  Rosmini was born in 1797 at Rovereto, Italy, a staunchly Italian-speaking town, but at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and ruled from Vienna. The Rosmini family, citizens of Rovereto for several centuries, had become rich through the manufacture of silk, and enjoyed the way of life proper to the lesser aristocracy.  Antonio’s primary and secondary education was, however, catered for at the public school, and through his own intensive reading. Tertiary education was completed at the University of Padua. After ordination to the priesthood in 1821, Rosmini studied and wrote at Rovereto until 1826, and from 1826–28 at Milan. Despite his instinctive distaste for  the excesses of the French Revolution, which inevitably played a large part in the cultural formation of persons growing to maturity in the first quarter of the 19th century, Rosmini was not afraid to take a stand against State interference in religious affairs. His  Panegyric for Pius VII (1823)  was considerably censored by the Austrian-Hungarian government and published only in 1831. By this time, Rosmini had founded his religious order (1828), and published at Rome his fundamental philosophical work,  A New Essay concerning the Origin of Ideas (1830).  As the title suggests, this was intended to supersede Locke’s famous Essay concerning Human Understanding. From then on, a torrent of philosophical and theological works poured out until his death at Stresa. From 1836 until 1855, Rosmini was involved in constant controversy. The approbation of his religious order (1836–38), his work on conscience (1840), theological disputes (1843–48) and his participation in the  political events of 1848, occasioned strong debate which led in 1849 to the inclusion of two of his works, The Five Wounds of Holy Church and the Civil Constitution according to Social Justice, in the Index of Prohibited Books. Strengthened by this,  Rosmini’s theological and political opponents pressed for an examination of all his works which led, however, to his exoneration (1854), a year before his death at Stresa in northern Italy (1855). Condemnation came posthumously (1888–9) when forty propositions, taken mostly from  books published after his death, were included in the decree Post Obitum of Leo XIII. A remarkable swing in ecclesiastical opinion took place in 2001 when a Vatican Note stated: ‘The motives for preoccupation and for doctrinal and prudential difficulties which determined the promulgation of the decree Post Obitum condemning the “Forty Propositions” drawn from the works of  Antonio Rosmini can now be considered as surmounted’ (CDF, Osservatore Romano, 1 July 2001).