Custodi, Pietro (1771-1842)

Encyclopaedia of the social sciences, editor in chief Edwin R.A. Seligman, New York, The Macmillan Company, vol. IV, 1931, p. 658

CUSTODI, PIETRO (1771-1842), Italian journalist and economist. Custodi was a native of Piedmont and a lawyer by profession. During the period of unrest preceding the Napoleonic reorganization of Italy he became editor of two short lived republican newspapers, La tribuna del popoloandL’amicodellalibertàitaliana.

Napoleon caused him to be arrested but after the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy he restored him to favor, appointing him secretary general of the finance department of Milan and later state councilor. Under the empire Custodi was created baron. His fame rests upon the great Scrittoriclassiciitaliani di economiapolitica (50 vols., Milan 1803-16), in which he collected and elucidated with biographical and critical notices the writings of the chief Italian economists from the earliest times down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. To Custodimore than to any other individual is due the credit for the propagation throughout the scholarly world of the economic ideas evolved in Italy before Adam Smith. Many of the works included in his collection, such as the lectures of Beccaria, had never before been printed. Custodialso published CesareBeccaria (Padua 1811), one of the early biographies of the great penologist, and Storia di Milano (4 vols., Milan 1824-25; later ed. 2 vols., Florence 1851), including and continuing the work by PietroVerri. Together with Gioja and Romagnosi he founded in 1824 Annaliuniversali di economiapubblica, which remained until its discontinuance in 1871 the leading Italian economic review.

Consult: Sangiorgio, G., Pietro Custodi, economista (Florence 1875).