Ginevra and Bernabo Lomellini's Marriage

Ginevra and Bernabo Lomellini's Marriage is a bond nearly destroyed when Bernabo trusts a rival merchant's false claim over his wife's known character. Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza's wager turns stolen objects and a private bodily mark into seeming proof of adultery; Bernabo responds by ordering Ginevra's death. She survives, lives for years under a male identity, and ultimately brings the accusation into the open. The marriage's restoration depends on her survival and her decision to forgive the husband who had condemned her.

The marriage put on trial

Bernabo and Ginevra are already husband and wife when their relationship becomes the subject of a dispute in Paris. Ambrogiuolo insists that women can be induced to betray their husbands and stakes money on his ability to prove the claim against Ginevra. Bernabo accepts a wager of five thousand gold florins against Ambrogiuolo's thousand. The terms give Ambrogiuolo three months to return with evidence, while Bernabo pledges not to go to Genoa or write to his wife during that period. The other merchants try to prevent the contest, anticipating that it may cause serious harm, but the two men bind themselves by written agreements.

The wager places Ginevra's fidelity in the hands of men who treat it as something to be tested and priced. Ambrogiuolo does not win her consent or enter into any intimacy with her. Instead, he bribes a poor woman connected with Ginevra's household to smuggle him into the house concealed in a chest. On successive nights he emerges while Ginevra sleeps, studies the bedchamber, and takes a purse, a night-rail, rings, and girdles. He also observes a mole beneath her left breast, surrounded by small reddish-gold hairs. These details give him the means to make a lie sound like knowledge acquired through adultery.

From suspicion to a death sentence

Back in Paris, Ambrogiuolo describes the chamber and produces Ginevra's belongings. Bernabo recognizes the room and the objects but initially points out that they could have been obtained from a servant. Ambrogiuolo then names the concealed mark. Bernabo's changed expression reveals how decisively the intimate detail has persuaded him; he accepts the claim as true and pays the wager. The episode makes the marriage's crisis turn not on an encounter between the spouses, but on Bernabo's willingness to let a stranger's carefully assembled signs outweigh his experience of Ginevra.

Bernabo leaves Paris with a deadly intention. Rather than enter Genoa himself, he waits at a country house about twenty miles away and sends a trusted servant to deliver a message summoning Ginevra. He privately orders the servant to kill her. Ginevra receives the news of her husband's return joyfully and rides out with the servant the next day. In a deep, lonely valley among rocks and trees, the servant draws his knife and tells her she must die. He says that Bernabo ordered the killing, though he does not know what offense she is supposed to have committed.

Ginevra pleads that she has done nothing to deserve such a death and asks the servant not to become her murderer in order to obey another man. She offers a way out: he can take her clothes back to Bernabo, report her dead, and leave her his doublet and hood so that she can disappear. Moved by compassion and unwilling to kill her, he accepts the exchange and gives her some of her money. He tells Bernabo that the killing is done and claims that wolves ate her body. The lie briefly completes the appearance of Ginevra's death; it does not establish her guilt.

Ginevra's concealed survival

After nightfall, Ginevra leaves the valley in disguise. She adopts masculine dress and the name Sicurano, and for six years travels through the world in that assumed identity. This long separation transforms the marriage's apparent ending into a suspension: Bernabo believes his wife dead, while Ginevra remains alive, bearing the consequences of his decision and concealing who she is. Her male presentation allows her to move through the story without being recognized as the woman whose alleged adultery had prompted the attempt on her life.

Eventually Ginevra, still known as Sicurano, encounters Ambrogiuolo and recognizes him. She arranges for Bernabo to come to Alexandria, where she can bring both men before the sultan. Ambrogiuolo has already recounted his boastful story for the sultan's amusement. In Bernabo's presence, he is pressed to tell how he won the wager and repeats the deception. Ginevra then asks Bernabo what he did to his wife in response to the lie. He admits that, overcome by anger over his lost money and the shame he believed he had suffered, he ordered a servant to kill her and accepted the report that wolves had devoured her.

Recognition, forgiveness, and the restored bond

Only after Bernabo has confessed does Ginevra disclose herself. She kneels before the sultan, lays aside her masculine voice and manner, and identifies herself as Ginevra, who has spent six years wandering in disguise. She opens her clothing to show the breast that bears the mark Ambrogiuolo had used as supposed proof. Turning to Ambrogiuolo, she challenges the claim that he ever lay with her; he recognizes her and is rendered speechless. The sultan, who had believed Sicurano to be a man, is astonished, then praises Ginevra's conduct and constancy.

At Ginevra's request, the sultan pardons Bernabo rather than imposing the death he deserves. Bernabo recognizes his wife, falls at her feet, weeps, and asks forgiveness. Ginevra grants it, raises him, and embraces him as her husband. Their reunion is therefore not presented as a simple return to the earlier marriage: it follows a public confession, the exposure of the false evidence, and Ginevra's deliberate choice to spare Bernabo. The sultan also orders Ambrogiuolo punished and gives Ginevra his property, along with a substantial gift of jewels, precious vessels, and money. He provides a ship for the couple's return to Genoa, where they arrive wealthy and are received with honor, particularly Ginevra, whom many had believed dead.

What the crisis reveals about their marriage

The plot distinguishes fidelity from the appearance of proof. Ambrogiuolo's knowledge is real, but its source is secret intrusion, not an affair; the objects and bodily mark establish access to Ginevra's private room, not consent or betrayal. Bernabo's failure is not merely that he misreads evidence: he refuses the interval in which trust might have restrained judgment, and his suspicion becomes an order to kill. Ginevra, by contrast, survives through persuasion, disguise, and decisive action, then determines the terms of the marriage's restoration by forgiving him.

The ending joins private reconciliation to public correction. Bernabo's confession makes his responsibility audible before the sultan and assembled witnesses; Ginevra's appearance overturns the story that had defined her as dead and unfaithful. Her return with Bernabo repairs the marriage, but the narrative leaves intact the gravity of what he did and the extraordinary cost of her survival. Their bond endures not because the accusation was harmless, but because Ginevra lives to reveal the truth and chooses to restore the relationship.