A less perfect captain: Reconsidering Goffredo in the Gerusalemme Liberata

The critics’ Goffredo

The characterization of Goffredo that Tasso suggested to Antoniano found one of its most assertive supporters in the 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico, who in The New Science describes Goffredo as the ideal military commander (Vico, 1998: II, 47): “’l vero capitano di guerra, per esemplo, è ’l Goffredo che finge Torquato Tasso; e tutti i capitani che non si conformano in tutto e per tutto a Goffredo, essi non sono veri capitani di guerra” (Vico, 1998: 197). ⁵ Adopting a seemingly antithetical and yet ultimately complementary viewpoint, the 19th-century poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi went so far as to label Goffredo as “pochissimo interessante, o forse nulla […] niente amabile, benché per ogni parte stimabile” [1991: 2:1879 (3596)] and, a few pages later—comparing Goffredo to Ulysses—as a “uomo incapace affatto di passioni, privo affatto d’illusioni, tutto ragione, austerissimo ne’ costumi, nelle azioni, nella disciplina militare o civile o privata” [1991: 2:1883 (3603)]. ⁶ Most 21st-century readers of the Liberata would be hard-pressed to disagree with Leopardi’s appraisal of Goffredo as a somber, cold, and not particularly likable character. While recognizing a degree of pensiveness and melancholy in the crusader captain that earlier readers overlooked, most modern critics both in North America and Europe have remained close to Leopardi’s and Vico’s opinions. Giovanni Getto (1977: 10), for example, emphasized Goffredo’s “totale distacco da ogni passione umana”; ⁷ according to Paul Larivaille (1987: 113), the poem’s ideology is “principalmente […] incarnata da Goffredo”; ⁸ Thomas Greene (1963: 190) stated that “Tasso’s temperament was one which found compliance to authority rather too congenial” and that Goffredo’s qualities exemplify this authority; ⁹ and Sergio Zatti (1983: 130) has ascribed to Goffredo “il ruolo di garante della norma Cristiana.” ¹⁰

Over the last few decades, however, several other prominent scholars have sketched a more multifaceted profile of Goffredo and thereby occasionally, or obliquely, challenged the commonplace view of the Liberata as a poem that embraces the allegedly reactionary strain of Catholicism that informed the Counter-Reformation and that finds in Goffredo its ideology’s most reliable agent. Among these scholars, Riccardo Bruscagli (1992–1993) has drawn attention to Goffredo’s “errore” in canto 11 of the Liberata, when the Christian leader joins the battle as a lightly-armored infantryman at the expense of his role as head of the army; ¹¹ Laura Benedetti (1996: 132–133) has stressed that Tasso diverges from the model of the proverbially pius Aeneas in the Liberata’s last scene, when Goffredo, still covered in blood from the recent battle, approaches Christ’s sepulcher; and David Quint (2005: 363–387) has—like Leopardi—read Goffredo as a figure of Ulyssean calculation and thus on the “losing” side of contemporary debates between arms and letters restated as an opposition between Ferrara’s heroic nobility and Florentine mercantilism. More recently, Giovanni Potente (2005: 277–334) has denied that the captain controls his army as an authoritarian leader, even as he portrayed Goffredo as a figura Christi; and two other critics—Aldo Castellani (2010: 319–322) and Alessandra Paola Macinante (2014: 569–570)—have noted Goffredo’s partial evolution (or psychological fluidity), both within the Liberata and among the poem’s various iterations, by highlighting instances in which he shows signs of vainglory, uncertainty, and insincerity.

