Salerno of Ghismonda and Guiscardo is more than a backdrop in the tales set there: its court and households frame both a fatal secret love and a clandestine affair shaped by an unequal marriage. In one story, the city is the domain of Tancred, whose affection for his daughter does not prevent him from destroying the man she loves; in another, it is home to the famous surgeon Master Mazzeo della Montagna and the young wife whose unmet desires lead her to Ruggieri da Jeroli.

The city and Tancred’s court

In the tragic tale, Salerno is the seat of Tancred, Lord of Salerno, and the setting of his daughter’s return to her father’s household after the death of her husband, the son of the Duke of Capua. Tancred has cherished her so closely that he delayed her marriage until she had long passed the age at which she might ordinarily have been wed. Once widowed, she remains in his household, living in comfort while he gives little thought to arranging another marriage for her.

The court brings together men of differing rank, among them Guiscardo, a young serving-man of humble extraction. Ghismonda judges him nobler in worth and manners than the others around her and falls in love with him; he recognizes her affection and returns it. Their secret relationship begins within the very household where her father’s authority and affection have kept her under close familial protection. The contrast between Guiscardo’s low birth and the high standard of his character makes the court a place where personal worth and social position come into direct tension.

A secret passage into love

Because Ghismonda wants to meet Guiscardo without confiding her passion to anyone, she devises a private means of arranging a tryst. She writes instructions in a letter, hides it inside a hollow cane, and gives the cane to him under the pretext that it can serve as a bellows for his serving-maid. Guiscardo discovers the letter and understands what she intends. In this episode, the household’s ordinary objects become instruments of concealment: an apparently casual gift carries the message that opens a hidden route to the lovers’ meeting.

The Salerno story turns on the conflict between this intimate alliance and Tancred’s paternal authority. Ghismonda and Guiscardo’s love is founded on their judgment of one another, but it must remain secret within a court governed by her father. The tale’s rubric announces the catastrophic outcome: Tancred kills his daughter’s lover and sends her Guiscardo’s heart in a golden bowl; Ghismonda pours poisoned water over it, drinks, and dies. The household that had contained her private happiness thus becomes the setting of its destruction.

Master Mazzeo’s household

A separate tale places Master Mazzeo della Montagna, a famous surgeon, in Salerno. By the time he is extremely old, he has married a beautiful, gentle young woman and furnished her with sumptuous clothes, jewels, and other comforts more lavishly than any other woman in the city. Yet material provision does not answer her dissatisfaction: he keeps her poorly covered in bed and tells her that intercourse with a woman requires many days of study and recovery. The narrator compares this excuse to the observances Ricciardo di Chinzica had taught his wife, making the doctor’s claim part of a recurring comic pattern of husbands who use elaborate reasons to avoid intimacy.

The wife responds by looking beyond the household for the satisfaction her marriage withholds. After considering several young men, she chooses Ruggieri da Jeroli, a nobleman by birth but notorious in Salerno for theft and other disreputable conduct. With help from her maid, she arranges their meetings. She also urges Ruggieri to abandon his wrongdoing and supports him with repeated gifts of money, attempting to redirect the very man whose reputation makes him an especially risky choice.

Two household worlds

The tales give Salerno contrasting domestic worlds rather than a single, uniform portrait of the city. Tancred’s court makes rank, paternal control, and secret desire collide in tragedy; Master Mazzeo’s richly furnished house exposes the distance between a wife’s material comforts and her husband’s neglect of her sexual needs. In both, private relationships take shape inside households whose established authority does not secure emotional fulfilment. Salerno’s narrative significance lies in this juxtaposition: the city hosts both the lovers’ fatal resistance to family power and a wife’s practical, discreet response to the limits of her marriage.