He is famous for the novelThe Betrothed (orig.Italian:I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces ofworld literature.[3] The novel is also a symbol of the ItalianRisorgimento, both for its patriotic message[3] and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unifiedItalian language.[4] Manzoni also contributed to the stabilization of the modern Italian language and helped to ensure linguistic unity throughout Italy.
Manzoni was born inMilan, Italy, on 7 March 1785. Pietro, his father, aged about fifty, belonged to an old family ofLecco, originally feudal lords ofBarzio, in theValsassina.[2] However, his biological father was likely Giovanni Verri,[10] brother of the influentialEnlightenment thinkersPietro andAlessandro Verri, and a habitué, along with his brothers andGiulia Beccaria, of the dazzling liberal Società del Caffè. The poet's maternal grandfather,Cesare Beccaria, was a well-known author and philosopher, and his mother Giulia had literary talent as well.[1] The young Alessandro spent his first two years incascina Costa inGalbiate and he was wet-nursed by Caterina Panzeri, as attested by a memorial tablet affixed in the place. In 1792 his parents broke their marriage and his mother began a relationship with the writerCarlo Imbonati, moving to England and later to Paris.[3]
As a boy, Alessandro rarely saw his mother. He seems to have had a cool and distant relationship with his father. At the age of six, he was sent away from home to begin his schooling in a variety of religiousboarding schools operated by theSomaschi andBarnabite fathers. From an early age, Alessandro was drawn to literature, to poetry in particular, and to the ideals of liberty, reason and atheism. Among his first poems was one from this period entitledThe Triumph of Liberty (1801), a poem of considerable merit in praise of theFrench Revolution. In 1804 Manzoni began to frequent the circle ofNeoclassical poets gathered aroundVincenzo Monti, whom he had already known and admired for some time before; Monti's influence is especially apparent in the poems of Manzoni's classicist period, most notablyAdda (1803), andUrania (1807).
His friendship with the scholarsFrancesco Lomonaco andVincenzo Cuoco, who had fled Bourbon Naples after the fall of theParthenopean Republic, further contributed to his revolutionary leanings and introduced him to historical studies and the philosophical ideas ofGiambattista Vico.[11] In 1804 Cuoco entrusted the nineteen year old Manzoni with the editing of his novelPlatone in Italia.[11]
Manzoni sojourned in Venice from the fall of 1803 to the spring of the following year. Here he attendedsalon hosted byIsabella Teotochi Albrizzi and made the acquaintance ofIppolito Pindemonte and Ugo Foscolo. Upon the death of his father in 1807, he joined thefreethinking household of his mother atAuteuil, and came into contact with the group of philosophers known as theIdéologues, among whom he made many friends, notablyClaude Charles Fauriel. He established close ties with the intellectual leader of theIdéologues,Antoine Destutt de Tracy, whose daughter he was at a certain point supposed to marry.[12] Through Fauriel andMadame de Condorcet, Manzoni met some of the leading intellectual figures of Paris, among themAugustin Thierry,François Guizot,Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, andBenjamin Constant. He became a close friend ofVictor Cousin, Marcellin de Fresne and Marquis Jean-Baptiste de Montgrand, who later translated into French Manzoni'sInni Sacri anThe Betrothed.
In 1806–1807, while at Auteuil, Manzoni published his first works, the neoclassical poemUrania, inspired by Monti'sMusogonia, and an elegy inblank verse, on the death of Count Carlo Imbonati. In the notes to hisSepolcri,Foscolo highly praised Manzoni's odeIn morte di Carlo Imbonati as the "poetry of a young talent born for literature and warm with love of country".[13]
In 1808, Manzoni married Henriette Blondel, daughter of aGenevese banker. She came from aCalvinist family, but in 1810 she became aRoman Catholic.[14] Her conversion profoundly influenced her husband.[15] That same year he experienced a religious crisis which led him fromagnosticism to an austere form of Catholicism.[3] The Manzoni family returned to Milan in June 1810. On his return to Milan Manzoni fell in with the circle of progressive young artists and intellectuals gathered around the poetCarlo Porta, theCameretta Portiana.[16] In honor of Porta Manzoni wrote his only poem in theLombard language.[17] In 1814 he settled with his wife in the house in Via Morone, Milan, where he continued to live until his death. The family divided its time between Milan and the country estate that Carlo Imbonati had left to his mother Giulia atBrusuglio, some six miles west of Milan. Manzoni's marriage proved a happy one, and he led for many years a retired domestic life, divided between literature and the picturesque husbandry ofLombardy.
