The Love Affair of Lisabetta and Lorenzo

The Love Affair of Lisabetta and Lorenzo is a reciprocal but clandestine attachment destroyed by the violence of Lisabetta’s brothers. Their relationship begins through mutual attraction and grows in the shadow of her household: Lorenzo is employed by her three brothers, but his place in their business gives him no protection when they decide that the affair threatens the family’s honor. After his murder, Lisabetta’s love persists as grief, care for his remains, and finally a public song associated with the basil pot that holds his head.

The Beginning of a Secret Relationship

Lisabetta is the only sister of three wealthy merchant brothers in Messina. They have not yet arranged her marriage. Lorenzo, a handsome and agreeable young man from Pisa, works in one of their warehouses and conducts their affairs. The relationship therefore begins within the brothers’ own household and business world, rather than between strangers: Lorenzo is close enough to be repeatedly seen by Lisabetta, but his position remains subordinate to the family that employs him.

Lisabetta looks at Lorenzo on several occasions, and he notices her. His interest becomes reciprocal; he turns his thoughts to her and leaves his other loves. Once each has gained confidence in the other, they do what both desire. The tale presents their attachment as mutually chosen and pleasurable, not as a pursuit by one party alone. Its secrecy, however, is incomplete. One night, when Lisabetta goes to Lorenzo’s sleeping place, her eldest brother sees her without her knowledge.

Discovery and Murder

The eldest brother is troubled by what he has seen, but at first gives no sign of it. In the morning he tells his brothers, and the three deliberate. They decide to keep silent and pretend they know nothing, intending to remove what they regard as a source of shame without bringing reproach or trouble upon themselves or their sister. Their apparent silence is not mercy: it allows them to choose the circumstances in which Lorenzo will be vulnerable.

One day the brothers feign a trip outside the city and take Lorenzo with them to a lonely, remote place. When the opportunity comes, they kill him while he is off guard and bury him where no one knows. Back in Messina, they say they have sent him away on business, a story made plausible by his usual role in their affairs and his occasional journeys for them. The lie exploits the very work that had brought Lorenzo into their home: his absence can be explained as another errand, while Lisabetta is left without a truthful account of why he does not return.

Lisabetta repeatedly asks her brothers about Lorenzo because the delay grieves her. One of them rebukes her and warns that further questions will bring an answer she deserves. Frightened and sorrowful, she stops asking them openly, but continues to call for Lorenzo at night and weep over his absence. Her private expectation has no resolution until a dream reveals what the household has concealed.

The Dream and the Basil Pot

In the dream, Lorenzo appears pale and disordered, his clothes torn and decayed. He tells Lisabetta that he cannot return: her brothers killed him on the last day she saw him. He also reveals where they buried him, then asks her not to call for him or wait for him any longer. The dream changes her uncertainty into knowledge. She gives credence to the vision and, the next morning, goes to the place it indicated, accompanied by a servant who knows the brothers’ affairs.

Lisabetta clears away the dead leaves and digs where the earth seems less hard. She finds Lorenzo’s body, which has not yet rotted or changed, confirming what the dream disclosed. Unable to carry the whole body away for a more fitting burial, she cuts off his head with a knife, wraps it in a napkin, and carries it home in her maid’s lap. In her chamber she weeps over it, bathes it with tears, and kisses it repeatedly. Her effort to remain with Lorenzo has become an act of preserving and mourning what remains of him.

She places the head, wrapped in fine linen, in a large pot used for marjoram or sweet basil, covers it with earth, and plants basil from Salerno above it. She waters the plant with her tears and with rose or orange-flower water, then sits beside the pot and gazes at it as the hiding place of her lover. Her tears continue to soak the basil; sustained tending and the richness of the earth formed by the decaying head help it grow beautiful and fragrant. The pot thus holds together the two aspects of her grief: Lorenzo is hidden beneath the growing plant, while Lisabetta’s care remains visible in the basil’s flourishing.

Separation, Death, and Remembrance

Lisabetta’s neighbors notice her daily attention to the pot, her wasting appearance, and her swollen-looking eyes from weeping. They report what they have seen to her brothers. After reproving her without success, the brothers secretly take the pot away. Lisabetta searches and pleads for its return, and her grief intensifies when she cannot recover it. She falls ill and asks for nothing except the basil pot.

The brothers eventually inspect the pot and find the cloth and Lorenzo’s head. His curled hair enables them to recognize him. Afraid that the murder will become known, they bury the head and secretly leave Messina for Naples. They remove both Lorenzo’s remains and themselves from the place where the crime occurred, but their departure does not restore Lisabetta: she continues lamenting and asking for the pot until she dies weeping.

Afterward, the affair becomes known to many, and someone makes a song about the pot’s theft that continues to be sung. The relationship therefore ends not in reunion or marriage, but in the loss of both lovers and the circulation of a remembered image. The brothers can take away the pot, yet cannot keep the story entirely private. Lisabetta and Lorenzo’s intimacy, first concealed within the household, survives in the basil pot’s place in communal song.