Religious conversion

According to a story tinged with legend and miracle, Alessandro Manzoni’s conversion (on which he was reluctant to comment) took place in the Parisian Church of Saint-Roch on 2 April 1810. During the celebrations for Napoleon’s marriage to Maria Luisa of Austria, the street crowds panicked after a few fire-crackers exploded and started to scatter, causing numerous victims among the crowds. Alessandro and Henriette became separated in the throng. Pushed along by people trying to escape, Manzoni found himself on the steps of the Church and took shelter inside. In the silence and peace inside the Church, he begged to find his wife again. Upon leaving the Church, the newly converted Manzoni found his wife. The episode is also narrated with variations, for example, Manzoni goes into the Church of his own accord and asks God to reveal himself. Clearly, however, his conversion was not due to a sudden flash but the outcome of a long process of meditation, an outcome that was never definitive or certain, and constantly subjected to doubt and confirmation (as during his crisis in 1817). Religious conversion was also a rather common phenomenon among intellectuals disappointed by and afraid of the Revolution and the Napoleonic regime. Manzoni’s first confessor was the Jansenist priest, Eustachio Degola, who also prepared Henriette for her conversion to Catholicism (approved with her abjuration on 22 May 1810). The Saint-Roch story nonetheless contains several reliable biographical details, such as Manzoni’s fear of crowds, his agoraphobia and panic attacks, all recurring symptoms of his neuroses. He re-elaborates artistically these features of his life, through, for example, the scenes of the rioting crowds in the Promessi Sposi (Chapters XII-XIII), and through the conversion of certain major characters such as the Innominato and Father Cristoforo.