CESARE CANTU. — Historian, man of letters, patriot and statesman, was born at Brivio (Como) on 5 December 1804 and died at Milan on 17 March 1895. Of a deeply religious working-class family, he studied on a meagre clerical stipend at the Milanese gymnasium of S. Alessandro; then, abandoning the idea of an ecclesiastical career, at the age of eighteen he began to teach in the gymnasium of Sondrio, later moving to that of Como, soon turning towards the fertile field of historical research and erudition.
An indefatigable worker, he read, investigated and wrote as much as he could, always keeping in view the great and noble ideal of religion and of country. So it may truly be said of him that he was at once the first and the last of the most convinced among the Neo-Guelphs.
A lover and student of the fine Catholic and patriotic Middle Ages in that full and “romantic” sense which was peculiar to his age, after publishing the polished little poem Algiro (1828), he soon followed it with the Storia della città e della diocesi di Como (1829–31), which so delighted Manzoni and remains a typical example among our municipal historical monographs. Already implicit in it was the formula that was to characterise his entire historiographical work: “A commune and a saint: these are the elements of which Italians have always composed their liberty.”
Thus suddenly brought into well-deserved fame, in 1832 he moved to teach in that same Milanese institute where he had spent the decisive years of his formation, entered the Manzonian circle, and, after a collection of sentimental verses, published in the Indicatore a historical commentary on I Promessi sposi (Ragionamenti sulla storia lombarda del sec. XVIII, Milan 1833). To this commentary rightly belongs the volume on L’abate Parini e la Lombardia nel secolo passato (1854), likewise the fruit of that familiarity—though not always inwardly harmonious or cordial—with the great Lombard which much later would yield the famous and much-debated Reminiscenze su Alessandro Manzoni (1882), equally rich in valuable and penetrating biographical elements that bring out the most indicative similarities and differences of character and of ideological and practical stance between the two.
Thus began, and ended only with his death, that whirl of manuscript sheets, printed proofs, volumes, pamphlets, essays, articles, translations, revisions and reworkings of what he had already published, bibliographical researches and archival discoveries of every kind, not without constant transitions from the historical to the literary field, which, to the vexation and disappointment of tardy and lazy rivals and critics, would always constitute the one true satisfaction of C.
Not a conspirator and patriot in the manner of others, but a faithful depositary of many political secrets of others, and above all a convinced adherent to the Neo-Guelph “open conspiracy,” with the clear aim of educating and elevating our people in the sense of the Christian tradition in the face of foreigners, he fell under the suspicion of the po
Cesare Cantù was imprisoned in 1835 and was only released after ten months of shrewd and steadfast silence due to lack of evidence. But, definitively compromised, he endured long persecutions and immediate loss of his position.
Consequently, he had to rely on his inexhaustible pen for a living, interspersing his *Notizia di G. D. Romagnosi* (1835) and the well-known and widely read historical novel *Margherita Pusterla* (1838) with various occasional educational works such as *Carlambogio da Montevecchio* (1836), *Il Galantuomo* (1837), *Il Buon fanciullo*, *Il Giovinetto*, down to an article *Sulle precauzioni nella cultura del pomo di terra* (1848), and the widely circulated *Buon senso e Buon cuore* (1870).
His release from prison coincided with his meeting the bookseller Pomba, who opened to Cantù the path to fame in Italy and beyond the Alps. From Pomba’s cherished idea of a historical encyclopedia arose, and immediately achieved extraordinary and lasting success, the thirty-five volumes of the *Storia universale* (1846), in which history is presented as the constant and perennial work of Providence, which watches over, guides, and judges men, institutions, and which, through Christianity, leads to a work of pacification, fraternization, and cultural and social civilization through the Church and the Papacy. The work clearly reflected the author’s deep conviction that, trusting in the healthiest demands for freedom, he foresaw a future far less gloomy than was commonly thought, thanks to the promises of Neo-Guelphism, understood as a great, universal return of civil society to Christianity.
In the persuasive and truly powerful effort of the *Storia universale* lies without doubt the standard by which the entire work and the singular personality of Cantù must be judged. If he was not always up to the modern demands of critical and scientific historiography, he nevertheless succeeded in framing an enormous mass of facts, institutions, customs, texts, and figures hitherto obscure or unknown. He thus made an immense heritage of the past readily accessible to scholars and educated people, and thereby greatly broadened the restricted historical horizon of his time. While the narrative parts may today be considered outdated, the other parts—equally rich and numerous—of the bibliographic and documentary apparatus remain alive and useful.
After the publication of the *Storia universale*, though the envy of unworthy imitators and the hostility of anticlerical radicalism continued to persecute Cantù, he was generously compensated by the admiring esteem of good people, the fame he did not greatly value, and even that prosperity which, strengthening his innate, deep sense of proud independence, led him to write in the preface to his most combative study: “Fortunately, I owe to princes, heroes, and ministers no gratitude other than having allowed me to speak the truth, free to make me pay for it.”
