72 pages • 2 hours read
Heptameron
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Sixth Day Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The morning of day six, Oisille changes her morning Scripture lesson to teach the Epistle of Saint John the Evangelist instead of what she had been reading, the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans. Oisille also begins the day of storytelling with a warning to trust not in man, but only in God.
Stories 51-60 Summary
In Story 51, the Duke of Urbino’s son is in love with a girl from a good family; however, he must speak to her through a messenger. He asks a man in his service to help, and that man gets a woman he loves to pass messages for the son. This messenger is in the service of the Duchess herself, and when the Duke, who himself “was more concerned with furthering the interest of his family than with pure and noble love” (429), discovers the communications, he demands the girl be brought to him. The Duchess helps the girl flee to a convent, but when the Duke lies that he will treat her kindly, the Duchess begs her to return. When she does, the Duke has her imprisoned and executed to everyone’s misery.
Story 52 takes place in a small town near Alençon where on a cold morning, the Seigneur de Tirelière walks into town to meet a lawyer named Antoine Bacheré. When an apothecary’s serving lad overhears Tirelière say he wants a good dinner at someone else’s expense, he decides to play a trick on him. Finding some frozen excrement on the street, the lad wraps it up like a sugar loaf and drops it when passing by the men, pretending not to notice. The men are elated and order a full dinner at a nearby inn. When the “sugar loaf” begins to melt, it begins to smell and ruins the man’s coat, and the two are humiliated; realizing they were tricked, they must pay for their dinner themselves.
In Story 53, the Prince de Belhoste is a happily married man who is in the court of King Francis I. When he falls in love, he tells his wife, and she supports this, especially when he falls for Madame de Neufchâtel. Their friendship is deep but becomes disrupted when the “importunate” Seigneur de Chariots begins to spend an excessive amount of time with Neufchâtel, even convincing her to marry him. The Prince confronts her and convinces her to let him threaten de Chariots, which he does. However, after some time, de Chariots is back visiting de Neufchâtel late into the night. When the Prince catches him, the former is alerted by a servant and flees by a window, but not before the Prince’s servant terrifies him by shouting “Kill him! Kill him!” (441) and rattling his sword against the wall as de Chariots is escaping by the window, leaving his cloak behind. The husband relates all this to his wife that evening, and they have a good laugh. The next day, de Chariots asks the Prince for his cloak back; the Prince feigns ignorance, but de Chariots has learned his lesson and knows the King will have him banished if he continues with the lady.
Story 54 takes place in France, where a husband and wife have been ordered by a doctor to sleep in separate beds to cure the husband’s illness. At night, each has a maid holding a candle for them to read by, and the husband begins to flirt with his maid, the younger of the two. The wife can see their shadows on the wall, and when she sees them kissing, she begins to laugh, breaking up their kiss. The husband asks why she laughs and says, “I’m such a silly thing that I laugh at my own shadow!” (446), but after that the husband gives up kissing the girl.
In Story 55, a rich merchant dies, leaving his wife to carry out his wishes. She knows he probably acquired his wealth by dishonest means and wished to make “some little donation or other to God” as if to buy his way into heaven (448). His orders are to sell their horse and give the proceeds to the poor, but this would leave his surviving family in hardship. Knowing her husband would never have made this donation if still alive, she devises a plan, sending the servant to sell the horse for one ducat along with a cat that will cost 99 ducats. The two must be bought together, but the servant finds a nobleman who agrees to the deal. She donates the one ducat from the horse to the poor and keeps the 99 ducats “to provide for the wants of herself and her children” (449).
When a French lady visits Padua in Story 56, she hears of a priest who is in prison and inquires as to why. She learns that the priest was once well respected, so much so that a lady asked him to help her find a husband for her daughter. The priest decides to present her with one of his young friars, presenting him as a student so that he might keep the dowry himself. The disguised friar and the girl marry and are happy together, but he always wears a hat to cover up the bald spot, or tonsure, usually worn by Franciscan monks, and he always disappears in the evening to go back to “school.” This continues until one day the mother and daughter visit a Franciscan church and, to their surprise, see the husband giving mass! They are incredulous but remain calm, and that evening they team up to remove his student’s cap, revealing his tonsure and the truth. They bring the case before the law, and both are punished.
