Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist known for his novel The Betrothed, considered a masterpiece of the world's literature. The novel is a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, being both significant as a patriotic message and a cornerstone marking the formation of a modern italian language.
Background
Manzoni was born in Milan, Italy, on 7 March 1785. His father Pietro, a man of about fifty, belonged to an old family of Lecco. The poet's maternal grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, was a well-known author, and his mother Giulia is said to possess a literary gift. The young Alessandro spent his first two years of life in cascina Costa in Galbiate. Caterina Panzeri was a person to care after him those years, as it is attested by a memorial plate affixed in the place. In 1792 his parents divorced and his mother started a relationship with the nobleman Carlo Imbonati, moving initially to England and later to Paris. Hence, their son was brought up in several religious institutes.
Education
At the age of fifteen he developed a steady passion for poetry, and wrote two sonnets of considerable merit. After the death of his father in 1805, he joined the freethinking household of his mother at Auteuil, and spent two years mixing with the literary set of the so-called "ideologues", philosophers of the 18th-century school, among whom he made many friends, the most notable being Claude Charles Fauriel. He also caught an anti-Catholic ideas of Voltaire there.
Religion
Imbibed the anti-religious and anti-Catholic ideas of Voltairianism in the youth. Converted from Jansenism to an austere form of Catholicism under the influence of his wife.