Madam Beritola—Giusfredi

Madam Beritola Caracciola and Giusfredi Capece are mother and son, separated by the overthrow of their family’s political world and reunited only after years of displacement, slavery, and mistaken identity. Their relationship gives the story a human measure of political upheaval: Giusfredi’s return to his mother begins not with a planned search or a clear recognition, but with a name he has kept secret and a sudden encounter in the household where both have lived without knowing one another.

Family and Political Ruin

Madam Beritola is the wife of Arrighetto Capece, a Neapolitan nobleman who governed Sicily under King Manfred. When Charles I of Anjou defeated Manfred at Benevento and took control of the island, Arrighetto prepared to flee rather than become a subject of his lord’s enemy. His plan was discovered; he and other supporters of Manfred were captured and delivered to Charles. This defeat dismantled the family’s secure position before mother and son had even been reunited: Arrighetto was imprisoned, while Madam Beritola did not know what had happened to him.

Pregnant and afraid of the danger around her, Madam Beritola abandoned her possessions and fled by boat with Giusfredi, then about eight years old. At Lipari she gave birth to a second son, Scacciato, and took ship with both boys and a nurse, intending to reach her relatives in Naples. The voyage did not bring them to safety. Carried by adverse winds to Ponza, the family’s ship was later taken by corsairs. Madam Beritola was left behind, unseen by the raiders; the nurse and both children were carried off to Genoa. That accident divided mother and sons, leaving her alone on the island and the children in captivity without her protection.

A Son Hidden by Another Name

In Genoa, the nurse and the boys were allotted as part of the corsair booty to Guasparrino d’Oria and sent to serve in his household. The nurse judged that revealing the children’s lineage could expose them to further danger. She told those who asked that they were her sons, and renamed the elder Giannotto di Procida instead of Giusfredi. She repeatedly explained the danger to the boy, who obeyed her and lived under the assumed name. His concealment was an act of protection, but it also prolonged the separation: Madam Beritola had no knowledge of where her sons were, and Giusfredi could not openly reclaim his family identity.

The boys spent several years in poor clothing and footwear, doing menial work in Guasparrino’s house. At sixteen, Giusfredi rejected the low condition of a servant and left aboard galleys bound for Alexandria. His travels did not improve his fortunes. Three or four years after leaving Genoa, he heard that his father might still be alive, imprisoned by Charles, and wandered until he reached Lunigiana. There he entered the service of Currado Malespina. By then, he had been away from his mother for years and was living under a name that concealed the very kinship he longed to recover.

Identity Revealed in Prison

The political reversal in Sicily eventually gave Giusfredi the occasion to speak. King Pedro of Aragon raised the island against Charles, and news of the revolt reached Currado’s imprisoned servants. Giusfredi, who had been imprisoned with Spina, lamented that the change he had sought for fourteen years had come when he was unable to act on it. His distress prompted a gaoler to ask what Sicily had to do with him.

Giusfredi then disclosed that his father, Arrighetto Capece, had once ruled there under Manfred, and that his own true name was Giusfredi, not Giannotto. He explained that, if freed, he believed he could regain a high position by returning to Sicily. The disclosure reached Currado, who privately asked Madam Beritola whether she had had a son named Giusfredi. She answered that her elder son, if alive, would bear that name and be twenty-two years old. Currado compared her account with the young prisoner’s history and, after questioning him about his past and finding clear signs of his identity, concluded that he was indeed her son.

Recognition and Reunion

Before bringing mother and son face to face, Currado arranged Giusfredi’s marriage to Spina, his daughter, and restored the young couple to better circumstances. He then asked Giusfredi whether seeing his mother would add to his happiness. Giusfredi feared that the suffering of her misfortunes might have ended her life, but hoped that, if she were alive, her counsel might help him recover his position in Sicily. His answer shows how reunion meant more than the recovery of affection: he also looked to his mother as a living connection to the family and political life from which he had been cut off.

When Madam Beritola entered, the words she had heard from Currado stirred a faint remembrance of her son’s childhood features. She ran to embrace Giusfredi before anyone could explain the discovery, then collapsed in his arms from overwhelming emotion. Giusfredi was astonished: he had seen her many times in the castle without recognizing her. Yet he immediately recognized her maternal scent, received her weeping, and kissed her tenderly. After she recovered, mother and son embraced again; with tears and affectionate words, they exchanged the accounts of what had happened to them. The reunion converts years of concealed identity and unwitting proximity into recognition, while making their shared history—not merely a name—the basis of their recovered bond.

Family Recovered, Future Still Unsettled

The reunion restored Madam Beritola and Giusfredi to one another, but it also exposed how much of the family remained dispersed. Giusfredi asked Currado to send for his younger brother, whom he knew to be enslaved in Guasparrino’s house in Genoa, and to send reliable people to Sicily to learn whether Arrighetto was alive and in what condition. Currado promptly dispatched agents to both places. The account establishes the mother-and-son reunion and Giusfredi’s efforts to recover the rest of his family; it does not, in these passages, report the outcome of those searches.

Their relationship is therefore marked by both an achieved recognition and an unfinished recovery. The son who had once been renamed to protect him can finally speak as Giusfredi, and the mother who had lost him can identify him through memory before receiving an explanation. But their reunion does not erase the separations caused by war, captivity, and forced service. It gives them a point from which to seek the missing father and brother, restoring family connection while leaving its larger restoration still to be determined.