A manuscript register and a literary echo #
The archives of Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) held at the Ambrosian Library in Milan contain an unedited manuscript register, written in Italian by several anonymous hands, and titled Elenco dei giustiziati in Milano: a chronological list of the public executions of men and women in the duchy of Milan between 1471 and 1764. This chronicle of the scaffold records the names of ‘thousands of wretches’ whose deaths made the Milanese philosopher ‘shudder’ with indignation, as he observes in his celebrated pamphlet of 1764, On Crimes and Punishments.
While reading through the finely-written pages of this register to prepare an article on the sources of On Crimes and Punishments and on penal practices in Beccaria’s time, and while deciphering the names and misdeeds of those condemned to death listed in it, I came across an entry that awakened a literary memory in me: a certain ‘Antonio Rivolta’ had been pardoned in June 1681, we read on page 72 of the Ambrosian document.
Now, for those who have read Manzoni’s The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), this is the pseudonym that Renzo chose when he sought refuge in Bergamo to escape the Lombardy police after the hunger riots in Milan.
Two recent articles on the subject #
I had the opportunity, in two articles published in 2024, to present the history of Beccaria’s register and to investigate this unexpected echo between the judicial chronicle and the novel by Alessandro Manzoni, a connoisseur of the Lombard archives and Beccaria’s papers.
The first article, a detailed analysis of the Ambrosian manuscript, appeared in a special issue of Modern Languages Online (MLO), published by Liverpool University Press:
« Giustizia fatta: observations sur un registre des condamnés à mort (1471-1764) de la bibliothèque de Beccaria », MLO, Modern Languages Open, Liverpool University Press, 2024. Open Access
The second article appeared in the proceedings of the symposium on Alessandro Manzoni held at the Turin Academy of Sciences in October 2023. It focuses on Manzoni’s relationship with the Enlightenment movement and his interest in the judicial archives of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
«Un aspetto dell’Illuminismo manzoniano: il piacere dell’archivio», in Carlo Ossola (ed.), “Gran segreto è la vita”: il pensiero e l’opera di Alessandro Manzoni. Atti del convegno dei 24-25 ottobre 2023, Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2024, p. 147-174.