Tales From the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  First Story

  1. Since Pampinea has already spoken at some length on this subject The reference is to Pampinea’s introductory remarks to the story of Master Alberto (I, 10).

  2. he ruined it completely The story told so ineptly by the knight ‘in itself was indeed excellent’, and thus presumably on a par with the stories B. himself is in the process of narrating. The tale of Madonna Oretta’s tactful dismissal of her incoherent companion may be read as an extended metaphor of the act of storytelling, or what some of B.’s commentators describe as a metanovella. By listing the knight’s various failings (verbal repetition, recapitulation of the plot, apologies for getting things wrong, and confusing the names of the characters) B. is pointing up by contrast the qualities expected of a good storyteller like himself. It has been suggested that the placing of the story at roughly the halfway point in the hundred tales is also significant, comparisons being drawn with Dante’s placing of the discourse on Love (the central theme of the Commedia) exactly midway through the poem, in canto XVII of Purgatorio. But the analogy is inexact, both because the art of storytelling is not one of B.’s major themes, and because the true halfway point of the Decameron (allowance being made for the tale of Filippo Balducci in the Introduction to the Fourth Day) is the last story of the Fifth Day.

  Second Story

  1. Geri Spina The husband of Madonna Oretta, in the previous tale, was a politically active Florentine merchant, named by the chronicler Giovanni Villani as one of the leaders of the Black Guelph faction at the turn of the fourteenth century. He died at some time between 1321 and 1332.

  2. Pope Boniface The delegation from Pope Boniface VIII, of whom Geri Spina was a leading supporter in Florence, visited the city in 1300 in an abortive attempt to settle disputes between the White and Black Guelphs.

  3. Santa Maria Ughi A small church near the Palazzo Strozzi, in the centre of Florence. The Pope’s emissaries, who were lodging ‘under Messer Geri’s roof’ near the Santa Trinità bridge, would have had to walk past the Palazzo Strozzi, whether on their way to the houses of the Cerchi or of the Donati, leaders of the White and Black Guelphs respectively.

  4. to the Amo Cisti is implying that the servant’s huge flask would be better filled from the river on which Florence stands.

  Third Story

  1. Antonio d’Orso Bishop of Florence between 1309 and 1322, Antonio d’Orso had a reputation for parsimony. He was also a man of exceptional learning, and in 1310 he was appointed a privy counsellor to Edward II of England.

  2. Dego della Ratta After coming to Naples in the retinue of Violante of Aragon when she arrived from Spain for her marriage to King Robert, Dego della Ratta served the Angevin court in various capacities, visiting Florence as the King’s marshal on three separate occasions, the last in 1317–18.

  3. the feast of St John 27 December.

  4. the palio Like its more famous counterpart, still held annually in the main square of Siena, the palio in Florence was a race between horses and riders representing the various districts of the city. Porta San Piero, the quarter where Monna Nonna ‘had recently been married and set up house’, lay on the route followed by the riders.

  Fourth Story

  1. Currado Gianfigliazzi The Gianfigliazzi family was associated with the Florentine banking community, in particular the Peruzzi. Dante (Inferno, XVII) claims to have come across the soul of one of them in the circle of Hell where money-lenders are punished. Currado Gianfigliazzi was renowned in early fourteenth-century Florence for his lavish hospitality.

  2. Peretola The Gianfigliazzi owned various properties in the region of Peretola, a small town in the Florentine countryside.

  3. Chichibio A common Venetian name, based onomatopoeically on the sound made by the chaffinch. Because the character in B.’s well-known story was simple-minded, the name later acquired derogatory overtones, being applied to persons of low intelligence. A near English equivalent would be ‘bird-brain’.

  4. hence a good liar B.’s profound dislike of the Venetians, already evident from the tale of Monna Lisetta (IV, 2), is further underlined by this aside on their mendacity.

  Fifth Story

  1. Forese da Rabatta Not only a famous jurist of the first half of the fourteenth century, Forese also took a leading part in the management of Florentine political affairs, occupying the office of priore several times between 1320 and 1335, and that of gonfaloniere in 1339–40.

