouble as is countenanced by the will of heaven, as the poem makes clear time and again, and as God grants the devils limited power, so the narrative gr ants them limited space. Once banished by Michele they never return to the field of battle, and in the second half of the poem they figure only by haunting the forest of Saron.

But however otherwise defeated and discredited, Plutone's voice of opposition raises one doubt that the events of the poem never put to rest: that God rules heaven and earth not by virtue but by force. The winning side may wrap themselves in the mantle of virtue; the message of the adversary is that might makes right.

CONCLUSION: MORTAL SUFFERING, DIVINE PARTISANSHIP, AND EPIC PLOT

Epic tells of deeds of arms. Renaissance poets who aimed to write epic on the Virgilian model understood warfare as the natural matter of the genre. (52) As a concomitant of its subject, epic abounds in mortal suffering and violence. Few readers encounter The Iliad or The Aeneid for the first time without being struck by the iteration of deaths, each described with grim particularity: the pierced windpipes, severed arms, spears driven through chests. (53) Christian epic would not always reproduce the classical sense of pathos regarding individual deaths, but the violence remains; the bloodbath in the final canto of the Liberata serves as a good example. Since the most powerful characters in these narratives are gods, the divine role in mortal suffering emerges as one of the genre's central thematic concerns. In combining martial subject matter with divine intervention, epic brings to the fore the question of divine justice.

In classical epic, the gods favor particular mortals, but their general good will towards humankind is never guaranteed. As Hugh Lloyd-Jones writes, "[t]he gods govern the universe not in men's interest but in their own, and have no primary concern for human welfare." (54) Their power is neither good nor evil; it simply is. The accomplishment of earthly justice -- punishing or rewarding individual mortals on ethical grounds -- constitutes one reason why the gods intervene in mortal affairs, but it is one reason among many, and divine intervention, even when prompted by concerns of justice, often claims innocent victims. The universe of ancient epic is not morally neutral in a proto-secular sense in which human desert has no effect whatsoever upon harvests, spear-casts, or storms at sea. The gods of ancient epic are personal, very much so, and human behavior matters to them. But the classical epic universe differs radically from the Christian in that there are no divine assurances: no covenants, no prospect of redemption, no assertion of God's ultimate love for humankind.

In the Christian tradition, believers are committed to a positive answer to the question of divine benevolence that the ancients left open. The unique and omnipotent Christian God must also be understood as benevolent and just. So Tasso's God is described -- "Egli e buono e giusto" (IX 56) -- and the description is not defended or explained but taken for granted. Tasso does not aim to justify the ways of God to men. But when an enthroned deity dispatches angels and makes decrees on behalf of one mortal army, which then prevails over another mortal army in a horrifically bloody battle, a reader who stands at any distance from the ideology of the winning side may question to what extent the infinite love traditionally predicated of the omnipotent character is borne out by the textual evidence. Thus we arrive at the theological problem of evil: is it truly a benevolent God who presides over the slaughter in the final cantos, who allows the pagans some fighting space and then wills their destruction with a nod of his head? We are dealing with a fictional character here, and so the question is one of literary judgment, not personal religious belief. We may accept the omniscience and omnipotence of Tasso's God as premises of the fiction, as we accept winged horses and enchanted rings when we read Ariosto. Benevolence is a different kind of property. On this count readers must decide for ourselves.

The problem of evil does not emerge for the ancients for the simple reason that they never claimed ultimate benevolence for their gods. (55) It does not emerge from the perspective of the crusaders, for whom the violent destruction of the pagans amply makes manifest God's goodness and justice; the pagans have sinned in worshipping the false god of Islam and so get what they deserve. Such is the view expressed by the narrative voice, describing the slaughter of the pagans within Jerusalem: "O giustizia del Ciel, quanto men presta / tanto piu grave sovra il popol rio!" (XIX, 38) (O justice of Heaven, so much the heavier on the sinful as it is less swift!). (56) It is clearly the poem's official line, and would have been accepted without controversy by the greater part of Tasso's contemporary readers, for whom it would go without saying that God prefers the Christians and that such preference is just and right. It will satisfy readers who share the moral premises of the crusaders, or who believe that one ought t o pretend to share those moral premises when reading Tasso. For a reader who does not see the religious difference between Christian and pagan as one of intrinsic moral significance, however, God's partisanship looks neither more nor less benevolent and just than Juno's; he favors those mortals who worship him, and wreaks terrible vengeance upon those who do not. If one focuses on those moments which represent Tasso's God as actively willing the rivers of blood, he will appear vengeful, even sadistic -- a post-Tridentine update of the jealous God of the Old Testament. If one concentrates on those passages in the poem which dwell on the vast expanse between heaven and earth and the ephemerality of human affairs, Tasso's God will appear remote from the mortal action, not so much causing the bloody events of the poem as allowing them to happen from an immense distance.

