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Heptameron
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Fifth Day Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Following the morning devotional study, Saffredent declares he wished the bridge would take another month to build. However, the narrator reveals the Abbot had expedited the bridge so he may quickly return to “entertain his lady pilgrims in the way he was wont” (376). Saffredent then opens the day of storytelling.
Stories 41-50 Summary
In Story 41, the Countess of Egmont, a beautiful Flemish woman, is in Cambrai for a peace conference between Margaret of Austria and Louise de Savoy. She returns home at Advent and sends for a Franciscan friar to preach and receive confessions. He hears the confessions of everyone in the house, including her daughter, and hearing the details of her private life “made our good father think he would like to risk an unusual kind of penance” (377). He tells her he must tie a cord to her naked body so she can receive absolution, but she refuses and runs off in tears. Eventually her mother hears the truth from her along with a complaint about him from the maid, so she has him beaten in the kitchens, bound hand and foot, and sent back to his Superior with a request for more respectable people to preach the word of God.
Story 42 tells of a Prince in Touraine who falls in love with 16-year-old Françoise, a girl of a lower station. She inherits her own land from her father, but since she is young, she lives with her sister, who is married to the Prince’s butler. The Prince decides to try to become her lover. He writes to her, and she refuses him, saying “it was not right for someone of her humble station to write to such a great prince” (384). He makes multiple attempts to seduce her: following her to multiple churches, falling off his horse in front of her house, sending a man to pay her, and ultimately getting the butler (her brother-in-law) to bring her to a secluded spot so he might take her by force (though the Prince misses this appointment due to a family event). She refuses him every time and ultimately returns to her own lands to avoid him. In the end, he relents and respects her for the rest of her life, allowing her to marry one of his servants.
In Story 43, the retinue of the Princess includes a woman named Jambique, who is always “condemning illicit love” (392), which results in most fearing her and considering he the enemy of love, as she “never spoke to men at all, except in a loud, arrogant voice” (392). Jambique is deeply in love with a gentleman in the entourage, but she keeps it a secret, as she is so “infatuated with the idea of her honor and reputation” (392). However, she spies the gentleman in the garden one day and comes to him in disguise, telling him they can be lovers if he never asks who she is or tells anyone. He agrees, and they enjoy themselves in the garden. She continues to summon him regularly through a messenger, sending word that he is “to remember [his] promise” (394). Eventually, his curiosity drives him to mark her back with chalk during one of their meetings so he can identify her, and he is shocked to discover Jambique is his secret lover. When he professes his love to her in the garden the next day, she humiliates him and rejects him outright, claiming to be a virtuous married woman. He persists, and she gets so angry she has the Princess expel him from the chateau. He never hears from her again, having broken his promise to her.
A Franciscan visits the de Sedan household in Story 44, asking for their annual donation of a pig as alms. While dining with the husband and wife, the husband tries to provoke the friar, teasing him by saying it is clever that they ask for alms before their hypocrisy is well known in the community. The friar is unperturbed, retorting that their order “has a sure foundation, and it will endure for as long as the world endures” (398). When the wife presses him on the nature of that foundation, he says it is founded upon “female foolishness.” The wife flies into a rage at the insult, but the husband offers him two pigs since the Franciscan “had at least made no attempt to conceal the truth” (398).
In Story 45, a deaf tapestry maker to the monarchy lives in Tours and is known to be both witty and very clever. He is married to a good woman but is not faithful to her and one day proposes he punish a chambermaid he secretly desires. The wife agrees, suspecting nothing. On the day of the Holy Innocents, he goes to the girl’s room and rapes her, and when the girl complains to the wife, the latter misunderstands and says she had been asking him to do it for over a month. Because of this response, the girl concludes “it was not such a great sin as she thought” and eventually begins to enjoy herself with the master when he returns to her (402). One day, a neighbor sees the husband frolicking in the snow with the maid, and she tells the wife, but not before the husband catches on and does the same thing with his wife in the snow, so that the wife honestly responds that it was herself that the neighbor witnessed, not the maid. Thus, the husband fools her twice into defending his lecherous habits.
