1

‘Adelchi’ and ‘Attila’: the barbarians and the Risorgimento

Ian Wood

The historiography of the barbarian invasions lies behind some of the most

important intellectual and political revolutions of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.1 According to Michel Foucault Marx commented to Engels in 1882: ‘You

know very well where we found our ideas of class struggle; we found it in the work of

the French historians who talked about the race struggle.’ What he had in mind, again

according to Foucault, were the debates about the nature of the barbarian take-over of the

West Roman Empire. In fact Foucault, rather suggestively, misremembered the date, the

recipient of the letter and the quotation: what Marx actually wrote in 1852 to

Weydemeyer was that ‘these gentlemen should study the historical works of Thierry,

Guizot, John Wade, and others in order to enlighten themselves as to the past “history of

classes”.’2 Marx is not quite as explicit as Foucault remembered in placing the origins of

the notion of the class struggle in an argument over the Frankish Conquest of Gaul.

Nevertheless, Foucault was unquestionably correct in seeing French historians of the

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as having a crucial role to play in the

development of the notions of both class and racial conflict.3 For Foucault himself, it

was this same discussion that lay at the heart of the new historico-political discourse

which transformed the way Europeans came to think about the State, sovereignty, the

Nation and race.4

1 This paper forms part of a project on ‘The use and abuse of the Barbarian Migrations from 1750 to 2000’, for which I held a British Academy Research Readership in 2004-6: much of the work for the paper was carried out while I was Balsdon Fellow at the British School in 2006. I should very much like to thank the staff of the British School, and also Alberto Tarquini, for their support. I am also indebted to those who heard versions of the paper, which were delivered at the universities of Leeds and Edinburgh: in particular I am indebted to David Laven, and to the readers of PSBR. 2 M. Foucault, Society must be defended, trans. D. Macey (London, 2003), 79: the correct quotation is supplied on p. 85, n. 6. The text is to be found in Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe, Dritte Abteilung, Briefwechsel (Berlin, 1987), V, 75. 3 On race, see M. Seliger, ‘Race thinking during the Restoration’, Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958), 273-82. 4 Foucault, Society must be defended, 49, and passim.

2

Foucault was perhaps more aware than most of the importance of debates about

the barbarian migrations. Yet he is by no means alone in noting the significance of the

study of the Middle Ages to nineteenth-century discussions of nationalism. Eric

Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Anthony Smith, Adrian Hastings, and, most recently,

Joep Leerssen have all commented in one way or another on the use of medieval past.5

None of them, however, is or was first and foremost a medievalist, even less an early

medievalist. As a result their observations did not include any discussion of the

historiography of the Early Middle Ages in its own right. A few, but only a few,

specialists in early medieval history have addressed the question of the use of the

Migration Period (from the fourth to the eighth century) in nineteenth-century political

debate.6 Yet just as early medieval history was used in some of the great socio-political

debates of the Modern Period, so too those debates themselves profoundly affected the

way that the Early Middle Ages were and are understood. This is a matter that deserves a

great deal more recognition than it usually gets. And it leads to some unexpected

conclusions: however great Gibbon’s Decline and Fall might be, it is nowhere near the

heart of the historico-political discourse identified by Foucault.7

Marx was, as so often, right when he identified French historians as having a

central role to play in the developing notion of the class struggle – though in fact English

historians had already made some comparable points, but in discussing 1066 rather than

5 J. Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: a cultural history (Amsterdam, 2006), 13-22 provides a useful overview of the issues, while he makes more use of discussion of the Middle Ages than have most of those who have contributed to the debate. 6 The two most significant works are P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: the Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002), and W. Goffart, Barbarian Tides: the Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 2006). While I have learnt much from both authors, my own emphases are rather different. For France there are also major contributions from specialists in Ancient History and historiography, C. Nicolet, La fabrique d’une nation: La France entre Rome et les Germains (Paris, 2003), and F. Hartog, Le XIXe siècle et l’histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges (Paris, 2001). 7 For Gibbon’s work in the context of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historiography of the Fall of the Roman Empire, I.N. Wood, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteeth Centuries’, in S. Barton and P. Linehan (eds.), Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher (Leiden, 2008), 327-47.

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the coming of the Anglo-Saxons.8 Yet it is neither France nor England that concerns me

here, but rather Italy, which has its own particular historiography, although, as is well

known, it drew directly on French models, and beyond them on English.9 Scholars

working on nineteenth-century Italy have, of course, noted the significance of the Middle

Ages in the imagination of the Risorgimento, though they have tended to treat the

medieval period as a single unit, and have concentrated on the great episodes of the High

Middle Ages, not least the Battle of Legnano and the Sicilian Vespers.10 In so doing they

have doubtless reflected Risorgimento interests, but they have arguably underestimated

the extent to which the barbarians of the fifth to eighth centuries presented a particularly

interesting field for debate in Italy, as elsewhere in western Europe.11 My concern is to

look specifically at the use of the Early Middle Ages, and to do so largely through an

examination of the sources for two theatrical works, Manzoni’s Adelchi and Verdi’s

Attila, both a which are included in Alberto Banti’s list of works of literature, of art, and

of opera, which he termed the canone risorgimentale.12 I hope to address specialists both

of the nineteenth century and of the Migration Period. Because I have two audiences in

mind I will, at times, have to spell out some points which will already be familiar, either

to medievalists or modernists, but not to both.

8 Augustin Thierry, ‘Autobiographical Preface’, The Historical Essays (Philadelphia, 1845), vii-xix. 9 A recent discussion is provided by A.M. Banti, ‘Le invasioni barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’, in A.M. Banti and R. Bizzocchi (eds.), Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento (Rome, 2002), 21-44. 10 See, for example, C. Duggan, The Force of Destiny: a history of Italy since 1796 (London, 2007), 96-8. 11 The volumes on I luoghi della memoria, edited by M. Isnenghi (Rome, 1996-7) have notably less on early-medieval figures and sites in Italy than do their French counterparts, Les lieux de mémoire, edited by P. Nora (Paris, 1984-92), although the latter collection arguably underestimates the importance of the Early Middle Ages for French identity. 12 A.M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, sanità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita, 2nd ed. (Turin, 2006), 45. Banti’s notion of a set of texts and paintings which can be seen as central expressions of the ideology of the Risorgimento provides a fundamental point of departure for any consideration of this material: in particular, see above n. 9, but also below, n. 30, together with A.M. Banti, L’onore della nazione: Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII alla Grande Guerra (Turin, 2005).

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One of the peculiarities of the Italian tradition was that one of its mainsprings was

a work intended to accompany a play, written in 1822: the drama was Alessandro

Manzoni’s Adelchi, 13 its historical introduction the Discorso sopra alcuni punti della

storia longobardica in Italia.14 Of course, the Hunnic invasion of 452, as well as the

Ostrogothic and Lombard invasions of Italy, and the kingdoms which emerged out of

them, had attracted the attention of earlier writers, and had been used in political

discourse.15 Machiavelli had argued that the Lombards would have contributed much to

Italy had they not been prevented from uniting the peninsula by the papacy. A papal

case, on the other hand, was put by Baronius, who saw the workings of Providence in the

collapse of heretics and persecutors of the Church.16 But it was Manzoni’s Discorso

which placed the history of the Lombard invasion at the heart of the historico-political

discourse which would feed directly into the Risorgimento.17

Manzoni’s Adelchi deals with the end of Lombard rule in Italy in 774: it opens

with the return to Pavia of the Lombard king Desiderio’s daughter, following her

repudiation by Carlo (Charlemagne). In the sources she is nameless, but Manzoni calls

her Ermengarda. Desiderio wants to avenge the insult, but his son Adelchi advises

caution. He proposes the return land to the Romans and making peace with Adriano

(Pope Hadrian). For her part Ermengarda wishes only to retire to a nunnery. Alcuino,

who has just been to Rome, arrives and delivers an ultimatum from Carlo: return the

13 Ed. M. Martelli and R. Bacchelli, Alessandro Manzoni, Tutte le Opere (Florence, 1973), I, 165-227. There is a convenient translation in F.B. Deigan, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis (Baltimore, 2004). 14 Ed. Martelli and Bacchelli, Alessandro Manzoni, Tutte le Opere II, 1981-2070. 15 G. Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’, Atti del 1o Congresso internazionale di Studi longobardi (Spoleto, 1952), 153-66: R. Toppan, ‘La revanche du barbare: evolution du concept de “barbare” en Italie de Macchiavel à Manzoni’, in J. Schillinger and P. Alexandre (eds.), Le barbare. Images phobiques et réflexions sur l’alterité dans la culture européenne (Bern, 2008), 117-33. 16 Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 14), 154-5. 17 A particularly useful discussion of Risorgimento historiography of the Middle Ages is S. Soldani, ‘Il Medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della nazione’, in E. Castelnuovo and G. Sergi (eds.), Arte e storia nel Medioevo, IV, Il Medioevo al passato e al presente (Turin, 2004), 149-86. See also Banti, ‘Le invasioni barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’ (above, n. 9).

