Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Such expression will suffice to show that Gioberti was in no sense a reliable prophet, but a philosopher of deeply religious strain who was seeking to reconcile the political freedom of Italy with the suzerainty of the Pope. He discountenanced all plotting and conspiracy, both of which were being advocated by Mazzini’s appeals to “Young Italy,” and built his country out of a confederation of states. Mazzini, impractical as he was in many respects, did at least realize that no such loosely joined federation could stand six months, and insisted above all in actual political hegemony of the states.

Gioberti’s “Primato,” deeply suggestive in itself to intellectual Italy, was given a remarkable impetus by the election at about the same time as its appearance of a new Pope. Pius IX., elected to the papal chair in June, 1846, seemed the very man to bring about the realization of Gioberti’s hopes. As Cardinal Mastai Ferreti he had been immensely popular, and he was known as a man of great amiability, keenly interested in new ideas, and ardent in the cause of Italian unity of action. His first act was to proclaim a general amnesty for political offenses, by which thousands of prisoners who had spent years in Roman prisons, or abroad in exile, many ignorant of the charges brought against them, were allowed to return to family and friends. He visited the poor and superintended the relief of the sick, even working among the Jewish quarters of Rome. He favored the construction of railroads, modified the restrictions of the press, and organized an advisory council of leading citizens. Small wonder that a world which had been used to the infinitely narrow-minded reactionaries Leo XII. and Gregory XVI. hailed Pius IX. as the regenerator of both church and state.

To a large degree Pius and Gioberti had both felt the same enthusiasms, and believed in the same principles, the cardinal one being that society was to be reformed by the Roman Church, and the government of society vested in the Church as a court of highest appeal. Different desires led the two men to this conclusion, Gioberti hoping that reform would come by means of concessions by arbitrary powers to the rights of the people, and the Pope believing that humanizing the form of church government would strengthen its actual power and increase the devotion of all nations to the Holy See. History proved that neither Gioberti nor Pius IX. was correct, but the seeming coincidence of their views increased the power of each. Gioberti gained the support of the liberal element in the Church, and the Pope gained the adhesion of intellectual men throughout Italy.

The new Pope had read Gioberti’s political writings, and had been deeply influenced by them. The “Primato,” issued at Brussels in 1842, had been prohibited in all the Italian states except Piedmont, and this fact added immensely to its weight with patriots. Charles Albert read it and admired it greatly; with the advent of Pius, he as well as men so diverse as Mazzini, Garibaldi, and D’Azeglio, looked for regeneration. Under the influence of this new spirit Charles Albert declared an amnesty for all exiles in 1846, and the philosopher-priest, after thirteen years of exile, was free to return home.

Long exile had somewhat crushed the ardent nature of the churchman, and he waited in Brussels until he was assured by friends that his return to Turin would be popular. Learning that his works, especially the “Primato” and the “Gesuita Moderno,” had made him a hero in the eyes of patriots, he finally returned to Turin in 1848. His entrance into the capital on April 29 of that year was the occasion for the greatest outburst of enthusiasm, a welcome intensified by the thought that this man had been banished for no other cause than the resentment of the hated Jesuits. The city was decorated and illuminated in his honor, deputations waited upon him, the King appointed him a Senator, but, as he had been elected as deputy by both Turin and Genoa to the Assembly of Representatives now to meet for the first time under the new constitution, he chose to sit in the lower house for Turin.

Invitations now poured in upon him from other cities, and before the Assembly met he made a tour of the states, commencing with Milan, and finally reaching Rome. He had three interviews with the Pope, and these meetings led him still further to believe that Pius was the man who should put his political philosophy into practice. He found the Romans, who of all Italians had most cause to hate the Jesuits, overjoyed with his work describing the modern abuses of that order, and anxious at all hazards that their new Pontiff should follow the new spirit of liberality.

While he was traveling and speaking publicly to all the peoples the Assembly met in Turin, and elected him its president. Count Balbo was Prime Minister, and in the same Parliament sat many of the younger element, including Cavour, and a large liberal section headed by D’Azeglio.

Meanwhile there had occurred the memorable battle-days of 1848, when the February revolution in Paris set fire to the tinder that had been preparing throughout Europe. The Milanese arose and drove out the Austrian garrison, Venice proclaimed the republic under Daniel Manin, and the cry of “a free Italy” rang from the Alps to Sicily. Pius IX., who had already made serious protest to Austria when in the preceding year that Power had garrisoned Ferrara, prepared to place himself actively at the head of the national movement, and in Piedmont Charles Albert took the field and went to the aid of Lombardy. At the close of 1848 Count Balbo resigned, and a new ministry was formed, in which Gioberti held a seat.

Unfortunately Pius IX. lacked the courage of his convictions, and when he heard that the Austrians were winning back their lost fields in Lombardy, his desire to send his troops to the aid of Piedmont cooled. The conservative elements about him gained his ear, and he replaced Mamiani, his Prime Minister, a man who wished him to give Rome a constitution, with Count Rossi, the French Ambassador, a man of great ability, but ultra conservative. In November, 1848, Rossi was assassinated, and shortly afterward the violence of the demands of the people convinced Pius that his best course was temporary flight. Acting upon this impulse on November 24, 1848, he escaped from Rome to Gaeta. Italy was beginning to see to what manner of man it had looked for deliverance.