{"id":3431,"date":"2021-06-21T15:27:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T15:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=3431"},"modified":"2021-06-21T15:28:50","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T15:28:50","slug":"the-betrothed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/21\/the-betrothed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Betrothed"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Betrothed<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Tackling wide ranging social issues from class struggle to market forces, The Betrothed<\/em> provides a background of surprising depth for its simple tale of star-crossed lovers.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Retroview by William Randolph Brafford<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Is there a great Christian social novelist? The acknowledged masters\u2014Dickens, Hugo, and Tolstoy\u2014were geniuses with a certain respect for religion, but they weren\u2019t orthodox. Graham Greene was interested in unsettled characters, alienated from society. Marilynne Robinson and Sigrid Undset\u2019s books are fundamentally about family dynamics, and deal with larger social issues through that lens. Dostoevsky is perhaps a better candidate, yet I think of him as a novelist of the anguished soul. My preferred candidate is Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian writer, scholar, and poet, who only published one novel. But what a novel it was.<\/p>

Manzoni\u2019s I Promessi Sposi<\/em> was written in the 1820s. It\u2019s been titled The Betrothed<\/em> in many of its English translations. It was renowned in the 19th century; Verdi called it a \u201cgift to humanity\u201d and dedicated his great Requiem to the novelist\u2019s memory. In 1909, here in America, Charles W. Eliot chose it for inclusion in what became the Harvard Classics: the famous \u201cfive foot shelf of books\u201d that Eliot intended to contain all that is needed for a liberal arts education. Yet Manzoni\u2019s stock seems to have fallen in the English-speaking world over the last century. Penguin Classics keeps an English translation in print, but it\u2019s hard to find much critical discussion of Manzoni. In Italian culture, his reputation is secure, although it seems the lengthy book is the bane of many high school students.<\/p>

Perhaps some of our contemporaries find the plot too simple. The Betrothed<\/em> is not the kind of story where the characters make a subtle psychological journey. It is, rather, an episodic historical fiction in a vividly realized setting. The heroes are Renzo and Lucia, the titular promised spouses, who live in a village on the shore of Lake Como. A powerful and dastardly noble wants Lucia for himself, and so he sends his goons to intimidate the village priest, who then refuses to perform the marriage. Renzo and Lucia have to flee the village, and they then have a series of separate adventures and meet interesting characters. The story carries them through some particularly tumultuous years in Milan\u2019s history, culminating in the bubonic plague of 1630, during which Renzo and Lucia finally reunite.<\/p>

More likely, it\u2019s Manzoni\u2019s overt piety that\u2019s fallen out of favor. As a young man, Manzoni was an atheist, but he had the peculiar fortune to fall in love with and marry a woman from a Calvinist family. Soon after the marriage, she converted to Roman Catholicism, and it wasn\u2019t long before Manzoni himself became a devout Catholic. The most heroic characters in The Betrothed<\/em> are religious. Lucia\u2019s faith is humble but deep: In every trouble, her first instinct is to trust God and ask for Mary\u2019s intercession. Another major character, Father Cristoforo, is an energetic Capuchin friar who helps Renzo and Lucia early in their journey. Cristoforo\u2019s story, relayed in a few chapters, is a study of how God can transform the vices of pride and anger into courage and zeal. And then there\u2019s Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, a real historical figure (and the nephew of St. Charles Borromeo) whom the characters meet along the way. Manzoni depicts Federigo himself as something close to a saint.<\/p>

