Origins of the House of Este

The dedication to Ippolito d’Este and the importance assigned to the adventures of Ruggiero reveal the encomiastic nature of Ariosto’s romance.  The Furioso is conceived as an exaltation of a royal household and not as a national poem about a people or a civilisation.  Ruggiero is the progenitor of the House of Este, he descends from the Trojan hero Hector and his adventures,  intertwined with those of Bradamante, confer a particular meaning to Ariosto’s epos. The marriage between Ruggiero and Bradamante, Rinaldo’s warier-woman sister, with Ruggiero’s final conversion to Christianity and Ruggiero’s duel with the last surviving Saracen hero Rodomonte, who is vanquished by the former, give encomiastic significance to heroism in the romance. The Furioso ends with an octave which recalls the end of the Aeneid, with the final killing of Turnos, as to underline the epic valour of the founder of the House of Este.  From the marriage of Ruggiero to Bradamante descends the House of Este. ‘Fansi le nozze splendide e reali/convenienti a chi cura ne piglia: / Carlo ne piglia cura, e le fa quali / farebbe, maritando una sua figlia’ (XLXI, 73, 1-2) . In more general terms the encomiastic and eulogistic intent of the romance is addressed at the court of Ferrara: the chivalrous adventures, already present in Boiardo, now serve to give life to a superior ideal of control over the world, and of equilibrium.  The encomiastic theme also appears before the elaboration of the Furioso, in the fragment in terza rima Obizzeide: Ariosto, who had just recently entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito, celebrated Obizzo d’Este, a famous forefather of the Lords of Ferrara, who had lived during the first half of the XIV century and who had served Philip the Handsome.

Ferrara, Estensi Castle