I owe a special thanks to Councillor Giulia Parente and Giampaolo de Rosa, President of the Culture Commission of the Municipality of Naples, for including the Conference on Pisacane again this year – as they did last year with the one on the 17th century – among the events of May of Monuments, which is one of the most significant events through which Naples presents itself to the world of civilisation and culture.

But I owe Leone Melillo and Luciano Russi, Rector of the University of Teramo and President of the Carlo Pisacane Documentation Centre, a sensitive person who has approached these studies with real enthusiasm, organising important cultural events every year in Sapri and collecting a specialised library, to chair the morning session of the conference, which led me to write this brief introduction. I thank them sincerely because occasions such as these, far from any claim to novelty or topicality, are always minor even if they are those which, in their apparent gratuitousness, have a true scientific character and fully correspond to my way of conceiving university and cultural commitment.