My article builds on this body of research and aims to show that Tasso’s depiction of Goffredo, particularly as it was initially delineated in the Gottifredo, exemplifies neither a uniform embodiment of virtue nor Tasso’s supposed endorsement of authoritarianism. The Goffredo Tasso articulates is, instead, the complex persona of a political and military leader who reveals the flaws buried beneath an apparently impermeable surface. This line of reasoning follows on from two interrelated points regarding the ideological foundations of the Liberata, as I have presented them elsewhere (Moudarres, 2019: 105–142). First, developing and diverging from Zatti’s productive reading of the juxtaposition between uniforme cristiano and multiforme pagano (Zatti, 1983: 9–44; 1998: 146–182), I have argued that Tasso’s sympathetic depiction of the centrifugal forces within the Liberata cannot be explained as the poet’s emotional affinity with these forces, but that such a narrative posture in fact undermines claims that his poem’s ideology ultimately conforms with the more severe voices of post-Tridentine Catholicism and European imperialism. Second, by discussing how the Erminia and Armida plotlines are interrupted, rather than ended, in the last two cantos of the Liberata, I have suggested that Tasso does not expel the errancy of romance from his poem and that the Liberata’s shift toward the epic unity epitomized by Goffredo’s authority is therefore incomplete. ¹²

The stained sword

The first two lines of the Liberata ostensibly present Goffredo as a new (Christian) Aeneas, whose goal—liberating Jerusalem, and with it Christ’s tomb, from its Muslim usurper—Tasso spells out unequivocally: “Canto l’arme pietose e ‘l capitano/che ‘l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo” (Tasso, 1996: 1.1.1–2). ¹³ As scholars have observed, this mention of the Holy Sepulcher symmetrically prefigures the poem’s conclusion (Ascoli, 1994), when Goffredo discharges his vow after commanding his soldiers in the war. At once pilgrim and holy warrior, he projects an aura of unblemished virtue, even if Tasso somewhat incongruously labels as “pietose” the “arme,” rather than “’l capitan,” as the underlying connection to Aeneas would seem to imply.

The third line of the first ottava might raise additional questions about Goffredo, since Tasso characterizes the captain’s achievements in the following terms: “Molto egli oprò co ’l senno e con la mano” (Tasso, 1996: 1.1.3). ¹⁴ Here the poet echoes a multilayered series of texts, ¹⁵ the most proximate of which is an encomiastic passage from canto 3 of the Orlando Furioso, where Ludovico Ariosto lauds Duke Alfonso I of Este: “Costui sarà, col senno e con la lancia,/ch’avrà l’onor, nei campi di Romagna” (Ariosto, 1992: 3.55.1–2). ¹⁶ The cited line from the Liberata’s first ottava also evokes a passage from Inferno 16 in which Dante describes Guido Guerra, one of the sinners “violent against nature” whom Virgil and the pilgrim encounter in the seventh circle of Hell: “Guido Guerra ebbe nome, e in sua vita/fece col senno assai e con la spada” (Alighieri, 1994: 16.38–39). ¹⁷ It is surprising that in the opening stanza of his poem Tasso might conjure a damned sinner from Dante’s Inferno as part of introducing Goffredo, even if Guerra was among the most valiant leaders of the Florentine Guelphs who expelled the Ghibellines from the city in the 1260s. Equally surprising is the poet’s apparent gesture toward the possibly ironic encomium that Ariosto—whose relationship with his patrons was famously tense ¹⁸ —gave to Alfonso d’Este, grandfather of Tasso’s own patron, Duke Alfonso II.

