Cecco Fortarrigo—Cecco Angiolieri

Cecco Fortarrigo and Cecco Angiolieri begin as companions brought together by a shared grievance, but their journey exposes how little that common ground can withstand. In Neifile’s tale, Angiolieri’s plans and money are first placed in Fortarrigo’s trust; Fortarrigo’s gambling, deception, and ability to enlist strangers against his master then reverse their positions, leaving Angiolieri robbed and humiliated. Their relation shifts from friendship to service and finally to a contest in which Fortarrigo’s knavery defeats Angiolieri’s foresight.

Origins of the Companionship

The two men are both grown and both named Cecco: one is the son of Messer Angiolieri, the other of Messer Fortarrigo. Though they differ in most of their habits, they share one misfortune—that their fathers hate them. This common experience makes them friends, and they often keep company together. The tale gives no further account of how their fathers came to hate them; instead, the shared grievance establishes the narrow basis of their bond.

Their differences become decisive when Angiolieri seeks to improve his prospects. Handsome and well-mannered, he believes the allowance his father provides is insufficient for life in Siena. A cardinal who is a great patron of his has arrived in the Marches of Ancona as the Pope’s legate, and Angiolieri decides to travel to him in hopes of bettering his condition. He arranges to receive at once the money his father would otherwise have given him over six months, intending to equip himself with clothes and a horse and make a respectable appearance. The journey therefore begins with a concrete plan and a substantial sum entrusted to Angiolieri’s keeping.

From Friend to Servant

When Fortarrigo learns of the journey, he asks Angiolieri to take him along, offering to serve as lackey and attendant for no wages beyond the payment of his expenses. Angiolieri refuses at first. He considers Fortarrigo capable of service but distrusts his habits: Fortarrigo is a gambler and at times a drunkard. Fortarrigo swears that he will avoid both failings, and his entreaties eventually persuade Angiolieri to accept him.

This agreement makes their unequal roles explicit. Angiolieri is the traveler with a destination, money, and a plan; Fortarrigo is the dependent companion who has promised to help him. The promise matters because it is broken almost as soon as it is made. At Buonconvento, after they have dined, Angiolieri lies down to sleep in the heat and tells Fortarrigo to wake him at None. While his master sleeps, Fortarrigo goes to a tavern, drinks, and gambles. He loses the money he has with him, then the clothes he is wearing. Rather than stop, he returns to Angiolieri’s room, takes the money from his purse, and loses that too. His conduct turns the entrusted service into an immediate betrayal of the very funds meant to support their journey.

The Reversal at Buonconvento

Angiolieri wakes, dresses, and prepares to continue without Fortarrigo, supposing he may be asleep or drunk somewhere, as he sometimes is. Only when he tries to pay the inn does he discover that he has no money. The hostelry erupts in confusion as Angiolieri protests that he has been robbed and threatens to have the host and household taken to Siena. The loss has made Angiolieri’s journey impossible, but Fortarrigo’s deception is not yet complete.

Fortarrigo returns in his shirt, intending to take Angiolieri’s clothes as he had taken his money. Seeing Angiolieri ready to leave, he delays him with a story about recovering his doublet from someone who has pawned it. When an onlooker identifies Fortarrigo as the person who lost the money at play, Angiolieri reproaches him and threatens punishment. Fortarrigo answers not with an apology but with an improvised performance of grievance: he follows Angiolieri along the road for about two miles, still demanding the clothes he claims are his.

The pursuit allows Fortarrigo to change the apparent meaning of the scene. Spotting husbandmen working in a field beside the road, he calls on them to stop Angiolieri. They run out with spades and mattocks and block the way, assuming that the well-dressed rider has robbed the shirt-clad man chasing him. Angiolieri explains what has happened, but the countrymen do not believe him. Fortarrigo’s appearance and accusation have made the victim look like the offender, while the thief presents himself as the injured party.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

With the husbandmen’s help, Fortarrigo pulls Angiolieri from his palfrey and strips him, taking his clothes and horse. He then rides away toward Siena, claiming publicly that he won them from Angiolieri. The reversal is complete: the man who had set out equipped to visit a cardinal as a man of means is left barefoot and in his shirt, while the servant who was to accompany him has taken his place on the horse.

Angiolieri returns to Buonconvento in poverty. Ashamed, he does not go straight back to Siena; after receiving borrowed clothes, he rides the mount Fortarrigo had been riding to his relatives at Corsignano and remains there until his father supplies him anew. The tale says that Fortarrigo’s villainy was not left unpunished in due time and place, but gives no details of that later punishment. It closes instead on the immediate contrast between Angiolieri’s good planning and Fortarrigo’s successful deceit. Introducing the story after the company has laughed at Calandrino’s folly, Neifile presents it as a contrary case: here one man’s knavery overcomes another’s wit, and the result is not a harmless embarrassment but the loss of money, clothes, horse, and intended journey.