The Capecchio brothers’ enslavement

The Capecchio brothers’ enslavement is a defining interval of dispossession in the story of Madam Beritola’s family: after political defeat and flight separated them from their mother, both boys were treated as household slaves in Genoa. Their captivity strips them of family name and rank, while the nurse’s concealment preserves the possibility that they may one day recover their identities and fortunes.

Political defeat and family separation

The brothers were born to Arrighetto Capece, a Neapolitan gentleman who governed Sicily under Manfred, and Madam Beritola Caracciola. After Charles I of Anjou defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento, Sicily passed to the victor. Arrighetto, unwilling to become a subject of his lord’s enemy, prepared to flee, but the plan was discovered: the Sicilians took him and other supporters of Manfred prisoner and delivered them to Charles, along with possession of the island.

Madam Beritola, pregnant and fearful for her safety, fled with her older son, Giusfredi, in a small boat. At Lipari she gave birth to a second son, Scacciato, and set out with both children and their nurse toward Naples. Their ship was blown instead to Ponza. When corsairs captured the vessel, they did not see Beritola, who had remained ashore, but carried off the nurse and the two boys. The family’s separation thus arose from the collision of political upheaval, an interrupted escape, and maritime capture.

Enslavement in Genoa

The captives were taken to Genoa, where the division of the corsairs’ booty assigned the nurse and both children to Messer Guasparrino d'Oria. He sent them to his house to work as slaves. The nurse grieved for her lost mistress and for the miserable condition into which they had fallen, but recognized that lamentation could not alter their circumstances.

She feared that the boys would be endangered if their noble birth became known. Hoping that a change in fortune might eventually allow them to regain their station, she told those who asked that they were her own sons. She also changed the elder boy’s name from Giusfredi to Giannotto di Procida, explaining repeatedly why concealment was necessary and warning him of the peril of discovery. The younger boy kept the name Scacciato. Giannotto understood and obeyed her instructions.

For several years the three lived in Guasparrino’s household, badly clothed and shod and set to its meanest tasks. Their circumstances sharply contradicted their origins: they were the children of a noble family, but captivity made them household dependants whose identities and prospects had to be hidden. In this period, the nurse’s protection consisted not in changing their status but in keeping their past from becoming a further source of danger.

Giannotto’s departure and the limits of the record

At sixteen, Giannotto had more spirit than suited a slave’s condition and scorned the degradation of menial service. He left Guasparrino’s household aboard galleys bound for Alexandria, taking leave of the service and travelling through different places without managing to advance himself. His departure ended his years of household enslavement, but the narrative does not present it as an immediate recovery of freedom, family, or rank: he remained a wanderer, seeking opportunity without success.

Three or four years after leaving Genoa, Giannotto heard that the father he had believed dead was still alive, imprisoned by Charles. He wandered on, nearly despairing of fortune, until chance brought him to Lunigiana, where he entered the service of Currado Malespina and served him capably. His mother was also in the household, but neither recognized the other, so much had time changed them since their separation. The account follows Giannotto beyond the enslavement, while leaving the younger Scacciato’s subsequent circumstances unspecified in this episode.

Narrative significance

The episode makes enslavement one stage in a chain of forced movement linking Sicily, Ponza, Genoa, the routes of the galleys, and Lunigiana. A ship seized by corsairs converts the nurse and boys into booty assigned to a Genoese household; years of service then give way, for Giannotto, to departure by sea and a precarious search for advancement. The story does not treat that movement as a simple passage from bondage to security: Giannotto’s first attempt to make his own way fails, and even reunion with his mother is delayed by mutual nonrecognition.

Against this coercive sequence, the nurse’s decisions preserve a narrow but consequential form of agency. She disguises the boys’ parentage, gives Giannotto a protective name, and teaches him why silence matters. Her concealment cannot restore the family while they remain enslaved, but it protects their lives and keeps their former identity available for the later reversals of fortune on which the family’s recovery depends.