Literature of antiquity and the Middle Ages - Summary - 2019

Liberated Jerusalem
Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)

The Lord Almighty from all of his heavenly throne drew an all-seeing glance to Syria, where the crusader army was standing. For the sixth year, the warriors of Christ had fought in the East, many cities and kingdoms had succumbed to them, but the Holy City of Jerusalem was still the stronghold of the infidels. Reading in human hearts as in the revealed book, He saw that only the great Gottfried Bouillon from the many glorious leaders was fully worthy to lead the Crusaders to the sacred feat of the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher. Archangel Gabriel brought this message to Gottfried, and he reverently accepted God's will.

When Gottfried summoned the Franks' leaders and told them that God had elected him to be the commander over them all, a rumbling rose in the assembly, for many leaders did not concede to Gottfried either in the nobility of the family or in exploits on the battlefield. But here, in his support, rose the voice of Peter Pustynnik, and all until the last took into account the words of the inspirer and honored adviser of the soldiers, and next morning the mighty army in which under the banner of Gottfried Bulonsky rallied the color of the chivalry of all Europe, went on a campaign. The east trembled.

And now the crusaders had camped in Emmaus, in the face of the walls of Jerusalem. Here ambassadors of the king of Egypt appeared to them in tents and offered to retreat from the Holy City for the rich ransom. After listening to Gottfried a resolute refusal, one of them went to vise, the second, the Circassian knight, Argant, grieving with the desire to quickly expose the sword against the enemies of the Prophet, drove to Jerusalem.

King Aladin ruled Jerusalem at that time, vassal the Egyptian king and the evil oppressor of the Christians. When the crusaders went on an attack, the army of Aladin met them at the city walls, and a brutal battle began, in which the number of non-Christians fell apart without numbers, but many brave knights fell. The Crusaders suffered particularly heavy damage from the mighty Arganta and the great Virgin warrior Klorinda who had come from Persia to help Aladin. With Clorinda, an incomparable Tankred was fighting in the battle, and a helmet drew her into the battle with a blow of spears, but, having noticed a beautiful face and golden braids, fighting with love, lowered his sword.

The bravest and most beautiful of the knights of Europe, the son of Italy, Rinalde was already on the city wall, when Gottfried gave the army orders to return to the camp, for it was not yet time to fall to the Holy Castle.

Seeing that the stronghold of the enemies of the Lord almost fell, the king of the underworld called his countless servants - demons, fury, chimeras, pagan gods - and ordered all the dark force to collapse on the Crusaders. The servant of the devil among others was the magician Idraot, the king of Damascus. He commanded his daughter to Armede, who obscured the beauty of all the East, to go to the state of Gottfried, and, using all the female art, to make a disorder in the ranks of the warriors of Christ.

Armida was in the state of the Franks, and none of them, apart from Gottfried and Tankred, could not resist the charm of her beauty. Called Princess of Damascus, by force and deceit of the deprived throne, Armida begged the leader of the Crusaders to give her a small detachment of select knights to overthrow the usurper; in exchange, Gottfried gave the Damascus alliance and all sorts of help. In the end, Gottfried commanded the lottery to select the ten brave men, but hardly it was a question of who would head the squad, the leader of the Norwegians, Gernand, upon the preaching of the devil, initiated a quarrel with Rinald and fell from his sword; incomparable Rinald was forced to go to exile.

Armida, armed with the love of the knights, led not to Damascus, but to the gloomy castle that stood on the shores of the Dead Sea, whose waters did not drown either iron or stone. In the walls of the castle, Armida revealed its true face, offering prisoners either to renounce Christ and to oppose the Franks or perish; Only one of the Knights, the despicable Rambald, chose life. The rest she sent in the shackles and under guarded guard to the king of Egypt.

In the meantime, the Crusaders carried a regular siege, carried Jerusalem with a shaft, built a car for assault, and the city's residents strengthened the walls. Disgusted with idleness, the proud son of the Caucasus, Argant, went out into the field, ready to fight with anyone who would accept his challenge. The brave Otgon went to Arganta first, but soon he was beaten incorrectly.

Then came the turn of Tankred. The two heroes came together like Ajax and Hector at the walls of Ilion. The brutal battle lasted until the very night, without revealing the winner, and when the herders interrupted the fight, the wounded soldiers agreed at dawn to continue it.

Hermione, the daughter of the King of Antioch, followed the duel with the city walls with a fading heart. She was once a prisoner of Tankred, but the noble Tuncred gave the princess freedom, Erminia undesirable, because she was flaming an irresistible love for her captivating her. The honey in medicine Herminia intends to penetrate into the state of the crusaders, in order to heal the wounds of the knight. To do this, she cut off her strange hair and clad in Clorinda's armor, but on her steps she found the guard and rushed behind her in pursuit. Tankred, having thought that a warrior was kind to his heart, because of him had endangered life, and wishing to save her from persecutors, he also started following Erminia. She did not catch her, and, having gotten out of the way, was deceived by the deceit in the enchanted castle of Armida, where she became her captive.