This is the view of the poem put forward by Erminia Ardissino in her recent book L'aspra tragedia. For Ardissino, the Liberata is a tragic work, suffused with the metaphysical pessimism which she takes as the common thread in Tasso's poetry, "una poesia dominata dall'onnipresenza del dolore umano, che non e combattuto ma permesso dalla divinita che dovrebbe 'provvedere"' (poetry dominated by the omnipresence of human suffering, which is not opposed but permitted by the deity who ought to intervene). (57) Tasso's tragic view of mortal affairs, Ardissino claims, can be summed up in the famous line from which she takes the title of her study, "L'aspra tragedia dello stato umano" (the bitter tragedy of the human condition). (58) While this line certainly does express metaphysical pessimism, it does so from a particular perspective -- that of the losing side. It occurs in the final canto of the poem, while the great final battle rages on the plain before Jerusalem. The pagan champion Solimano climbs to the top of the tower of David, where he has taken temporary refuge, and looks down upon the field:

Or mentre in guisa tal fera tenzone
e tra 'l fedel essercito e 'l pagano,
salse in cima a la torre ad un balcone
e miro, benche lunge, il fer Soldano;
miro, quasi in teatro o in agone,
l'aspra tragedia dello stato umano:
i vari assalti e 'l fero orror di morte
e i gran giochi del caso e de la sorte.
                                    (XX 73)

(Now while in such fashion savage contest holds between the army of the faithful and the pagan, the fierce Sultan climbed up to the top of the tower on a balcony and watched, though far away; he watched, as in a theater or a stadium, the bitter tragedy of the human condition, the various assaults and the fierce horror of death, and the mighty casts of fate and fortune.)

In this fleeting moment of detachment, the doomed warrior sees the battlefield not as the ground where glory is won but where life is lost, and sees not two contending armies but many individual assaults, their outcomes subject to the indiscriminate play of chance and fate. It is a powerfully moving vision, and a specifically pagan one. Where Solimano sees "i gran giochi del caso e de la sorte," the poem's voices of Christian authority (Goffredo, Piero, the narrative voice) see the accomplishment of providential design. When, soon after his view from the Tower of David, Solimano meets his death at the hand of the invincible Rinaldo, his unwonted lack of ferocity is ascribed to God's will: "Cosa insolita in lui, ma che non regge, / de gli affari qua giu l'eterna legge?" (XX, 104) (a thing unaccustomed in him, but what cannot the Eternal Law command in affairs down here?) As the pagan champions are killed and the pagan army vanquished by the Christians, so the pagan causes -- chance and fate, reflexes of the Gr eek moira -- are subsumed in the Christian poem by l'eterna legge. (59) Solimano's tragic fatalism is one perspective that the poem offers, but to identify it as Ardissino does as Tasso's underlying view is to read selectively, to substitute a part for the poems conflicted whole.

