St. Julian's Paternoster

St. Julian's Paternoster is a morning prayer for protection on the road and, above all, for a safe place to sleep at night. In the tale of Rinaldo d'Asti, it expresses a plain traveler’s habitual faith; the robbery that follows turns his confidence into an ironic test. Filostrato’s introduction broadens the expression into a figurative warning about the perils of love as well as travel.

The prayer and its purpose

Rinaldo describes himself as a plain man, little versed in prayers. When setting out on a journey, however, he says a Pater and an Ave for the souls of St. Julian’s father and mother, then asks God and the saint to grant him a good lodging for the coming night. The practice is not a request to avoid every danger along the way: its promised comfort is safe harbor at day’s end.

Rinaldo believes experience has confirmed the devotion. He says that he has passed through many dangers on his journeys and nevertheless found himself safe and well lodged at night. He attributes both his daytime escapes and his nighttime welcome to the prayer, and insists that without saying it in the morning he would fare poorly and find no good lodging. The expression thus joins a small, repeated act of devotion to the practical anxieties of travel.

A traveler’s faith put to the test

One of the three highwaymen traveling with Rinaldo asks what prayer he uses on the road. After hearing the answer, the robber asks whether Rinaldo said it that morning. Rinaldo confirms that he did. The man privately treats this as no protection against the robbery to come, then counters that he has traveled without that prayer and has always lodged well. He names the Dirupisti, the Intemerata, and the De Profundis as the prayers he uses instead, claiming that his grandmother commended them.

Late that day, beyond Castel Guglielmo, the three men attack Rinaldo at a solitary river ford. They take his money, clothes, and horse, leave him on foot and in his shirt, and taunt him to see whether St. Julian will provide a good lodging that night. The scene places Rinaldo’s stated faith beside an immediate, concrete reversal: he did say the prayer, yet it has not kept him from being robbed. The evidence here establishes the mockery and the robbery, not the eventual outcome of his search for shelter.

From road prayer to a figure for love

Filostrato invokes St. Julian's Paternoster while introducing a tale of religious matters, misadventure, and love. He presents it as a prayer travelers should not neglect in perilous lands of love, where someone who has not said it may be badly lodged despite having a good bed. The image carries the practical association of the prayer—protection and lodging—into the uncertain terrain of romantic experience.

That framing makes the expression more than a detail in Rinaldo’s account of his habits. The highwaymen turn its promise into a taunt, while the introductory address makes the same promise a playful figure for the risks faced by lovers. Across both uses, a prayer for a secure night’s lodging marks the gap between hoped-for protection and the hazards that can defeat or complicate it.