Yet Tasso’s possible reference to Inferno 16 and canto 3 of the Orlando Furioso may reveal more in omission than in the commission of any explicit equivalence. While Guido Guerra excelled with his sword and Alfonso with his lance, Goffredo more simply “oprò con la mano.” Tasso’s textual departure from Dante’s and Ariosto’s poems is slight but significant, as it confirms that, as Quint has shown in the article cited above, the closest model for Gerusalemme liberata 1.1.3 is in fact a passage from book 13 of the Metamorphoses. In it, Ovid relates the oratorical contest for Achilles’s weapons that pits Ulysses, the man of astuteness and eloquence, against Ajax, the man of strength and impetuosity. The former prevails through an elaborate speech describing his service for the Achaeans with both his intellect and actions: “It would take a long time to tell the things I accomplished for your good both with thought and deed (consilio manuque) during the long-drawn war” (Ovid, 1984: 13.205–206). ¹⁹ Predictably, Ajax is no match for Ulysses. But in his speech Ajax—who would commit suicide soon after the contest (Ovid, 1984: 13.384–398)—lays several truthful charges against his opponent, citing Ulysses’s attempt to avoid the Trojan War by pretending to be mad and his betrayal of Palamedes, the fellow Achaean who had revealed Ulysses’s deceit (Ovid, 1984: 13.34–39 and 13.56–60, respectively). Ovid insinuates a note of irony into the very start of Ulysses’s brilliant performance by describing the Ithacan as he feigns wiping away a tear of grief for Achilles’s death (Ovid, 1984: 13.131–134). Moreover, while Ulysses’s speech amounts to a masterful rhetorical exploit, he was a proverbial trickster in the Roman tradition and hardly a model of integrity. In the end, none of the possible references emerging from Gerusalemme liberata 1.1.3—to Alfonso d’Este, Guido Guerra, or Ulysses—serves as an entirely edifying model for Goffredo. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the absence of Guido’s “spada” or of Alfonso’s “lancia” may signal the limited role that Goffredo, as the leader of the crusaders, is destined to play in the military operations that Tasso’s poem depicts, especially when compared to the role Tasso reserves for Rinaldo, the deadliest Christian warrior and indispensable hero for the conquest of Jerusalem. ²⁰

That we should read in these terms Tasso’s choice to divorce Goffredo from arms in the Liberata’s first few lines is supported by the intense symbolic value of the sword that Rinaldo inherits from the ill-fated Danish fighter Sveno and eventually uses to slay the Turkish enemy Solimano (Tasso, 1996: 8.34–38 and 20.104–108). Scholars have previously noted that in an earlier version of the Liberata’s canto 8 Tasso had included an episode—later excised from the poem’s 1581 edition—in which Goffredo fails a test that would have won him Sveno’s sword and realizes, together with the other crusaders, that the weapon is instead destined for Rinaldo: “A tentar la ventura esser primiero/volse Goffredo e indarno ebbe tentato,/ché macchia indi non tolse” (Tasso, 1957: 8.b). ²¹ There is little doubt that any affair involving a magic sword evoked other enchanted weapons of the chivalric tradition—from the Arthurian legend of Excalibur to Orlando’s Durlindana—and it might well be that Tasso therefore deemed the episode unsuitable for the epic he had been drafting. Indeed, in a letter to Scipione Gonzaga (September 1575) that reiterates a point he made in passing to Luca Scalabrino a few months earlier, Tasso claims that he gladly expunged this episode because of its excessive romance flavor: “la ventura della spada dubito che senta del romanzo” (Tasso, 1995: 89–90) and “la ventura della spada a nessuno spiacque mai più che a me” (Tasso, 1995: 190). ²² Yet even if Tasso’s declared intention to trim fantasy elements from the Liberata were the main reason behind his choice, this episode’s presence in the poem’s early form would still bring to the surface a deep set of structural dilemmas that the editorial process did not fully wipe out. Indeed, the tension between the roles played by Rinaldo and Goffredo—a tension that transpires from both the Liberata itself and some of Tasso’s letters ²³ —concerns the poem’s underpinnings and, as we shall see, reverberates with other significant passages that were excluded from the 1581 edition.

In terms of poetic conventions, the co-existence of two protagonists and heroic centers (Goffredo and Rinaldo) betrays the hybrid nature of the Liberata as an epic that, though tied to the constraints of the genre as debated in the 16th century, at times adopts the modes of a chivalric romance. ²⁴ As regards the political sphere of Tasso’s dilemmas, the prominence given to Rinaldo could also be interpreted as a challenge to Goffredo’s authority as head of the crusader army. It is unlikely a coincidence that Tasso feels compelled, in his letter to Antoniano, to justify the coexistence of these two heroes, stressing that Goffredo’s superiority is divinely ordained and that Rinaldo is no more necessary to Goffredo than a hammer is to a blacksmith: “s’egli [Goffredo] ha bisogno di Rinaldo, l’ha come il fabro del martello” (Tasso, 1995: 360). ²⁵ From this gloss one can surmise that Antoniano, whose letter to Tasso is not extant, objected to what he had perceived as the imperfection of Goffredo’s primacy within the crusaders’ hierarchy. By removing Goffredo’s failure to claim Sveno’s sword, and thus making the juxtaposition with Rinaldo less explicit and unflattering, Tasso aimed in part to allay the skepticism of those who saw in the Goffredo–Rinaldo relationship a sign that the captain’s position as sole head of the Christian army was not adequately established. As we shall see in what follows, a similar logic of cleansing and containment of Goffredo’s shortcomings underlies the reworking of the passages that narrate his responses to Armida’s mission to seduce the crusaders and to Rinaldo’s killing of his fellow Christian fighter Gernando.

