“Slapstick and smutty”: the real medieval history behind The Decameron
As the darkly comic tale of 14th-century Florentine nobles escaping the Black Death is brought to life in a Netflix limited series, we investigate the real history behind the bawdy medieval bestseller with expertise from Dr Rebecca Bowen…
The Black Death, the 14th-century pandemic that caused the deaths of as many as a third of all Europeans, perhaps isn’t a likely contender as the backdrop for an irreverent comedy.
When the writer Boccaccio saw the plague ravage the city of Florence in 1348, he described the symptoms in vivid detail: “Its first sign here in both men and women was a swelling in the groin or beneath the armpit, growing sometimes in the shape of a simple apple, sometimes in that of an egg.” After this, he explains, “symptoms would develop then into dark of livid patches that many people found appearing on their arms of thighs or elsewhere.”
There was little hope, he wrote. “No physician's prescriptions, no medicine seemed of the slightest benefit as a cure for this disease,” and “nearly all the sick would succumb within three days.”
It doesn’t sound fun. Yet Netflix’s black-humoured take on Boccaccio’s Decameron doesn’t shy away from the brutal realities of the pestilence, from showing flagellants tearing their own flesh with cattle whips to the widespread abandonment of the sick and dead – all while inviting laughs at the petty vanities, squabbles and desires of its main characters.
It's a raunchy and far-from-grave take on this devastating event, and set to a thoroughly modern soundtrack – New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ doesn’t feature in many medieval lute players’ repertoires. But this (literal) romp through the Decameron’s many-layered stories still borrows much from the spirit of Boccaccio’s original book, and has much to teach us about life amid the Black Death.
Read on for the real history of the slapstick source material, and the grim realities of an era-defining pandemic that caused Boccaccio to put pen to paper.
Is The Decameron a real story?
No, Netflix’s The Decameron is not a true story. The series is very loosely based on Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century Decameron, which was a collection of fictional stories.
Boccaccio imagines a group of young men and women meeting up at a church in Florence, where the Black Death is raging. They arrange to flee in the countryside outside the city, moving between various villas where they entertain one another by each telling each other ten stories a day, for ten days.
Though the characters are fictional, the setting for the action – the plague that ravaged Florence in 1348 – is real. Boccaccio’s observations on the symptoms and the devastation, and how people struggled to both deter the pestilence and flee from it, are accurate and emotive.
As Dr Rebecca Bowen shared on the HistoryExtra podcast, “Boccaccio does have something to say about a world turned upside down. He says: ‘Things of this world are wholly lacking in stability and are in a constant state of flux.’”
He gives vivid descriptions of the physical symptoms, says Bowen, talking about “the ‘buboes on the body’, and ‘dark patches on the skin’, which modern science identifies as necrosis and sepsis. He chillingly observes that most people were dead in three days, and likens the spread of the disease to ‘fire’.”
Boccaccio also details the various remedies attempted, such as “electing new officials, cleaning the cities, banning sick visitors”, and even mentions that “praying didn’t work”, a big problem in the deeply Christian society of the Middle Ages.
His characters also offer human perspectives, says Bowen. Pampinea, one of the young storytellers, describes how terrifying she finds the spread of the pestilence. Boccaccio writes: “My hair stands on end. Everywhere I go about the house, everywhere I stop, I fancy I see the ghosts of those who’ve died. And they don’t look the way I’ve known them. They look utterly ghastly. Heaven knows why.”
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What does Decameron mean?
The title of The Decameron is significant, rooted in the Greek language. Composed of the Greek nouns deca (meaning ten) and hemeron (meaning days), the title translates literally to “the book of ten days”.
Bowen notes that the title “recalls and satirises an important genre of Christian religious texts called the Hexamerons”.
The Hexamerons, named from the Greek term hex (meaning six), refer to the six days of creation as described in the Bible. Boccaccio was perhaps positioning his work in relation to these religious texts, suggesting a contrast and a secular parallel.
“As soon as we start reading the Decameron, we realise it’s not going to be like these religious hexamerons,” says Bowen.
“Because he tells us in this prologue that he wants his readers to ‘derive entertainment from the amusing events there described and equally, helpful advice’.”
Who was Giovanni Boccaccio?
