Note 171 — BOOK IV.

As Tasso often employs magic, we have sought with care for all that relates to this species of the marvellous in the contemporary historians. That which we have just quoted from William of Tyre, is the only instance we have been able to find. Some historians likewise have said that the mother of Kerboghâ was a sorceress, and that she had foretold to her son the defeat of Antioch. It is in vain to seek for similar incidents in the history of the first crusade. We ought to add that magic was much less in vogue in the twelfth century than in that in which Tasso lived. The Crusaders were no doubt very superstitious, but their superstitions were not attached to little things; they were struck by the phenomena they saw in the heavens; they believed in the appearance of saints, and in revelations made by God himself, but not in magicians. Ideas of magic came to us a long time afterwards, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The chroniclers of that period, who speak of anterior facts, fill their recitals with whimsical and ridiculous fables, such as are not to be found in more ancient authors. We must not judge of the middle ages by the chronicles of Robert Gaguin, or by those of Archbishop Turpin, the work of a monk of the twelfth century; still less by the romances of the same period.