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Giulio Salvadori and the Catholic Political Tradition in Italy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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The Catholic political tradition is at the very center of contemporary Italian politics, but the process by which that tradition came into existence and how it evolved remains obscure and often is subjected to extremely simplistic explanations. Modern Catholic political theory began to take shape during the period of the French Revolution. However, it was the Risorgimento that decisively influenced the political consciousness of Italy's Catholics. The unification of the country in 1860 came about largely at the Church's expense. Pius IX, once the darling of Catholic liberals, responded to the Risorgimento with a fusillade of counterrevolutionary invective in Sillabo degli errori del nostro tempo (8 December 1864), still the most notorious example of anguished Catholic imprecations in the post-Risorgimento period. The Church, never comfortable in the post-1789 world, now made unforgettably clear her utter and irrevocable rejection of that world. Her role as the aggressive critic of modernity hardened into one of the outstanding conventions of nineteenthcentury European culture.
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References
1 The counterrevolutionary tone of Catholic political pronouncements was set by de Maistre, Joseph in Considerations sur la France (1796)Google Scholar; by de Chateaubriand, François René in Essai sur Us revolutions (1797)Google Scholar; and by de Bonald, Louis in Legislation primitive (1802)Google Scholar. See also de Lamennais, Felicité-Robert, Essai sur l'indifference en matiere de religion (1817–1823)Google Scholar, De la religion consideree dans ses rapports avec I'ordrepolitique (1825–1826), and Des progres de la Revolution et de la guerre contre I'eglise (1829). For Lamennais' immense and contradictory influence in Italy, see Zadei, Guido, L'abate Lamennais e gli italiani del suo tempo (Turin, 1925)Google Scholar and Candeloro, Giorgio, Il movimento cattolico in Italia (Rome, 1972)Google Scholar.
2 Gregory XVI had condemned Catholic liberalism and all liberalism in a 15 August 1832 encyclical, Mirari vos.
3 More than twenty years ago Webster, Richard gave this advice to the reader of his book, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy (Stanford, 1960)Google Scholar: “If he should encounter difficulties in picking his way through the maze of tendencies and currents in the Catholic world of Italy, let him use the oiographical method” (p. vii). I am taking that advice quite literally in this essay.
4 For the best account of Salvadori's childhood, see Vian, Nello, Lagiovinezza di Giulio Salvadori: dalla stagione bizantina al rinnovamento (Rome, 1962), especially chaps. 1–2Google Scholar. Salvadori's relationship with his real father was distant, and Gamurrini filled this void in the young man's life.
5 The epistolary relationship between Salvadori and Carducci began late in 1881 when the young poet wrote to his hero: “I admire and love your work.” Yet he had the temerity to make “a few pedantic observations” in an effort “to improve” the Master's verse. Salvadori, Giulio, Lettere, ed. Vian, Nello (Rome, 1976)Google Scholar, probably December 1881. Carducci did not take umbrage at this; in fact, he helped Salvadori to get editorial work from the Bologna publisher, Zanichelli, and generally to make his way in the literary world of Umbertian Italy.
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7 See “In Cerca della Libertà: a Enrico Ferri,” La Domenica del Fracassa, 7 June 1885, for Salvadori's account of his involvement and break with the naturalists. This open letter was republished in a collection of similar Salvadori letters in Lettere aperte, ed. Villani, Carlo and Vian, Nello (Rome, 1939)Google Scholar.
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13 As a reviewer Salvadori enjoyed the reputation of one whose praise was sought after and whose condemnation was feared (“il cercato lodatore, il temuto stroncatore”). See Allodoli, Ettore, “Letteratura dell'ottocento,” Nuova antologia, 05 1947Google Scholar.
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16 Cited by Vian, in “Libera Fedeltà di Trompeo,” Amicizie e incontri, p. 176Google Scholar.
17 In a letter to his friend, Severino Ferrari, Salvadori wrote that he still liked Carducci, but no longer admired him in quite the same way. In a single sentence he summarized his new view of the older poet: “Carducci is dead” (autumn 1883 in Lettere). His disillusionment with Carduccianism had been coming on for a long while, and even in such an early piece as “La lirica di due legislature,” Cronaca bizantina, 16 December 1882, he complained that the disciples of Carducci had brought before the public “our wicker baskets, all overflowing with leaves and sometimes even with flowers,” but the public wanted food to eat. In 1882 Salvadori blamed the “decadent” disciples, himself included, but a year later he believed that Carduccianism itself was flawed by a fatal egocentricity.