Ardissino is quite right to observe that Tasso's God countenances massive mortal suffering, but her description of the poem as universally tragic leaves out the very real impact of God's partisanship. That it is tragic for the pagans is certain. Theirs is a doom far worse than that of Homer's Trojans or Virgil's Latins; not only do they go to their deaths en masse, but they die only to incur eternal damnation. (60) Like the Christians, the pagans pray, but it does no good, not because their god does not accept their prayers but because he does not exist. (61) Tasso's pagans live, fight and die under a terrible delusion; they have, all along, been worshipping a nonentity, and are duly punished for it. As damnation makes the pagan deaths more horrible, so beatification softens the impact of the Crusaders' deaths considerably. Goffredo loses some dear companions, but the dream-vision vouchsafed him in canto XIV makes it clear that they are safe in heaven and that he will be reunited with them at journey's end. N or do their deaths even deprive Goffredo of their assistance in combat; in canto XVIII the archangel Michele shows him the recently beatified Christian dead fighting alongside the living about the ramparts of Jerusalem. (62) Since the Christians gain both earthly victory and eternal reward, the human condition is considerably less of an aspra tragedia for them it is for the pagans. In the Iliad and Aeneid both sides worship the same gods, but in the Liberata the religious difference between Christian and pagan configures the divide between them in moral terms. Christians and pagans are engaged in a holy war, backed respectively by God and the devil. According to the poem's official ideology, the infidels deserve to be slaughtered simply because they are infidels, stubborn in their refusal to worship the one true God. The version of pietas with which Tasso endows his hero manifests itself above all in Goffredo's ability to avoid distractions from his divinely ordained mission. (63)

The side favored by the Almighty will prevail, as it must, but not right away. Epic requires conflict that runs the length of the poem, conflict of sufficient grandeur and depth to move the reader and to ennoble the winning side. Such conflict transpires while the mightiest deity delays in bringing about his will; it involves temporary victories for the adversaries, obstacles for the heroes to overcome, reversals of fortune, and mortal suffering on a grand scale. Like the Virgilian Juno or Homeric Poseidon, Tasso's God takes a partisan role in an earthly struggle. Like the Virgilian Jupiter or Homeric Zeus, Tasso's God tolerates interference for a certain space and then steps in to impose his will. Unlike any of the Olympians, Tasso's God is infinite and unique, opposed by an always-already-defeated Satan who neither poses a genuine threat nor induces God's voluntary accommodation. Whereas Ardissino sees the willingness of Tasso's God to countenance a great deal of violence as the manifestation of the poet's tragic vision, it is better understood as a consequence that Tasso could scarcely have avoided, given his epic subject and given Christianity Epic narrative requires meaningful conflict, and Christian theology requires that the one God holds all the cards; from this tension emerges the structural problem of divine counterbalance. It becomes inevitable when God and Satan replace the Olympian community Epic narrative requires human suffering; Christian theology asserts divine benevolence; from this tension emerges the theodical problem of evil. It becomes inevitable when the Christian God of love replaces the frankly self-interested Olympians.

These tensions between the requirements of theology and the requirements of narrative would re-emerge for as long as poets attempted to construct a Christian supernatural on the classical epic model. Renaissance epic poets handled the difficulties in various ways and with varying degrees of success, from Petrarch's theologically ambiguous "Jupiter" to Trissino's factionally divided heaven to Ariosto's gently ironic gestures towards divine providence. Milton, a poet who was also a theologian, would face the structural and theodical problems of Christian epic most directly, by eschewing "Wars, hitherto the only argument / Heroic deemed" (64) and taking the origin of evil and the justice of God as the central issues of Paradise Lost. Gerusalemme liberata does not effect such a radical change of subject. Rather, it adopts the traditional martial subject matter of the Iliad and Aeneid and introduces a deity who is at once transcendent and immanent, at once omnipotent and partisan. In doing so, Tasso's poem exempli fies the narrative tensions intrinsic to Christian epic; in doing so in such memorable verse, it constitutes one of the highest artistic expressions of Renaissance Christian triumphalism. The rhetoric of divine partisanship, most durable of justifications for earthly conquest, becomes in Gerusalemme liberata the truth of the poem; Tasso's Christian soldiers quite literally have God on their side.

* For their comments on a previous version of this essay I am grateful to Lina Bolzoni, Linda Gregerson, Matteo Residori, Michael Schoenfeldt, Sergio Zatti, and the readers for Renaissance Quarterly.

(1.) "[Tasso's heaven] is a part of the fable, a part of the make believe, appealing enough but never "real," never impinging on one's actual spiritual life." Greene, T., 207.

(2.) Brand, 91 if.

(3.) One valuable exception is Baldassari.

(4.) De Sanctis, 2:156; Donadoni, 513-14.

(5.) See Bosco, De Vendittis.