Meanwhile, it was the morning and no one came to meet Argantu. The Circassian knight began to suffer the criminality of the Franks, but none of them dared to accept the challenge, until Raymond, the Toulouse Count, had finally left. When the victory was already almost in the hands of Raymond, the king of darkness tempted the best Saracen archer to release an arrow into the knight and he directed her flight. The arrows sank into the armament of Lat, but the guardian angel saved Raymond from the true death.

Seeing how the laws of the duel were insidiously violated, the Crusaders rushed to the infidels. Their rage was so great that they hardly broke down the enemy and did not burst into Jerusalem. But not this day was determined by the Lord to take the Holy City, so He allowed the hellish army to come to help the wrong people and to hold back the pressure of the Christians.

The dark forces did not leave the plan to crush the Crusaders. Inspired by Furia Alekto, Sultan Soliman, with the army of nomadic Arabs at night, suddenly attacked the Franks' camp. And he would have won, when the Lord did not send the archangel Michael, so that he took away the unfaithful help of hell. The Crusaders made their breath, the rows closed, and then the knights who were liberated by Rinald from the Armidian captivity came to the very end of the day. The Arabs fled, and a mighty Soliman fled, in the battle that had deprived the lives of many Christian warriors.

There was a day, and Peter Pustynnik blessed Gottfried to go on an attack. Serving the molberen, the Crusaders surrounded the walls of Jerusalem under cover of siege cars, the Wicked fiercely resisted; Clorinda sowed death in the ranks of Christians with his arrows, one of which was Gottfried himself. The angel of God healed the leader, and he again went out on the battlefield, but the fallen night darkness forced him to give an order to retreat.

At night Argant and Clorinda made a fortune to the state of the Franks and set fire to the siege machines with a mixture made by the magician Isman. When they retreated, persecuted by the Crusaders, the city's defenders slammed the gate, not knowing in the dark that Clorinda was left outside. Tankred entered with her in battle, but the soldier was in armor unknown to him, and the knight recognized the beloved, only causing her a mortal blow. Born in the Muslim faith, Clorinda knew, however, that her parents were the Christian rulers of Ethiopia and that she would have to accept baptism in infancy as she wished. Mentally wounded, she asked her assassin to accomplish this sacrament over her, and she already sent the spirit to a Christian.

In order that the Crusaders could not build new machines, Isman let the devils into the only forest in the district. None of the knights dared to enter the enchanted area except Tankred, but that was not enough to dissolve the evil master's magic.

Despair reigned in the camp of a crusading army, when Gottfried in a dream revealed that only Rinald would overcome witchcraft and that only the adversaries of Jerusalem finally quaked before him. At one time, Armida vowed to take revenge on Rinaldi, who had been repulsing captive knights from her, but barely saw him, as she fluttered with irresistible love. The young man also struck her beauty in the very heart, and Armida moved with her beloved into the far-off enchanted Happy Islands. To these islands and went to Rinald two knights: Danish Karl and Ubald. With the help of a good wizard, they succeeded in reaching the ocean, whose waters only Ulysses had previously flooded. Having overcome many dangers and temptations, Gottfried's ambassadors found Rinald's forgotten about everything through the joys of love. But it was worth Rinald to see the armor, as he remembered the sacred duty, and without hesitation followed Charles with Ubalod. The frightened Army rushed to the state of the Egyptian king, who, with the recruited all over the East, went to help Aladin to the army. Inspired by eastern witches, Armida was promising to become the wife of someone who would fight Rinald in battle.

And so Gottfried gives an order to the last assault. In a bloody encounter, Christians mumbled the infidels, of which the most terrible - unbeaten Argant - fell from Tankred's hand. The Crusaders entered the Holy Grail, and Aladin, with the remnants of the army, took refuge in the Tower of David, when clouds of dust arose on the horizon-the Egyptian army came to Jerusalem.

Again the battle began, cruel, because the power of the infidels was strong. At one of the most difficult moments for Christians to her help brought out the soldiers from the David Tower Aladin, but everything was vain. With the help of God, the crusaders took the upper hand, the non-Christians fled. The Egyptian king became a prisoner of Gottfried, but he let go of him, not wanting to hear about the rich redemption, for he did not trade, he came with the East, but to fight.

Dispersing the blood of the infidels, Gottfried and his associates entered the liberated city and, even without removing the blood-stained lat, slipped their knees in front of the Holy Sepulcher.