Historica Wiki
Advertisement
Scipione Piattoli

Scipione Piattoli (10 November 1749-12 April 1809) was an Italian Catholic priest and Enlightenment philosopher.

Biography[]

Scipione Piattoli was born in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1749, a scion of a family of painters. He joined the Piarist order in 1763, although he came to be known for his secular lifestyle. He taught at the University of Modena from 1772 to 1782 before becoming a liberal political activist, and he left Modena in 1782 due to political rivalries. He became a tutor to the Potocki family of Poland-Lithuania, leaving their service in 1784 and working for the Lubomirski family. During this time, he joined the Freemasons in Warsaw and tutored the young Henryk Ludwik Lubomirski. During his stay at the Lubomirski family's Paris residence, he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Marquis de Condorcet. In 1787, he became the tutor of Adam Czartoryski. Piattoli became an intermediary between the reformist Patriotic Party and King Stanislaw Poniatowski, and he helped draft Poland's 1791 constitution. In 1794, he helped organize the Kosciuszko Uprising against Russian influence, and he was interned by the Austrians for several years after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. He was released in 1800 and worked for Czartoryski in Russia before retiring to Courland in 1807. He abandoned the priesthood and married a lady of the court, and he died in Altenburg in 1809.

Advertisement