(6.) For most of his adult life Tasso appears to have suffered from religious hypochondria. He was tormented by anxieties as to his own orthodoxy and capacity to believe, and twice took the unusual step of turning himself in to the Inquisition for spiritual examination. From the evidence presented by De Vendittis himself it is clear that the poet's worries about his religion contributed much to his mental disturbance. But the critic, untroubled, describes Tasso's religious outlook as a spirito di ricerca and writes as if Tasso, like any good Catholic, manifested his faith in struggling with his doubts: "La ricerca inesausta della verita non forse per se stessa indizio di un animo naturalmente religioso? E il dubitare non anch'esso un mezzo -- umano quanto si vuole - per giungere alla fede?" (De Vendittis, 504) (Is not the tireless quest for truth perhaps in itself the indication of a naturally religious spirit? And is doubt not also a means, however human, of arriving at faith?)

(7.) See Ardissino, Stephens, 1994.

(8.) Ardissino, 207.

(9.) Tasso, 1983, at 17-12, VII 79, IX 55-59, and XIII 72-74. One might also count as an appearance the six lines in which he sends the dream-vision to Goffredo (XIV 2).

(10.) Stephens, 1994, 184.

(11.) "On the relation between the early Discorsi and the Liberata see Baldassari; Larivaille, 28-51; Kates, 17-65; Rhu, 15-56; Scianatico, 113-50.

(12.) One speaks of the "early Discorsi" to distinguish the Discorsi dell'arte poetica from the later Discorsi del poema eroico, published in 1594. Just as Tasso rewrote the Liberata, publishing in 1593 a substantially altered poem on the first crusade under the title Gerusalemme conquistata, so he produced a revised version of his early poetic treatise.

(13.) "Poco dilettevole e veramente quel poema che non ha seco quelle maraviglie che tanto muovono non solo l'animo de gl'ignoranti, ma de' giudiziosi ancora; parlo di quelli anelli, di quelli scudi incantati, di que' corsieri volanti, di quelle navi converse in ninfe, di quelle larve che fra' combattenti si tramettono e d'altre cose si fatte: delle quali, quasi di sapori, deve giudizioso scrittore condire ii suo poema, perche con esse invita ed alletta il gusto degli uomini vulgari, non solo senza fastidio, ma con sodisfazione ancora de' piu intendenti." (Truly, that poem delights us little that does not include those wonders which so move the minds not only of the ignorant but of the intelligent, as well. I am speaking of those enchanted rings and shields, those flying steeds, those ships turned into nymphs, those phantoms that intervene between combatants, and other such things. With these the judicious writer should season his poem as with spices because he thereby prompts and entices the appetite of the common people not only without the annoyance but with the pleasure, as well, of the most discerning.) Torquato Tasso, Discord dell'arte poetica, in 1959, 353. The English translation is by Rhu, 102.

(14.) E.g. Ariosto, 1976, III 20-22, XXVI 128, XLII 34-39. See also Baldassari, 45-49.

(15.) "Attribuisca il poeta alcune operazioni, che di gran lunga eccedono il poter degli uomini, a Dio, a gli Angioli suoi, a demoni, o a coloro a' quali da Dio o da' demoni concessa questa podesta, quali sono i santi, i maghi e le fate. Queste opere, se per se stesse saranno considerate, maravigliose parranno; anzi miracoli sono chiamati nel commune uso di parlare. Queste medesime, se si avra riguardo a la virtu ed a la potenza di chil'ha operate, verisimili saranno giudicate, perche avendo gli uomini nostri bevuta nelle fasce insieme co'l latte questa opinione, ed essendo poi in loro confermata da i maestri della nostra santa Fede: cioe che Dio ed i suoi ministri e i demoni e i maghi, permettendo lui, possino far cose sovra le forze della natura maravigliose." Tasso, 1959, 355; trans. Rhu, 103-04 (slightly emended).

(16.) Io stimo ch'in ciascun poema eroico sia necessarissimo quel mirabile ch'eccede I'uso dell'attioni e la possibilita de gli uomini; o sia egli effetto de gli dei, com'e ne' poemi de' gentili, o degli angioli, o vero de' diavoli e de' maghi, com'e in tutte le moderne poesie. Ne questa differenza del mirabile mi pare essenziale e tale che possa constituire diverse spezie di poesie: ma accidentalissima, la qual si vari e si debba variare secondo la mutazion della religione e de' costumi." Tasso, 1995, 354-55, translation mine.

