Nonna de’ Pulci’s retort

Nonna de’ Pulci’s retort turns a public tease into a compact exposure of complicity: when Antonio d'Orso asks whether she could win Dego della Ratta, she answers that she would require good money. Her wit recalls a sordid bargain involving the marshal and the bishop’s own kin, making the joke land on both the man who exploited a woman and the prelate who had kept silent.

The Incident Behind the Joke

Dego della Ratta, a Catalan marshal serving King Robert, had agreed with the miserly husband of a Florentine woman—Antonio d'Orso’s granddaughter—that he would pay five hundred gold florins for a night with her. The woman was unwilling. To meet the price, Dego had silver poplins gilded so that they would pass for gold florins, then gave them to the husband after lying with her. When the transaction became widely known, the husband suffered both loss and public scorn. Antonio d'Orso, the woman’s uncle, affected to know nothing of the affair.

The Public Tease

On Saint John’s Day in Florence, Antonio d'Orso and Dego della Ratta were riding together as they watched the women lining the way for the race. The bishop pointed out Nonna, then recently married, describing her as fresh, fair, well-spoken, and high-spirited. Near her, he laid his hand on Dego’s shoulder and asked, “Nonna, how deemest thou of this gallant? Thinkest thou thou couldst make a conquest of him?” In a crowded public setting, the question made her the target of a sexual jest and risked sullying her honor before those who heard it.

The Retort and Its Reversal

Nonna did not answer by denying the premise or pleading her reputation. She returned the insult in the language of the earlier bargain: “Maybe, sir, he would not make a conquest of me; but, in any case, I should want good money.” Her reply recast Dego’s supposed conquest as a transaction and recalled the gilded coins paid for an unwilling woman. The joke therefore rebuked not only the marshal, author of that deception, but also Antonio d'Orso, whose niece had been harmed and whose response had been silence.

Both men understood the allusion. They felt themselves touched to the quick, then rode away shamefast and silent, neither looking at the other nor speaking further to Nonna that day. The tale closes by treating her answer as a justified counterblow: having been bitten by the bishop’s words, she was free to “bite her biter with a retort.”