Fra Cipolla

Fra Cipolla is a small, red-haired friar whose quick wit and gift for performance make him both a familiar figure in Certaldo and the center of one of the Decameron’s comic demonstrations of religious persuasion. When two young men remove the relic he has promised to display, he does not abandon his sermon or admit the loss. Instead, he recasts the contents of the wrong casket as a providential substitute, turns the crowd’s expectation into renewed devotion, and leaves with better offerings than before.

Identity and Annual Visits

Fra Cipolla belongs to the Order of Saint Anthony and makes an annual journey to Certaldo, a small burgh in Val d’Elsa, to collect alms for the poor associated with his order. The locals give grain and oats according to their means and devotion, partly in hope that Saint Anthony will protect their cattle, asses, pigs, and sheep; members of the confraternity also pay their yearly due. Fra Cipolla’s visit therefore combines fundraising, popular religion, and public entertainment.

His appearance and reputation suit the performance he gives. He is described as short, red-haired, and cheerful, a merry rascal with an unusually ready tongue. Though no scholar, he can sound to strangers like a great rhetorician, even Tully or Quintilian. He is also a friend, gossip, or well-wisher to nearly everyone in the district. That local familiarity helps him command an audience: the people know him, welcome him, and are disposed to hear what he says.

The Promised Relic

On a Sunday in August, after the villagers have gathered for mass, Fra Cipolla announces the afternoon sermon and collection. He promises a special attraction as well: Angel Gabriel’s feather, which he claims to have brought from the Holy Land and which, according to his account, remained in the Virgin Mary’s chamber after the announcement at Nazareth. The relic is not incidental to his appeal. It gives the promised gathering a sacred focus and offers the country people a reason to return after their meal.

Two young men, Giovanni del Bragioniera and Biagio Pizzini, hear the announcement and decide to play a trick on their friend. While Fra Cipolla is dining elsewhere, Biagio keeps his servant occupied and Giovanni searches the friar’s baggage. They find the feather’s casket and carry it off, leaving Fra Cipolla unaware that the object he has advertised is gone. The servant, Guccio Balena, is presented as an especially poor watchman: his master jokes that he has nine serious faults, among them lying, slovenliness, disobedience, neglect, and stupidity. Fra Cipolla later blames himself for entrusting his belongings to such a careless attendant, rather than identifying the thieves.

Improvising a New Relic

A large crowd gathers for the promised display. Fra Cipolla begins his sermon, recites the Confiteor, lights two torches, and carefully unwraps the casket. Inside are coals, not the feather. He does not change color or accuse anyone. After briefly cursing himself in silence for his poor choice of caretaker, he raises his eyes and hands and praises God’s power. The pause between the discovery and the explanation becomes the hinge of his performance: he converts a practical failure into an occasion to speak with still greater certainty.

Fra Cipolla tells the crowd that, in his youth, his superior sent him eastward to seek the Privileges of Porcellana. His invented itinerary runs from Venice through Borgo de’ Greci, Algarve, Baldacca, Parione, and Sardinia, then through the straits of San Giorgio to Truffia and Buffia, the land of Menzogna, the Abruzzi, the Mountains of the Bachi, and finally India Pastinaca. The extravagant place names and marvels, including flying hedge-bills, give his account the air of a traveler's testimony while also making its artifice comic. He even invokes Maso del Saggio as a witness to what he claims to have seen in India.

The explanation for the caskets is simpler and more effective. Fra Cipolla says that the feather and the coals wherewith Saint Lawrence was roasted are kept in two similar containers, and that he has mistakenly brought the latter. He then represents the mistake as God’s own decision, particularly apt because Saint Lawrence’s feast is only two days away. The coals, he assures the congregation, can protect anyone marked with them in the form of a cross from the touch of fire for the coming year.

The Crowd, the Tricksters, and the Performance

The villagers accept the substitution. They approach reverently, make offerings, and ask Fra Cipolla to touch them with the coals. He uses them to draw large crosses on their white shirts, doublets, and women’s veils, claiming that the coals grow back in the casket as they are used. What began as the threatened collapse of a relic display becomes a successful rite of contact, and the people of Certaldo receive the marks they have come seeking.

Giovanni and Biagio are present to hear the explanation and laugh so hard at the friar’s improvisation that they think they will burst. Once the crowd has gone, they tell Fra Cipolla what they did and return the feather. The theft has not stopped his performance; it has given him an opportunity to display the very resourcefulness that his reputation promises. He keeps the feather for the following year, when it can serve him again.

Narrative Significance

Fra Cipolla’s episode turns on the gap between a relic’s physical identity and the meaning an audience is persuaded to give it. The crowd does not know what is in the casket until Fra Cipolla opens it; after the discovery, his assurance and elaborate account direct their interpretation of the coals. The episode makes his eloquence an instrument of practical ingenuity, but also of deception: the villagers give offerings and accept a protective power on the basis of his fabricated explanation.

The story’s comedy depends on the contrast between his humble office and extravagant self-presentation, and between the apparent failure of the promised feather and the success of the substitute. The pranksters expect to expose him, yet his capacity to improvise turns their intervention into a new sermon and a profitable display. The assembled company, in turn, enjoys the tale as a comic performance, laughing especially at his pilgrimage and relics. Fra Cipolla emerges not as a learned theologian but as a practiced speaker who understands how spectacle, local trust, and a timely story can hold an audience even when the object on display is not the one announced.