User:Mikceo/History of the Column of Infamy

History of the Column of Infamy
Author	Alessandro Manzoni
Language	Italian
Genre	Essay
Published	1840
Publication place	Italy

Ignorance in natural philosophy may produce inconvenience, but not iniquity; and a bad institution does not enforce itself
— Alessandro Manzoni, Introduction of the History of the Column of Infamy

History of the Column of Infamy (originally named Storia della colonna infame) is a history essay written by Alessandro Manzoni. It is set in the same historical period of the novel The Betrothed.

Historical event

The story tells of the trial brought to Milan, during the terrible plague of 1630, against two alleged untori, considered responsible for the pestilential contagion through mysterious substances, following an accusation - unfounded - by a "sissy" of the people, Caterina Rosa.

The trial, held historically in the summer of 1630, decreed both the condemnation of two innocents, Guglielmo Piazza (commissioner of health) and Gian Giacomo Mora (barber), executed with the torment of the wheel, and the destruction of the house-shop of the latter. As a warning, the "infamous column", which gives the name to the story, was erected on the ruins of Mora's home.

Only in 1778 the Column of Infamy, now become a testimony of infamy no longer in charge of the condemned, but of the judges who had committed an enormous injustice, was overthrown. In the Castello Sforzesco of Milan the tombstone is preserved, which bears a description, in seventeenth-century Latin, of the punishments inflicted.

Manzoni's work

Alessandro Manzoni realized the History of the Column of Infamy a rather long time. Originally linked to the novel I promessi sposi, the story should have been part of the fifth chapter of the fourth volume of the work, in its first edition, published as Fermo and Lucia. Manzoni, however, considered that this long digression, which he followed to another on the tragic events of the plague, would "mislead his readers".^[1]

The unmistakable characteristic of the author was the perennial dissatisfaction and the subsequent revision of all his works, an attitude that led him to exclude the story of the infamous column with the intention of publishing it as a historical appendix in the second edition of the novel. The piece was indeed far too long to be included in the novel. Manzoni will publish it later, in 1840, with the known title. Manzoni drew much of the news from Giuseppe Ripamonti's De peste Mediolani quae fuit anno 1630, which also describes the story of the infamous column, which also inspired Pietro Verri's Osservazioni sulla tortura.

With this tragic affair, Manzoni wants to face the relationship between the responsibilities of the individual and the beliefs and beliefs of personal or collective time. Through a historical, juridical and psychological analysis, the author tries to underline the mistake made by the judges and the abuse of their power, which trampled every form of common sense and compassion, driven by a totally unfounded belief and by a fear linked to the tremendous weather condition caused by the plague epidemic.

Criticism at work

Benedetto Croce was very strict towards Manzoni. The accusation of anti-historicalism towards this work by Manzoni was developed by the historian Fausto Nicolini, close to positions and ideology on Croce. The main criticisms made by Nicolini are:^[2]

not having considered the anointings to be real, probably made by monatti;
not having considered the reality in which the judges were;
distorting some parts to make the proceedings look flawed, while the judges followed the norms of the time;
having presented the accused as honest men, keeping silent crimes and guilt of many of them (excluding Gian Giacomo Mora and Gaspare Migliavacca, really innocent);
having kept silent the torture established by Cardinal Federico Borromeo for others suspected of being unmasks.

A defense of the History of the Column of Infamy was published by Leonardo Sciascia, who defined the judges as "bureaucrats of evil"^[3] and which proposed a parallel between the events of the trial and the special anti-terrorism laws aimed at ensuring impunity for political repentants.^[4]

In his essay on Manzoni, Carlo Varotti suggests a different reading from that of Croce's inspiration, which recognizes the reflection of Beccaria's nephew on the problem of the responsibility of each individual and on the admissibility to automatically justify the customs of a certain historical period invoking the "spirit of time".^[5]

Adaptations

In 1962 Dino Buzzati wrote the comedy La colonna infame, played for the first time in the 23th october 1962 in Teatro Sant'Erasmo of Milan by Maner Lualdi, with the direction of Edmo Fenoglio and with the actors Piero Nuti, Giustino Durano and Paolo Poli.^[6]^[7]
In 1972 Nelo Risi directed the film The Infamous Column, a transposition of the essay.

Notes

^ . p. 5. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ . pp. 297–341. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ . pp. 119 e ss. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ http://sellerio.it/it/catalogo/Storia-Colonna-Infame/Manzoni/151. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ . pp. 197–202. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^ {{cite journal}}: Empty citation (help)
^ {{cite journal}}: Empty citation (help)