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Day 8: First 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
Panfilo’s “tale of country love” will teach the useful moral that one shouldn’t believe everything a priest says. In Varlungo, a barely literate Worthy Priest entertains his parishioners with “holy aphorisms” on Sundays. In their husbands’ absence, he “blesses” the parish wives. He especially likes Monna Belcolore, the wife of Bentivegna del Mazzo, a “seductive-looking” and “buxom” woman “better versed in the grinder’s art than any other girl” in the hamlet. When she dances and plays her tambourine, she drives everyone wild.
As soon as Panfilo invokes “country love,” he’s put readers on notice that his tale’s humor will arise from mockery of lower-class characters. The priest who isn’t very good at his job (thanks to his incomplete education) and who seduces his parishioners between Sundays is a figure of anticlerical satire, since Roman Catholic priests take vows of celibacy. Belcolore and her husband have literal names: hers means “well-colored,” indicating her beauty, while his means “may you have joy of the rod,” crudely reminding the audience that this tale isn’t going to be about refined, aristocratic love, but plain old sex.
Active
Themes
The Worthy Priest tries to attract Monna Belcolore’s attentions, singing in church to impress her (he sounds like a donkey) and giving her tokens of his affection like garlic and onions. When he meets Bentivegna del Mazzo on his way to Florence to answer a court summons, he sends the man off with his blessing and runs to Belcolore’s home. Monna Belcolore expresses surprise that priests “do that sort of thing” which the Priest claims to do particularly well. He offers her a small gift, but she wants money to retrieve some pawned items.
The portrait of the Worthy Priest is as unflattering as it is humorous, and in the context of The Decameron’s larger anticlerical satire, the Priest’s braying songs certainly suggest an affinity between hypocritical clergy and asses generally. His gifts suggest that rustic peasants are undiscerning, smelly, or both. Not only are his onions and garlic the kind of common crops grown everywhere, but he also doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that they will make Belcolore herself stinky. While he offers her a gift—an object whose exchange creates a bond between giver and recipient—she would prefer money. Money is less romantic, but far more practical in a small rural economy, where she has already had to pawn some of her nicer belonging for cash.
Active
Themes
The Worthy Priest promises to pay Monna Belcolore within a week, but she refuses “to do his bidding without a quid pro quo,” especially because he has ruined other girls’ reputations already. Desperate and “rearing to get on with the job,” he offers her his fine woolen cloak as a surety, so she allows him to give her kisses and more in the barn. Only afterwards does he consider the difficulty of coming up with the five pounds he promised her.
But being a “crafty […] fellow,” the Worthy Priest comes up with a plan to retrieve his cloak for free. The next day, he borrows Monna Belcolore’s mortar and pestle to make a sauce. Then, just as she and Bentivegna del Mazzo are sitting down to breakfast, he sends his sacristan to return it and ask her to return the cloak he had given her against its loan. On hearing that she’d asked the Priest for a surety, Bentivegna angrily tells her that the priest should have what he wants without charge or surety required.
Active
Themes
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Monna Belcolore sends the cloak back to the Worthy Priest with her own message: he “won’t be grinding any more of [his] sauces in her mortar.” She refuses to talk to him for the rest of the summer, but eventually he wears through her resistance with the threat of hellfire. Eventually, she makes peace with him, allowing him to repay her in other ways.
Active
Themes
