Light of Peace

What Alessandro Manzoni thinks about the war? Was he a pacifist or a warmonger?

In Betrothed Manzoni considers that war is madness is all forms of violence.

Father Christopher Renzo complains every time about the character of Manzoni's considering the law in isolation. The wise monk in fact knows clearly what does it mean to act impetuously using violence.

Manzoni describes in ‘The Betrothed’ in a very negative way the riots in the streets which led to the assault on the furnaces. In addition, the novel step of mercenaries from Milan has been termed as the plague and shows an overall condemnation of wars of the seventeenth century.

But the condemnation of violence in this Betrothed was strongly contested by political extremists of the Risorgimento to the point that they accused him of teaching the Italians to surrender before the tyranny.

It seems that Manzoni was a staunch opponent of the war. But Manzoni also puts forth the idea of a God who guides his people into war against the oppressor. To support his point he gave the example that God saved Israel from the pursuit of tyrannical Pharaoh and ordered that Jael be armed so that the oppressor of his people could be killed.

Here is a hidden message with which Manzoni urges Italians to try to win over the fighters, with his words and heroism in the war of liberation, "
At this point a contradiction may be seen in his stance about the fratricidal war being madness but this may be right when it can become a useful tool to get rid of an oppressor. On one side is the condemnation of wars waged on a whim or desire to conquest the sovereign lands, the other is the justification for wars of national liberation.

Manzoni thus helps to develop a condemnation of war with the exceptions of "just wars" in the wake of Catholic culture in general, which is opposed to the indiscriminate use of violence but admitted that for extreme cases of self-defense and for cases where there was a general interest superior to that act, the wars were justified.

During the period of Constantine, the Church began to develop its theory of "just war". This doctrine of war is more than another symptom of the need by the Church to adapt to political environment, but especially to it being a "state".
Elaborating on the rule when to go to war, and what to do in war, it is a real legal code that has been handed down today in certain aspects.

With regard to the justification, there must be a just cause that is not retaliation or revenge;

Must be declared by a lawful public authority ;

Both conflicting parties must declare that they accept the sacrifice of lives in the given situation;

Destruction of the enemy should not be the aim and especially repression of the innocent must be avoided.

Costs must be proportionate to the good results that you hope to achieve;

Conditions must be favorable for a success;

It should be adopted as a last resort.

With regard to the tactics, no attacks on civilian targets will be launched.

Later in the eleventh century, traditions and institutions sought to limit the armed conflict. Truce of God and the Peace of God were accepted as true pastoral guidelines. This was an expression of peace that emanates