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A Vindication of Catholic Morality
1819 · translated from the Italian · 250 pages
A Vindication of Catholic Morality
by Alessandro Manzoni
Before The Betrothed made him Italy's national novelist, Manzoni wrote this: a direct rebuttal to Sismondi's charge, in his history of the Italian republics, that Catholic moral teaching had corrupted the Italian character. It is polemic with a named opponent rather than general apologetics, and it argues that Sismondi has confused the church's doctrine with the failures of those who ignored it.
The convert behind the argument
Manzoni was raised in a household touched by the Enlightenment, spent formative years in Paris among the ideologues, and was a Voltairean unbeliever into his twenties. He and his wife Enrichetta — herself a convert from Calvinism — returned to Catholicism around 1810, and everything he wrote afterwards, including The Betrothed, was shaped by it.
Summary
The occasion was Sismondi's Histoire des républiques italiennes, which argued that the moral teaching of the Catholic Church — the confessional, the doctrine of penance, the treatment of sin — had eroded the Italian conscience and helped produce the political decay of the peninsula.
Manzoni's answer is methodological before it is doctrinal: Sismondi, he argues, has taken the conduct of people who disregarded the church's teaching as evidence about the teaching itself. He then works through the specific charges — the doctrine of penance is the central one — insisting on what the Council of Trent actually says against what Sismondi's sources assume it says.
The book's tone is unusually cool for polemic, which is characteristic of him, and it belongs to the same years as his religious hymns. It is the least-read of Manzoni's major works and the most directly apologetic.
Who was Alessandro Manzoni?
Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873) was born in Milan, the grandson of the reforming jurist Cesare Beccaria on his mother's side. He spent his early twenties in Paris in the circle of the ideologues and held the sceptical, Voltairean opinions of that world.
He and his wife Enrichetta Blondel, a Swiss Calvinist who converted to Catholicism, both came into the church around 1810. He went on to write the Sacred Hymns, the tragedies, and I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1827), which effectively created modern literary Italian and remains the country's national novel.
Common questions
- What is A Vindication of Catholic Morality?
- Manzoni's 1819 reply to the historian Sismondi, who had argued that Catholic moral teaching corrupted the Italian character. Manzoni answers that Sismondi has judged the doctrine by the behaviour of people who ignored it.
- Was Manzoni a convert?
- Yes. He was a Voltairean unbeliever through his early twenties, formed in Paris among the ideologues, and returned to Catholicism around 1810 along with his wife, who converted from Calvinism.
A note on the text. A Vindication of Catholic Morality is in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.