(17.) Here as throughout I quote from Tasso, 1983, English translation by Ralph Nash, Tasso, 1987. I have silently emended the translation in a few instances.

(18.) During Argillano's attempted mutiny, God may have provided Goffredo with a celestial bodyguard, but the narrator is not certain: "E fama che fu vista in volto crudo / ed in atto feroce e minacciante / un alato guerrier tener lo scudo / de la difesa al pio Buglion davante, / e vibrar fulminando il ferro ignudo / che di sangue vedeasi ancor stillante: / sangue era forse di citta, di regni, / che provocar del Cielo i tardi sdegni" (VIII 84). (Fame is that a winged warrior was seen, in visage cruel, in gesture fierce and menacing, holding the shield of his defense before the worthy Bouillon, and brandishing like a thunderbolt his naked sword that could be seen yet dripping drops of blood. It was the blood perhaps of cities, of realms, that have provoked the slow-roused wrath of heaven.) Here both the angel's presence and the built-in allegory of his bloody sword are described in terms of possibility: E fama che ... sangue era forse .... Likewise in canto II the narrator is not sure whether a human or divine agent is responsible when a stolen image of the Virgin vanishes from the mosque where it was transplanted: "ch'incerta fama e ancor se cio s'ascriva / ad arte umana od a mirabil opra / ben e pieta che, l'arte e 'lzelo / uman cedendo, autor se 'n creda il Cielo" (II.9) (Fame is uncertain still whether that act be ascribed to human handiwork or to miraculous agency. It is good religion that, giving up the claims of human piety and zeal, Heaven be thought the agent.)

(19.) "Nell'ultimo canto sono queste parole: 'Sta dubbia in mezzo la Fortuna e Marte.' Potra forse parere ad alcuno ch'io introduca le deita de gentili. Se cosi e, rimovansi queste e tutte l'altre parole simili: ma vo credendo che queste voci si fatte siano tanto ammolite dall'uso, ch'altro omai non suonino, ne altro senso ricevino, se non che la sorte della guerra, per lo valore de' soldati contrapesato, era dubbia." Tasso, 1995, 243; translation mine.

(20.) On the fusion of Christian and dassical in Sannazaro's De Partu Virginis (On the Virgin Birth, 1527) see Greene, 144-70.

(21.) At the opening of Trissino's poem, God is looking down upon the earth when the plight of Italy is brought to His attention by an angel "called Providence by us." Trissino, I 18-19. Compare also God's first appearance in Paradise Lost (III 55 ff.), which echoes both Tasso and Virgil.

(22.) By contrast, when Tancredi advises Rinaldo as to Goffredo's intended response to his transgression in Canto V, he prefaces his message with the following caveat: "Bench'io sembianza esterna / del cor non stimi testimon verace, / che 'n parte troppo cupa e troppo interna / ii pensier de' mortali occulto giace." (V.41) (Although I do not hold external appearance to be true witness of the heart [for the thought of mortals lies hidden in a place too dark and inward.]) Tancredi proceeds to venture a guess, but he won't presume to know Goffredo's mind; appearance, sembianza esterna, is no reliable index of thought, and appearances are all mortals can see. Tasso thus renders explicit the difference between human and divine discernment.

(23.) Ariosto, too, invokes this commonplace, and to compare his handling with Tasso's succinctly illustrates the two poets' difference in religious temperament. In an excursus on the faithlessness of young men, the Ariostan narrator comments that "L'amante, per aver quel che desia, / senza guardar che Dio tutto ode e vede, / aviluppa promesse e giuramenti, / che tutti spargon poi per l'aria i venti." (To compass his desire, a lover, forgetful that God sees and hears all things, spins a web of promises and oaths all of which are in time scattered by a breath of wind.) Ariosto, 1976, 1974 ed. X 5. Here Ariosto mentions God's omniscience in passing, as a truism devoid of immediate consequences. Tasso treats the idea in absolute earnest.

