Abbot Giuseppe Barbieri

Giuseppe Barbieri was born in Bassano on 26 December 1774 and spent his childhood along the banks of the Brenta between the “laughing hills” and the pleasant valleys. He moved to Padua and attended the faculty of theology and law, he was the favorite pupil of Cesarotti. In 1795 he wore the habit of St. Benedict in the monastery of Praglia located on the hills that, as “guests” and “confidants” of the poet’s intellect, were celebrated by him in the poem I Colli Euganei. He was commissioned to teach “humanity and rhetoric” in the college annexed to the abbey. In this period there were frequent meetings with Cesarotti who lived in Selvazzano, not far from Praglia. In 1808 the Barbieri obtained a teaching position at the University of Padua and left the cloistered life, too rigid and tiring for his poor health. After 1813, Giuseppe Barbieri, passionately in love with nature, silence and solitude, chose as his home “the dear villa…” which was the ideal place to appreciate them in their full expression.

“…The Poets
Love free days, tranquil hours,
Quiet retreats, they love hills and valleys,
The murmur of streams, the whispered breezes,
The rustling of leaves; they love the sky and the earth
To enjoy openly, and in Nature’s embrace
Listen to Nature’s mysterious senses.”

This is how he describes the choice of Torreglia and his retreat to the Poggio della Mira, in one of his letters to Isabella Albrizzi, collected with others in “Opere” (1821) and written precisely when the silence is heavier and the voices of the night suggest intimate feelings and deeper thoughts. And again, in a letter to Regina Abriani Borromeo:

“…On the other hand, this blessed fertility of Padua,
these leafy and vigorous plantations, these luxuriant furrows of cereal wealth,
this succulent greenness and brownness of meadows, this gravity, if I may say so,
of the Euganean nature,
has a certain I don’t know what of melancholy and epic that deeply moves me.”

Between 1818 and 1819 he hosted in his retreat Niccolò Tommaseo, famous Italian linguist, writer and patriot, who defined the place “Vatum Locus” (place of poets), and kidnapped by the beauty of the place wrote “Tauriliae descriptio”, poem in Latin hexameters:

“…Not far from the Euganean city, there is a beautiful place:
once it was sea; then, to spew flames, the waters disappeared:
behold the hills rise, behold them arrange themselves in an amphitheater and cover themselves with vegetation of all kinds.
One among these shines more brightly and houses within it, beautiful
in its simplicity. Wise one, here you can study nature.
From here, speaker, you can contemplate the little house where was born
he who plucked such a splendid crown from the Latin foliage.”

Giuseppe Barbieri died on 9 November 1852. At his request, he was buried in Torreglia in the places “…where he had fixed his nest and enclosed his heart…”: in the old parish church of San Sabino, “…placed in a delightful place facing the rising sun…” just a few steps from his villa.

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