Fra Cipolla’s relic switch and improvised sermon

Fra Cipolla’s relic switch and improvised sermon is a tale of fraud rescued by performance: when two young men replace the relic he intends to display with a box of coals, Fra Cipolla does not admit defeat but turns the substitution into a new miracle. His invention persuades the people of Certaldo to accept the coals as sacred and to pay for blessings, while the episode exposes how easily authority, ritual, and a crowd’s expectations can be enlisted in a convincing deception.

The Feather and the Setup

Fra Cipolla has promised the people of Certaldo that they will see the feather of the Angel Gabriel. The claim depends on a world in which the object can seem plausible: the story says that few in that part of Tuscany had ever seen or even heard of a parrot. In Fra Cipolla’s chamber, two young men find the supposed relic in a little casket wrapped in taffeta, inside his saddle-bags. They take the feather and, so that the casket will not appear empty, put in some coals they find in a corner. They replace everything as they found it and leave without being seen.

The substitution is made possible by the very apparatus that lends the relic its authority. The feather is kept out of ordinary sight, carefully wrapped and stored in a casket; the waiting audience will encounter it only through Fra Cipolla’s ceremony and interpretation. The young men know that he expects to show the feather, but their trick does not supply an explanation for what happens next. They wait to hear what he will say when he discovers the coals.

A Crowd Arrives to See a Relic

The promise spreads by word of mouth. After mass, people return home, neighbors tell neighbors, and, once the meal is over, so many country people crowd into Certaldo that the town can scarcely contain them. Fra Cipolla has eaten and slept before he hears how large the gathering is. He sends for Guccio Balena, ordering him to bring the bells and saddle-bags; Guccio has to tear himself away from the kitchen and Nuta before he can carry out the errand.

The scene heightens the stakes of the discovery: the missing feather is not a private disappointment but the expected centrepiece of a public religious display. Fra Cipolla begins his sermon without realizing that anything has been disturbed. He speaks at length, then prepares to reveal the relic with formal gestures: he recites the Confiteor, has two torches lit, removes his bonnet, and delicately unfolds the taffeta around the casket. When he opens it and sees coals, he does not change colour. He does not identify the young men or accuse Guccio Balena; inwardly, he blames himself for entrusting his possessions to a servant he knows to be negligent, disobedient, careless, and forgetful.

The Improvised Pilgrimage

Fra Cipolla raises his eyes and hands to heaven and treats the unexpected contents as an occasion for praise. He tells the congregation that, when young, he was sent by his superior to seek the Privileges of Porcellana. From Venice, he claims, he travelled through Borgo de' Greci, Algarve, and Sardinia, then through the lands of Truffia, Buffia, and Menzogna. His invented geography supplies a stage for jokes about travelling friars who seek their own advantage and spend money that is not coined. He continues through the Abruzzi and the Mountains of the Bachi, finally claiming to have reached India Pastinaca, where hedge-bills supposedly fly. He invokes Maso del Saggio as a witness, claiming to have found him there cracking walnuts and selling the shells by retail.

The fanciful journey changes register when Fra Cipolla reaches the holy countries. He describes meeting the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, in reverence for the habit of Saint Anthony, showed him many relics. The list combines extravagant impossibilities with mock-learned detail: the finger of the Holy Ghost, a seraph’s forelock, a nail of the Cherubim, part of the Verbum Caro, rays of the star seen by the Three Wise Men, and a vial of Saint Michael’s sweat from his fight with the devil. Fra Cipolla says that, in return for the Steeps of Monte Morello and chapters of the Caprezio, the patriarch gave him relics including a tooth of the Holy Rood, the sound of the bells of Solomon’s Temple in a vial, the feather of the Angel Gabriel, and coals used to roast Saint Lawrence. He claims to have brought them home devoutly, kept them with him, and waited for his superior’s approval before displaying them; that approval, he says, followed miracles and letters from the patriarch.

The Coals Become a Miracle

Fra Cipolla now supplies the explanation that the theft has made necessary. He says that he carries the feather and Saint Lawrence’s coals in separate caskets, but that they look so alike he has sometimes mistaken one for the other. He declares that this time, too, he took the wrong casket. Rather than present the error as mere carelessness, he recasts it as divine purpose: the feast of Saint Lawrence is only two days away, so God must have placed the coals in his hands to rekindle devotion to the martyr.

He invites the people to remove their bonnets and come forward to see the relic. He adds a practical promise to the spiritual explanation: anyone marked with these coals in the form of a cross can be assured that fire will not touch them for the whole year. Chanting a canticle in praise of Saint Lawrence, he opens the casket. The crowd looks on with reverent admiration, then presses around him, offering more generously than before and asking him to touch their clothes with the coals. Fra Cipolla makes large crosses on white smocks, doublets, and women’s veils. He further claims that the coals grow again in the casket as they diminish in use. The failed display has become a profitable rite, and his quick invention has given the crowd a reason to receive precisely the object the young men substituted.

Exposure, Survival, and Comic Reversal

The two young men have been present for the sermon. They laugh so hard at Fra Cipolla’s account of the relics, his travels, and the deftness of his explanation that they fear they will split their sides. Once the common people have departed, they approach him, reveal the substitution, and return the feather. The joke does not destroy Fra Cipolla’s public performance: the people have already received their crosses, and the missing relic has served him well in their absence. The returned feather is available for him to use again the following year.

The action’s reversal is therefore not from fraud to exposure, but from one possible fraud to another, more resourceful performance. Fra Cipolla’s advertised relic is counterfeit, and his tale of its acquisition is an invention; yet the unexpected coals allow him to turn a threatened embarrassment into a successful show. The episode makes the crowd’s credulity part of the comedy, but also gives the friar’s presence of mind its own force: the pranksters take the feather, while he takes control of what the audience sees and what it means.