The year 1857 found him yet once more in Italy, where, for complicity in short-lived émeutes which took place at Genoa, Leghorn and Naples, he was again laid under sentence of death. Undiscouraged in the pursuit of the one great aim of his life by any such incidents as these, he returned to London, where he edited his new journal Pensiero ed Azione, in which the constant burden of his message to the overcautious practical politicians of Italy was: “I am but a voice crying Action; but the state of Italy cries for it also. So do the best men and people of her cities. Do you wish to destroy my influence? Act.” The same tone was at a somewhat later date assumed in the letter he wrote to Victor Emmanuel, urging him to put himself at the head of the movement for Italian unity, and promising republican support. As regards the events of 1859-1860, however, it may be questioned whether, through his characteristic inability to distinguish between the ideally perfect and the practically possible, he did not actually hinder more than he helped the course of events by which the realization of so much of the great dream of his life was at last brought about. If Mazzini was the prophet of Italian unity, and Garibaldi its knight errant, to Cavour alone belongs the honour of having been the statesman by whom it was finally accomplished. After the irresistible pressure of the popular movement had led to the establishment not of an Italian republic but of an Italian kingdom, Mazzini could honestly enough write, “I too have striven to realize unity under a monarchical flag,” but candour compelled him to add, “The Italian people are led astray by a delusion at the present day, a delusion which has induced them to substitute material for moral unity and their own reorganization. Not so I. I bow my head sorrowfully to the sovereignty of the national will; but monarchy will never number me amongst its servants or followers.” In 1865, by way of protest against the still uncancelled sentence of death under which he lay, Mazzini was elected by Messina as delegate to the Italian parliament, but, feeling himself unable to take the oath of allegiance to the monarchy, he never took his seat. In the following year, when a general amnesty was granted after the cession of Venice to Italy, the sentence of death was at last removed, but he declined to accept such an “offer of oblivion and pardon for having loved Italy above all earthly things.” In May 1869 he was again expelled from Switzerland at the instance of the Italian government for having conspired with Garibaldi; after a few months spent in England he set out (1870) for Sicily, but was promptly arrested at sea and carried to Gaeta, where he was imprisoned for two months. Events soon made it evident that there was little danger to fear from the contemplated rising, and the occasion of the birth of a prince was seized for restoring him to liberty. The remainder of his life, spent partly in London and partly at Lugano, presents no noteworthy incidents. For some time his health had been far from satisfactory, but the immediate cause of his death was an attack of pleurisy with which he was seized at Pisa, and which terminated fatally on the 10th of March 1872. The Italian parliament by a unanimous vote expressed the national sorrow with which the tidings of his death had been received, the president pronouncing an eloquent eulogy on the departed patriot as a model of disinterestedness and self-denial, and one who had dedicated his whole life ungrudgingly to the cause of his country’s freedom. A public funeral took place at Pisa on the 14th of March, and the remains were afterwards conveyed to Genoa.
(J. S. Bl.)
The published writings of Mazzini, mostly occasional, are very voluminous. An edition was begun by himself and continued by A. Saffi, Scritti editi e inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini, in 18 vols. (Milan and Rome, 1861-1891); many of the most important are found in the partially autobiographical Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini (1864-1870) and the two most systematic—Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe, a remarkable series of criticisms on Benthamism, St Simonianism, Fourierism, and other economic and socialistic schools of the day, and the treatise On the Duties of Man, an admirable primer of ethics, dedicated to the Italian working class—will be found in Joseph Mazzini: a Memoir, by Mrs E. A. Venturi (London, 1875). Mazzini’s “first great sacrifice,” he tells us, was “the renunciation of the career of literature for the more direct path of political action,” and as late as 1861 we find him still recurring to the long-cherished hope of being able to leave the stormy arena of politics and consecrate the last years of his life to the dream of his youth. He had specially contemplated three considerable literary undertakings—a volume of Thoughts on Religion, a popular History of Italy, to enable the working classes to apprehend what he conceived to be the “mission” of Italy in God’s providential ordering of the world, and a comprehensive collection of translations of ancient and modern classics into Italian. None of these was actually achieved. No one, however, can read even the briefest and most occasional writing of Mazzini without gaining some impression of the simple grandeur of the man, the lofty elevation of his moral tone, his unwavering faith in the living God, who is ever revealing Himself in the progressive development of humanity. His last public utterance is to be found in a highly characteristic article on Renan’s Réforme Morale et Intellectuelle, finished on the 3rd of March 1872, and published in the Fortnightly Review for February 1874. Of the 40,000 letters of Mazzini only a small part have been published. In 1887 two hundred unpublished letters were printed at Turin (Duecento lettere inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini), in 1895 the Lettres intimes were published in Paris, and in 1905 Francesco Rosso published Lettre inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini (Turin, 1905). A popular edition of Mazzini’s writings has been undertaken by order of the Italian government.
For Mazzini’s biography see Jessie White Mario, Della vita di Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1886), a useful if somewhat too enthusiastic work; Bolton King, Mazzini (London, 1903); Count von Schack, Joseph Mazzini und die italienische Einheit (Stuttgart, 1891). A. Luzio’s Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1905) contains a great deal of valuable information, bibliographical and other, and Dora Melegari in La giovine Italia e Giuseppe Mazzini (Milan, 1906) publishes the correspondence between Mazzini and Luigi A. Melegari during the early days of “Young Italy.” For the literary side of Mazzini’s life see Peretti, Gli scritti letterarii di Giuseppe Mazzini (Turin, 1904).
(L. V.*)
MAZZONI, GIACOMO (1548-1598), Italian philosopher, was born at Cesena and died at Ferrara. A member of a noble family and highly educated, he was one of the most eminent savants of the period. He occupied chairs in the universities of Pisa and Rome, was one of the founders of the Della Crusca Academy, and had the distinction, it is said, of thrice vanquishing the Admirable Crichton in dialectic. His chief work in philosophy was an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, and in this spirit he published in 1597 a treatise In universam Platonis et Aristotelis philosophiam praecludia. He wrote also De triplici hominum vita, wherein he outlined a theory of the infinite perfection and development of nature. Apart from philosophy, he was prominent in literature as the champion of Dante, and produced two works in the poet’s defence: Discorso composto in difesa della comedia di Dante (1572), and Della difesa della comedia di Dante (1587, reprinted 1688). He was an authority on ancient languages and philology, and gave a great impetus to the scientific study of the Italian language.
MAZZONI, GUIDO (1859- ), Italian poet, was born at Florence, and educated at Pisa and Bologna. In 1887 he became professor of Italian at Padua, and in 1894 at Florence. He was much influenced by Carducci, and became prominent both as a prolific and well-read critic and as a poet of individual distinction. His chief volumes of verse are Versi (1880), Nuove poesie (1886), Poesie (1891), Voci della vita (1893).