Composed between March 1814 and October 1815, La Passione is Manzoni’s fourth sacred hymn, celebrating Christianity’s most tragic event: the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Manzoni was particularly interested in this theme, and in his historical dramas also depicted the repercussions of the sacrifice of Christ in innocent figures humiliated and insulted by the world’s evil (Carmagnola, Adelchis, Ermengarda, and the victims of the Storia della colonna infame). The hymn starts out with an invitation to reflect deeply on the sorrowful events of Good Friday. The author then transposes into his own verse (in decasyllables, as in other poems) the biblical passage on Isaiah’s lament for the forthcoming event. The poet depicts Christ’s suffering by following the words of Isaiah (Egli è il Giusto che i vili han trafitto, / ma tacente, ma senza tenzone; / egli è il Giusto; e di tutti il delitto / il Signor sul suo capo versò). He then recalls the kiss of Judas the traitor, the trial, the cowardly Pilate, the curses hurled by the Jews (Che il suo sangue ricada su di noi e sui nostri figli!), the insults of the crowd, the death on the cross. As in his previous hymns, the description and narrative are faithful to the Scriptures, but God’s menacing consent to the sacrilegious curses of the people is the poet’s own addition, as is the vision of the innocent blood of Christ still falling upon the children (the misera prole) of Israel. Closing the hymn is the invocation to God to turn this spilling of blood into a purification that cancels out original sin and delivers humanity from its miserable condition of blame and abandonment. The invocation is for a merciful God, the New Testament God, to replace the terrifying and vengeful God of the Old Testament. The complex theme of original sin, the Father’s revenge (O gran Padre, per Lui che s’immola, / cessi alfine quell’ira tremenda), and of abandoning humanity, is already found in Natale, and may well stems from Manzoni’s Jansenist background as from his own psychology.