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.

MANIN