Re-imagining Democracy 18th-19th Centuries

RESUMEN El trabajo analiza las polémicas en torno a los usos del concepto de democracia durante el proceso de Independencia chilena, entre 1808 y 1833. Mediante una aproximación desde la historia conceptual se examinan los debates y diversas valoraciones de la democracia en sus diferentes articulaciones semánticas con otros conceptos (como pueblo, libertad e igualdad) así como con una serie de problemas propios de la constitución de un régimen de modernidad política, en especial, la delimitación de los marcos de participación ciudadana. ABSTRACT The paper analyzes the controversies about the uses of the concept of democracy during the Chilean Independence (1808-1833). Through an approach from the conceptual history, the article analyzes the discussions and various assessments of democracy in

The essay focuses on the Calabrian radical group who had a leading role in the 1848 revolution in Naples, as one of the possible key to interpreting the Neapolitan revolution itself. Moving from the assumption that the subversive choice and its specific contents resulted in more complex interactions, the investigation wants to track the social background, the ideological references, the cultural and literary influences of 25 patriots whose political experiences are detectable in the period considered and who would have been protagonist in the 1848 revolution from 1830 (when the patriot Benedetto Musolino began to develop the ideological base of the sect I figliuoli della Giovine Italia) until 1847. The analysis draws upon both edited documents written by the Calabrian patriots and the coeval memorialists, and the primary sources in the Central Museum of Risorgimento, the State Archive of Naples, the Private Archive of Domenico Mauro, the State Archive of Reggio Calabria. This article forms part of a wider research theme on the radical movement and the political mobilization in Naples during the 1848 revolution. My doctoral thesis researches have been conducted on the political demonstrations during the 1848 revolution in Naples. From this investigation it has clearly emerged how much the radical fringe of the liberal faction acquired and increased popular consensus in opposition to the various constitutional governments, as it succeeded in both managing new tools of communication than impressing political influence through demonstrations, newspapers and flyers, and also succeeded in spreading its propaganda among institutions and public spaces such as universities, public administrations, and the National Guard which was already agitated by internal conflicts that became more of political nature during the 1848 revolution. Therefore, to be able to deepen the origins of the 1848 radical propaganda in Naples and the reasons of its success among the different sections of city population, it is necessary to survey the long formation of the militant group that actually drove the actions in the streets during the 1848 riots – a group formed in prevalence by militants of Calabrian origins, coming from the provinces of Cosenza, Catanzaro, and Reggio Calabria. In that respect, I have identified 25 patriots, whose political story is in fact traced in the period 1831-1848, since their crucial actions took part in the cornerstone events of the southern political democratic process: the affiliation to the sect of "The sons of young Italy" founded by the Calabrian republican Benedetto Musolino from Pizzo Calabro; the participation in the insurrection attempts in Calabria, in the years 1837, 1843-44, and 1847; the contribution to the urban demonstrations in the capital city during the 1848 riots; the involvement in the Neapolitan events of May 15; and, finally, the support to the revolutionary committees that were formed in Calabrian cities between May and June of the same 1848. KEY WORDS: Naples 1848, European revolutions of 1848, revolution, Kingdom of two Sicilies, Calabrian radicals, republicanism, collective biography. Il saggio prende in esame il gruppo dei radicali calabresi che durante la rivoluzione del 1848 fu protagonista della mobilitazione a Napoli, come una delle possibili chiavi di interpretazione della rivoluzione stessa. Muovendo dall’assunto che la scelta eversiva e i suoi specifici contenuti furono risultato della complessa interazione di molteplici variabili, lo studio mira a ricostruire il profilo sociale, i riferimenti ideologici e le esperienze politico-culturali e letterarie di 25 militanti dal 1830 (anno in cui il patriota Benedetto Musolino formulava i riferimenti ideologici della setta I figliuoli della Giovine Italia) al 1847. L’analisi attinge sia alla documentazione edita prodotta dagli stessi calabresi e dai memorialisti coevi, sia dai carteggi privati e le fonti di polizia custoditi presso il Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, l’Archivio di Stato di Napoli, L’Archivio privato di Domenico Mauro e l’Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria. PAROLE CHIAVE: Parole chiave: Napoli 1848, rivoluzioni europee del 1848, rivoluzione, Regno delle Due Sicilie, radicali calabresi, repubblicanesimo, biografia collettiva.

The paper discusses the political thought of Cesare Balbo (1789–1853), a leading Risorgimento moderate liberal and politician, in the context of the efforts by the Piedmontese political elite to support and legitimise the constitutional regime introduced by King Charles Albert in 1848. Revising current interpretations of Risorgimento moderate liberalism as backward and provincial, it seeks to locate the political thought of Balbo and his colleagues at the heart of contemporary European, and particularly French, debates regarding liberty and aristocracy. In particular, it argues that the views of Balbo and more broadly Piedmontese moderate liberals on centralisation, the importance of a social elite to defend freedom, and equalisation, were conversant with the ideas of Guizot, Chateaubriand, Burke and Tocqueville. Their harsh condemnation of republican virtue, on the other hand, rendered their liberalism peculiar in the Italian context, where Tuscan moderate liberals continued to resort to the language of civic humanism after 1848 to defend their political and social model.

L’articolo prende in esame il progetto di Costituzione inedito del democratico Casimiro De Lieto (Reggio Calabria 1803- Firenze 1874). De Lieto inviò le "Basi d’una Costituzione pel Napoletano" - questo il nome del documento-al ministro degli affari esteri Luigi Dragonetti Il 13 aprile del 1848, durante la rivoluzione napoletana, affinché il Regno delle Due Sicilie si dotasse di una Costituzione più avanzata sul piano dei diritti civili e politici rispetto a quella concessa dal sovrano il 10 febbraio dello stesso anno. Lo studio punta ad approfondire l’idea di democrazia che i democratici napoletani espressero durante la rivoluzione del 1848 . L’ambizione è quella di metterne in luce le diversità con il liberalismo nel Napoletano e di fornire gli elementi che consentano di contestualizzare la formazione tra i movimenti repubblicani e democratici in Europa.
Inside the Democratic Constitution. State, Economy and Religion in Casimiro De Lieto's unedited project
The article analyses the unedited Costitution project written by the democratic activist Casimiro De Lieto (Reggio Calabria 1803- Florence 1874). On 13th April 1848, De Lieto sent his “ Basi d’una Costituzione pel Napoletano” –this is how he named the document- to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Dragonetti, in order to ask for a more advanced Costitution than that granted by the King a few months before. The research aims at deepening the idea of democracy Southern Italian democrats shared during the 1848 revolution, by focussing on De Lieto’s project principles and rules. In particular, the study aims both at tracing the main differences between democrats and liberals in the Neapolitan context and at providing the basic elements for an analysis of Neapolitan democracy in the framework of the European republican movements.

Resumen: Entre los diferentes símbolos del republicanismo español, las alegorías femeninas ocuparon un lugar preeminente, al convertirse en figuras rectoras de espacios y de prácticas sociales. Ese "peso simbólico" contrastaba con la realidad de una cultura política esencialmente androcéntrica, en la cual las mujeres padecían un manifiesto apartamiento de cualquier ámbito de decisión. El sesgo de género tenía su origen en el propio contexto social pero también en la socialización política diferenciada que vivían desde niñas. En ocasiones, hubo correligionarias que se vistieron de alegoría de la República y entonces, de algún modo, el plano simbólico y el real se entremezclaron.

"This book provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of democracy in Europe, with a focus on the new EU member states, and makes an important and original contribution to the debate on the future of European democracy.

Author Paul Blokker seeks to provide a critical reconceptualization of the notion of democratic political culture by developing a ‘multiple democracies’ theoretical approach. He draws on debates in democratization theory and normative political theory, and presents a cultural-sociological approach for the analysis of democratization and democratic regimes. This approach emphasizes the historical and cultural embedment of democracy, identifies a potential variety of ‘ethics of democracy’ that underpin democratic political cultures, and points to the significance of democratic imagination in the interpretation and recombination of such ethics.

The book explores the relevance of this approach by analysing multiple political cultures and their role in the emergence of democratic regimes in three new member states - Hungary, Poland, and Romania - providing a detailed description and analysis of political cultures by means of the analysis of constitutional politics, constitutional texts, and political elite discourses, and the identification of distinct politico-cultural elements that distinguish these societies from each other.

It will be of interest to students and scholars of democracy, European studies, post-communist studies, political theory and comparative politics."

SOMMARIO: L'articolo si sviluppa in tre parti. Nella prima si affronta il tema della coesistenza della doppia patria, della doppia fedeltà, del doppio senso di appartenenza, borbonica e ital-iana, nel Regno di Napoli fino al 1848. Dopo la rivoluzione del 1848 l'aspirazione alla nazionalità italiana si disgiunge dalla fedeltà alla dinastia borbonica. La seconda parte è dedicata all'anal-isi critica della storiografia sul '48 europeo compiuta da Giuseppe Galasso. Nella terza parte è analizzata la tendenza interpretativa più recente sullo sviluppo di un movimento radicale durante la congiuntura quarantottesca napoletana. ABSTRACT: The article in three parts proposes a reflection on the revolution of 1848 in Naples. In the first part the focus is the living together of the Bourbon fidelity and the Italian nation in Neapolitan Kingdom until 1848. After this time " Neapolitan Nation " and " Italian Nation " were different, opposite senses of belonging. The second part is a critical analysis of the historiogra-phy on the European Revolution of 1848 made by Giuseppe Galasso. In the late part I discuss some recent studies about the rising of a radical movement in Neapolitan Revolution.

The article discusses the way in which liberals conceived the relationship between freedom of the press, political liberty, and the Risorgimento. It argues that while all Risorgimento patriots advocated the introduction of freedom of the press, and saw it as a precondition for the success of their programmes, they also held different views on its applicability. While early liberals like Giuseppe Pecchio and Ugo Foscolo, in tune with the ideas of Benjamin Constant, were in favour of the largest possible freedom of speech, Italian moderates were less convinced of the benefits of an unchecked proliferation of political media. In line with the ideas of the French doctrinaires, Cesare Balbo, Vincenzo Gioberti, Terenzio Mamiani and Carlo Farini insisted on the pedagogical role of the press, and on the need to prevent it from becoming an instrument in the hands of democratic leaders and demagogues, one that would lead either to the proliferation of factions or to the establishment of a dictatorship of the majority.

By focusing on its electoral role, this paper revises some of the prevailing views regarding the Catholic Church's impact on the politics of Colombia between 1830 and 1930. To this aim, the paper offers a brief general overview of the Church during the period, in an attempt to locate its sources of power. Then, I look at the place the religious cleavage had in the formation of the party system that emerged in the republic by the mid-nineteenth century. Next, I examine the various ways in which the Church was involved in the electoral process both before and after the emergence of the party system. Finally, the concluding section considers the wider implications that such involvement might have represented for the history of democracy in Colombia. Overall, the paper addresses the following questions: What had the historical role of the Catholic Church been in the politics of Colombia since independence? How did the Church-the hierarchy, the clergy and the laity-relate to the electoral history and partisan divisions of the country? And to what extent did the involvement of the Church in electioneering enhance or hinder the process of democratization over this century?

The revolution of 1848 was a crucial step for the apprenticeship in the democratic practices in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Historians have been dedicating scarce attention to this theme, since they consider political life in Southern Italy as a prerogative of a very small group of capital citizens.
This book deals with the political mobilization in Naples during 1848 and aims at challenging the idea of the Italian Mezzogiorno as peripherical in the European revolutionary context. To this end, two aspects of the process are focussed and explored: first, the street politics, which played a key role in the making of public opinion, i.e. the demonstrations, the petitions, the sociabilité in the coffeehouses and the popular figures; second, the radical group which tried to lead the political mobilization in the Bourbon capital. The latter, in addition, has been deep investigated in its cultural, ideological and socio-economical aspects with the ambition to explain its contribution to the realization of the much more widespread “imaginaries”and istances of the Neapolitan revolution.

The article analyses how nineteenth-century Spanish Democrats understood democracy, what were the issues at stake, how they were debated, and how political and social discourses evolved. It focuses on Democrats’ conceptions of citizenship, freedom, equality, sovereignty, political activity and the nation, as well as on their ideas on the most convenient form of government and organization of the State. It traces the process through which their original idea of democracy as an active and immediate exercise of power evolved into another centred on the control and limitation of power and the promotion of individual autonomy. It finally points out their holistic vision of society and their difficulty accepting a plurality of interests and parties, which had considerable influence on their political practice and their attempts at self-organization.

The establishment of representative government in Portugal implied the free participation of the citizenry in the formation of public opinion. The right to petition was initially understood as an individual form of participation, but soon it would be practiced through public gatherings, marches and other displays of the collective will of a multitude. Initially, most of those forms of popular participation were identified with riots and insurrections, but during the second half of the nineteenth century, the public meeting became institutionalized. This paper explores the process whereby political campaigns based on drafting petitions,
collecting signatures, and holding public meetings became a legitimate political form.

L’articolo esplora la rete di relazioni politiche che si sviluppò intorno al democratico meridionale
Casimiro De Lieto, dai primi scambi epistolari  - nel 1833 - sino alle cospirazioni per la liberazione
del Mezzogiorno del 1854-56. Attraverso l’analisi della leadership di De Lieto, la circolazione di
idee, programmi e immagini fra questi e i corrispondenti e le  trasformazioni della rete, l’articolo
intende contribuire allo studio delle rivoluzioni del XIX secolo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia da un
duplice punto di vista: le motivazioni soggettive alla base delle scelte politiche; il contributo delle
relazioni interindividuali e dei gruppi territoriali alle rivoluzioni. La ricerca attinge al fondo del
patriota custodito presso il Museo Centrale del Risorgimento (Roma).

"Correspondence and Political Networks. Casimiro De Lieto's Network Between Italian Mezzogiorno and Roman Republic"
The article investigates the political network of the democratic, Southern Italian patriot Casimiro
De Lieto, starting with from his early epistolary exchanges – in 1833- to the conspirancies for the
liberation of Mezzogiorno in 1854-56. By analisyng the leadership of De Lieto, the circulation of
ideas, programmes and images between him and his correspondents and changes in his network, the
article aims at offering a contribution to the study of the XIX revolutions in Southern Italy. This
research  is  utilizing  two  approaches:  the  subjective  motivation  for  political  choice;    the
interpersonal exchanges and territorial groups contributing to revolution. The investigation draws
upon De Lieto’s personal fond in the Central Museum of Risorgimento (Rome).

That the French Revolution was the product of a vast anti-religious conspiracy was a commonplace of counterrevolutionary writing already in 1790. However, it was only after the beginning of the European wars in 1792 that Catholic intellectuals explicitly started conceiving the fight against revolutionary France as a war of religion. This paper traces the transnational development of this idea, from its origins in the Spain of the War of the Pyrenees to its re-elaboration in Francisco Gustà’s Critical Essay on the Crusades, published in Italy in 1794. A Catalan ex-Jesuit, Gustà exhorted Pope Pius VI to launch a modern crusade against revolutionary France. A close analysis of this text and of its reception reveals how the preaching of a modern crusade led to the emergence of some of the defining features of Catholic conservatism: the myth of medieval Christendom as an alternative to revolutionary modernity; the role of the pope—the only authority who could legitimately launch a crusade—as a supranational leader; and the need for mass mobilization in defense of religion. Thus, this paper argues that what characterized Catholic conservatism from its very inception was the inextricable entanglement of modern means and anti-modern ideals.

That the French Revolution was the product of a vast anti-religious conspiracy was a commonplace of counterrevolutionary writing already in 1790. However, it was only after the beginning of the European wars in 1792 that Catholic intellectuals explicitly started conceiving the fight against revolutionary France as a war of religion. This paper traces the transnational development of this idea, from its origins in the Spain of the War of the Pyrenees to its re-elaboration in Francisco Gustà’s Critical Essay on the Crusades, published in Italy in 1794. A Catalan ex-Jesuit, Gustà exhorted Pope Pius VI to launch a modern crusade against revolutionary France. A close analysis of this text and of its reception in the late 1790s reveals how the preaching of a modern crusade led to the emergence of some of the defining features of modern Catholic conservatism: the myth of medieval Christendom as an alternative to revolutionary modernity; the role of the pope—the only authority who could legitimately launch a crusade—as a supranational leader; and the need for mass mobilization in defense of religion.

The revolutionary wave of the 1790s subverted long-standing balances of power and forced European intellectuals to rethink the geopolitical arrangement of the continent. Some Italian patriots, while advocating the creation of a unitary state south of the Alps, primarily understood the revolution as a transnational phenomenon and thus regarded the republicanization of the Peninsula as part and parcel of a wider geopolitical transformation, centered around the Mediterranean Basin. This paper deals with the writings of two of these patriots, the Roman Enrico Michele L'Aurora (circa 1760-?) and the Neapolitan Matteo Galdi (1765-1821), who were both in exile in Milan between 1796 and 1799. According to them, the Mediterranean shores were not just peripheral spaces that were being involved in a transformation originated elsewhere. This is not to say that they did not recognize the centrality of France to the whole revolutionary process, but they also viewed the creation of the so-called "sister republics" in the Italian Peninsula as the first step towards a broad geopolitical transformation. From this perspective, the Mediterranean Basin was at the very heart of the revolution. Placing the south of Europe at the center of the emergence of the new post-revolutionary world, L'Aurora and Galdi challenged a long-established hierarchy of civilization that throughout the eighteenth century had defined the very concept of Europe in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other-the East, but also the European South itself. In their views, it was the South that would eventually revolutionize and regenerate the North. So, while rethinking the revolution as an inherently transnational phenomenon rather than a French-centered event radiating its influence abroad, L'Aurora and Galdi redefined the asymmetrical relationships between European centers and peripheries, and at the same time, they put forward a new form of "cosmopolitan patriotism," which could coexist with the principle of nationality.

Les mobilisations actuelles pour une « vraie démocratie » en Espagne s'ancrentelles dans une culture démocratique plus ancienne qu'il n'y paraît ? Florencia Peyrou revient sur l'histoire du républicanisme espagnol : elle le compare aux autres mouvements radicaux et républicains européens, et montre à la fois sa radicalité, ses apports et ses contradictions. La Vie des Idées publie à la suite de cet article deux témoignages sur le mouvement social actuel, qui font écho aux débats passés entre démocratie directe et démocratie représentative en Espagne : une chronique du 15M par Juan Luis Simal, et un témoignage sur la prise de décision dans le campement de la Puerta del Sol par Eva Botella-Ordinas. Comment se sont diffusées les attitudes, les valeurs et les pratiques démocratiques ? Le rôle des mouvements sociaux et politiques dans le parcours sinueux qui a mené à la démocratie libérale actuelle a été primordial. Ceux-ci se sont organisés pour exiger, entre autres, le respect de l'autorité parlementaire et des libertés civiles, l'extension du suffrage, des élections transparentes et la légitimité des partis politiques. L'analyse des groupes démocrates permet de comprendre comment ils ont amplifié leurs appuis sociaux, se sont affrontés aux pouvoirs établis et aux discours hégémoniques, et finalement, ont formulé et reformulé leur imaginaire politique et social 1 .

The arrival of the French army in Italy in 1796 produced a momentous upheaval south of the Alps. Between 1796 and 1799 the whole Italian Peninsula was republicanized, the idea of the Italian nation as a political community was first conceived, and notions of democracy and representation were widely debated. The constitutional circles, popular societies led by the patriots and specifically devoted to the politicization of the masses, played a crucial role within this debate. My paper, widely based on manuscripts and printed primary sources produced by the circles of the Cisalpine Republic, deals with the way in which the discussions held in popular societies led to a substantial redefinition of the concept of virtue. As historians have recently pointed out, over the eighteenth century the concept of virtue had been at the center of a wide debate, and the long-standing notion of republican virtue had already been eroded by the increasing recognition that the pursuit of private interests provided benefits to the state as a whole. The Italian patriots, in spite of being imbued with republican thought, shifted the meaning of virtue in yet another direction. They realized that the classical republican notion of virtue, which was intrinsically heroic, could not be proposed as a practicable ideal to a wide popular audience. Therefore, drawing on the concept of natural virtue, they started thinking of virtue in terms of humanity, fraternal love, and bienfaisance. In so doing, they did not reject the language of classical republicanism in its entirety, yet thoroughly redefined it from within, putting a new concept of private virtue into the foreground. The citizens were no longer supposed to sacrifice themselves for their patrie, yet to love and care for their fellow citizens as if they were members of the same family. Since virtue was the basis for the construction of a national community, its redefinition as familial love led the patriots to think of the nation in terms of a familial community.

The publication of Nicola Spedalieri's "De' diritti dell'uomo" ("On the Rights of Man") in 1791 marked a turning point in the relationship between Catholicism and modern political culture. While after the outbreak of the French Revolution many Catholic intellectuals sided with the Counterrevolution and a scattered few others openly embraced the new order, Spedalieri chose a different path. Profoundly convinced of the need to come to terms with the spirit of the century in order to defend Catholicism, in his work Spedalieri selectively appropriated key terms and concepts of Enlightenment and revolutionary culture, such as the social contract and the rights of man, in the attempt of neutralizing their most radical features. Purporting to speak "as a pure philosopher," Spedalieri bet that only by speaking the same language of the enemies of religion he could provide a persuasive demonstration that religion had still a fundamental part to play in the post-revolutionary world, and that society and the state should be re-Christianized. In other words, Spedalieri suggested that Catholic culture should incorporate elements of modernity in order to better fight modernity itself and its most dangerous offshoot, secularization. This paper analyzes the debate sparked by the publication of Spedalieri's work as well as its long-term implications for Catholic intellectuals in the modern era.

The production of imagined geographies is widely understood as a tool of colonial power. This paper, analyzing the writings of pro-revolutionary Italian patriots in the 1790s, argues that imagined geographies can also be used to subvert existing hierarchies and to renegotiate the relationship between centers and peripheries. Throughout the eighteenth century, European identity had been defined in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other—the Orient, but also the European South. After the French army invaded Italy in 1796, Italian patriots, who advocated the creation of a democratic republic in the Peninsula, started to reconsider the role of Italy and the Mediterranean Basin in the revolutionary process. They argued that it was in the Mediterranean that the Revolution would fight its most important battle. This was, of course, the battle for the liberty of navigation and commerce—against the British monopoly of trade—but also the battle of the “peoples of the South” against the “peoples of the North.” Challenging a long-established hierarchy of civilization, Italian patriots argued for the superiority of the South over the North. The peoples of the South were described as the promoters of international cooperation, freedom, and peace, whereas the peoples of the North were characterized by aggressive and exploitative attitudes. Both South and North, for them, were not geographical but cultural definitions—in fact, the South spanned from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands, including Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Producing such a new imagined geography, Italian patriots reconceptualized the Revolution as a worldwide event that would eventually produce the emergence of a new peaceful global order based on the “southern spirit.” The creation of a worldwide federation of nation-states—including an Italian republic—would naturally follow.

After the arrival of the French army south of the Alps in 1796, the entire Italian peninsula was republicanized and the patriots struggled to build popular consensus for the new regimes. In the course of this struggle, the depiction of the stereotypical image of the aristocratic enemy proved to be one of the most powerful tools at their disposal.
Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, my paper analyzes how the patriots created and used this image in the speeches they gave during the meetings of political societies in the Cisalpine Republic. In the eyes of the patriots, the aristocrat was not a member of a specific social class, nor was the term a synonym for noble. Rather, the aristocrat was depicted as the specular opposite of the virtuous patriot. Since he refused to embrace the new ideas, he was considered as the embodiment of the vices that had animated the ancien régime. Thus, whoever rejected or opposed the new regime, even a peasant, could be accused of being an aristocrat. Labeling people as aristocrats became an effective way to stigmatize and exclude them from the social fabric. Even their belonging to the human race was called into question, since they were usually described as monsters, animals, and cannibals.
Evoking the figure of the aristocrat during their speeches, the patriots were able to raise feelings of contempt, hatred, fear, and even conspiracy obsession in their audiences, thus strengthening the loyalty to the republic. Although eventually the patriots failed to stabilize the new regime, my paper sheds new light on the connections between political emotions, revolutionary rhetoric, and popular propaganda.

il mestiere di storico Rivista della Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea X / 2, 2018 viella SOCIETÀ ITALIANA PER LO STUDIO DELLA STORIA CONTEMPORANEA sede operativa c/o Dip. (carta) ISBN 978-88-3313-200-6 (e-book pdf ) ISBN 978-88-3313-199-3 (e-pub) Rivista semestrale, anno X, n. 2, 2018 Registrazione presso il Tribunale di Roma del 4/5

Traditional religious beliefs played a major role during the revolutionary upheaval of the end of the eighteenth century. This paper analyzes how Italian pro-revolutionary Catholics reimagined the role of religion in the new post-revolutionary order, focusing on the cases of Niccolò Fava Ghisilieri, Cardinal Gregorio Barnaba Chiaramonti (later Pope Pius VII), and Gaetano Giudici. Fava Ghisilieri, a deputy at the Cispadane Constitutional Convention of 1797, advocated the proclamation of Catholicism as the state religion of the newborn Cispadane Republic. Chiaramonti argued that the state could be secular, but a republican society had necessarily to be based on Catholic moral teaching. Giudici, a Milanese Jansenist priest, while commenting on a draft divorce law in 1798, went even further and suggested that both state and society could be secular. These three cases reveal that the rethinking of the role played by religion in the state and society was crucial to the emergence of the modern post-revolutionary order.

At the end of the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the structural transformations that European societies were undergoing at the time were inextricably linked to the emergence of a new family model. In this paper, I shed light on the ways the idea of a correspondence between the structure of the family and the structure of society was formed in the eighteenth century. Of course, the family had long been used as a metaphor to describe the political community, but it was during the second half of the eighteenth century that intellectuals like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Cesare Beccaria realized that the structure of the family mirrored the wider structure of society, and that the family itself could be deployed as a tool of social control. Thus, the critique of the traditional family started to be linked to the critique of the existing political order.  Enlightened intellectuals censured the abuses of paternal authority, which mirrored the misdeeds of the monarchs. At the same time, defending freedom of marriage and advocating the reform of inheritance laws, they reshaped the family into a community based on strong emotional ties rather than on economic interests, and on more equal relationships among family members. Such a family, long dreamed of by the intellectuals, suddenly became real in the 1790s as a result of the reforms passed by the r​evolutionary assemblies in France and in the European sister republics—and in particular in Italy between 1796 and 1799. It was in this context that, once the family had been reshaped, the family metaphor eventually became one of the discursive tools most frequently used to describe the nation.

The outbreak of the French Revolution marked the beginning of a new era of international relations. The legacy of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and the emergence of the new revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty forced politicians and intellectuals all across Europe to rethink the political order of the continent and its relations with the Mediterranean Basin. This paper deals with the Euro-Mediterranean visions of two leading figures of the Italian patriotic movement during the so-called republican triennium (1796-99), Matteo Galdi (1765-1821) and Enrico Michele L’Aurora (ca 1760-?). Galdi envisioned the creation of a worldwide federal “republic of mankind,” whereas L’Aurora strongly advocated the creation of a European federation and of a European Congress. Exploring their published and unpublished works, this paper shows how both Galdi and L’Aurora merged Enlightenment cosmopolitanism with the new principle of nationality. The way they tried to combine these two elements reveals how they understood the revolution and the idea of nation themselves.

As historians have recently pointed out, over the eighteenth century the long-standing notion of republican virtue was eroded by the recognition that the pursuit of private interests provided benefits to the state as a whole. After Bonaparte republicanized the Italian Peninsula in 1796, the patriots, in spite of being imbued with republican thought, shifted the meaning of virtue in yet another direction. They realized that the traditional notion, which was intrinsically heroic, could not be proposed as a practicable ideal to a wide popular audience. Therefore, they started thinking of virtue in terms of empathy, brotherly love, and charity. In so doing, they did not reject the language of classical republicanism, yet thoroughly redefined it from within, putting a new concept of virtue into the foreground. This concept implied that the citizens were no longer supposed to sacrifice for their country, yet to love and care for their fellow citizens as if they were members of the same family. They were also called to lead a harmonious family life. This redefinition of virtue led the patriots to think of the nation itself in terms of a familial community and fostered the emergence of an autonomous private sphere, that could be properly defined as bourgeois.

The revolutionary wave of the 1790s subverted long-standing balances of power and forced European intellectuals to rethink the geopolitical arrangement of the continent. Analyzing the geographical imagination of pro-revolutionary Italian patriots in the 1790s, this paper argues that these patriots produced new imagined geographies to subvert existing cultural and political hierarchies and to renegotiate the relationship between European centers and peripheries. Throughout the eighteenth century, European identity had been defined in antithesis to what was regarded as the uncivilized other—the Orient, but also the European South. Reconsidering the role of the Mediterranean Basin in the revolutionary process, Italian patriots argued that it was in the Mediterranean that the Revolution would fight its most important battle. This was, of course, the battle for the liberty of navigation and commerce against British monopoly of trade, but also the battle of the “peoples of the South” against the “peoples of the North.” The peoples of the South were described as the promoters of international cooperation, freedom, and peace, whereas the peoples of the North were characterized by aggressive and exploitative attitudes. Both South and North, thus, were not merely geographical but cultural definitions—in fact, the South spanned from the Ottoman Empire to the Netherlands, including Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. The production of such a new imagined geography was meant to upend long-established hierarchies of civilization and to imagine a new peaceful European order based on the “southern spirit” and on new forms of continental governance.

The notion of republican virtue stood at the very heart of revolutionary politics after 1789. Republican thinkers had described virtue as a love for the country requiring the citizens to sacrifice their personal sphere, their feelings, and, if necessary, even their own life for the common good. When the Italian Peninsula was republicanized by Napoleon after 1796, Italian patriots got involved in a large endeavor meant to gain popular consensus for the new republics. Since virtue was widely considered as the only solid foundation of a republican government, its dissemination was absolutely crucial. Some patriots started preaching the traditional heroic notion of virtue. Some others were convinced that such a virtue was too "hard" to be practiced by vast masses of people or even incompatible with the Italian national character, and wondered how to allow common people to be virtuous without demanding too much from them. As a result, they started thinking of virtue in terms of humanity, benevolence, and fraternal love. According to these patriots, virtuous citizens were no longer supposed to sacrifice themselves for their country, but to love and care for their neighbors as if they were members of the same family. Reshaping virtue in such a way, these patriots put forward a definition of republic that was compatible with the preservation of the autonomy of the private sphere and that was supposed to accommodate the needs of the people.

Patrizio napoletano, giureconsulto, reazionario militante dalla congiura dei Baccher ( 1799) e membro del governo controrivoluzionario napoletano del 1821, Giovanni Battista Vecchione (Pozzuoli, Napoli, 1757-1826) fu una delle personalità più incisive del legittimismo borbonico  a livello intellettuale, istituzionale e politico. La voce fornisce gli elementi per contestualizzarne l'attività e il pensiero nelle vicende del Regno di Napoli prima e del Regno delle due Sicilie poi.

25 settembre 2018). Notizie su Spano sono infine in: C. Pillon, I comunisti nella storia d 'Italia, Milano 1967, pp. 288, 301, 309, 494, 538, 550, 597, 840-842, 850 s., 887, 916, 928, 956, 966, 1156 P. Spriano, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, II-V, Torino 1969-1975 C. Salinari, I comunisti raccontano, I, Milano 1975, pp. 245-249, 270, 312 s., 316-318, 375; G. Procacci, Il socialismo internazionale e la guerra d'Etiopia, Roma 1978, pp. 55 s.; J.B. Urban, Moscow and the Italian communist party: from Togliatti to Berlinguer, Ithaca (N.Y.)-London 1986, pp. 233, 236; R. Martinelli, Storia del Partito comunista italiano, VI, Torino 1995, pp. 11, 61, 85-86, 127-130, 219, 282, 361; Quel terribile 1956: i verbali della Direzione comunista tra il XX Congresso del PCUS e l'VIII Congresso del PCI, a cura di M.A. Höbel, Il PCI, il PCF e i 'fatti d'Ungheria': una missione ufficiale a Parigi il 15-17 novembre 1956, in Giano: pace ambiente problemi globali, 2006, n. 54, pp. 87-95 (in partic. pp. 90-93); Il PCI e lo stalinismo: un dibattito del 1961. La relazione, gli interventi e le conclusioni al Comitato centrale e alla Commissione centrale di controllo del 10-11 novembre, a cura di M.L. Righi, Roma 2007, pp. 262-269 (testo dell'intervento di Spano durante la sessione dell'11 novembre); Italiani e antifascisti in Tunisia negli anni Trenta: percorsi di una difficile identità, a cura di L. Valenzi, Napoli 2008, pp. 32-36, 77-80; O. Pappagallo, Il PCI e la rivoluzione cubana, Roma 2009, pp. 48, 65 s., 109, 151-156; M. Galeazzi, Il PCI e il movimento dei Paesi non allineati, 1955-1975, Milano 2011 G. Candreva, Nazionalismo e comunismo di fronte alla guerra d'Etiopia, in História: debates e tendências, 2013, 13, 1, pp. 150-166 (in partic. pp. 158 s., 166); C. Maltone, Scrivere contro: i giornali antifascisti italiani in Francia dal 1922 al 1943, in Line@editoriale, 2013.fr/pum/lineaeditoriale/index.php?id=675 (25 settembre 2018); L. El Houssi, L'urlo contro il regime: gli antifascisti italiani in Tunisia fra le due guerre,

In March 1791, Pope Pius VI officially condemned the French Revolution. However, the breach between Rome and Paris did not go uncontested. Some sectors of the Curia were afraid that the papal condemnation would produce a schism and urged a softer line. It was in this context that Nicola Spedalieri published his book "On the Rights of Man". While criticizing the religious policies of the French Constituent Assembly as the product of an anti-Christian conspiracy, Spedalieri accepted the basic principles of revolutionary public law, as the social contract and the right of revolution, and delineated a path of conciliation between Catholicism and the new regime. Arguing that civil society had to be grounded in religious basis, he called for the proclamation of Catholicism as the state religion. “On the Rights of Man” soon became a literary case and sparked a wide debate. Between 1792 and 1800, almost forty books were published either against or in defense of Spedalieri’s work. Spedalieri’s opponents praised his critique of the Revolution but advocated the divine right of the kings and the alliance of throne and altar, whether they attributed to the papacy a sort of primacy over temporal authorities or embraced regalist doctrines. On the contrary, most of Spedalieri’s supporters ended up embracing the new revolutionary order, while still emphasizing that it needed a religious foundation. Spedalieri’s work certainly allowed for a diverse range of interpretations, but it was crucial in putting the rethinking of the role of religion in society at the center of the ongoing political debate. Examining this debate, the paper argues that the age of revolution was not simply a period of secularization and that the emergence of modernity did not necessarily entail the displacement of religion from the public sphere.