Zeppe’s Revenge on Spinelloccio

Zeppa di Mino’s revenge on Spinelloccio Tanena turns a breach of friendship into a deliberately measured exchange: Zeppa discovers his companion’s affair with his wife, answers it by sleeping with Spinelloccio’s wife, and ends not with a public scandal or a lasting feud but with an astonishing reconciliation among all four. Told by Fiammetta on the Ninth Day, the episode makes revenge both the plot’s engine and its limit: Zeppa means to answer the injury without letting it spread beyond what he considers its measure.

The friendship and its breach

The two young men live in Siena, as neighbors in Camollia. They are comfortable in their circumstances, come from good city families, and appear to be bound by a friendship closer than brotherhood. Each has a beautiful wife. Spinelloccio’s frequent visits to Zeppa’s home—whether Zeppa is there or away—make him familiar with the household, but that familiarity eventually crosses into an affair with Zeppa’s wife. The relationship continues for some time without discovery, so the betrayal grows inside the ordinary trust of their companionship.

Zeppa learns the truth not through an accusation or confession, but by being home without his wife’s knowledge when Spinelloccio arrives. Spinelloccio is told that Zeppa is away, comes straight into the house, finds Zeppa’s wife alone, and embraces and kisses her. Zeppa watches unseen as the pair go together into a chamber and shut the door. His discovery makes the friendship’s apparent intimacy newly painful: the man he trusted has used that trust to enter his home and take his wife as a lover.

A private plan for retaliation

Zeppa does not expose the pair in the moment. He reasons that an outcry would not lessen the injury and would only increase the shame. Instead, he stays hidden until Spinelloccio leaves, then confronts his wife in the chamber. Her disordered head-veils confirm what he has seen; after questioning, she admits her familiarity with Spinelloccio and weeps for pardon. Zeppa makes forgiveness conditional on her cooperation in a plan for the following morning.

He instructs her to arrange for Spinelloccio to come to the house around tierce, and, when Zeppa returns, to hide him in a chest and lock it. He promises that he will not harm Spinelloccio. His method is therefore a controlled trap rather than an impulsive assault: Spinelloccio is to be caught in the same domestic space where the affair began, while Zeppa keeps the knowledge and timing of the encounter to himself.

The next morning, the friends are together when Spinelloccio claims he must dine with another friend and discuss a private matter. Zeppa points out that it is not yet dinner-time, but Spinelloccio insists on leaving early. He takes a circuitous route to Zeppa’s house and joins Zeppa’s wife. When she hears Zeppa returning, she feigns alarm, ushers Spinelloccio into the chest, and locks him inside as instructed.

The exchange inside the house

Zeppa then asks his wife whether it is time to dine. She answers that it is, and he tells her that Spinelloccio has gone to dine elsewhere and left his own wife alone. At Zeppa’s direction, she calls that woman over to join them. The invitation brings the second wife into the house without disclosing that her husband is shut in a chest nearby.

Zeppa welcomes Spinelloccio’s wife, then takes her by the hand into the chamber and locks the door. When she protests, he explains that Spinelloccio has been sleeping with his wife and that he intends to answer that offense in kind. He says he will take his revenge on her as well as on Spinelloccio; if she refuses, he threatens to bring her husband out of the chest and punish the couple more harshly. The woman accepts the exchange on the condition that she can remain at peace with Zeppa’s wife afterward, just as she intends to remain at peace with her own husband. Zeppa agrees and promises her a fine jewel.

Spinelloccio hears the conversation from inside the chest and feels what is happening above him. At first he is furious, but he also recognizes that he began the offense and that Zeppa has treated him humanely by seeking a reciprocal rather than more severe retaliation. This recognition changes the scene from a private trap into an enforced reckoning: Spinelloccio cannot interrupt or control it, but he can acknowledge the logic of the response.

Disclosure and reconciliation

When Zeppa has finished, Spinelloccio’s wife asks for the promised jewel. Zeppa opens the chamber door, calls his own wife in, and has her open the chest. He reveals Spinelloccio inside: the promised jewel is the husband she has found there. The reveal exposes both men’s knowledge of the affairs and leaves Spinelloccio and his wife abashed. The chest, first used to conceal Spinelloccio from Zeppa, has become the instrument by which Zeppa stages the truth before the injured parties.

Spinelloccio comes out and declares that they are quits. He proposes that the men remain friends as before and that, since they share everything else, they share their wives too. Zeppa accepts. The four dine together in harmony, and the story says that thereafter each wife has two husbands and each man two wives, without further strife or resentment between them. The ending converts secret adultery and retaliation into an openly acknowledged, if deliberately comic, arrangement. Fiammetta’s tale thus makes the measure of revenge central: Zeppa answers betrayal with an equivalent injury, and the former friends choose to treat that exchange as sufficient to restore their companionship.