His prodigious literary activity led to his falling under the suspicions of the Austrian police, who thought he was a member of Young Italy, and he was arrested in 1833.

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).

[5] It is the first historical work by an Italian which, in a well-finished and vigorous style, gives a philosophical treatment of the development of all civilized peoples from the remotest times to the pontificate of Pius IX.

[8] Just before the revolution of 1848, being warned that he would be arrested, he fled to Turin, but after the Five Days he returned to Milan and edited a paper called La Guardia Nazionale.

[9] A staunch Catholic, Cantù opposed the bill establishing civil marriage and was one of the few MPs to vote against the separation of church and state.

[3] Cantù showed the influence of the Romantic school, of which Alessandro Manzoni is the most important representative, and he sought to combine Church and State, politics and religion.