Puccio di Rinieri

Puccio di Rinieri is a wealthy, earnest, and markedly gullible religious devotee whose attempt to secure his own salvation becomes the cover for Dom Felice’s affair with his wife. In Pamfilo’s story, Puccio’s rigid piety does not protect his household: it supplies the monk with a scheme that keeps Puccio awake in prayer while leaving the way clear for the lovers.

Identity and Religious Life

Puccio lives near San Pancrazio and is described as an honest, well-to-do man. In later life he devotes himself entirely to religious observance and becomes a tertiary of the Franciscan Order, acquiring the name Fra Puccio. With only his wife and a maid in his household, he has no craft to occupy him, and his days revolve around churchgoing and devotional practice.

His observances are regular and strenuous: he recites prayers, attends sermons and mass, joins the Lauds sung by lay confraternities, and fasts and mortifies himself. There is even a rumor that he belongs to the Flagellants. Yet the narrator emphasizes that Puccio is also ignorant and slow-witted. His devotion is sincere, but he lacks the discernment to distinguish religious instruction from a performance designed to exploit him.

Household and Dom Felice

Puccio’s wife, Isabetta, is young, around twenty-eight to thirty, and described as attractive and full of life. Because of her husband’s piety—and perhaps his age—she endures longer and more frequent fasts than she wants. When she seeks sleep or affection, Puccio instead recounts religious material to her, including the life of Christ and sermons. Their marriage is thus presented as a household in which his devotional routine leaves her wants unattended.

Dom Felice, a young, handsome, quick-witted, and learned conventual of San Pancrazio, has recently returned from Paris. Puccio forms a close friendship with him, impressed by the monk’s ability to resolve his doubts and by the show of devotion he makes. Trusting him, Puccio brings him home to dine and sup; Isabetta, for her husband’s sake, also receives him cordially. Dom Felice notices her and, after making clear his desire, discovers that she will meet him only in her own home. Puccio, meanwhile, never goes outside the town. The constraint that seems to make an affair impossible gives the monk a reason to invent a plan that can operate inside Puccio’s house.

The Counterfeit Penance

Dom Felice tells Puccio that there is a shorter, little-known road to blessedness than the one Puccio is following. He claims that church authorities keep it secret because, if ordinary people knew it, they would stop giving alms to the clergy. The proposed penance requires Puccio first to confess his sins, then to fast strictly for forty days and abstain from touching any woman, including his wife.

Each night, around Compline, Puccio must stand beneath an open view of the sky, lean his back against a wide plank, stretch out his arms in the posture of the crucifix, and remain motionless until Matins. He is to say three hundred Paternosters and three hundred Ave Marys during the vigil. In the daytime he may sleep after Matins, but must attend at least three masses, repeat another fifty of each prayer, and return to church for evening devotions before beginning the vigil again. Dom Felice presents these exhausting instructions as a practice he has performed himself and assures Puccio that devout perseverance will bring him a foretaste of eternal beatitude.

Puccio accepts the regimen as manageable and decides to begin on Sunday. With Dom Felice’s permission, he tells Isabetta the entire plan. She understands what the monk intends by keeping her husband fixed in one place until Matins, but answers that she approves of his good work and will fast alongside him. Her agreement lets the deception proceed without making Puccio suspicious.

The Affair and Its Aftermath

Once Puccio begins the penance, Dom Felice comes to supper with Isabetta on most evenings, bringing plentiful food and drink. After Puccio has settled into his vigil, the monk stays with her until Matins. The penance is performed in a place beside her chamber, separated from it only by a thin wall. On one night, the lovers’ movement shakes the floor; Puccio pauses his prayers and calls to ask what his wife is doing. Isabetta answers that she is tossing about, and when he questions her, she explains it as the restlessness of a fasting person who cannot sleep. Puccio accepts the explanation and resumes his prayers, interpreting the disturbance through the very bodily deprivation his penance imposes.

After that night, Dom Felice and Isabetta arrange a bed in another part of the house. The monk leaves at the same hour each morning, and Isabetta returns to her own bed before Puccio finishes his vigil. Puccio continues the prescribed penance, unaware that its nightly schedule is serving the lovers rather than his spiritual advancement.

The deception outlasts the forty days. Once the penance is complete, Isabetta still finds ways to meet Dom Felice discreetly, and the narrator says that the affair continues for a long time. Puccio believes that his discipline has won him Paradise; in the story’s closing reversal, it has instead helped provide Dom Felice and Isabetta with the opportunity to enjoy themselves. His arc turns religious aspiration into dramatic irony: the more faithfully he follows the monk’s instructions, the more completely he enables the private life he is trying to exclude.