The Sicilian Vespers is the popular rising that ended Charles I of Anjou’s rule in Sicily and brought the island under the House of Aragon. In the Decameron, this political upheaval reaches into private lives: its news awakens hope in a prisoner, its violence frees a captive nobleman, and the new regime’s authority shapes a king’s response to two lovers facing execution.

Causes and Political Background

The revolt belongs to a struggle over the succession to the crowns of Naples and Sicily. The account identifies Charles I of Anjou as the ruler who overcame and killed Manfred, then took the island; the Ghibellines, in turn, helped drive Charles out. The uprising is dated to 1283 and associated with the efforts of Giovanni da Procida, whose political work helped stir the island to rebellion. Its result was not merely a change of ruler: the crown passed from Charles to the House of Aragon, represented in the stories by Pedro of Aragon and, later, Frederick, King of Sicily.

The narrative presents this transfer through its effects on people caught within the political order. A change of sovereignty becomes tangible in prison cells and family separations: the uprising releases those held under Charles, alters the prospects of exiles, and gives the new rulers both power and obligations. The stories do not offer a continuous account of the revolt itself; they make its consequences visible through separate lives touched by its success.

News Reaches Giusfredi in Prison

In one embedded tale, the report of the revolt reaches Giusfredi while he is imprisoned by Currado Malespina. Currado, a Ghibelline, rejoices at the news that Pedro of Aragon has raised Sicily against Charles and taken the island. Giusfredi, by contrast, receives the news with a sigh: for fourteen years he has wandered as a beggar, hoping for precisely this political change, but now he is locked away and sees no prospect of leaving alive.

The report prompts him to disclose the identity he has concealed. He explains that he is not the servant Giannotto but Giusfredi, son of Arrighetto Capece, and that his father had been lord of Sicily under Manfred. The child Giusfredi remembers fleeing the island is now an adult captive; the rebellion that once seemed the condition for his family’s recovery has arrived too late, he believes, to help him. His disclosure gives Currado grounds to investigate his parentage. Once convinced of Giusfredi’s identity, Currado sees a way to end the imprisonment and repair the dishonor surrounding his daughter Spina’s relationship with him. The political news thus changes the meaning of the prisoner’s confession: it identifies not just a servant’s hidden past but a dispossessed Sicilian family with a possible future.

Arrighetto’s Release and Restoration

The revolt’s consequences become still more concrete in the report of Arrighetto’s fate. He had been held captive by Charles. When the rising broke out, people stormed the prison, killed his guards, and freed him. They made him their captain, and he led them in expelling and killing the French. Pedro of Aragon received Arrighetto into particular favor and restored his honors and possessions.

These developments reverse the family’s fortunes. Arrighetto, separated from his wife Madam Beritola and son for years, learns that they have survived; he sends a brigantine carrying gentlemen to bring them to him. The news reaches them during a banquet held after Giusfredi’s identity has been recognized. Their reunion joins the public consequences of revolt to a private restoration: a political prisoner becomes a leader, a family separated by captivity is reassembled, and the son’s return is no longer only a hope attached to distant events. Pedro’s restoration of Arrighetto’s property and standing shows the new regime not simply replacing Charles but redistributing honor and authority among those who had opposed him.

The New Regime and a Later Royal Judgment

Another tale shows the revolt’s political legacy in the reign of Frederick, King of Sicily. Gianni di Procida and Violante, the daughter of Marino Bolgaro, are condemned after being discovered together. Ruggieri dell'Oria intervenes, explains that Gianni is the son of Landolfo di Procida and nephew of Giovanni da Procida, whose efforts had helped make the king ruler of the island, and reminds Frederick that Violante’s father had helped preserve the king’s officers in Ischia. Their relationship, he argues, arises from long-standing love rather than a deliberate affront to royal authority.

Once he verifies Ruggieri’s account, Frederick halts the execution. He has the lovers released, hears their case, and decides to answer the injury done to them with gifts and honor. When he learns that they are of one mind, he arranges their marriage and sends them home with magnificent presents. The episode does not retell the revolt; it shows how the political order produced by it remains active in later judgments. Kinship with Giovanni da Procida and loyalty to the Aragonese king become reasons to reconsider a sentence, while royal power is expressed through clemency as well as punishment.

Narrative Significance

Across these episodes, the uprising functions as a hinge between public conflict and private change. For Giusfredi, it is the long-awaited news that exposes his identity and makes a family restoration imaginable. For Arrighetto, it means release, command, and recovered standing. Under Frederick, its legacy supplies the political context in which a king can spare Gianni and Violante and reward their marriage.

The stories give the event no single battlefield scene or comprehensive chronology. Instead, they measure its significance by reversals in custody, status, and kinship: Charles’s prisoners are freed, an exiled family is restored, and the authority of the Aragonese kings shapes the fate of later subjects. In this narrative, the Sicilian Vespers is at once a dynastic transfer and a force that carries history into intimate life.