Manfred kills Matilda in a mistaken attack at the tomb of Alfonso, transforming his attempt to prevent a suspected meeting between Isabella and Theodore into the fatal destruction of his own daughter. The killing exposes the violence of Manfred’s jealousy and political control, while Matilda’s response centers the scene on forgiveness and filial care rather than accusation.

Causes and Background

Manfred enters the episode already agitated. Isabella has resisted his advances, and he interprets her unease as impatience to meet Theodore. A report that Theodore is speaking privately with a woman from the castle at the tomb of Alfonso confirms his suspicion in his own mind, though the informant has not identified the woman. Manfred goes secretly to the church, following the voices through the aisles by the faint moonlight.

The scene’s decisive error arises from Manfred’s assumption that the woman is Isabella. He hears a speaker lament that Manfred will never permit her union with Theodore; taking this as confirmation of the meeting he fears, he attacks without first establishing whom he has found. The words belong to Matilda, who has come to the tomb for a different reason, as she explains before her death: her mother had sent her to pray and intercede for her father.

The Attack and Immediate Recognition

Believing that he has found Isabella with Theodore, Manfred cries that the meeting will not take place and strikes the woman speaking beside the tomb. Matilda falls, mortally wounded. Theodore rushes at Manfred and takes the dagger from him, but Matilda stops him: the attacker is her father. That recognition reverses the scene’s apparent conflict. Manfred has acted against the imagined rival, yet the person harmed is his own child; Theodore, who had seemed to be the object of Manfred’s jealousy, becomes the person trying to protect Matilda.

Manfred, as if emerging from a trance, beats his breast and tries to recover the dagger so he can kill himself. Theodore masters his grief long enough to help Matilda, while monks arrive in response to his cries. Some try to stop her bleeding; others restrain Manfred. Jerome reaches the church and interprets the death as divine retribution for the blood of Alfonso, whose tomb stands at the scene of the killing. His accusation makes the setting more than a hiding place: Manfred’s violence has polluted a sacred space and, in Jerome’s account, completes the judgment that has pursued his rule.

Matilda’s Last Requests and the Family’s Grief

As Matilda’s attendants carry her toward the castle, Theodore supports her head and tries to sustain her hope, while Jerome holds a crucifix before her and speaks to her of heaven. Even as she is dying, Matilda turns from her own fate to the people she fears will suffer: she asks that her father be forgiven, urges her mother not to leave him, and says that Hippolita loves him. She also clarifies that she had not gone to the tomb to meet Theodore. Sent by Hippolita to intercede for Manfred, she had found Theodore praying there; she had come on an errand of family concern, not the clandestine meeting Manfred imagined.

Matilda then recalls that she had vowed not to see Theodore again and wonders whether that broken vow brought the calamity upon her, while insisting that the breach was not intentional. Her final appeal names Isabella and Theodore and asks them, for her sake, to do something she cannot finish saying. She dies before completing it. The scene thus ends with the tenderness that defined her response to the attack: rather than accuse Manfred, she seeks his forgiveness and tries to preserve the ties among her parents, Theodore, and Isabella.

Consequences and Aftermath

The immediate aftermath gives Manfred no relief in the recognition that he has killed his daughter. When he approaches the chamber and reads the outcome in the faces of the grieving company, the feared consequence of his mistaken act is confirmed. Theodore refuses to be separated from Matilda’s body, kissing her hands and expressing his despair, while Isabella and the women draw Hippolita away from the corpse. The grief that began at the tomb spreads through the castle household, leaving Manfred’s error inseparable from the loss of Matilda and the devastation of those who loved her.

Consequences and Aftermath

The killing leaves Manfred facing the consequence he had tried to avert: his daughter is dying, and she does not accuse him. At the castle, Matilda takes the hands of both parents and clasps them to her heart, a final gesture of filial care that Manfred cannot bear. When she dies, Theodore refuses to be separated from her body, while Isabella and the attendants lead the overwhelmed Hippolita away. Manfred later approaches the chamber hoping once more to see his daughter, but the company’s faces tell him that she is gone. The catastrophe therefore extends beyond the mistaken attack itself: it destroys Matilda, devastates those around her, and leaves Manfred confronted with the cost of violence driven by suspicion.