Cesare Beccaria

It could be said that Enlightenment culture was passed on to Manzoni genetically, since his maternal grandfather (Giulia’s father) was the famous Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), one of the major exponents of the Milanese Enlightenment in the latter half of the eighteenth century, which saw a fruitful collaboration between the groups of intellectuals that embraced the ideas of the French philosophes and the reformist rule of the Habsburgs (Maria Teresa and later Joseph II). Together with the Verri brothers, Pietro and Alessandro, Cesare Beccaria promoted the Società dei Pugni, which encouraged intellectuals to go beyond the limits of and exclusively literary commitment (similarly to the practice of the Accademia dei Trasformati) and to take an active part in political and social renewal. This was the goal underlying the foundation of Il Caffè, a periodical that brought the new European journalism (such as Addison and Steele’s Spectator) into Italy, with its clear discussions on trade, monetary reform, political economy, penal law, science, customs, universal brotherhood and other topics relevant to the construction of modern statehood. Beccaria’s name is associated above all with a short treatise entitled Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments, 1764), recalled by Manzoni in the third chapter of the Storia della Colonna infame, where he calls it “that little book [...] that promoted not only the abolition of torture but also the reform of all criminal legislation”. In his treatise, Beccaria set out revolutionary principles concerning the abolition of the death penalty (considered unhelpful as a crime deterrent), the certainty and proportionality of punishments, the need for the social prevention of crime, and the atrocity of torture. His work was immediately successful throughout Europe, and was praised and translated by the philosophers of the Encyclopédie. Together with Pietro Verri’s Osservazioni sulla tortura, it had a profound impact on Manzoni thinking on ethics and law.