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Updated: June 10, 2025
According to his biographer Manso, the author of the Gerusalemme Liberata was singularly noble and refined in appearance, though always possessed of an air of melancholy; he was well-built, strong, active and resourceful, anything in fact but a carpet-knight who spent his days in writing verse and dallying with Italian court beauties: “Colla penna e colla spada, Nessun val quanto Torquato;”
Unless, therefore, we take for granted that Manso was intimate with the author Salandra he knew most of his literary countrymen and sent or gave to Milton a copy of the manuscript of 'Adamo' before it was printed, or that Milton was personally familiar with Salandra, we may conclude that the poem was forwarded to him from Italy by some other friend, perhaps by some member of the Accademia, degli Oziosi which Manso had founded.
If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in Naples that of Manso, Marquis of Villa, where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman.
The Catholic princes besought Pope Julius II to make it a bishopric, and recommended as its first prelate Alonzo Manso, canon of Salamanca, doctor in theology, a man held in high esteem at court. His Holiness granted the request, and designated the whole of the island as the diocese, with the principal settlement in it as the see.
It is one of drowning; and the swollen stream, still foaming past, is evidence eloquent of how it happened. On the man's body there are no signs of rifling or robbery. His pockets, when turned inside out, yield such contents as might be expected on the person of an Indio manso.
It is the want of genius, as far as it goes, and apart from martyrdoms for conscience' sake, which produces misfortunes even to genius itself the want of as much wit and balance on the common side of things, as genius is supposed to confine to the uncommon. Manso has left a minute account of his friend's person and manners.
He returned, in spite of the best and most generous reception, to Rome; then left Rome for Mantua, on invitation from his ever-kind deliverer from prison, now the reigning duke; tired again, even of him; returned to Rome; then once more to Naples, where the Prince of Conca, Grand Admiral of the kingdom, lodged and treated him like an equal; but he grew suspicious of the admiral, and went to live with his friend Manso; quitted Manso for Rome again; was treated with reverence on the way, like Ariosto, by a famous leader of banditti; was received at Rome into the Vatican itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino, nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air.
Bishop Manso, on his arrival in 1513, found Puerto Rico in a state bordering on anarchy, and after vain attempts to check the prevalent immorality and establish the authority of the Church, he returned to Spain in 1519.
Diego Torres Vargas, the canon of the San Juan Cathedral, says in his memoirs: "Manso was made inquisitor, and he, being the first, may be said to have been the Inquisitor-General of the Indies; ... the delinquents were brought from all parts to be burned and punished here ... The Inquisition building exists till this day , and until the coming of the Hollanders in 1625 many sambenitos could be seen in the cathedral hung up behind the choir."
Cardinal Cintio requested the Pope to give him the honour of a coronation. It had been desired by the poet, it seems, three years before. He was disappointed of it at that time; and now that it was granted, he was disappointed of the ceremony. Manso says he no longer cared for it; and, as he felt himself dying, this is not improbable.
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