Maso and His Companions Pull Down a Judge’s Trousers in a Florentine Court is a carefully staged public prank that turns a visiting judge’s shabby appearance into an indictment of the authorities who appointed him. Maso del Saggio, Ribi, and Matteuzzo divert the judge with feigned complaints, then use the broken boards beneath his bench to strip away his breeches while he is still presiding over court. The exposure is comic, but its target is official pretension: the final explanation makes the prank a pointed notice that Florence recognizes the poor quality of the judges sent to administer justice there.

A Judge Made into a Spectacle

The episode takes place in Florence, where a governor from the Marches of Ancona has arrived with judges and notaries. The tale’s narrator presents these visitors as mean-spirited and miserly, and their judicial credentials seem no more impressive than their origins: they appear to have been taken from ploughs or cobblers’ stalls rather than law schools. One of the governor’s judges, Messer Niccola da San Lepidio, has been assigned to hear criminal cases. The account thus places an ostensible representative of legal authority in a setting already marked by contempt for his appointment.

Maso notices the judge during a visit to the courthouse to look for a friend. His attention settles not on a legal argument but on the judge’s incongruous clothing: a smoke-blackened, greasy miniver cap, a small inkhorn at his belt, and a gown longer than his mantle. Most striking are the judge’s breeches. Because his clothes gape in front when he sits, their loose, awkward length hangs halfway down his legs. Maso reads this appearance as an invitation to ridicule and leaves his original errand to find two companions of a similarly mischievous temper.

The Plan and Its Execution

Maso brings Ribi and Matteuzzo to see the judge, and the three laugh at him from a distance. Their inspection of the courtroom supplies the practical means for the joke: a person can pass beneath the judge’s platform, and the boards under his feet are broken enough for an arm to be thrust between them. Maso proposes pulling the judge’s breeches down. After agreeing on what each will do, they leave and return the following morning, when the courtroom is crowded.

Matteuzzo slips beneath the bench and positions himself directly under the judge. Above him, Maso and Ribi create a noisy distraction by pretending to bring rival complaints about stolen property. Maso alleges that another man has taken his saddle-bags; Ribi counters with a competing accusation over a pair of boots. Their invented quarrel keeps the judge leaning toward them as he tries to hear both sides. The false claims are not merely a cover story: they hold the judge’s attention and his clothing in place while Matteuzzo reaches through the gap in the boards.

When the judge stands and leans toward the complainants, Matteuzzo seizes the breeches by the seat and pulls. They come down at once; the narrator attributes the ease of the maneuver to the judge’s lean build. The judge feels the movement, tries to sit again, and pulls his skirts forward to cover himself. Maso and Ribi keep hold of his clothes and continue demanding that he hear their cases, so that the whole courtroom sees the judge exposed. After holding the breeches for a time, Matteuzzo releases them and escapes unseen from beneath the platform. Maso and Ribi break away in opposite directions, leaving the judge to pull his clothing back into place in full view of the court.

From Practical Joke to Political Rebuke

The judge initially does not understand what has happened. He asks where the men who were arguing over saddle-bags and boots have gone, then swears that he must discover whether it is customary in Florence to pull down judges’ breeches while they sit on the bench. His complaint treats the incident as an affront to judicial dignity, but the people around the governor provide another interpretation: the Florentines have shown that they know the governor brought them inferior judges when he should have brought competent ones.

The governor makes a great stir on hearing of the incident, yet his friends persuade him to keep silent. The explanation turns the prank into a public rebuke: the judge’s exposed breeches become an image of the weakness concealed beneath his office, while the supposed property dispute gives the conspirators a way to make the court itself witness the humiliation. The matter goes no further for the time being, but the judge’s dignity has been publicly punctured and the governor has received the message without a formal accusation.

Framing and Comic Method

The episode is the fifth story of the Eighth Day, told by Filostrato after he says he has chosen a tale about Maso del Saggio and his companions. Its structure depends on a reversal between appearance and purpose. The men seem to be petitioners seeking justice over ordinary thefts; in fact, their fabricated quarrel prevents the judge from noticing the real action beneath his bench. The court’s procedures become the machinery of the joke: the judge leans in to hear competing claims, and that gesture gives Matteuzzo his opportunity.

The prank’s conclusion also redirects laughter toward the officials who might otherwise punish the pranksters. The governor’s anger is checked not by an investigation or a verdict but by an account of what the Florentines meant to communicate. In this telling, the exposure is both a physical gag and a critique of imported authority: a judge who sits above the crowd is made, for a moment, the object on display before it. The incident ends without further proceedings, leaving the civic insult legible even as its perpetrators disappear.