In 1812 Manzoni began a collection of lyrics known as theSacred Hymns (Inni Sacri), which were published along with other of his religious poems in 1815. This sequence of hymns was supposed to cover the major festivals of the ecclesiastical year, a sort of CatholicFasti, and were to number at least twelve, but Manzoni ultimately only completed five of them. The collection was received warmly by Goethe, who saw the young Italian poet restoring vitality to jejune religious topics, and by Stendhal, who claimed to see in Manzoni a talent to rivalLord Byron.[18]
His intellectual energy in this period of his life was also devoted to the composition of a scholarly treatise on Catholic morality,Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, written in response toJean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, who "attributed the moral corruption of the Italians to the papacy".[19] Two patriotic lyrics, celebrating the Milanese insurrection of 1814 and theRimini Proclamation of 1815, belong to the same epoch.[2] In 1818 he had to sell his paternal inheritance, as his money had been lost to a dishonest agent. His characteristic generosity was shown at this time in his dealings with his peasants, who were heavily indebted to him. He not only cancelled on the spot the record of all sums owed to him, but bade them keep for themselves the whole of the coming maize harvest.
While he shared many of the cultural and political aims of the Milanese Romantic circles, Manzoni was always cautious in his overt pronouncements. He declined invitations to contribute to the most prominent of theItalian Romanticliterary magazine, the influential though short-livedIl Conciliatore (1 Sept. 1818 – 10 Oct. 1819). In his only public statement on the subject,Lettera sul Romanticismo, published in 1823, he expressed agreement with the Romantics' condemnation of the use ofclassical mythology, slavish imitation of ancient authors, and normative rules such as theclassical unities, but he rejected the excesses of northernEuropean Romantics.[20]
Illustration for the tragedyIl Conte di Carmagnola by Francesco Hayez
In 1819, Manzoni published his first tragedy,Il Conte di Carmagnola, which, boldly violating all classical conventions, excited a lively controversy. The protagonist of the play is theRenaissancecondottieroFrancesco Bussone, falsely accused of betrayal by theVenetian Senate, condemned to death, and executed. Though written in verse, the tragedy follows Romantic canons, disregarding thepseudo-Aristotelian unities of time and place and including choruses with the function of commenting on the action, as had been theorized by theGerman Romantic poetSchlegel.[21] Manzoni's theatrical reform caused a great stir both in Italy and abroad; it is worth mentioning that his attacks on the dramatic unities inPrefazione al Carmagnola (1820) andLettre à M. Chauvet (1823), published in the French edition of the tragedy, antedateHugo'sPréface à Cromwell (1827) by at least seven years.[22] The tragedy was severely criticized in aQuarterly Review article to whichGoethe replied in its defence, "one genius," asAngelo de Gubernatis remarks, "having divined the other."[23]
Manzoni was enthused by the Piedmontese revolution of March 1821. On this occasion he wrote one of his most famous poems, the odeMarch 1821. First published only in 1848, the ode expresses Manzoni's enthusiasm over the news of theTurin insurrection an enthusiasm that led him to imagine the triumphal entry of the Piedmontese into Lombardy.
The death ofNapoleon in 1821 inspired Manzoni's powerful stanzasIl Cinque maggio (The Fifth of May), one of the most popular lyrics in the Italian language.[24] The ode is a poetic meditation on destiny, and on the mystery of the great figures that from time to time burst onto the stage of history. The poetry is pervaded with a profound Christian spirit, perhaps even purer and intenser than the spirit of his more definitely religious works. The poem was immensely successful throughout Europe and was translated intoGerman by Goethe.[11] The political events of that year, and the imprisonment of many of his friends, weighed much on Manzoni's mind, and the historical studies in which he sought distraction during his subsequent retirement at Brusuglio suggested his great work.
Frontispiece ofThe Betrothed in the second definitive edition of 1840–1842
Manzoni started work on the novel in 1821,[25] but he began the actual composition ofFermo e Lucia on 24 April 1821, after reading the novels ofWalter Scott, mainly in French translations.[26] Round the episode of the Innominato, historically identified withFrancesco Bernardino Visconti, the first manuscript of the novelThe Betrothed (in ItalianI promessi sposi) began to grow into shape, and was completed in September 1823. The work was published, after being deeply reshaped by the author and revised by friends in 1825–1827, at the rate of a volume a year; it at once raised its author to the first rank of literary fame. It is generally agreed to be his greatest work, and the paradigm of modern Italian language.
