Acre

Acre is a fortified meeting point in the Decameron’s eastern Mediterranean world, where a protected international fair and a Christian military campaign give the same city sharply different roles. Under Saladin, it is a place where merchants are meant to trade safely; in the account of Torello, it becomes part of the route into a disastrous campaign and captivity.

Fair and Governorship

At a certain season each year, Christian and Saracen merchants gathered at Acre for a great fair. To secure the merchants and their merchandise, Saladin customarily sent officers and troops. He appointed Sicurano, by then experienced in the local language and in his service, as governor and captain of the guard. The account thus presents the fair not as an unregulated marketplace but as an event whose safety depends on the ruler’s military and administrative authority.

Sicurano carried out the charge diligently, making his rounds among the merchants. At the shops of Venetian traders, he recognized a purse and girdle that had once belonged to him. Their presence at the fair connected Acre’s commercial traffic to the earlier deception that had driven him from his former life. His official position let him investigate the goods and the man who claimed them without immediately disclosing his own identity.

Trade and Exposure

The fair brings Sicurano into contact with merchants from several Italian cities, including Sicily, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. His willingness to make their acquaintance is linked to his memory of his homeland, while his duties require him to inspect the place and its trade. Acre therefore serves both as a regulated commercial hub and as the setting where private history re-enters public view.

When Sicurano asks about the purse and girdle, Ambrogiuolo of Piacenza claims them and recounts how he acquired them. He boasts that he had deceived Bernabo Lomellini about Bernabo’s wife, Ginevra, and won a wager by claiming to have slept with her. From the stolen belongings and Ambrogiuolo’s own account, Sicurano understands how the fraud led to Ginevra’s suffering. Acre’s market becomes the point at which a traveling merchant’s goods expose a concealed crime.

Military Route and Captivity

Acre also appears in Torello’s account of the Christian campaign. After leaving Genoa by galley, Torello reaches the city and joins the Christian forces there. Sickness and widespread mortality break out among the Christians; Saladin subsequently takes many of the survivors without a battle and distributes them among cities as prisoners. Torello is carried to Alexandria, where he remains unknown and works as a falcon trainer.

The narrative does not make the fair and the military episode one continuous event. Their juxtaposition instead gives Acre two complementary functions: it is a place where commerce can proceed under a ruler’s protection, and a staging point in a campaign whose risks overturn the travelers’ fortunes. For Torello, arrival at Acre leads not to safe passage but to capture and separation from home; for Sicurano, the city’s secure and busy fair provides the occasion to uncover the truth.