It was precisely from the complex and multifaceted fabric of the *Storia universale* that nearly all his numerous later writings derived, among which should be mentioned *Storia di cento anni* (1851), *Storia degli Italiani* (1854–56), *Beccaria e il diritto penale* (1862), *Storie della letteratura* (Greek, Latin, and Italian, 1863–66), *Gli eretici d’Italia* (same date), *Alcuni Italiani contemporanei* (1868), *Italiani illustri* (1873–74), *Il Conciliatore e i Carbonari* (1878), *Monti e l’età che fu sua* (1879), *Gli ultimi trent’anni* (same date), and others. Volumes and essays, these and the rest, in which there are eloquent pages, rich in valuable insights and severe reflections.
A constructive precursor of Neo-Guelphism and a balanced patriot, Cantù was one of the few—perhaps the only one—among the Neo-Guelphs who did not allow himself to be carried away by the euphoric dreams and enthusiasms of the tumultuous biennium 1846–48. Drawing on his great historical experience, he intuited beneath the naïvely rhetorical veneer the inner weaknesses of that movement, foresaw the inevitable dark hour of catastrophe and disappointment, and the consequent unleashing of extreme radicalism and reactionism, which were to open, for a long time, an abyss between the faith and the most cherished political aspirations of Italian Catholics.
It is precisely in the constant and inflexible rectitude of Cantù’s thought and work that the explanation lies for his attitude and orientation, resolutely Neo-Guelph, which he alone maintained, despite everything, in those crucial years that effectively resulted in his exclusion from political life and his unappreciated unpopularity in the new Italy.
In truth, that Italy pieced together by dynastic and revolutionary audacity, that reconstruction of the most Catholic of nations carried out in an anti-popular and anticlerical spirit, that monarchical predominance over all the ancient and noble republican traditions, those frenzies of demolishing every sound tradition—none of this could have pleased Cantù, just as, among others, it did not please Capponi and D’Azeglio. As a deputy in Parliament from 1860 to 1867, he was an open and declared opponent of that laborious offspring of the Right which called itself the “liberal State.” And, as has been rightly written only recently, “certain that he had behind him the real Italy against the legal Italy, the consensus of the multitudes of humble Christian folk against a minority entrenched in power thanks to an artificial electoral law,” he exposed aloud all the equivocation and inner emptiness concealed beneath the new state construction, which he foresaw—inevitably—was destined to collapse as soon as all Italian Catholics either could affirm their faith by vote or lost it by becoming revolutionaries.
Hence arose, in the welcoming quiet of the State Archives of Milan, whose superintendence was the only office that no one dared deny or revoke to him, that interesting and harsh, often passionate and violent, but fundamentally truthful and honest indictment against the actors and events of the new Italy, against the omissions and distortions of official historiography.
### CANTU CESARE - CANZIO, CANZIANO E CANZIANILLA
unofficial or merely laudatory and partisan account of the Risorgimento, as in his chronicle *Della indipendenza italiana* (1872-77): a bold attempt to revise outworn interpretations; a firm warning to Italians of unresolved problems.
Moreover, events, circumstances, and studies in our own day seem to have rendered justice to C., sometimes even investing his writings and thought with a deserved sense of timeliness.
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### CANUTO (KNUD), the Great, king of DENMARK, ENGLAND, and NORWAY
Son of Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Denmark and England, and of Gunhild, princess of Poland, born c. 995. He accompanied his father in the invasion of England in 1013 and succeeded him on the throne the following year. He continued the struggle in the island until, in 1016, upon the death of King Æthelred, his rule was acknowledged; he secured it by marrying Æthelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy.
Once internal consolidation was achieved, C. faced the restlessness of his warriors, who chafed at inactivity after the conquest. He disbanded them and, in their place, created a new military organization called the *Tinglid*, with a core unit, the *Hird*, which became the king’s special guard. The new army was structured as a knightly brotherhood governed by its own exceedingly strict code, the *Vederlag*.
When the Danish throne fell vacant in 1020, C. returned to his ancestral realm and was recognized as king; the regency in England was entrusted, in place of the loyal Thorkell the Tall, to a native, Godwin. In the years that followed, his expansionist drive continued: against the Slavs at the mouth of the Vistula and in support of the anti-Polish struggle of the German king Conrad II, from whom he obtained the cession of part of Schleswig. Then, taking advantage of the reaction in Norway—his ancestral land—against King Olaf’s religious policy (v.), which had forcibly introduced Christianity, he attacked his rival. But meeting strong resistance, allied with the Swedish king Anund Jacob, in the naval battle at the mouth of the Helge River, he desisted from further struggle, opting instead for simpler political means to achieve his goal. Indeed, when he went to Rome in 1027 for Conrad II’s coronation, an agreement with the Pope and Emperor to attack Norway resulted in Olaf’s exile and recognition of C.’s authority.
The work of the conquering king, which marked the high point of Viking and Danish expansion, was complete; yet it proved short-lived. Though C. strengthened the Church in the northern lands and, through broader intercourse, infused England with Nordic customs, upon his death on 12 Nov. 1035 the three crowns again split apart. His son Sweyn succeeded him in Norway, another son Harold Harefoot in England, and a third, Hardecanute, in Denmark—all three having brief lives and reigns.
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