18 I tell the story of this secession movement in Byzantium for Rome: The Politics of Nostalgia in Umbertian Italy (1878–1900) (Chapel Hill, 1980)Google Scholar. See Chapter 5 “Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863–1938) and the Bizantina Schism, 1883–1884.”
19 Vian, , La giovinezza, p. 86Google Scholar. Further regarding Sommaruga, drew, Salvadori back in revulsion from “the base instincts that he had in his blood” (p. 197)Google Scholar.
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21 On 1 September 1884 Salvadori wrote to Mazzoni: “I have need of at least a year of quiet” (Lettere). Mazzoni responded with the Ascoli Piceno offer.
22 Augustine, Saint, Confessions (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1961), Book VIII, p. 178Google Scholar.
23 Cited by Monticone, Severino, Giulio Salvadori: il poeta dell'umile Italia (Alba, 1947)Google Scholar. See chapter 5 “La religione dell'ideale.”
24 It is known, for example, that in 1882 Salvadori was dabbling in spiritualist experiments. See Salvadori to Antonio Fogazzaro, 23 October 1882 (Lettere).
25 Mascherpa, , Giulio Salvadori, p. 37Google Scholar.
26 Salvadori to Angelo Conti, March 1885, Lettere. Psychohistorians will be interested in the next sentence of this letter: “And I love only you, my Angel.” However, this is almost surely nothing more than epistolary convention. Playful affection between men or between women was not yet regarded as the infallible sign of homosexual relations or of the desire for such relations.
27 One of his best-known poems of the period was “Occhi Lucenti.” Thirtyseven years later he still referred to the Countess, long-deceased, as “la Persona.” Salvadori to Mario Barberis, 12 September 1921, Lettere.
28 Less than three weeks after Fogazzaro's death, Salvadori wrote to the novelist's biographer, Tommaso Gallarati Scotti: “I feel grateful to that man because in an uncertain moment of my life he as a writer helped me to feel the gentleness of the spirit, showing me how one was able to begin purifying love” (26 March 1911, Lettere).
29 Salvadori to Fogazzaro, 23 October 1882, Lettere.
30 Salvadori to Fogazzaro, 18 January 1883, ibid.
31 Salvadori to Fogazzaro, 30 September 1883, ibid.
32 Salvadori to Fogazzaro, February 1883, ibid.
33 Salvadori to Tommaso Gallarati Scotti, 12 August 1920, ibid.
34 Vian, “In Lumine Vitae: Con Antonio Fogazzaro,” Amicizie e incontri.
35 Salvadori to Fogazzaro, 29 May 1885, Lettere.
36 Salvadori's copy of Scotti's, Tommaso GallaratiLa vita di Antonio Fogazzaro (Milan, 1920)Google Scholar contains this marginal note: “Fogazzaro gave me the example of renunciation for obedience to God.” Cited by Monticone, Giulio Salvadori. See chapter 7 “Ritorno.”
37 Salvadori to Giannina Nenci Pistoj, 6 March 1885, Lettere.
38 The quoted phrase is from a letter that Salvadori wrote to Fogazzaro on 29 May 1885, Lettere. Castelli's, article, “Un poeta che sara santo,” appeared in Secolo XIX, 10 08 1935Google Scholar.
39 Salvadori to Nenci Pistoj, 4 April 1885, Lettere.
40 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Possessed (New York, Modern Library, 1936), p. 617Google Scholar.
41 Mascherpa, , Giulio Salvadori, p. 53Google Scholar.
42 Monticone, Giulio Salvadori. See chapter 9 “Le Conseguenze del Ritorno.”
43 Cited by Vian, , “Alia Conquista di Roma,” Amicizie e incontri, p. 61Google Scholar.
44 See Vian, “Sodalizio Dannunziano, ” Amicizie e incontri.
45 Cited by Monticone, Giulio Salvadori. See chapter 6, “Beatrice.”
46 In 1895 Salvadori wrote an “open letter” about his participation in this order, “a Brotherhood of Penitents,” to Don Francesco Faberi. See “I Fratelli della penitenza di S. Francesco d'Assisi e i doveri sociali secondo il Vangelo,” in Lettere aperte.
