Week 72

 

It was the year 1843 when Vincenzo Gioberti - theologian, philosopher and former court chaplain of the Kingdom of Piedmont, then exiled to Bruxelles – published his most influential work: Del primato civile e morale degli italiani (“The civil and moral primacy of the Italians”). A lengthy and somewhat cumbersome philosophical treaty, the Primato was nonetheless a popular work – popular enough, at least, that many might have felt confident enough to give a summary of it without having to read the whole thing – and marked a period, a brief interlude in fact, during which the relations between the Italian national movement and the Holy See appeared almost on the verge of taking a much different rout than the one they actually took with the 1848 revolutions.

Considering that, when Gioberti's work was conceived and composed, the Holy See was still occupied by the reactionary Gregory XVI, there are good reason to question whether Gioberti himself looked at his “political project” as a viable one, or rather – as he observed soon after the publication (in a letter to T. Mamiani, August 13^th 1843) – as a “utopia”, in the original meaning of an “perfect explication of an ideal”.

Its publication though, took place at a time when the Italian national movement was more receptive to a true, practical political platform – or at least to something that resembled one, even remotely – and especially the moderates were looking for some alternative to Mazzini's republicanism and maybe for a way to come to a conciliation with the instances of conservation and social stability that had found a recurrent incarnation in the societal action of the Roman Church. So that, when the moderate Pius IX (who had a reputation, likely well beyond his intentions, for a progressive open to “national” ideas) was elected to the Holy See in 1846, Gioberti's program appeared for a few months destined to come to an unforeseeable but fortunate realization.

And, like it had appeared, this hope vanished into thin air with the apparent defeat of the national movement in 1849.

In some way, that was a critical moment for the relations between the Catholic Church and the Italian political movements as well – and therefore also for the subsequent affirmation of an Italian Catholic political movement. With 1848 the largest portion of the Catholic intransigentism of reactionary imprint – tied to the doctrines of de Maistre, de Bonald and the early Lamennais – had ceased to exist or to exert any meaningful social influence, with the European events jumping ahead of any debate on traditional ultramontanism, divine right of the sovereigns and intermediate powers. While the Italian national movement, no longer an affair of conspirators and secret societies, took the form of a proper, concrete and almost real political program.

We have started our coverage of the Italian Catholic political movement with the suppression of the Company of Jesus in 1773 – but it is reasonable to say that until around the time of the great European unrest of 1848-49 that movement existed in a largely pre-political form, with the first instances of Catholic liberalism somewhat anticipating the development of political intransigentism. And in some way, the last great Catholic reaction, embodied by Pope Gregory XVI, was rooted in a markedly anti-political sentiment, taking the word in its XIX Century meaning.

The new Pope had ascended to the Holy See during the revolution of February-March 1831 and immediately reinstated the zelante card. Tommaso Bernetti – who had been replaced by the moderate card. Giuseppe Albani during the pontificate of Pius VIII – as Secretary of State, opening a new phase of intransigent reaction and repressive measures against the liberal forces.

The internal policies pursued by the Holy See were in direct contrast with those suggested by the European powers – while on one hand the tense climate of the Papal Legations offered the French and Austrians especially a good argument for their influence over Italian affairs, the region also constituted a permanent reservoir of social tensions which threatened to make a lasting pacification of the other Italian States impossible. More so, the need to intervene and maintain garrisons in the principal cities was in itself a cause of strain in the Austro-French relations, and therefore looked upon unfavorably by the British. Also, and not to be overlooked, the public opinion within certain more advanced political systems had taken a fair degree of interest in the Italian matters, due to the various initiatives of exiles groups in Paris, Marseilles, London, Bruxelles and even in the United States – the harsh treatment of the Italian patriots and liberals (the memorial Le mie prigioni, written by the Piedmontese liberal Silvio Pellico and published in 1832 after ten years of imprisonment, most of which spent in the Spielberg Fortress, gained large popularity in Europe as a denunciation of the overbearing and illiberal nature of the Austrian rule – curiously enough, Pellico's intention was to write an inspirational tale of moral and religious discovery) did therefore create a negative echo in the developing political press, and to some extent affected directly the attitude of the leadership of those countries.

While his first political choices made little to endear the new Pope to his reluctant international supporters, one should keep in mind – as showcased by the political action of his successor, Pius IX – that a “liberalization” of the Papal State was largely a desperate endeavor, and that such liberalization, when and in the measure it actually took place, went through a complete eversion of the Papal administration rather than an improvement of it. And that's because – even if one should be cautious with certain qualifiers – by mid XIX Century the Papal administration truly was a relic of the past, and, worse, most observers regarded it so. Nor was the financial situation of the Papal States any better – since Gregory XVI had been unable to contain expenditure, and actually appears to have increased it – with the Holy See recording an average deficit somewhere between 10% and 15% of revenue through every year from 1831 to 1846, when the total debt peaked at around 38 millions (revenue did not appear to have exceeded 7 millions), managed mostly through loans from foreign bankers.

The conference of the Five Greats (plus the Kingdom of Sardinia) held in Rome from April 13^th to May 10^th resulted in a memorandum submitted on the 21^st to the Secretary of State, suggesting the adoption of certain “improvements” to be made permanent (unlike the reforms of Consalvi during 1816-21 which had been in good part reversed by Leo XII) by means of an “internal guarantee” and adopted not only “in those provinces affected by the revolutionary movement, but also in those which had remained loyal as well as in the Capital”. More so such improvements had to include the admission of “laical personnel to the administrative and judiciary functions” - and were to be aimed above all to the “judiciary system”, according to the principles contained in the motu proprio of July 6^th 1816 (you can find it here and I suspect none of the delegates of the great powers had thoroughly examined the state of the Papal judiciary system – so that we can all safely and conveniently assume that Consalvi, who was behind the proposed reform, had looked properly into it), and to the “municipal and provincial administration”. Similarly, given the already dreadful situation of the Papal finances, the major European powers advised for the creation of a “central Court of Audit” in charge of supervising revenue and expenditure – within this central institution and other similar “administration councils”, the Government was to favor the participation of elements taken from “the individuals most notable for their birthright, wealth and talent” as well as from the local elective councils.

Bernetti declined to contract any formal obligation over such a program of moderate reforms, and in fact none of the suggestions made by the Great Powers would find its way into the Papal administration during the pontificate of Gregory XVI. Rather, the Austrian troops were withdrawn – Metternich being both annoyed with Bernetti and wary of troubling the moderate French government of Perier – and the Papal forces attempted to fill their void with little success. Soon enough most of the urban centers, with the exception of Rimini and Ferrara, fell under the administration of municipal councils, often in cohabitation with the Papal delegates.

In January 1832 these tensions resulted in a full blown battle involving a few thousand men near the small city of Cesena, with the defeat of the municipal troops coming from Forlì. The subsequent occupation of the town and the violent repression carried off by the pontifical troops prompted the Austrians to cross the border with the Legations again to occupy Bologna. Immediately, the French sent an expedition corp to the Adriatic port city of Ancona – in fact without previously informing the Papal government – on February 23^rd 1832, for the purpose of counter-weighting the Austrian expansion into the Legations. Meanwhile the British delegate, Lord Seymour, had resolved to leave Rome, where his efforts in favor of the adoption of the 1831 memorandum had so far been fruitless (and with the new situation appeared largely pointless), but not without submitting first a complaint over the conduct of the Pontifical Government.