Goffredo and Armida

The second revised passage I wish to discuss takes us back to canto 4 of the Liberata and relates to the stability of Goffredo’s authority as well. More specifically, we will consider how Tasso depicts the Christian captain’s reaction to Armida’s attempted seduction in cantos 4 and 5 and how this reaction varies from the Gottifredo to the Liberata. As David Quint (1993: 39–41 and 216) has noted, Goffredo’s response evokes, by contrast, Caesar’s reaction to Cleopatra’s effort to seduce him in book 10 of the Civil War. ²⁶ Yet, while Quint (1993: 216) claims that “the identification of Goffredo with Caesar, Lucan’s enemy of republican liberty, suggests just how authoritarian is the political thought of Tasso’s poem,” I would argue instead that this identification reveals the limits of Goffredo’s authority over the crusaders, providing further evidence both of his fallibility and of the complexity underlying the poem’s political dynamics. Put simply, the sporadic alignment of Goffredo with the Roman general in the Liberata (Tasso, 1996: 20.14–19, for instance) does not denote Tasso’s endorsement of Caesar’s despotism. ²⁷

Among the numerous failings for which Lucan blames Caesar is his affair with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. According to the Roman poet, this affair would have lasting effects in Rome’s history (Lucan, 1928: 10.53–77): just as Helen’s beauty had led to the Trojan War, so did Cleopatra’s beauty drive Italy to madness (Lucan, 1928: 10.60–62). Cleopatra wins Caesar’s favor to support her claim to power by pretending to have been deprived of her kingdom: “Mighty Caesar, if birth counts for aught, I am the noble daughter of Lagus, king of Egypt; but I have been driven from my father’s throne and shall be an exile for ever, unless your right hand restores me to my former destiny” (Lucan, 1928: 10.85–88). ²⁸ Tasso engineers a similar scenario in canto 4 of the Liberata. Coaxed by her uncle Idraote, the enchantress Armida arrives at the crusaders’ camp with the aim of sowing discord. In an attempt to lure as many Christian soldiers as possible away from the battle for Jerusalem, she addresses Goffredo, falsely claiming that she has been the victim of a conspiracy to seize power in Damascus (Tasso, 1996: 4.43). Armida’s initial appeal to Goffredo falls short, since he steadfastly prioritizes the recovery of Jerusalem over any feeling of pity he might have toward her (Tasso, 1996: 4.68–69). Armida succeeds, however, in rousing the chivalric spirit (or rather, the desire) of many Christian knights. Though somewhat independent, these “soldiers of fortune” (“guerrier […] di ventura”, Tasso, 1996: 4.79.4) are supposed to fight under Goffredo’s command. Instead they convince him to let them fight for Armida (Tasso, 1996: 4.82). Dozens of knights would eventually join her, deserting their solemn religious duty (Tasso, 1996: 5.76–85), even though Goffredo categorically demanded that no more than 10 men follow her: “e tra voi scelga i diece a suo talento;/non già di diece il numero trascenda,/ch’in questo il sommo imperio a me riservo” (Tasso, 1996: 5.5.5–7). ²⁹

