Abstract
This article considers the gendering of Scanderbeg, the protagonist of Margherita Sarrocchi's 1623 historical epic, the Scanderbeide, arguing that his tendency to femininity is part of an overall project to rework traditional gender roles in the poem. Scanderbeg's femininity is most visible through his conversion to Christianity, which echoes that of Tasso's Clorinda and precipitates the war that will position him as defender of the city of Croia. While his conversion at the point of death associates him with a class of female characters in early modern epic, it also serves as a form of homecoming and links him to an ancient male predecessor, Odysseus. This figurative homecoming ultimately diminishes the importance of a geographical homeland in the poem, transforming the epic concept of patria into a symbolic motherland comprised of Scanderbeg's Christian community.
Keywords
Perhaps the most striking scene in Margherita Sarrocchi's Scanderbeide (1623) occurs when a warrior queen exonerates an accused murderess, asserting that homicide is a justified response to the rape attempt endured by the woman in question (Sarrocchi, 1623: canto 13). 1 This show of female solidarity and the singularity of the idea that the law should favor an outspoken woman in Sarrocchi's context has won the poem critical attention in recent years (Cox, 2011; Milligan, 2018; Pezzini, 2005; Russell, 2006); both this episode and the untraditional characterizations of these women warriors, Rosmonda and Silveria, point to the poet's proto-feminism. Sarrocchi's unconventional use of gender is also demonstrated in other ways throughout the epic, including in the representation of its male protagonist, Scanderbeg. Scanderbeg experiences a different form of homecoming from his epic predecessors: it is his conversion to Christianity that constitutes his nostos, rather than a return to a physical place. This emphasis on the religious journey feminizes the hero within the early modern context, placing him alongside female characters like Tasso's Clorinda who undergo the same process. At the same time, certain aspects of Scanderbeg's conversion-homecoming also tie him to the ancient hero Odysseus. This fluctuation between male and female models for the protagonist provides further evidence of the poem's reworking of traditional gender roles. It also serves to suppress the importance of homeland in the Scanderbeide, yet another example of Sarrocchi's divergence from epic convention.
The Scanderbeide recounts the Albanian war for independence from the Ottoman Turks from 1443 to 1468. The war was led by the prince George Scanderbeg (1405–1468), the son of Gjon Castrioti (d.1437), an Albanian nobleman who governed the territory in the northern region of Matia until it was conquered by the Turks. Gjon subsequently became a vassal of the sultan, Murad II (Amuratte in the Italian of Sarrocchi's poem). His son was sent as a hostage to the Turks, who converted him to Islam. After participating in several military campaigns in the service of the sultan, Scanderbeg left the Turkish side, re-converted to Christianity, and built up an Albanian resistance to the Ottomans which came to be recognized as the first bid for an independent Albania (Russell, 2006: 22–23).
The poem follows this chain of events in broad strokes, although the action begins after Scanderbeg's return to Christianity, recalling his time with the sultan in flashback. Nonetheless, this backstory and re-conversion has a significant hand in shaping Scanderbeg's character, which combines elements of the archetypal powerful male epic hero with some traditionally feminine traits. Scanderbeg converts back to Christianity as a response to an incident with Amuratte. Sent to conquer Belgrade as the general for Amuratte's forces, Scanderbeg negotiates peace with its citizens, to which Amuratte agrees. However, Amuratte's plan to capture and enslave the beautiful daughter of the captain of the opposing army violates this agreement. Scanderbeg, disapproving, refuses to comply with the plan, and Amuratte is convinced by an advisor to poison him for it. On the point of death, Scanderbeg turns to the Christian faith of his origins and his health is miraculously restored. As revenge for Amuratte's betrayal, Scanderbeg occupies Epirus and takes up residence in Croia (Krüje), where he is accepted as leader of the people. Amuratte besieges the city, which is where the action of the poem begins.
Feminine Scanderbeg: Defense, Conversion, and Contemporary Models
This section argues that Sarrocchi uses three devices to feminize Scanderbeg. First, relying and expanding upon Virginia Cox's reading of the military strategy in the poem, I show that the protagonist is often placed in the defensive position, in parallel with several female characters in the poem. Then I propose a connection between conversion and femininity, examining the two moments leading up to Scanderbeg's conversion. Lastly, I note that this conversion places him in a tradition of female Muslim characters in early modern epic who also must convert.
