The Giant’s Heel: Treachery and Pride in Pulci’s Morgante

When, in canto 16, Margutte professes his creed and confesses his sins to Morgante, he declares that the only one he has never committed is betrayal:

Io t’ho lasciato indrieto un gran capitolo di mille altri peccati in guazzabuglio; […] salvo che questo alla fine udirai: che tradimento ignun non feci mai

(Morg. 18.142).

In Pulci’s view treachery occupies a unique position. Even the semi-giant, vessel of all vices, despises it. In this essay, I shall show how unfaithfulness develops as one of the crucial threads in the fabric of the Morgante, with considerable political and theological implications, and how it reflects Pulci’s understanding of the risks rooted in Florentine historical dynamics under the Medici regime. From the poet’s standpoint, the primary vulnerability of a state lies within itself, taking the shape of envies and conflicts eroding its political body. Even if this entity can be portrayed as gigantic, its Achilles heel is exposed to the deadly toxin of betrayal.

The snapshot that most emblematically captures this condition is the episode of Morgante’s death, which immediately follows one of his most hyperbolic deeds, the slaying of a whale. A small crab bites the giant’s foot and causes an infection that rapidly kills him:

Ma non potea fuggir suo reo distino: e’ si scalzò, quando uccise il gran pesce; era presso alla riva un granchiolino, e morsegli il tallon; costui fuori esce: vede che stato era un granchio marino; non se ne cura, e questo duol pur cresce; e cominciava con Orlando a ridere, dicendo:—Un granchio m’ha voluto uccidere:

forse volea vendicar la balena, tanto ch’io ebbi una vecchia paura. — Guarda dove Fortuna costui mena! Rimmollasi più volte, e non si cura; ed ogni giorno cresceva la pena, perché la corda del nervo s’indura; e tanta doglia e spasimo v’accolse che questo granchio la vita gli tolse

(Morg. 20.50–51).

As we know from medieval bestiaries, and most characteristically in Cecco d’Ascoli’s Acerba, to which Pulci refers in his description of Luciana’s pavilion, the crab is traditionally described as a treacherous animal: “vedeasi il cancro l’ostrica ingannare”.¹ The significance of this zoological image is enriched by the etymology of the medical terms ‘cancer’ and ‘gangrene.’ These words derive from the Greek karkinos and the Latin cancer, which obviously mean crab. The fateful advance of Morgante’s disease resembles Celsus’s account of the progression from a carelessly treated wound into a “cancer” in his De medicina, a treatise that the Roman physician composed in the first century CE.² A manuscript of this work was rediscovered in northern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century and printed in Florence in 1478, the same year in which the first edition of the Morgante was published.

Two interrelated factors heighten the import of Morgante’s demise.³ First of all, Pulci emphasizes the giant’s exposure to lethal threats that appear insignificant. Secondly, he highlights the inclination to underestimate and laugh off such apparently irrelevant perils: Morgante

vede che stato era un granchio marino; non se ne cura, e questo duol pur cresce; e cominciava con Orlando a ridere.

These remarks appear more noteworthy if we look at Pulci’s vision in broader terms, as it is laid out in canto 11, where the poet addresses Charlemagne directly. The king apparently fails to discern Ganelon’s plot against Astolfo, who is about to be hanged as a thief, and whose Passion reproduces Christ’s last hours. As Pulci declares, treachery and pride, the two faces of Morgante’s vulnerability, are the sins that caused Lucifer to fall:

Non hai tu [Carlo] letto che per tal peccato la fonte di pietà sù in Ciel si secca? e con superbia insieme mescolato, caduto è d’Aquilon nella Giudecca con tutti i suoi seguaci già Lucifero?

(Morg. 11.74).

This passage reveals biblical allusions (to Isaiah 14:12–13, for example) and Dantesque contaminations (Giudecca is the last area of the infernal circle reserved to traitors). Pulci...