‘Mad and desperate study’

One of the would-be participants in the debate around Mme de Staël's views was Giacomo Leopardi, who in 1815 was a sickly seventeen-year-old from Recanati, a small hill town in the papal province of Marche. Deemed unsuitable for a sanctuary by the angels who had winged the house of the Virgin Mary all the way from Nazareth to its territory (they moved it after only one year to its final resting place at nearby Loreto), Recanati nevertheless ended up with something at least as important. It was a library of over 15,000 books collected in an informed and systematic way by Count Monaldo Leopardi (1776–1845), taking advantage of the sale of books from the religious houses abolished during French rule. Monaldo was one of those conservatives who believed the world was being swamped by a tide of pernicious liberalism, and was therefore prepared to swim against the tide, even when that meant falling foul of established authority. He was passionately committed to education. He opened his library to his fellow citizens (who seem to have ignored the opportunity) and obtained for his first-born, Giacomo, a dispensation to read banned books when the boy was only fifteen. Giacomo was often openly bitter in his letters about his father's narrow-minded and rigid attitude and beliefs, and grew up to dislike nearly everything he stood for; yet he knew he was sincere, had for him a trust and affection as deep and lasting as the ideological chasm that divided them, and, within Monaldo's limitations, received from him unfailing support.