Boccaccio’s Decameron – First-Day Introduction & Selected Stories
Introductory Materials Provided in the Transcript
• Author & Text
– Giovanni Boccaccio, “The Decameron” (second edition, Penguin, tr. G.H. McWilliam).
– Framing device: during the Black Death of in Florence, ten young people flee the city and tell stories for ten days; transcript covers First Day introduction plus portions of several stories.
• Opening Address to Readers
– Boccaccio speaks directly to “fairest ladies,” acknowledging the grim opening (the plague) but promising a “beautiful and delectable plain” of stories beyond the “rugged hill.”
– Literary strategy: sorrow → joy; unpleasant prologue heightens later pleasure; rhetoric of consolation.
Historical Context: The 1348 Plague in Florence
• Possible causes
– Astrological influence ("heavenly bodies").
– Divine punishment for human iniquity.
– Originated in the East, swept westward, unstoppable.
• Futile human responses
– Municipal clean-ups, quarantines, health ordinances.
– Religious processions & petitions.
– All "ineffectual."
• Medical description of the disease
– Initial symptom: swellings in groin/armpit (gavoccioli) the size of eggs/apples.
– Later symptom: dark blotches/bruise-like spots on limbs; both sure signs of death.
– Death commonly within three days; often no fever.
• Contagion dynamics
– Person-to-person, object-to-person, even animal-to-animal (anecdote of two pigs gnawing infected rags and dying on the spot).
Social Reactions & Moral Breakdown
• Four general behavioural camps
Ascetics: locked themselves away, abstemious diet, music for distraction.
Hedonists: drank, sang, seized pleasures, treated plague “as one enormous joke.”
Moderates: moved about with posies/spices to filter stench, satisfied normal appetites only.
Flight: wealthy men & women abandoned city for countryside or abroad.
• Collapse of civic order
– Magistrates dead or understaffed → laws unenforced.
– Respect for Church institutions wanes; processions vanish; bodies left unattended.
– Servant shortage; greedy hirelings demand exorbitant wages yet die quickly themselves.
• Breakdown of family bonds
– "Brother abandoned brother… wives deserted husbands… parents refused to nurse children."
– Women accept male attendants regardless of modesty → later accusations of post-plague unchastity.
• Funeral customs overturned
– Pre-plague: women mourners, priests, candlelit processions, individual interment.
– Plague: corpses dumped at doors, mass graves (trench “tier upon tier like ship’s cargo”), no rites, bodies borne by gravedigger fraternities.
• Rural devastation
– Peasants die “like animals”; fields untilled; livestock roam wild; societal paralysis.
• Estimated death toll
– “Over ” deaths within Florence walls (number exceeds believed pre-plague population → hyperbolic to stress horror).
Birth of the Story-Telling Brigata
• Setting at Santa Maria Novella church, Tuesday morning.
– Seven young ladies (ages –, mutually related/friendly, names withheld for decorum).
– They will soon join three young men, depart to a villa, and institute daily storytelling under rotating kings/queens → frame for 100 tales.
First Day, First Story: Ser Ciappelletto (a.k.a. Ser Cepperello)
• Historical frame
– Musciatto Franzesi, wealthy Paris merchant, must collect debts in quarrelsome Burgundy.
– Needs an agent as villainous as debtors → hires Ser Cepperello (nicknamed Ciappelletto by French).
• Character sketch of Ciappelletto
– Profession: notary; speciality: crafting false documents gratis.
– Perjury enthusiast; fomenter of discord; murderer; blasphemer; mocker of Church; glutton; sodomite; gambler; thief.
– Protected by patrons, never punished.
• Sequence of events
– Travels to Burgundy; lodges with two Florentine money-lender brothers.
– Falls terminally ill; brothers fear scandal if he dies unconfessed (no burial in church, reputational ruin).
– Ciappelletto overhears worries, promises to solve problem by making “a good confession.”