47 Salvadori, , “Prefazione,” Canzoniere civile (Rome and Milan, 1889)Google Scholar. See also part 5 “Sul Principio della Nuova Scienza.”
48 Salvadori, “Per una fiera Italia,” ibid.
49 Salvadori, “Epilogo,” ibid.
50 Salvadori, “II Natale dell'umile Italia,” ibid. Father Cossa was Salvadori's spiritual director until the older man's death in 1916. In an 18 September 1912 letter to him Salvadori expressed his deep appreciation for “such a treasure of wisdom and love” (Lettere).
51 Salvadori to Don Francesco Faberi, 27 August 1897, Lettere.
52 For more on Toniolo's role in Catholic social thought, see Jemolo, Arturo Carlo, Chiesa e stato in Italia: dalla unificazione a Giovanni XXIII (Turin, 1974)Google Scholar, chapter 3, “II periodo di Leone XIII e di Umberto I.”
53 See Giorgio Candeloro, movimento cattolico in Italia.
54 Desjardins, Paul, Le devoir present (Paris, 1892)Google Scholar. For more background on Desjardins, , see Paul Desjardins et les Décades de Pontigny, ed. Heurgon-Desjardins, Anne (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar.
55 Desjardins, , Le devoir present, p. 25Google Scholar. This was an idea that pervaded his thought even after World War I. See the “Preface” to French Patriotism in the Nineteenth Century 1814–1833: Traced by Contemporary Texts, eds. Stewart, H. F. and Desjardins, Paul (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar, e.g., “When Roland claims that his men have right on their side; when the French bishops, before giving communion to the crusaders and sending them to the assault of Constantinople in the name of God, explain that their cause and quarrel are just, it is plain that right and wrong are being measured by no merely selfish or even national standards” (p. xv).
56 Salvadori to Desjardins, 24–25 June 1894, Lettere.
57 Salvadori, , “La Nostra Unione,” L'ora presente, 01 1895Google Scholar.
58 For example, on 11 December 1902 he wrote to the French Protestant pastor and biographer, Paul Sabatier: “That great mission is yours, to make known to our brothers of the Reformation that the true reformer of the Church was St. Francis… (Lettere).
59 For more on Desjardins and the question of anti-Semitism, see Grand's, George-Guy memoir article on him in In memoriam: Paul Desjardins (1859–1940) (Paris, 1949), p. 12Google Scholar. His salutary influence on Salvadori regarding the Jewish question can be seen in “Vescovo Cattolico e Rabbino Israelita,” L'ora presente, July 1896. However, both before and after the Ora presente period Salvadori exhibited a strong prejudice toward the Jews. See his 1893 open letter to Antonio Fogazzaro, “II problema religioso in Italia,” in which he accused the Jews of waging incessant war on Christian civilization. This was republished in Lettere aperte. Incidentally, Fogazzaro read the piece “with keen pleasure and much profit.” Fogazzaro to Salvadori, 10 November 1893 (Fogazzaro, Antonio, Lettere scelte, ed. Scotti, Tommaso Gallarati [Milan, 1940]Google Scholar). The letter to Fogazzaro typified the views that Salvadori entertained toward the Jews for most of his adult life. More than ten years later he complained to his close friend, an Italianized Russian Orthodox uomo universale of letters, Giovanni Belosersky, that “unfortunately a good part of our daily press is in the hands of Jews” who misrepresented the news for their own ends (Salvadori to Belosersky, 9 October 1904, Lettere). Unquestionably, Salvadori had a more narrow mind than Desjardins, and the Ora presente editorial line was a patch of light, reflected from another mind, in between two longer periods of semidarkness.
60 While repeatedly acknowledging Desjardins's pioneer status in the history of L'ora presente, Salvadori also gave generous praise to Raffaele Salustri (1846?–1892) as one of the “precursors” of the journal. Salustri was a religious poet who enjoyed a modest vogue among fin de siecle Italian Catholics. See Salvadori, , “Un precursore delFUnione in Italia,” L'ora presente, 01 1895Google Scholar. Fragments of Salustri's devotional poems were published in scattered issues of L'ora presente throughout its history.
