Five-minute digest
The Decameron
Summary
The Decameron is a collection of one hundred tales written in Florentine Italian by Giovanni Boccaccio around 1349 to 1353, just after the Black Death. Its title is Greek for ten days. In the opening, Boccaccio describes the plague of 1348 in Florence without softening it: corpses carried away by the cartload, the sick abandoned by neighbors and kin, and the ordinary rules of law and religion collapsing under fear. One Tuesday morning seven young women meet after Mass in the church of Santa Maria Novella. Led by Pampinea, they decide to leave the dying city, and three young men of their acquaintance go with them to a series of country villas outside Florence. There, in gardens and beside fountains, they keep an orderly and graceful life: each day one of them is crowned king or queen, sets a theme, and each of the ten tells one story. They rest on Fridays, in honor of the Passion, and on Saturdays, so the ten days of storytelling fill two weeks, and each day closes with dancing and a song. The themes move from free choice on the first day through fortune, people who gain what they desire by effort, loves that end in death, loves that end happily, witty replies, tricks played by wives and then by everyone, a second free day, and finally deeds of generosity and magnificence. The tales range across the whole Mediterranean world, from merchants, pirates, and kings to friars, nuns, peasants, and painters. Some are tragic, like the story of Tancred, who sends his daughter her lover's heart in a golden cup, or Lisabetta, who hides her murdered lover's head in a pot of basil. Many are comic and bawdy, and a good number mock greedy, lustful, or hypocritical clergy, beginning with Ser Ciappelletto, a scoundrel whose false deathbed confession makes him a popular saint. Others are serious moral and religious tales: Abraham the Jew, who is converted because the Church survives the corruption of Rome; Melchisedech and the parable of the three rings; and Federigo, who sacrifices his falcon for the woman he loves. The last day honors magnanimity and ends with Griselda, the peasant wife whose husband tests her patience with cruel trials. In the introduction to the fourth day and in his conclusion Boccaccio defends himself against critics who called his work indecent or frivolous. The Decameron became a model for Italian prose and a storehouse of plots for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, and many others. This library hosts the 1903 English translation by J. M. Rigg.
Top Lessons
Charity in a time of plague
Boccaccio's opening shows what fear did to Florence in 1348: the sick were abandoned by neighbors, kin, and even parents, and the dead were buried without mourning. The ten young people answer the disaster by withdrawing to order, courtesy, and stories, not by nursing the sick. Students can weigh that response against the Christian call to stay with the suffering.
Satire of the clergy and the truth of the faith
Many tales mock friars, monks, and priests who are greedy, lustful, or false, beginning with Ser Ciappelletto. Yet the second tale argues that the Church must be upheld by God because it survives such ministers. Students should distinguish satire of hypocrites from mockery of the faith they betray, and ask where Boccaccio's book does each.
Generosity and magnanimity
The tenth day honors liberality: Nathan offers his life to a jealous young man, Titus and Gisippus each try to die for the other, and Federigo on the fifth day gives up his last falcon. These tales show a nobility of soul that gives without counting the cost. Students can ask which acts are truly generous and which are proud display.
Patience, power, and Griselda
Griselda bears her husband's cruel tests without complaint, and Petrarch and Chaucer later retold her story as an example of patience. Yet Dioneo introduces the tale as mad folly that no one should copy, and the guests at the end condemn Gualtieri's harshness. The tale asks students to separate admirable endurance from obedience to wrong.
Fortune and human effort
The second and third days set fortune, which raises and ruins people suddenly, beside industry and wit, by which people win what they want. Boccaccio's characters rarely look to providence; they trust luck and cleverness. Students can compare that outlook with the Christian teaching that God governs what we call chance.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“Tis humane to have compassion on the afflicted”
Frequently cited
“brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes husband by wife”
“the goodness of God spares to regard our errors when they result from unavoidable ignorance”
“your religion continually grows, and shines more and more clear”
Frequently cited
“Each of these peoples deems itself to have the true inheritance, the true law, the true commandments of God”
Frequently cited
“I had rather have a man without wealth than wealth without a man”
“the rank I had with you was of your and God's bestowal, nor did I ever make as if it were mine by gift, or so esteem it, but still accounted it as a loan”
“they censured as intolerably harsh the probation to which he had subjected Griselda”
“whoso goes a reading among these stories, let him pass over those that vex him, and read those that please him”
“they may be readily cured thereof by the Lament of Jeremiah, the Passion of the Saviour, or the Complaint of the Magdalen”
Medical Lens
The introduction to the First Day is one of the most famous eyewitness-style descriptions of the Black Death: Boccaccio records the tumours called gavoccioli in the groin and armpits, the black or livid spots that followed, the helplessness of physicians and of the many untrained people practising medicine, the city's cleansing and its refusal of entry to the sick, public processions and prayers, and the breakdown of care for the sick and the dead. Several later tales mock physicians and quacks, among them Master Simone, the gullible doctor of the eighth and ninth days.
- First Day: Introduction
Symptoms and course of the plague of 1348 in Florence, the uselessness of medicine, and the mass graves dug for the dead.
- First Day: Introduction
How the citizens responded: some shut themselves away in moderation, some gave themselves to excess, many fled, and the sick were abandoned.
- Day 8, Novel 9
Bruno and Buffalmacco make a fool of Master Simone, a physician who is vain of his learning.