  2. Baronet The allusion is clarified in the story that follows.

  3. Giotto The most important Italian painter of the fourteenth century, Giotto was born in either 1266–7 or 1276, and died in 1337. In a passage concerning the transience of earthly fame, Dante tells us that Giotto has eclipsed Cimabue as the most famous painter of his day (Purgatorio, XI, 94– 5). B. probably met him when the painter was working in Naples between 1329 and 1333. The trompe l’œil effect that B. attributes to Giotto’s realism (‘people’s eyes are deceived and they mistake the picture for the real thing’) reflects the general view of B. and his contemporaries that Giotto was a great innovator in the art of painting.

  4. Mugello Both Forese and Giotto had been born in the Mugello, which lies to the north-east of Florence.

  Sixth Story

  1. Montughi A hillside village a few miles north of Florence. Many wealthy Florentines had country houses in the area.

  2. Uberti… Lamberti Two of the oldest families in Florence. The Uberti are especially well remembered because of the famous episode in the Commedia where Dante depicts the proud figure of Farinata degli Uberti rising from a flaming tomb in the circle of the Heretics (Inferno, X, 35–6).

  3. Baronci As the story shows, the Baronci, a well-to-do family of the Florentine bourgeoisie, were notoriously ill-favoured. But Scalza’s explanation (that they were formed when God was learning the rudiments of his craft) caused problems for B.’s post-Tridentine editors, as well as for his English translators. The apparent blasphemy so shocked the 1620 translator that he replaced it with a different tale altogether, whilst in the 1702 translation Scalza is reported as saying that the antiquity of the Baronci ‘will be evident by that Prometheus made them in time when he first began to Paint, and made others after he was Master of his Art’. The 1741 translator has Scalza saying: ‘You must understand therefore that they were formed when nature was in its infancy, and before she was perfect at her work.’ This became the standard way of translating the passage until John Payne set matters right in 1886. He anglicized the Baronci, calling them ‘the Cadgers’, claiming in a footnote that Baronci is ‘the Florentine name for what we should call professional beggars’. Later in the same footnote, Payne observes, with tongue firmly in cheek, that ‘this story has been a prodigious stumbling-block to former translators, not one of whom appears to have had the slightest idea of Boccaccio’s meaning’.

  Seventh Story

  1. Rinaldo de’ Pugliesi Like the Montagues and Capulets in Verona, the two families named in this story, the Pugliesi and the Guazzalotri, were sworn enemies in the town of Prato, which lies some fifteen miles northwest of Florence.

  2. podestà In this context, the podestà is the chief magistrate. The same title can also indicate a chief executive official appointed by some central authority, as in III, 5, where Francesco Vergellesi is appointed podestà di Milano (‘governor of Milan’).

  3. Throw it to the dogs? The phrase used by Madonna Filippa recalls Matthew vii, 6: ‘Nolite dare sanctum canibus’ (‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs’). Sanctum and sacrum were colloquial terms in B.’s day for a woman’s body.

  Eighth Story

  1. Cesca Diminutive of Francesca. The tale of the disagreeable young woman is unusual in that no precise location is specified, though one assumes that, like most of the other stories in the Sixth Day, it is set in Florence.

  2. in the glass In medieval literature, the mirror was interpreted as a symbol of truth.

  Ninth Story

  1. Betto Brunelleschi A leading f
igure in Florentine politics at the turn of the fourteenth century, Betto Brunelleschi, originally a White Guelph, was a friend both of Guido Cavalcanti (the central figure in B.’s story) and of Dante, who dedicated one of his sonnets to him. After the events of 1301 that led to Dante’s exile, he became a powerful figure among the ruling Black Guelphs, and brought about the downfall and death of their discredited leader, Corso Donati. He was murdered by two of Corso’s young kinsmen in 1311.

  2. Cavalcanti’s son, Guido Affectionately described by Dante as his primo amico (‘first friend’), Guido Cavalcanti was, after Dante himself, the leading poet of the dolce stil novo. He was exiled from Florence in 1300, but having contracted malaria was allowed to return, and he died in August of the same year. On the evidence of Guido’s poems, B.’s complimentary assessment of his gifts as a logician and natural philosopher is well justified, but there is no good reason to suppose that he was an Epicurean in its medieval sense of atheist. The stigma of atheism attaching to his name probably arose because Dante, in the tenth canto of Inferno, describes his encounter with the spirit of Guido’s father, Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, in the circle of those who denied the immortality of the soul.