Set inLombardy under Spanish rule in the 17th century, the novel narrates the story of twofiancés, Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella, who endure famine, war, and plague as well as corruption in Church and State before they are finally united.The Betrothed is very much a realist novel: the two protagonists are ordinary people, the style and the language are plain and everyday, and the narrative situations are drawn from everyday life. The novel is particularly notable for its strong characterization: Manzoni is able to unfold a character in all particulars, to display it in all its aspects, to follow it through its different phases.[27] The story of Renzo and Lucia is interwoven with the great historic events of the 17th century (theThirty Years' War, the famine of 1628, and theplague of 1630) in a vast social panorama whose protagonists are at the same time CardinalFederico Borromeo, the most noble religious figure of the time, the Unnamed (Francesco Bernardino Visconti), the most feared outlaw of his day, and many other individuals both named or left anonymous in the novel.
Immediately hailed as a work of genius, the novel went through 68 editions and sold over 60,000 copies in the next fourteen years.[28] It was soon translated into French, German and English. Such international writers as Goethe,Edgar Allan Poe andStendhal, and the influential Italian criticsNiccolò Tommaseo,Silvio Pellico,Pietro Giordani andFrancesco de Sanctis praised the work.[29] In an enthusiastic review published in 1838 onThe Monthly ChronicleMary Shelley called Manzoni "a man of first-rate genius"[30]
The Penguin Companion to European Literature notes that 'the book's real greatness lies in its delineation of character...in the heroine, Lucia, in Padre Cristoforo, theCapuchin friar, and the saintly cardinal (Borromeo) of Milan, he has created three living examples of that pure and wholehearted Christianity which is his ideal. But his psychological penetration extends also to those who fall short of this standard, whether through weakness or perversity, and the novel is rich in pictures of ordinary men and women, seen with a delightful irony and disenchantment which always stops short of cynicism, and which provides a perfect balance for the evangelical fervour of his ideal'. According toPeter Brooks "The Betrothed is the most original and powerful of European historical novels in the tradition of Walter Scott (...) It ranks withThe Charterhouse of Parma andWar and Peace as a drama of life lived within the dynamics of history".[31]
Frontispiece of theStoria della colonna infame, 1842
Following a stay in Florence in 1827 Manzoni began a thorough linguistic revision ofThe Betrothed. His aim was to bring the novel's language closer to the kind ofFlorentine dialect spoken by the educated classes. He enlisted the help of two Florentine friends, Gaetano Cioni andGiovanni Battista Niccolini, to whom he gave copies of his novel, asking them to make corrections in the margin wherever the language was not in conformity with modern, cultured Florentine.[32] The revised edition of his masterpiece was published in serialised from 1840 to 1842. It was integrated by 450 pictures by the famous illustratorFrancesco Gonin.[33]
As an appendix to the second edition of theThe Betrothed, Manzoni published in 1842 theStoria della colonna infame (History of the infamous column).[34] The essay recounts the trial of Health Commissioner Guglielmo Piazza and barber Gian Giacomo Mora during the plague of 1630. Both men were sentenced to death as "untori" (people suspected of spreading the plague by smearing a poisonous substance on walls). The essay denounces the torture used, and the absurdity of the time's criminal legislation, as well assuperstition and ignorance. Manzoni took its inspiration from Pietro Verri'sNotes on torture, and Cesare Beccaria's more extensive and more famousOn Crimes and Punishments. The essay's intention was to underscore the individual responsibilities and the perverse passions of those magistrates who knew very well they were sentencing innocent persons to death. TheStoria della colonna infame was highly regarded by French writersAlphonse de Lamartine and Augustin Thierry.[35] It provided the source of inspiration forLeonardo Sciascia's novelMorte dell'Inquisitore.[36]
In 1822, Manzoni had published his second tragedy,Adelchi, turning on the overthrow byCharlemagne of theLombard domination in Italy, and containing many veiled allusions to the existing Austrian rule.[37] Manzoni published together with theAdelchi hisDiscourse on a few items of Longobard history in Italy, the best of his historical essays. Both theAdelchi andIl Conte di Carmagnola were quickly translated and circulated in France, Germany and England and won Manzoni the praise ofGyörgy Lukács, who considered him "the most important exponent of historical drama at the time in Western Europe."[38]
In 1826 Manzoni befriended the Catholic philosopherAntonio Rosmini. The novelist maintained constant contact with the philosopher through correspondence and visits. Rosmini played the same rôle of confidant and critic in Manzoni's later life, that Fauriel had played during Manzoni's youth.[39] His ties with Rosmini prompted Manzoni to devote himself to philosophical studies. After 1827, Manzoni wrote mainly essays on philosophy, history, politics and economics, literature, and above all language – most notablySentir messa (1836), and the unfinished treatisesSaggio comparativo sulla rivoluzione francese del 1789 e la rivoluzione italiana del 1859, begun in 1862, andDella lingua italiana, which were published posthumously.[20]
Manzoni favored the Italian unification and on February 1860 he was made asenator by the King of ItalyVictor Emmanuel II.[40] Before and after his embracing an austere Catholicism upon marrying Henriette Blondel, Manzoni's politics can be broadly described asprogressive liberal.