(24.) Zatti 1983, 13 ff., traces in Tasso's poem a deep tension between two antithetical codes of value, which he describes in terms of a series of oppositions: unity -- variety, concord -- discord, concentration -- dispersal. This master conflict plays out on multiple levels in the poem: the forces of heaven against the forces of hell, the Christian arme pietose against the pagan popol misto, the captain Goffredo against his compagni erranti. The former represent forces of counter-Reformation religious authority, and the latter a lay humanism.

(25.) In fact Tasso considered beginning the action of the poem with a reference to Pope Urban preaching the Crusade. In a letter to Scipione Gonzaga written in summer 1575, he proposed to open the narrative with the following stanza: "Gia il sesto anno volgea che 'I grand'Urbano, / Ch'ebbe le chiavi ond'il ciel s'apre e serra, / A concilio raccolse il pio cristiano / In Chiaramonte, e 'l persuase a guerra, / A liberar dal popolo profano / Di Giesu la natia sacrata terra: / E cingendo la spada a duci al fianco, / Die loro purpurea croce, abito bianco." (Six years had passed from when the great Urban / who held the keys with which open and close the heavens / called Christendom in council / in Clairmont, and urged war, / to liberate from the hands of the profane / the holy land, birthplace of Jesus, I and as the captains girded on their swords / he gave them the purple cross, and white vestments.) See Tasso, 1995, 187-88; translation mine.

(26) See Iliad III 354-65, Aeneid XII 728-41. In this instance the reader may do well to forget that the angel's shield has been described a few stanzas earlier as large enough to cover all people and lands between the Atlas and the Caucusus ("grande che puo coprir genti e paesi / quanti ye n'ha fra il Caucaso e l'Atlante," VII 82); it is otherwise rather difficult to imagine the angel extending his arm to take Argante's blow: "stese il braccio e tolse il ferro crudo / sovra il diamante del celeste scudo" (VII 92) (he stretched forth his arm and took the cruel steel on the adamant of his celestial shield).

(27.) See Iliad IV 86 ff, Aeneid XII 222 ff.

(28.) In the Iliad it is the same goddess, Athena, who first convinces the Trojan archer Pandaros to shoo and then turns aside the arrow from its goal; her purpose is to cause the Trojans to break the truce, without bringing any lasting harm to Menelaos. In Tasso's version two divine characters are involved: the devil who convinces Oradino to shoot the arrow, and the guardian angel who deflects it. What in Homer is one god's calculated stratagem in Tasso becomes an inexplicable concession on the part of heaven.

(29.) See Seznec, 84 ff. Seznec claims that the Renaissance allegories of the pagan gods in fact departed little from those of the previous centuries, despite their claims to novelty, and points, 104, to the resemblance between "the mythological moralities of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and those of the twelfth century or even of the ninth and sixth."

(30.) Martindale, 56.

(31.) In Iliad XIV Hera connives to have Zeus fall into a deep post-coital slumber, during which interval she and other gods violate his edict that they stay out of the battle at Troy.

(32.) On the concept of moira in Greek literature see Dietrich and Greene, W.C.

(33.) Paradise Lost IX 18-19. Citations from Paradise Lost are taken from Milton, 1998.

(34.) On the politics and poetics of Trissino's poem and its place in Tasso's poetic development see Zatti, 1996, "L'imperialismo epico del Trissino" 59-110. Paul Larivaille, 40, describes Tasso's early poetics as an attempt to negotiate a via media between Ariosto's excessively free romance narration and Trissino's excessively strict Aristotelianism.

(35.) Zatti, 1996, 101.

(36.) Greene, T., 176.

(37.) Baldassari, 54, aptly describes the devils' role within the epic plot as a funzione ritardante.

(38.) "The same Angel [Michele] ... when he sees his time, that is, when half the Christians are already killed, and all the rest are in a fair way to be Routed, stickles betwixt the Remainders of God's Host, and the Race of Fiends; Pulls the Devils backward by their Tails, and drives them from their quarry; or otherwise the whole business had miscarri'd and Jerusalem remain'd untaken. This, says Boileau, is a very unequal match for the Poor Devils, who are sure to come by the worst of it in the Combat; for nothing is more easie, than for an Almighty Power to bring his old Rebels to Reason, when he Pleases." Dryden, 4:18. While Dryden cites Boileau, thinking of the French poet's reference to Tasso in L'Art poetique (III 209-16), the passage in canto IX is not mentioned in Boileau's poem. Dryden is drawing on his own memory here, as Swedenberg notes (Ibid., 539).