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lands of St Peter or fight. Desiderio chooses war, a decision which is not welcomed by

all the dukes.

In the second act – the opening of which is a fanciful dramatisation of the entry

for the year 773 of the Annales Regni Francorum18 – Carlo, whose army has been

blocked in the Val di Susa, is thinking of returning home. However a Roman deacon

from Ravenna, Martino,19 offers to lead a group of soldiers to outflank the Lombards. He

does so, and as a result the Lombards flee, leaving the Franks to comment on their

cowardice. Adelchi, who has managed to find Desiderio, decides to organise Lombard

resistence from the vantage point of the cities. A Chorus comments on the reactions of

the Italian peasantry, as they note that their masters are in disarray.

In Brescia Ermengarda is dying. She insists that she holds no rancour against

Carlo, but clearly resents his abandoning her for another woman. Her life, death and

salvation are celebrated in a second Chorus. Adelchi, besieged in Verona, decides to

escape to Byzantium and to organise opposition from there. Meanwhile Desiderio tries to

negotiate with Carlo for his son, saying that Adelchi has often opposed his father’s

policies. News arrives, however, that a group of men have been killed or wounded while

trying to escape the city. The dying Adelchi is brought in: he laments the past injustices

of the Lombards towards the people of Italy, asks that his father be well treated in

captivity, and dies.

At first sight the story is unexceptionable. There are only a few hints that it rested

on a radical rereading of Italian history. Crucial is Adelchi’s suggestion that Desiderio

make peace with Adriano and return land to the Romans:

sgombriam le terre de’Romani; amici

siam d’Adriano. (I, 1, ll 190-1)

let us return

The lands to the Romans; let us be friends with Hadrian.20

Also important is Martino’s emphasis on his appearance:

18 Annales Regni Francorum, s.a. 763, ed. F. Kurze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi (Hannover, 1895). 19 The choice of name is interesting. One wonders whether Manzoni had in mind Martin of Tours, a saint who was very much in Charlemagne’s mind. 20 Trans. Deigan (above, n. 16), 221.

6

la breve chioma, il mento ignudo

l’abito, il volto ed il sermon latino,

Straniero ed inimico. (II, 3, ll. 158-60)

My shaved chin and short hair, my face, my garments,

My Latin tongue, all would have easily

Given me away as a foe amidst their crowd.21

There is the sustained Chorus, describing the reaction of the Italian peasants to the defeat

of their Lombard masters (III 9),22 and a comment on the oppression wrought by the

Lombards even creeps into the elegy for Ermengarda (IV 1, ll. 97-102).23 A furthr

example of Manzoni’s emphasis on the division between the Italians and their overlords

can be found in Adelchi’s final condemnation of the unjust rule of the Lombards.

Una feroce

forza il mondo possiede, e fa nomarsi

dritto: la man degli avi insanguinata

seminò l’ingiustizia; i padri l’hanno

coltivata col sangue; e omai la terra

altra messe non dà. (V 8, ll. 354-9)

A fierce and dire force governs the world;

Men call it law! With blood-stained hands our

Forefathers cast the seeds of injustice;

Our fathers manured it with blood

And the land does not yield other harvest.24

Adelchi thus comes to understand that the Lombard state was destined to collapse

because it was created as a result of conquest and oppression.

Manzoni’s underlying vision was set out separately, and more explicitly, in his

Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia of 1822. His chief

contention in this work is that during the Lombard period there were essentially two

nations in Italy, which were in no way assimilated: two peoples with different names,

21 Trans. Deigan, 239. 22 Trans. Deigan, 267-9. 23 Trans. Deigan, 281. 24 Trans. Deigan, 306.

7

language, dress, interests and law: it was the same throughout the post-Roman world: si

trovò quasi tutta l’Europa, dopo l’invasioni e gli stabilimente de’Barbari.25 Machiavelli

and others, including Muratori, on whose collection of source material Manzoni was

dependent, had argued that there was relatively quick integration:26 in Machiavelli’s

words Si convertirono in paesani; non ritenevano di forestieri altro que il nome: ‘They

changed into people of the country: they retained nothing foreign except their name.’27

Manzoni denies this. Instead, in his view the Roman population was simply dispossessed

and enslaved – hence the depiction of the peasantry in the first Chorus of the Adelchi, and

the protagonist’s own awareness of injustice.28

It is not difficult to see how this interpretation might relate to the situation in Italy

in the early nineteenth century, where foreign powers controlled much of the territory.

Manzoni’s Adelchi, and its accompanying Discorso, were in tune with Risorgimento

hostility to the presence of foreign powers in Italy, even though the author himself was

keen to emphasise the virtue of suffering patiently, as demonstrated by the behaviour of

Ermengarda.29 But the idea of two separate peoples, one oppressing the other, did not

come out of Italian tradition. Indeed, the Italian scholars listed by Manzoni in the

Discorso largely held the views which began with Machiavelli. Rather, Manzoni had

borrowed a model from French historiography, and imposed it on the documentation of

Lombard history.30

Although it is not apparent from the text of the Discorso, Manzoni’s central idea

seems to have been inspired primarily by Augustin Thierry, whom he encountered when

25 Ed. Martelli and Bacchelli, Alessandro Manzoni, Tutte le Opere, II, 1987. 26 See, for instance, Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 13), 156-7, 159. 27 Machiavelli, Istoria Fiorentina, I, cited by Manzoni, Discorso sulla stora longobardica, 1988. 28 On the importance of the chorus in Adelchi, see Banti, ‘Le invasione barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’ (above, n. 9), 37: Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 39: Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 95. 29 Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 105, 132. 30 Not that he was alone in drawing on French scholarship: Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 14), 162: P. Finelli and G.L. Fruci, 'Il “momento risorgimentale” nel discorso politico francese (1796-1870)’, in A.M. Banti and P. Ginsborg, Storia d'Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento (Turin, 2007).747-76.

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he was in Paris, where his mother was living, in the course of 1819-20.31 For Thierry,

according to his own autobiographical essay, 1820 was the year in which he turned his

mind to ‘the original historians of France and the Gauls’.32 Certainly it was the year in

which he published ‘a series of letters on the History of France’ which caused something

of a scandal. Although the first of the essays was published in July, which was the very

time that Manzoni left Paris, it is clear that the Italian was well aware of Thierry’s

ideas.33 Most important here is a letter of Manzoni written on 17th October 1820 to his

close friend Claude Fauriel, to whom he had just dedicated his first play, Il Conte di

Carmagnola.34 Indeed he talks of the sources on which Thierry was working as

‘indispensibles non seulement pour les rapports immédiats de l’histoire de Charlemagne

avec celle des Lombards, mais aussi pour attraper quelques indications sur les

établissemens des conquérans barbares qui tous se ressemblent fort’.35

Thierry was a good deal younger than Manzoni, but was already coming to

prominence as the historian who gave a voice to the underclass, the rotouriers. For

Thierry, France had up until the Revolution essentially been made up of two classes: the

nobility, who were the descendents of the Franks, and the Tiers État, who derived from

the indigenous Gallo-Roman population. The former, having conquered Gaul, enslaved

and oppressed the Gallo-Romans, and this injustice formed the bedrock of the social

structure of France, although it was challenged already in the Middle Ages in the towns,

above all by the communes.

