Alessandro

Alessandro’s story makes a reversal of fortune hinge not on inherited power or wealth, but on resourcefulness and personal worth. Sent abroad to protect a family business, he loses its financial foundation through war; on his return, his good manners and competence bring him into the company of a disguised princess. Their marriage restores his family and carries him from commercial dependence to royal favor.

Identity and Background

Alessandro is the nephew of three Florentine brothers who have rebuilt their fortunes after earlier extravagance. They send him to England to look after their affairs while they remain at home. He lends money to barons against their castles and other possessions, a profitable business that for a time helps sustain his uncles’ increasingly extravagant household expenses.

His position is therefore both trusted and vulnerable. The brothers depend on the income he remits, but their confidence in the English business outlasts the conditions that made it profitable. When war breaks out between the king and his son, the barons’ castles are taken, Alessandro loses his source of revenue, and the brothers continue borrowing and spending. Their creditors eventually have them arrested when their property cannot cover their debts. Their wives and children scatter in distress, while Alessandro remains in England for several years, waiting in vain for peace to restore the business.

The Return Journey and the Disguised Abbot

Seeing that the hoped-for peace has not come and that his continued stay may endanger him, Alessandro sets out alone for Italy. On the road from Bruges he encounters a newly elected English abbot traveling with monks, servants, baggage, and two elderly knights related to the king. The knights explain that the party is bound for the papal court to seek a dispensation for the abbot’s excessive youth. Alessandro joins their company, and the abbot soon draws him into conversation.

Alessandro frankly explains his circumstances and offers his service. His speech and manners impress the abbot, who judges him well-bred despite the humble character of his business, pities his misfortune, and encourages him to hope for a recovery of fortune. Alessandro’s practical ability soon becomes visible as well: when the party reaches a village with too few inns, he arranges a room for the abbot through an acquaintance and finds lodging for the rest of the retinue around the village. He handles the arrangements so capably that he nearly takes charge of the household.

The abbot’s interest in Alessandro is not merely courteous. After the two have traveled together for several days, the abbot privately reveals that she is a woman. She explains that she left home unmarried and was traveling to ask the pope to arrange her marriage; on seeing Alessandro, she fell in love with him and resolved to take him as her husband. She makes her choice plain: he may accept her or leave at once. Alessandro, judging her noble and wealthy from her company and retinue and finding her beautiful, agrees.

Marriage and Royal Recognition

That night the woman gives Alessandro a ring and pledges herself to him before an image of Christ. Their private betrothal precedes the public recognition of her identity. When the party reaches the papal court, she reveals that she is the English king’s daughter and explains that she fled because her father intended to marry her to the King of Scotland. Alessandro is astonished; the two knights are more deeply shocked and angered. Pope Boniface VIII, though surprised by her disguise and choice, accepts that the commitment has already been made. He appeases the knights and arranges a public wedding.

At the marriage feast, attended by cardinals and other distinguished guests, the princess appears in royal clothing and Alessandro is dressed magnificently. The Pope solemnizes their marriage afresh and gives them his blessing. The scene publicly transforms what began as a private pledge made on the road: Alessandro is no longer simply a moneylender’s nephew accompanying a disguised traveler, but the princess’s acknowledged husband and a figure accepted at court.

Restoration of His Family and Public Role

The couple travels to the brothers’ city, where news of their arrival has preceded them. The princess has the three brothers released after paying their creditors, and she restores their possessions to them and their wives. Their recovery is thus made possible by the marriage, but it also reverses the consequences of their earlier ruin: the debts that had led to imprisonment are discharged, and the family regains its estate.

Alessandro and his wife then go to Paris, where the king receives them honorably. Through the intervention of the two knights, the king is reconciled with his daughter and welcomes both her and his son-in-law. He knights Alessandro and grants him the earldom of Cornwall. In his new position Alessandro proves capable of reconciling the king with his son; the reconciliation brings great benefit to England and wins Alessandro the people’s favor. Agolante, meanwhile, recovers what is due to him and his brothers and returns to Florence wealthy, having first been knighted by Count Alessandro.

Fortune, Conduct, and the Ending

Alessandro’s rise is set against two distinct turns of fortune. His family’s lending business first prospers through loans secured by the barons’ estates, then collapses when war removes those estates as a source of repayment. Alessandro’s own recovery begins when, displaced from that business, he meets someone able to recognize in his bearing and speech a worth that his occupation does not convey. The story links social advancement to practical service as much as to marriage: he arranges the traveling party’s lodging, earns the princess’s confidence, restores his family, and later helps reconcile the English king and his son.

The ending extends beyond his title. Alessandro lives for a long time in honor with his wife. The narrator adds a more extraordinary report with explicit qualification: some say that, with his wit and courage and the aid of his father-in-law, he later conquered Scotland and was crowned its king. The story thus closes by turning the vulnerable agent who once waited on uncertain English revenues into a royal son-in-law whose reputation, in one reported version, reaches a crown of his own.