Sacripante is a character in the Italian romantic epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

s Orlando innamorato

Orlando Innamorato

Orlando Innamorato is an epic poem written by the Italian Renaissance author Matteo Maria Boiardo. The poem is a romance concerning the heroic knight Orlando .-Composition and publication:...

by Matteo Maria Boiardo

Matteo Maria Boiardo

Matteo Maria Boiardo was an Italian Renaissance poet.Boiardo was born at, or near, Scandiano ; the son of Giovanni di Feltrino and Lucia Strozzi, he was of noble lineage, ranking as Count of Scandiano, with seignorial power over Arceto, Casalgrande, Gesso, and Torricella...

 and Orlando furioso

Orlando Furioso

Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...

by Ludovico Ariosto

Ludovico Ariosto

Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso . The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions...

. Sacripante is the King of Circassia

Circassia

Circassia was an independent mountainous country located in the Caucasus region of Eurasia and was the largest and most important country in the Caucasus. Circassia was located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea...

 and one of the leading Saracen

Saracen

Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans to refer to a people who lived in desert areas in and around the Roman province of Arabia, and who were distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Middle Ages the term was expanded to include Arabs, and then all who professed the religion of Islam...

 knights. He is passionately in love with Angelica

Angelica (character)

Angelica is a princess in the epic poem Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo. She reappears in the saga's continuation, Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, and in various later works based on the two original Orlando pieces...

 and fights to defend her when she is besieged in the fortress of Albracca

Albracca

Albracca is a major city of Cathay in the Italian romantic epics Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto...

. His horse Frontino is stolen from underneath him by the cunning thief Brunello

Brunello (character)

Brunello is a character in the Italian romantic epics Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto. Brunello is a dwarf and a cunning thief who works for the Saracen army of King Agramante. He first appears in the second book of Orlando innamorato where...

. In Orlando furioso he offers to become the wandering Angelica's protector but she evades him.

Sacripante is also the name of boastful character in Alessandro Tassoni

Alessandro Tassoni

Alessandro Tassoni was an Italian poet and writer.- Life :He was born in Modena, to a noble family. In 1597, he began his service for the cardinal Colonna whom he followed to Spain. In 1603 he was back in Italy and moved to Rome.In 1612 he published anonymously the booklet Le Filippiche in which...

's mock-epic poem La secchia rapita. Sacrapant is a wizard in George Peele

George Peele

George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...

's play The Old Wives' Tale (published 1595). Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 sacripante, as well as French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 sacripant, came to mean a rogue or a scoundrel.

Sources

• Boiardo: Orlando innamorato ed. Giuseppe Anceschi (Garzanti,1978)
• Ariosto:Orlando Furioso, verse translation by Barbara Reynolds
  Barbara Reynolds
  Barbara Reynolds is an English scholar, lexicographer and translator, wife of the philologist and translator Lewis Thorpe.-Early life:The daughter of Alfred Charles Reynolds, and the god-daughter of Dorothy L...
  
  in two volumes (Penguin Classics, 1975). Part one (cantos 1-23) ISBN 0-14-044311-8; part two (cantos 24-46) ISBN 0-14-044310-X
• Ariosto: Orlando Furioso ed. Marcello Turchi (Garzanti, 1974)