(39.) See Baldassari, 57.

(40.) For an account of the literary evolution of Satan from Tasso and Marino through Milton and into the Romantic imagination, see Praz, 41-67.

(41.) See Zatti, "Dalla parte di Satana: sull'imperialismo cristiano nella Gerusalemme liberata" in Zatti, ed., 1998, 146-82. My discussion is indebted to his analysis of Plutone's speech as a radical questioning of the poem's official ideology, first set forth in Zatti, 1983, 27-29 and developed in the essay cited above.

(42.) In an additional stanza which Tasso removed as objectionable, Plutone uses even stronger language, referring to God as tiranno del ciel. See Tasso, 1995, 282n.

(43.) The rivalry for precedence between the Este and the Medici began in 1541 and extended over the next four decades, generating much lobbying and propaganda on both sides. Precedence was a much-discussed subject at the Este court; Tasso himself wrote a dialogue entitled Della precedenza. Alfonso II's desire to gain prestige that would trump the Medici led him to costly and improbable initiatives such as an abortive campaign against the Turks in 1566 and an attempt to win the elective throne of Poland. See Chiappini, 1967.

(44.) Ralph Nash, Tasso, 1987, 73 n2, attributes the lack of antecedent for l'angelo iniquo to Tasso's unfinished revision process; see a similar rough spot at XV 57.

(45.) See VII 99-101, where Beelzebub appears to Oradino in the form of Clorinda, and IX 8-12, where Aletto appears to Solimano as his old counselor Araspe. Gabriel, too, takes human shape when he visits Goffredo at beginning of the poem, appearing as a blond youth (I 13). In the latter two cases, as often occurs in classical epic, the supernatural characters' human disguises are literally a matter of form; both Goffredo and Solimano recognize that they have received divine visitations.

(46.) "For a detailed reading of the political significance of Argillano's revolt see Quint, 214-34. He suggests that Argillano may be modelled on one Mariano Parisini, a bandit active around Ascoli Piceno in the 1560s, and argues that Argillano functions in the poem as "a stand-in for Rinaldo, one who discloses the more serious dangers and consequences of the hero's actions... punished by the poem so that Rinaldo can be forgiven and rehabilitated" (222). Argillano and Rinaldo, Quint demonstrates, are linked by topical allusion as refractory subjects of the states of the Church.

(47.) Compare also the celestially inspired dream visions granted to Arsete and Clorinda (XII 36-40) and to Goffredo (XIV 2-19).

(48.) For a useful summary of the theory of double motivation see Richard Janko, "The gods in Homer: further considerations" in Cambridge Commentary, 4:1-7.

(49.) It is clear from his correspondence that Tasso himself did not regard the supernatural characters in his poem as merely metaphorical. See, for example, the letter to Gonzaga of July 5, 1575, in which Tasso discusses the episode at the end of Canto VII in which the devils stir up whirlwinds. See Tasso, 1995, 143-51.

(50.) For this recognition, see e.g. VIII 2, where Astragorre notes the impending arrival of Carlo in the Christian camp: "Mira, Aletto, venirne (ed impedito / esser non puo da noi) quel cavaliero / che da le fere mani e vivo uscito / del sovran difensor del nostro impero." (Behold approaching [and he cannot be stayed by us] that knight who escaped alive from the fierce hands of the royal defender of our realm.)

(51.) Compare the rationale of Milton's Satan in choosing the serpent as his means of subterfuge: "for in the wily snake, / Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark, / As from his wit and native subtlety / Proceeding, which in other beasts observed / Doubt might beget of diabolic power / Active within beyond the sense of brute" (Paradise Lost IX 91-96). Milton, following the description of the serpent in Genesis as 'subtlest beast of all the field," presents the serpent as already known in Eden for his trickiness; and Satan, like Tasso's devils, avails himself of the most likely instrument for his designs.