Thierry himself, in the autobiographical preface he attached to his Historical

Essays of 1834, claimed that the origins of this interpretation came from what he learnt

31 Cesare de Lollis, Alessandro Manzoni e gli storici liberali francesi della restaurazione (Bari, 1926), 47: Banti, ‘Le invasioni barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’ (above, n. 9), 21-3: Deigan, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Count of Carmagnola and Adelchis, 13-14. On this phase of Manzoni’s life see also G.P. Bognetti, Manzoni giovane, ed. M. Cataudella (Naples, 1972). 32 Thierry, ‘Autobiographical Preface’ (above, n. 8), xi. 33 See, most recently, Banti, ‘Le invasioni barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’ (above, n. 9). 34 Manzoni, ep, 137, ed. A. Chiari and F. Ghisalberti, Tutte le opere di Alessandro Manzoni, VII, Lettere I (Milan, 1970), 212-7: de Lollis, Alessandro Manzoni e gli storici liberali francesi, 47. 35 Manzoni, ep, 137 (above, n. 34), 216.

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about the Norman Conquest and its impact on the political and social structure of

England from Hume, from the English historians and also from Walter Scott (especially

Ivanhoe), and indeed in 1825 he would write an important book on 1066.36 In fact,

however, his argument fitted into a well-established French debate on the Frankish

settlement in Gaul, which began with the writings of the Comte de Boulainvilliers, both

in the work he did for the government-sponsored État de la France, published in 1727,

and in a series of short works published posthumously in the 1730s.37 Boulainvilliers

developed the idea that the Franks conquered and enslaved the Gallo-Romans and that

this conquest was the basis of the rights and privileges of the nobility, who were

descended from the conquerors. According to Boulainvilliers, however, the monarchy,

originally of no greater status than the nobles, made common cause with the descendants

of the Gallo-Romans, thus overturning the nobility’s rights. As a member of an ancient

noble family he wanted to see a revival of the power and influence of the aristocracy.

Boulainvilliers’ argument was soon challenged by the abbé Du Bos, in his

Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules, where he

denied that there had been a conquest, and argued that there had been complete

integration of Gallo-Romans and Franks.38 This remarkable work was based on a

meticulous reading of the sources, but Du Bos was regarded, with only slight justice, as a

mouthpiece for the monarchy, and as such was attacked by Montesquieu and then by

Mably.39 Although not intending to reassert the nobiliaire claims of Boulainvilliers, they

went some way towards creating a deformed version of his argument. They

36 See Thierry, ‘Autobiographical Preface’ (above, n. 8), xi: Banti, ‘Le invasioni barbariche e le origini delle nazioni’ (above, n. 9). 24-30. 37 Foucault, Society must be defended, 144-65. For Boulainvilliers in general, see R. Simon, Henry de Boulainviller: historien, politicien, philosophe, astrologue, 1658-1722 (Gap, 1940), and H.A. Ellis, Boulainvilliers and the French Monarchy (Ithaca, 1988). 38 More accessible is the revised edition: J.-B. Du Bos, Histoire critique de l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules, 3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1735). See Wood, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, (above, n. 7), 337-43. On Du Bos, A. Lombard, L’Abbé Du Bos. Un initiateur de la pensée moderne (1670-1742) (Paris, 1913). 39 Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des Loix (1748), books 30 and 31, ed. J. Brethe de la Gressaye, IV (Paris, 1961). G.B. de Mably, Observations sur l’histoire de France, 3 vols., ed. G. Brizzard, Collection complete des Oeuvres de l’Abbé de Mably (Paris, 1794/5), I, 141.

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acknowledged that there was a conquest, and indeed that the Gallo-Roman population

was subjugated, though at the same time they were excited by the notion of Germanic

egalitarianism to be found in Tacitus. A more logical reaction to the model developed by

Boulainvilliers was that of the abbé Sièyes, who proposed that the nobles should all be

sent back to the marshes and forests of Germany, where they belonged.40 There was,

therefore, a well-established debate about the Frankish conquest and subsequent

oppression of the native population of Gaul. Indeed, the subject matter had become a

battle-ground over which the issues of noble rights, sovereign power, and equality for the

members of the Tiers État were debated. It was at the very heart of what Foucault

described as the emerging historico-political discourse of the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries. Even though Thierry claimed that it was the Norman Conquest which really

sensitised him to the issues of conquest and oppression, he could have situated his

writings on the Merovingians firmly within a French tradition: he seems to have

deliberately decided not to do so – in placing himself in a line of English historiography

he set himself apart. Perhaps what he learnt most from Scott was how to write narrative

history for a literary audience. What he himself added to the debate was essentially the

voice of the oppressed rotouriers.

Thierry was not the only scholar writing in French to attract Manzoni’s attention.

In his letter to Fauriel the Italian had asked,

Or je voudrais que vous eussiez la bonté de m’indiquer quelque ouvrage moderne

(à part les plus connus) de ceux qui, bien ou mal, ont voulu débrouiller le chaos de

ces établissemens dans le moyen âge, et qui surtout ont parlé de la condition des

peuples indigènes subjugués et possédés, qui est le point sur le quel l’histoire est

le plus pauvre, puisque pour ce qui regarde les Lombards on ne trouve presque

pas une mention des italiens dans leur histoire, qui cependant s’est faite en

Italie.41

No doubt the writings of Du Bos were among the best-known books mentioned by

Manzoni, for he cited him directly. Among the new works that Manzoni was to read was

40 E.J. Sieyès, Qu’est-ce le Tiers État?, ed. R. Zapperi (Geneva, 1970), 128. It was first published in 1789. 41 Manzoni, ep, 137 (above, n. 34), 216.

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the first volume of Simonde de Sismondi’s Histoire des Français, which appeared in

182142 – as Thierry was later careful to point out, a year after the publication in the

Courier Français of the first of his own letters on the history of France.43 It is a work

that Manzoni refers to in the Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in

Italia.44

Historians of the Risorgimento, when they discuss Sismondi, tend to concentrate

on his Histoire des Républiques italiennes du moyen âge, first published in 1807-9.

Indeed, it was called ‘il nostro codice, il nostro vangelo’ by de Santis,45 and has recently

been described as the ‘onnipresenti Repubbliche di Sismondi’.46 The Histoire des

Républiques italiennes even underpinned Thierry’s view of the French communes as

centres of freedom against the feudal oppression established by the aristocracy in the

countryside. The work was to appear in English and Spanish (in 1832 and 1837

respectively), but an Italian translation had already been published in 1817-9, and there is

an undated edition that may have appeared yet earlier. It was already reviewed by Pietro

Borsieri in Il Conciliatore on 18th October 1818.47 Manzoni cited the Storia delle

Repubbliche italiane in 1819. Coming from Geneva Sismondi did not share Manzoni’s

reverence for the Catholic Church: a point that is made clear in his interpretation of the

Italian Communes. Manzoni’s Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica of 1819 was

explicitly written ‘a difendere la morale della Chiesa cattolica dall’accuse che le sono

fatte nel Cap. CXXVII della Storie delle Repubbliche Italiane del medio evo’.48

Sismondi’s protestant critique of the Church was too much for Manzoni, but the Italian

42 For the complete history, J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Français, 18 vols. (Brussels, 1846). 43 Thierry, ‘Autobiographical Preface’ (above, n. 8), xvii. 44 Manzoni, Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica, 1984, 2029. 45 R. Bizzocchi, 'Una nuova morale per la donna e la famiglia', in Banti and Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d'Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento, 69-96, at p. 84. 46 I. Porciani, 'Disciplinamento nazionale e modelli domestici', in Banti and Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d'Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento, 97-125, at p. 102. See also Finelli and Fruci, 'Il “momento risorgimentale” nel discorso politico francese’ (above, n. 30), 758-60, and Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 96-8. 47 Il Conciliatore. Foglio Scientifico-letterario, ed. V. Branca (Florence, 1948-54), I, 223-34. 48 Ed. Martelli and Bacchelli, Manzoni, Tutte le opere, II, 1335-1461, especially at pp. 1335 and 1497.

12

clearly felt that he had to engage with his Swiss contemporary. Since he went out of his

way to attack Sismondi’s History of the Italian Communes it is, perhaps, no surprise that

Manzoni read the first volumes of the Histoire des Français soon after their publication.

