Piccarda’s plot to expose the Fiesole parish priest

Madam Piccarda’s plot to expose the Fiesole parish priest transforms an unwanted pursuit into a carefully staged public disgrace. When an arrogant rector repeatedly presses his attentions on a young widow, she wins her brothers’ support, substitutes the servant Ciutazza for herself, and arranges for the bishop to discover the priest in bed with the wrong woman. The trick turns the rector’s presumption against him: he is punished without the brothers having to shed a priest’s blood, while Piccarda escapes his importunity.

Setting and the rector’s pursuit

In the story Emilia tells, Madam Piccarda is a young, beautiful widow of noble birth who owns an estate near the cathedral in Fiesole. She is not wealthy enough to live grandly; for most of the year, she stays in a small house there with her two courteous and worthy brothers. Her regular presence at the cathedral brings her to the attention of its rector, an older man whose years have not brought him modesty or good sense. The tale describes him as arrogant, conceited, and so ill-conditioned that nobody wishes him well.

The rector declares his love and asks Piccarda to return it. She refuses, pointing to the difference between his claims as her spiritual father and his conduct as a priest who should be modest and chaste. She also reminds him that she is a widow, not a girl, and rejects the kind of love he demands. Her answer is a clear boundary, not an invitation to negotiate. But he treats refusal as an obstacle to overcome: he renews his advances through letters, messages, and approaches in person whenever he sees her at church.

Emilia introduces the episode as another example of clerics imposing themselves on women, and Piccarda’s predicament makes the imbalance concrete. The rector can repeatedly seek her out in a church; she must find a way to stop him without allowing his pursuit to dictate the terms of the encounter. Rather than accept his pressure or appeal to force, she brings her brothers into the matter and obtains their full agreement before acting.

The feigned consent and the substitution

Piccarda meets the rector again at church and, after he has renewed his familiar advances, pretends that his persistence has changed her mind. Her sudden apparent surrender delights him. He boasts of his success with women and asks when and where they can meet. Piccarda presents the supposed obstacles of her small house: her brothers and their companions are nearby, the rooms are close together, and even a whisper might be overheard. If the rector comes, she explains, he must remain silent and in darkness. He agrees to these conditions and presses for a meeting that very evening.

The plan depends on a substitute. Piccarda’s servant Ciutazza is described as conspicuously ungainly: her nose is flattened, her mouth crooked, her lips thick, her teeth badly set, and she squints. Her complexion is greenish and yellow; she is also hipshot and crooked on one side. Her name is Ciuta, but people call her Ciutazza. Piccarda offers her a fine new shift in exchange for lying in her mistress’s bed and welcoming a man without speaking, so that the brothers in the adjoining room will not hear. Ciutazza accepts readily, and the promised garment gives the arrangement a plainly stated reward.

That night Piccarda’s brothers make themselves audible in their room, reinforcing the conditions she described. The rector enters Piccarda’s chamber quietly and in darkness, goes to the bed as instructed, and embraces Ciutazza, believing that he has reached the woman he has pursued. He kisses her and has intercourse with her without discovering the substitution. The deception works because he relies on his expectation of access and follows the arrangement without demanding to see or speak with the woman in the bed.

The bishop’s discovery

Once the rector is in the chamber, Piccarda’s brothers carry the next part of the plan outside the house. They go to the great square, where circumstances provide an opportunity they had not needed to arrange: because of the heat, the bishop has been looking for them so he can visit and drink with them. They return with him to their house, welcome him into a cool courtyard lit by many torches, and serve him wine. Afterward, they offer to show him something inside.

One brother takes a lighted torch to the chamber, followed by the bishop and the others. The rector has hurried through the encounter and, exhausted, has fallen asleep with Ciutazza in his arms despite the heat. The light and the company wake him. Seeing the people around the bed, he hides his head beneath the covers; the bishop makes him uncover himself and confront the identity of his bedfellow. In that instant, the rector understands that Piccarda has made his own secrecy and presumption the instruments of his exposure.

The bishop rebukes him and orders him to dress. Under guard, the rector is sent home to undergo penance for his offence. When the bishop asks how he came to be in the house with Ciutazza, Piccarda’s brothers explain the whole scheme. The bishop commends them and their sister: they have dealt with the rector as he deserved without taking the more violent course of killing a priest.

Punishment, ridicule, and the ending

The rector’s punishment continues after the staged discovery. The bishop makes him bewail his offence for forty days, but the story distinguishes formal penance from the longer sting of humiliation: Piccarda’s deception and the rector’s own conduct make him rue the affair for more than forty-nine days. For a long time afterward, whenever he goes out, children point at him and identify him as the man who lay with Ciutazza. Their mockery turns a secret encounter into a public reputation he cannot readily escape.

Piccarda, meanwhile, has rid herself of the rector’s importunity without bloodshed. Ciutazza receives the promised shift and a merry night. The ending distributes the consequences with comic precision: the priest who assumed that persistence entitled him to a woman’s favour is exposed before the bishop, while the servant who knowingly takes his place is paid for her part in the trick. The episode’s reversal rests on practical intelligence and coordination within the household. Piccarda secures her brothers’ consent, uses the close arrangement of the rooms as part of her deception, and lets the rector’s own expectation carry him into the trap.