This short account of Armida’s undertaking shows that, while Goffredo—unlike Caesar with Cleopatra in the Civil War—resists her seduction, he nonetheless fails to thwart her disruptive plan and to affirm his authority among the crusaders. That authority is in fact undermined twice: first when the knights reject his decision not to assist Armida until they have completed their campaign to recover Jerusalem, and then when they refuse even to abide by that vestige of “sommo imperio” (Tasso, 1996: 5.5.7) he reserves when he tries unsuccessfully to limit the number of men allowed to fulfill their purported chivalric responsibility to Armida. “Imperio”—which in the Liberata broadly signifies both command over people and power over a territory—is a keyword in Tasso’s lexicon. Although we find over 25 instances of “imperio” in the Liberata, the phrase “sommo imperio” appears only one other time in the poem, when Ugone (a recently deceased Frankish chief) appears to Goffredo in a dream, instructing him on how to regain Rinaldo’s services without publicly compromising his own command (Tasso, 1996: 14.16). In both cases, the phrase “sommo imperio” refers with emphasis to Goffredo’s authority over his men, thus raising the stakes of the order he issues in canto 5. That the seduced knights would disobey such an order, even though it carries the full weight of their leader’s “imperio,” vividly illustrates the limits of Goffredo’s power. It is true that they will eventually rejoin the fight against the Muslim enemy, but only thanks to the providential intervention of Rinaldo (Tasso, 1996: 10.71–72), who—after killing his fellow crusader Gernando (Tasso, 1996: 5.31)—exiled himself to avoid Goffredo’s punishment (Tasso, 1996: 5.51–52). Thus, the allusion to Lucan’s Caesar and Cleopatra, which may initially appear to highlight Goffredo’s virtue, on closer inspection exposes his inability to control his troops.

Epistles VII and VIII of the Lettere poetiche make plain that Tasso struggled with this episode. He changed several stanzas and inserted 13 more in the first part of canto 5 in order to accommodate the revisers’ concern regarding Goffredo’s role in it. ³⁰ In the original version of the encounter with Armida, ³¹ Goffredo gives in to her request for help, showing himself to be less impassive than readers like Leopardi would eventually make him out to be: “E il capitan […] cesse, poi ch’ebbe repugnato alquanto,/e vinto déssi a’ naturali affetti.” ³² The phrase Tasso uses to describe the emotion that leads to Goffredo’s concession is “naturali affetti”; it is worth pointing out that “affetti” is also the word with which, in the Liberata, Tasso describes the desire the Christian captain asks his knights to rein in when he makes a plea on their confidence in him (Tasso, 1996: 4.83.2). This textual parallel suggests an unexpected similarity between Goffredo’s feelings towards Armida in the poem’s early version and his men’s “affetti” in the Liberata. In the poem’s revised form it is Eustazio (Goffredo’s brother) who speaks to Armida (Tasso, 1996: 4.84), after Goffredo finds himself cornered by the knights’ overwhelmingly negative response to his refusal and allows them to choose their own course of action, even as he issues a caveat that his men will heedlessly (if predictably) ignore: “Ma se Goffredo di credenza alquanto/pur trova in voi, temprate i vostri affetti” (Tasso, 1996: 4.83.1–2). ³³ With these changes, Tasso sought to accommodate the objections of revisers who had found Goffredo’s original concession to Armida inconsistent with his usual prudence and therefore recommended a modification. ³⁴ As he had done in the episode involving Sveno’s sword, Tasso adjusted the poem to obfuscate a failure on Goffredo’s part.