It is important to note that even in Italy Sismondi was more than a historian of the

Italian republics. He was an economist of note: his Nouveaux principes d’économie

politique, ou de richesse dans ses rapports avec la population received particular

attention in a three-part review by Giuseppe Pecchio in Il Conciliatore in 1819.49 He

argued that the creation of wealth should be for the use of all, and not just for the

enrichment of the few. This was a theme that he pursued in a number of historical works,

which are of considerable importance and were highly regarded well into the twentieth

century, with some justification. For the early medievalist his major work is perhaps his

Histoire des Français, which was translated into English in 1851. He also wrote a

History of the Fall of the Roman Empire, which apparently appeared first in English in

1834, and then, a year later in French, as the Histoire de la chute de l’Empire romain et

du déclin de la civilisation, de l’an 250 à l’an 1000. An Italian version by Cesare Cantù

appeared in 1836: but there is also an undated edition which claims to be the prima

versione italiana. In the History of the Fall of the Roman Empire, though without

mentioning him by name, Sismondi seems to have been intent on undermining some of

Gibbon’s central ideas, above all the idea that the Roman Empire represented a Golden

Age – which might account for the work’s early English publication.50 His

interpretations in all these historical works were underpinned by his economic views. He

restated the French interpretation of the barbarian invasions as leading to the enslavement

of the Gallo-Romans, but did so in economic rather than political terms. And he also

argued that the Roman Empire itself had been built on a similar pattern of conquest and

exploitation. Cantù, writing in 1865, thought that Sismondi had contributed significantly

to the understanding of two major issues in Italian history: ‘la condizione de’natii sotto i

49 Il Conciliatore. Foglio Scientifico-letterario, ed. V. Branca, II, 727-31, III, 34-40, 50-60. 50 Wood, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (above, n. 7), 332.

13

Barbari, e l’origine de’Comuni’.51 It is, therefore, not surprising that the Histoire des

Français provided Manzoni with an economic interpretation of the effect of the barbarian

invasions to go alongside the class-based reading proposed by Augustin Thierry.

The Adelchi and the Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in

Italia followed almost directly after Manzoni’s return to Italy. And they applied the

French model of barbarian conquest, and the subsequent enslavement and exploitation of

the indigenous population, exactly. They, and indeed the French and Swiss scholarship

on which they were based, had an immediate impact on Italian historiography of the

Lombard period. Above all there was Carlo Troya’s Storia d’Italia del Medio-evo of

1839-59. In particular part 5 of the first volume – in fact a freestanding book in its own

right – De’ populi barbari avanti la loro venuta in Italia: Delle condizione de’ Romani

vinti da’ Longobardi of 1841 restates Manzoni’s basic interpretation with occasional

revision. Troya, like Manzoni himself, goes back to the earlier French debates, citing

Boulainvilliers, Du Bos and Montesquieu.52 In addition to his great work of

interpretation, between 1852 and 1855 he also published the first major edition of

Lombard charters, the Codice diplomatico longobardo dal 568 al 774.53 Troya, it should

be remembered, was not only one of the key intellectuals of the Risorgimento. He was

also an important politician: for a brief period in 1848-9 he was even Prime Minister of

the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Nor was he the only Risorgimento idealist and politician to write about the

Lombard conquest. Cesare Balbo began writing a Storia d’Italia sotto ai Barbari, the

first two volumes of which were published posthumously in 1856. Balbo’s approach

differed somewhat from that of Manzoni: in particular in deciding between two

51 C. Cantù, Storia della letteratura italiana (Florence, 1865), 674-5. I am indebted to David Laven for drawing my attention to this quotation. 52 C. Troya, Storia d’Italia del Medio-evo, I, pt. 5, Della condizione de’ Romani vinti da’Longobardi e della vera lezione d’alcune parole di Paolo Diacono intorno a tale argomento (Naples, 1841), vi. Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 14), 162, 165: Soldani, ‘Il Medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della nazione’ (above, n. 17), 160-1] 53 Interestingly and perhaps typically, Duggan in The Force of Destiny, 157, simply presents him as a historian of the conflict between the papacy and the empire, although early medieval historians would probably rate the Codice diplomatico as one of the major scholarly achievements of the century.

14

divergent readings in Paul the Deacon, which had concerned both Manzoni and Troya, he

opted for the less extreme: ‘e cosi all’interpretazione la quale concorda con tutto

l’addolcimento della conquista narrata da Paolo.’54 He did admit, however, that there

was more oppression under the Lombards than there had been under the Goths.

Another, rather younger, figure of the Risorgimento, Pasquale Villari also showed

an interest in the barbarians. Born in Naples in 1826, Villari threw himself into the

abortive revolution which was suppressed on 15th May 1848. In exile, he moved to

Rome, where he published his first historical work in the journal Il nazionale in 1849.55

According to Ermenegildo Pistelli, in the biographical preface attached to the collection

of Villari’s works made for his ninetieth birthday in 1916, the intellectual influences on

him at this stage were Sismondi, Guizot, Thierry, (Heinrich) Leo and ‘nostri

cinquecentisti’:56 thus a mixture of French writers, two of whom we have already met, a

German legal historian of the Italian comuni, and author of a highly regarded history of

Italy, as well as Italian historians of the Renaissance.

François Guizot deserves a comment here. He was a major political player in

France in the first half of the nineteenth century.57 He held posts in the ministries of the

interior and of justice under Louis XVIII. More important, under Louis Philippe he was

minister for public instruction from 1832-7 and was the leading figure in government

from 1840-8, after which he spent a brief period of exile in England. He was also,

however, a noted historian, being appointed to a chair at the Sorbonne as early as 1812.

Much of his historical writing was concerned with the early modern period, not least the

English Revolution, but his Histoire de la civilisation en Europe of 1828 and his Histoire

de la civilisation en France of 1830, covered a much broader span of history. Both were

based on sets of lectures, and were translated into English by Hazlitt in 1846. It was

probably these works which most influenced the young Villari: the Storia generale della

civiltà in Europa appeared in Italian as early as 1841 in a translation by Antonio

54 C. Balbo, Storia d’Italia (Turin, 1830), II, 101. Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 14), 162: Soldani, ‘Il Medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della nazione’ (above, n. 17), 160, 162, 174. 55 P. Villari, L’Italia e la civiltà (Milan, 1916), x. 56 Villari, L’Italia e la civiltà, x. 57 R. Tombs, France 1814-1914 (London, 1996), 68-70, 366-76.

15

Zoncada, but there is another version, the Storia generale dell’incivilimento, that claims

to be the prima versione italiana. Guizot’s interest in the Middle Ages, however, was

first apparent in his translation of Gibbon into French in 1812.58 Although references to

the Early Middle Ages are scattered throughout the two histories of civilisation, perhaps

more important for an early medievalist – and certainly more consistently focused on the

early period – are his Essais sur l’Histoire de France (pour servir de complement aux

Observations sur l’Histoire de France de l’abbé de Mably) of 1823.59 Here, while

acknowledging that there was a Frankish conquest of Gaul, he argued for a more complex

pattern of social development than simple exploitation by the victors. He saw the Franks

as lacking the wherewithal to control the people they had conquered, and argued that the

resulting need for multiple associations led to the rise of feudalism, and thus to the

establishment of local despots whole dominated a servile population. As a result the

monarchy had to embark on a further conquest of the aristocracy.60

Guizot, like Sismondi and Thierry, was an obvious author for Villari to consult in

the 1840s. As for the Italian’s later career, after his brief sojourn in Rome he moved

north to Tuscany. There he threw himself into the study of Tuscan culture. As a scholar

he would go on concentrate on the Florentine Renaissance, notably on Savonarola and

Machiavelli. This perhaps hardened the differences between his interpretation of the

barbarians and that of Manzoni. These are already visible in 1849,61 and also in the short

L’Italia, la civiltà latina e la civiltà germanica of 1861. Here he initially appears to take

a position similar to Manzoni’s: ‘Le genti latine e germaniche in sul principio del Medio

Evo, mantengono l’Europa in un moto così disordinato e così incomposto d’uomini e

d’eventi, che altro non possiamo osservare, se non che due razzi si agitano su questo

mobile terreno, l’una vinta, l’altra vincitrice’. But he then continues: ‘Dopo qualche

tempo però la scena del mondo comincia a mutare e gli uomini pare che trovino più

58 Wood, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (above, n. 7), 329-31. 59 F. Guizot, Essais sur l’Histoire de France (pour servir de complement aux Observations sur l’Histoire de France de l’abbé de Mably) (Paris, 1823). 60 Guizot, Essais sur l’Histoire de France, 347-51. 61 Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 91.

