GALANTI, GIUSEPPE MARIA. - Historian and economist, b. at Santacroce del Sannio on 25 Nov. 1743, d. at Naples on 6 Oct. 1806. A disciple of Genovesi, he devoted himself to historical, geographical and statistical research on the Kingdom of Naples.

His first works, among them an Elogio del Genovesi (Naples 1772), in defense of reformism, are marked by an Enlightenment optimism that would give way, in the Descrizione dello stato antico ed attuale del contado del Molise (ibid. 1781), to a pessimistic realism founded on the study of the country's economic conditions. He saw in feudalism and in the privileges of the clergy the principal source of the country's misery. He also wrote a Descrizione delle Sicilie (ibid. 1786-94), incomplete, and a Testamento forense (Venice 1806). Carried along by the revolutionary movement of 1799, he maintained a critical attitude toward it.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: G. Verrecchia, G. M. G., Campobasso 1924; N. Cortese, Gli Abruzzi alla fine del Settecento nella descrizione di G.

M. G., in Samnium, 12 (1939), pp. 133-52; 13 (1940), pp. 135-50; G. De Ruggiero, Il pensiero politico meridionale, 2nd ed., Bari 1946, see index.

Sergio Cotta

@incollection{ec5_galanti_giuseppe_maria, author = {Cotta, Sergio}, title = {Galanti, giuseppe maria}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {V}, pages = {1854--1855}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/galanti-giuseppe-maria} }

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Galanti, Giuseppe Maria

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