Mazzini, Giuseppe

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MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE

MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE (1805–1872), the most inspirational figure of the Italian Risorgimento.

Giuseppe Mazzini was born in Genoa on 22 June 1805 to a family of the upper middle class, the third of four children and the only male. His father was a successful medical doctor and university professor, his mother a well-educated woman who shared her son's interests and convictions. Both parents were religious, but it was the Jansenist inclinations of the mother that had the greatest impact on the son. Jansenists were Catholics who took their religion in pure form, with little ritual and much moral commitment. So did the mother and the son. After experiencing a personal crisis in his youth, the son insisted that there could be no true commitment to worldly causes without a religious foundation. Precociously intelligent and a quick learner, the young Mazzini was educated at home by private tutors, entered the University of Genoa at age fourteen, and graduated with a law degree in 1827. But the law was not his calling. Like many of his generation, he was drawn to the literature of Romanticism, which satisfied the need for passionate expression.

Love of country became the passion of Mazzini's life after an encounter with the destitute victims of the failed revolution of 1821 begging in the streets of Genoa on their way into exile. It was on that occasion, he claimed, that he first perceived that one could, and that therefore one should, fight for the ideals of patria and libertà. The ideals of homeland and liberty were the two anchors of his creed. God was at the root of the creed, but Mazzini's attention was on the affairs of this world and his theology was nonconformist. His experience of a warm and supportive family life may have had something to do with the notion that love is the most sublime human passion, for he attributed to the capacity for love the ability of individuals to transcend their egoism and reach out in broadening circles of empathy toward the whole human race. Attachment to family and nation were part of that continuum. God was the driving force of history. Mazzini's motto "God and the People" summed up his view that human agency followed a divine script. The name of that script was Progress.

A people divided and under foreign control had a duty to become free and united so that they could fulfill the earthly mission that God assigned to them for the benefit of humanity. A people deprived of their freedom had no choice but to revolt. Mazzini was not loath to accept the legitimacy of violence when the means of peaceful change were denied. Monarchy was the target of his revolutionary violence. Monarchies in any shape or form were corrupt because they existed to protect dynastic interests rather than the public good. Mazzinianism thus revolved around the political postulates of republicanism, democracy, national independence, and unity.

Deeming it immoral not to act on one's convictions, Mazzini coined the motto "Thought and Action" to emphasize that principled action was a duty. The concept of duty loomed large in Mazzini's thinking, and often trumped the concept of individual rights. The moral imperative to act on his convictions made him a leader of student protests and a member of the secret Carboneria society, which he joined the same year that he graduated from university. He was a zealous Carbonaro, recruiting near and far and making a nuisance of himself with less zealous fellow conspirators. He could not abide the hocus-pocus of secret rituals and did not share the Carbonari's faith that they could work with constitutional monarchs. Absolute or constitutional, all monarchs were unacceptable to Mazzini. Someone from inside the secret society set him up. Arrested, imprisoned, and tried on charges of sedition, he was given the choice between confinement at home and expatriation.

Mazzini chose to go abroad and left for France in January 1831 to begin life as a political exile. He hoped that the July Revolution that had succeeded in France would also succeed in Italy. When that did not happen, he founded his own organization to take up where the secret societies had left off.

Young Italy openly proclaimed its republicanism, commitment to revolution, democracy, and social justice. Harassed by the French police, Mazzini moved to Geneva in July 1833, but nothing went as planned. In February 1834 incursions into the region of Savoy by armed bands of exiles failed to ignite the popular revolts that Mazzini counted on to start the revolution. Young Italy never recovered from these setbacks. Undeterred, Mazzini launched Young Europe in April 1834 with a few other Italian, German, and Polish exiles to unify the revolutionary forces of Europe. Young Europe also foundered, but the notion of forming a unified revolutionary front lived on.

Forced to leave Switzerland, Mazzini settled in London in January 1837. In the English capital he wrote for British publications, made friends with Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), opened a school for Italian workers, revived Young Italy, and gained recognition as the voice of the Italian national movement. Living in a cosmopolitan city broadened Mazzini's vision. He became more aware of the problems of industrial society, showed renewed interest in workers, and made room for them in Young Italy. He insisted that workers be part of the national movement and exhorted middle-class Italians to help their less fortunate brothers for the sake of national solidarity. To workers he held out the prospect of full political participation in republican Italy. The right to vote would guarantee workers their rights.

By the time the revolutions of 1848 broke out, Mazzini had to contend with competitors. Charles Albert (r. 1831–1849) was one. The administrative reforms of this enigmatic monarch and his covert expressions of support for Italian independence appealed to liberals. Liberal Catholics and their Neo-Guelph movement were invigorated by the election of the reputedly liberal Pope Pius IX (r. 1846–1878) in 1846. According to the leader of the Neo-Guelphs, Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852), the pope was the natural leader of the movement for Italian independence, a view that Mazzini found abhorrent. Mazzini returned to Italy in April 1848 after an absence of seventeen years to find popular acclaim and opposition. Even republicans were no longer united behind him. In Milan he clashed with Carlo Cattaneo (1801–1869), a republican federalist who did not share Mazzini's enthusiasm for centralized government, and with Giuseppe Ferrari (1811–1876), a federalist and a socialist.

Mazzini found a friendlier reception in Rome. The short-lived Roman Republic of 1849 gave Mazzini the opportunity to put his ideas to the test. He worshipped the name of Rome and believed that democratic government was destined to spread from Rome to the rest of Europe. He was principally responsible for the experiment in republican government as the leading figure of a governing triumvirate. He set out to show the world that republicans could live up to their ideals and govern responsibly. The republic adopted universal suffrage, organized popular clubs to involve ordinary people in public affairs, staged rallies and ceremonies, provided relief for the unemployed, curtailed clerical privileges, declared an end to the pope's temporal rule, and maintained public order—all to no avail. A coalition of powers led by France evicted the insurgents and restored Rome to the pope.

Mazzini continued to fight monarchy and rely on popular revolution when others lost faith in his ways. From London he plotted insurgencies in Italy that failed and cost his dwindling followers dearly. Abandoned by the middle classes that turned increasingly toward the charismatic Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) and the adroit Count Cavour (Camillo Benso, 1810–1861), Mazzini pinned his hopes on workers. His book The Duties of Man (1860) exhorted workers to be mindful of their rights and duties, reject class warfare, and remain loyal to the ideal of a republican Italy. Many listened, and not only in Italy, but his condemnation of the Paris Commune and socialism alienated militant radicals, who rejected him. A sense of isolation and failure marked the last years of his life. He died in Pisa under an assumed name, for he was still officially banned from the country. His acceptance as a founder of the nation came some thirty years after his death, when the passage of time defused the passions that made him controversial.