The character was beloved in Sicily and beyond for over a century, and his vicissitudes were staged as part of the Paladins of France cycle in Sicilian puppet theater. His story also spread across northern Italy through various venues, including the epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and the hand puppet theaters of Lombardy and Piedmont.[1]

The Storia dei paladini’s Book Six opens with Rinaldo encountering a fisherman who beseeches him to take over the care of an abandoned infant. The fisherman only knows that the father had condemned his child to die, but that the captain charged with the heinous task did not have the heart to carry it out. Rinaldo adopts the boy, giving him the name of Morbello to remember the site where he was discovered, and brings him home to his wife Clarice to raise him.

The early adventures of Morbello – in which he acquires enchanted arms, wins his first joust, conquers the heart of the lovely damsel Rosana, and frees his fellow paladins from an enchantment – establish his preeminence as a knight (chapters 3-5). Yet despite having been honored by Charlemagne, who promised Rosana as his bride, Morbello (who gives himself the name of Malaguerra) is subsequently pit against the Frankish emperor because of Gano di Magonza’s machinations (chapters 13-15). After originally planning to abduct Rosana on behalf of his nephew, Gano decides to possess the damsel himself. Although Malaguerra chases the culprit to Paris (after accompanying an unharmed Rosana safely to her homeland) and gains the support of Orlando, Gano avoids punishment by inventing a fraudulent story that wins the emperor to his side. Malaguerra is subsequently persuaded by Orlando to forgive his fiancée’s abductor, thus demonstrating the youth’s earnest effort to make peace.

Malaguerra’s troubles are far from over, however. It is now with the complicity of Charlemagne that Gano attempts to arrest Malaguerra in his sleep during the night. The wary knight, however, kills the guards who attempt to carry out the treacherous plan and wounds Gano in the process. With the rumor of Gano’s death and ensuing commotion, Malaguerra is forced to defend himself against an onslaught of attackers. Orlando urges the young knight to escape. Once Malaguerra steps foot outside of France, he will never return.

After a subsequent adventure in Macedonia and a hurricane at sea, Malaguerra eventually arrives in Trebizond where the rest of Book Six plays out (chapters 17-20). After the knight defeats a giant who had sought the death of emperor Arismondo’s daughter, the giant’s brothers, rulers of Armenia, head to Trebizond with a large army. Despite the gratitude Arismondo should have felt for the heroic newcomer, out of fear and convenience he has the knight imprisoned in order to turn him over to the brothers. When the population rebels, however, the emperor offers to free Malaguerra in exchange for his defense against the brothers.

The episode culminates in a climactic scene in which Arismondo, in order to rid himself of the angry brothers, poisons them at a supposedly reconciliatory banquet. Believing himself to be poisoned as well, Malaguerra strikes a fatal blow against the emperor. The soldiers, assuming that Malaguerra had killed the five royal guests as well as their own ruler, immediately attack him. After the youth is gravely wounded from behind, the queen intervenes to save his life. She then spots a necklace she had left with her infant several years before, thus realizing that the newly arrived knight is none other than her long lost son Orello that Arismondo had sent to die at sea after a prophet foretold that at the age of eighteen the boy would kill his father. The queen further explains that, at her urging, the official charged with the task spared the infant’s life and took him to a distant shore. Rinaldo, accompanied by other paladins, arrives in time to corroborate the queen’s story by recounting how he adopted Morbello as an infant. Having thus regained his original identity and family, Orello, surrounded by the principal paladins of France, is happily proclaimed heir and emperor of Trebizond.

In addition to adopting the general romance plot of the hero abandoned to his fate as an infant and raised anonymously until his identity is discovered at a crucial moment, Lodico’s story incorporates elements of the Oedipus Rex tragedy in the denouement. Unlike his tragic Greek counterpart, however, Malaguerra does not commit any unwitting act that brings shame upon himself or others. On the contrary, he has no regrets in causing his father’s death since the latter had sought to have him killed. Indeed, Lodico had prepared this moment right from the very opening of Book Six where he cryptically condemned those who commit evil deeds as the result of prophecy.

Because Malaguerra was raised a Christian, he persuades his mother, the queen, and subsequently the entire population, to convert as well. Yet just when the reader could have imagined a happily-ever-after ending with Orello as an exemplary ruler, Lodico warns us that the character is destined to be killed by neighboring kings because of his religion.

Lodico’s Storia dei paladini was so popular that Giuseppe Leggio (1870-1911) published an edition with additional episodes in 1895-1896. This expanded edition elaborates Malaguerra’s story in a way that brings further attention to both the reprehensible behavior of Charlemagne and the parallels between Rinaldo and his even more rebellious adopted son. The puppeteers who staged Malaguerra’s story sometimes followed Lodico by envisioning his murder while other times used poetic license to grant him a long happy life.[2] In the New World, the scripts of the Catanese-American puppeteer Agrippino Manteo (1884-1947), who performed in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, further develop the parallel between Malaguerra and Rinaldo and intensify the sense of collective resistance to the emperors Charlemagne and Arismondo.[3] Malaguerra has also recently returned to the Sicilian puppet theater stage in a play by the puppeteer Enzo Mancuso of Palermo (see featured image).

In northern Italy, there are epic Maggi (folk operas) in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines that bear his name.[4] The most elaborate version of his story was penned by a hand puppeteer from the western Po River Valley, Peppino Sarina (1884–1978). His 140-page adaptation in two notebooks entitled Malaguerra I and II bears the date of August 1958, exactly one century after the publication of the Storia dei paladini’s first edition. Even in its unfinished state, the narrative unfolds in 124 interlaced scenes, each prefaced by a specific location and developed with recourse to extensive dialogues. Peppino not only refashioned his sources, but also invented new episodes that creatively evoked other works in the chivalric epic canon, most notably, Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato.[5]

Behind the memorable deeds of Malaguerra and the objectionable actions of Charlemagne, Gano, and Arismondo, the narrative raises universal political issues. At stake in the conflict are the central questions of individual rights, justice, and political accountability. The repeated mistakes made by the two emperors underscore how political power may exacerbate weakness of judgment, corruption, intransigence, and bias. The hero’s fundamental belief in his self-sovereignty as an individual challenges the pretensions of the ruler to be obeyed even when acting unethically. The staging of Malaguerra’s conflictual situations in both Christian France and Saracen Trebizond demonstrates, moreover, that the political issues raised by the narrative transcend cultural, religious, and geographical differences.

Malaguerra’s popularity as a heroic character fighting against the injustices perpetrated by those wielding political power reminds us that Sicilian puppet theater was not simply a chivalric soap opera for the masses before the advent of television, but could also be a vehicle to express a critical attitude toward the state under the cover of dramatizing medieval and Renaissance canonical epics. It certainly does not seem a coincidence that Malaguerra’s adoptive father Rinaldo, the knight who most consistently and prominently plays out the opposition between individual rights and unwarrantable state power, was the character most beloved by the traditional puppet theater public.

[1] For further background on Malaguerra, see Pasqualino, Rerum palatinorum fragmenta, 122-23, but especially Alessandro Napoli’s notes 125n-126n, 138n-145n; Carocci, Il poema che cammina, 44-48, and “Metamorfosi del tema dell’esilio”; and Cavallo, “Malaguerra.”

[2] See Carocci, “Metamorfosi del tema dell’esilio.”

[3] See Cavallo, “Malaguerra,” 277-82.

[4] See Cavallo, “Malaguerra,” 285-86.

[5] An English language translation of this work is available on the World Epics website at https://edblogs.columbia.edu/worldepics/peppino-sarina-malaguerra-english-translation/.