Fra Alberto’s impersonation of the Angel Gabriel turns a private affair built on religious fraud into a public spectacle: the friar persuades Lisetta da Ca' Quirino that an angel desires her, then escapes discovery only to be displayed in disguise before the people of Venice. In Pampinea’s tale, sacred language first lends the deception its power; when that fiction collapses, costume and public ridicule become the instruments of exposure.

The friar’s invented revelation

Fra Alberto’s approach begins with a rebuke. Lisetta had spoken proudly of her beauty, and he had dismissed her claims as vanity. A few days later, he came to her house with a trusted companion and apologized, pretending that his criticism had brought supernatural punishment upon him. He described a vision in which the Angel Gabriel had beaten him for disparaging Lisetta’s celestial charms and ordered him to seek her pardon. The story converted the friar’s earlier disapproval into supposed proof that heaven itself favored her.

Lisetta accepted the account as true. Fra Alberto then enlarged the deception: he claimed the angel wished to visit her in human form, and asked her to tell him when to come. His explanation made the arrangement seem pious rather than adulterous. He further told her that Gabriel would take his soul into Paradise and enter his body, so that the friar’s presence in her bed would be part of a divine visitation. Lisetta agreed to receive the supposed angel and to leave her door open.

The affair behind the disguise

On the appointed night, Fra Alberto prepared himself with rich confections, then dressed in the angelic trappings he had brought and went to Lisetta’s house. She knelt before the figure in white; he blessed her, directed her to bed, and joined her there. The contrast between the heavenly identity he performed and the ordinary bodily affair he pursued is central to the fraud: his disguise gave Lisetta a false religious interpretation of what was happening, while his claims about Paradise supplied a story she could repeat as evidence of the angel’s favor.

The next day Lisetta visited Fra Alberto and recounted what she believed had happened, including the angel’s supposed account of heavenly glories. She also embellished the tale with marvels of her own. Fra Alberto sustained the fiction by claiming that, while the angel occupied his body, his soul had been carried to a place of roses and flowers. Their stories thus reinforced one another: Lisetta treated the imagined visitation as a distinction granted to her, and the friar pretended that he had experienced its spiritual counterpart.

Gossip brings the fiction into the open

Lisetta’s confidante could scarcely wait to repeat the story. She told it at a gathering of women; those listeners passed it on to husbands and others, and within two days the account had spread throughout Venice. Among those who heard it were Lisetta’s brothers-in-law. They did not confront her at once. Instead, they resolved to catch the supposed angel and test whether he could fly, keeping watch for several nights.

Fra Alberto heard something of Lisetta’s indiscretion and came to her house one night, intending to reproach her. Her brothers-in-law saw him arrive and moved toward the chamber. With no other escape available, he opened a window overlooking the Grand Canal and plunged into the water. He could swim, so he reached the opposite bank unharmed and took refuge in an open house, where he begged a poor man to protect him. The man hid him in his bed while he went out on his errands.

From angel to public spectacle

The next day, the man heard at the Rialto that the angel who had visited Lisetta had escaped her kinsmen by jumping into the canal. Recognizing his guest, he demanded fifty ducats in exchange for keeping the friar’s identity secret. He then proposed a more public escape: Venice was celebrating a festival that included a procession of people dressed as bears, wild men, and other figures. Fra Alberto accepted the plan despite its humiliation, fearing Lisetta’s relatives more than the shame of being disguised.

His host smeared him with honey, covered him with down, fastened a chain around his neck, and placed a mask on his face. He gave Fra Alberto a staff and two large dogs, then arranged for a public announcement inviting people to see the Angel Gabriel at St. Mark’s Place. In the crowded square, he chained the disguised friar to a raised column. Once the crowd had gathered, he removed the mask and revealed that this was the man who supposedly descended from heaven to comfort Venetian ladies.

The recognition was immediate. The crowd shouted abuse and threw filth at Fra Alberto; the spectacle reversed the authority his angelic costume had borrowed. His fellow friars eventually arrived, freed him, covered him with a gown, and took him back to the convent amid the people’s outcry. The tale says that he was believed to have died in prison after a wretched life. His fall completes the reversal: a friar who used the appearance of holiness to facilitate his deception is himself unmasked and turned into a public object of ridicule.