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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Numbers

Boccaccio uses the medieval symbolism of numbers to structure the book, express the themes, and connect stories. The symbolism of numbers was a common, universally understood language that dated back to Greek and Roman times. The number 1 represents unity; 2, duality; 3, unity in diversity; and so on. The number 4 symbolizes judgment and is unlucky. The number 7 stands for completeness. The Decameron is structured around such numerology. The brigade of storytellers has seven women and three men. That makes ten companions, the perfect number, and each one tells the perfect number of stories on ten different days. As a bonus, Boccaccio adds ten poems that are nearly perfect expressions of love, his strongest theme. The same symbolism of numbers appears throughout the stories. On the evil Ciappelletto’s deathbed, his confessor quizzes him about the seven deadly sins. Two travelers who mistakenly get into the wrong two beds create a comedy of duality.

The Fountain

A central fountain is part of the motif of the walled garden, but the fountain has additional symbolism of its own. It is an allusion to the Fountain of Life in the Bible as well as a symbol of knowledge and human ingenuity. (The metaphor “fountain of knowledge” is still in common English use.) In art and literature, fountains stand for relief from thirst, healing, and rest. In Bible tales and other ancient stories, they are gathering places. In Boccaccio’s walled garden, the fountain is the pole around which everyone dances, making it a symbol of divine order.

Relics

Relics, the supposed remains of holy people, are symbols of piety in the eyes of the Church but of fraud and hypocrisy in the eyes of Boccaccio. He makes his contempt for the relic trade clear in the first story of the book, when a priory benefits from having the holy relics of one of the worst men who ever lived. Dioneo’s rascally priest defrauds gullible people with a feather from the Angel Gabriel. Some tricksters substitute a lump of coal, but the ingenious priest convinces his audience that the coal is a relic too. The appearance of a holy relic in a story in The Decameron is a clear signal that the story will be about clerical greed and human folly.

Glasses and Looking Glasses

Glass objects were rare and valuable in Boccaccio’s time, symbols of luxury as well as transparency, reflection, and fragility. In Emilia’s song at the end of the first day, she refers to a looking glass, an ancient symbol of vanity, as she celebrates her own beauty. In medieval writing, a mirror was also a symbol of truth. Drinking glasses, another status symbol, also embody the concepts of friendship, transparency, and fragility. When the companions dip glasses in the fountain on the morning of the tenth day, they are pledging friendship to each other and drinking their fill of knowledge at the same time. The fountain has been the site of most of the storytelling sessions, but only on the last day do the companions dip glasses into it.

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