Bruno and Buffalmacco Steal a Pig and Blackmail Calandrino with a False Ordeal

Bruno and Buffalmacco’s theft of Calandrino’s pig turns a straightforward farmyard robbery into a public fraud: they steal the animal, then manipulate a staged ordeal until Calandrino appears guilty of stealing it himself. The trick succeeds not through any real test of guilt but through the bitterness of aloes, Calandrino’s credulity, and his fear that his wife will learn what has happened. Its final profit is two pairs of capons, while the victim is left with neither pig nor reputation.

The farm and the theft

Calandrino owns a small farm near Florence, part of his wife’s dowry. Each year he goes there with her to kill and salt a pig. On this occasion, his wife is unwell and stays behind, so he makes the trip alone. Bruno and Buffalmacco learn that she is absent and go to stay for several days with a priest, their close friend and Calandrino’s neighbor.

Calandrino welcomes them to the house and shows them the animal, presenting it as proof of what a capable household manager he is. Bruno suggests selling the pig and spending the money together, while Calandrino tells his wife it was stolen. Calandrino refuses: he expects her not to believe him and fears she would drive him from the house. His refusal does not end the matter. After leaving, Bruno and Buffalmacco decide to take the pig themselves and share the meal with the priest.

Their plan depends on Calandrino’s habits as much as on the open opportunity. Bruno proposes taking him to a tavern and having the priest pretend to pay the bill, knowing Calandrino likes to drink when someone else is footing the cost. Calandrino readily drinks, becomes drunk, and returns home late without eating supper. Thinking he has shut the door, he leaves it open and goes to bed. Bruno and Buffalmacco then enter without needing to break in, unhook the pig, and carry it to the priest’s house. They put it away and go to sleep; later, they salt the stolen animal.

A false test of guilt

In the morning, sober again, Calandrino finds the pig gone and the door open. He calls out in distress and asks whether anyone knows who took it. When Bruno and Buffalmacco arrive, they encourage him to make his complaint loudly, while pretending to suspect that he is inventing the theft. Calandrino insists that he is telling the truth, but their teasing establishes the story they will later exploit: perhaps he has taken the pig himself and is trying to deceive his wife and friends.

Buffalmacco offers to discover the thief through an ordeal. He first proposes bread and cheese, then Bruno objects that a guilty neighbor might refuse to attend. They settle instead on ginger boluses and wine, claiming that the thief will be unable to swallow a bolus and will find it more bitter than poison. Calandrino agrees, wanting to know who took the pig. Bruno asks him for money to buy the ingredients and receives about forty shillings.

The supposed sacred test is prepared by fraud. In Florence, Bruno buys a pound of ginger boluses from a druggist, then has two dogballs made with fresh hepatic aloes. He covers them with sugar so they resemble the others and marks them secretly to distinguish them. He also buys vernage, a white wine. The procedure is not a genuine means of identifying a thief: Bruno controls the marked substitutes and intends to place them with Calandrino.

The ordeal turns against Calandrino

The next morning, Calandrino assembles young Florentines and local farmers. Bruno and Buffalmacco arrive with a box of pills and wine, arrange the company in a ring, and explain that the thief will be unable to swallow his bolus. Their announcement makes the gathering itself part of the deception: everyone is invited to watch for a sign, and the supposed guilty person is offered a chance to confess privately to the priest rather than be exposed before the crowd.

Bruno distributes the boluses in order and gives Calandrino one of the bitter dogballs. Calandrino puts it into his mouth, tastes the aloes, and spits it out. Bruno feigns surprise and gives him the second marked ball, again treating the incident as though it might have some innocent explanation. This time Calandrino tries to keep the bolus in his mouth, but the taste is too bitter; he chews it, tears streaming down his face, and finally spits it out as well. The others have been watching one another, and the spectacle persuades them that Calandrino must have stolen his own pig. Some of them openly reproach him.

The ordeal reverses the meaning of Calandrino’s original complaint. His visible reaction, engineered by the aloes, is treated as proof of guilt, while the actual theft disappears from view. The performance works because its participants accept the rules Bruno has invented: the bolus is assumed to reveal what it was designed to conceal, and the victim’s inability to endure its bitterness becomes an accusation against him.

Blackmail and the final loss

Once the company has gone, Bruno and Buffalmacco turn the false verdict into a private demand. Buffalmacco accuses Calandrino of taking the pig and pretending otherwise to avoid spending money on his friends. Bruno adds a further allegation: someone at the gathering supposedly told him that Calandrino keeps a mistress and gives her whatever he can scrape together. On that invented account, the pig must have been sent or sold to her.

Bruno also invokes an earlier episode, when Calandrino led his companions down the Mugnone in search of the Heliotrope and afterward claimed to have found the magic stone. The reference allows the two men to cast this new accusation as another of Calandrino’s tricks, even though they themselves have stolen the pig. They say they will tell Mistress Tessa unless he pays them two pairs of capons. Afraid of his wife’s scolding and convinced that the men will not believe his oaths, Calandrino gives in. Bruno and Buffalmacco take the capons to Florence, having already salted the pig, and leave Calandrino to endure the loss and the mockery.

The episode’s comedy rests on the gap between what has happened and what the crowd is led to believe. Calandrino is the one whose animal has been stolen, yet the staged ritual makes him look like the thief; Bruno and Buffalmacco pose as helpers while directing every step toward their own advantage. The final threat exposes the practical purpose beneath the performance: the false ordeal supplies leverage, and the fear of domestic embarrassment turns that leverage into payment.