16

stabile dimora sulla terra’.62 Villari would go on to play a significant role in Italian

politics in the second half of the nineteenth century: he was a member of the legislative

chamber from 1867-82 and Minister of Education from 1889-92. Towards the end of his

life, when he returned to consider the barbarian invasions, the distinction between his

interpretation and that of Manzoni was yet more apparent. In Le invasione barbariche in

Italia of 1901 he argued that the population of Italy was always ethnically mixed, and he

rejected the argument that the Lombards enslaved the Italians.63 Indeed, in a very

nuanced interpretation that fully acknowledged the problem of interpreting the sources,

he saw the incomers as bringing some relief to the native population and found no

evidence that they suppressed Roman institutions or law.64

But to return to the first half of the nineteenth century: as we have seen Manzoni

played a significant role in the introduction of French historiography on the Frankish

invasion into Italian history-writing. In applying the French model to the source material

of the Lombards, however, he transformed an argument which was first and foremost

about class into one about the presence of foreigners on Italian soil. Thus, while the

French debate had contributed to the intellectual origins of the Revolution, and in the

liberal writings of Thierry to a critique of Napoleonic imperialism and its ideological

supporters, that in Italy fed directly into the hostility towards the presence of foreign

powers in Italy, in particular that of Austria in the North.

By 1848 Manzoni’s interpretation of the Lombards, developed as it had been

around the story of Adelchi, was widespread in Italian intellectual circles.65 But already

the reading of another figure of the history of the Fall of the Roman Empire had come to

play a role in Risorgimento politics: that of Attila. Premiered at La Fenice in 1846,

Verdi’s Attila was immediately acclaimed by the Venetians.66 And one of the phrases

sung by the Roman general Ezio, or Aetius – ‘Avrai tu l’universo, resti l’Italia a me’

(‘You take the universe, but leave Italy to me’) – became one of the catch-phrases of the

62 P. Villari, L’Italia, la civiltà latina e la civiltà germanica (Florence, 1861), 22-3. 63 The work was translated almost immediately into English: P. Villari, The Barbarian Invasions of Italy (London, 1902), especially II, ch. 2, 291. 64 Villari, The Barbarian Invasions of Italy, 339-46. 65 Falco, ‘La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana’ (above, n. 14), 160-2. 66 C. Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi (London, 1969), 135.

17

Risorgimento.67 So obviously open to patriotic interpretation is the line that

musicologists have wondered why on the earth the Austrian censors failed to insist on its

removal.68 Perhaps they would have been less surprised had they known more about the

cumbersome workings of censorship in Venice under the Austrians.69 But another

answer to the question lies in the complex history of the source material on which Verdi

and his librettists were drawing – a history which intersects with and adds to that of the

relationship between Manzoni, Thierry and Sismondi.

Verdi’s opera begins with the sack of Aquileia. Attila is astonished to find a

group of warlike women led by Odabella, the daughter of the duke of the city, still

determined to fight. Impressed, he gives Odabella his sword, which she sees as a weapon

with which to avenge the death of her father. At this point Ezio arrives, and offers to

make a deal with Attila, allowing him a free hand everywhere except Italy, which he

wants for himself. Attila naturally rejects the offer.

The scene changes to the Venetian lagoon, where the population of Aquileia have

fled, led by Foresto, Odabella’s betrothed. They prophesy the foundation of a new city.

Odabella, however, is ensconced in Attila’s camp, where Foresto finds her: he thinks that

she has betrayed him, but she compares herself with Judith, the killer of Holofernes.

Meanwhile Attila is dreaming: he has a vision of being turned away at the gates of Rome

by an old man, who tells him that he, the king, is only the scourge of mankind, not of the

territory of the gods. Attila is terrified, all the more so when the figure of his dream,

67 G. Martin, ‘Verdi and the Risorgimento’, in W. Weaver and M. Chusid, A Verdi Companion (London, 1980), 13-41, at p. 22. On the patriotism of Verdi, see C. Sorba, ‘Il Risorgimento in musica: l’opera lirica nei teatri del 1848), in Banti and Bizzocchi (eds.), Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento, 133-56, at pp. 143, 148: on the question of the extent to which the image of Verdi as ‘vate del Risorgimento’ is an oversimplification, C. Abbate and R. Parker, ‘Introduction: On Analyzing Opera’, in Abbate and Parker (eds.), Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner (Berkeley, 1989), 1-24, at pp. 11-12. Also, R. Parker, The New Grove Guide to Verdi and his Operas (Oxford, 2007), 30. 68 Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi, 135. 69 D. Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815-1835 (Oxford, 2002), 175-92. For the rather different situation in Rome, A. Giger, ‘Social control and the censorship of Giuseppe Verdi’s Operas in Rome (184-1959)’, Cambridge Opera Journal 11, 3 (1999), 233-66.

18

Leone (or pope Leo), arrives surrounded by a choir of virgins, and repeats the words the

king has just heard.

Ezio and Foresto plot to kill the Hunnic king. Their plan, however, is foiled at the

banquet, by Odabella, who is determined to kill him herself. But she does insist on being

granted Foresto as a reward for saving Attila. To this the king agrees, but adds that as a

further reward he will also marry her. Foresto naturally is convinced of her faithlessness,

and hatches another plot to kill Attila during the wedding ceremony. Odabella returns,

haunted by the ghost of her father. She tries to convince Foresto that she is still true to

him. Attila hears their exchange, and denounces her for returning to her lover. At that

moment they hear the sounds of the Roman attack on the Hunnic camp. Finally Odabella

kills Attila.

Certainly only a small portion of this is historical. Attila did sack Aquileia, and

the people of the city may well have fled for safety to the Venetian lagoon, thus indirectly

contributing to the foundation of Venice. Aetius was the leading West-Roman general –

though he seems to have done little to oppose Attila’s Italian campaign. Attila did

advance on Rome, but turned back following an encounter with an embassy which

included pope Leo.70 According to Priscus, he did indeed die in the night following his

last marriage,71 while according to Marcellinus comes he was stabbed to death by his

wife.72 Odabella and Foresto are, of course, nothing but literary creations – despite

Julian Budden’s strange description of Foresto as ‘a historical character’.73

The libretto of Attila was begun by Thermistocle Solera and completed by

Francesco Maria Piave. They, or Verdi, were responsible for some of the invention: for

70 Prosper, Epitoma chronicon, s.a. 452, ed. T. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi IX, Chronica Minora I (Berlin, 1892). The best recent narrative account of Attila is to be found in P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: a new history (London, 2005), 300-84: the best introduction to the Huns is probably still that of E.A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (Oxford, 1948), reprinted with additional material as The Huns (Oxford, 1996).] 71 Priscus, fr. 24, ed. R.C. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus, II (Liverpool, 1983), 317-9. 72 Marcellinus comes, s.a. 454, ed. T. Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi XI, Chronica Minora II (Berlin, 1894). 73 J. Budden, The Operas of Verdi, I, From Oberto to Rigoletto (London, 1973), 247.

19

instance the scene in the lagoon, which must have been included to please the Venetians

– though, as we shall see, the story had a broader signficance, for the foundation of

Venice was of considerable importance for Sismondi, in his reading of the origins of the

Italian city-states. The majority of the structure, however, and some of the detail of

Verdi’s opera was taken from a German play, Attila, König der Hunnen, written by

Zacharias Werner in 1807. Werner is a figure of importance in the German Romantic

movement, and for a while was looked upon as a successor to Goethe. Indeed, he was

briefly a protégé of Goethe, though they fell out over religion. The latter was infuriated

by Werner’s comparison of the moon to a communion wafer, and cast him from his

circle.74

Werner originally came from Prussia, and held a post in the Prussian bureaucracy,

but following the Napoleonic intervention in Germany he moved south to Weimar, where

he encountered Goethe in 1807. From there he travelled to Switzerland, where he was

welcomed to the circle of Mme de Staël – of whom more anon. From Switzerland he

went to Rome, where he converted to Roman Catholicism. He was ordained priest, and

then went on to establish a religious reputation for himself in Austria. His sermons

attracted a good deal of attention during the Congress of Vienna. Thereafter in 1816 he

moved to Podalien, before returning to Vienna in 1819. He died in 1823.

