Gualtieri di Saluzzo, the marquis forced into marriage for reasons of state, chooses a poor girl of humble origins, Griselda (10). The women is made to face a series of trials, ever more cruel, in order to prove her submission to her husband. Gualtieri first has her believe he has killed their children, he then repudiates her for a new spouse, who is in reality their daughter. The docile and resigned way in which Griselda patiently submits to wifely duty allows her to win out in the end. By all considered “most wise” for her trial of condescendence, Griselda is celebrated by her family reunited (father, mother and two children).

This novella was much appreciated by Petrarch, who saw it as a lofty moral exemplum, and who translated it in part into Latin, in the Seniles XVII 3. Entitled De insigni obedientia et fide uxorial, this apologue was widely read and appreciated, in this abridged form that exalts its parenthetic character.

The value of the novella cannot in effect be limited to the sole function of moral teaching. Vittore Branca[1] has underlined how within the scope of the work is an ascension that guides the reader from the depravity of Ser Ciappelletto to the values of Griselda. Yet on closer scrutiny the modelling of the life of this young Piedmontese girl’s life on that of saints and martyrs is only partly so. From this point of view the trials set by Gualtieri would seem to represent the power of sin, but this would then not explain why the family is reunited when the husband is cast as the emissary of the devil. What the marquis would seem to more probably represent is instead the social authority of the head of the family, thus reiterating the importance of the family according to an ideology that gains more and more ground towards the end of the Decameron.

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[1]V. Branca, Boccaccio medievale, Florence 1970