Dom Gianni di Barolo—Pietro da Tresanti

Dom Gianni di Barolo and Pietro da Tresanti are friends whose reciprocal hospitality leads to a comic deception involving Dom Gianni’s mare and Pietro’s wife, Gemmata. Their bond is tested when Pietro believes the priest can magically turn a woman into a mare; Dom Gianni stages the transformation, but Pietro’s protest interrupts it. The episode turns a tale of friendship and generous hosting into a farce about credulity, performance, and the power of a badly timed word.

Identity and Background

Dom Gianni is a priest at Barletta with a poor living, which he supplements by traveling around the fairs of Apulia to buy and sell merchandise with his mare. Pietro, who calls himself a trader, travels in the same way with an ass. The two men meet through this shared occupation and form a close friendship. Their practical circumstances matter: neither is presented as wealthy, and both rely on animals and trade to make their way from fair to fair.

Pietro lives at Tresanti in a small house that barely accommodates him, Gemmata, and the ass. When Dom Gianni visits, there is no spare bed. The priest’s mare is stabled with Pietro’s ass, while Dom Gianni sleeps beside her on a truss of straw. This awkward arrangement establishes the material limits within which their hospitality operates: Pietro welcomes his friend, but cannot offer him the comfortable lodging he would like to provide.

Reciprocal Hospitality

The friendship is expressed through repeated acts of hosting. When Pietro comes to Barletta, Dom Gianni takes him to the parsonage and entertains him as generously as his means allow. When Dom Gianni travels to Tresanti, Pietro receives him in return, despite having only the one poor bed and little space. Their hospitality is reciprocal in intention, though not in comfort: each does what he can with what he has.

Gemmata recognizes the debt created by this exchange. Because Dom Gianni gives her husband lodging and welcomes him in Barletta, she repeatedly offers to sleep at a neighbor’s house when the priest visits, so that he might share the bed with Pietro. Dom Gianni refuses these offers. The story makes that refusal the hinge between ordinary hospitality and the fabricated marvel that follows: rather than accept the proposed arrangement, he supplies Gemmata and Pietro with an explanation involving his mare.

The Mare Transformation

Dom Gianni tells Gemmata that he can turn his mare into a beautiful woman and back again, and claims that this is why he does not need to leave the animal to sleep in Pietro’s bed. Gemmata believes him. She passes the claim to Pietro and urges him to learn the charm, imagining that Pietro could turn her into a mare while the ass and mare were put to work, then restore her to human form at home. Pietro, described as somewhat dull of wit, accepts the proposal and persistently asks Dom Gianni to teach him.

Dom Gianni first tries to dissuade him. When Pietro will not abandon the idea, the priest agrees to demonstrate before daybreak, warning that the procedure requires exact obedience and that speaking at the wrong moment will spoil it. Pietro and Gemmata, too impatient to sleep, rise early and summon him. Dom Gianni has Pietro hold a light and watch, then directs Gemmata to stand on all fours, naked, while he names the parts of a mare in sequence. The ceremony is a staged performance, not evidence of an actual transformation; its apparent magic provides cover for Dom Gianni’s sexual handling of Gemmata.

At the final step, Dom Gianni uses a dibble as the mare’s supposed tail. Pietro objects and tells him to stop. The interruption arrives after the rest of the ritual has been carried out, but Dom Gianni immediately declares the spell ruined and impossible to repeat. Pietro’s protest, which he believes protects his wife, instead gives the priest a ready explanation for why the promised transformation has failed. The comic mechanism depends on the contrast between Pietro’s earnest attention to the supposed rules and Dom Gianni’s control of the performance.

Rupture and Narrative Significance

Gemmata understands the practical absurdity of Pietro’s objection and rebukes him for spoiling what she had expected to gain from the supposed spell. Her response sharpens the joke: Pietro has neither secured the transformation he wanted nor successfully protected the arrangement from which he hoped to benefit. The attempted enchantment ends with Gemmata dressing, disappointed, and Pietro continuing his familiar trade with the ass.

The episode closes the incident without ending the friendship. Pietro and Dom Gianni go together to the fair at Bitonto, and Pietro never again asks him to perform such a service. Their companionship survives, but its terms have changed: Pietro has learned not to repeat this particular request, while the story leaves Dom Gianni’s successful deception intact. The relationship thus joins genuine reciprocal hospitality to comic exploitation. The same intimacy that makes Dom Gianni a welcome guest gives him access to Pietro’s home, and Pietro’s trust in his friend allows a boast to become a credible spell.