A Franciscan friar named De Vale is invited to dinner at a judge’s home in Story 46; while there, he attempts to follow the man’s wife upstairs to rape her. She kicks him down the stairs, and he flees in humiliation while she informs her husband. This friar later insinuates himself into a new household that is open to the Franciscans. When the mother of the house complains that her daughter is undisciplined, he offers to punish her. Instead of whipping her, she wakes up to him raping her in her sleep. She screams, but her mother does not come, thinking she is being punished normally. He flees again, and the mother finds out the truth, but he is never seen again.
In Story 47, two gentlemen who grew up together are such good friends that they “lived as if they were one man” (410), living together in harmonious friendship and sharing the same property. One of the two gets married, and their friendship remains the same until one day the husband begins to “lose confidence” in his friend and begins to prohibit his wife from speaking to him. She communicates this to the friend, who confronts the husband, promising he has no interest whatsoever in the wife. The husband promises to trust his friend, but the cycle repeats itself, and this time the friend is furious at the husband, not only for suspecting him but for hiding it so it can fester. The friend ends their friendship, moves out with his portion of the property, becomes his greatest enemy, and ultimately finds a way to cuckhold his friend.
Story 48 tells of two Franciscan friars who are lodging at a home during a wedding. They are excluded from the festivities due to their vocation, but one of the two decides he wants to sleep with the new bride. When she retires to the bedroom, her husband keeps dancing, and the friar sees his opportunity and sneaks into bed with her (she does not recognize him). At one point, he gets spooked and runs back to his companion, who tells him the coast is clear, so he returns to the bride for a second round. When the husband finally comes to bed, the bride has no interest in consummating the marriage with him—she instead scolds him, “Have you decided not to go to sleep at all and to do nothing but torment me?” (414). The husband is shocked and discovers the truth. When the wedding party finds the friars, who have run away, they tear them limb from limb and leave them in a vineyard “in the care of Bacchus and Venus” to die (402).
In Story 49, King Charles begins an affair with a countess, and when certain men in the court hear of it, they begin to pursue her as well. A man named Astillon succeeds in winning her over, and he pretends to take a leave from court so he can stay with her in her chambers for around a week, “living on nothing but light, nourishing food” (417). A second man follows the first “prisoner,” followed by four more, all willing sexual prisoners of the Countess, who shrewdly manages it so they are all unaware of one another. At a banquet, these men begin bragging about their time as a prisoner and realize they have all slept with the Countess: “We all of us serve the same master” (419). They plot to humiliate her by meeting her outside church with chains around their necks, but she pretends she does not understand; instead, they are humiliated when she continues to carry on with her affairs as she desires rather than being shamed by society.
Story 50 takes place in Cremona, where a gentleman named Jean-Pierre is in love with a lady who lives close by; he loves him back but never gives him a satisfying answer. His health begins to decline, doctors prescribe a bloodletting, and the lady eventually sends him a message saying she will meet him at night as she knows he is suffering for her. When they meet up, he is elated but does not realize his bandages from the bloodletting are beginning to unravel. He bleeds to death and falls at her feet, and she grabs his dagger and plunges it into her own heart. Her parents find them the next day and bury them together.
Fifth Day Analysis
The prologue uses the metaphor of a “spiritual meal” to open the day, and it ends with this same metaphor, with the group being “just as hungry for conversation as for food” (427). The value of the stories told by the group, and their related conversations, are underscored with this metaphor that draws attention to the soul’s need for nourishment, whether through Scripture readings, the tales, or the simple company of others.
A humorous tale, Story 41 again criticizes the hypocrisy of those in power, charged with speaking the word of God, revealing the well-respected friar for a fraud. This story connects to the ongoing theme of hidden selves, for the daughter confesses her own scandalous secrets, but she does so in an appropriate setting. The friar abuses his office in taking her confession as a means to manipulate her into a sexual situation. As part of the humoristic device, Saffredent reverses that power, taking the supposed method of “absolution” suggested by the friar to use it in his own punishment; ultimately it is the friar who is bound by the cord and publicly humiliated.
