Spina

Spina is the young daughter of Currado Malespina whose love for Giannotto brings her from a secret woodland affair to a year of separation and imprisonment, then to marriage with her father’s consent. Her story turns on the contrast between Currado’s first furious response and the mercy that follows when Giannotto refuses to dissemble either his love for Spina or his respect for her father.

Identity and Background

Spina is described as fair and agreeable, and as a little more than sixteen years old. She is a widow: after the death of her husband, Niccolo da Grignano, she returns to her father’s house. Her youth and beauty draw Giannotto’s attention, and she returns his love. The account presents her as a young woman whose romantic choices unfold within her father’s household and under his authority.

Love and Discovery

Spina and Giannotto become passionately enamoured, and their relationship continues secretly for several months without the household becoming aware of it. As their confidence grows, they act with less discretion. While walking together through a thick wood, they leave the rest of the company behind and settle in a secluded, grassy place among the trees, where they take pleasure in one another.

Their privacy ends when Spina’s mother finds them, followed by Currado. He is deeply angered by what he sees and has three of his servants seize the lovers and carry them in bonds to one of his castles. His initial intention is to put them both to a shameful death. Spina’s mother, though angry with her daughter and believing her deserving of severe punishment, recognizes Currado’s purpose and intervenes. She pleads with him not to become his daughter’s killer in his old age or stain his hands with the blood of a servant. Her appeal turns him from execution to imprisonment.

Imprisonment and Marriage

Currado orders the lovers confined in separate places, closely guarded and given scant food. Their punishment brings prolonged distress: they weep, fast, and endure hardship apart. They remain in this condition for a year, while Currado does not revisit their case.

When Currado eventually speaks with Giannotto, he offers him a choice that tests the young man’s character. Giannotto acknowledges that he has always loved Spina and still does, and admits that he treated her less honourably than he should have. He does not pretend that his conduct was blameless, but argues that it was a fault of youth and insists that he acted as a friend, not an enemy. He says he would welcome what Currado offers, but would rather return to prison than be given false hope. Even if Currado continues to punish him, he will still love Spina and hold her father in reverence.

Giannotto’s candour changes Currado’s judgment. Currado marvels at his courage and at the constancy and tenderness of his love; he embraces and kisses him, then has Spina brought secretly to him. Prison has left her lean, pale, and weak, so altered that she scarcely resembles her former self. In Currado’s presence, she and Giannotto mutually contract marriage according to their custom. Their union is thus not merely a private continuation of the affair: it is made openly before her father, who has changed from the person who ordered their confinement into the person who permits their marriage.

Family Reconciliation and Narrative Significance

After several days, when the newly married couple have been provided with what they need, Currado tells his wife and Giannotto’s mother, Cavriuola, the news. Cavriuola responds through tears, saying that the return of her elder son would restore what is dearer to her than herself and revive her lost hope. Currado’s wife welcomes the prospect of the match as well. The marriage therefore repairs more than the lovers’ separation: it reunites families in a moment made possible by Currado’s reversal of his earlier anger.

Spina’s story gives its central reversal a human cost and a concrete form. The lovers’ path to marriage passes through a secluded wood, separate confinement, and a year of deprivation; the reunion does not erase that suffering, but ends the punishment and makes their relationship lawful and acknowledged. Spina’s own speech and motives are not developed at length in the account. Her place in the resolution is nevertheless decisive: she is brought from confinement to marry Giannotto, and the story’s reconciliation rests on their mutual consent as well as on her father’s changed decision.