Giusfredi—Scacciato

Giusfredi—Scacciato is a brotherly bond tested by political defeat, enslavement, and years of separation. The brothers are taken from their mother during the family’s flight from Sicily and raised under concealed identities in a Genoese household. When Giusfredi eventually leaves to seek their imprisoned father, Scacciato remains behind; their reunion, arranged through Giusfredi’s new patron, makes recovery of the family a shared purpose rather than a solitary return.

Identity and Family Background

Giusfredi and Scacciato are the two sons of Arrighetto Capece and Madam Beritola Caracciola. Giusfredi is the elder; Scacciato is born after his mother flees Sicily while pregnant. Their childhood is shaped by the overthrow of Manfred and the seizure of Sicily by Charles I of Anjou. Arrighetto, who had governed the island, is captured, while Madam Beritola abandons her possessions and escapes with Giusfredi, then about eight years old, to Lipari. There she gives birth to Scacciato and names him for the family’s expulsion and displacement.

The planned voyage to Naples does not reunite the family with its kin. Wind carries the ship to Ponza, where Madam Beritola goes ashore alone to mourn Arrighetto. While she is away, corsairs capture the vessel and carry the nurse and both children to Genoa. The brothers’ separation from their mother thus becomes a separation from each other’s former life: they are now vulnerable children in another household, with no assurance that their parents remain alive or that their family’s position can be restored.

Separation and Concealed Identity

In Genoa, the nurse recognizes that the boys could be endangered if their identities became known. She tells people that they are her sons and changes the elder boy’s name from Giusfredi to Giannotto di Procida, while leaving the younger boy’s name, Scacciato, unchanged. She repeatedly explains to Giusfredi why the disguise matters, and he obeys her instructions. Their shared dependence on the nurse is the practical means by which the brothers survive captivity without publicly surrendering their origins.

The three remain in the service of Messer Guasparrino d'Oria for several years, poorly clothed and shod and assigned menial work. At sixteen, Giusfredi resents the low status of a servant and leaves Genoa aboard galleys bound for Alexandria. Scacciato does not accompany him; he remains with the nurse in Guasparrino’s household. Their paths therefore divide at the moment Giusfredi begins trying to improve his condition, leaving his younger brother in the place where both had endured servitude.

Giusfredi’s Search and Appeal

After years of travel, Giusfredi hears that Arrighetto may still be alive and imprisoned by Charles I of Anjou. He makes his way to Lunigiana and enters the service of Currado Malespina. His connection with Currado’s household brings him into contact with Madam Beritola, who has also arrived there; mother and son recognize one another, and Giusfredi’s identity is restored. The recovery of his mother does not end the family’s separation. Scacciato is still in Genoa, and the father’s fate remains uncertain.

At the family celebration following his recognition, Giusfredi asks Currado to bring Scacciato from Guasparrino’s house and to send an agent to Sicily to learn whether Arrighetto is alive. The requests join two unfinished searches: one for his brother, who remains in servitude, and one for his father, whose survival is unknown. Currado responds promptly, dispatching trusted messengers to Genoa and Sicily. Giusfredi’s appeal makes the brotherly relationship active across distance: he does not treat his own reunion with Madam Beritola as the end of the family’s recovery, but seeks the return of the brother who has been left behind.

Reunion and Restoration

The messenger sent to Genoa finds Guasparrino willing to send Scacciato and the nurse, but Guasparrino initially warns him against trusting Giannotto, whom he regards as a knave. The warning reflects the confusion produced by the concealed identity: the name under which Giusfredi had lived is being judged as though it belonged to a stranger, even while Currado’s account connects that supposed stranger to the family’s recovered heir. The nurse, hearing that the Sicilian revolt has occurred and that Arrighetto is alive, sets aside her earlier fear and explains the history of the boys and her decision to conceal them. Guasparrino’s inquiries strengthen his belief in the account, and he recognizes that he had treated the young man unfairly.

Guasparrino sends Scacciato, the nurse, and his own daughter to join Currado’s company. At the gathering, Madam Beritola’s joy at seeing her son again and the brothers’ joy in one another are presented as part of a wider family reunion. The narrative gives the brothers’ mutual happiness its own place among the celebrations: Scacciato’s return repairs a separation that neither Giusfredi’s recognition nor his mother’s recovery could by itself resolve. Their reunion also coincides with the news that Arrighetto has escaped captivity during the revolt in Sicily and has been restored to his honours and possessions by Pedro of Aragon. A brigantine carrying Arrighetto and his companions is on its way to them.

Narrative Significance

The brothers’ relationship is developed through absence and recovery rather than through conflict between them. They share the original loss of home and status, but the circumstances of captivity divide their lives: Giusfredi departs to seek advancement and news of his father, while Scacciato remains with the nurse. The deliberate renaming of the elder brother protects both boys, yet later complicates recognition, showing how concealment that preserves kinship can also obscure it from outsiders.

Their reunion belongs to the story’s larger pattern of reversals of fortune. A family scattered by political defeat and a corsair seizure is gradually reassembled through the actions of the nurse, Giusfredi, Currado, and Guasparrino. The brothers’ joy is therefore not an isolated happy ending: it marks the restoration of a family network that includes their mother and, in the news arriving at the feast, their father. In Emilia’s account, the return of Scacciato helps make the tale’s eventual happiness credible precisely because it follows years of separation and uncertainty.