Attila, König der Hunnen is an immensely complex play.75 Like Verdi’s libretto,

which was derived from it, it begins with the sack of Aquileia. Attila, der Geißel Gottes,

the sourge of God, as he is regarded by all parties in the play, is hailed by his druids.

Hildegunde, a Burgundian princess held hostage at Attila’s court – who is transformed by

Verdi’s librettists into the Roman Odabella – wishes to avenge the death of her betrothed,

Walther, at the hands of Attila. For the time being she hides her intentions, asking to be

allowed to kill some of the refugees. Attila is more merciful, stating that enough blood

has been shed already: and he kills a Hun who protests. The first act ends with a

remarkable court scene, in which Attila is shown dispensing justice.

74 H. Watanabe-O’Kelly (ed.), The Cambridge History of German Literature (Cambridge, 1997), 250. Watanabe-O’Kelly’s account of Werner, ibid., 248-60, provides one of the few recent assessments of him as a writer. 75 The text is reprinted in Zacharias Werner, Dramatische Werke, V (Bern, 1970).

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Werner, unlike Verdi or his librettists, then turns his attention to Rome, and first

to Honoria, who has been unjustly deprived of her inheritance by her brother,

Valentinian, in implicit contrast with Attila’s justice. As a result, she has appealed

secretly to the Hunnic king. Leo, the pope, realises that she is in love with Attila, whom

he too regards as the scourge of God, and therefore an agent of Providence. Valentinian

meanwhile plays dice, and Aetius mopes in the corner, because no one is paying any

attention to his advice. Valentinian’s mother, Placidia (whose life Werner has

prolonged),76 is alarmed that no truce has been arranged with Attila. And her anxiety is

shown to be well founded when a messenger announces (quite unhistorically) that

Ravenna has fallen. Leo arrives and urges repentance on all, and Placidia responds by

blaming Honoria for their troubles, has her sent to prison, and names Aetius as dictator.

In the next act we find Aetius in Attila’s camp, waiting to speak to the king. He

reveals his own ambition for the throne. Attention switches to Attila. He briefly

comments on the plight of Honoria, before punishing those involved in the sack of

Ravenna, which had not been sanctioned. Hildegunde meanwhile is embroidering. The

king asks forgiveness for his treatment of her and her Burgundian people, but he further

offends her by commenting on the sad state of Honoria. To make up, Attila proposes

marriage.

Aetius, who is an old friend of Attila, arrives. Left alone with the Hunnic king,

the scale of the Roman’s ambition becomes clear, as he proposes that the two of them

divide the world between them:

Ich, Du! Wir sind die Welt! …

Die Erd’ ist groß, sie reicht wohl für uns Beide!

Behalte was Du hast: – (Du hast schon viel! – )

Mir laß den Rest – doch, bei dem Gott in mir,

Den muß ich haben!77

I, you! We are the world …

The earth is large: it is enough for both of us!

76 This dramatic licence becomes an established feature of popular versions of the Attila story, and can be found in the 1954 Franco-Italian film, Attila, il flagello di Dio or Attila, fléau de Dieu. 77 Werner, Attila, 97.

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Keep what you have: – (you already have plenty!)

Leave me the rest – yes, with God in me,

I must have it.

The words are an almost exact parallel to those sung by Ezio, which so stirred Italian

audiences. Attila thinks that Aetius must be unwell, but Aetius reiterates his request:

Sieb Roma frei und theil’ mit mir den Erdball!78

Let Rome be free, and divide the world with me!

The Hun refuses: he must pursue his destiny.

Aetius decides to support a plot to poison Attila, but Hildegunde is determined

that she alone will kill him, and so intervenes to prevent him from drinking from the

poisoned cup. Aetius admits his knowledge of the plot: Attila magnanimously lets him

go free, but announces his intention to destroy Rome tomorrow.

At dawn Attila calls for the sword of Wodan and launches the attack on the city.

Within the walls Leo calls on the Romans to repent their sins, and announces his

intention himself to visit Attila. He tells Valentinian and Placidia to forgive Honoria, and

then sets out for the camp of the Angel of Death, the Würgeengel.

Fighting is already underway. Attila himself disarms Aetius, but will not kill him,

because he is his Waffenbruder (an idea which Budden states is ridiculous,79 but which is

not so preposterous, given that Aetius in his youth had been a hostage among the

Huns).80 Odoacer, however, enters and – rather to the surprise of anyone who knows the

history – dispatches Aetius. At that moment a procession comes through the gates. Leo,

who is carried on the shoulders of men in white, is mistaken by the druids as Wodan. He

announces to Attila that Honoria has been restored to her rights, and also that God, who

gave the Hunnic king the sword of Fate, has decreed that the city will not fall.

Hildegunde wants to kill the old man, but is miraculously prevented from doing so.

Attila himself is overcome by the vision he has had of spirits protecting the city. He

knows that his mission is accomplished. He arranges peace with Leo.

78 Werner, Attila, 98. 79 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, I. 244. 80 Amédée Thierry, Histoire d’Attila et de ses successeurs jusqu’à l’établissement des hongrois en Europe suivie des legends et traditions, 2 vols. 3rd ed. (Paris, 1865), I, 45: P. McGeorge, Late Roman Warlords (Oxford, 2002), 9.

22

Attila now insists on going ahead with his marriage to Hildegunde, that very

evening. She recognises Attila’s virtues, but is determined to take vengeance, and to do

so with the axe of her dead lover, Walther – there is surely a deliberate echo of

Clytemnestra. Meanwhile in Rome, Placidia and Valentinian have broken their promises,

and Honoria has been taken back into confinement, where Leo visits her. He realises that

Rome is lost after all. Honoria herself has decided to become a nun, but asks if she may

see Attila. Leo promises to take her to him.

In the Hunnic camp the wedding ceremony has started, but mysteriously Attila is

unable to light the marriage torch. The ceremony is further disrupted when Odoacer

announces the renewed mistreatment of Honoria. Attila says he will attack Rome again,

but notices that his sword is broken. He retires to bed with his new bride.

Leo and Honoria enter the camp. The pope wakes Attila to tell him that

Hildegunde plans to kill him. The king says that, since she once saved his life, he will do

nothing. Leo praises his stance and pronounces the forgiveness of sins. He then brings

Honoria forward. Attila sees in her the angel of death. Leo tells him that love overcomes

death. At that moment Hildegunde comes in: she has already killed Attila’s son Irnak.

She now kills the king, who dies with the name Honoria on his lips. Odoacer condemns

Hildegunde to be burned. She reiterates her love for Walther, which prompts Leo to

comment that love can exist in hell as well as heaven. The play closes with the Huns

acknowledging Odoacer as their king.

Summarising Werner’s play scarcely does justice to the range of ideas within it –

many of which seem to have been lifted directly by Wagner.81 The historical oddities

also obscure the remarkable awareness of the sources which the play seems to presuppose

– and casts favourable light on the historical knowledge to be found among the Prussian

bureaucrats even before the arrival of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the Danish classicist who

joined the government in Berlin in the very year that Werner left it. While on the one

hand Werner wrongly presents the chronology of the lives of Placidia, Aetius and Irnak,

there are plenty of echoes of early traditions relating to Attila and his simple tastes

81 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, I, 243-4 notes the similarities with Wagner, without stressing the fact that Werner was a generation older.

