Giuseppe Maria Galanti
Encyclopedia
Life
Galanti was born in Santa Croce del SannioSanta Croce del Sannio
Santa Croce del Sannio is a comune in the Province of Benevento in the Italian region Campania, located about 70 km northeast of Naples and about 30 km north of Benevento....
, Molise
Molise
Molise is a region of Southern Italy, the second smallest of the regions. It was formerly part of the region of Abruzzi e Molise and now a separate entity...
. He was a follower of Pietro Giannone
Pietro Giannone
Pietro Giannone was an Italian historian born in Ischitella, in the province of Capitanata. He opposed the papal influence in Naples, for which he was imprisoned for twelve years until his death.-Early life:...
and studied under Antonio Genovesi
Antonio Genovesi
Antonio Genovesi was an Italian writer on philosophy and political economy.-Biography:Genovesi was born at Castiglione, near Salerno....
. While young he was influenced by independent-minded priests and came to hate feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
; moving as a boy to Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, he came to know the ideas of Gaetano Filangieri
Gaetano Filangieri
Gaetano Filangieri , Italian jurist and philosopher, was born in San Sebastiano al Vesuvio, a country near Naples....
as well as those of Genovesi.
With the title Visitatore generale del Regno, he surveyed the state of the kingdom, and proposed agricultural and economic reforms. A critic of the top layers of Neapolitan society, he considered them too little interested in commerce.
Works
- Elogio storico del signor Abate Antonio Genovesi (1772)
- Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli cittadino e segretario fiorentino. Con un Discorso intorno alla costituzione della Società ed al governo politico (1779)
- Descrizione del Contado di Molise (1781)
- Saggio sopra l' antica storia de' primi abitatori dell'Italia (1783)
- Descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie (five volumes, 1786-1794)
- Giornale di viaggio in Calabria (1792)
- Breve descrizione della città di Napoli e del suo contorno (1792), (critical edition, Maria Rosaria Pelizzari, 2000)
- Memoria intorno allo stato dei Banchi (1799)
- Testamento forense (1806)
- Scritti sulla Calabria (critical edition, 1993)
- Memorie storiche del mio tempo e altri scritti di natura autobiografica (1761-1806) (critical edition, 1996)
- Pensieri vari e altri scritti della tarda maturità (critical edition, 2000)
- Prospetto storico sulle vicende del genere umano (critical edition, 2000)