Decameron Day 5 / 7.3, 7.4, 8.3, 8.7, 8.8

7.3_ Boccaccio keeps coming back to the unfaithful Friar, this figure of great respect is constantly doing one person or another and getting away with it. What does this say about the Friars in the tales and how does this particular Friar use his title to get away with having sex with his friends wife?

This Particular Friar (Rinaldo) set out from the very beginning to get into bed with Madonna Agnesa, his neighbor's wife. As we carry on he eventually begins to honor the position of Friar and he no longer wishes to lay with his neighbor's wife, although, like several other Friars in The Decameron, Rinaldo soon gives into the "sins of the flesh" and starts to have relationships with the mother of his godchild (Madonna Agnesa). Obviously something weird is going on with Boccaccio in that he seems to target Friars as dumb and/or lusty men, previously we saw a Friar tricked into being the middle man between a married lady and a "good looking man". I believe that it might not so much that he has something against Friars but simply that they have such a high position that it's only natural that their trespasses be well known. We also see two of our Friars using their position to get what they want, In one of our first stories a Friar tricks another Friar into sleeping with the same woman in order to have something to hold against him. Here we see Rinaldo using his position as Friar to excuse his being in the bedroom with Madonna Agnesa.

8.7) We see a great example of "The Code of Hammurabi" with an eye for an eye sort of story, we also see this in the following story which end's vastly different than this tale. What is the difference between 8.7 and 8.8 that makes this "eye for an eye" style come out so diversely?

In both stories our main character is first hurt by the one he loves (or thought he loved) and is then scorned by she that they most care about. Instead of simply leaving the woman or revealing her treachery the scorned men instead plan vengeance, although both of them have different intent. We can clearly see this in the pages prior to the actual incident of their revenge, one man (8.8) is trying to keep his friend by simply returning the trespass done against him while the other wants his former lady to first realize what she did to him and understand what she put him through (8.7). In both cases the revenge is successful although I am reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi said in that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", we can see this best in the first of the two stories where both the scorned and the later scorched ended up near death. If the whole world carried on with this sort of vengeance then at some point most of us would end up in a situation much like this ladies where someone we have hurt in the past uses a situation against us.