Paganino Abducts Bartolomea

Paganino Abducts Bartolomea is the sudden rupture at the heart of Bartolomea’s marriage to Ricciardo di Chinzica: while the couple are at sea for a day’s diversion, the corsair Paganino da Mare seizes her from another boat and carries her away before Ricciardo can stop him. The abduction exposes the gulf between Ricciardo’s rigid control of his wife and the life Bartolomea comes to lead with her captor, whom she ultimately regards with pleasure rather than longing for her former household.

Background: A Marriage Governed by a Calendar

Ricciardo is a wealthy judge in Pisa, clever in his studies but, as the tale presents him, physically unequal to his young wife. He has married Bartolomea, the beautiful daughter of Messer Lotto Gualandi, with great ceremony. After a difficult wedding night, he seeks to regulate their sexual life by teaching her an elaborate calendar of supposed prohibitions. He claims that saints’ days, fasts, Ember Days, apostolic vigils, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Lent, phases of the moon, and numerous other occasions require abstinence.

The calendar serves Ricciardo’s convenience: he handles Bartolomea only about once a month, if that, and keeps close watch over her lest anyone teach her which days might be available for intimacy. His domestic authority therefore depends not just on distance between the spouses but on a fabricated system that makes their deprivation seem religiously and calendrically ordained.

The Abduction at Sea

During hot weather, Ricciardo takes Bartolomea to his country estate near Monte Nero for several days. To entertain her, he arranges a fishing excursion in two boats: he travels with the fishermen, while Bartolomea is in a boat with other women. The sport carries them several miles from shore before they realize how far they have drifted.

Paganino, a famous corsair of the time, spots the boats and overtakes the one carrying the women. Seeing Bartolomea, he takes her aboard his galliot and sails away. Ricciardo has reached land and watches the seizure but cannot prevent it. His distress is intensified by his habitual jealousy: he suspects even the air around Bartolomea, yet in this moment he does not know who has taken her or where the corsair has gone.

From Captive to Companion

Paganino initially finds Bartolomea weeping and tries to comfort her with gentle words. By nightfall, however, he turns from words to physical consolation; by the time they reach Monaco, the tale says, Ricciardo and his ordinances have entirely slipped from her mind. Paganino keeps her there and treats her honorably as his wife, attending to her day and night. The abduction thus changes not only Bartolomea’s location but the terms of her intimate life: the calendar that had restricted her marriage no longer governs her, and she begins to live merrily with Paganino.

Paganino’s intention is not simply to hold a temporary prisoner for ransom. He has no wife and, taken by Bartolomea’s beauty, resolves to keep her for himself. That decision sets up the next confrontation: after Ricciardo learns where she is, he travels by sea to Monaco, hoping to recover her and prepared to spend whatever money is needed. Paganino receives him courteously but does not immediately acknowledge him or accept his claim; instead, he proposes that Bartolomea herself be brought in to recognize her husband and decide whether she wishes to leave.

Narrative Reversal

The episode makes Ricciardo’s authority collapse in the very setting he chose for recreation. His careful rules and jealous vigilance have not secured Bartolomea’s attachment; the open sea removes her from his control, and the corsair’s direct attentions undo the abstinence calendar in a single night. The contrast gives the abduction its comic and erotic force: Ricciardo’s elaborate schedule is powerless against the circumstances that carry his wife away, while Paganino’s treatment of her turns the supposed disaster into a new, cheerful life. The story’s next test is not whether Ricciardo can pay a ransom, but whether Bartolomea will choose to return.