In Story 57, a French ambassador is traveling in England when he encounters a nobleman with a bejeweled ladies’ glove attached to his cloak. The nobleman shares with the ambassador that he is in love with a woman, and one day while in a meadow with her, he collapses under the weight of this love. She is alarmed and comes to revive him, and he asks her to place her hand over his heart so she can feel how it beats. He professes his love, and she is so surprised she withdraws her hand, but he clenches her glove; he keeps the glove as a precious reminder of her. The ambassador, “who would have rather had the hand than the glove” (458), mocks the gentleman, claiming to admire his chivalry and saying that it is fortunate he did not get much farther with the woman, as he would have “expired in ecstasy” (458). The Englishman naively takes his comments in earnest.
Story 58 takes place in the court of King Francis I, where a noblewoman has many liaisons but protects her honor. She has a special relationship with one gentleman, with whom she often disputes because he is not very faithful. One day she pretends she will finally take pity on him and tells him to meet her in her room after she leaves the court. She alerts her friends, Madame Marguerite (the princess) and the Duchess of Montpensier, to watch and help her humiliate him. As he sneaks over to the stairs he would take to ascend to her room, she shouts “Help! Thief!” from her window, and her friends join in, drawing everyone’s attention to him. He is sexually frustrated by this but remains in love with her.
Story 59 is the second part of this noblewoman’s story. She is happily married to a man who accepts that she has servants but also expects that she remain faithful to him. His main concern is that her life at court is too costly, to which she replies that “she might give him beggars’ rags, but never a cuckold’s horns” (465). Her husband begins to withhold money, but the wife notices that he has been pursuing the maid for a while now, without success, and decides to leverage this in her favor. She convinces the maid to comply to an extent: When the husband goes to meet her in a little house in their park, the wife arrives first and, after witnessing him professing his desire for the maid, surprises him. He’s furious and attacks the maid, but the wife brings him to heel and thereafter gets whatever she wants from him (while the maid is dismissed and married to someone respectable).
Story 60 takes place in Paris, where a gullible, good-hearted man is married to “the most unbridled creature you could imagine” (471), who takes up with one of the cantors of King Louis XII. She runs away with this cantor to Blois, and after the husband repeatedly writes to her to come home, he threatens to get the Church courts involved. She then devises a plan to fake her death, makes a great show of a deathbed confession, and is buried; her Cantor then digs her up so they can live together secretly. When the husband hears this, he is happy to hear she is likely in heaven and moves on; he marries a good woman who gives him several children. However, through rumors they both hear she is still alive, and after a court battle, the Cantor is ordered to repudiate her, and she must go home to her husband, where “she is treated far better than she ever deserved” (473).
Sixth Day Analysis
As the day begins, the reader learns that until this point, Oisille has been teaching the group the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, in which Paul writes at length about how to obtain salvation, namely through faith and good deeds. The switch to the Epistle of Saint John signifies a focus more on love, ethics, and fellowship with God, setting a different tone for their lessons. The lesson is fitting for a day defined primarily by the deceptions men and women perpetuate, contrasted with Scripture that focuses on love, ethics, and how to identify true teachers.
Story 51 begins the day with an example of extreme cruelty combined with power. The Duke is not only cruel, he is able to deceive his wife and set a fatal trap for her maid, who was only the messenger in the service of noble love. In the discussion that follows, Longarine asserts that Italians are ruled by three vices (cruelty, idolatry, pride). These generalizations are taken to hyperbolic extremes when Geburon shares a gruesome anecdote of cannibalism and fetal murder to illustrate the savagery between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The broad stereotyping of the Italians here serves as a means to discuss vice more broadly as well, reaffirming their moral codes and spiritual beliefs.
