Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Vincenzo Gioberti was born in Turin April 5, 1801, and was the only child of parents of very moderate means. At an early age it was decided that he should prepare for the priesthood, and his education was entrusted to the fathers of the Oratory in Turin. His nature was more conformable to the teaching of churchmen than was that of Alfieri or Manzoni, and whereas both the latter had chafed under the discipline and mental training of the Church schools the young Gioberti became a thoughtful student. He differed from Mazzini, a contemporary studying at Genoa, in that although he early learned that the condition of his country was wretched, his mind could only conceive of improvement by orderly and temperate steps. He was a brilliant scholar, and during the years of his training for the priesthood he delved deep into the history of philosophy, and studied closely the writings of the fathers and doctors of the Roman Church. In 1825 he was ordained a priest.

The young priest, a man of a serious and reflective mind, turned his attention to the affairs of his country, and gradually entered upon a careful study of the literature of the day, and the political theories that were then agitating men’s minds. He took part in scholastic discussions of religious and political subjects, and in time widened his acquaintance in Turin so that he came in contact with the leaders of thought in the Sardinian capital. As he met men and spoke his thoughts more freely it came to be seen that he was occupied above everything else with the problem of freeing Italy from the foreign overlords, and this gradually marked him as a free-thinking priest. At first, however, he did not incur the enmity of the clerical party, for, although his conception of Italian freedom consisted in emancipation not alone from the arms of foreign masters, but from all modes of thought which were alien to the nation’s genius, and detrimental to its national authority, this authority was always associated in his mind with the idea of Papal supremacy, but a supremacy intellectual rather than political.

The reign of Charles Albert of Piedmont was a continual battle between the conservative party and the enlightened liberals. The leaders of the conservatives were clerics, in large measure Jesuits, who kept in close touch with the Court of Vienna, realizing to the full that their aims and those of Austria were to all intents identical, the maintenance of the status quo in Italy. The young priest Gioberti was not long in incurring the hostility of the Jesuits, because, although he sought the ultimate supremacy of the Papal See, he desired it as a moral rather than as a physical supremacy, and he most ardently hoped for the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy and the absolute independence of Piedmont from Viennese influence. His was, however, too brilliant a mind to be denied, and, despite the efforts of the Court party, Charles Albert, who was always cognizant of the abilities of other men, soon after his accession to the throne in 1831 nominated the young priest to be one of the royal chaplains.

As chaplain of the court Gioberti quickly assumed prominence. His nature was open and frank, he made friends easily, he wrote on ecclesiastical and political subjects, and his patriotism was known to be unbounded. He soon had gathered a party about him, and his influence over the King grew rapidly. Charles Albert’s own views on Italian policy were at that time almost identical with Gioberti’s, he would have been glad to acknowledge a confederation of Italian states under the presidency of the Pope, provided the foreign princelings could be disposed of without bloodshed. This, however, the clerical party did not approve of, any change being to their view revolutionary, and the realization that the chaplain was gaining the private ear of the King finally compelled them to mark him for exile.

Aware of this disaffection in the Church party at Turin, Gioberti in 1833 asked permission of Charles Albert to resign his chaplaincy, but, before his request was granted he was suddenly arrested one day while walking with a friend in the public gardens of the city, and placed in prison. The influence of the clerical party was so all-powerful in the Piedmont of that day that no attempt to secure Gioberti’s release was effective, and no popular demonstration at such an outrage could take place. He was given no trial, and his case was the subject of no apparent judicial process. After four months’ imprisonment he was informed that his banishment had been decreed, and he was at once conducted to the frontier in charge of a carabineer. At the same time his name was stricken off the roll of the theological doctors of the College of Turin.