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(attested by Priscus),82 his association with the sword of Mars (recorded by both Priscus

and Jordanes),83 his killing of the king of the Burgundians (noted in Paul the Deacon’s

Romana),84 and his death following a wedding feast.85 Even the story of Honoria’s

proposal to Attila in based on early evidence, being reported by Priscus and repeated by

Jordanes.86 Hildegunde may be a complete fabrication, but her name indicates that she is

a combination of of Attila’s last wife, Ildico,87 and the Burgundian Hiltgunt, a heroine of

medieval German epic.88 Werner’s awareness of at least one version of Hiltgund’s

legend is confirmed by the fact that her lover, like Hildegunde’s betrothed, is called

Walter. Moreover, the Burgundian past is entirely apposite, since the Huns did indeed

destroy their kingdom. As a result of this back-story, Hildegunde’s behaviour is a good

deal more plausible than is that of the Roman Odabella in Verdi.89 As for the position of

Odoacer, while his acclamation as king by the Huns is certainly unhistorical, it does act

as a symbolic statement of his real role in the ending of the West Roman Empire, for it

was he who deposed the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus. Further, Werner’s attempt

to show Attila dispensing justice seems to stem from an awareness of Germanic, though

not of course Hunnic, law. Finally, the repeated emphasis on the king’s reputation as the

flagellum Dei was well-known by the early nineteenth century. Amédée Thierry,

Augustin’s brother, writing in 1856, thought the idea originated at some point between

82 Priscus (above, n. 71), fr. 13, 282-7. 83 Priscus, fr. 12, 280-3: Jordanes, De origine actibus Getarum, 35, § 183, ed. F. Giunta and A. Grillone, Fonti per la storia d’Italia (Rome, 1991). 84 Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana, XIV, § 5, ed. A. Crivelluci, Fonti per la storia d’Italia (Rome, 1914). 85 Priscus (above, n. 71), fr. 24. 86 Priscus, fr. 17, 20, § 3, 21 § 2: Jordanes, Getica, 42, § 223-4. 87 Priscus, fr. 24. 88 Her story is known from several medieval sources: B. Murdoch, Walthari: a verse translation of the medieval Latin Waltharius (Glasgow, 1989), 13-17. Werner cannot have known the fullest version of it, the Waltharius of Gaeraldus, ed. A.K. Bate (Reading, 1978), since it was not published until 1838. 89 Odabella is discussed by both Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 323-6, and S. Chiappini, ‘La voce della martire. Dagli “evirati cantori” all'eroina romantica, in Banti and Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d'Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento, 289-328, at p. 322. But neither comment on the problems caused by the fact that Verdi and his librettists have changed Odabella into a Roman.

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the fifth and eighth centuries,90 and pointed to the fact that Isidore of Seville associated

the Huns with the words of Isaiah X, 15, ‘quomodo si elevetur virga contra elevantem se’

(‘as if the rod should shake itself against him that lifts it up’),91 while in the second Life

of Lupus of Troyes the Hunnic king proclaims ‘Ego sum Attila, rex Hunnorum, flagellum

Dei.’92 Clearly Werner’s presentation of events, for all its oddities, depended on a

knowledge, whether direct or indirect, of the contents of late antique and early medieval

accounts of the Hunnic invasion.

Verdi too was no slouch. Having decided to tackle Attila he wrote to Piave on

12th April 1844:

Eccoti lo schizzo della tragedia di Verner. Vi sono delle cose magnifiche e piene

d’effeto. Leggi l’Alemagna della Staël. …

A me pare che si possa fare un bel lavoro, e se studierai seriamente farai il tuo più

bel libretto. Ma bisogna studiare molto. Ti manderò l’originale di Verner fra

pochi giorni, e tu devi fartelo tradurre, perchè vi sono squarci di poesia

potentissimi. Insomma serviti di tutto, ma fa una gran cosa. Leggi sopratutto

l’Alemagna della Staël, que quella ti darà dei grandi lumi. Se tu trovi l’originale

di Verner a Venezia, mi levi un gran fastidio. Sappiamelo dire.

Ti raccomando di studio multo questo soggetto ed avere bene in mente tutto:

l’epoca, i caratteri, ecc. ecc. … Poi fa lo schizzo, ma distesamente, scena per

scena, con tutti i personaggi; insomma, che non vi sia che da verseggiare, e così

farai minor fatica. Leggi Verner, sopratutto nei cori che sono stupendi.93

Osborne, in his account of Verdi’s operas, edited and altered the order of the composer’s

sentences, but essentially conveyed the gist of the letter:

‘I shall send you the original Werner play in a few days, and you must have it

translated, for there are passages of tremendous power in it. Read also Madame de

90 Thierry, Attila, II, 238-59. 91 Thierry, Attila, II, 240: Isidore, Historia Gothorum, 29, s.a. 457, ed. Mommsen, Monumenta Germani Historica, XI, Auctores Antiquissimi II: trans. G. Donini and G.B. Ford, Isidore of Seville’s History of the Kings of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi (Leiden, 1966). 92 Thierry, Attila, II, 242: Vita Altera Lupi, IV, § 45, Acta Sanctorum, 29th July, VII (Paris, 1868), 90. 93 I Copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. G. Cesari and A. Luzio (Milan, 1913), 437-8.

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Staël’s De l’Allemagne, which will throw great light on it for you. I advise you to study

the subject thoroughly and to keep everything well in mind; period, characters, and so

on.’94

So Piave was to do his research – though Verdi’s notion of historical research was

not exactly ours: he sent Vincenzo Luccardi to do a sketch of Raphael’s painting of

Attila and pope Leo, to discover what Hunnic costume and hairstyle looked like.95 But

one name in the instructions to Piave is crucial, and it is reiterated in the letter: Madame

de Staël. De Staël is well known among historians of nineteenth-century Italy, largely

because of her influential novel, Corinne ou l’Italie of 1807.96 But just as it is important

to look beyond Sismondi’s Repubbliche, so too one should note that Italians were reading

more of de Staël’s work than Corinne. For an understanding of Verdi’s Attila De

l’Allemagne is vital. Originally published in 1810, it appeared in an Italian translation as

L’Alemagna, in 1814 – an English edition was published a year earlier and a German one

a year later.97

Anne-Louise-Germaine, Baroness de Staël-Holstein, was among the most

influential figures of the early nineteenth century, and was even regarded as being

responsible for Napoleon’s fall.98 She was the daughter, in Manzoni’s words the celebre

figlia,99 of Louis XVI’s minister, Necker, whose exile precipitated the fall of the Bastille.

Her mother was famous for the salon she maintained, which numbered among its

habitués Buffon and Diderot. She herself was a figure of some influence in the world of

the Revolution. Her partner, Narbonne, became Minister for War in 1791, and her own

salon played a role in the formulation of the constitution of that year. She was exiled in

1795, but returned with the establishment of the Directoire. She saved Talleyrand from

inclusion in the list of emigrés, but was herself exiled again as a critic of Napoleon from

94 Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi, I, 133. 95 I Copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, 441. 96 See, for instance, the recurrent discussions in Banti and Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d’Italia, Annali 22, Il Risorgimento, 83-4, 184, 192, 289-90, 758, 777-8, 784. By contrast there is only one page of discussion (486) of De l’Allemagne. 97 J.C. Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staël’s ‘De l’Allemagne’, 1810-1813 (Cambridge, 1994). 98 Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism, 6. 99 A. Manzoni, La Rivoluzione Francese del 1789 e la Rivoluzione Italiana del 1859, ed. Martelli and Bacchelli, Tutte le Opere, II, 2132.

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1803-14. Much of her exile was spent at her chateau of Coppet, outside Geneva, and it

was there that she welcomed Werner.

In De l’Allemagne de Staël essentially used her imaginative reconstruction of

Germany to critique Napoleon’s France.100 And to define Germany she resorted to an

analysis of its culture, not least of its drama. One of the dramatists she analysed (or

rather distorted) in greatest detail was Werner, and above all his Attila.101 Her

interpretation of Werner’s work involved the suggestion that the character of Attila was a

portrait of Napoleon himself. In one draft of De l’Allemagne she even attributed traits to

Werner’s Attila which are not to be found in the play at all, but which were certainly true

of Napoleon: Il [Attila] ne fait que la guerre et cependant le luxe et les Beaux Arts lui

plaisent comme ses conquêtes.102 ‘He did nothing but make war: however, luxury and

the Beaux Arts delighted him as much as his conquests.’ This has no echo in Werner’s

play, but is obviously applicable to the emperor. The analysis of Attila which appears in

De l’Allemagne103 had already been printed in a pirated edition under the title Portrait

d’Attila. This excerpt so incensed Napoleon that he ordered the pulping of all copies of

De l’Allemagne in 1810.104 It is, in fact, highly unlikely that Werner intended Attila to be

a portrait of Napoleon: the Hunnic king is certainly the hero of the play: he is

magnanimous and just: he is regarded by everyone (pope Leo included) as the scourge of

God, and he is even saved spiritually by the love of a Christian woman at the end of the

play. This is scarcely the Napoleon whose intervention in Germany led to Werner’s

departure from Berlin. Nevertheless, de Staël’s reading of Werner’s work helped to

make it a central text of the early nineteenth century. Perhaps Napoleon III remembered

de Staël’s critique of his namesake and role-model when in 1857, having read Amédée

Thierry’s Attila, itself a major piece of historical interpretation, he asked the author to

identify the site of the Hunnic defeat, outside Châlons.105 Did he have in mind the

100 Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism. 101 Mme De Staël, De L’Allemagne, ed. La comtesse J. de Pange and Mlle S. Balayé (Paris, 1959), III, 141-9. 102 De Staël, De L’Allemagne, III, 144, n. L. 14: Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism, 70. 103 De Staël, De L’Allemagne, III, 141-9. 104 Isbell, The Birth of European Romanticism, 5, 71, 91. 105 Thierry, Attila, II, 428-37.

