Christ began to do and to teach

“Christ began to do and to teach” is a biblical phrase turned into a practical rebuke: those who instruct others in virtue should first embody what they teach. In the Decameron, the saying sharpens a critique of friars who demand exemplary conduct from the laity while failing to live by their own precepts.

Wording and Scriptural Source

The expression appears as the conclusion of an argument about religious example: if friars choose to live as friars, the speaker says, they should follow the Gospel’s order and “Christ began to do and to teach.” The paired verbs matter. Doing comes first; teaching follows, and the sequence makes conduct the credential for instruction rather than an optional accompaniment to it. A footnote identifies the allusion as an apparent reference to the opening verse of the Acts of the Apostles, where Luke describes his former treatise as concerning what Jesus began both to do and to teach. The note also cautions that the biblical passage does not support the interpretation Boccaccio’s speaker gives it. The expression therefore works at once as a recognizable scriptural echo and as a deliberately sharpened application of that echo to clerical behavior.

The Argument Against Clerical Hypocrisy

The phrase belongs to a sustained attack on friars who answer criticism with the maxim “Do as we say and not as we do.” Their demands upon lay people include giving money, keeping chastity, practising patience, forgiving injuries, and avoiding slander. The speaker exposes the self-interest beneath those demands: the friars benefit when the laity provide money, remain patient, and trust them with private matters, while the friars themselves evade the restraint they prescribe. The criticism turns especially on the contradiction between public religious authority and private conduct. The speaker recalls friars who pursue women, including nuns, and notes that some of those who do so make the loudest sermons. The appeal to Christ’s example reverses the usual direction of moral instruction: instead of treating the friar’s office as proof of virtue, it makes the friar’s actions the evidence by which his teaching must be judged.

The Saying in the Story Collection’s Clerical Satire

The expression’s force fits a collection in which religious appearances repeatedly prove unreliable. Ser Ciappelletto, a notorious wrongdoer, gives a friar a false confession and is subsequently revered as a saint. In another tale, Abraham visits the Roman court and finds churchmen devoted to lust, greed, and gluttony; nevertheless, he concludes that Christianity’s continued growth despite their conduct testifies to its divine foundation. These stories approach clerical failure from different directions, but both distinguish the claims of religion from the conduct of its representatives. The pattern also includes religious figures who exploit the authority their office supplies. An abbot makes Ferondo believe he has been in purgatory, using the deception to serve his own ends, while Fra Alberto impersonates the angel Gabriel and is exposed before a crowd. These episodes do not quote the expression, but they give its demand for congruence between teaching and practice a wider narrative setting: religious language can instruct, console, or deceive, and a holy appearance is no guarantee of holy conduct.

Meaning and Limits

The saying is not presented as a detached theological explanation of the biblical verse. Its immediate purpose is argumentative: it denies that a religious teacher can excuse personal misconduct by insisting that the laity obey. The speaker’s appeal makes exemplary action a condition of credible instruction, while the scriptural wording lends force to a rebuke aimed at institutional hypocrisy. At the same time, the collection’s surrounding stories prevent the critique from collapsing into a simple claim that corrupt clergy disprove Christianity. Abraham’s conversion makes the distinction explicit: the failures of churchmen condemn those individuals, yet do not, in his reasoning, overturn the truth of the faith they fail to uphold. The expression thus carries both an ethical standard for teachers and a satirical measure of the distance between religious profession and lived behavior.