Driven into exile because of his political opinions, even as Mazzini was exiled as a suspect rather than because of any proof against him, Gioberti reached Paris in October, 1833. Like so many other great Italians of that day he was destined to spend many years away from his beloved country. Without friends, family, or money, his career apparently ruined, his hopes shattered, Gioberti was to sound the depths of a courageous man’s despair. Mazzini took himself to London to eke out a meager living as a teacher of Italian, and with the same thought Gioberti went to Brussels. Here he undertook to teach philosophy, and finally obtained employment in assisting his friend Gaggia in the management of a small college. All his leisure time he devoted to studying and writing on philosophy, rising early, and working the better part of the night, and producing work after work of great value in philosophic inquiry, all of which bore especially upon the needs of his own countrymen.

His stay in Brussels, which lasted from 1834 to 1845, saw the production of his greatest books, all deeply earnest, and each one causing in turn the greatest interest and emotion in Italy. The volume of his work was most remarkable, treatises appearing at short intervals, each one of which would have sufficed to represent a lifetime’s study. His first work was the result of a friendship formed in Brussels with a young fellow-exile, Paolo Pallia, who on one occasion expressed to Gioberti certain doubts as to the reality of revelations and a future life. Gioberti at once commenced work upon his “La Teorica del Sovran-naturale,” which was finished and published in 1838. This was followed in 1839 and 1840 by his three volumes called “Introduzione allo Studio della Filosofia.” In all these writings he stands apart from his contemporary European philosophers. Method of speculation is with him subjective and psychological. He adopts much from Plato. Throughout all his writings religion is synonomous with civilization, and he repeatedly states that religion is the true and only expression of the idea in this life, and is one with the real civilization of history. Civilization is the means to perfection, of which religion is the essence.

These strictly philosophic works were followed by the essays “Del Bello” and “Del Buono,” and after a short interval by a magnificent exposure of the Jesuit Order, “Il Gesuita Moderno,” and his “Del Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani,” and “Prolegomeni.”

It was the “Primato” which gave the exiled Gioberti his place as a great factor in the struggle for Italian independence. His ideas seem strangely archaic now, but they were compelling in 1846. He himself says: “I intend to show ... that Italy alone has the qualities required to become the chief of nations, and that although to-day she has almost completely lost that chiefship, it is in her power to recover it, and I will state the most important conditions of that renovation.... As infant civilization was born between two rivers, so renewed and adult civilization arose between two seas; the former in fertile Mesopotamia, whence it easily spread over Asia, Africa and the west; the latter in Italy, which divides the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, thus forming the central promontory of Europe and placed in a position to dominate the rest of the hemisphere.... In the Church there is neither Greek nor Barbarian, and all nations form a cosmopolitan society, as all the tribes of Israel a single nation. But as, in the Jewish nation, genealogy determined the tenure of the hierarchy, and the sons of Levi received the custody of the Law and the service of the Temple, so in the Christian commonwealth the division of the nations is in a manner involved in the order of the Catholic Church. And, the Church having a supreme head, we must recognize a moral pre-eminence where Heaven has established its seat, and where nearer, quicker, more immediate and more uninterrupted are the in-breathings of its voice. This preeminence certainly does not transgress the natural order of divine intentions, real and efficient in their working and in the obligations they impose. So that the Italians, humanly speaking, are the Levites of Christianity, having been chosen by Providence to keep the Christian Pontificate, and to protect with love, with veneration, and if necessary by arms, the ark of the new covenant.... Let the nations, then, turn their eyes to Italy, their ancient and loving mother, who holds the seeds of their regeneration. Italy is the organ of the supreme reason and the royal and ideal word; the fountain, rule and guardian of every other reason and eloquence; for there resides the Head that rules, the Arm that moves, the Tongue that commands and the Heart that animates Christianity at large.... As Rome is the seat of Christian wisdom, Piedmont is to-day the principal home of Italian military strength. Seated on the slopes of the Alps, as a wedge between Austria and France, and as a guard to the peninsula, of which it is the vestibule and peristyle, it is destined to watch from its mountains, and crush in its ravines, every foreign aggressor, compelling its powerful neighbors to respect the common independence of Italy.”