France

France in the Decameron is more than a place of origin: it is a center of commerce and royal authority, a point of departure for crusading, and a realm whose political upheavals can reorder the lives of people far from its court.

A commercial and political center

Paris appears as a home of wealthy merchants and a setting for relationships shaped by trade. Musciatto Franzesi, a rich merchant in France who has become a knight, must leave for Tuscany and struggles to settle his affairs. His commercial concerns include recovering debts from Burgundians, whom he regards as quarrelsome and untrustworthy; this difficulty leads him to consider entrusting the task to Ser Ciappelletto. The episode presents France as the base of a far-reaching merchant’s business, while showing how obligations contracted there reach into other regions.

A different Parisian merchant, Jehannot de Chevigné, trades in silks and cloth and is bound by friendship to Abraham, a wealthy Jewish merchant whom he repeatedly urges to convert to Christianity. Their conversations place commerce and religious conviction side by side: friendship provides the occasion for Jehannot’s appeals, but Abraham’s own adherence to his faith remains central to the dispute. Together, the two merchants make Paris a setting for both material exchange and argument over belief.

Monarchy, crusade, and the making of exile

France is also a kingdom organized around royal service and military departure. When King Philip II Augustus prepared to join a general crusade, reports of the Marchioness of Monferrato’s beauty and virtue stirred in him a sudden desire to visit her. He arranged to land at Genoa and travel overland, hoping the absence of her husband, the Marquis of Monferrato, would give him an honorable pretext to approach her. The episode sets the king’s private appetite against the public language of crusade and rank: the marchioness’s reputation reaches him before she does, while his royal power makes his intended visit a serious intrusion rather than an ordinary courtship.

The realm’s exposure to war and political change becomes more destructive in the story of Gautier of Antwerp. After the Roman Empire passed from French to German hands, conflict between the two peoples prompted the King of France and his son to lead an army against their enemies. They entrusted governance of the kingdom to Gautier, a trusted and capable nobleman, who consulted the queen and her daughter-in-law and treated them with the deference due to his liege ladies. That delegated authority placed him close to the royal household, but it could not protect him from an accusation born within it.

When Gautier rejected the princess’s advances, she tore her hair and clothing and cried that he had tried to violate her. Fearing that courtiers’ envy would make her story more credible than his innocence, he fled with his children toward Calais. The household’s response turned accusation into public punishment: his property was plundered and razed, and the king and prince, hearing the distorted account, condemned Gautier and his descendants to perpetual exile. He crossed to England with Louis and Violante, instructing them to endure poverty patiently and conceal their parentage. France, which had entrusted him with its government, had become the country from which his family had to disappear.

The reversal came through confession rather than battle. Years later, while Gautier served anonymously as a horseboy in the French army, the dying queen admitted to the Archbishop of Rouen and other witnesses that he had suffered unjustly. The king then declared him innocent and promised a reward for news of him or his children. Gautier disclosed himself to Perrot and Jamy Lamiens, his son and son-in-law, and Jamy presented him to the king still wearing his groom’s clothes. Recognized despite the years and his altered appearance, Gautier was embraced, restored to his rank and possessions, and honored alongside his family. The episode makes royal authority both the instrument of his dispossession and the means of his public restoration; the exposure of the truth reverses, but does not erase, the long exile.

A royal cure and a marriage imposed

France is also the setting for Gillette de Narbonne’s attempt to turn medical skill into a claim on Bertrand de Roussillon. Having loved him since childhood, she learned that the King of France, suffering from a fistula caused by a neglected abscess in his breast, had given up hope of recovery. She saw an opening: by treating him, she could gain access to Bertrand and ask the king to arrange their marriage. Gillette prepared a powder from medicinal simples, went to Paris, and promised she could cure the king within eight days without causing him pain.

The king had little faith that a young woman could succeed where experienced physicians had failed, but agreed to test her. Gillette offered to be burned alive if she failed; in return, she asked to marry a husband of her own choosing, excluding the king’s sons and the royal house. She cured him before the deadline, and the king honored his promise by summoning Bertrand and commanding him to return to his county with Gillette as his wife. Bertrand objected that her lineage did not match his rank and refused to consent, but the king insisted that he must keep the pledge made in exchange for his health.

The cure therefore secures a marriage in name before it secures a willing partnership. Bertrand takes Gillette against his will and leaves for Tuscany in defiance, where he courts another woman; Gillette later reaches him in disguise, and the two have sons. Only after she brings him the signs that fulfill the conditions he had set does he accept her as his wife. The episode makes the French king’s gratitude consequential beyond the court: his promise changes Gillette’s status, but royal authority alone cannot settle the private resistance that follows.

Restoration through service and kinship

The final movement of Gautier of Antwerp’s story makes France not merely the court from which he was expelled, but the destination of a carefully staged return. During the renewed war between the French and Germans, he served with the English force sent to aid France, still unrecognized and dressed as a horseboy. When news of the queen’s confession reached him, he did not simply claim the king’s reward for himself. He arranged for Jamy Lamiens, who had married Gautier’s daughter Violante without receiving a dowry, to identify the family and collect the promised bounty. Gautier’s proposal would both restore his children and provide Jamy’s wife with the marriage portion she had lacked.

Jamy presented Gautier and Perrot to the king while Gautier remained in his groom’s clothing, making the contrast between appearance and rank part of the recognition scene. The king ordered that Gautier be supplied with clothes, servants, horses, and equipment appropriate to his station, and treated Jamy with honor as well. The family then gathered in Paris: Jamy brought his wife and mother, and Perrot’s wife joined them. The king restored Gautier’s possessions and raised him to greater honor than before; Gautier remained in Paris until his death. His return thus closes the French arc not with a simple reversal of exile, but with public recognition translated into renewed family standing and a lasting home.