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, though his birthplace is uncertain, possibly being Florence or the small town of Certaldo in the Val d'Elsa valley near Siena. Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a merchant, Boccaccino di Chellino, who immediately recognised him as a legitimate child.
Boccaccino was a currency converter, a vital profession at a time when each city-state minted its own currency, Bowen explains. This job brought him to Paris in late 1313, “leading to an apocryphal tale that Boccaccio's mother might have been a French princess,” though her true identity remains unknown and, the fact that Boccaccio was already born by the time Boccaccino arrived in Paris somewhat discredits this tale.
Boccaccio grew up in Florence until the age of 13, when he moved to Naples with his father – who had secured a prominent position as the director of the Naples branch of the Bardi Bank, serving King Robert d'Anjou of Naples.
Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a merchant
In this vibrant and international city, Boccaccio was exposed to the high culture of the European elite and admitted to the learned circle of the Biblioteca Angiolina at age 20, a royal library that housed texts from across the world.
Despite being expected to study law, Boccaccio notoriously neglected his studies in favour of literary pursuits, producing four major works in both verse and prose during these formative years.
After spending around 15 years in Naples, the 28-year-old Boccaccio returned to a plague-devastated Florence (the plague had hit the city in 1340). According to Florentine historian Giovanni Villani, this plague killed a sixth of the population.
The banking system of the city was also in chaos, as Edward III of England had defaulted on a major loan, collapsing the banking system that employed his father.
Despite the turmoil, explains Bowen, “Boccaccio stayed in Florence for the next decade, and he started to write more poems as well as his first prose novel – this is called the Elegy of Lady Fiammetta [Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta].
“It's while he's there that he witnesses the second plague, in 1348.”
It’s not known where or even whether Boccaccio self-isolated during the plague, though it’s likely that he was in Florence for some time. The plague killed his father, leaving him a somewhat diminished family fortune.
“And then for three years, we don't really know what happened to him, but those are the three years in which he wrote the Decameron.”
What is the plot of Boccaccio’s Decameron?
You might think that Boccaccio's Decameron is a simple tale of the 1348 plague in Florence, but the story is a deeper than that. Bowen describes it as a “Russian doll narrative”.
The book begins with a clear declaration from Boccaccio: “I'm going to tell a hundred stories.” However, says Bowen, the writer immediately complicates this by offering multiple names for these tales – “fables, parables, stories, or whatever you want to call them” – indicating the complexity within.
At the first level, she explains, the plot is set against the backdrop of the plague that devastated Florence in 1348.
“The historical narrator provides a detailed, almost scientific account of the plague’s impact,” says Bowen, but the grim reality quickly transitions to a more intimate story of a group seeking escape from the city’s misery.
The narrative focuses on seven women who meet at the church of Santa Maria Novella, still a notable site in Florence today. These women, a mix of friends and relatives, discuss fleeing the city to find solace in the countryside. They decide to head towards the hills, specifically the area around Fiesole, “a popular retreat even now, particularly when it’s hot”, Bowen explains.
However, they faced a dilemma: it was deemed inappropriate for seven women to travel alone. Fortuitously, three young men – also relatives or connected through marriage – enter the church.
These men agree to join the escape and with a couple of servants in tow, this ‘brigata’, or merry band, sets out for the hills, with drama immediately coming from their romantic interest in one another.
“That’s just the introduction,” explains Bowen. Over ten days, the group stays in various villas. Each day, they elect one member to be the master of ceremonies, responsible for planning meals and activities. Central to their routine is the storytelling session.
“Within the narrative,” says Bowen, “they've got these rules. They decide that the game that they're really going to play for their entertainment during the plague, for their wellbeing, is to tell stories. This is going to be the thing that saves their spirits from this grim moment.”
The characters’ days follow a pattern, says Bowen. “Usually in the early morning, they all wander about, then they meet up somewhere cool and airy, and then in the heat of the day, they'll pause and have a siesta. Once the heat goes down a bit, they'll meet up again and they'll start telling these stories.”
The stories themselves, told in various styles over 10 days, form the bulk of the narrative, until “eventually, they finish their journey through the hills and they head back down to Florence.”
In what language is the Decameron written, and who was it for?
Boccaccio wrote the Decameron in the Tuscan dialect.