Since his French trip, Manzoni's liberalism included a profound understanding of economics. He was well acquainted with authors such asJean-Baptiste Say andAdam Smith and left numerous notes on the economic treatises and essays he was reading. His understanding of economics came to surface in his grand historical novelThe Betrothed, particularly in Chapter 12, where he deals with the famine inLombardy. Economist andPresident of the Italian RepublicLuigi Einaudi praised the chapter and the whole ofThe Betrothed as "one of the best treatises on political economy ever written".[12] Economic historianDeirdre N. McCloskey likewise described it as "a lecture in Economics 101".[41]
On 25 December 1833, Manzoni's wife Henriette died, a loss which was followed nine months later by the death of his eldest daughter, Giulietta, wife ofMassimo d'Azeglio. In the mid-1830s he attended the "Salotto Maffei", asalon in Milan hosted byClara Maffei, and in 1837 he married again, to Teresa Borri, widow of Count Decio Stampa. The new Mrs. Manzoni's nature was not the docile and conciliating one of Henriette, and she didn't get along very well either with her mother-in-law nor with step-children. In 1845, Teresa bore twins, one of whom was stillborn, and the other of whom lived only a few hours.
In 1860 KingVictor Emmanuel II named Manzoni asenator.[42] Owing to his prestige in the field of studies on the problem of language – something that had engaged his attention while he was writing the novel on up to hisLettera a Giacinto Carena sulla lingua italiana (Letter to Giacinto Carena on the Italian language, 1846) – Manzoni was appointed chairman of a commission dealing with this subject by the minister of public education, Emilio Broglio. In this capacity, he wrote a report entitledDell'unità della lingua e dei mezzi per diffonderla (On the unity of the language and on the means for achieving it, 1868), in which he proposed that Florentine should be taught in schools, and a modern Florentine dictionary published.[43] The report was published the same year in the March issue of theNuova Antologia and inLa Perseveranza of 5 March. The Minister of Education decided to adopt Manzoni's recommendations and under his auspices theNuovo Vocabolariodella lingua italiana was begun in accordance with Manzoni's criterion, namely the acceptance of the living usage of Florence.[citation needed]
The last years of the writer's life were marred by the death of his mother (1841), his second wife (1861), six of his children, and his closest friends, Charles Fauriel (1844),Tommaso Grossi (1853) and Antonio Rosmini (1855). The death of his eldest son, Pier Luigi, on 28 April 1873, was the final blow which hastened his end. He was already weakened as he had fallen on 6 January while exiting theSan Fedele church, hitting his head on the steps, and he died after 5 months of cerebralmeningitis, a complication of the trauma.[citation needed]
His funeral was celebrated in theMilan Cathedral with almost royal pomp.[44] Manzoni's remains, after they lay in state for some days, were followed to theCimitero Monumentale in Milan by a vast cortege, including the royal princes and all the great officers of state.[44] A monument to Manzoni byFrancesco Barzaghi, was erected in the Piazza San Fedele in 1883; however his noblest monument wasGiuseppe Verdi'sRequiem, written in 1874 to honour his memory.Natalia Ginzburg wrote a biographical study of Manzoni and his family based on Manzoni family letters (La famiglia Manzoni, 1983; Eng. trans.The Manzoni Family, 1987).
