Canto III: In Search of Orlando
Reading Luigi Pulci's Morgante
Here’s something cool I wrote recently.
Previously:
Introducing Luigi Pulci
Canto I: Giants on the Mountain
Canto II: The Demon’s Feast
When last we left our heroes, the knight Orlando and his giant friend Morgante had entered the Pagan lands, assumed false names, and taken service with Manfredonio, who is besieging King Caradoro, as Caradoro refuses to let Manfredonio marry his daughter Meridana. As such, Orlando has entered into combat with Lionetto, Caradoro’s son and champion…
And so the combat continues, and now Orlando is forcibly dismounted. Morgante steps into the fight and with his weaponized bell-clapper makes Lionetto’s troops ‘see fireflies’, giving Orlando time to remount. But Orlando has made a mistake: he bemoaned aloud that his famous mount—Vegliantin—has been left behind in France, allowing Lionetto to deduce his true identity. So Lionetto, afraid of facing the greatest living knight, attempts to flee the field, only for Orlando to decapitate him in front of the city’s wall.
King Caradoro weeps for his lost son, but Princess Meridana decides to do something about it: she dresses as a knight and prepares to enter the field! The arming scene is brief but fun, you can tell Pulci is having a blast using all the terminology for the armour, like a modern camouflage guy showing off his tacticool gear.
So Meridana rides out to meet Orlando in combat, they trade insults and then fight, Meridana holding her own for a full stanza, but then her helmet is damaged and Orlando, seeing her tresses, realizes he’s fighting a girl. Orlando laughs and calls the fight off, rides back to camp. Meridana, humiliated, rides back to the city.
Meanwhile, in France, the courier Chimento has returned with news of Orlando’s whereabouts—sort of. He faints before he can get the story out, so the Peers of France are left to think Orlando is dead. They weep for three stanzas, then Chimento wakes and corrects them: Orlando is in the Girfoglio desert, and was almost tricked by Ganelon’s spy. Rinaldo, incensed, attacks Ganelon’s men, beheading one before they can get Charlemagne to intervene. Charlemagne, still under the spell of Ganelon’s influence, blames Rinaldo. So Rinaldo vows to set out and find Orlando, putting his three brothers in charge of protecting his castle and Montalban. Oliver—Orlando’s companion and best friend—decides to go with Rinaldo, as does Dudone, the son of Ogier the Dane.
The trio travel to the monastery at the base of the mountain where Orlando previously lodged and met Morgante, only to find that a giant named Brunoro, cousin to Morgante, has conquered the monastery and thrown its abbot in jail with the help of the thirty thousand Saracen troops he commands (all of them combat-tested veterans, we’re told), part of his revenge against Orlando for killing Morgante’s brothers.
Rinaldo introduces himself as a knight belonging to a sultan, and demands hospitality. Brunoro thinks Rinaldo looks like a jumped-up courier at best, so has his men find ‘rotted leftovers’ and chicken bones to feed them, dishwater to drink. It’s a punishment but also a test. Rinaldo, though, has overheard everything. Still, he pretends to enjoy the slop and swill presented to him. Oliver and Dudone, however, aren’t having it, and refuse to act like dogs grateful for a bone—they don’t even remove their visored helmets at table. Their horses, however, are fed plenty. Bayard—Rinaldo’s famous horse, who acts like a loyal dog whenever the story needs it—bites one of Brunoro’s servants. Brunoro is envious and wants this magnificent horse for himself. Back at the table, Rinaldo is annoyed at a Saracen who slurps and spills his soup, for which Rinaldo insults him, and now, finally, the fighting kicks off—until Brunoro calls time out, to find out what Rinaldo’s real grievance is.
Rinaldo explains that the slurping annoyed him, and Brunoro somehow thinks that’s proof that Rinaldo is a man who cares about justice, so he decides to share his tale, saying that Rinaldo must help the Saracens avenge themselves on Orlando. Rinaldo asks to hear the abbot’s side of the story, and Brunoro agrees, and the abbot explains the Brunoro’s giant cousins started this feud, Orlando only finished it. So it’s duelling time: Brunoro gets Bayard if he wins, but the Saracens must leave the abbey if Rinaldo wins.
Rinaldo, obviously, wins the joust, but he kills Brunoro on the first pass, which is actually a problem because now they have 30,000 Saracen troops to contend with. Oliver, Dudone, and even the abbot rush to Rinaldo’s aid:
‘Twas then Dudon fast to the abbot ran,
who had once more been fastened very tight:
he cut the rope and let his hands go free.
The abbot right away began to fight:
quickly he ripped a bar off a huge door
and plucked a pagan’s head with it at once;
so deftly, then, could he his Weapon mix
that he decapitated more than six.And what about the other monks? They all
removed their tunics: with big rocks and sticks,
against the Saracens they all onrushed,
murdering many of the faithless throng.
Rinaldo sliced so many more that day,
and each one floated in a pond of blood,
he leveled here some brains and there some brows—
just as we see it in a slaughterhouse.
And soon the Saracens are jumping out of windows and fleeing to the desert. After the fight, Rinaldo eats more swill soup, and the canto ends with the abbot and Rinaldo realizing that they are cousins.
So, aside from the food stuff we’re still basically in the mindset of a medieval chanson de geste, but that will change in a few cantos when our man Luigi really gets going…
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