In Story 42, the young girl serves as another example of steadfast chastity in the face of multiple temptations. From the beginning, she can see clearly that the Prince has bad intentions; she is far too low-born to be a marriage match, and a tryst would ruin her virtue. Indeed, these sorts of self-indulgent love affairs are for the noble class—they can amuse themselves with dalliances and intrigue, and they can usually afford the consequences. The lower classes have no leverage to play that sort of game; the affair would ruin her marriage prospects, and she has no need of a serviteur. As such, the story demonstrates an incongruency of values and desires that cannot translate across high- and low-born societies.
Returning to a courtly setting and the love games played amongst the nobility, Story 43 includes harsh criticism of Jambique’s hypocrisy that is reinforced by the storytellers, who all agree she should suffer for masking her low desires and pretending to be someone else (literally with a mask, and figuratively in playing the virtuous wife). Maintaining a certain reputation at court is intensely important, particularly for women, and this story illustrates the lengths a woman might go to protect that façade, particularly when there is so little room for error for women. Her hypocrisy and sanctimonious reproaches, however, uphold these impossible standards for women, a point Hircan makes repeatedly.
Story 44 provides a means for the group to debate the inherent foolishness and worldliness of women and how the clergy might manipulate that foolishness to its benefit. It also gives Oisille the opportunity to reiterate that the Scriptures provide the only truth and guard against the possibly deceiving sermons of the friars. This point ties to a greater point illustrated across The Heptameron’s prologues and engages with the Reformation philosophy that lay people can engage independently with Scripture and spiritual matters without the intervention of the clergy.
As with similar tales exploring the sexual exploits of the lower classes, Story 44 reads like a fabliau and highlights the wit of the tradesman who has managed to deceive two women. As is typical of stories about peasants and tradesmen, the violence against the maid becomes a matter of humor to illustrate the cleverness of the tapestry maker, who, through manipulating the facts, can persuade women to unknowingly accommodate his vice. Rape is taken a bit more seriously in Story 46, in which two families of a somewhat higher station allow a corrupt Franciscan friar to stay in their homes. The story serves to reiterate the danger of letting the Church, here represented by a friar, into the private space of the home, both literally and metaphorically. As Hircan observes, the mother was a fool to allow in her house “the sort of man you should only ever see in church” (408). The story ends on an ominous note, with the friar not located, implying he (and others like him) can be anywhere and that families should guard their homes against any possible threat.
More than most of the stories in The Heptameron, Story 47 engages with psychological elements that result from the love triangle at the heart of the tale. There are elements of twinning here, as the two men are so similar they practically function as one person. Homosexuality is perhaps implied here, but it is certainly not explicit and is unusual for Renaissance literature. The addition of a wife does not necessarily disrupt their friendship, as there is love between all three people, and their domestic arrangement functions for a time. However, it is the figurative split within the husband—who is hiding the suspicious part of himself from the others while he is outwardly normal—that causes a rift in their friendship. This betrayal is central to the split, for as Hircan notes, to be suspected of fraud is devastating to a friendship. To hide it and let it fester is even worse, and in doing so the husband not only ruins their friendship, but he also brings about the infidelity (of both his wife and friend) that he feared most.
In Story 48, the group revisits the problem of clergy infiltrating the intimate spaces of the laity. Like Stories 31, 41 and 46, the Franciscan friars create trouble for husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, when they enter the domestic spaces of the family. Here, the friar is so bold as to enter the marriage bed itself, taking from the husband what is rightfully his. While other devious friars have disappeared into the night, in this case, he pays for this transgression with his life. The severe punishment affirms the social boundaries set to keep everyday people’s lives out of the reach of the religious orders, who should be more focused on spiritual life than domestic affairs.
In Story 49, the Countess is viewed as being extremely vile, not simply because she carries on multiple, consecutive affairs, but because she refuses to feel shame or seek penitence when her wantonness is publicly revealed. Her bold upsetting of societal norms would be seen as a threat, much more so than when men conduct themselves in a similar manner, as women are expected to protect their chastity and virtue.
Story 50 ends the day of storytelling with a tragic tale of two lovers that ends like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet but pre-dates the play. The trope of two lovers who cannot stand to live without one another is a familiar one, and it brings pleasure to some of the storytellers, as it upholds the idea of idealized love. However, both lovers are criticized, one for being careless with his wounds, the other for being careless with her lover’s heart.
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