The Angel's Lost Wings

In the Decameron , Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) tells the story of how Friar Alberto, a cunning monk, seduces the conceited Venetian beauty Lisetta, convincing her he is the angel Gabriel sent to love her. After a period of intense love-making their affair is exposed, leading to Friar Alberto’s public humiliation and imprisonment. Boccaccio thus criticises hypocrisy, particularly among monks, through the story of Friar Alberto, whose deceitful actions lead to his downfall. The hundred short stories of the Decameron , many of which are set on the Apennine peninsula, reflect the changing social dynamics and the tension between private and public life in the rapidly growing Italian towns and city-states. Embracing the unpredictability of life and an alleged rationality inherent to nature, they go a long way to understand and sympathise with characters who follow their natural instincts, while they condemn false pretence and double standards, for example, Friar Alberto’s disguise of his urges as divine (seraphic) love.