Cesare Beccaria

Cesare Beccaria was born in Milan in 1738 into a family of marquises. He spent eight years, 'fanatical and servile' as he called them, at a Jesuit school, and took a degree in law at Pavia. Reading Montesquieu's Persian Letters 'converted' him to the Enlightenment, and he joined the Milanese circle of reformers led by the Verri brothers, the Accademia dei Pugni, the 'Academy of Fists'. Encouraged and helped by his friends, he published On Crimes and Punishments anonymously at twenty-six; it caused an immediate sensation throughout Europe and was translated into many languages, Voltaire wrote a commentary on it, and Catherine II invited him to St Petersburg to help reform Russia's laws. Shy by nature, he never again wrote anything as important, and in later life served as an economic official in the government of Milan. His grandson was the great Italian novelist Manzoni.