Murder Shrieks Out

Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi, widowed in 1498, gave birth to a son five months later. She was twenty-one years old. Soon after, she secretly married her household steward, bore him three children, and-for twelve years-as regent of the Duchy of Amalfi, concealed both marriage and family from her powerful, corrupt brothers, who would eventually banish her and order her imprisonment. In 1510, in an effort to elude her brothers, the duchess, along with her maid and youngest children, went on a pilgrimage to Loreto in the hope of joining her husband and older son in nearby Ancona. The effort, however, failed. The duchess, her maid, her son, and infant daughter, presumably held captive in the fortress Torre dello Ziro, mysteriously disappeared. These events inspired John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi.