MANZONI
The position of Manzoni in modern Italian life and literature is doubly interesting, both because his work in poetry and the drama marks the vital turning point in the historic battle of Classicism with Romanticism, and because his romance “I Promessi Sposi” is the greatest achievement in all Italian letters in the field of the novel. Walter Scott gave the country north of Tweed a history in the “Waverley Novels,” and Alessandro Manzoni’s writing a little later, at a time when Scott’s work was a great factor in European literature, gave Italy a history in the same sense. The inestimable service that the Waverley Novels did Scotland “I Promessi Sposi” did the disrupted states of Italy.
The spirit of the French Revolution was all-engrossing, as subversive of the old religions, philosophies, and literatures, as it was of the old politics. It represented the actual thoughts of the men of that era, but it developed so rapidly and fell into such excesses that its downfall was sudden and complete. Then the reaction set in, which, as De Sanctis in his history of the movement says, was “as rapid and violent as the revolution.... The white terror succeeded to the red.”
The same critic goes on to show that there were at this period two great philosophic principles, materialism and skepticism, and that in opposition to them there rose a spirituality which was carried to the heights of idealism. This spirituality approached the mysticism of mediæval days. “To the right of nature,” he says, “was opposed the divine right, to popular sovereignty legitimacy, to individual rights the State, to liberty authority and order. The middle ages returned in triumph.... Christianity, hitherto the target of all offense, became the center of every philosophical investigation, the banner of all social and religious progress.... The criterions of art were changed. There was a pagan art and a Christian art, where highest expression was sought in the Gothic, in the glooms, the mysteries, the vague, the indefinite, in a beyond which was called the ideal, in an inspiration towards the infinite, incapable of fruition and therefore melancholy.... To Voltaire and Rousseau succeeded Chateaubriand, De Staël, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Lamennais. And in 1815 appeared the Sacred Hymns of the young Manzoni.”
This spirit of idealism became the incentive for the new school of Romance in literature and the drama, in contrast to the drab materialism of the Revolutionary age. This school of Romance is not, however, to be considered as diametrically opposed to the Classical School, for they had much in common, and the contrast between them lay not so much in the spirit which animated them as in the strict regard of Classicism for the time-hallowed unities of time, place, and action, and the willingness of the Romantic School to sacrifice all these for freedom of movement and effect. The new school wished to find its poems in the experiences of men of that day, to write its dramas about any comedy or tragedy without regard to their classic form, it wished freedom to grow as its own spirit might dictate. In Germany and England great Romanticists were ripening into power, Goethe and Burger, Scott and Byron were being widely read in Italy, and the dramas of both Schiller and Shakespeare were continually translated and reproduced in Italian verse. The restoration of the Austrians and Bourbons after the Napoleonic downfall made any chance to speak political truths impossible, even in the half-veiled militant form used earlier by Alfieri. The Romantic School therefore, confined in its modern scope, turned backward, became retrospective, and sought its outlet in the glories of that mediæval world which had been so nearly akin in spirit to the modern sentiment. It turned from recent atheistic tendencies to a mood of great devotion, from lax morality to a high degree of upright conduct, from the regard of liberty as the greatest good to that of responsibility to mankind as the goal. Only distantly and secondarily political, this Romantic movement was first of all moral, and taught Italians that in order to be good citizens they must be good men first. As in all literary history the movement had a deep philosophic meaning, and this sense of moral responsibility was at the base of all Manzoni’s great creative efforts.
First of all, then, the literary movement which succeeded the Revolutionary era in Italy was idealistic as compared with the materialism of the days of the Napoleonic occupation, and secondly, it was Romantic in contradistinction to the Classicism of the earlier times. Greek and Roman themes for artistic expression were abandoned for the stories of national mediævalism, the Papacy became the center of its poetic aspiration, and its spirit, though highly ardent, was far more truly modern than that of Classicism had been. Our former critic, De Sanctis, says that in this new movement religion “is no longer a creed, it is an artistic motive.... It is not enough that there are saints, they must be beautiful: the Christian idea returns as art.... Providence comes back to the world, the miracle reappears in story, hope and prayer revive, the heart softens, it opens itself to gentle influences.... Manzoni reconstructs the ideal of the Christian Paradise and reconciles it with the modern spirit. Mythology goes, the classic remains; the eighteenth century is denied, its ideas prevail.”
Manzoni stood first for that new movement which opposed morality to license in national development, secondly for the temper which derided the classic limits of the three unities and held that a purely national event was as suitable for the purpose of artistic representation as the stories of classic history. In addition to this he first adopted that form of the Romantic spirit which was rising so rapidly into use in England in the novels of Walter Scott, in France in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lamennais, and in Germany in those of Goethe and Schiller, and gave Italy the result in his great novel of Italian life and history. For each of these reasons Manzoni represents a force potent in upbuilding Italian character and strengthening it at the time of its great crisis. Though he drew suggestions from abroad, he made his work Italian, and thoroughly Italian. “If,” says De Sanctis, “the Romantic School, by its name, its ties, its studies, its impressions, was allied to German traditions and French fashions, it was at bottom Italian in accent, aspiration, form, and motive.... Every one felt our hopes palpitating under the mediæval robe; the least allusion, the remotest meanings, were caught by the public, which was in the closest accord with the writers. The middle ages were no longer treated with historical and positive intention; they became the garments of our ideals, the transparent expression of our hopes.”
Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan, March 7, 1785, at about the time when Alfieri was accomplishing his greatest work. His father, Pietro Manzoni, belonged to the nobility, and bore the title of Count, a title which Alessandro, when he inherited it at an early age, refused to adopt, and continued to refuse to use during his whole life. His mother was the daughter of Beccaria, a man well known throughout Europe for his studies of political economy and criminology, and whose treatise entitled “Crimes and Punishments” was greatly admired in the Voltairean circles of France. Alessandro’s mother was a remarkably intelligent woman, with a fineness of nature which was inherited by her son, and which kept him unspoiled and simple through a life unusually acclaimed and applauded.
His earliest youth was spent among the hills of Galbiate, according to the custom of wealthy Lombard families, to send their children to the mountains in order to give them rugged health. The boy was in care of a woman who was successively his nurse and governess, and who taught him to read and stirred his interest in the legends and history of the neighboring countryside. When still a small boy he was sent to the church college of the Frati Lomaschi, education being then entirely in charge of ecclesiastics. He seems to have been in no wise an apt student, the close confinement, the strict discipline, and the dry manner of teaching subjects which were all of an eminently classical nature combining to dull his spirits and interest. Stories are current in Milan of Manzoni’s inability to learn, almost bordering on stupidity, but such stories are popular of men who have later shown great ability, and deserve little credence. Suffice it that he showed no great aptitude for learning at the school of the Frati Lomaschi, nor even later at the Collegio dei Nobili. At the latter he did, however, meet the poet Vincenzo Monti, a man well known throughout Italy, who had had for patrons the Cardinals Borghese and Braschi, a poet and dramatist whose pen was too apt to serve the political party in power, but who had achieved wide popularity, and whose poems were praised by critics as diverse-minded as Byron and Napoleon Bonaparte. Monti met the young Manzoni when he was on a visit to the college, and took an interest in him. Alessandro admired the poet, and it was perhaps this acquaintance which first actively interested him in literature as a pursuit. The meeting of the boy Walter Scott with Robert Burns is a parallel in Scottish literary annals.
In 1805, when he was twenty, Alessandro’s father died and the youth left the Collegio dei Nobili, and returned for a time to his mother. After a period of home life he was sent to the University of Pavia, the best-known of Lombard universities. His stay here was short. His mother, now a widow for several years, was advised to go to France for her health, and the close bonds which united mother and son would not allow of such a distant separation. Alessandro left the University and went with his mother to Auteuil, which was then a fashionable watering place where the beau monde of French art and letters gathered. Here and at Paris he met the leading thinkers of the time, Volney, Cabanis, De Tracy, Fauriel, and Condorcet, all of whom were interested in the young man as the grandson of Beccaria and because of his own originality of thought. These men called themselves idealogues, and claimed to have shaken off all the conventions of the previous centuries. As a student Manzoni had been an extremely liberal Catholic, and was usually considered by strict critics a follower of Voltaire. At Paris and Auteuil, however, he met so many men of the then prevalent atheistic mode of thought that his own interest in his family religion was quickened and he emerged from his friendship with such men as Cabanis and Condorcet a more pronounced churchman than he had been before. It was characteristic of him to cling tenaciously to those precedents and standards which had so long survived in his own country. His religion, however, was soon to become more to him than a field for philosophic speculation, for in 1810 he married Louise Henriette Blondel, daughter of a banker of Geneva, who, herself a convert from Protestantism to the Church of Rome, became most ardent in the church of her adoption. She soon brought Alessandro to her own enthusiastic view, and from the date of his marriage his philosophy never varied. Henriette Manzoni possessed rare beauty, and was long remembered in Milan “for her fresh blond head, and her blue eyes, her lovely eyes,” and the young husband was ideally happy with his bride. He had by now determined to try his skill at composition, and set himself as models the three men whose fame was then at its height in Italy, Alfieri, Vincenzo Monti, and Ugo Foscolo.
His bride had brought Manzoni a country seat as well as considerable property, and so he settled in the country and studied to perfect his style in writing. His first works were a series of Sacred Hymns, written directly under the influence of the renewed religious faith attendant on his marriage. These were published in 1815, and were at once noticed as poems alike remarkable for deep religious feeling and great beauty of expression. Appearing as they did at a time when religion was being bitterly assailed, churchmen looked upon the young poet as a distinct acquisition to their forces. Manzoni was not, however, even then a believer in the temporal power of the Pope. He said to Madame Colet, the author of “L’Italie des Italiens,” “I bow humbly to the Pope, and the Church has no more respectful son; but why confound the interests of earth and those of heaven? The Roman people are right in asking their freedom—there are hours for nations, as for governments, in which they must occupy themselves, not with what is convenient, but with what is just. Let us lay hands boldly upon the temporal power, but let us not touch the doctrine of the Church. The one is as distinct from the other as the immortal soul from the frail and mortal body. To believe that the Church is attacked in taking away its earthly possessions is a real heresy to every true Christian.”
This was the same view which Manzoni held throughout his life, and which, stated in his quoted words, gives the position taken by the most enlightened men of the Nationalist party in those later days when the question of the temporal power of the Pope became vital for Italy. What the Sacred Hymns showed was that Manzoni looked to the Church as the center of all true aspiration and religion rather than to philosophic theories as the safeguard of morals.
His next production carried him a step further in advance of his contemporaries, and marked him as the leader of the Romantic School. In 1819 he wrote his first tragedy, published the following year under the title “Il Conte di Carmagnola.” The subject-matter was the career of Carmagnola, a celebrated condottiere of the Middle Ages, and the dramatic form was entirely distinct from that classic construction which had so long tyrannized over the drama. In an introduction he explains his departure from the classic unities of time, place, and action, and gives his reasons for believing that the dramatist should be free to choose his own subject and to treat it in such fashion as shall seem to him best to express his idea. The Elizabethan dramatists had long before discarded the law of the unities in England, and had carried their plots over such courses of time and place as they pleased, and so had Schiller in Germany, but in Italy the law had been absolute from the time of Tasso to that of Alfieri. Eight years after Manzoni’s “Carmagnola” appeared, Victor Hugo brought on the great dramatic war in France with his “Cromwell,” and from the date of his ultimate triumph in Paris dates the downfall of the Classicists and the full glory of the Romanticists.
In Italy Manzoni’s step was violently attacked and defended. Conservatives opposed him, but the younger element immediately acclaimed him as their leader. The following year, 1821, he wrote his great ode on the death of Napoleon, which had occurred on May 5th, at St. Helena, and the news of which had greatly affected all Europe. The ode, entitled “Il Cinque Maggio,” was remarkable for great dignity, a deep and profound estimate of Napoleon’s genius, and a tribute to his colossal fame which even the French recognized as the fittest expression of poetic power. The ode was at once translated into German by Goethe, and into English by Gladstone and the Earl of Derby. It immediately placed him at the head of the new school of continental poets.
Very soon afterwards, in 1822, Manzoni wrote his second tragedy, “Adelchi,” a drama of the war between the Lombards and Charlemagne. It followed the lines of the Carmagnola, repeating the break from classical precedents, and establishing the value of the Romantic School. Both dramas were acted, but without success. The Carmagnola, when it was given at Florence in 1828, had the open support of the court to offset the attacks of the old school, and yet did not win even a mildly enthusiastic hearing. The Adelchi was tried with a similar result at Turin.
In spite of their ill reception on the stage, both of Manzoni’s dramas were immensely popular with readers, and, although based on incidents remote in point of time, both thrilled with a patriotism that stirred the hearts of all Italians. Mr. Howells says of the tragedies in his “Modern Italian Poets,” “The time of the Carmagnola is the fifteenth century; that of the Adelchi the eighth century; and however strongly marked are the characters,—and they are very strongly marked, and differ widely from most persons of Italian classic tragedy in this respect,—one still feels that they are subordinate to the great contests of elements and principles for which the tragedy furnishes a scene. In the Carmagnola the pathos is chiefly in the feeling embodied by the magnificent chorus lamenting the slaughter of Italians by Italians at the battle of Maclodio; in the Adelchi we are conscious of no emotion so strong as that we experience when we hear the wail of the Italian people, to whom the overthrow of their Longobard oppressors by the Franks is but the signal of a new enslavement. This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola, both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are much more dramatic than the dialogue. It is in the emotion of a spectator belonging to our own time rather than in that of an actor of those past times that the poet shows his dramatic strength, and whenever he speaks abstractly for country and humanity he moves us in a way that permits no doubt of his greatness.”
Manzoni’s greatest work, however, was yet to appear, for admirable as were his poems and inspiring as were his heroic dramas it was as a novelist that he was to reach his pinnacle of fame. It was also as a novelist that he was to become one of the men who directly created that national spirit which made modern Italy. Italy had had many poets, but no great novelist since Boccaccio. Fortunately Manzoni had not been confined to the literature of his own land, but had studied Goethe, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Scott, and drew his inspiration largely from them. He owed much to the English novel, and especially to the author of “Waverley,” a man whom he much admired, and who fully returned his admiration.
“I Promessi Sposi” appeared in 1825 and created a tremendous impression. Scott said that it was the greatest historical novel ever written, and Goethe said, “It satisfies us like perfectly ripe fruit.” It was the first and greatest Italian romance, and it awakened an interest throughout Europe in Italian history. The scene is laid in Milan under the harsh Spanish rule of the Seventeenth Century, and the reader is carried through the story of war and famine, and the great plague. Its merits are hard to exaggerate, the beauty of its descriptions and the accuracy of its history, the intense interest of its characters, a galaxy that embraces every walk of life, the truth of its philosophy are equally remarkable. The universal feelings of humanity pulse through its pages; as Dr. Garnett says of it, “as a picture of human nature the book is above criticism; it is just the fact, neither more nor less.”
Victor Hugo in “Les Miserables” wrote a book which appealed to the innate democracy of man, but Manzoni in “I Promessi Sposi” made the same appeal without having recourse to the Frenchman’s use of the grotesque and gigantic. Through the whole of the latter novel runs the note of a profound sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, a note which is perhaps stronger in this book than in any romance ever written. It is the work of a great mind, fully alive to every sensibility and sympathy, accurate in its judgments, and to which, in the ancient words, nothing human is foreign.
Cardinal and priest, brigand and simple hero, grande dame and the lovely girl whose hand promised in marriage gives part title to the book, are each perfect in their way, and bring the characteristics of a past century vividly before the present. Goethe pointed out the too great prominence of the historical element, but the very careful attention paid by Manzoni to the accuracy of his setting must add to the sense of reality which he so completely gains. The novel was rapidly translated into all modern languages, and at once created a school of historical novelists in Italy.
To us who have seen the romantic movement give place in turn to that of realism, it is difficult to understand what Scott and Hugo, Goethe and Manzoni did for the men of the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century. They made people feel as they had not felt before the wide scope of existence and the importance of the individual. Literature had been a matter of form and convention, of classic model, of purely aristocratic vision. The new movement was part of that same impulse which was demanding constitutions of kings and bringing the middle classes into political prominence. It was an awakening of public spirit which had slept soundly through several centuries. Voltaire and Rousseau, Alfieri and Foscolo had sounded the first notes of a new intellectual renaissance, and now Hugo and Manzoni went further and stepped boldly out from all classic restraints.
Although “I Promessi Sposi” is more widely known and more highly regarded than any Italian book, except the Divine Comedy of Dante, Manzoni’s personality impressed itself but little upon his age. He had not the fighting nature of Victor Hugo, nor the mental unrest of Byron, two of his great contemporaries. He preferred the retirement of his farm to the excitements of Milan, and although he was always an ardent advocate of Italian unity and freedom he took but small part in the great events that soon delivered Lombardy from Austria. After the appearance of “I Promessi Sposi” he wrote little more. “Formerly,” he said, “the muse came after me, now I should have to go after her.” His quiet life laid him open to the charge of an indifferent patriotism, but those who knew him best understood that such an accusation was bitterly untrue.
When the Austrian government returned to Milan the members of the Lombard nobility were required to write their names in an official register or forfeit their titles. Manzoni preferred to lose his claim as a patrician, and later refused a decoration, saying that he had made a vow never to wear any order of knighthood. He afterwards offered the same excuse to Victor Emmanuel when the latter wished to decorate him. He was elected a Senator in 1860, when the first National Assembly met, and went to Turin to take his seat, but soon after retired to the privacy of his own home on Lake Maggiore. Here he entertained many great guests, among them Cavour and D’Azeglio, to whom he was warmly attached. His life flowed on an even current, the existence of a philosophic spirit interested as an observer rather than as an actor.
Henriette Manzoni died in 1833, and in 1837 he married Teresa Borri, widow of Count Stampa. He saw his children grow up about him and go to take their places in the world. Gradually he saw the cause of national freedom win its way, and the King to whom he was so devoted unite the scattered states under one crown. He saw the fall of the temporal power of the Pope, and with it the consummation of his hopes. In 1873, at the age of eighty-eight, he died, universally mourned and revered. A Milanese journal said: “After the confessor left the room Manzoni called his friends and said to them, ‘When I am dead, do what I did every day; pray for Italy—pray for the king and his family—so good to me!’ His country was the last thought of this great man dying, as in his whole long life it had been his most vivid and constant affection.”
It was nearly fifty years since his last important work had appeared, but during that long half century of inactivity Manzoni’s fame had grown steadily. His romance had passed through one hundred and eighteen editions in Italian alone. Milan decreed him a state funeral, and representatives of all European countries appeared at the old Lombard capital with addresses from their sovereigns. It has been said that Manzoni’s death evoked a greater unanimity of sentiment than has been called forth by that of any other great author of modern times, except possibly by that of Sir Walter Scott. Even those who had criticised Manzoni had always spoken their opinions in a spirit of reverence. He was regarded as the great guiding figure in the course of the new national literature.
A singularly uneventful life for one of the great builders of a nation, uneventful even for that of a scholar or poet. Moreover the roll of his works is small numerically, comprising his Sacred Hymns, the two dramas, the Ode on Napoleon, the single novel, and in addition only a few essays, the “Innominata” or Column of Infamy, an historical note to “I Promessi Sposi,” an essay on the Romantic School, called “Letters on Romanticism,” and one entitled “Letters on the Unity of Time and Place,” the purpose of which was to show that the unity of action is the only unity of importance to the dramatist. The bulk of his work was not great, but each expression of it was masterful in its way, the Hymns true poetry as well as deep religious sentiment, the Ode considered the finest ode in all Italian poetry, the dramas pulsing with life and feeling, the novel unsurpassed. These were the literary values of his work, but these in themselves would not account for Manzoni’s influence on his times. He was a moral and political force, showing the men of his day that nations can only hope for liberty and peace when the citizens respect the law and virtue. A generation that had lived through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era needed some one to lead them back to moral sanity, and this was the greatest of Manzoni’s works.
Like Gioberti, like D’Azeglio, like Victor Emmanuel, Manzoni was a staunch Catholic as well as a true Italian. A close friend, Signor Bonghi, said of him: “He had two faiths, one in the future of Catholicism, another in the future of Italy, and the one, whatever was said, whatever happened, never disturbed the other. In anxious moments, when the harmony between the two was least visible, he expected it the most, and never allowed his faith in one or the other to be shaken. Rome he wished to be the abode of the King; Rome he wished also to be the abode of the Pope. Obedient to the Divine Authority of the Pontificate, no one passed a more correct judgment upon its civil character, or defended with more firmness, when speaking upon the subject, the right of the State.”
That he was the poet of resignation, as Monnier declared, is disproved by his dramas and his novel. The martial lyrics of the plays burn with a spirit only too evidently fired by the contemporary subjection of Italy to Austria and France. Take for example the first and last verses of one of the lyrics in the Adelchi, as rendered into English by Miss Ellen Clarke:
Could Manzoni have meant such words to speak other than of the Austrians and Bourbons who were grinding Italians into servitude? Could his marvelous meter, which has been said in its “plunging” to suggest a charge of horses, have been meant other than to drive his countrymen to self assertion? Manzoni was patriot as well as artist, and read his times with no unskilful eye. When Victor Emmanuel visited Milan in 1859 he said that he should like to meet the poet, and, when told that the latter was ill, declared that he would go to him. Manzoni, however, would not hear of this, and as soon as he was able called upon the King. The sovereign’s marks of regard and respect overwhelmed the poet. Later he said of the meeting, “I see in the character of the King the intervention of Providence. He is exactly the sovereign that circumstances require to accomplish the resurrection of Italy. He has rectitude, courage, incorruptible honesty, and disinterestedness; he seeks not glory or fortune for himself, but for his country. He is so simple, never caring to appear great, that he does not meet the admiration of those who seek to find in princes and heroes theatrical actions and grandiloquent words. He is natural because he is true, and this makes his enemies say that he is wanting in regal majesty. To found Italian unity he has risked his throne, and his life.”
Manzoni’s prophecies came true and he himself had no small part in accomplishing that great end towards which so many men of diverse forces worked. As well as king and statesman, warrior and prophet, the man of letters taught his people how to find their independence.
GIOBERTI
Gioberti’s signal gift to his countrymen was his great book, “II Primato d’Italia,” a statement of the causes of Italy’s early primacy among European nations, and a philosophic theory for her regeneration. Like Savonarola he flayed the vices of his time and preached redemption through Christian living, but, unlike the great Fra, he undertook to teach that the Church was no less fitted to be the seat of statecraft than of religion. It was this that gained him the ear of Rome as well as that of Piedmont, and made it seem for a moment as though he had found the solution of Italy’s troubles.
The effect of the “Primato” was felt from Turin to Naples. “The book,” said Minghetti, the statesman of a later decade, “seemed to some an extravagance, to others a revelation. The truth is, that while many of its ideas were peculiar to the author, and partook of his character, his studies, and his profession, the substance of it responded to a sentiment still undefined, but which had been slowly developing in the minds of Italians. The idea of nationality had, in the previous years, spread far and wide through many channels, open and secret, and the desire of a great and free country had taken possession of the majority of the younger men; but the methods hitherto employed had proved so inefficient that weariness and disgust had followed. Experience had proved that conspiracies, secret societies, and partial insurrections were of no utility—that they made the governments more severe, retarded civil progress, arrested the increase of public prosperity, plunged many families into misery, and did not even win the approbation of civilized nations.
“The rumors of wars and of European insurrections which were circulated every spring time, the mystic declamations of Mazzini in the name of God and the people, ... all these things showed that the time had come to try another method, more serious, more practical, and surer.... Gioberti, a Piedmontese exile for the sake of liberty, had taken part in the earliest phases of the “Giovine Italia” or had been in relation with its chiefs, but had wearied of that pompous and impotent society. His intellect had anticipated that change which had been imperceptibly operating and now began to appear widely ... but obscurely in the consciousness of many men. This opportuneness and coincidence of the ideas of the author with the spirit of the day gave his book a special importance.... The purpose of the book was to prove that Italy, although it had lost all political value for the outside world, contained all the conditions of moral and political revival, and that to effect this change there was no need of revolutions, invasions, or imitations of the foreigner, since political revival is limited to three heads—unity, independence, and liberty—the first two of which might be obtained by a confederation of the various states under the presidency of the Pope, and the last by means of internal reforms in each state, effected by their respective Princes without danger or diminution of their real power.”
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.”
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.
From Gaeta the self-exiled Pontiff issued a formal protest against the violence to which he stated his people had subjected him, and by which means alone his latest enactments had been extorted from him, and declared all measures passed in Rome during his absence null and void.
In Rome the brief Republic of Mazzini held sway, and at Gaeta France and Austria sought to cheer the Pope. Charles Albert, his hope of Papal aid fading rapidly, attempted for a few months to stem the tide of French and Austrian influence over Pius. He tried to effect a reconciliation between the Holy Father and the Romans, and Gioberti wrote to the Pope, saying: “I hope the Court of Gaeta is about to return to sentiments more evangelical, more worthy of Pius IX. I am sorry to have to say that the Court of Gaeta, repudiating the doctrine of conciliation, and adopting that of vengeance and blood, does not seem to know that it is repudiating the maxims of Christ, and putting in their stead those of Mahomet.” In addition Gioberti did his best to gain the Pope’s concurrence in a plan for the formation of an Italian federation of princes, but without success. The bolt was shot, Pius had had his day as popular idol, and having proven that Italy had nothing to hope politically from the Pope, quickly retroceded to the plane of the Bourbon Princes and Grand Dukes. To Gioberti, who had hoped so much from the spiritual and temporal power of Rome, the disillusionment was terrific.
That he was a theorist rather than a practical statesman he now showed conclusively by advocating as minister at Turin that Piedmont should anticipate the inevitable restoration of the rulers of central Italy by the governments of Austria and France by restoring them itself. Had this plan been adopted the House of Savoy would have been irretrievably ruined in the eyes of patriotic Italy, and the country left without any champion of freedom. Fortunately his proposal met with small favor.
The battle of Novara ended the struggles of Charles Albert, and Victor Emmanuel, a man of sterner make, came into control. A new ministry was formed for the new King by General Delaunay, who included Gioberti again in the cabinet, although he held no portfolio. He was not in touch, however, with the new elements of government, he could not appreciate a statecraft that was in essence radical, and after several disagreements he was appointed on a nominal mission to Paris, which in reality removed him from any part in the government at Turin. His best work had been done in the service of Charles Albert, he was not in touch with the coming policies of the adroit Cavour.
The stirring years of 1848 and 1849 passed, the dream of the Pope’s leadership vanished, and the yoke of the foreigner seemed to have settled as heavily as ever upon the states of Italy. Again exiles gathered in London and Paris, Mazzini returned to his English fogs, and we find Gioberti the confidant in Paris of many banished fellow-countrymen. The Marquis Pallavicino, friend of Manin and many other patriots, became his bosom friend. He was offered a pension by his government, but declined it, and devoted himself to writing. In 1851 he published his great work, the “Rinnovamento Civile d’Italia,” in which he pointed out the mistakes made by Italians in 1848 and 1849, acknowledged his own blunders in political sagacity, and designated Piedmont as the leader of a great national movement, which should ultimately end in a regenerated Italy, with its capital in a lay and constitutional Rome. He had met and talked with Cavour in Paris during the preparation of this book, and he had had the perspicacity to predict that Cavour was the man who should unite his land. The statesman was half amused, half impressed by Gioberti’s words, he had always considered him a man who just failed of being a great statesman because he was a visionary, but he was profoundly impressed by the grasp and depth of his new work.
The “Rinnovamento” was indeed true prophecy, the philosopher had at last seen the futility of a political confederation of peoples under a religious head, he realized that Princes supported by foreign Powers would never unite for any common end. “Except the young sovereign who rules Piedmont,” he says in the “Rinnovamento,” “I see no one in Italy who could undertake our emancipation. Instead of imitating Pius, Ferdinand, and Leopold, who violated their sworn compacts, he maintains his with religious observance—vulgar praise in other times, but to-day not small, being contrary to example.” Victor Emmanuel, reading the book, was as much impressed by it as Cavour had been, and time and again repeated, “I will do what Gioberti says.”
Pius IX., still amiable, still suave, was kept in Rome by French arms, and was solely occupied in proving his own insufficiency as a temporal ruler of any sort whatever. He had retracted all his liberal acts, made friends with all his old foes, and placed entire charge of state affairs in the hands of that most unsavory of men, Cardinal Antonelli. Under him the Jesuits resumed their former activity, and soon had closed completely about the Pope. Then it was that the works of Gioberti, the “Primato” and the “Prolegomeni,” which had once so greatly delighted the Pope, were placed upon the Index Expurgatorius and publicly condemned by the Church. The action had no other effect than to amuse the world; Italy and all friends of Italy had read and pondered the great treatises, and drawn their own conclusions from them irrespective of the wishes of the Roman See.