Tasso’s remedy here, however, does not fully exonerate the Christian captain from his mishandling of a complex situation. Although the revision shifts some responsibility for Armida’s success from Goffredo to the unwise “guerrier di ventura,” he nevertheless emerges from this sequence of events as a weakened figure, since the adjustment also highlights the knights’ insubordination in the face of Goffredo’s appeal to their confidence (“credenza”) in him. The effects of the plot Armida introduces in canto 4 will last well into the second half of the Liberata, thus crucially delaying the conquest of Jerusalem, for she will eventually abscond with Rinaldo himself to her island beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Rinaldo, without whom Goffredo cannot discharge his vow to free the sepulcher of Christ, will only be rescued in canto 16. It also bears stressing here that the delay Armida initiates in her role as a new Cleopatra ³⁵ —and then prolongs as a new Circe or Alcina—is crucial to the narrative viability of the Liberata, as the historical material available to Tasso was insufficient to the structural needs of his epic. ³⁶ In other words, if Tasso was to craft the poem he had envisioned, at this juncture of its storyline he needed Goffredo to prove himself an ineffective—albeit chaste—leader. Tasso reached a problematic sort of poetic compromise: he had to allow Armida to temporarily hijack the crusaders’ mission, thus revealing Goffredo’s failure, and, at the same time, he had to avoid fundamentally undercutting Goffredo’s “imperio,” lest he lose credibility as commander. Thus, we can hardly see the Goffredo–Caesar identification (here developed via the Armida–Cleopatra analogy) as a ringing endorsement of authoritarianism. On the one hand, Tasso underscores Goffredo’s weakness as a leader because it suits his poem’s structural needs. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, Goffredo’s limitations as a leader destabilize the vision of unified power that hinges on his authority. The following pages further advance this point by showing how Tasso’s adjustments in canto 5 of the Liberata reveal the effort to erase yet another defect in Goffredo’s leadership.

Goffredo’s dissimulation and justice

In an essay on Tasso’s use of allegory in the Liberata, Lawrence Rhu (1988: 123–126) has observed a flaw involving the captain’s psychology in a passage of canto 5 that closely follows the Armida episode. In this revision, the poet purged another ottava that might have compromised Goffredo’s stature as leader within the Christian army. The narrative differences are relatively minor: offended in his honor, Rinaldo (Ubaldo in the Gottifredo) kills the Norwegian Gernando (the Castilian Ernando in the Gottifredo) and then exiles himself. ³⁷ The nationality shift from one version of the poem to the other indicates that, probably in light of the religious conflicts that ensued with the Reformation, Tasso decided a northern European lord branded as “barbaro signor” (Tasso, 1996: 5.17.1) ³⁸ would be a more fitting—and less controversial—rival for Rinaldo than a member of the Spanish ruling family. In the Gottifredo, Ernando is in fact imagined as the brother of an unnamed Castilian ruler: “Sceso era Ernando da’ famosi regi/de la Castiglia, ond’ha il fratel l’impero” (Gottifredo 5.4.1–2, in Tasso, 1957). ³⁹ One could plausibly ascribe this change to the vital role Spain’s (Catholic) Hapsburg dynasty played in the political reality of the 16th century in Europe and beyond, first with the Holy Emperor Charles V and then with his sons: Phillip II, King of Spain, and his half-brother John of Austria, commander of the Christian fleet that defeated the Turks in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.

More relevant for our purposes is what happens in the aftermath of Ernando’s death, when Ubaldo, as he resists an attempt to capture him, slays another fighter (Gottifredo 5.36–43, in Tasso, 1957). In one of the ottave excluded from the Liberata, Goffredo conceals the joy he feels on learning that the men tasked with arresting Ubaldo failed to do so, overwhelmed by the hero’s tremendous ferocity: “Goffredo, ancor che con rampogne accusi/la lor viltade e mostri irato il viso,/gode tacito in sé che sì delusi/tornati sian del lor fallace aviso” (Gottifredo 5.43.3–6, in Tasso, 1957). ⁴⁰ Even if concealed, a joyful reaction to such internecine violence runs counter to Goffredo’s main responsibility as commander in chief as spelled out in the poem’s first stanza—namely, to end divisions between the crusaders and unify them under his authority (Tasso, 1996: 1.1.8)—and would therefore show Goffredo as “inwardly unfit for the role that the poet assigned him” (Rhu, 1988: 125). ⁴¹ His equivocal behavior also amounts to a prime example of dissimulation—a mode of communication that Sergio Zatti has persuasively characterized as a key theme of the Liberata ⁴² —linking Goffredo to such characters as Armida, Erminia, and the Egyptian ambassador Alete, all of whom at different points in the poem find themselves masking their intentions in order to achieve their own goals. Moreover, although the man Ubaldo kills in this quarrel is one of Ernando’s comrades, Tasso describes the other troops charged with arresting Ubaldo as “ministri di giustizia” (Gottifredo 5.37.1, in Tasso, 1957). In their effort to seize Rinaldo, these “officers of justice” represent the order Goffredo is supposed to embody and uphold within the Christian camp. Equally problematic is that the source of Goffredo’s dissimulation is his fondness of Ubaldo: “Ama l’invitto Ubaldo, e la severa/legge eseguire in lui molesto gli era” (Gottifredo 5.43.7–8, in Tasso, 1957). ⁴³ This sort of favoritism appears to be incompatible with the captain’s declared role as a fair-minded leader. ⁴⁴ Even if Goffredo’s duplicity in the Gottifredo is construed as a symptom of a harmless benevolence towards Ubaldo—and not, for example, as a nefarious sign of a divide-and-conquer strategy or of hostility towards the Spanish monarchy—that Tasso would attribute such a feeling to the crusader captain negates the claim that he is a leader shorn of passions or an impeccable interpreter of God’s justice on earth.