Virginia Cox (2011: 190) observes that the approach to the military situation in the Scanderbeide differs from that of most other epic poems. The Christian army is largely on the defensive for the duration of the poem. Scanderbeg and his followers are already stationed in Croia and act as the city's protectors, rather than its invaders. Amuratte's army, the villains, are instead on the offensive, advancing on Croia. This is a reversal of the epic standard whereby the heroes conquer the citadel held by the enemy. Cox (2011: 190) reads Sarrocchi's reversal through a gendered lens, noting that Scanderbeg and his troops are feminized because they are in the receiving role rather than the penetrative one. Usually in chivalric epic, it is the Muslims who are placed on the defensive so as to imply that they are less virile. Here the defensive position exudes strength because it is the Christian heroes who occupy it. If read in tandem with the attempted rape episode mentioned above, this positioning permits Sarrocchi's feminist leanings to come into clearer focus. The attacking Turks parallel Silveria's would-be rapists, while the Christian stronghold corresponds to Silveria's safeguarding of her virginity. When Rosmonda declares that Silveria was right to kill her two assailants, Sarrocchi justifies Scanderbeg's defensive actions in the larger conflict. 2 She thus reinforces the message of feminine strength; Scanderbeg as protector of the city and Silveria as protector of her body both succeed in their virtuous endeavors.
Furthermore, Amuratte and Scanderbeg's original quarrel anticipates the rape attempt on two levels. First, it is another instance of the hero acting in response to an affront, on the defensive instead of the offensive. Upon discovering Amuratte's violation of the peace pact, Scanderbeg is compared to a lion as he considers how to respond:
This is the first of several lion similes in the poem, and the only one in which a lone male lion is placed in a defensive position instead of an offensive one. 3 Its initial weakness as a cub is the gateway to strength as it matures and becomes able to react to others’ misdeeds. Likewise, Scanderbeg is spurred to action in the face of Amuratte's crime. This portrayal contributes to his femininity, but again does not reduce his valor; he is heroic because of the position he takes, rather than in spite of it. At the same time, the descriptors used to depict the adult lion with its great mane and ample fur connote masculinity, thereby maintaining the balance of Scanderbeg's gendering between male and female. Scanderbeg's male attributes, although here superficial, ensure that he is still a plausible epic protagonist.
Amuratte's flouting of the peace negotiation is also linked to the later violence against Silveria because it, too, concerns the victimization of a woman. The sultan's deputy Lagnete tries to absolve himself from responsibility for kidnapping a maiden, Dori, by placing the blame with her. He claims that it was she who had sought the sultan's attentions in pursuit of wealth and status (Sarrocchi, 1623: 1.47–64). Rather than take Lagnete at his word, Scanderbeg makes the unusual choice to hear Dori's account of the events. The young woman denies knowing Lagnete and Scanderbeg believes her, allowing her to return to the safety of her family. Significantly, Dori is summoned to speak in a public forum and successfully defends herself, convincing everyone in attendance of her innocence. The justice system of the poem, as arbitrated here by Scanderbeg and later by Rosmonda, sides with the female characters who are in the defensive position.
The interaction with Dori is a pivotal episode for Scanderbeg for other reasons: it is his first encounter with his future wife, and it marks his first turn back towards Christianity. Dori's arguments rest on religion. In her commentary on Lagnete's deception, she asserts that blaming others for one's own error is a Muslim tendency, of which the Christian God would never approve (Sarrocchi, 1623: 1.65–66). Indeed, it is the Christian God who ensures that the onlookers of both religions immediately believe Dori's story. Sarrocchi employs descriptors of extreme chasteness, faithfulness, and delicate Petrarchan beauty to illustrate Dori here (“La vergine,” “il verginal candore,” “nobil donzella,” “occhi lucenti,” the blushing “bianche gote”), compensating for the character's transgression in public speaking by having her exude meek femininity as well as religious righteousness (Sarrocchi, 1623: 1.64–68). After the young woman's speech, the poet continues to describe her in this vein:
Of note is the fact that Dori manages to silence Lagnete, in a reversal of typical gender roles, but also the manner in which her typically feminine beauty is tied to her religious purity. Dori's beautiful eyes do not flash with a Medusean glance capable of petrifying its recipient, in the way that Petrarch often describes Laura, but instead their light reveals Dori's pious intentions. 4 Laura's eyes cause the male lover to become opaque as he turns to stone, while Dori's eyes by contrast bring clarity and transparency (“Qual suol candor da trasparente velo / Qual da cristallo sol purpureo fiore, / O da nube sottil sereno Cielo” ) (Sarrocchi, 1623: 1.67). Physical beauty as evidence of divine nobility is a Neoplatonic principle also employed by Sarrocchi's contemporary, Lucrezia Marinella, to highlight the superiority of women over men: because they are naturally more beautiful than men, she argues, women are holier. 5
The light from Dori's eyes has a particular effect on Scanderbeg:
As we understand, both from the sequence of events and the echo of the noun “lume” in the verb “illuminar,” the same light that emanates from Dori's eyes and confirms her innocence also passes over Scanderbeg and triggers the memory of his baptism. Albeit briefly, he longs for Jesus: “E da quelle efficaci, e vere note; / Che mostraro in Giesù tanta speranza, / Un’occulta virtù l’alma percuote, / Che con pietoso affetto in lei s’avanza” (Sarrocchi, 1623: 1.71). This is the first instance of Sarrocchi's linking the concept of conversion to femininity. Dori's beauty, which is so closely connected to her piety, as we have seen, inspires Scanderbeg to consider converting back to Christianity. It is important to underline that this sudden turn toward the Christian God is not born out of desire for Dori as a wife or lover (although they do eventually marry), as for example Ruggiero's conversion is motivated in the Orlando furioso. Rather, God makes Dori's beautiful eyes the mechanism by which Scanderbeg is reminded of his original faith.
