Giacobinismo

As a part of a broader investigation on political sociability in the first Cisalpine Republic (1797–99), the essay reconstructs the organization of the constitutional circles, patriotic societies which were promoted by some of the leading exponents of the Italian republican movement, and formed a network over the whole Cisalpine territory. By analyzing the different statutory models and their circulation, the essay outlines the characters of the new democratic and politicized sociability, and delineates the fundamental part played by the circles within the patriots’ pedagogic project. The debate on the circles’ statutes, which focuses principally on three topics (the role of the moderators in directing the circles’ activities, the political instruction of the people, and the part which Catholicism and priests play in republican pedagogy), can shed new light on the actual nature and the distinctive features of the Italian patriotic movement.

L'opera di Francesco Mario Pagano può essere studiata sotto diversi aspetti: quello del teorico dei diritti umani che interpreta le libertà e i doveri dell'uomo sotto una prospettiva nuova, ispirata a principi aristotelici costituisce l'oggetto di questo lavoro, che si articola utilizzando soprattutto quelle che furono le principali opere politiche di Mario Pagano (I saggi politici e la Dichiarazione dei diritti e doveri dell'uomo, del cittadino, del popolo, e de' suoi rappresentanti). Tale studio segue tre direttrici: il confronto con i testi costituzionali francesi del periodo rivoluzionario; il rapporto fra diritti e doveri; il riconoscimento filosofico e giuridico dei diritti economici e sociali. Ne deriva una lettura particolare del pensiero di Pagano, la quale cerca di mettere in evidenza tanto l'originalità della sua opera di costituzionalista quanto le tendenze antindividualistiche ed aristoteliche del suo pensiero; una lettura che tenta altresì di ridimensionare l'immagine del Pagano rivoluzionario "moderato" per proporne una diversa che metta invece in luce gli aspetti "progressisti" del suo pensiero.

Il triennio 1796-1799 si configura come un periodo di massima importanza nella crisi della società italiana di fine ‘700. Il vento della rivoluzione francese scuote le strutture d’ancien règime nella penisola, introducendovi idealità e istituzioni inedite, e al contempo toccando i nervi scoperti di una società in cambiamento. In questo contesto, la città costituisce il teatro della lotta politica, il luogo dove i patrioti di ogni provenienza geografica si riuniscono per dare vita a programmi riformatori finalizzati a mutare radicalmente il sentire popolare, il vivere collettivo e lo stesso volto urbano. Ma se la città costituisce il centro del potere politico, luogo fisico dove si svolge il dibattito e l’ideazione rivoluzionaria, è nel suo rapporto con la campagna che si gioca il futuro della rivoluzione. Il contrasto fra la realtà urbana, vivificata da energie economiche e intellettuali, e il contado, drammaticamente fermo nella sua staticità, si rivela il problema di fondo dell’azione giacobina. La conciliazione fra il centro e la periferia si gioca non solo sul terreno dell’educazione e del coinvolgimento politico della plebe di campagna, ma anche su quello della critica e del ripensamento dello stesso habitat cittadino. Sulla scorta della critica illuministica alla città che si avvia sulla strada dell’industrializzazione (Rousseau, Morelly, Mercier, Diderot, ecc.), fra i nostri democratici sorge un netto sentimento di ripulsa di fronte all’emergere del “mostro” urbano. Una ripulsa che rivendica il progetto utopico di una città in armonia con l’ambiente naturale, una città che recuperi le virtù del mondo contadino, una città a misura d’uomo fondata sull’eguaglianza e sulla libertà. Non si tratta del semplice sollazzamento filosofico dell’intellettuale, dell’esotica fuga dalla realtà del pensatore, ma dell’attiva reinterpretazione dell’esistente portata avanti da “illuministi che entrano in azione” (Cantimori, 1957). Un razionale progetto politico volto alla “rigenerazione” completa dell’uomo e del suo habitat urbano.

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.

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.

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.

In 1798 the Jacobin Matteo Galdi theorized the distinction between methodical public education, given in the schools, and revolutionary public education, «which instructs the masses in the principles of democracy». Among the latter’s tools, Galdi enumerated the constitutional circles, which were patriotic societies specifically devoted to educate the adults, who could not take advantage of the new scholastic system.
Many patriots got involved in the circles’ activities in 1797-98. In comparison with precedent experiences of patriotic sociability in 1796-97, the circles did not set any admission requirements and allowed women and men of all social classes to actively join the sessions.
My paper primarily analyses the way this new form of egalitarian republican sociability was intended as a useful tool for the political education of Italian people. Particular emphasis will therefore be placed on the pedagogic instruments conceived by the patriots within the circles: they included not only speeches and catechisms, but also chants, poetry readings, festivals, para-religious ceremonies, and commemorations held in honour of the martyrs of freedom. Through the revolutionary education, the patriots aimed at giving birth to a new political community, replacing the ancient regime’s one. Furthermore, my paper deals with the patriots’ successful attempt to organize all the Cisalpine circles in a similar way, in order to build a real network devoted to the popular education and to maximize the positive effects of patriotic sociability.