It is not surprising, then, that Tasso’s revision of this section of canto 5 is quite substantial. In the Liberata, it is Goffredo himself who articulates the reasons why he should exercise his power—the word he uses is “imperio” once again—equally over all the men under his command, even if that means depriving his army of its best warrior. At a critical juncture of the Liberata, in which Goffredo seeks to establish his authority over the various factions among the crusaders, his exchange with Tancredi, the knight who advocates on Rinaldo’s behalf for a mild retribution, helps dramatize Tasso’s reflection on the nature of justice and good governance. In doing so, the poet engages with a tradition in the history of political thought that concerns issues of clemency and equity, and that finds an especially pertinent reference point in Niccolò Machiavelli’s analysis of rewards and punishment in the Discorsi. ⁴⁵ While it is unfeasible to explore fully in this article this complex tradition or the implications of Tasso’s possible engagement with Machiavelli’s works, it is worth noting briefly two interrelated points concerning how Goffredo handles Rinaldo’s killing of Gernando in the Liberata: first, in order to probe how Tasso confronts the question of justice in his poem, it is helpful to highlight the conflicting views on Rinaldo’s punishment offered by Tancredi and Goffredo; second, we should consider the possible influence of Machiavelli’s Discorsi on how Tasso articulates these views.

To Tancredi’s claim that Rinaldo deserves special treatment in view of his extraordinary valor (“Non dee chi regna/nel castigo con tutti esser eguale,” Tasso, 1996: 5.36.5–6), ⁴⁶ Goffredo responds as follows:

Mal Tancredi consigli, e male stimi

se vuoi ch’i grandi in sua licenza io lassi.

Qual fora imperio il mio s’a vili ed imi

sol duce de la plebe, io commandassi?

Scettro impotente, e vergognoso impero:

se con tal legge è dato, io più no ‘l chero.

(Tasso, 1996: 5.37.3–8) ⁴⁷

The line of defense Tancredi sets forth on Rinaldo’s behalf is founded on a heroic ethos, according to which an individual’s exceptional merit may offset his or her other acts, even if criminal. As we have just seen, this viewpoint is adamantly rejected by Goffredo, who—I would submit—follows the lead of Machiavelli’s contention in Discorsi 1.22 and 1.24. ⁵¹ To assert that all crimes must be punished according to a state’s laws, here Machiavelli uses the example of Publius Horatius who, thanks to his victory over the Curiatii brothers, ensured Rome’s independence from (and dominion over) the city of Alba Longa. After this exploit, however, Horatius slew his sister, whom he encountered on returning to Rome as she mourned her betrothed, one of the Curiatii killed in the duel. As Livy relates in his History of Rome (1.24–26), Tullus Hostilius, Rome’s king at the time, ordered that Horatius face a public trial for his sororicide. Thanks to Horatius’s exceptional deeds and his father’s prayers, the trial resulted in a relatively light sentence. Machiavelli criticizes this outcome, describing the failure to punish a crime as prescribed by the law, regardless of the merits of the individual who commits it, as an existential threat to a well-ordered commonwealth: “nessuna republica bene ordinata non mai cancellò i demeriti con gli meriti de’ suoi cittadini […] quando questi ordini sono bene osservati, una città vive libera molto tempo: altrimenti sempre rovinerà tosto” (Machiavelli, 2000: 1.24.1). ⁵² As is typical in Machiavelli’s writings, an individual example leads to a general conclusion pertinent, in this case, to any polity that wishes to live free.

