Madam Beritola—Scacciato

Madam Beritola—Scacciato is a mother-and-son relationship tested by political defeat, forced separation, and enslavement, then restored through the nurse’s protection of the children’s identity and a sequence of recognitions. Scacciato’s name, meaning the Banished or Expelled One, gives the separation a lasting mark; his eventual reunion with Madam Beritola turns that imposed exile into a return to family and home.

Political Upheaval and Scacciato’s Birth

After the death of Emperor Frederick II, Manfred was crowned King of Sicily, and Arrighetto Capece held the island’s governance. When Charles I defeated and killed Manfred at Benevento, the Sicilians revolted and Arrighetto, seeking to escape rather than become a subject of his lord’s enemy, was captured and delivered to Charles with other supporters of Manfred. The political reversal left Madam Beritola without news of her husband and afraid of what had happened to him.

Poor and pregnant, Madam Beritola fled with her approximately eight-year-old son, Giusfredi, in a small boat to Lipari. There she gave birth to a second son, Scacciato. She hired a nurse and set out with both boys for Naples, intending to reach her relatives, but the ship was driven by the wind to Ponza. The family’s movements, begun as an attempt to find safety and kin, instead brought them into a more precarious separation.

Separation and Captivity

At Ponza, Madam Beritola went alone to a remote place to mourn Arrighetto. Corsairs seized the ship on which she had arrived, leaving her unseen, but took the nurse and both children among their captives. The nurse and boys were allotted as booty to Guasparrino d’Oria, who sent them to his household to serve as slaves. Madam Beritola’s absence from the captured group separated her from Scacciato at the very moment when the boys’ dependence on adult protection became most consequential.

The nurse responded to captivity by keeping the children’s parentage secret. She presented both boys as her own sons, and, to reduce danger to the elder, changed Giusfredi’s name to Giannotto di Procida. She left the younger boy’s name, Scacciato, unchanged. She repeatedly explained to the quick-witted elder why his identity had to remain concealed, while shielding the brothers’ connection to their mother and father from those around them. For Scacciato, the account establishes this early life chiefly through the nurse’s guardianship and the long separation from Madam Beritola; it does not describe a later private meeting between mother and son before the family’s recognition.

Recognition and Reunion

Years later, after Giusfredi had been recognized by Madam Beritola and entered the service of Currado Malespina, he asked that his captive brother and the nurse be brought to him. Currado sent a messenger to Guasparrino d’Oria with the account of his dealings with Giusfredi and Madam Beritola. Guasparrino confirmed that Scacciato and the nurse had been in his house for fourteen years, but warned the messenger not to trust Giannotto, whom he considered a knave and who now called himself Giusfredi.

The nurse then gave Guasparrino the family’s history. Having heard of the revolt in Sicily and learned that Arrighetto was alive, she no longer feared that disclosure would endanger the children. Her account agreed with the messenger’s, and Guasparrino made further inquiries until he was convinced. Recognition thus depended not on the family’s uninterrupted presence together, but on the nurse’s preserved knowledge and the corroboration of separate accounts.

Guasparrino sought to make amends for the treatment Scacciato had endured in his household. Knowing Arrighetto’s former standing, he gave Scacciato his own fair, eleven-year-old daughter in marriage, with a great dowry, and arranged a celebratory feast. He then travelled with Scacciato, the nurse, and his daughter to meet Currado Malespina and the family. At the reunion, Madam Beritola saw her younger son again, and the joy of mother and son was joined by the brothers’ happiness at finding one another and by their gratitude to the nurse.

Return to Sicily and the Meaning of Kinship

The family’s restoration was completed when a messenger from Sicily arrived with news of Arrighetto. During the revolt against Charles I, Sicilians had freed him from captivity and made him their captain; Pedro of Aragon had reinstated him in his honours and possessions. Arrighetto, who had heard nothing of his wife and son since his capture, sent a brigantine to bring them back. Madam Beritola, Scacciato, the elder brother, and their daughters-in-law travelled to Sicily and were received by Arrighetto in Palermo.

Scacciato’s relationship with Madam Beritola therefore unfolds across a chain of separations and returns: his birth during his mother’s flight, capture while she is elsewhere on Ponza, years in the nurse’s protective care, and reunion after the family’s identities and circumstances have been established. The story gives the mother-and-son bond its force through these concrete interruptions. The nurse preserves the knowledge that can reconnect them, while Scacciato’s unchanged name carries the language of banishment into the scene of recognition. The family’s final return to Sicily reverses the flight that began with Arrighetto’s fall and Madam Beritola’s uncertainty, and the account closes with their life together restored.