  3. Orsammichele… Corso degli Adimari… San Giovanni… Santa Reparata Orsammichele is a district near the centre of Florence, named after the church of San Michele in Orto. The road linking San Michele with the baptistery of San Giovanni (Corso degli Adimari) is now known as the Via Calzaiuoli. The church of Santa Reparata, alongside the baptistery, was demolished to make way for the cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, on which work began in 1294.

  4. the tombstones, which were very tall P. F. Watson, in an article published in Studi sul Boccaccio, XVIII (1989), points out that the ‘arche, che grandi erano’ of the original text refers, not to tombstones, but to sarcophagi: ‘An arca di marmo… enriches our sense of Guido’s plight and Guido’s leap… What lies behind Cavalcanti as Betto’s men close in is a row of stone boxes with very thick walls. They are also very large. The sarcophagus now in the Cathedral museum’s courtyard and its companion stand over a metre high. Factor in a lid of some thickness, and the sarcophagi now tower over a Fiat 500 and match the height of men six hundred years ago… No horses can pursue [Cavalcanti] along the narrow passage left between the arche and the Baptistery’s south-east wall.’ Watson’s interpretation of the passage is correct, but it is questionable whether a more exact translation would be better suited to the context for an English reader. Later in the same article, Watson makes the novel suggestion that in B.’s tale, Cavalcanti may be seen as ‘Mercurius psychopompos, the god who conducts the souls of the Dead to the Underworld’.

  Tenth Story

  1. friars of Saint Anthony The founder of organized monasticism, St Anthony (c. 251–356) was one of the most popular saints of the early Middle Ages. The black-robed Hospitallers of Saint Anthony were a familiar sight in the towns and villages of western Europe, ringing small bells as they collected alms. But by the end of the thirteenth century, their greed, like that of their pigs which were allowed by special dispensation to roam freely through the streets, had become proverbial. Dante writes scathingly (Paradiso, XXIX, 124) of Anthony fattening his swine on empty promises (‘Di questo ingrassa ilporco sant’ Antonio’).

  2. Certaldo The town where B. spent most of the last thirteen years of his life lies about twenty miles south-west of Florence. He was possibly born there, and in an earlier work he proudly describes himself as one of its citizens.

  3. Cipolla A cipolla is an onion, as may be deduced from the reason B. gives for the character’s popularity in and around Certaldo, where an onion is depicted in the town’s coat of arms. Like most of what Cipolla later has to say in his famous sermon to his captive audience, his name carries nonsensical and equivocal overtones.

  4. Cicero… Quintilian Two of the most famous orators and rhetoricians of ancient Rome.

  5. after nones After three o’clock in the afternoon.

  6. the citadel The castello, or citadel, situated in the upper part of the town, was the headquarters of the local administration.

  7. Guccio Porco Balena (‘Whale’), Imbratta (‘Befoul’) and Porco (‘Pig’), the nicknames of Cipolla’s servant, form the preliminaries to a grotesque caricature, introduced with an unusual amount of supporting detail. The only other character in the Decameron to be presented in so prolix a fashion is Ser Ciappelletto (I, 1), where the narrative required a clear initial awareness of the dying man’s iniquitous way of life. Here, on the other hand, the verbose description of Guccio and of his wooing of the scullery-maid foreshadow the ludicrous oratorical outpourings of Cipolla himself.

  8. Lippo Topo Once thought to be a cartoonist of moderate artistic talent specializing in the drawing of comically distorted figures, Lippo Topo seems in fact to have been proverbial for his laziness, but there is no evidence that he was a painter.

  9. Altopascio The abbey of the Hospitallers, near Lucca, renowned for its generous doles of soup.

  10. the Lord of Chatillon A fictional title suggesting the possessor of enormous wealth.

  11. Confiteor Literally ‘I confess’, the Confiteor is a prayer recited at the beginning of the Mass and other church rituals.