• The fraudulent confession
– Brothers summon “holiest and ablest” friar.
– Ciappelletto invents saintly life: weekly confessions, perpetual virginity, extreme fasting (<leaf salads), generous almsgiving, righteous anger only over others’ sin, scrupulosity over trifles (spitting in church, sweeping on Sabbath).
– “Worst sin” he can recall: cursed his mother once as a child; weeps theatrically.
– Friar, utterly convinced, grants absolution; proclaims him saintly to convent chapter.
• Post-mortem veneration
– Ciappelletto dies, receives grand funeral; friar preaches sermon on his purity.
– Townsfolk venerate corpse, seek relics, candles, votive offerings; chapel becomes pilgrimage site.
– He is popularly canonized “Saint Ciappelletto.”
• Theological irony / theme
– God’s mercy responds to people’s faith even when object is fraudulent; illustrates discrepancy between human judgment and divine omniscience.
First Day, Second Story: Jew Abraham & the Roman Curia (brief within transcript)
• Narrator Neifile aims to show God’s patience with corrupt clergy.
– Merchant Jehannot persuades pious Jew Abraham to visit Rome to observe Christian leaders.
– Abraham witnesses clerical depravity yet concludes Christianity must be divinely supported (else it would have perished) → converts.
– (Full details beyond given excerpt, but theme flagged: corruption paradoxically validates faith.)
Fourth Day, Fifth Story: Lisabetta da Messina & the Pot of Basil
• Principal characters
– Three wealthy Florentine merchant brothers in Messina.
– Sister Lisabetta (unmarried).
– Lorenzo, their handsome Pisan factor (employee).
• Plot outline
– Mutual love; secret affair discovered by eldest brother.
– Brothers murder Lorenzo on country outing, bury corpse secretly, claim he’s away on business.
– Lisabetta plagued by foreboding; Lorenzo appears in dream, reveals murder site.
– She and ex-wet-nurse retrieve corpse, sever head, conceal it in large pot planted with fine Salernitan basil, watered only with rosewater, orange-blossom water, and her tears.
– Basil flourishes; brothers notice obsessive tending, confiscate pot; discover head; flee to Naples.
– Lisabetta wastes away weeping for lost basil; post-humous popular lament in folk song (“Chi ti tolse” etc.).
• Themes
– Love vs. familial honor; female fidelity; transformation of body → relic (head fertilizes basil).
– Intertextual anticipation of Keats’s poem “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.”
Fourth Day, Sixth Story (opening fragment)
• Narrator Panfilo introduces reflection on dreams: neither entirely true nor false.
– Moral: virtuous persons should not fear ominous dreams; wicked should distrust pleasing dreams.
– Begins to tell story of Andreuola (noble Brescian) and low-born but worthy Gabbiotto; they secretly marry via maid’s help.
– Story promises dual prophetic dreams, impending tragedy and legal plea before chief magistrate; transcript breaks before outcome.
Recurring Motifs & Analytical Connections
• Plague as moral microscope: amplifies vices (cowardice, greed) and virtues (wit, resourcefulness).
• Storytelling as therapy: diversion from collective trauma; models of behavior.
• Appearance vs. Reality: saintly façade of Ciappelletto; corrupt clergy; hidden basil head.
• Role of women: from passive victims (plague abandonment) to narrators (brigata) to active protagonists (Lisabetta, Andreuola).
• Faith vs. Works: Ser Ciappelletto shows empty ritual; Abraham story shows faith despite corrupt works.
Numerical / Statistical References (in LaTeX)
• Year of plague: .
• Supposed Florentine death toll: .
• Brigata composition: ladies + men over days = stories.
Ethical & Philosophical Implications
• Question of genuine sanctity vs. social construction of sainthood.
• Reliability of institutions (Church, family, civic law) under crisis.
• Human interpretive need: dreams, miracles, relics as frameworks to decode chaotic reality.