Magnanimity and Generosity in the Tenth Day

Magnanimity and Generosity in the Tenth Day is the principle that unites the day’s stories of people acting generously or magnificently in love and other affairs. Introduced as a way to inspire worthy conduct and lasting renown, the theme grows more demanding with each example: wealth may be given, but so may safety, vengeance, possession, and the power to claim another person. The day’s most consequential generosity does not merely reward merit; it relinquishes advantage and leaves another person free.

The Day’s Theme and Its Measure

At the close of the preceding day, Pamfilo takes the crown from Emilia and announces that the company will return from unrestricted storytelling to a common subject: those who have acted generously or magnificently in love or otherwise. Such deeds, he suggests, can kindle the company’s desire to act worthily and make a brief mortal life endure in laudatory renown. The theme is therefore both ethical and social. A generous action matters in itself, but its telling also makes it an example that can be remembered and imitated.

The stories test this ideal across different kinds of power. A king can bestow riches; an outlaw can spare a captive; a host can offer hospitality; a lover can give up a claim. The day does not treat these gestures as interchangeable. Their force depends on what the giver could have withheld or taken, and on whether the recipient is left with a real choice. As the storytellers compare one deed with another, generosity becomes a contest in which the most impressive gift may be not an object but the surrender of control.

Gifts, Hospitality, and Fortune

In the opening story, Messer Ruggieri de' Figiovanni serves Alfonso, King of Spain, with distinction but believes that his merit has gone unrecognized. Alfonso answers the grievance with a test involving two locked coffers: one contains the royal crown, sceptre, orb, and jewels; the other contains earth. Ruggieri chooses the coffer of earth. The king treats the result as evidence that fortune, rather than royal ingratitude, has denied him a fitting reward, then gives him the valuable coffer so he can return to Tuscany with a public witness of his worth. The generosity lies not only in the gift but in Alfonso’s effort to distinguish his own judgment from the apparent injustice of chance.

The story of Ghino di Tacco makes the contrast between social reputation and conduct more pointed. Ghino captures the Abbot of Cluny, a wealthy churchman travelling to the baths after falling ill. Instead of simply exploiting his prisoner, Ghino keeps him comfortably and helps him recover. He then reveals his identity and places the abbot’s goods and horses at his disposal, allowing him to take what he needs and leave or stay as he chooses. The abbot departs with only necessary things, asks Pope Boniface VIII to restore Ghino to favour, and helps secure him a position among the Hospitallers. An encounter that begins as captivity becomes reciprocal recognition: the abbot responds to mercy with advocacy, and Ghino’s changed circumstances make a different life possible.

Hospitality is also measured in smaller, intimate scenes elsewhere in the collection. After Rinaldo d'Asti is robbed and left in danger, a woman admits him through a private entrance, offers him a still-warm bath, clothes him in garments belonging to her late husband, and shares supper with him. Her welcome answers immediate vulnerability with practical care. Landolfo Ruffolo, rescued from the sea, later repays the woman who brought him ashore and the townsmen who clothed and assisted him. His restored fortune does not erase the help he received: he sends money to both groups, turning survival into an occasion for gratitude and repayment.

Restraint, Mercy, and the Renunciation of Power

The day’s most radical example begins with Nathan, whose fame rests on a palace built to receive travellers and a long practice of generous hospitality. Mithridanes, envious of Nathan’s renown, imitates his liberality but wants to surpass him. He eventually sets out to kill his rival. Nathan, not recognizing him when they meet, listens to his purpose and even explains how to find the secluded place where Nathan can be attacked. When Mithridanes reaches the appointed spot and recognizes his intended victim, he is overcome by shame and abandons his sword. Nathan embraces him rather than seeking punishment. His response transforms a would-be murder into friendship, and makes generosity toward an enemy more striking than generosity toward a guest.

Messer Gentile de' Carisendi’s story shifts the test from life to love and possession. He rescues Madam Catalina from her tomb after she has been mistakenly buried as dead, and she gives birth to a son while under his care. At a banquet, Gentile presents the woman and child to an assembly that includes her husband, Niccoluccio Caccianimico, without initially disclosing who they are. He then makes clear that he will return them to Niccoluccio. Gentile has loved Catalina and still has the power to keep what circumstance has placed in his hands; instead, he restores her to her husband and relinquishes the hope of possessing her. The story explicitly ranks this act above gifts of crowns or the reconciliation of an outlaw, because Gentile gives up something he continues to desire.

In the story of Madam Dianora, generosity passes from one person to another until it frees everyone from a claim. To discourage the persistent Messer Ansaldo Gradense, Dianora demands a garden as green in January as in May, believing the task impossible. Ansaldo obtains the garden through a nigromancer and presents it to her. Her husband, Gilberto, permits her to honour the promise she has made, although doing so means accepting the prospect of Ansaldo’s desire being fulfilled. Ansaldo then releases her from that promise, moved by Gilberto’s generosity. The nigromancer, in turn, refuses the payment Ansaldo owes him. The episode does not make the original demand or the desire behind it disappear; instead, each person’s willingness to yield prevents obligation from becoming coercion. Ansaldo’s love changes into an honourable affection, while the former rivals become friends.

The Wider Pattern of Giving and Its Limits

Across the day’s examples, generosity is repeatedly shown as a choice made at a moment when a person could insist on advantage. Alfonso can answer Ruggieri’s complaint with a gift; the Abbot of Cluny can respond to his captor’s mercy with a request for pardon; Nathan can defend himself but chooses reconciliation; Gentile can retain Catalina but returns her; Gilberto and Ansaldo can treat Dianora as the object of a bargain but instead release her from its pressure. These actions differ in scale and circumstance, yet each alters a relationship by refusing to turn power into possession.

Other episodes in the collection sharpen the contrast between giving and taking. Abraham’s visit to Rome exposes churchmen’s greed and the sale of sacred offices, yet he returns convinced that Christianity’s continued growth despite such corruption testifies to its divine foundation. In the story of Ferondo, an abbot uses deception to secure an adulterous affair, while the apparent miracle of Ferondo’s return becomes a public fiction that the credulous villagers accept. Fra Alberto, by contrast, impersonates the Angel Gabriel to deceive Lisetta and is publicly exposed. These stories do not present clerical status as proof of virtue; they make conduct, rather than office or appearance, the measure. Against such exploitation, the Tenth Day’s acts of mercy and relinquishment gain particular weight.

The day’s final measure of magnanimity is therefore not simply how much a giver can afford to lose. It is whether generosity recognizes another person as more than a prize, debtor, captive, or instrument of reputation. Gifts can earn honour, create bonds, and repair injuries, but the most consequential acts go further: they give up the right to exact repayment or possession. In that sense, the stories make renunciation—not abundance alone—the clearest proof of a generous spirit.