LEOPARDI, MONALDO. — Writer, born at Recanati on 16 August 1776, died there on 30 April 1847. A man of weak will, he was dominated in the management of the household by his wife Adelaide Antici; he was nevertheless not an unloving father to his son Giacomo, as a literary legend had portrayed him.
A remarkable local scholar, he composed the Annali di Recanati; a staunch defender of the alliance between Church and State, he was opposed to the Congress of Vienna, which had not fully accepted the concept of legitimism: he was nevertheless favorable to the « spirit of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace » of the Consalvi government. For M. L., « restoration means putting right things that have been damaged » (as he wrote in the Dialoghetti sulle materie correnti nell'anno 1831, on p. 49 of the reprint edited by A. Moravia under the title Viaggio di Pulcinella, Rome 1945), but this does not at all make him favorable to eighteenth-century royal absolutism, precisely because it was imbued with jurisdictionalism and therefore opposed to the Curia. From 1832 to 1835 he published the Voce della ragione, in which he fought for his political ideas.
Among his historical publications, the following should be remembered: Serie dei vescovi di Recanati (Macerata 1828); Vita di Nicolò Banofede, vescovo di Chiusi (Pesaro 1832); La S. Casa di Loreto (Lugano 1841); Cose lauretane (Ancona 1844).