Alessandro’s schooling took place away from home and his parents, at religious boarding schools. In autumn 1791, at the age of six, he entered the school of the Somascan Fathers at Merate. In April 1796, he was transferred to a Somascan school in Lugano, since his father wanted to keep him away from the dangerous revolutionary ideas that were spreading in Lombardy. Among the educators at St Anthony’s in Lugano was Father Francesco Soave, a thinker who tried to reconcile Condillac’s Sensationism with the Christian tradition, and whom Manzoni remembered with affection later in life. Alessandro, however, did not manage to stay long enough to follow his courses in philosophy since measures taken by the government of the Cisalpine Republic meant that his father was forced to bring him back to Italy. In the spring of 1798, at the age of thirteen, he entered Milan’s Longone school, run by the Barnabite Fathers, where he made important friendships with Luigi Arese, Giambattista Pagani, Federico Confalonieri, Ermes Visconti, and first met Vincenzo Monti. Various biographies, anecdotes and information from his early poems suggest that he was restless and rebellious as a teenager, enamoured of libertarian and anti-clerical ideas, and open to the influences of Sensationism and rationalism. According to one story concerning Alessandro’s “lack of discipline”, the Somascan Rector reported Alessandro to his father because the boy had indicated his solidarity with revolutionary ideas. Evoking his boarding school years in his Carme for Imbonati, Manzoni shows disdain for what he calls the sozzo ovile (filthy sheepshed) and mercenario armento (mercenary herd), possibly referring specifically to the Longone school and priests who taught for payment. In 1801, at the age of sixteen, Alessandro returned to his father’s home, and to the sad and melancholy atmosphere from which his mother had fled.