Orlando innamorato di Bojardo - 1830 Author:Matteo Maria Boiardo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In the history of King Ruggero and his father, there are many of the elements which constitute the Italian romanesque poems, and give them that religious interes... more »t and epic importance, to which allusion has been made more than once. The wars of these two sovereigns in Sicily and Africa were enough to render their very name venerable to the people of their days. What more glorious and more romantic title could any monarch take, than that of King of Africa, which Ruggero King of Sicily probably assumed after having conquered the Moors in their own country ? Ruggero di Reggio went to Sicily with the title, given afterwards by romancers to Orlando, of standard-bearer to the Pope.d The conquestof that island was undertaken in the spirit of a crusade, as has been most ably proved by Gre- Oorio." It was for this reason that Ruggero sent as trophies and proofs of victory in that holy undertaking, some of the spoils which he took from the Saracens in Sicily.f It was asserted that at the battle of Cerami, only one hundred and thirty-six Normans beat thirty-five thousand Saracens ; and that a knight, dressed in bright armour, and with a white banner, had come to assist the Christians, in the same manner that, on several trying occasions, he went to assist the crusaders in Palestine. The saint, generally supposed to have come so kindly to the aid of the Christians, was St. George, who, as he had slain a dragon, might well find pleasure in destroying Moslems, who in the eyes of Christians were more terrible and more dangerous than any fire-breathing dragons. Among the spoils of the battle of Cerami were four camels, (the Istoria Imperiale says forty,) which Ruggero sent to the Pope. Owing to these victories the Count of Sicily was every where celebrated as the champion of Christianity,h and mo...« less