The Robbery and Separation of Beritola’s Family

The Robbery and Separation of Beritola’s Family is the calamity that scatters a noble household across the Mediterranean and places each survivor in a different, precarious life. Told by Emilia as a story of Fortune’s cruelty, it begins with the defeat of Manfred and the capture of Arrighetto Capece, then turns on a pirate raid at Ponza that leaves Beritola isolated and her two sons in captivity. Political reversal becomes intimate loss: a husband imprisoned, children carried away, and a mother forced to make a life among strangers.

Political upheaval and flight

After the death of Emperor Frederick II, Manfred was crowned King of Sicily. Arrighetto Capece, a Neapolitan gentleman married to Beritola Caracciola, held the governance of the island. When Charles I of Anjou defeated Manfred at Benevento and the realm submitted to the victor, Arrighetto prepared to flee rather than become subject to his lord’s enemy. His intention became known, however, and the Sicilians seized him and other supporters of Manfred, delivering them to Charles along with possession of the island.

Beritola was left without news of her husband in the sudden change of power. Afraid of what might happen to her, she abandoned her possessions and, poor and pregnant, escaped by boat with her son Giusfredi, who was about eight years old. At Lipari she gave birth to another son, Scacciato. With a nurse and both children, she then set sail toward Naples to rejoin her kin. The journey meant to restore her to family instead carried her toward a second loss.

The raid at Ponza

The ship was driven by the wind to Ponza. While the passengers waited in a small inlet for a chance to continue their voyage, Beritola went to a secluded place on the island to mourn Arrighetto. This had become her daily practice. One day, while she was away, a pirate galley appeared without warning and seized the ship and everyone aboard it. Beritola did not see the attack as it happened: when she returned to the shore, she found her children gone and saw the galley towing the little vessel out to sea.

The sight made the scale of her loss suddenly plain. She had already lost her husband to imprisonment; now, as far as she could tell, her sons too were beyond her reach. She fainted on the shore, calling for her family, and no one was there to revive her. When her senses returned, she searched the caves and called for the children until night came, but found no trace of them. Exhausted and hungry the next day, she ate herbs and returned to the cavern where she had been accustomed to grieve. The raid thus divides the family not through a choice or a quarrel, but through an abrupt seizure at the edge of the sea.

Beritola’s island refuge

In her isolation, Beritola noticed a she-goat entering a nearby cavern and then coming out again. Inside she found two newborn kids. Because she was still producing milk after giving birth, she took them to her breast; they suckled and accepted her as their dam. She grew attached to the animals and to their mother, and stayed on Ponza, living on herbs and water and weeping whenever she remembered her husband, children, and former life. The kids offer companionship, but not knowledge of what has happened to her sons or any means of finding them.

After some months, Currado Malespina arrived on the island with his wife and servants while returning from a pilgrimage to the holy places of Apulia. His dogs chased the now-grown kids into Beritola’s cavern. She ran out with a staff and drove the dogs away; Currado and his wife, following the animals, found her living there, lean, darkened, and covered in hair. At their urging she recounted her identity and misfortunes, and told them of her intention to remain alone on the island. Currado, who had known Arrighetto, wept at her story and offered either to take her home or to provide for her as a sister. Beritola initially refused to go where she might be recognized.

Currado’s wife brought her food and clothing, then persuaded her to travel to Lunigiana with the two kids and their mother. Since Beritola’s name was unknown there and she was associated with the animals, she became known as Cavriuola. She lived at Currado’s castle in widow’s dress, serving his wife humbly and continuing to care for the kids. Her rescue ends the immediate ordeal of the island, but it does not reunite her with her children.

The children in captivity

The pirates who seized the ship carried the nurse and the boys to Genoa. In the division of the galley’s plunder, all three fell to Messer Guasparrino d’Oria, who sent them to serve as slaves in his household. The nurse grieved over their condition and the loss of Beritola, but recognized that distress alone could not change their position. She also feared that the boys might be placed in danger if their identities became known.

She therefore presented Giusfredi and Scacciato as her own sons. To protect the elder, she renamed Giusfredi Giannotto di Procida and repeatedly explained to him why his name had to remain concealed. Quick-witted and obedient, he followed her instruction. For several years the boys and nurse endured poor clothing, inadequate shoes, and the household’s meanest tasks. The separation has therefore changed not just their location but the form of their lives: the sons of a captured governor become unrecognized servants, while their mother is living under another name and status far away.

At sixteen, Giannotto could no longer endure the menial condition. He left Guasparrino’s service aboard galleys bound for Alexandria, but his travels did not advance his fortune. Three or four years after leaving Genoa, he heard that the father he believed dead was still alive, imprisoned by Charles I. He then wandered toward Lunigiana and entered Currado Malespina’s service, unknowingly approaching the place where his mother had found refuge. The tale identifies the family’s eventual restoration, but this part of the separation narrative leaves its members still divided: the mother sheltered in Lunigiana, the elder son in Currado’s household, and the younger son’s course not yet disclosed.

Fortune, concealment, and separation

The episode repeatedly reverses the direction in which its characters expect to travel. Beritola sails for Naples to find kin but is carried to Ponza; the pirate raid takes the children while she is away; and the woman left behind, presumed lost to the world, eventually reaches the same region where her son seeks employment. Sea travel connects the settings, but it also exposes the family to forces they cannot govern: political defeat, storms, piracy, and enslavement.

Concealment becomes a practical means of survival rather than a disguise adopted for advantage. The nurse changes Giusfredi’s name so that his birth will not expose him to further danger, while Beritola accepts the unfamiliar identity of Cavriuola and serves in another household. Against these imposed identities, the story preserves the family’s actual bonds even while its members cannot act on them. Its eventual promise of recognition and restoration gives the prolonged scattering a direction, without erasing the years of fear, servitude, and uncertainty through which each survivor must pass.