The circumstances of Scanderbeg's decision to convert strengthen the association between conversion and femininity in Sarrocchi. Shortly after the hero meets Dori, Amuratte poisons him for disobeying the order to enslave her. As he suffers the effects of the poison, God imbues Scanderbeg with a “zelo di carità, di pura fede” similar to the zeal that had earlier issued from Dori's eyes (Sarrocchi, 1623: 2.27). The protagonist vows to return to Christianity and immediately recovers from the poison. If we read for the gendered implications of this conversion episode, Scanderbeg is again placed in the female position, defending himself from an oncoming attack. Just as Silveria must react to the rape attempt, so does Scanderbeg react to his near-death experience at the hands of Amuratte. While she chooses brute force to remedy her situation, he chooses to turn to the Christian God. Later on, he will use his physical strength in the war and she will choose to convert to Christianity; this interweaving of their trajectories also points to gender fluidity in the poem as well as the feminization of the conversion moment.
Indeed, the fact that Silveria must eventually convert, and Rosmonda alongside her, comes as little surprise to any scholar of Counter-Reformation epic. The necessity of conversion for the female Muslim figures in early modern epic is well-established in the literature (Milligan, 2018; Quint, 1993; Tylus, 1993; Zatti, 1983). The Scanderbeide's closest model in terms of genre is of course Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1581), the quintessential historical epic of the period. The question arises for all three of the Muslim women in Tasso: will Clorinda, Armida, and Erminia convert so as to integrate themselves into the Christian community? Of the three, it is the guerriera in particular who must temper her extreme otherness through conversion. Even when Clorinda does convert, she is not afforded the luxury of survival; although she sheds her former religious and societal role, there is nonetheless no future for her in the economy of the poem. 6
Scanderbeg, on the other hand, is permitted to survive as the protagonist and male hero of the poem. His conversion occurs early on so that he can spend the rest of the poem without a tarnished reputation. However, the fact that he has to convert at all already separates him from the blameless Goffredo, leader of the crusaders in the Liberata. Goffredo's identity is fixed in his purpose to unite the Christians in one goal, a strong contrast to the Muslims whose inconstancy contributes to their negatively feminized image (Zatti, 1983). Scanderbeg's identity is instead flexible from the offset of the poem, when we witness the lead-up to his conversion in flashback. As Virginia Cox (2011: 189–190) has noted, of the possible models for Scanderbeg, it is actually Clorinda to whom Sarrocchi's hero most closely relates. He is born to a Christian family, spends his childhood with a Muslim guardian, and converts back to his original faith on the point of death, just as she does. His former faith is also referred to later when he disguises himself as a Muslim captain during a night raid, again just as Clorinda does. Cox (2011: 190) reminds us that disguise in Tasso is an almost exclusively female undertaking. 7 Scanderbeg's similarity to this category of female warriors, specifically Clorinda, is most evident through his conversion and thus another indicator of his femininity.
Masculine Scanderbeg?: Homecoming, Conversion, and an Ancient Model
As I have argued above, Scanderbeg's femininity is not an indicator of weakness, as it is in Tasso. If Sarrocchi had considered Scanderbeg's conversion damaging to his heroism, she may not have included it in the poem, especially since it is background information unnecessary to the plot proper. Instead, she highlights Scanderbeg's conversion and in fact privileges it as a figurative site of homecoming for the protagonist, replacing the traditional heroic nostos with religious conversion. In this section I outline first how conversion takes precedence over homeland in the poem. I then show the unlikely link between Scanderbeg and Odysseus, raising the question of whether this connection serves to masculinize the Albanian. I conclude that the unconventional gendering of Scanderbeg uncovers a further instance of Sarrocchi's straying from epic precedent.
