Ricciardo di Chinzica

Ricciardo di Chinzica is a wealthy judge of Pisa whose cleverness and command of rules cannot make his marriage conform to his desires. He marries the beautiful young Bartolomea, then turns the calendar into an elaborate system for avoiding sex; when a corsair takes her, the limits of his authority become unmistakable. His failed attempt to recover her ends not in reconciliation but in her refusal, his death from grief, and her marriage to the man she has chosen.

Identity and Marriage

Ricciardo is introduced as a judge more gifted in wit than in bodily strength. Although rich, he deliberately seeks a fair and young wife, a choice the narrator presents as a mistake he might have avoided had he applied to himself the counsel he gives others. Bartolomea, the daughter of a Pisan gentleman, is among the city’s most beautiful young women. Their difference in age and physical capacity is central to the story: Ricciardo has the means and judgment to arrange the marriage he wants, but not the strength to meet the expectations that marriage brings.

The wedding is celebrated with great pomp. On the first night, Ricciardo manages only a brief attempt at consummation, nearly exhausting himself. The next morning he restores himself with malmsey, restorative confections, and other remedies. The comic contrast is already established: a judge accustomed to handling affairs through study and argument finds that the body does not obey the same methods.

The Calendar as a Marital Device

After this failure, Ricciardo teaches Bartolomea a calendar that seems designed for children learning to read. He claims that every day is sacred to one or more saints and must therefore be kept free of marital intercourse. He adds fast days, Ember Days, apostolic vigils, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Lent, phases of the moon, and further exceptions. The accumulation makes his rule appear learned and comprehensive, but its practical effect is to restrict his young wife to sex perhaps once a month, or less.

Ricciardo’s calendar turns religious observance into a device for managing a marriage according to his own physical limits. He also keeps close watch over Bartolomea, afraid that someone else might teach her to distinguish supposed holidays from working days. His vigilance reveals the insecurity beneath his confident rule-making: he tries to control both the terms of intimacy and the knowledge by which his wife might question them.

Capture and Attempted Recovery

During a spell of hot weather, Ricciardo takes Bartolomea to a country estate near Monte Nero. To entertain her, he arranges a fishing excursion in two boats. The boats drift miles out to sea while their occupants are absorbed in the sport. A galliot belonging to the corsair Paganino da Mare overtakes the boat carrying the women. Paganino sees Bartolomea, takes her aboard, and sails away in full view of Ricciardo, who has reached land.

Ricciardo is especially distressed because he is jealous and does not know who has taken his wife or where she has gone. After learning that she is in Monaco, he goes there by sea, prepared to spend whatever is required for her ransom. Paganino receives him courteously and offers to bring the woman before him; if she confirms that Ricciardo is her husband and wishes to leave, Ricciardo may pay what he considers appropriate. If she does not, Paganino says, Ricciardo has no right to take her away. The terms shift the question from the judge’s claim and bargaining power to Bartolomea’s own decision.

Refusal and Ending

When Bartolomea appears, dressed and adorned, she greets Ricciardo as a stranger rather than embracing him as the husband who expects her return. Ricciardo first supposes that grief has changed his appearance so much that she no longer recognizes him. He then pleads with her to come back, promises to care for her honour, and says he will try to satisfy her desires. His appeal arrives only after the marriage’s long pattern of restriction has ended and after she has experienced a different life with Paganino.

Bartolomea rejects the idea that her husband can now claim to protect her honour. She contrasts the calendar-governed marriage in Pisa with her present life, where Paganino holds her through the night; she makes clear that she intends to stay and threatens to call for help if Ricciardo tries to force her away. The refusal defeats his effort to turn money, status, and renewed promises into control over her choice. He leaves for Pisa without her, overcome by grief and regret at having taken a young wife when he was already spent. For a time, whenever anyone addresses him, he answers, “The ill hole will have no holidays;” not long afterward, he dies.

Paganino, learning of Ricciardo’s death and of Bartolomea’s affection for him, marries her lawfully. The ending makes the calendar’s central irony plain: the rules Ricciardo devised to limit intimacy cannot secure his marriage, while Bartolomea’s new union is described as free of the saints’ days, vigils, and Lenten abstentions he had imposed. The story’s comic reversal rests on more than a judge’s bodily weakness. The man who could regulate his wife’s days in theory cannot command her consent in practice; when she speaks for herself, his legal and marital authority proves powerless.