When I think of exemplary figures of holiness in other novels, I think of Dostoevsky\u2019s Elder Zossima, or the bishop in Les Miserables<\/em>. These men seem to be holy despite the church around them; they are solitary in their sanctity. In English literature not only are saintly figures rare but they are often not placed very high in the hierarchy: it\u2019s almost a trope to hold up one particular good pastor as a standard by which the rest of the church can be criticized. Manzoni inverts this English trope: in The Betrothed<\/em>, it\u2019s the village priest who is a comical coward, and it\u2019s the bishop who is saintly. And the novel doesn\u2019t just hold up one good bishop as the counterexample to general ecclesiastical vice; Manzoni situates his figures of holiness in the context of the institutional Church. Cristoforo\u2019s zeal for charity is limited by the orders of his superiors, who are perhaps a little more worldly than he is, and yet Manzoni never hints that this is a bad thing. Cristoforo welcomes the discipline of his Order; he knows that he needs it. And during the plague, Federigo Borromeo inspires the priests of Milan by his own example, so that only the priests and the Capuchins manage any real degree of self-sacrifice and service.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Manzoni understands the comedy inherent in all human endeavor, aside from obedience to God.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Yet Manzoni isn\u2019t unrealistic about corruption among those religious in life. From this perspective, the high point of the book might be an extended conversation between Federigo Borromeo and Don Abbondio, the village priest who refused to marry Renzo and Lucia. At this point in the book, Federigo knows Lucia and Renzo\u2019s story, and he wants to know why Don Abbondio hadn\u2019t married them in the first place. Federigo speaks in the style of Catholic devotional writing: the kind of extended, theologically informed admonishments that you might find in a Newman sermon or in St. Francis de Sales\u2019s writing:<\/p>

“Do you not know that to suffer for the sake of justice is victory, for us? If you do not know that, what do you preach? What instruction can you give? What good news<\/em> do you proclaim to the poor? \u2026 You will be asked, one day, whether you have at all times used the resources that were in your hand to perform the duties that were prescribed to you\u2014even when men of power had the temerity to forbid you to do so.”<\/p>

Don Abbondio, on the other hand, comes off like one of C.S. Lewis\u2019s more pitiably self-deluded characters, mired in self-justification and bad excuses: \u201cSo that’s how it goes!\u2014thought Don Abbondio. [\u2026] all this noisy reproach for a half-lie, told with the sole object of saving my skin. But the people at the top of the tree are always in the right. It’s my destiny to get kicks from everyone, even from saints.\u201d<\/p>

And yet Federigo Borromeo\u2019s gentle but piercing spiritual insight eventually has its effect: Don Abbondio feels “a certain dissatisfaction with himself, a compassion for others, a mixed sensation of tenderness and embarrassment,” which is perhaps a stage prior to true repentance, but a good state nonetheless.<\/p>

There are other moments like this in the book. Next to the saintly characters, the ordinary sinners look petty and foolish, because Manzoni understands the comedy inherent in all human endeavor, aside from obedience to God. And some of the funniest passages are ironic criticisms of the efficacy of government policy: most memorably, a section on Milan\u2019s repeated but fruitless attempts to outlaw private mercenaries. As in any good 19th-century novel, there are fops and fools at all levels of society. But what doesn\u2019t come in for ridicule is heroic sanctity. At the end of the book, the plague is devastating in Milan. The efforts of the monks and priests don\u2019t do that much from a utilitarian perspective: the population of the city decreases by three quarters. But they pray and they serve, usually at the cost of their own lives.<\/p>

Its wide sweep is what makes The Betrothed<\/em> a social novel: It explicitly considers market forces, political motivations, class struggles, and other concepts that help answer questions about how a society works. Further, it’s a Christian novel not just because Manzoni believes Christianity is true, but because he is concerned to show what organized Christianity can be at its best: suffering with an afflicted society, not as individuals who happen to be especially devoted, but as part of the church\u2019s institutional life. Finally, it’s a great novel because Manzoni writes with art, wit, and wisdom. I\u2019ve found nothing else like it in literature.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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William Borman<\/strong> is a lifelong Presbyterian, currently working as a software developer. Originally from North Carolina, he now lives in Queens, New York.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tackling wide ranging social issues from class struggle to market forces, The Betrothed provides a background of surprising depth for its simple tale of star-crossed lovers. 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