Saverio Scrofani
Introduction by R. Nicolì
This digital edition reproduces, within the POLYSEMI Library, the first seventeen letters included in Viaggio in Grecia by Saverio Scrofani, which consists of sixty letters. They have been copied from the text published by Edizioni dell’Ateneo (Rome, 1965) and philologically edited by Claudio Mutini.[1]
The author was born in the province of Ragusa in 1756 and belonged to a simple family that entrusted a maternal uncle, the bishop of Syracuse, with Saverio’s education, hoping he could become a priest. However, disappointing his family expectations, Scrofani lived a quite immoral and troubled life, and devoted to gambling and worldliness. Nevertheless, he has never neglected his studies focused on economy and specific agricultural topics, so as to be extremely prolific in writing the results of his research. He belonged to that generation of intellectuals who, despite being educated within the principles of the Enlightenment, had to disseminate his writings in the changed context of Reforming Absolutism. Read more “Saverio Scrofani”