The humble

Manzoni scholars have used the term “umili” (“the humble”) to describe the genti meccaniche e di piccolo affare whose simple but dramatic adventures are brought to the fore in the Promessi Sposi. To find Manzoni’s own definition of “the humble”, however, we should look not in his novel but in the lines of Pentecoste, where the poet asks slave mothers not to envy free mothers since al regno i miseri / seco il Signor solleva (“the Lord raises the miserable to his Kingdom with him”), and exhorts poor men to look up at the sky, since it belongs to them. The humble are those who accept their condition of poverty or suffering insofar as it makes them more similar to Christ and opens the kingdom of heaven to them. Thus “the humble” is not a socio-economic category but an ethical and religious one: “the humble” are the “poor in spirit” of the Gospels. This spiritual condition is intrinsic to the novel’s protagonists and other characters, but not necessarily connected to material poverty. Renzo and Lucia are not well-off, but they manage to live off their work and (in Renzo’s case) income from the vineyard. Indeed, although they remain “humble”, the couple will increase their income considerable. In this regard Manzoni did not go as far as Carlo Porta, who had focused on socially and economically marginalized individuals. Some critics have perceived Manzoni’s description and characterization of “the humble” as belonging to a “paternalistic” ideology that undervalues people. This, however, is true only in the case of a few minor characters, whose humbleness is coloured by ingenuity and ignorance. One example is Fra Galdino, the mendicant friar who recounts the “miracle of the walnuts” at the home of Lucia and Agnese (Chapter III), expressing a childish and fable-like concept of faith that Manzoni rejected entirely. It is no coincidence that Agnese is the only one who listens to Fra Galdino, for her “humbleness” is rather similar to that of the simple friar. Lucia, on the other hand, does not listen to him (she goes to get the walnuts for the monastery), for her “humbleness” is more complex and replete with evangelical “culture”.