A subsequent stanza (5.39) of the Liberata corroborates that Machiavelli’s discussion of Horatius probably influenced Tasso’s amendment of Goffredo’s reaction to Rinaldo’s crime. Here Tasso—through the words of Goffredo’s advisor, Raimondo—appears to channel Machiavelli’s contention that a state’s very existence is at stake if said state fails to punish all its criminals with the prescribed severity: “Cade ogni regno, e ruinosa è senza/la base del timor ogni clemenza” (Tasso, 1996: 5.39.7–8). ⁵³ In addition to the sweeping scope of these claims in both the Discorsi (“nessuna,” “mai,” “sempre”) and the Liberata (“ogni regno”), Tasso’s use of “ruinosa” echoes Machiavelli’s “rovinerà.” It is true that Raimondo uses the word “regno” instead of “republica,” adapting Machiavelli’s concept to the Liberata’s representation of the crusader army as a principality, but his remarks clearly support Goffredo’s aspiration to exercise his authority with evenhandedness, and Raimondo’s view of justice is congruent with Machiavelli’s understanding of Rome as a “città libera” at the time of the monarchy, including during Tullus Hostilius’s reign. ⁵⁴ Moreover, as Tasso explains in one of the letters to Scipione Gonzaga referenced above—perhaps with a nod to the classical theory of mixed republics that Machiavelli embraces in the Discorsi—Goffredo’s rule over the crusaders is not unlimited: “quel governo non [è] così semplicemente regio che non partecipasse alquanto dello stato degli ottimati” (Tasso, 1995: 61). ⁵⁵ Although it should be considered cautiously like Tasso’s other pronouncements from the Lettere poetiche, this statement adds further evidence to refute the notion that Goffredo’s leadership in the Liberata is synonymous with absolutism.

Conclusion

It thus seems clear that the revisions discussed in this article reveal Goffredo’s significant faults in the following terms: a challenge to the hierarchical order vis-à-vis Rinaldo in the episode of Sveno’s sword in canto 8; a failure in strategic judgment and self-mastery with his concession to Armida in canto 4; and a blemish on his moral character in the exercise of justice, as he dissimulates his pleasure in Rinaldo’s ability to avoid the consequences of his crimes in canto 5. These textual incongruities reveal a less perfect captain, who occasionally falls short in achieving his most essential tasks and, in his imperfections, cannot be read as the embodiment of Tasso’s alleged sympathy for authoritarianism that scholars have frequently made him out to be. Indeed, each of the three revisions entails a challenge to Goffredo’s “imperio,” suggesting that his authority within the Christian camp is not thoroughly consolidated, and, in the case of the knights’ refusal to obey his order in the Armida episode, it is ignored entirely. Even after the changes to the Gottifredo, the consequences of Goffredo’s shortcomings remain essential to the structure of the Liberata. Yet the flaws that have emerged from my analysis of Goffredo do not detract from the portrait of him that Tasso presents in his poem. That the Christian captain is less “buono e pio” than Tasso avowed in his letter to Antoniano instead enriches this portrait by making both its political and psychological features more nuanced: he is prudent and yet occasionally ineffectual; gallant and yet problematically similar to the trickster Ulysses; loyal and yet at times opportunistic. In a flight of fancy, one can even imagine that the shadows cast on the presumably impeccable image of Goffredo would have left Vico slightly perplexed and Leopardi pleasantly amused.