Cesare Cantù
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
.
Cantù was born at Brivio, in Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
, and began his career as a teacher.
His first literary essay (1828) was a romantic poem entitled Algiso, o la Lega Lombarda (new ed, Milan; 1876), and in the following year he produced a Storia della città e della diocesi di Como in two volumes (Como, 1829). The death of his father then left him in charge of a large family, and he worked very hard both as a teacher and a writer to provide for them. His prodigious literary activity led to his falling under the suspicions of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n police, and he was mixed up in a political trial and arrested in 1833.
While in prison writing materials were denied him, but he managed to write on rags with a tooth-pick and candle smoke, and thus composed the novel Margherita Pusterla (Milan, 1838). On his release a year later, as he was interdicted from teaching, literature became his only resource. In 1836 the Turinese publisher, Giuseppe Pomba, commissioned him to write a universal history
Universal history
Universal history is basic to the Western tradition of historiography, especially the Abrahamic wellspring of that tradition. Simply stated, universal history is the presentation of the history of humankind as a whole, as a coherent unit.-Ancient authors:...
, which his vast reading enabled him to do. In six years the work was completed in seventy-two volumes, and immediately achieved a general popularity; the publisher made a fortune out of it, and Cantù's royalties amounted, it is said, to 300,000 lire (£12,000).
Just before the revolution of 1848, being warned that he would be arrested, he fled to Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
, but after the Five Days
Five Days of Milan
The Five Days of Milan was a major event in the Revolutionary Year of 1848 and the start of the First Italian War of Independence. On March 18th, the city of Milan, rose, and in five days of street fighting drove Marshal Radetzky and his men from the city....
he returned to Milan and edited a paper called La Guardia Nazionale. Between 1849 and 1850 he published his Storia degli Italiani (Turin, 1855) and many other works. In 1857 the archduke Maximilian tried to conciliate the Milanese by the promise of a constitution, and Cantù was one of the few Liberals
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
who accepted the olive branch, and went about in company with the archduke. This act was regarded as treason and caused Cantù much annoyance in after years. He continued his literary activity after the formation of the Italian kingdom, producing volume after volume until his death. For a short time he was member of the Italian parliament; he founded the Lombard historical society, and was appointed superintendent of the Lombard archives.
His, views are colored by strong religious and political prejudice, and by a moralizing tendency, and his historical work has little critical value and is for the most part pure book-making, although he collected a vast amount of material which has been of use to other writers. In dealing with modern Italian history he is reactionary and often wilfully inaccurate. Besides the above-mentioned works he wrote Gli eretici d'Italia (Milan, 1873); Cronistoria dell’Indipendenza italiana (Naples, 1872-1877); Il Conciliatore e i carbonari (Milan, 1878), etc.