For centuries his family had been among the leading landowners of the region, and closely connected with the Church (throughout Leopardi's lifetime Recanati was part of the Papal States).

The taxes imposed by it, he said in his Memoirs, were terrible—amounting, in his own case, to over twelve thousand scudi, besides a carriage, four horses, wood, oil, fodder, beds, sheets, and even clothes.

On 25 June 1800, the new Pope Pius VII, on his triumphant return from France to Rome, went to Loreto, and even paid a morning visit to Recanati.

After the Battle of Marengo, the Papal States again fell into the power of France, and as long as this rule lasted, Monaldo remained in complete retirement.

She summoned a family council, laid bare the whole situation, persuaded Monaldo to resign the management of the estate to an administrator, signed an agreement with his creditors, and herself became the undisputed mistress of the household.

[2] In 1812 Monaldo formally opened to the public the great library in his own house, which he had been preparing for the past ten years, hoping to upgrade the culture of his fellow citizens.

It was inaugurated on the evening of 7 January 1840 with the opera Beatrice di Tenda by Vincenzo Bellini, on which occasion the theatre was dedicated to the town's renowned musician Giuseppe Persiani (1804-1869).

[5] His relationship with his son Giacomo, of which we have testimony in the latter's Epistolario,[6] was profound but suffered, as is inevitable in an encounter, albeit bound by reciprocal affection, between two diametrically opposed temperaments with a completely different conception of life.

This letter is a precious document for understanding the heated protest of the twenty-one year old poet who rebels against his gloomy relegation to the loved-hated town of his birth without repudiating his sincere affection for his father – in fact asking to be excused for his painful choice firmly records his awareness of his greatness and his presentiment of his destiny («I had rather be unhappy than insignificant»).

"[9] His belief system demanded that absolute submission to the authority of both throne and altar be a universally accepted principle that, if violated, could only lead to a complete breakdown of order and responsibility.

[12] Between the attachment to one's town and catholic universalism there was no space for the crucial role as intermediary Mazzini or Gioberti had attributed to the nations in reconciling individuals and humanity.

A poet in his youth, he later on became the author of many theological and political treatises, and revived in his native city a 'poetical Academy' which had previously existed there in 1400, under the name of 'I Disuguali Placidi'—literally, the Placidly Unequal, or those who can agree to disagree.

Among his most successful works were the Dialoghetti sulle materie correnti nell’anno 1831, a masterpiece of counterrevolutionary and anti-liberal satire,[13] that went through six editions in three months and were translated into French, Dutch and German; the Istoria evangelica (1832), praised by Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) and translated into Spanish; Il Catechismo filosofico per uso delle scuole inferiori (1832), reprinted and adopted in the public schools of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; and La città della filosofia (1833).

Le Conferenze del Villaggio (Lugano, Veladini e Comp., 1838) were translated into French by David Paul Drach, a close friend and admirer of Monaldo.

Giacomo, too, was at first not indifferent to this success nor did it displease him to be mistaken for the author, and only when his liberal friends in Florence and elsewhere began to criticize the reactionary nature of the book did he publicly disclaim its authorship.