(52.) This is not to say that Renaissance epic did not vary significantly in its representation of warfare. Michael Murrin discusses the impact on Renaissance epic of the technological changes in warfare from the latter fifteenth century on, particularly the advent of the gun. There was widespread sentiment (as expressed by Ariosto, for example) that gun-based warfare was not fit heroic matter, which sentiment made for difficulties in choosing contemporary subjects. Iberian poets such as Camoens, Ercilla and Villagra modernized, and incorporated guns into their poems; others like Tasso and Trissino chose historical subjects, setting their poems in a time before the gun; Spenser and Sidney tended to avoid full-scale epic warfare in favor of the single combat characteristic of chivalric romance.

(53.) Simone Weil, 3, claimed that violence is itself the subject of the Iliad: "The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force." On Homer's modes of expressing the pathos of violent death see Griffin, 103 ff.

(54.) Lloyd-Jones, 161.

(55.) "The resonant line at the opening of the Aeneid, "tantaene animis caelestibus irae?" (Can there be such anger in heavenly hearts?) is not the statement of a theological paradox but a chilling rhetorical question, to which the rest of the poem provides an answer.

(56.) In Tasso, 1983, Caretti notes, 562, that the apostrophe echoes Inf. XXIV 119-20: "Oh potenza di Dio, quant' e severa, / che cotai colpi per vendetta croscia!" (How fierce is the power of God, that rains down such blows in vengeance!). Observe the difference in theological emphasis between Dante's potenza and Tasso's giustizia.

(57.) Ardissino, 40-41.

(58.) "Lo spettacolo delle ultime fasi della guerra nella Gerusalemme liberata, come appare agli occhi di Solimano, puo essere assunto a valore universale, a metafora dell' 'aspra tragedia de lo stato umano'" (The spectacle of the final stages of the war in Gerusalemme liberata, as it appears to Solimano, can be endowed with general significance as "the bitter tragedy of the human condition.) Ardissino, 7.

(59.) This revision is figured even more explicitly in Paradise Lost, where only devils and fallen mortals speak in fatalistic terms. See e.g. 1116, 1133, II 232, II 550, IX 689, IX 885.

(60.) The three pagans recuperated for the Christian side are the poem's major female characters, Clorinda, Armida and Erminia. Clorinda asks for baptism as she dies, and later appears to Tancredi in a heavenly dream; Armida receives an apparent conversion in the final canto; and Erminia last appears tending Tancredi's wounds in the Christian camp. God's principle of selection among the pagans is that of the doorman at a crowded nightclub: admit the attractive young women, and to hell with everybody else.

(61.) Thus, for example, Tisaferno prays before doing battle with Rinaldo, "Cosi pregava, e le preghiere ir vote / che il suo sordo Macon nulla l'udiva." (XX114) (So he prayed, but his prayers went in vain, as his deaf Mohammed heard nothing).

(62.) XVIII 92-96.

(63.) For a contrasting view, see Stephens, 1995, 296-319. He argues that in having Goffredo spare the pagan king Altamoro at the end of the poem Tasso critiques the ethos of revenge common to Homeric and Virgilian epic: Achilles and Aeneas both slay suppliants, but Goffredo does not. For Stephens, the incident is important because Altamoro has a wife, an Andromache figure, and her presence in the poem gives the sparing of Altamoro "emotional significance" beyond its negligible role in the plot. "However much carnage Tasso's Christians wreak on the nameless and faceless abstractions of Muslims, the poem refuses to widow Andromache yet again." (Ibid., 315) Stephens' intertextual reading is characteristically acute, but it places excessive weight on a faint echo within a minor incident. Goffredo's sparing of Altamoro scarcely mitigates the mass slaughter with which the poem ends. Furthermore, the evocation of Andromache on which Stephens' argument rests is a secondary element in the passage in question. Goffred o does not tell Altamoro that he spares him because he wouldn't want to widow Altamoro's wife, but rather that he isn't interested in ransom: "guerreggio in Asia, e non vi cambio o merco." (I am in Asia to make war, not to barter or do business.) What Tasso is critiquing here is not Homeric-Virgilian heroic vengeance so much as the common practice of ransoming prisoners; a truly Christian warrior, Tasso implies, isn't in it for the money.

(64.) "Paradise Lost IX 28-29.

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