SOURCE: Quint, David. “Political Allegory in the Gerusalemme Liberata.” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 1 (spring 1990): 1-24.

In the following essay, Quint discusses the religious aspects of Gerusalemme liberata, which, he argues, celebrates the triumph of the Counter-Reformation.

In 1553, six years before Tasso first began to sketch the poem that was to become the Gerusalemme liberata, the Catholic monarchs Philip II and Mary Tudor acceded to the throne of England, after the Protestant reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. The event was celebrated in an encomiastic oration, De vestituta in Anglia religione (“On the restoration of religion in England”), by the minor Modenese humanist, Antonio Fiordibello. In one passage Fiordibello searches for a precedent to the achievement of the new English rulers.

Quorum igitur Regum, Imperatorumque res gestae tam amplae unquam ac tam magnificae & gloriosae fuerunt, ut sint cum vestrae hujus actionis pietate, amplitudine, gloria comparandae? Admirari solent plerique vel...