Pericone da Visalgo

Pericone da Visalgo is a gentleman of Majorca whose rescue of Alatiel from a shipwreck becomes a short-lived refuge and then another rupture in her fortunes. He receives her and the few surviving women into his castle, tends to her, and desires her; his brother Marato ultimately kills him in his sleep and abducts Alatiel. Pericone’s episode brings hospitality, sexual pursuit, and violence into immediate succession.

Rescue and Reception

After a storm drives Alatiel’s ship ashore on Majorca, its sailors abandon it in a crowded shallop that founders, while the waterlogged vessel grounds on the beach. Alatiel wakes to find herself without the men who had sailed with her and with most of her women dead or barely alive. When Pericone happens upon the stranded ship with servants on horseback, he sends one aboard to discover who is there.

The survivors cannot understand one another’s language. They make their plight known by signs and plead for help; Pericone has them brought ashore, along with the most precious goods that can be salvaged, and takes them to his castle. There, food and rest restore Alatiel after the voyage. The honor shown her by the other women and the richness of her clothing lead him to recognize that she is a woman of high rank, though he cannot learn her identity.

Desire and a Changing Relationship

Pericone is struck by Alatiel’s beauty. He considers seeking her in marriage if she has no husband, or otherwise trying to win her favors. After she has recovered, he finds her more beautiful still and approaches her with gestures intended to persuade her without force. She rejects him, and her refusal intensifies rather than diminishes his desire.

Alatiel, meanwhile, recognizes from the people’s customs that she is among Christians. She anticipates that she may eventually have to yield to Pericone, whether by force or through affection, but resolves to meet her altered circumstances with courage. She tells her three surviving women not to disclose her identity unless doing so might clearly help restore their liberty, and urges them to preserve their chastity. She maintains that no one but her husband should possess her. Later, during the relationship’s period of pleasure, she approaches Pericone through actions rather than words she cannot make him understand. This shift occurs amid their linguistic isolation, without erasing the vulnerability of her position as a displaced woman dependent on his protection.

Marato’s Attack and Pericone’s Death

Pericone’s brother Marato, a young man of twenty-five, sees Alatiel and desires her. Reading her gestures as signs that she favors him, he decides that Pericone’s watch is the only obstacle to having her. He arranges with two Genoese merchants bound for Chiarenza to be received aboard their vessel with Alatiel, then secretly brings trusted companions into Pericone’s house.

After part of the night has passed, Marato and his accomplices enter the chamber where Pericone is asleep beside Alatiel. They kill Pericone in his sleep. Alatiel wakes in tears and is threatened with death if she cries out. The attackers take her and much of Pericone’s most valuable property, then bring her to the shore, where Marato boards the waiting ship with her. His companions return unseen. Pericone’s death thus ends both his household’s security and his own claim to the woman he had sheltered.

Narrative Role and Aftermath

Pericone’s brief appearance is one link in Alatiel’s repeated passage between shipwreck, captivity, and new attachments. His rescue genuinely saves her from the immediate danger of the stranded ship, but it also places her under the authority of a man whose desire she initially resists. Their relationship changes, yet no lasting safety follows: Marato’s murder of his brother transfers Alatiel to another captor and sends the story onward by sea.

The episode sharpens the contrast between the apparent refuge of Pericone’s castle and the violence inside it. The same household that offers Alatiel rest becomes the scene of a concealed fratricide; hospitality and desire are overtaken by Marato’s calculated seizure. Pericone is not the central survivor of this sequence but the figure whose rescue, courtship, and sudden death mark one of the decisive reversals in Alatiel’s fortunes.