Friar Cipolla (whose name means “Onion”) is the protagonist of Dioneo’s sixth tale (VI, 10). He belongs to the order of St. Anthony’s Hospitallers, and he travels around with his servant Guccio Imbratta, displaying false relics and dazzling unsophisticated country-dwellers with his rhetorical skills. His false relics and his dazzling but empty rhetorical style make him part of the anticlerical satire threaded throughout The Decameron.
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Friar Cipolla Character Timeline in The Decameron
The timeline below shows where the character Friar Cipolla appears in The Decameron. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Day 6: Tenth Tale
...a friar of St. Anthony neatly avoided a trap set by two youths. Each year, Friar Cipolla visits Certaldo to collect alms. He’s warmly welcomed, maybe because his name sounds like “onion”...
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Giovanni del Bragoniera and Biagio Pizzini hear this and decide to play a prank on Friar Cipolla . While he dines with friends, they go to his inn with the intention of...
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Friar Cipolla frequently denigrates Guccio Imbratta (Guccio the Pig), listing his fatal flaws in a song: Porco...
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...they find a small box wrapped in cloth, in which is a parrot’s tail-feather. Doubtless, Friar Cipolla would have gotten away with this “relic,” since the townsfolk are simple and not well-traveled....
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That afternoon, when the entire populace has gathered in front of the church, Friar Cipolla begins his sermon. But at the climactic moment when he opens the box, he finds...
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...included the finger of the Holy Ghost and a phial of angel’s sweat. Tocursemenot gave Friar Cipolla “holes from the Holy Cross,” “sound … from Solomon’s Temple,” and Gabriel’s feather, among other...
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Friar Cipolla has the coals with him now because their box is identical to the feather’s box,...
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Day 6: Conclusion
As the laughter over Friar Cipolla ’s relics dies down, Elissa places the crown on Dioneo’s head. Claiming that the kings...
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