The Decameron company leaves plague-stricken Florence

The Decameron company leaves plague-stricken Florence in 1348, transforming flight from a city of contagion and abandonment into the beginning of a deliberately ordered life of refuge and storytelling. The seven women and three young men depart not simply to escape danger: their journey creates the conditions for a company whose tales offer diversion, and particularly consolation to women whose freedom of movement and means of easing private distress are limited.

The Plague and the Collapse of Ordinary Life

The departure follows the arrival of a deadly pestilence in Florence in 1348. The narrator presents its cause through the explanations available within the account: it may have arisen through the influence of the heavenly bodies or have been sent by God in punishment for human wrongdoing. Neither civic precautions nor repeated religious processions and prayers prevent its effects. In the spring, the disease appears in swellings in the groin or beneath the armpits, some as large as an apple and others an egg; later, black or livid marks spread across the body. The signs are described as portents of death, and few recover. Many die within three days of their appearance, often without fever or another complication.

The account emphasizes how readily the illness seems to pass from the sick to the healthy. Contact with a patient, or even with clothing and other objects the patient has touched, is feared as a route of infection. A particularly striking reported example is the narrator’s sight of two hogs nosing and mouthing rags discarded by a plague victim: both animals soon collapse dead upon them. In the face of such apparent danger, medical advice and medicines seem ineffective; the narration attributes this either to the nature of the infection or to the ignorance of practitioners, including people who had never received medical instruction.

People respond in sharply different ways. Some withdraw into houses where no one has been sick, eat and drink moderately, and use music and other amusements to avoid both infection and distressing news. Others pursue constant feasting and revelry, treating abandoned houses and possessions as though they were common property, while still trying to avoid the sick. Many choose flight, supposing that escape from the city offers the best protection, though the narrator notes that people in every group and place fall ill and die. Fear also breaks bonds of care: neighbours keep away from one another, relatives rarely visit, and even parents refuse to tend sick children. Those who fall ill are left to a small number of charitable friends or poorly qualified servants, some of whom die while serving them. The narrator estimates that more than a hundred thousand people perish within Florence’s walls between March and July.

The Company Forms

Against this background, seven young women meet by chance in the church of Santa Maria Novella on a Tuesday morning. They have heard the service in mourning clothes. The narrator describes them as between eighteen and twenty-eight, connected by friendship, neighbourhood, or kinship, and of noble birth. He withholds their actual names to protect them from later embarrassment or malicious gossip about the stories they tell and hear, assigning instead the names Pampinea, Fiammetta, Filomena, Emilia, Lauretta, Neifile, and Elisa. The women sit together and discuss the conditions around them.

Pampinea argues that remaining in the nearly emptied city is an avoidable danger. She proposes that the women take their attendants and withdraw to country residences, where they can live within the bounds of reason while enjoying fresher air, open landscapes, birdsong, and the necessities of life. Her case is also an answer to the charge that departure would mean abandoning others: she says that their own relatives have already died or fled, leaving them alone. In her view, it is not more dishonourable for women to leave than for others of their sex to remain amid conditions that expose them to harm.

Filomena supports the plan but warns that the women should not set out without guidance. Her objection rests on contemporary assumptions about women’s supposed inconstancy and inability to govern themselves without men; she fears their company might quickly dissolve or bring them dishonour. Elisa likewise says that male guidance is generally needed for women’s undertakings, but points out that the women’s surviving male relatives have already fled and that inviting strangers could invite scandal. Their exchange makes the departure a practical and social negotiation as well as an escape from disease.

The Young Men and the Journey

Three young men are present and watching the women. Pampinea treats their appearance as a fortunate opportunity: they can serve as guides and attendants. Neifile raises a particular concern. One of the men loves her, and, she says, some of the men are enamoured of women in the company; their presence could therefore expose the women, as well as the men, to gossip. Filomena answers that honest conduct matters more than hostile talk and that truth will defend them. The women agree to invite the men on the understanding that they accompany the party in a pure, brotherly spirit. The young men initially take the proposal for a jest, but accept when they see that it is serious and promptly prepare to leave.

On Wednesday, near daybreak, the women and their attendants set out with the three young men and their servants. Necessary provisions have been arranged and sent ahead. After travelling just over two miles from Florence, the company reaches a previously selected place: a low hill set back from the main road, green with shrubs and plants. A palace stands on its summit, with a courtyard, galleries, rooms, gardens, lawns, wells of cold water, and cellars stocked with fine wine. The beds have been made, the rooms swept, and the available flowers scattered through them. The prepared residence offers a pointed contrast to the city they have left: it is a protected, provisioned setting in which the group can remain together without the immediate pressure of the plague.

Refuge Becomes a Storytelling Community

The company’s withdrawal gains its enduring purpose when recreation becomes a shared practice rather than an interval of idleness. On the first afternoon, as the heat makes it unwise to wander, the queen proposes that they tell stories instead of playing chess or tables. A game, she reasons, would trouble one player without giving much pleasure to the others watching; a story can entertain everyone who listens. The company approves, and the first day is left open for each person to choose a subject. The queen then asks Pamfilo to begin.

The storytelling arrangement develops into a routine of measured activity: time outdoors, meals, dancing and other diversions, rest, and a return to the tales. A later queen retains the pattern established by Pampinea and introduces a daily subject so that each member can prepare a story in advance. The chosen theme concerns people who, after being buffeted by changing fortunes, reach a joyful outcome beyond their expectations. Thus the party’s escape does not resolve the catastrophe in Florence; it establishes a temporary social order elsewhere, in which attentive listening and storytelling answer, in part, the isolation and distress that have made flight necessary. The framing also gives particular weight to women’s need for solace: the book’s narrator presents women in love as confined by family obligations and domestic space, with fewer diversions available to draw them away from melancholy than men possess.