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LUIGI SETTEMBRINI (1813–1877)

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Originally appearing in Volume V24, Page 705 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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LUIGI SETTEMBRINI (1813–1877)  ,
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Italian man of letters and politician, was born in Naples . At the age of twenty-two he was appointed professor of eloquence at
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Catanzaro, and married Raffaela Luigia Faucitano (1835) . While still a young man he had been affected by the
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wave of liberalism then spreading all over Italy, and soon after his
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marriage he began to conspire mildly against the Bourbon government . Betrayed by a priest, he was arrested in 1839 and imprisoned at Naples; although liberated three years later he lost his professorship and had to maintain himself by private lessons . Nevertheless he continued to conspire, and in 1847 he published anonymously a " Protest of the
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People of the Two Sicilies," a scathing indictment of the Bourbon government . On the advice of friends he went to Malta on a
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British warship, but although, when King Ferdinand II. granted a constitution (16th of
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February 1848), he returned to Naples and was given an appointment at the
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ministry of
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education, he soon resigned on account of the prevailing
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chaos, and retired to a
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farm at Posilipo . When reaction set in, once more Settembrini was arrested as a suspect (
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June 1849) and imprisoned . After a monstrously unfair trial, he and two other " politicals were condemned to
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death, and nineteen others to varying terms of imprisonment (February 1851) . The death sentences were, however, commuted to imprisonment for
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life, and Settembrini was sent to the dungeons of
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San Stefano . There he remained for eight years . His friends, including Antonio Pauizzi, then in England, made various unsuccessful attempts to liberate him, and at last he was deported with sixty-five other
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political prisoners . The exiles received an enthusiastic welcome in
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London, but Settembrini after a short stay in England joined his
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family at Florence in 186o .

On the formation of the Italian

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kingdom he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the university of Naples, and devoted the rest of his life to
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literary pursuits . In 1875 he was nominated senator . He died in 1877 . His chief
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work is his Lezioni di letteratura italiana, of which the dominant note is the conviction that Italian literature " is as the very soul of the nation, seeking, in opposition to
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medieval mysticism, reality, freedom, independence of reason, truth and beauty " (P . Villari) . See L . Settembrini, Ricordanze, 2 vols., edited by F. de Sanctis (Naples, 1879–188o) ; Epistolario di
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Luigi Settembrini, edited by F . Fiorentino; P . Villari, Saggi critici (Florence, 1884); Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, Italian Characters (London, 1901) .

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