Due lettere sulla peste del 1630. Mascardi Achillini Manzoni

In 1630 a short correspondence with the title Due lettere l’una del Mascardi all’Achillini, l’altra dell’Achillini al Mascardi sopra le presenti calamità was published in Bologna; the two well-known men of letters exchanged their opinions about the plague devastating Italy in that time and, in particular, around the possibility of a contagion voluntary provoked by human cruelty or devilish strength. The first part of the essay provides information about the cultural background of the correspondence between Mascardi and Achillini, traditionally considered representatives of two opposite and conflicting literary tendencies: the first as an eminent exponent of the classicism of the Barberini’s circle, the other very close to Marino and to the more experimental line of seventeenth-century poetry. The second part of the essay examines Manzoni’s polemic dialogue with the seventeenth-century pamphlet, from whom he drew materials for both I Promessi Sposi and La storia della colonna infame; new hypotheses are proposed around a possible interest of Manzoni for Mascardi’s most important work, the treatise Dell’arte istorica, published in Rome in 1636, conserved, with some reading traces, in the library of Manzoni’s House.