Torello and Adalieta’s marriage

Torello and Adalieta’s marriage is tested by a long separation, a mistaken report of Torello’s death, and the preparations for Adalieta’s remarriage. Its decisive token is the ring she gives him when he leaves for a crusade: years later, that ring turns an apparent stranger at her wedding feast back into her husband. The reunion restores their marriage not through a new promise but through recognition, and the story closes with the couple living together for many years.

Separation and the parting promise

When Messer Torello d'Istria resolves to join the crusade, he leaves despite Adalieta’s tears and entreaties. He explains that he goes for the honor of his body and the health of his soul, but admits he cannot know whether he will return. The uncertainty gives their farewell its particular weight: his departure is chosen, while the length and outcome of the separation are beyond either spouse’s control.

Before leaving, Messer Torello d'Istria asks Adalieta not to marry again for a year, a month, and a day from the date of his departure unless she receives certain news that he is alive. He understands that she is young, beautiful, and of high family, and that her brothers and relatives may press her to accept another husband if he is believed dead. The stipulated interval is therefore more than a test of private devotion. It is also a practical allowance for the family pressure he expects her to face.

Adalieta promises that, as far as her life permits, she will live and die as his wife and in his memory. She also acknowledges that circumstances may force her to act otherwise, in which case she will obey the period he has requested. Before he rides away, she removes a ring from her finger and gives it to him, asking him to remember her if she dies before seeing him again. The exchange makes the ring a physical pledge carried across a separation neither of them can control.

False death and family pressure

The marriage is endangered by an error of identity. A Provençal man named Messer Torello de Dignes dies and is buried among the Christians taken by Saladin. Because his name resembles that of Messer Torello d'Istria, reports that Messer Torello is dead are understood to mean Adalieta’s husband. Some returning Italians even claim to have seen him dead and attended his burial. The false report converts uncertainty into apparent certainty without actually resolving what has happened to him.

At Pavia, Adalieta grieves for months. When prominent men seek her in marriage, her brothers and other relatives urge her to marry again. She refuses repeatedly and with tears, but finally consents under their continued pressure, on the condition that she will not go to her new husband until the period promised to Messer Torello has run its course. Her actions preserve the parting agreement as far as circumstances allow, even while family authority moves her toward a second marriage.

The timing sharpens the conflict. With perhaps eight days left before the end of the appointed term, news reaches Messer Torello in Alexandria that the ship carrying the Genoese ambassadors has been lost near Sicily, with no survivors. Believing that nothing can have reached Pavia about his condition, and that Adalieta must already have remarried, he falls into such grief that he loses his appetite and takes to bed intending to die. His despair arises from the same false information that has shaped Adalieta’s situation: each spouse believes the other’s future has become irretrievable.

Recognition at the wedding feast

Saladin, who loves and honors Messer Torello, learns the reason for his distress and arranges for him to be transported to Pavia by magic, asleep on a bed. When the sleeping draught wears off, Messer Torello wakes in the presence of his uncle, an abbot, and monks. They are frightened because they believe him to have been dead for months. His uncle recognizes him despite his great beard and Saracen clothing, then tells him that Adalieta has been married again and is due to attend the wedding feast that very morning.

Messer Torello asks to attend the feast before the guests learn he has returned. At the bridegroom’s house he sits opposite Adalieta, but his beard, foreign dress, and the accepted report of his death prevent her from recognizing him. The ring supplies what appearance and hearsay cannot. Messer Torello places it in his mouth, drops it unseen into a gilded cup sent from the bride, and returns the cup to her. As Adalieta uncovers it, she sees the ring she gave her husband at their parting and recognizes it as his.

Her response is immediate and public: she overturns the table and runs to Messer Torello, embracing him so fiercely that she cannot be separated from his neck until he asks her to compose herself. The wedding gathering is thrown into disorder, but the disruption becomes joyful as the guests learn that the man believed dead is alive. Messer Torello recounts what has happened since his departure and claims his right to take his wife back, since he is not dead after all.

Restoration of the marriage

The bridegroom responds frankly and as a friend, leaving Messer Torello free to do as he pleases. Adalieta removes the ring and crown supplied by her new husband and puts on the ring she has recovered from the cup, along with the crown sent by Saladin. The change of objects makes the restored bond visible: the token of the first marriage has reappeared, while the adornments of the second match are set aside.

The wedding party accompanies the couple to Messer Torello’s house, where they reassure his grieving relatives and townspeople, who regard his return as nearly miraculous. Messer Torello shares his jewels with the man who had borne the expense of the nuptials, the abbot, and others, and sends messages of his safe return to Saladin, whom he continues to call his friend and servant. He and Adalieta live together for many years, and he practices hospitality and courtesy more generously than before.

The marriage’s course thus moves from a parting pledge to a threatened replacement and finally to public recognition. Adalieta’s fidelity is not presented as freedom from all pressure: she resists remarriage, then yields to her relatives while still honoring the agreed waiting period. Messer Torello, meanwhile, can return only through Saladin’s intervention and the ring’s unmistakable evidence. The couple’s reunion resolves the misunderstanding and restores their life together; the story also links their good fortune to the hospitality and courtesy they have practiced.