Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni was born 7 March 1785, a philosopher and poet who moved through verse and plays before finding his form. In 1827 he published The Betrothed, a sprawling novel set in 17th-century Lombardy that became a symbol of the Risorgimento — not only for its patriotic thrust but because Manzoni wrote it in a clear, modern Italian that helped knit the dialects of a divided land into something unified. He spent years revising the text to stabilize the language, and the work became a milestone in shaping the tongue Italy would speak. A proponent of Liberal Catholicism, he stood as one of…