Abstract

The essay deals with the relationship between nationalism and Catholic religion in Alessandro Manzoni’s work in the light of his comparison with Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge. It attempts to reopen the old dossier on the nature of the Italian «national character» by shedding light on the threefold cultural conflict that the publication of the Histoire sparked in the future author of The Betrothed. The hypothesis is that this cultural conflict spanned three dimensions of Manzoni’s intellectual evolution: the correction of the Enlightenment of his youth, the correction of the liberal judgement on the Catholic religion and the correction of the implications that this judgement carried on the evaluation of the national character of the Italians. Through a precise analysis of the Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, the boundaries of Alessandro Manzoni’s patriotism are sketched in the light of his peculiar Catholicism, noting the precarious resolution of the author’s political aporias in the mobilisation of a Catholic universalism that rejects the earthly dimension in order to ground human action in a transcendent perspective.