LEOPARDI, Monaldo. - Writer, born at Recanati on 16 Aug. 1776, died there on 30 Apr. 1847. Of weak will, he was dominated in domestic administration by his wife Adelaide Antici; he was, however, not the overbearing father of his son Giacomo, as a literary legend had portrayed.
A notable local scholar, he composed the *Annali di Recanati*; a staunch defender of the alliance between State and Church, he opposed the Congress of Vienna, which had not fully accepted the concept of legitimacy; he was, however, favourable to the “spirit of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace” of the Consalvi government. For M. L. “to restore means to mend what is broken” (as he wrote in the *Dialoghetti sulle materie correnti nell'anno 1837*, p. 49 of the reprint edited by A. Moravia under the title *Viaggio di Pulcinella*, Rome 1945), but in this he showed no favour whatever for eighteenth-century royal absolutism, precisely because it smacked of jurisdictionalism and was therefore anti-curial. From 1832 to 1835 he published *La Voce della ragione*, in which he championed his political ideas.
Among his historical works may be noted: *Serie dei vescovi di Recanati* (Macerata 1828); *Vita di Nicolò Bonafede, vescovo di Chiusi* (Pesaro 1832); *La S. Casa di Loreto* (Lugano 1841); *Cose lauretane* (Ancona 1844).