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creation of a monument which would imply that the French were the descendents not of

the Huns, but of the victorious followers of Aetius?106

Before leaving de Staël we should note one other leading figure of her salon in

exile: our old friend Simonde de Sismondi. Not only was he a frequent visitor to

Coppet, but he also accompanied de Staël to Italy in 1804-5, and to Austria and Germany

in 1808-10. Given the appearance of an Italian version of his Fall of the Roman Empire

in 1836 – with the possibility that this was not the earliest – one wonders if this work of

Sismondi was among those consulted by Solera and Piave. It is worth noting that

Sismondi’s account of Attila in his Fall of the Roman Empire has a certain amount in

common with Werner’s portrait, including an emphasis on the Hun’s personal virtues,

and on his role as the scourge of God: but Sismondi also saw the Huns as purveyors of

‘Tartar barbarism’ and ‘Russian civilisation’.107 Equally, like Verdi, he saw in the

plundering of northern Italy the origins of Venice:

‘The extent of his [Attila’s] ravages, and the certainty of having no mercy from

the barbarian, produced an effect upon the people of Italy that led to the erection of a

splendid monument, which has perpetuated to our days the memory of the terror he

inspired. All the inhabitants of that part of Italy which is situated at the mouths of the

great rivers, and called Venetia, took refuge in the low lands, upon the islands, almost

covered with water, which choke the mouths of the Adige, the Po, the Brenta, and the

Tagliamento. There they sheltered themselves under huts made of branches, and

transported thither a small part of their wealth. In a short time they constructed more

commodious habitations, and several cities were seen to rise as it were out of the waters.

106 When he erected the monument to Vercingetorix at Alesia in 1865, Napoleon III was certainly intent on outdoing the Hermannsdenkmal of Ernst von Bandel, which was under construction from 1838-75 – the Alise-Ste-Reine inscription by Viollet-le-Duc reads La Gaule unie/Formant une seule nation/Animée d’un même esprit,/Peut défier l’Univers. See the chapters by M. Struck ‘The Heilige Römische Reich, Deutscer Nation and Herman the German’, and A. King ‘Vercingetorix, Asterix and the Gauls’ in R. Hingley (ed.), Images of Rome: Perceptions of Ancient Rome in Europe and the United States in the Modern Age (Portsmouth, RI, 2001), 91-112, 113-25. After 1870 Attila would have German overtones in the iconography of the Panthéon in Paris: I.N. Wood, ‘The Panthéon in Paris: lieu d’oubli’ (forthcoming). 107 J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, A History of the Fall of the Roman Empire, Comprising a View of the Invasion and Settlement of the Barbarians (London, 1834), I, 156, 162.

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Such was the origin of Venice; and that haughty republic justly called herself the eldest

daughter of the Roman empire. She was founded by the Romans while the empire was

yet standing, and the independence which characterised her early years was still inviolate

to our own time.’108

In Sismondi’s grand scheme the foundation of Venice, which could be traced

back to the time of Attila, was a sine qua non of the rise of the Italian republics, and thus

of the development of European liberty. Not surprisingly he had already described the

origins of Venice in similar terms in his Histoire des Républiques italiennes, though there

the picture is perhaps a little less poetic, and the stress is as much on the economic

foundations of the city as on Venetian independence.109

Certainly not everything in the libretto of Attila is taken from Werner. But the

line that is most obviously central to a Risorgimento reading of the opera, Ezio’s Resti

l’Italia a me is, as we have seen, an almost direct translation from Werner’s play. Yet,

whereas Ezio’s words have reasonably been seen as a challenge to Habsburg rule,

Werner’s Attila, far from being anti-Austrian, was regarded, ever since de Staël’s De

l’Allemagne, as an attack on Napoleon. Further, it was not only de Staël who had thought

highly of the work. Beethoven had considered setting it as an opera, and there was at

least one Italian version before Verdi’s: Francesco Malipiero’s Ildegonda di Borgogna,

which was first performed in Venice under the title L’Attila in 1845 – a few months

before Verdi’s work was premiered.110 Moreover, in Verdi, as in Werner, Ezio or Aetius

is definitely not a laudable character, but rather an ineffectual and over-ambitious plotter.

And, despite de Staël’s reading, the hero of both the play and the opera is unquestionably

Attila himself.111 He is honourable, and if he is a force for destruction, he is divinely

ordained in that role. Moreover, from the viewpoint of some members of the Habsburg

aristocracy he was an ancestral figure. The Esterhazy family claimed descent from him,

108 Sismondi, A History of the Fall of the Roman Empire, I, 163-4. 109 J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques italiennes du Moyen Age I, chapter 5: I have consulted the fifth edition (Brussels, 1838), where the main discussion is on pp. 188-90. 110 Budden, The Operas of Verdi, vol. 1, 244. 111 On the dignity of Attila in Verdi: Martin, ‘Verdi and the Risorgimento’, 31.

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and proclaimed the fact on the facade of their palace at Eisenstadt. No wonder the

Habsburg censors in Venice failed to see the inflammatory possibilities of Verdi’s opera.

Verdi’s Attila and Manzoni’s Adelchi have both been seen as items in the canone

risorgimentale.112 They were also complex and, in certain repects, learned responses to

the early medieval past. Manzoni knew his Carolingian source material, and Werner

would seem to have had access to good information on the fifth century. Above all the

intellectual world that underpinned the plays of Manzoni and Werner, and Verdi’s

libretto, was international. The chain of transmission that we have been considering has,

after all, involved not just Italians, but a Prussian, two French in exile in Switzerland, and

any number of other Frenchmen, including Boulainvilliers, Du Bos, Montesquieu, Mably

and Thierry – behind whom one can also see Walter Scott and Hume. Verdi, Solera and

Piave had added a layer to Werner’s play, which had already been (mis)interpreted by

Madame de Staël, and perhaps they had done so having read their Sismondi. And it is

worth noting how many of the historians we have considered had significant careers in

politics, not least there were Guizot, Troya and Villari.

Of course the early part of this chain of intellectual transmission includes writers

who took radically opposed views. Among the more recent figures, Manzoni did not

always agree with Sismondi. Nor did Balbo or Villari follow Manzoni’s hard line on the

Lombards. Verdi may have called Manzoni a saint, and he certainly composed the

Requiem in his memory. Even so the two had their differences, notably over matters

ecclesiastical. Leone in Attila is unusual amongst Verdi’s religious authority figures: the

sinister Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlos and the High Priest Ramphis in Aida are more

representative.

Just as social tension in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France led scholars to

concentrate their attention on the arrival of the Franks in Roman Gaul, so too the

presence of foreign rulers influenced Manzoni’s Adelchi, and its accompanying Discorso,

with their insistence on a class of foreign oppressors and an oppressed indigenous

population. The political discontents of the Risorgimento helped to force a reading of

oppression onto the sources, and to confirm an interpretation of Italian history as a long

sequence best epitomised by Thomas Hodgkin under the title Italy and her Invaders.

112 Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 45.

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Within that sequence, the Early Middle Ages was a crucial phase, with its own debates,

the historiography of which is not simply an appendage to that of the more famous

conflicts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, even if many of those who wrote about it

wrote about the later history as well. The Migration Period and its immediate aftermath,

during the Risorgimento as today, was of interest in its own right, and not just to

historians. It involved scholars and intellectuals – politicians and cultural figures – from

across much of western Europe.