Geographical homeland in the Scanderbeide is subordinated to Scanderbeg's return to his religious “homeland,” that is, Christianity. The hero's decision to reclaim Croia is secondary, motivated less by a sense of duty to the land itself and more by the desire for revenge against Amuratte for his impious actions. The fact that Sarrocchi's Christians are in the defensive position not only points to a feminine strength but also, on a literal level, means that they are not actively trying to annex land. The war is more ideological than territorial. For the Christians, and especially Scanderbeg, it is driven more by religious zeal than by a devotion to the land. Consider the contrast between the military situation in Sarrocchi's poem and the epic models on which the Scanderbeide is most closely based: in the Aeneid, Aeneas and his followers seek land on which to establish a new Troy, ousting Turnus and the Rutulians in the process. 8 In the Gerusalemme liberata, the crusaders’ goal is to conquer the city of Jerusalem, freeing it from Muslim control. Both of these examples make the possession of the land itself the defining factor in the protagonists’ victory. The Crusade in Tasso's poem is also entirely motivated by religion, but the religious undertaking is defined by the repossession of the Holy City of Jerusalem. Croia, in contrast, is not specifically linked to the religious mission of the protagonist. Since gaining land is not the objective, the land is deemphasized.
A hero who decides to fully devote himself to Christianity is an especially appropriate choice during the Counter-Reformation. 9 This decision to return to his original faith also somewhat surprisingly reflects the journey of a pre-Christian hero, one whose gender aligns with Scanderbeg's and whose homecoming sets the tone for all epic nostos: Odysseus. While Odysseus's nostos is most evident at the literal level in his return to Ithaca, his homecoming does not merely consist of his physical arrival in his homeland (Cassin, 2016; Nagy, 2013; Wilson, 2018). Gregory Nagy (2013: 275) proposes a metaphorical definition of nostos that matches closely with my view of Scanderbeg's metaphorical return: nostos can mean a “return to light and life”. In the Odyssey, the moment that Odysseus arrives on the island of Ithaca (13.78–95) coincides with the one instance in the poem in which the meanings of nostos and noos (regaining consciousness after a period of darkness, whether that is sleep or death) come together to form the meaning of “returning from darkness and death to light and life” (Nagy, 2013: 299). Odysseus is in a deep sleep that Homer compares to death while on the ship to Ithaca, but once he is deposited on land, he awakens with the sunrise. Nagy observes that the elements of a death-like sleep, a return to consciousness and a return to light all occur simultaneously in the context of Odysseus's homecoming (Nagy, 2013: 300). Scanderbeg's conversion metaphorically contains all of these elements as well: as he returns to his religious home, he awakens from the darkness that was his devotion to Islam and sees the light of Christianity.
Furthermore, Nagy (2013: 275) writes that nostos can also indicate immortalization after death. The immortalization of a hero's soul is not explicitly addressed in Homer, but Odysseus's return from Hades in Books 11–12 nevertheless stands in for the soul's journey after death: This way, the nostos of Odysseus, as an epic narrative, becomes interwoven with a mystical subnarrative. While the epic narrative tells about the hero's return to Ithaca after all the fighting at Troy and all the travels at sea, the mystical subnarrative tells about the soul's return from darkness and death to light and life. (Nagy, 2013: 300)
This mystical subnarrative situated in the context of the ancient Greek hero prefigures the Christian concept of the immortal soul, which Scanderbeg will achieve as a result of his conversion. Sarrocchi takes the classical example of Odysseus's homecoming and adjusts it to fit a Christian belief system.