Gioberti died in Paris October 16, 1852, just as the new era in Italian affairs which he had predicted in his last book was actually commencing with the advent of Cavour as Prime Minister of Piedmont.
When we review Gioberti’s work we find that it was chiefly important as a stimulus to Italian patriotic thought, as a threshing out of theories and principles in preparation for a true realization of national needs and hopes. That the philosophy, in so far as it was political, of his “Primato” failed to prove true when attempted in practice, and must inevitably so have failed as we see now, did not affect his influence over his own generation. That influence was one which contrasted sharply with Mazzini’s, Gioberti always preaching orderly organization, Mazzini daring attempts of many sorts, both alike in the ardor of their enthusiasm.
While Mazzini appealed to the mass, Gioberti appealed to the scholars, the clergy, the thinking classes, and his appeal was patriotic as well as intellectual. In his “Primato” he stirs his countrymen to consider their country’s place among the nations. “While to the north,” he says, “there is a people numbering only twenty-four millions who rule the sea, make Europe tremble, own India, vanquish China and occupy the best parts of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania, what great things have we Italians done? What are our manual and intellectual exploits? Where are our fleets and our colonies? What rank do our legates hold; what force do they wield; what wise or authoritative influence do they exert in foreign courts? What weight attaches to the Italian name in the balance of European power? Foreigners, indeed, know and still visit our country, but only for the purpose of enjoying the changeless beauty of our skies and of looking upon the ruins of our past. But what profits it to speak of glory, riches, and power? Can Italy say she has a place in the world? Can she boast of a life of her own and of a political autonomy, when she is awed by the first insolent and ambitious upstart who tramples her under foot and galls her with his yoke? Who is there who shudders not when he reflects that, disunited as we are, we must be the prey of any assailant whatever, and that we owe even that wretched fraction of independence which charters and protocols still allow us to the compassion of our neighbors?” Then he concludes, “Although all this has come upon us through our own fault; nevertheless, by the exercise of a little strength of will and determination, without upheavals or revolutions and without perpetrating injustice, we can still be one of the first races in the world.”
With consummate skill he arranged a national program in which the Pope, the Princes, the people, even Austria, should have a part, and it was scarcely to be wondered that inasmuch as each interest was flattered each thought well of the program. The clergy were no less delighted with the eloquence of one of their own number than with his teaching that religion and patriotism should go hand in hand, those high in power felt that their power would be left them under his theory, and the people were stirred by his eloquence and dreams of what Italy should become. As a result there arose what was known as the “Neo-Guelph” party, which, harking back to the Middle Ages, sought to place the Pope at the head of the national movement. And, by a beautiful coincidence of history, just at that moment a new Pontiff, one of that clergy which had so greatly admired Gioberti’s writings, ascended St. Peter’s throne. In these facts you have the cause of Gioberti’s commanding position in the early years of the great struggle.
Unfortunately Gioberti’s theories were dreams, not even so practical as the aspirations of Mazzini’s “Young Italy.” He had failed utterly to grasp the need of absolute administrative concentration and did not accurately estimate the jealousies and prides of the petty Princes and the churchmen. He believed that those forces which had so long destroyed Italian unity could be made to unite to restore it, he believed that the Roman Church could exercise a wise temporal authority. He looked back to the Middle Ages, and spoke with some of Savonarola’s words. He appealed to his people’s ancient love of art and letters, to the glories of the mediæval cities, to the world-wide authority of Rome and St. Peter’s. The appeal stirred the imagination of the intellectual classes, and drew the attention of other countries to the fallen estate of Italy. Beyond that it could not be effective; the needs of State and Church, of Princes and people, had grown too unalterably opposed. Mazzini was far nearer right, a truer teacher, a surer guide.
The time came when Gioberti recognized that Italy’s salvation lay in the strong hand, and this he acknowledged in his last book. It is the truest of all his political philosophies because he had then understood that the future belonged to men of such abilities as were possessed by Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, and to a well-knit nation rather than to a confraternity of ill-assorted states.
Yet for all its fallacies Gioberti’s “Primato” woke intellectual Italy from a sleep which had lasted centuries, and made it consider the problem of its regeneration.