Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) was born in Milan to Giulia Beccaria, the freespirited daughter of the famous criminologist, Cesare Beccaria (see On Crimes and Punishments, also in WLAIT 7: Italian Literature and Its Times). Officially Manzoni’s father was Pietro Manzoni, Giulia’s husband and a conservative who was 17 years her senior. There is much speculation that Beccaria’s actual father was Giovanni Verri, a prominent liberal intellectual. In any case, Giulia eventually eloped with the well-known Milanese banker Carlo Imbonati. Alessandro experienced a rather unstable childhood of wet nurses, boarding schools, and traveling back and forth between Paris and Milan, but he adored his new father figure, Imbonati. His time in Paris, as well as the French occupation of Milan (under Napoleon Bonaparte), greatly influenced young Manzoni, providing him the opportunity to meet and study many great European cultural figures of the day. The time he spent at his paternal family’s property near Lake Como also left a strong impression, as reflected in his description of the region in The Betrothed. In 1808 Manzoni married Enrichetta Blondel—the daughter of a Swiss banker and a devout, puritanical Protestant. Manzoni himself was raised with atheistic beliefs.
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