Page 164 - THE DECAMERON: 100 Days on 100 Etchings by Petru Rusu

“Tingoccio and Meuccio“
Tingoccio Mini and Meuccio di Tura are BFFs. They love to
go to church together and listen to sermons. The sermons
they’ve heard often deal with the afterlife, but they’re
confused. How do they know what really awaits them
after death? They make a pact with each other. Whoever
dies first will come back and tell the other what it’s like.
Meanwhile, Tingoccio becomes godfather to the son of
a beautiful woman called Monna Mita. It happens that
both Tingoccio and Meuccio fall in love with Mita.Neither
wants to own up to his desires. Tingoccio’s ashamed to
be in lust with the mother of his godchild and Meuccio
thinks that if Tingoccio knows, he’ll poison Mita’s mind
against him. Tingoccio eventually overcomes his scruples
and gets Mita into bed with him. Dioneo says that things
go so well in that department that Tingoccio worked too
hard and got a fever that eventually killed him. True to his
word, Tingoccio appears to Meuccio after death. Meuccio’s
DECAMERON 164
freaked out, but manages to ask if Tingoccio has been
damned to Hell or not. Tingoccio replies that while he’s not
in Hell, he’s being severely punished for his sins. Would
Meuccio please say some prayers and have masses said
for his soul? Meuccio promises to do this. Before Tingoccio
leaves, Meuccio remembers to ask the important question:
what punishment had he been given for sleeping with Mita,
the mother of his godchild? Tingoccio reveals that when he
was being roasted in the fire for all his other sins, he was
still particularly worried about that. One of the other souls
asked why he was trembling in the fire. Tingoccio tells him
the reason and the soul has a good laugh at his stupidity:
sleeping with a mother of a godchild doesn’t even count
as a sin. After Tingoccio goes, Meuccio laughs at his
own stupidity he’d let several women out of his clutches
because they were the mothers of his godchildren. He
decides to be wiser in the future.
“Tingoccio and Meuccio” retrieved from publicly source: shmoop
<https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/decameron/summary/seventh-day-tenth-story>