Giosefo

Giosefo is a young man who seeks Solomon’s advice about his supposedly intractable wife. Solomon’s answer sends him to Goosebridge, where a muleteer’s treatment of a balking animal supplies Giosefo with the interpretation he wants: he returns home and uses violence to compel obedience. His episode makes a brief, practical fable of advice and application, but its resolution also lays bare the severity of the story’s assumptions about authority within marriage.

Identity and Introduction

Giosefo appears in the Queen’s story about two young men who travel to Jerusalem to consult Solomon, whose wisdom and readiness to advise petitioners are renowned. On the road out of Antioch, Giosefo joins Melisso, a wealthy young gentleman from Lajazzo who is also bound for Jerusalem. Their grievances differ. Melisso says that although he is young and rich and keeps open house for his fellow townsmen, he cannot find anyone who wishes him well. Giosefo, by contrast, seeks a way to deal with his wife, whom he regards as exceptionally perverse.

The story introduces Giosefo through the problem he brings to the king: neither prayers nor kind words, he says, have corrected his wife’s waywardness. His request is not for a change in his own conduct or for a better understanding between them, but for counsel on how to govern her. That stated aim shapes the meaning he later draws from Solomon’s deliberately spare reply.

The Counsel and the Road to Goosebridge

After Melisso and Giosefo arrive in Jerusalem, one of Solomon’s barons secures their admission to the king. Melisso explains his difficulty first and receives the single-word counsel to love. Giosefo then presents his complaint and is told to go to Goosebridge. The two young men leave without understanding how either answer could help; Giosefo in particular initially takes the destination as a rebuff rather than a meaningful instruction.

The answer becomes legible only during their return journey. At a river crossing, the travelers must wait while a caravan of pack animals passes over a fine bridge. One mule takes fright and refuses to go forward. Its muleteer first strikes it moderately, then beats it harder as it shies from side to side and turns back. Giosefo and Melisso protest that the man will injure the animal and urge gentler handling, believing kindness will move it more effectively. The muleteer replies that he knows his own mule and continues striking until it crosses. The animal’s passage, rather than the travelers’ appeal to gentleness, determines which method appears effective in the scene.

At the bridge-head, Giosefo asks a poor man the name of the place and learns that it is Goosebridge. The name recalls Solomon’s instruction. Giosefo now believes he has understood: he had not known how to beat his wife, and the muleteer has shown him what to do. The story turns the journey’s physical incident into an answer, but the inference is Giosefo’s; the episode presents the king’s words as a puzzle whose meaning he supplies from what he has just witnessed.

The Lesson Applied at Home

In Antioch, Giosefo invites Melisso to stay for a day or two. At supper, he tells his wife to prepare the meal according to Melisso’s instructions, but she does nearly the opposite, as she has done before. When Giosefo objects, she answers him haughtily and insists on doing what she considers right. He declares that he will change her manner and asks Melisso to remain and watch, reminding him of the muleteer’s insistence that he be left to manage his own animal.

Giosefo then takes a round stick made from young oak and follows his wife into the chamber to which she has withdrawn. He grabs her by the hair, throws her down, and beats her. She first cries out and threatens him; as the blows continue and she is bruised, she begs for mercy and promises not to oppose his wishes again. Giosefo does not stop at her plea but continues until he is exhausted and, as the narration puts it, no place on her back remains unbruised. The violence is presented as the enactment of his reading of the muleteer’s example, not as a negotiated settlement between the spouses.

Afterward, Giosefo returns to Melisso and predicts that the result of the Goosebridge advice will be evident the next day. In the morning, his wife rises in pain and asks what he wants prepared for dinner. Giosefo and Melisso find the meal properly made according to the instructions. The change in her behavior is the immediate proof Giosefo accepts: the former refusal has given way to compliance after the beating.

Narrative Role and Significance

The episode is framed by the Queen’s opening claim that women should submit to men’s governance, and her introduction invokes an earlier tale about a wife who resisted her husband. Giosefo’s story thus arrives already placed within an argument about obedience. Its concrete demonstration is not Solomon’s explanation but the muleteer’s blows, which Giosefo transfers from animal handling to marriage. The bridge provides the memorable link between the king’s riddle and the husband’s action; the bruised wife and her compliant request the next morning provide its consequence.

Giosefo’s role is therefore both that of a petitioner who receives a cryptic answer and of an interpreter who turns an observed act into a rule for domestic conduct. The tale reports that he and his companions judge the counsel successful because his wife obeys afterward. That practical outcome does not make the method gentle: the narrative specifies the beating’s severity and the woman’s pain, even as it presents her compliance as confirmation. The contrast between the appeal to gentleness at the bridge and Giosefo’s force at home gives the story its sharpest tension. Solomon’s brief direction acquires its meaning through Giosefo’s choice of example—and the cost of that choice falls on his wife.