Ferondo Is Made to Seem Dead and Deceived into Believing He Is in Purgatory is a tale of fabricated death used to conceal clerical desire. An abbot exploits Ferondo’s jealousy and credulity, first declaring that the farmer must die to be cured, then making him believe that the prison where he is beaten is purgatory. The trick allows the abbot to visit Ferondo’s wife in secret, while the supposed penance gradually teaches Ferondo to renounce the very jealousy that made him vulnerable.

The Tale and Its Setting

After Emilia finishes her long story, the queen signals Lauretta to speak. Lauretta introduces a true story that, she says, sounds more like a falsehood: a living man was buried as dead, then came to believe that he had risen from the sepulchre and was revered as a saint, though the abbot behind the deception deserved condemnation as a criminal. The tale is therefore framed from the outset by the gap between appearance and truth, and by the danger of mistaking an imposed performance for a miracle.

The events take place at a remote abbey in Tuscany. Its abbot is reputed to be holy and just, except in his dealings with women, a failing he conceals so successfully that almost no one suspects it. Ferondo, a wealthy farmer, becomes his close companion. The abbot enjoys the farmer’s extraordinary foolishness, but his attention turns to Ferondo’s beautiful wife, with whom he becomes passionately enamoured. He fears that Ferondo, despite his dullness in other matters, is too watchful and jealous for the abbot to reach her openly.

Confession Becomes a Bargain

The abbot draws the couple to the abbey garden and entertains them with pious talk about eternal life and the good works of earlier men and women. His performance persuades Ferondo’s wife to ask permission to confess to him. Seated at the abbot’s feet, she describes her marriage as a kind of widowhood: she is bound to a husband whose foolishness and excessive jealousy leave her in misery, and she asks for counsel before undertaking any other religious good work.

The abbot welcomes her complaint because it gives him an opening. He presents Ferondo’s jealousy as an affliction for which he knows a remedy: Ferondo must go to purgatory, die there, undergo sufficient penance, and then be restored to life through prayers. The wife agrees, provided that she need not remain imprisoned in her marriage for the rest of her life. The abbot warns her not to marry anyone during Ferondo’s supposed absence, since Ferondo would return more jealous than before.

He then demands her love as the reward for his service, promising to visit her by night while Ferondo is in purgatory and to provide the solace her husband should have given her. He appeals to his own desire, insists that his sanctity resides in the soul rather than the body, and offers precious jewels as another inducement. The wife is aghast at the demand, but after the abbot continues to persuade her, she agrees to obey once Ferondo has been sent away. Pleased, the abbot gives her a handsome ring and arranges for Ferondo to come to the abbey. The wife returns to her companions praising the abbot’s sanctity, an outward account that conceals the bargain just made.

A Death Manufactured

When Ferondo arrives, the abbot prepares a sleeping powder he obtained in the Levant from a great prince. The prince had claimed that the substance was used by the Old Man of the Mountain to send people, while asleep, into his paradise or bring them out of it. According to the abbot’s knowledge of the powder, its effect lasts for a period proportionate to the amount given, without harming the person who takes it, and makes the sleeper appear lifeless. The abbot mixes a dose sufficient for three days into a beaker of wine that has not yet cleared, and Ferondo drinks it without suspicion.

The abbot and some monks make sport of Ferondo’s foolishness in the cloister. As the powder takes effect, Ferondo is overcome by a sudden, powerful drowsiness; he falls asleep while still standing and then collapses. The abbot pretends alarm, has Ferondo loosened, calls for cold water to be thrown on his face, and tries other remedies as though some bodily disorder had driven away his life and senses. The monks feel for a pulse and find no sign of life, so they conclude that he is dead.

Ferondo’s wife and kinsfolk are summoned. She mourns him for a time with her kinswomen, and the abbot has Ferondo laid in a tomb in the clothes he is wearing. She then returns home, saying that she means not to leave the little son she had by her husband; she remains there to govern the child and Ferondo’s wealth. The public burial makes the false death credible to the people closest to him, while also removing him from his wife’s household and placing his estate under her management.

That night, the abbot and a trusted Bolognese monk secretly take Ferondo out of the tomb. They carry him into a lightless vault used as a prison for monks who have committed offences. There they remove his clothes, dress him as a monk, and lay him on straw until he regains his senses. The abbot instructs his accomplice in what to do, keeping the arrangement secret from everyone else.

The Counterfeit Purgatory

The following day, the abbot visits Ferondo’s wife, who is dressed in black and appears to be in great distress. After comforting her, he quietly reminds her of her promise. She says she is ready and appoints him to come that night. The abbot then makes repeated night journeys to her, dressed in Ferondo’s clothes and accompanied by the Bolognese monk. When villagers encounter him on the way, they believe Ferondo is going about the countryside doing penance. Their stories circulate among the country people and reach the wife, who knows what those apparent sightings really mean.

When Ferondo wakes in the vault, the Bolognese monk greets him with a frightening noise and beats him soundly with a rod. Ferondo can only weep and ask where he is; the monk tells him that he is in purgatory and is dead. The monk brings him food and drink, explaining that Ferondo’s former wife sent them to the church for masses for his soul and that God has ordered the provisions to be given to him. Ferondo accepts the explanation, eats ravenously, and complains that the wine is poor, wishing his wife had sent wine from a particular cask. His mundane appetite persists inside the supposedly supernatural ordeal.

After the meal, the monk beats him again. He says that God has ordained two beatings each day because Ferondo was jealous despite having the best woman in the country for a wife. Ferondo agrees that his wife was kind, but says he did not know God disapproved of jealousy. The monk tells him he should have corrected himself while alive. Ferondo responds that, if he ever returns to the world, he will be the best husband: he will not beat his wife or speak harshly to her, except perhaps about the wine and the candles she sent for the masses.

The monk explains that he too is dead, and that he must feed and beat Ferondo because he once praised a jealous master. He says that thousands of other people are present, although Ferondo cannot see or hear them, and that their present place is many miles from their home countries. Ferondo’s questions and the monk’s invented answers give the imprisonment the shape of a complete afterlife, turning a hidden vault, a rod, and food sent by his wife into apparent evidence of divine judgment.

Return to the Tomb

Ferondo spends ten months being fed and beaten while the abbot continues his visits to the wife. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she tells the abbot. They decide that Ferondo must be returned to life without delay, so she can claim that the child is his. The abbot has Ferondo summoned in a counterfeit voice and tells him that God has decided he may return to the world, where he will have a son by his wife. He is to name the child Benedict, supposedly in response to the prayers of his holy abbot and wife and in honour of Saint Benedict. Ferondo rejoices and blesses God, the abbot, and his wife.

The abbot gives him another dose of the powder in wine, this time enough to make him sleep for about four hours. With the Bolognese monk’s help, he dresses Ferondo in his own clothes and secretly puts him back in the tomb where he had been buried. At daybreak, Ferondo wakes and sees light through a crack, something he has not seen for nearly ten months. Convinced that he has been brought back to life, he cries out to be released and pushes against the tomb lid until it begins to move.

The monks, who have finished saying matins, recognize Ferondo’s voice and see him trying to emerge. Terrified by what appears to be a resurrection, they flee to the abbot. He pretends to rise from prayer, tells them not to fear, and directs them to take the cross and holy water and follow him to see what God wishes to show through his power. The episode’s last turn repeats its governing deception: the man who engineered the false death and false purgatory now presents the staged return as a divine sign, ready to control the meaning others assign to what they see.