GIOVANNI, GIACOMO LEOPARDI. — Poet, born in Recanati on 29 June 1798 to Marchioness Adelaide Antici and Count Monaldo (q.v.), died in Naples on 14 June 1837. His tutors until the age of fifteen were his father, the Spanish Jesuit Giuseppe Maria De Torres, Fr. Sebastiano Sanchini, but above all the books in his father’s library, which contained over 16,000 volumes: in those rooms he spent “the best part” of himself and his youthful dream of becoming a distinguished philologist, translating from Homer, Hesiod, Isocrates, Epictetus, Virgil, Horace, Fronto, Eusebius, essays which he sent from time to time, with prefaces and annotations, to Lo Spettatore, L’Antologia, and Il Nuovo Ricoglitore.
After an attempted escape from Recanati, his spiritual crisis deepened in 1819: the loss of faith and of human hopes. Nor did his journey to Rome in November 1822 help to distract him; the only emotion he felt was at the tomb of Tasso, and deep down a great longing for his “native savage village.” Between 1825 and 1828 he wandered through various Italian cities: in Milan, invited by the publisher Stella to plan a Latin and Italian edition of Cicero’s complete works; in Bologna, detained by his love for the Countess Carniani-Malvezzi; in Florence, where he was comforted by the friendship of eminent men of letters, especially Colletta, who proposed the publication of the Canti; in Pisa (the city he loved for its “most blessed climate”), which inspired him to write Il Risorgimento and A Silvia. Returning for the last time to Recanati (“the second night”), he left again two years later.
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LEONTIUS OF BYZANTIUM — GIOVANNI GIACOMO LEOPARDI
1170
Now, truly content, I wish to share with you that on Friday the 19th, my wife Adelaide Antici gave birth happily to a male child after nine months of marriage. The joy I feel is all the greater because it was preceded by forty-one hours of suffering due to the long labor pains imposed by the midwife of the Holy Fountain — I omit the name of Giacomo. I hope that you will share in my joy and that it will be an honor to receive your esteemed commands. I remain with true esteem and devotion.
Your Relative and Servant
Recanati, 9 July 1798
GIOVANNI GIACOMO LEOPARDI — Birth announcement signed by Count Monaldo — Ravenna, Archivio Cavalli.
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BIBL.:
On Leontius of Byzantium, in Mélanges de science religieuse, Lille 1944, p. 35 ff.; B. Altaner, Der griechische Theologe Leontius und Leontius der skythische Mönch, in Theologische Quartalschrift, 128 (1947), pp. 147–65; On the life of L. of Byzantium, see also: J. Rees, The De sectis, A treatise attributed to Leontius of Byzantion, in Journal of theological studies, 41 (1940), p. 263 ff. On the forgeries of the Apollinarians see the literature cited by I. de Ghellinck, Patristique et moyen âge, II, Brussels 1947, p. 351.