  12. those parts where the sun appears The sun will appear anywhere, but Cipolla is giving his listeners the impression that he has travelled in the Orient. In similar vein, he later claims to have visited ‘the mountains of the Basques, where all the waters flow downwards’, as though this were a phenomenon that was out of the ordinary.

  13. the privileges of the Porcellana Probably a veiled reference to the practice of sodomy, a vice to which monks and friars were traditionally susceptible. But Porcellana, like most of the places named in the opening section of Cipolla’s sermon, was also the name of a locality in Florence. In the translation, an attempt has been made to preserve the humorous impact of Cipolla’s rapid succession of Florentine doubles entendres, in many cases replacing them with others having wider European and/or Mediterranean associations.

  14. the land of Abruzzi Wild and inaccessible, the mountainous Abruzzi region in eastern Italy would have suggested to Cipolla’s audience a remote part of the universe. His claim that the inhabitants ‘go climbing the hills in clogs’ has strong homosexual undertones (see notes to V, 10).

  15. clothe pigs in their own entrails i.e. ‘make sausages’, but the phrase probably has obscene connotations, like the reference to their ‘carrying bread on staves, and wine in pouches’.

  16. Parsnipindia The original reads ‘India Pastinaca’. B. is possibly using pastinaca (‘parsnip’) in the same way that carota (‘carrot’) is sometimes used to indicate a cock-and-bull story.

  17. Maso del Saggio Well known in fourteenth-century Florence as a perpetrator of practical jokes, he appears again in three later stories (VIII, 3, 5 and 6).

  18. Besokindas Tocursemenot In the original, Nonmiblasmete Sevoipiace, a name coined on Old French: ‘Ne me blasmez se vos plait.’

  19. all the holy relics Like Chaucer’s Pardoner, Cipolla is the instrument for a satirical attack on the cult of holy relics, which by the mid-fourteenth century had reached its zenith. B.’s catalogue of relics is more equivocal than Chaucer’s, incorporating certain items that are clearly blasphemous, such as the ‘straight and firm’ finger of the Holy Ghost and ‘the Word-made-flash-in-the-pan’. The latter phrase represents the translator’s despairing attempt to render B.’s hugely comical ‘Verbum-caro-fatti-alle-finestre’ (literally ‘Verbum-Caro-get-thee-to-the-windows’), a corruption of John i, 14: ‘Verbum carofactum est’ (‘And the Word was made flesh’).

  20. the Rumpiad… Capretius By inviting comparison to the Iliad and Lucretius, the translation comes near to conveying the strong homosexual overtones of B.’s Monte Morello (a mountain north of Florence whose name also serves as a slang term for the male posterior), and Caprezio, based on the Italian name for the Latin poet. A capro being a he-goat, the two names suggest
the practice of sodomy in both its passive and active forms.

  21. Saint Gherardo da Villamagna’s sandals Saint Gherardo was one of the earliest followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. By claiming he had presented one of the saint’s sandals (zoccoli) to Gherardo di Bonsi (‘who holds him in the deepest veneration’), Cipolla is implying that the latter was given to homosexual practices. Gherardo di Bonsi was in fact one of the most highly respected members of the Arte della Lana, the Florentine woollen guild, and founder of the hospital of San Gherardo in the Via San Gallo.

  22. the Feast of Saint Lawrence i.e. 10 August. Popular tradition has it that Saint Lawrence was martyred by being roasted on a gridiron, which is the saint’s emblem, but it is more likely that he was beheaded.

  23. they will never be touched by fire without getting burnt Cipolla’s concluding master stroke is to make his hearers believe the opposite of what he actually says.

  (Conclusion)

  1. a guilty conscience Dioneo’s suggestion of the possible reason for the ladies’ reluctance to discuss the topic he has prescribed, anticipating Freud, reflects B.’s intuitive understanding of the human psyche.

  2. the Valley of the Ladies The third, and most elaborate, locus amœnus in the Decameron is a refined and more detailed version of similar locations described in two of B.’s earlier works, the Caccia di Diana and Ninfale fiesolano. It will become the setting for the tales of adulterous wives recounted on the Seventh Day, where the contrast between the mythical, pre-lapsarian world of the storytellers and the everyday world of the narratives is more than usually pronounced.