L'età rivoluzionaria e napoleonica fu un momento fondante per la cultura politica della Penisola italiana. Accanto ai fondamentali contributi che la storiografia ha fornito negli ultimi decenni, si cerca di offrire delle nuove linee d'indagine per quanto riguarda la città di Brescia dal 1792 al 1802.  Non si tratta solo di far emergere il ruolo dei rivoluzionari e patrioti nell’ottica di abbattimento dell’antico ordine e dell’instaurazione di una repubblica democratica, ma esplorare anche ambiti spesso presi meno in considerazione, quale quello relativo alla controrivoluzione – rilevante soprattutto nelle valli bresciane – e quello delle resistenze alla diffusione dei principi democratico-repubblicani interne alla città. Dunque, il fine ultimo sarà fornire un quadro completo della vita politica-sociale-culturale di Brescia, in maniera organica e senza cesure, superando così la visione frammentaria degli studi finora pubblicati, sbilanciati, peraltro, a favore del fronte rivoluzionario. Lo studio di Brescia, città che non deve essere considerata a sé, ma inserita nel contesto peninsulare, può offrire degli interessanti spunti di riflessione, come il ruolo della nobiltà nella preparazione del moto insurrezionale che portò alla formazione della Repubblica bresciana o la rete cospirativa che collegava la città lombarda con altri focolai rivoluzionari attivi nel nord Italia (Milano, Genova e Nizza). . Un caso, quello bresciano, che non pare essere circoscritto ai suoi confini, ma interessare altre località, altri gruppi, attivi in Italia in epoca rivoluzionaria e napoleonica.

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.

Lo sguardo di Antonio D'Andria su Nicola Fiorentino, uno dei 122 martiri della Repubblica napoletana del 1799. Una disamina attenta e intrigante, discussa insieme a Giuseppe Zafarone, di cui l'autore è collega presso l'Università degli Studi di Basilicata, a Francesco Nocco dell'Università degli Studi di Bari, archivista e Gianni Palumbo, dell'Associazione culturale "Giuseppe Camillo Giordano", sodalizio culturale di cui fa parte anche Nocco e che ha sede a Pomarico, luogo natale di Nicola Fiorentino.

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 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.

LA CITTÀ “RIGENERATA”: I GIACOBINI ITALIANI E LA QUESTIONE URBANA FRA EGUAGLIANZA E LIBERTÀ
Il triennio 1796-1799 si configura come un periodo di massima importanza nella crisi della società italiana di fine ‘700. Il vento della rivoluzione francese scuote le strutture d’ancien règime nella penisola, introducendovi idealità e istituzioni inedite, e al contempo toccando i nervi scoperti di una società in cambiamento. In questo contesto, la città costituisce il teatro della lotta politica, il luogo dove i patrioti di ogni provenienza geografica si riuniscono per dare vita a programmi riformatori finalizzati a mutare radicalmente il sentire popolare, il vivere collettivo e lo stesso volto urbano. Ma se la città costituisce il centro del potere politico, luogo fisico dove si svolge il dibattito e l’ideazione rivoluzionaria, è nel suo rapporto con la campagna che si gioca il futuro della rivoluzione. Il contrasto fra la realtà urbana, vivificata da energie economiche e intellettuali, e il contado, drammaticamente fermo nella sua staticità, si rivela il problema di fondo dell’azione giacobina. La conciliazione fra il centro e la periferia si gioca non solo sul terreno dell’educazione e del coinvolgimento politico della plebe di campagna, ma anche su quello della critica e del ripensamento dello stesso habitat cittadino. Sulla scorta della critica illuministica alla città che si avvia sulla strada dell’industrializzazione (Rousseau, Morelly, Mercier, Diderot, ecc.), fra i nostri democratici sorge un netto sentimento di ripulsa di fronte all’emergere del “mostro” urbano. Una ripulsa che rivendica il progetto utopico di una città in armonia con l’ambiente naturale, una città che recuperi le virtù del mondo contadino, una città a misura d’uomo fondata sull’eguaglianza e sulla libertà.  Non si tratta del semplice sollazzamento filosofico dell’intellettuale, dell’esotica fuga dalla realtà del pensatore, ma dell’attiva reinterpretazione dell’esistente portata avanti da “illuministi che entrano in azione” (Cantimori, 1957). Un razionale progetto politico volto alla “rigenerazione” completa dell’uomo e del suo habitat urbano.

The age of revolutions is usually regarded as a period of radical secularization and dechristianization. This paper, which focuses on the debate on religion and politics in Italy during the 1790s, challenges this view and argues that religion continued to play a crucial role in European public life after 1789. However, both “patriots” and counterrevolutionary writers seemed to be more interested in the social utility of religion than in its truth—which had been for centuries the most contended issue. Counterrevolutionaries maintained that post-revolutionary society, deprived of its religious foundations, would rapidly turn into anarchy. Some of them identified the restoration of religion as the only possible way out of the revolutionary deadlock, whereas some others went as far as to assert that even the new order could be accepted if it was grounded in religious principles. On the other hand, revolutionists of all stripes were conscious that their chances of gaining popular support for the new republican regimes were contingent on th​eir ability to turn religion into a tool of propaganda. At the same time, some of them, while arguing for an evangelical reform of traditional religions, claimed that religious morality had to innervate republican society in order to make it stable.

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.