Filostrato, teller of Day Three’s first story

Filostrato, teller of Day Three’s first story, is identified in the narrative frame through his contribution to the storytelling company rather than through a personal history. His role is to open the day’s sequence with the story of Masetto of Lamporecchio, using a comic reversal to question assumptions about appetite, religious life, and social station.

Identity and Introduction

The text marks Filostrato as the teller of the first story on Day Three. The surviving evidence supplies no account of his origins, private life, or conduct outside the storytelling gathering; his characterization here rests on what he chooses to tell and how he introduces it.

The Story of Masetto

Before recounting the events, Filostrato disputes the belief that a woman’s religious clothing makes her insensible to feminine desire, as if becoming a nun had turned her to stone. He also challenges the notion that the hard work and coarse living of agricultural laborers necessarily extinguish carnal appetite or dull their judgment. He offers his tale as a demonstration against both assumptions.

The story’s heading identifies its central stratagem and reversal: Masetto of Lamporecchio pretends to be dumb, becomes gardener at a convent of women, and finds that the women flock to lie with him. The premise places the convent’s discipline alongside the desires it is supposed to contain, while Masetto’s assumed muteness enables his entry into that enclosed world.

Place in the Storytelling Sequence

After Filostrato’s story ends, the ladies are described as sometimes blushing and sometimes laughing. Neifile then directs Pampinea, teller of the story of Talano and Peter of Aragon, to take the next turn. The transition places Filostrato’s tale within the company’s ordered exchange of stories: its provocative comedy prompts a visible response before the next narrator begins.

Narrative Role

Filostrato frames the tale as evidence against easy judgments about religious vocation and rural labor. The argument is deliberately tested through an episode whose plot turns on concealed speech and sexual appetite. The available account establishes this framing and the tale’s broad premise, but does not provide enough evidence to attribute further motives, personal beliefs, or a wider character arc to Filostrato.