Nonna de’ Pulci’s St. John’s Day retort is a pointed reversal: when Bishop Antonio d’Orso publicly teased her about winning the marshal Dego della Ratta, she answered in a way that recalled Dego’s earlier payment to a husband for access to his wife. In the setting of a public Florentine celebration, her quick reply made the bishop and marshal feel the shame their own conduct had invited.

A story about how to answer an insult

Lauretta tells the episode within the Fifth Day’s storytelling, after reflecting on the art of the witty saying. Such a remark, she argues, should bite like a sheep rather than a dog: a sharp retort may be justified when it answers an insult, but its force depends on who speaks, to whom, and when and where. The encounter gives her argument a concrete test. Antonio’s teasing is not harmless banter to Nonna; it threatens her honor in front of a crowd, so she answers with a counterstroke rather than letting the insinuation stand.

The bargain behind the encounter

Before the public exchange, Dego had taken an interest in a beautiful Florentine woman who was the granddaughter of Antonio’s brother. Her husband was reputed to be miserly, and Dego agreed to pay him five hundred gold florins in exchange for being allowed to lie with her for a night. The encounter was against the woman’s will. To make the payment, Dego had silver poplins gilded so that they could pass for gold florins unless examined closely. The husband accepted them; once the deception became known, he suffered both financial loss and public scorn.

Antonio, though considered a discreet man, affected not to know what had happened. The episode thus places him in an uncomfortable position when he later rides beside Dego: the bishop has avoided acknowledging the marshal’s fraud and the harm done to his own kinswoman, yet he is willing to make that woman the subject of a public jest.

The St. John’s Day retort

The exchange takes place as Antonio and Dego ride together on St. John’s Day, watching the women along the route of the race for the mantle. Antonio points out Nonna, a young, newly married woman, and asks whether she thinks she could win Dego over. The question turns her into the target of a flirtatious challenge before the people nearby, putting her reputation at stake.

Nonna answers, “Maybe, sir, he would not make a conquest of me; but, in any case, I should want good money.” Her reference to money makes the remark more than a refusal to entertain the bishop’s suggestion. It recalls Dego’s earlier bargain and gilded payment, exposing the transaction beneath his reputation as a gallant. Because Antonio had remained silent about that affair, the reply also implicates him: the bishop’s own kinswoman has returned his insinuation with a reminder of what he had chosen not to confront.

Reversal and narrative significance

The rebuke lands on both riders. Dego is touched as the man who arranged the fraudulent payment, while Antonio is touched through the dishonor done to his relative and his own silence about it. The two men ride away shamefaced, without looking at one another or saying anything more to Nonna that day. The public teasing that threatened her honor ends instead in their retreat.

Lauretta presents the moment as an example of a retort proportionate to its provocation: Nonna does not begin the exchange, but answers the men who have put her in it. The story’s compact reversal turns a bishop’s attempted jest into an exposure of clerical discretion and male complicity, while the gilded coins remain the concrete measure of the difference between Dego’s performance of gallantry and the fraud that lay behind it.