A link between the two heroes that speaks to the question of masculinity is the existence of a mark on their bodies that identifies them when they each return to their homes. Odysseus lands on Ithaca in Book 13 of the Odyssey, but in his disguise as an old beggar he is not recognized by another human until 19.383–466, when his elderly former nursemaid washes his feet and notices the scar on his leg. Odysseus anticipates Eurycleia's recognition, which occasions a recollection of how the scar was inflicted: as a youth, he sustained an injury from a boar he was hunting. Critic Tamara Neal writes that: Injury is, essentially, a means of validating heroic identity. It is a literal mark of heroic achievement and an essential component in the ontogeny of the epic hero. Like the boar wound that the adolescent Odysseus sustains, a battle wound grounds a man's identity. […] War, like the hunt, is a ritual that affirms male society. Injury signals participation in the ritual and admits the hunter/warrior into the adult/heroic community. (2006: 15–16)
The scar represents two moments of transition for Odysseus, first his entrance into manhood and then his entrance into the final portion of his adult journey (Neal, 2006: 16). In Neal's framework, the scar would function as a sign of masculinity since it is evidence of Odysseus withstanding an injury. Scanderbeg, on the other hand, might appear less masculine because the spot that identifies him when he returns to Croia in 2.47 is instead a sword-shaped birthmark, not a former wound. But notably, rather than a scar acquired during the Trojan War, it is the scar acquired during his adolescence that identifies Odysseus because it signifies his connection to his home. I would argue that in both cases, rather than being signs of masculinity, the marks on their bodies cause the heroes to be infantilized upon their returns because is their younger selves that exist in the memories of those who receive them. Both Odysseus and Scanderbeg obtained these marks during their formative years at home, and thus the marks have become literal signs of belonging to the community to which the characters return as adults. Indeed, Sarrocchi compares the people welcoming Scanderbeg back to Croia to a mother receiving a newly freed son:
This simile conveys the sense of restitution of a missing child as well as communal maternal responsibility for the hero's safety. Both are triggered by the sight of the birthmark. Furthermore, this simile in the Scanderbeide recalls Eurycleia's reaction to being reunited with Odysseus. She is not his biological mother, but as his former wet-nurse, she is certainly a mother figure for the hero, addressing him multiple times as “my child” (Homer, 1919: 19.474, 492).
This portrayal of Odysseus accords with Gregory Nagy's argument (2013: 283) that the hero's kleos, his epic glory, is not derived from his actions in the Trojan War but instead from his achieving nostos. He is defined by his homecoming and not by his martial feats. While Scanderbeg's nostos is also a prerequisite to his kleos, he still achieves epic glory through battle in the rest of the poem because his homecoming occurs so early. The two traits are less dependent on each other in the Scanderbeide, showing Scanderbeg's well-roundedness as a hero: Scanderbeg has the nostos of Odysseus and the kleos of Achilles. 10 In contrast to the Greek's scar, which symbolizes his moment of transition into heroism, the Albanian's birthmark signifies that he was chosen by God to lead his kingdom from birth. Odysseus thus serves as a point of comparison for Sarrocchi to demonstrate Scanderbeg's heroic stature: the significance of his homecoming surpasses even that of the most famous epic homecomer because it is condoned by the Christian God.
Sarrocchi's last method of redefining homecoming lies in the reduction of ancestral encomium and prophecy in the poem. Aeneas's descent to the underworld in Book 6 of the Aeneid provides a precedent for many Renaissance imitations. Virgil's hero meets the shade of his father and learns about his future descendants and the rise of Rome. The early modern heroes are in turn informed both about the past and the future of their lineages, which inevitably bear some relation to the poem's patrons. 11 Sarrocchi, however, omits this episode. In fact, as Serena Pezzini (2005: 213) points out, the author almost entirely eliminates the epic topoi of genealogy and prophecy, mentioning relatives of friends and minor patrons only in the catalogue of the armies in Canto 2. She does not mention the poem's dedicatee, Giulia D’Este, after the proem. While Pezzini questions the extent to which we can interpret this absence, given the complicated politics of patron-client relations and that Sarrocchi did not have a strong association with any one family, the author's painstaking edits from the first edition to the second nevertheless speak to a concern with issues related to encomium. In letters to Galileo in 1611 and 1612, Sarrocchi solicits his opinion about her choice of dedicatee and mentions plans to add praise of various minor patrons (among whom Galileo himself, although this would never come to fruition, probably due to his disgraced reputation during the Inquisition). 12 She ultimately does change the dedicatee from Costanza Colonna in the 1606 version to Giulia D’Este in 1623. These careful revisions, as well as Sarrocchi's adherence otherwise to the bounds of the genre as dictated by Virgil and Tasso, make it slightly surprising that she would limit the genealogical/prophetic element to minor patrons. Even if she had no need to praise a major patron, she followed convention in dedicating the poem to Giulia D’Este. To then stray from convention by failing to provide ancestral connections for the Este family seems unusual. One potential literary motivation for this omission is that it helps shift the focus away from the land as the indicator of “home.” Though Scanderbeg's ancestors lived in Croia, there is no particular reverence for their relationship with the city in the poem, and since there is also no mention of any descendants, there is no sense of what the city will become. In fact, by identifying the communal group with the mother rather than the father figure in the simile above, Sarrocchi problematizes the concept of patria as the definitive symbol of heroic homecoming. The emphasis on the geographical fatherland is diminished in favor of the “motherland” comprised of Scanderbeg's Christian community. Scanderbeg's femininity, as portrayed through his conversion, is thus projected onto the epic framework itself.
