Arconati Visconti, Giuseppe

ARCONATI VISCONTI, GIUSEPPE. - Politician, b. in Milan on 9 April 1797, d. there on 11 March 1873. From a noble family, a scholar of philosophical and religious questions, he married his cousin Costanza Trotti, with whom he had so profound a communion of feelings and action that their biographies are inseparable. Their salon soon became a center of national propaganda of European importance. Conspirators with Confalonieri for the constitutional movement, they fled to Brussels (1821), where they had dealings with French and Belgian scholars and patriots and with Italian exiles, especially Berchet, Scalvini, Arrivabene. In Berlin they worked for the liberation of Confalonieri from the Spielberg. With the amnesty of Ferdinand I they moved to Tuscany, then, after the Five Days, to Milan, whence they took refuge in Piedmont (1850). Elected deputy after the annexation of Lombardy, A.V. was a member of the right. He was appointed senator in 1865.

The A. were intimates of Manzoni, and kept alive the faith in an accord between the Church and liberty. Giuseppe was loved by Pellico as an exemplary «liberal of Christian temper». The only time he spoke in the senate was to express his reluctance regarding the conquest of Rome. No less fervent was Costanza, who also occupied herself with religious studies with Giobertian tendencies and who set herself, in a certain way, against the intemperances of the Belgioioso. In works of charity both gave an example of generosity and feeling.

Egilberto Manire