The Parish Priest of Fiesole and Ciutazza Are Caught in the Act is the exposure at the center of Emilia’s story of a widow harassed by a cleric. The rector repeatedly presses a woman who has clearly refused him; she answers not with force but with a carefully staged substitution. Believing he has finally gained the widow’s consent, he enters her darkened bedchamber and embraces Ciutazza instead. The bishop and the woman’s brothers arrive with a light, discover the mistake, and make the rector’s desire the instrument of his humiliation.

Background and the Rector’s Pursuit

The episode is presented as the fourth story of the eighth day. Emilia introduces it as another instance of clerics imposing themselves on women, and says that the widow, being discreet, found a way to treat the rector as he deserved. The story’s opening emphasis is therefore on the imbalance between his spiritual position and his conduct: he claims no entitlement by right, but persists despite her refusal. The widow initially gives him a direct answer. She says that she will not love him in the manner he demands, pointing to his position as her spiritual father, his priesthood, and his age as reasons he ought to be modest and chaste. She also invokes her own status as a widow and the discretion expected of her. Her refusal distinguishes a proper spiritual relationship from the sexual attention he seeks, but does not end his advances. The rector renews his suit repeatedly, through letters and messages as well as in person when he sees her at church. The persistence becomes an annoyance she can no longer dismiss as a single unwelcome proposal. Before acting, she tells her brothers both what the rector has been doing and what she intends to do. Their full agreement gives the plan a family alliance behind it: the response is organized rather than impulsive, and it aims to expose him without resorting to violence.

The Substitution in the Bedchamber

When the rector approaches her again, the widow pretends that his repeated attentions have overcome her resistance. She presents the change of heart as the result of his persistence, then lets him believe that the only obstacle is finding a private place. Her own house, she explains, is difficult because her two brothers and their companions are nearby; any encounter would have to take place in darkness and silence. The rector accepts those conditions and asks her to arrange a meeting that very night. The widow enlists her serving-wench, Ciutazza, by offering her a fine new shift. Ciutazza is described as older and notably ungainly, with a flattened nose, an uneven mouth, thick lips, badly set teeth, squinting eyes, and a greenish-yellow complexion. She is also crooked on one side. The household calls her Ciutazza, a name reflecting her unattractive appearance, but the story makes clear that she is not without roguery. When told that she must lie in the widow’s bed and remain silent, she readily agrees; the promised shift is her reward. At night the brothers make themselves audible in their own chamber, reinforcing the impression that the rector must be quiet. He enters the widow’s room in darkness and goes straight to the bed as instructed. Ciutazza joins him there. Thinking she is the woman he has been courting, he takes her in his arms and kisses her without speaking. The trick depends on the conditions he had accepted: darkness, silence, and his certainty that the widow had at last yielded.

The Bishop’s Discovery

The exposure is arranged through a coincidence the widow’s brothers turn to their advantage. They leave the house and meet the bishop, who has been looking for them because the heat has made him wish to visit their home and drink with them. They bring him back to their house, where he enjoys their wine in a cool little courtyard lit by flambeaux. Afterward, they ask him to see a small matter they wish to show him. He agrees, not knowing that their invitation will lead to the rector’s bedchamber. One brother carries a lighted flambeau into the room, followed by the bishop and the others. The rector has hurried through the encounter and, exhausted, fallen asleep despite the heat, with Ciutazza in his arms. The light reveals the scene before he can explain or escape it. Waking to find the group around him, he hides his head under the bedclothes. At the bishop’s command he has to look at the woman beside him and recognize that the widow’s scheme has succeeded.

Penance, Ridicule, and the Ending

The bishop rebukes the rector and orders that he be dressed and taken away under guard. The brothers explain the whole arrangement; the bishop commends them and the widow for punishing the man without shedding a priest’s blood. His response makes the exposure more than a private embarrassment: the cleric is disciplined by the very ecclesiastical authority whose status might otherwise have shielded him. The rector is made to do penance for forty days. His punishment continues beyond that formal term. For a long while afterward, children point him out in the street as the man who lay with Ciutazza. Their mockery turns the concealed encounter into a lasting public identity, and the rector is so distressed by it that he is nearly driven mad. The story gives the widow a decisive victory: she is rid of his importunity, while Ciutazza receives the promised shift and, as Emilia’s narration puts it, a merry night.

Narrative Significance

The event’s reversal rests on the gap between what the rector believes and what the scene actually contains. He mistakes a staged surrender for genuine consent, and the darkness he accepts to protect the meeting becomes the condition that makes him vulnerable to exposure. Ciutazza’s body, which the narrative describes in deliberately comic detail, becomes part of the mechanism of the trick: the rector’s desire blinds him to the person he is embracing until the brothers bring in the light. The episode also turns clerical authority inside out. The rector is presented as a spiritual father who ignores the restraint his office should require; the widow and her brothers instead act with forethought, while the bishop condemns the rector and praises their nonviolent response. The comic ending does not erase the pressure that prompted the plot. It shows how the woman converts persistent harassment into a trap whose consequences—the penance and the children’s public taunts—finally stop the advances that refusal alone had not ended.