“At the time, there was no standard Italian language,” explains Bowen. “Italian actually only became the dominant language spoken in Italy with the advent of mass-produced television programming in the 1960s. Up until the 1960s, most people in Italy didn't speak Italian; they spoke their local dialects.”
“Nobody had written a long prose piece in the vernacular before Boccaccio writes Decameron,” says Bowen, and he was inspired by Dante and his Divine Comedy.
While the educated elite read Latin, the vernacular Tuscan dialect was widely spoken, making his work available to a broader audience.
“He was able to weave together lots of different stories of genres, of styles, and he was working to sort of flavour his writing with a little bit for everybody,” says Bowen.
As in the most recent Netflix adaptation, Boccaccio's Decameron was intended to be funny; Bowen notes that “there's quite a lot of slapstick humour in it” – though some of the humour does not translate well to contemporary sensibilities.
“There are elements that might seem inappropriate or even chilling today,” she explains, “such as jokes about sexual violence, ableism, ageism, and body shaming.”
Despite these aspects, Bowen highlights that some characters "really are still funny, even by modern standards”. Boccaccio crafted his narratives to be engaging and amusing, with a mix of bawdy and dark tales, and uses the reactions of his in-text audience, the ‘brigata’, to perhaps serve as a model for how readers might respond to the stories.
Bowen likens this to "old sitcoms when they hold up the signs saying ‘cheer’ or ‘laugh’ or ‘clap’." Boccaccio frequently describes the ‘brigata’, especially the women, laughing heartily at the more risqué tales, sometimes to the point of “cracking their jaws”.
How much sex is in the Decameron?
Sex and sexuality permeate many of the tales in the Decameron, says Bowen. A notable disruptor character, Dioneo, introduces the first erotic tale.
“Dioneo – whose name evokes the Greek god of wine and revelry, Dionysus – sets the tone with a narrative about a monk who brings a young woman into his cell for sex.
“The story escalates when the abbot, upon discovering the affair, decides to partake himself, leading to a scenario where the monk catches the abbot in the act. This tale highlights both sexual themes and the corruption of the clergy, a recurring motif in Boccaccio’s work.”
What's a couple of sexy stories in exchange for this madness that ensued?
The sexual content increases as the days progress, explains Bowen. By the fifth day, the stories are not just innuendo-laden but explicit in their eroticism. Boccaccio presents a range of scenarios involving sexual desire, infidelity, and the natural impulse for sex. For instance, tales feature young women falling in love, wives cheating on their husbands, and even nuns and monks seeking sexual fulfilment. There is also a significant defence of sex as a natural impulse, often emphasising female pleasure.
Boccaccio did intend for women to read his work, says Bowen, incorporating female characters who both narrate and listen to the stories.
However, he later expressed concern about the appropriateness of these tales for women. In a letter written decades years after completing the Decameron, he advised his friend and patron Mainardo Cavalcanti not to allow the women in his household to read the book, stating, “You know how much they contain is less than decent and offensive to propriety.”
He was also worried, says Bowen, about how he would be perceived. In the same letter, Boccaccio wrote: “I cannot praise your having allowed the honourable ladies of your household to read my trifles, rather I beg you to give me your word that you will not do so again.” He was concerned, as Bowen quotes, that readers might view him as “a smutty panderer, an incestuous old man, an impure person, a foul-mouthed scandalmonger”.
Despite these concerns, Boccaccio defended the risqué nature of his text in the Decameron's conclusion, says Bowen.
In the topsy-turvy world where “highly respectable folk ... went about with a pair of breeches wrapped about their heads as a precaution,” Boccaccio argues that in the face of such chaos, his stories are warranted. As Bowen puts it: “What's a couple of sexy stories in exchange for this madness that ensued?”
You can listen to the full episode with Dr Rebecca Bowen on the HistoryExtra podcast, available now.
Dr Rebecca Bowen is a postdoctoral research associate on the AHRC project and an associate scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-. The translation quoted in the podcast episode is Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, translated by Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
An eight-part 2024 adaptation of The Decameron, starring Zosia Mamet, Jessica Plummer and Saoirse-Monica Jackson, is available on Netflix now.
Authors
Elinor Evans is digital editor of HistoryExtra.com. She commissions and writes history articles for the website, and regularly interviews historians for the award-winning HistoryExtra podcast
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