The Petrarchian rewriting of Gualtieri and Griselda’s short story aims to moralize Boccaccio’s tale and overturn the way in which the author takes leave from the reader of the Decameron. In this work of Christian moralization, Seneca, an ever present model for Petrarch, plays an important role: the reference is not only to Senecan and Petrarchian themes like fuga temporis, but also to the philosophical ‘ascetism’ of a text such as De constantia sapientis. This moral lesson had a first, restless disciple in Geoffrey Chaucer: Petrarch himself does not hide that he translated the Boccaccian narration in Latin also to allow those who did not know the vernacular Italian to read it.