Inni Sacri: Il nome di Maria

Manzoni’s second sacred hymn, Il nome di Maria (“The Name of Mary”), was written between November 1812 and April 1813 and centres on the worship of the Virgin Mary. The poem begins by recalling Elizabeth’s prediction of the divine birth when Mary went to visit her, as narrated in a passage in Luke’s Gospel (“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”). This is followed by a series of praises of the name of the Virgin Mary, celebrating the values linked to the Marian cult. For Christians, the name means “mother of God” and is venerated across the earth, both in the old and new worlds (lines 25-36). The bells ring out three times a day in honour of the name (lines 41-44), and the name is invoked by those who are afraid and in need of help, like a child in the darkness of the night, a sailor caught in a storm or a poor and humble weeping woman (lines 45-56). The Virgin Mary’s maternal image is evoked, namely, the image of a mother who has suffered and shows pity for the suffering of others, both rich and poor (lines 53-60), although the biblical image of terrifying power is also highlighted (with its closing citation from the Song of Solomon). At the end of the poem the poet invites the Jewish people to unite with the Christians in celebrating the name of Mary, who herself belonged to the people of Israel (lines 69-80). Based on the solid and totally Catholic concept underlying the Marian cult, this hymn seems more harmonic and cogent than hymns such as Il Natale (“The Nativity”) or La Passione (“The Passion”), in spite of occasional extremes in diction and tone (imperfections testifying to the poet’s difficulties in the Inni Sacri in creating a new poetic language able to transpose the sacred subject matter into poetry). In this hymn, Scriptural sources are less obvious, and the dominating force a more classical one of solemn composure. The metrical structure derives from Latin Sapphic Verse, modelled on the neoclassical variant of three hendecasyllabic lines followed by a concluding line of seven syllables that was deployed by Monti.