Elisa

Elisa is one of the seven women whose flight from plague-stricken Florence gives the Decameron its storytelling company, and she becomes the queen who governs its sixth day. Both in her tales and in the company’s affairs, she moves between comedy and danger: lovers are separated or killed, deceivers are exposed, and apparent moral authority is repeatedly unsettled by what people actually do.

Identity and Introduction

Elisa first appears among seven young women gathered by chance in Santa Maria Novella, where they have attended service in mourning clothes. The city is nearly empty of inhabitants. The women are connected by friendship, neighborhood, or kinship, and the narrator places all seven between eighteen and twenty-eight years of age. He withholds their actual names to protect their reputations from future scandal, assigning names instead so their parts in the stories can be followed without confusion. Elisa is introduced as the last of the seven.

The first proposal for escape comes from Pampinea, but Filomena cautions against the women setting out without guidance. Elisa then states the period’s conventional assumption that men are women’s heads and that women’s undertakings rarely succeed without male direction. Yet her concern is also practical: most of their male relatives are dead or scattered, and inviting strangers could expose the women to scandal or trouble. The three young men who enter the church include Pamfilo, Filostrato, and Dioneo, each seeking a beloved among the women. Elisa’s remarks therefore arise from a specific problem of protection and company, not from an abstract discussion of women’s capacities.

Stories of Love, Risk, and Loyalty

In her first-day story, Elisa considers how a word can accomplish what repeated reproof and punishment have failed to achieve. A Gascon pilgrim, returning from the Holy Sepulchre, is abused in Cyprus and receives no redress. She is warned that the king is too abject to defend even himself against insults. The story’s title signals the reversal Elisa is preparing: the woman’s rebuke touches the king to the quick and turns a mean-spirited ruler into a man of worth and courage. Elisa presents speech as an intervention capable of changing conduct when conventional authority has proved useless.

Her account of Gerbino develops love through report rather than sight. The daughter of the King of Tunis hears accounts of Gerbino’s prowess and courtesy and falls in love with the man she imagines from them; in Sicily, Gerbino is likewise inflamed by the princess’s reported beauty and worth. Their mediated courtship becomes a tragedy of distance and obligation. Gerbino’s grandfather, King Guglielmo II of Sicily, has pledged his faith to the King of Tunis. When the Tunisian ship carrying the princess refuses to surrender her, its crew kills her before Gerbino can rescue her. He boards the vessel, kills many of its defenders, retrieves her body from the sea, and buries her on Ustica. King Guglielmo then orders Gerbino beheaded rather than be judged faithless to his pledge, choosing fidelity to his word over the survival of his own line. Elisa’s story makes the lovers’ deaths the consequence of both a love kindled at a distance and a political oath that cannot be reconciled with rescue.

On the fifth day, Elisa tells of Pietro Boccamazza and Agnolella, whose love crosses a social boundary. Pietro belongs to a powerful Roman family; Agnolella is the daughter of a plebeian who is nevertheless dear to the Romans. When Pietro asks to marry her, his relatives oppose him and warn Agnolella’s father against accepting. Pietro and Agnolella agree to flee when the route to marriage is blocked. The story’s announced course carries them through an encounter with thieves and separate dangers before they find one another again: Pietro escapes captivity, reaches the castle where Agnolella has arrived, marries her, and returns with her to Rome. Elisa introduces the lovers’ dangerous night through its contrast with the many happy days that follow.

Queen of the Sixth Day

At the close of the fifth day, the queen places the laurel crown on Elisa’s head and yields the authority to command. Elisa takes up the office practically, first arranging with the seneschal for what the company will need during her governance. She then sets the sixth day’s subject: people who answer a jibe with a ready reply, or escape loss, danger, or shame through quick counsel. The choice gives verbal agility a communal purpose. A well-judged answer is not merely entertaining; it can blunt an attack or avert harm.

The sixth day begins with the company walking over dewy grass, discussing the previous tales and laughing again at their adventures. After the meal, songs, games, and the usual gathering at the fountain, a kitchen commotion interrupts the expected opening of the stories. Elisa also takes initiative outside the formal storytelling: while the sun is still high, she invites the women to visit the nearby Ladies’ Valley, a place they have not yet seen, and sets out with them without telling the young men. They reach it after a little more than a mile, entering by a narrow path beside clear running water. The round plain, just over half a mile in circuit, is enclosed by six low hills crowned with castle-like palaces. Fruit trees cover the southern slopes; the northern sides are wooded. Fir, cypress, laurel, and pine shade the meadow, and a stream falls over the rocks between two hills. Elisa’s private excursion contrasts with her earlier acknowledgement of women’s reliance on male direction: as queen, she arranges the women’s movement for themselves.

Later Tales: Deception and Exposure

On the seventh day, Elisa tells of Fra Rinaldo, who uses the role of a child’s godfather to create an excuse for approaching Madam Agnesa, the wife of a rich neighbor. He is passionately enamored of her and offers to stand godfather to her child; once accepted, the connection gives him a more plausible reason to speak with her. The tale’s announced situation turns on the risk of discovery: the husband finds Fra Rinaldo closeted with his wife, and the pair persuade him that the friar is exorcising worms from his godson. Religious office and family ritual become cover for an affair, then are recruited again as a false explanation when the cover fails.

Elisa’s eighth-day tale sends Calandrino, Bruno, and Buffalmacco along the Mugnone in search of a heliotrope stone. The deception begins with Maso del Saggio, who finds Calandrino alone in a church and speaks of marvel-working stones as if he were an expert. He describes the Land of Bengodi as a place of extravagant plenty, with a mountain of grated Parmesan where people cook macaroni and ravioli and a stream of fine wine. Calandrino believes the talk and goes searching; he returns laden with stones, is scolded by his wife, and beats her in a rage. He then recounts the supposed discovery to companions who know more than he does. The comic reversal depends on the distance between Calandrino’s conviction and the knowledge shared by his audience.

On the ninth day, Elisa tells of Isabetta, a young nun who repeatedly receives her lover in secret. Other nuns discover the visits and arrange to have the abbess catch the pair together. Madam Usimbalda, reputed to be pious, hurries from her own concealed meeting with a priest when the nuns summon her. In the dark she mistakenly puts on the priest’s breeches instead of her own headdress. Isabetta notices the mistake and points it out, turning the accusation back upon the abbess. The nun is acquitted and allowed to remain with her lover. Elisa frames the escape as fortune shaming those who claim the authority to judge others: the convent’s discipline collapses at the moment its enforcer is exposed in the same kind of conduct.

Narrative Role and Significance

Elisa’s stories repeatedly set public reputation against private conduct. The Cypriot king’s reputation for cowardice is altered by a woman’s speech; the convent’s reputation for sanctity cannot protect its abbess from exposure; and the stories of Gerbino and Pietro show lovers facing consequences imposed by political promises or family rank. The tales do not make these outcomes alike: one ends in the lovers’ violent deaths, while the other carries its fugitives through danger to marriage and return.

Her position in the storytelling company similarly combines accepted convention with independent action. Elisa voices the perceived need for male guidance when the women first consider leaving the city, yet she accepts the crown, sets the sixth day’s theme, attends to its practical arrangements, and leads the women on an excursion without the men. Her narrative role is therefore more than that of a teller assigned stories. She helps shape the company’s daily life and chooses tales in which speech, ingenuity, and the exposure of pretended virtue change what can happen next.