Monument to Alessandro Manzoni in Piazza San Fedele, Milan
At first misunderstood by Catholicintegralists due to his liberal leanings,[45] Manzoni has since been revered as one of the most important modern Catholic authors. His treatiseOsservazioni sulla morale cattolica was quoted byPope Pius XI in his encyclical on Christian EducationDivini Illius Magistri:
"20. It is worthy of note how a layman, an excellent writer and at the same time a profound and conscientious thinker, has been able to understand well and express exactly this fundamental Catholic doctrine: 'The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it'".[46]
Pope Francis loved Manzoni's masterpieceThe Betrothed. First introduced to him by his grandmother, he stated to have read it at least three times during his life and asked engaged couples to read the novel for edification before marriage.[47]
"Manzoni is for literate Italians a cultural titan akin to Dante, Verdi, Leopardi,Ungaretti".[50] The language employed in his masterpiece,The Betrothed has shaped the language which, after the unification of Italy (1861), became the chief model of standard educated Italian.The Betrothed forms an indispensable part of the curriculum in Italian high schools[51] and has shaped Italians' ways of thinking, often in unconscious ways, more than any other novel. Verbal borrowings from it have become embedded in everyday language, as well as constantly resurfacing in films, books, and journalism.[20]
On 23 February 1691 Pietro Antonio Manzoni, Alessandro's great-grandfather, purchased the autonomous municipality[52] ofMoncucco as a fief (created on that occasion and dependent on Mirasole, a farmstead-castle nearCaltignaga[53][54]), ensuring the noble title to his family:Signore di Moncucco di Mirasole (Lord of Moncucco of Mirasole).[55] In 1753 the fief passed to his son Alessandro Valeriano and in 1773 to the latter's second-born son, Pietro (presumed father of Alessandro).[56]
^De Gubernatis, Angelo (1872).Ricordi biografici: pagine estratte dalla storia contemporanea letteraria italiana in servigio della gioventù. Florence: Tipografia Editrice dell'Associazione. p. 19.
^This appears from his letter to Fauriel of 3 November 1821, in which he discussed Walter Scott and his approach to the historical novel (Tonelli 1984, p. 242).
^Maiden, Martin (2002)."History of the Italian Language".The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved5 June 2025.
^In the wake of Manzoni's death such conservative publications asCiviltà cattolica,Scuola cattolica andOsservatore cattolico ignored or criticized what was then regarded as his liberal ideology. Typical was the position of Davide Albertario, who in theScuola cattolica of 29 May 1873 remarked that Manzoni had «due fedi» and «due amori»: «l'una in Dio e nella Chiesa, l'altra nella rivoluzione, nemica di Dio e della Chiesa».
^Francesca Ortolano (3 January 2007)."Comune di Garbagna Novarese".Sistema Informativo Unificato per le Soprintendenze Archivistiche (in Italian). Retrieved26 August 2021.
^Giancarlo Andenna (1982). "Castello di Caltignaga".Da Novara tutto intorno. Andar per castelli (in Italian). Novara: Milvia. p. 500.
^Società storica lombarda (1874)."Il patriziato milanese".Archivio storico lombardo - Giornale della Società storica lombarda (in Italian). Milan: G. Brigola. p. 462. Retrieved20 August 2021.
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Sante Matteo; Larry H. Peer, eds. (1986).The Reasonable Romantic: Essays on Alessandro Manzoni. New York:P. Lang.
Davie, Mark (1992). "Manzoni after 1848: An 'Irresolute Utopian'?".Modern Language Review.87 (4):847–57.doi:10.2307/3731423.JSTOR3731423.
Gladfelder, Hal (1993). "Seeing Black: Alessandro Manzoni between Fiction and History".Modern Language Notes.108 (1):59–86.doi:10.2307/2904689.JSTOR2904689.
Macchia, Giovanni (1994).Manzoni e la via del romanzo. Milan: Adelphi.ISBN9788845910524.
Pierce, Glenn Palen (1998).Manzoni and the Aesthetics of the Lombard Seicento: Art Assimilated Into the Narrative of I Promessi Sposi. Lewisburg:Bucknell University Press.ISBN9780838753675.
Godt, Clareece (1998).The Mobile Spectacle: Variable Perspective in Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi. New York: Peter Lang.ISBN978-0820421346.
Boylan, Amy (2005)."The Betrothed". In Joyce Moss (ed.).World Literature and Its Times. Vol. 7: Italian Literature and Its Times. Detroit, MI:Thomson Gale. pp. 61–69. Retrieved30 May 2025.
Codebò, Marco (2006). "Records, Fiction, and Power in Alessandro Manzoni's 'I Promessi Sposi' and 'Storia Della Colonna Infame".Modern Language Notes.121 (1):187–206.JSTOR3840728.
Miller, Cecilia (2016). "The Betrothed (1825-1827, 1840-1842), Revolution, and the Perfectibility of the Human Mind".Enlightenment and Political Fiction: The Everyday Intellectual. New York and London: Routledge. pp. 206–259.doi:10.4324/9781315667072-6.ISBN978-1-315-66707-2.
