January

January in the story of Madam Dianora and Messer Ansaldo Gradense is more than a calendar setting: its severe winter weather makes the month the measure of an apparently impossible demand, while a garden that blooms in the cold gives that demand force and consequence.

The January Demand

Madam Dianora, a noblewoman living in Udine and the wife of Gilberto, seeks to end Messer Ansaldo’s persistent suit by setting him a task she believes cannot be fulfilled. Through a messenger, she declares that if his love is genuine, he must provide, during the coming month of January, a garden near the city full of green grass, flowers, and trees in leaf, as if it were May. She warns that if he fails, he must cease sending messengers; if he continues his pursuit, she will disclose it to her husband and relatives.

The demand makes January’s season part of the test. What Madam Dianora proposes is not simply a garden, but spring in the middle of winter: an outward proof intended to close off any hope of satisfying her suitor.

The Garden in Winter

Messer Ansaldo treats the challenge as difficult but resolves to try. After searching for help, he finds a practitioner who offers to produce the garden by necromantic art, in return for a large payment. On the night before the calends of January, while the cold is extreme and everything is covered with snow and ice, the practitioner works in a meadow beside Udine. By morning it appears as a beautiful garden, with green grass, trees, and fruits of every kind.

Messer Ansaldo visits the garden, chooses its finest fruits and fairest flowers, and has them secretly delivered to Madam Dianora. He invites her to see what she required and reminds her that she promised, under oath, to fulfill her side of the bargain. The garden’s sudden abundance gives January its defining contrast: winter remains present in the surrounding snow and ice, yet the meadow displays the signs of another season.

A Promise Brought into the Open

Madam Dianora has already heard reports of the garden when she receives its flowers and fruit. Although she regrets the promise, curiosity leads her to visit with other women of the city. She returns home distressed by the obligation she believes she has incurred; her efforts to conceal that distress fail, and Gilberto presses her to explain. She eventually tells him the whole story.

Gilberto first becomes angry, then distinguishes her intention from the danger of having listened to the messages and entered into terms concerning her chastity. He tells her to go to Messer Ansaldo and seek release from her promise while preserving her chastity if she can. In this sequence, January’s impossible season is transformed into a real moral and marital predicament: the garden does not merely display marvels, but makes the consequences of Madam Dianora’s words impossible to ignore.