Early Life in Italy
Panizzi was born in Brescello in the province of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and obtained a degree in law from the University of Parma in 1818. In Parma, it is likely that he joined one of the secret patriotic societies which aimed to unite Italy as an independent country. Reggio Emilia was then ruled by Francesco IV, the Duke of Modena. Panizzi then returned to Brescello where he practiced law and in 1821 became inspector of the town's schools.
In 1820, following a short lived revolution in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Francesco IV started to arrest and jail suspected patriots on trumped-up, flimsy charges. When in May 1822 the Duchy's Chief of Police, Giulio Besini, was assassinated, the tempo of arrests picked up, many were convicted, and a priest executed. Panizzi, tipped off that he also faced arrest and trial as a subversive, fled to Switzerland, where in 1823 he wrote and published a book decrying the repressive regime and trials against citizens of the Duchy of Modena. Following the book's publication, he was indicted, tried, and condemned to death in absentia in Modena, and pressure was brought to have him expelled from Switzerland.
Read more about this topic: Anthony Panizzi
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or italy:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“An early dew woos the half-opened flowers”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.”
—Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1816–1841)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)