Ermellina

Ermellina is the wife of Aldobrandino Palermini and the beloved of Tedaldo Elisei, whose seven-year absence ends when he returns to Florence disguised as a pilgrim. Her story turns on a painful confusion: she gives up the man she loves under a friar’s spiritual threat, then believes him dead, while her husband faces execution for a murder he did not commit. Tedaldo’s return restores their intimacy, but only after he has made her private grief part of a larger effort to save Aldobrandino.

Identity and Position

Ermellina is introduced as a married woman in Florence, loved by the noble youth Tedaldo. She had returned his love for a time, and their relationship was concealed so successfully that no one understood the cause of his later misery. The story identifies her first through these private ties: she is Aldobrandino’s wife, but also the woman whose sudden withdrawal drives Tedaldo away.

The collection’s opening describes women in love as constrained by the wishes and authority of fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, and often confined to their chambers with few diversions. Ermellina’s experience gives that framing a particular shape. Her love is private, and the decision that ends it follows a religious warning delivered in confession rather than an open discussion between the lovers. Her feelings persist even when outward contact stops.

Separation and the Cost of Silence

After Ermellina had accepted Tedaldo’s attentions for a time, she abruptly refused his messages and would no longer see him. Unable to recover what he believed he had lost through no fault of his own, Tedaldo secretly left Florence. He told no friend or relative except a confidant who knew the story, took what money he could, and went to Ancona; from there he travelled to Cyprus under the name Filippo di Sanlodeccio and entered a merchant’s service.

Ermellina later explains what brought about the break. She had confessed her love for Tedaldo to a friar, who frightened her with a warning that continuing the affair would send her to hell. She consequently resolved to end their meetings and refused his letters and messages so that she would have no reason to resume them. Yet, she admits, if Tedaldo had stayed and persevered, her resolve might have yielded. She had not ceased to love him: even his long absence and the death she believed he had suffered could not remove him from her heart. The distance between her actions and her desire is central to the tragedy of their separation.

The Pilgrim and the Recognition

Seven years after leaving, Tedaldo heard in Cyprus a song he had once composed about their love and the happiness they had shared. Taking it as reason to believe Ermellina had not forgotten him, he returned to Florence. There he learned that Aldobrandino had been convicted of Tedaldo’s supposed murder. In fact, innkeepers and their servant had killed a stranger whom they mistook for Tedaldo; their confession would later clear Aldobrandino.

Tedaldo approached Ermellina in the guise of a pilgrim. He found her alone, weeping, and promised that her distress would end and her husband be saved. Claiming divine knowledge, he recounted details of her life and asked whether she had ever had a lover. Ermellina, astonished that the pilgrim seemed to know a secret, admitted her love for Tedaldo and the reason she had broken with him. She also recognized that she had wrongly assumed the friars to be wholly saintly. Tedaldo told her that her lover was alive, though she insisted that she had seen him dead and mourned him.

To make his identity certain, Tedaldo showed her the ring she had given him on their last night together. She recognized it. He then removed his pilgrim’s gown and hat and spoke in the Florentine manner. At first Ermellina recoiled, frightened as if a dead man had returned from the tomb; hearing his voice and looking again, she knew him. Her fear gave way to tears, embraces, and welcome. The ring, preserved through his long absence, turns recognition into proof and closes the gap between the man she mourned and the lover before her.

Reunion and Narrative Role

Tedaldo did not let the reunion displace his immediate purpose: he left Ermellina to seek Aldobrandino’s release. After the real killers confessed, he returned secretly to her house, where she awaited both news of her husband and reconciliation with Tedaldo. He told her Aldobrandino would be safe, then described what he had done. Relieved at once to have her lover alive and her husband out of danger, Ermellina embraced and kissed Tedaldo; they went to bed together and made peace.

Her part in the story is not limited to receiving Tedaldo’s return. By explaining her confession and the friar’s intervention, she reveals the cause of a separation that had appeared inexplicable even to the man most affected by it. Her mistaken certainty that Tedaldo was dead also shows how completely the false identification of the murdered stranger has governed her grief. The story’s reversal restores him to her, but entwines their private reunion with the public correction of Aldobrandino’s wrongful conviction. In that movement from concealed desire and silence to confession, recognition, and renewed intimacy, Ermellina’s story joins the collection’s concern with women’s constrained lives to its repeated attention to how words, beliefs, and mistaken appearances shape fortune.