# Giosefo — The Decameron character guide

> Giosefo in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0018-the-third-story

## Snapshot

A Jewish merchant whose patience under a deliberately impossible test becomes the unlikely proof that wins him Christian baptism.

## Who they are

Giosefo is a wealthy Jew of Paris, pressed by a Christian friend to convert and shrewd enough to demand a trial first: let him go to Rome and see the heads of the Church for himself. What he witnesses there — corruption so flagrant it should have destroyed the faith — instead convinces him that a religion so abused yet still standing must be divinely upheld. He matters because his story turns satire into paradox, letting the Decameron mock the clergy while making a convert of its most clear-eyed observer.

## In the story

### [The Seventh Story](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_decameron_se/chapters/the-seventh-story)

Simona's lover, a youth of low condition who dies after rubbing a sage leaf on his teeth in the garden.

### [The Ninth Story](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_decameron_se/chapters/the-ninth-story)

A young man with a froward wife who seeks Solomon's counsel and learns to beat her into submission.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_decameron_se/characters/giosefo
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_decameron_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_decameron_se/characters