Giulia Beccaria

Giulia Maria Anna Margarita Beccaria Manzoni (; 21 July 1762 – 7 July 1841) was an Italian noblewoman, the daughter of criminologist Cesare Beccaria. She was the wife of and the mother of writer Alessandro Manzoni.

Biography

Youth and relationship with Giovanni Verri Daughter of Marquis Cesare Beccaria and Teresa de Blasco – a noblewoman of Spanish origin – Giulia, after a childhood spent in her father’s home, was educated from 1774 at the boarding school attached to the San Paolo convent, from which she left in 1780, after turning eighteen. The young woman’s adolescence was marked not only by the austere atmosphere of the convent, which suited her little, but also by her father’s indifference

Marriage to Pietro Manzoni

On 20 October 1782, the twenty-year-old Giulia, due to her family’s financial difficulties and the lack of approval from Pietro and Alessandro Verri for her marriage to their younger brother Giovanni, Evidence of this emotional state comes from the intervention of Niccolò Tommaseo: “Even of Pietro Verri [Manzoni] speaks with reverence, all the more so because he knows, and his mother did not hide it from him, that he was his nephew, that is, the son of one of his brothers.” Despite the differences in character and age, from the marriage with Pietro Manzoni, officially, their only son Alessandro was born in Milan on 7 March 1785, Thanks to Imbonati, Giulia was able to associate with the idéologues, a group of intellectuals, heirs of late Enlightenment thought, interested in the study of society and its issues, becoming friends with Sophie de Condorcet and Claude Fauriel, with whom her son Alessandro would later form connections. then inquired about Mademoiselle Augustine Emilie Victoire, daughter of the French philosopher Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy. The two young people married in Milan on 8 February 1808. The tombs of Giulia Beccaria and Enrichetta Blondel in the cemetery of Brusuglio. Following her conversion, Giulia’s interests also changed: from the worldly life alongside Sophie de Condorcet and the Enlightenment thinkers, her daily routine now revolved around numerous acts of piety and spiritual mortifications prescribed by the Manzoni family’s spiritual director, Luigi Tosi, from whom she received her first Eucharist alongside her daughter-in-law and son on 15 August 1810. The 1810s and 1820s saw Giulia take on the role of grandmother to her numerous grandchildren, as well as that of her son’s literary advisor, promoting his image and supporting his artistic endeavors. However, the family idyll was disrupted by the death of Enrichetta on 25 December 1833 (an event that inspired Manzoni to compose the ode, left unfinished, ). The 1830s also saw the death of Manzoni’s eldest daughter, Giulietta, married to Massimo d’Azeglio. The now-elderly Giulia, in her final years, clashed with Manzoni’s second wife, , who, unlike Enrichetta, was very resistant to granting her elderly mother-in-law the role of “family engine” she had held until then. Tired and ill (she began suffering from nervous disorders ), Beccaria died on 7 July 1841, shortly after the death of another granddaughter, Sofia. Beccaria’s remains rest, alongside those of Enrichetta and some of her grandchildren, in the cemetery of Brusuglio, a frazione of Cormano (Milan).