Sacripante (also spelled Sacripant, Sacrepant and Sacrapant) is a character in the Italian romantic
epicsOrlando innamorato by
Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando furioso by
Ludovico Ariosto. Sacripante is the King of
Circassia and one of the leading
Saracen knights. He is passionately in love with
Angelica and fights to defend her when she is besieged in the fortress of
Albracca. His horse
Frontino is stolen from underneath him by the cunning thief
Brunello. 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's mock-epic poem La secchia rapita. Sacrapant is a wizard in
George Peele's play The Old Wives' Tale (published 1595).
Italiansacripante, as well as
Frenchsacripant, came to mean a rogue or a scoundrel. In Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Miss Sacripant is the name of Elstir's portrait of an actress disguised as a young man who is really Odette de Crécy.
Sources
Boiardo: Orlando innamorato ed. Giuseppe Anceschi (Garzanti,1978)