Story 52 uses scatological humor to demonstrate the vice mentioned in the earlier story’s discussion, wherein those who think they are clever are often easily outsmarted. Sugar would have been very valuable in the 16th century, and it was typically sold by apothecaries, so the serving lad’s trick was indeed very clever. The discussion that follows questions whether women are truly disgusted by such base humor and dirty words, or whether their reaction is a mask of decency, which segues into the next tale. In the courtly love-triangle that develops in Story 53, the deceiver is once again the deceived. Tying to the discussion of public facades and private vices, De Neufchâtel, for her part, repeatedly says she does not want de Chariot’s attentions, but this is questionable, as she repeatedly allows him back into her bedroom despite the Prince’s intervention. However, it is the Prince, as servant to de Neufchâtel, who virtuously fulfills his duty as servant, successfully protecting her honor when she is incapable of, or even unwilling to, drive away her importunate lover.
Story 54 deals with the more indirect ways women might undermine their husband’s infidelity, rather than the more direct approach expected of a man. She is commended for caring for his health, for controlling her feelings, and for diffusing her husband’s passion without directly challenging him and causing a more humiliating scene. Once again, the deceiver is deceived, and the wife’s trick manages to effectively stop the tryst. In the following tale, Story 45, the merchant’s wife is even more clever than her husband, shrewdly manipulating her husband’s orders to undermine his wishes while still carrying them out. By undervaluing the horse and overvaluing the cat, she profits from the sale and provides for her family while her husband only selfishly thought of buying his way into heaven (which she knows is not possible). The story allows the storytellers to discuss the unethical aspects of usury—charging interest on loaned money—of which just a fraction is then donated to the Church. This hypocrisy is criticized and is extended to the Franciscans, who continually seek bequeathals by guaranteeing access to heaven.
Story 56 picks up this criticism of the Franciscans to demonstrate how the deceiver is deceived and literally unmasked in the private space of the home. Continuing the theme that the clergy should not cross the boundaries of the domestic space, the mother of the tale introduces this danger into the home figuratively when she asks a priest to play matchmaker for her daughter, and literally when the young friar marries the daughter and joins the household. While the old priest is certainly seen as corrupt, Simontaut criticizes the mother for not putting her faith in God, instead requiring an intermediary to choose the husband—a sure sign of Reformationist thought leaving a mark on the group’s debates.
Set in England, Story 57 engages with the tropes of noble “perfect” love, English chivalry, and the courtly ideals of Arthurian romance. The bedazzled glove, which symbolizes the gentleman’s noble, unrequited love, serves as a talisman for the woman who rejected him, or like a holy relic. The tale echoes similar medieval romances, such as the stories of Lancelot of Guinevere, although these tropes would be passé by the 16th century, and they are clearly mocked by the Ambassador, even if the gentleman is too earnest to detect his sarcasm. As such, “English habits” are mocked as childish and romantic, with the Ambassador, who literally and figurative represents France, providing the practical, French view on the matter.
Stories 58 and 59 are told as a pair, involving the same cunning woman who can easily manipulate men to her advantage, from servants to lovers. In 58, she strikes the perfect balance of engaging with a servant but never crossing the line of infidelity, and she gets some amusement out of it as well. The second part of this story moves from the public court space to her domestic life, where the reality (and the expense) of being a courtier adds some strain to her relationship with her husband. She is again able to deceive the deceiver, outsmarting her husband (whose sense has perhaps been dulled by his desire for the maid) and getting all the financial support she needs to continue her lifestyle. She is an example of the perfect courtier: clever, desirable, and resourceful, without compromising her virtue nor the sanctity of her marriage.
The final tale of the day, Story 60 tells of the love triangle between the husband, his wife, and the Cantor, providing for an intersection of vice and stupidity. The husband is faulted for being so naïve and blinded to the true nature of his unfaithful and unrepentant wife, and for him there is a note of tragedy when his second marriage to a good woman must be dissolved. The relationship between the scandalous wife and Cantor, while replete with vice, provides a new debate for the group, which cannot fathom why women would be attracted to the clergy. Hircan argues that women enjoy sinning with men who can absolve them afterwards, Oisille believes it is just for the opportunity to do it in secrecy, while Saffredent is convinced women actually think a love affair with the clergy makes them more saintly than other women. In the end, the husband, wife, and Cantor are each punished by the Church when they must return to their original arrangements.
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