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Day 5: Sixth Tale
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Decameron, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sex
Men and Women
Moderation and Excess
Intelligence
Class and Character
Faith vs. Religion
Summary
Analysis
The ladies of the company, “on tenterhooks” while waiting to hear the lovers’ fate, rejoiced and thanked God for their release. The queen commands Lauretta to tell the next tale, and she cheerfully begins. In Sicily during the reign of King William the Second, a nobleman named Amerigo Abate lives in Trapani with his many children.
The ladies’ reaction to the suspense of the story—even though the day’s theme means it had to have a happy ending—is a description of “narrative catharsis,” the purification or purgation of negative emotions through experiencing a work of art, specifically a play or a story. The brigata left Florence to escape the horrors of the plague, and they tell stories to pass the time and as a pleasant form of entertainment. Thus, their reaction to the preceding story in this moment allows Giovanni Boccaccio to dramatize (in a story) the very work of emotional rebalancing that (good, emotionally powerful) stories can accomplish in their audiences.
Active
Themes
Needing servants to care for his estate and family, Amerigo Abate buys some children, “believing them to be Turkish,” who were captured by Genoese pirates along the Armenian Coast. One, named Teodoro, stands out from the rest of the “rustic … stock” due to his good looks and well-bred manners. He grows up more under the direction of his “innate good breeding” than the “accident of his menial status,” becoming so poised and agreeable that Amerigo grants his freedom, sponsors his conversion, and baptizes him as “Pietro.”
Medieval Christian social norms and laws disallowed owning other Christians as slaves (although they could be servants). Thus Amerigo purchases “Turkish,” or Muslim children. However, the fact that they were captured along the Armenian coast should have made him cautious; the Kingdom of Armenia practiced Christianity and had become a strong ally of European kingdoms in the Crusades. Teodoro’s differences from the other children, in both looks and manners, strongly suggest that he is a Christian Armenian at the very least, and likely a member of the nobility as well—all factors that should protect him from being enslaved. And he earns Amerigo’s trust through the power of his innate good character, despite the accidents of fortune that have led to his enslavement (like Guisfredi and the Outcast in III, 6).
Active
Themes
Teodoro (Pietro) and Violante (one of Amerigo Abate’s daughters) fall in love. Given his menial status, they cannot express their feelings publicly. One hot day, Amerigo’s Wife and a company of ladies and servants (including Violante and Teodoro) are in the country when a storm approaches. As they hurry home, Violante and Teodoro find themselves separated from the group, and when hail starts to fall, they shelter in a crumbling farm cottage. Huddled together under the insufficient scrap of roof, they move from declaring their love to hand-holding to kissing to sex.
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Themes
After that day, they meet at the cottage regularly until Violante becomes pregnant. When she’s unable to abort the pregnancy, Teodoro (Pietro) plans to flee, sure that she will be forgiven but that he will be executed for taking advantage of Amerigo Abate’s daughter. Violante convinces him to stay by promising to keep his name out of her scandal. When she confesses to Amerigo’s Wife, she’s taken to the country to have the baby secretly. But Amerigo happens to be passing by when Violante is in labor. Hearing the commotion, he bursts into the room and threatens to kill Violante until she confesses that Teodoro fathered her son.
Active
Themes
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Amerigo Abate has Teodoro (Pietro) arrested, and the local magistrate, Messer Currado, sentences him to be publicly whipped, then hanged. This isn’t enough to quench Amerigo’s rage, and on the day of the execution, he orders Violante to kill herself by poison or dagger, after which a servant will kill her baby. But going to the gallows, Teodoro passes some Armenian noblemen, passing through town on their way to Rome. One of them, Phineas, notices Teodoro’s strawberry birthmark and is reminded of his son, who was kidnapped years before by pirates.
Active
Themes
In the Armenian language, Phineas asks Teodoro about his past and Teodoro answers that his Armenian father’s name was Phineas. Phineas pushes through the crowd, tearfully embraces Teodoro, and drapes his silk cloak over the young man. He then hurries to Messer Currado, informing him that Teodoro is not a slave but a freeborn man willing to make his relationship with Violante right by marrying her. Cursing the waywardness of fortune, Currado stays the execution and calls for Amerigo Abate who, having stopped Violante’s forced suicide (which was held up by her indecision between the poison and the dagger), apologizes profusely for everything and declares his delight at the prospect of having Teodoro as a son-in-law.
Active
Themes
On hearing that Violante will marry him if he wishes, Teodoro (Pietro) has “the sensation of passing from Hell into Heaven at a single bound.” She is likewise relieved to learn that Teodoro is alive and ready to marry her. Their engagement is announced, Violante puts her son out to a wetnurse and recovers from her delivery, and after her confinement she presents herself to Phineas. After their wedding, Teodoro and Violante take their son and go to Armenia.
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Themes
