A Neapolitan in the French Revolution. Notes for a biography of Luigi Pio [Un napoletano nella Rivoluzione francese. Appunti per una biografia di Luigi Pio]

Luigi Pio was the Neapolitan chargé d'affaires in Paris in the 1780s. He resigned in early 1790 and was immediately granted French citizenship. He became a revolutionary activist in Paris, playing various roles in political clubs, in administration and in newspapers. His activities, including sensational denunciations, afforded him a notoriety which exposed him to public attacks and a period in jail under the Terror. The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it combines different French, Neapolitan and American sources in the attempt to shed light on the many obscure aspects in this interesting figure's biography, on which scholars today still derive information from very dated research. On the other hand, Pio's biography is seen here as a case-study, which can help us define and understand some of the more general - but sometimes neglected - issues concerning the political culture of the revolutionary period: cosmopolitanism as a lived experience and the characteristics of the expatriate, as distinct from the exile; the role of secularism and philosophical atheism in individual political choices and in the building of personal networks and circles from the 1780s to the Restoration.