61 Salvadori, , “L'ora presente,” L'ora presente, 01 1895Google Scholar.
62 Salvadori, , “Ai fratelli dell'Eritrea,” L'ora presente, 02 1895Google Scholar.
63 Salvadori, , “Nel giorno amaro,” L'ora presente, 03 1896Google Scholar.
64 “Dopo la Battaglia di Adua: ai Caduti,” L'ora presente, April 1896. In a 17 September 1896 letter to Filippo Crispolti, Salvadori stated that although he had not written this poem it did reflect his own feelings about “that catastrophe.” He concluded: “It seems to me that [the battle] has sounded the hour of a visitation from God” (Lettere). L'ora presente had a personal as well as a public reason for mourning the carnage of Adua: one of the Union's founding members, Colonel Cesare Airaghi, was a casualty, “shouting the name of Italy” as he fell. See Salvadori, “II Colonello Cesare Airaghi (n. a Milano 1840),” L'ora presente, ibid. A high percentage of the members belonging to l'Unione per il bene were military officers. This statistic must have gladdened the heart of Desjardins who had written in Le devoir present that the army should become the “école universelle du pays.” He believed that patriotic military officers were even more important in the reveil than fervent teachers and that the moral awakening should occur first in military schools (p. 71).
65 Nevertheless, Salvadori continued to believe in the holiness of European imperialism as a means of preparing for the regeneration of the world through Christianity, just as Roman imperialism did in antiquity. See Salvadori, to Belosersky, Giovanni, 9 10 1904, LettereGoogle Scholar.
66 Salvadori, , “Dopo due anni,” L'ora presente, 01 1897Google Scholar.
67 For a good general introduction to the problem of modernism, see Candeloro, movimento cattolico in Italia, chapter 7, “La democrazia cristiana e la crisi dell'Opera dei Congressi.”
68 See Aron's, Raymond memoir article in In memoriam: Paul Desjardins (1859–1940), p. 78Google Scholar.
69 Salvadori to Desjardins, 11 April 1898, Lettere.
70 Salvadori to Sabatier, 25 December 1906, ibid.
71 Salvadori to Augusto Sterlini, 22 April 1897, ibid.
72 Here Salvadori followed the lead of Desjardins who looked upon Charles Maurras as a deadly antagonist. See the memoir article of George-Guy Grand in In memoriam: Paul Desjardins (1859–1940).
73 Salvadori, , “Cose Nostre,” L'ora presente, 06 1897Google Scholar.
74 Sabatier saw through Salvadori's affected nonchalance and wrote: “You will have a difficult time convincing me that the disappearance of L'ora presente is not a calamity.” Cited by Vian, in “Francescana Amicizia con Paul Sabatier” (Amicizie e incontri, p. 114)Google Scholar.
75 Salvadori, , “Dov'è, o Morte, la tua Vittoria?”, L'ora presente, 11–12 1897Google Scholar.
76 To Sabatier he complained about the heavy burden imposed by “my two teaching assignments, that of the ginnasio and that of the university” (Salvadori to Sabatier, 4 January 1896, Lettere).
77 Spadolini, Giovanni, Le due Rome: Chiesa e stato fra '800 e '900 (Florence, 1974), p. 75Google Scholar. Croce thought that Salvadori showed some early promise as a writer and a critic—a promise completely destroyed, however, by his post-1885 estetica moralistica.” See “G. Salvadori – C. Fortebracci – Antonietta Giacomelli” in La letteratura della nuova Italia: saggi critici (Bari, 1940), VI: 88Google Scholar.
78 Salvadori, to Gamurrini, , 8 11 1910, LettereGoogle Scholar.
79 Cited by Monticone, Giulio Salvadori. See chapter 18, “La Cagnara Massonica.” Monticone argues that the Masons were largely responsible for Salvadori's professional setbacks at this time.
80 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1968), p. 72Google Scholar.
81 Father Agostino Gemelli, the rector of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, wholeheartedly identified with the Fascist regime. See Richard Webster, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy, chapter 12, “Father Gemelli and the Catholic University of Milan.”
82 Vian, , “In Lumine Vitae, Con Antonio Fogazzaro,” Amicizie e incontri, p. 88Google Scholar. On 10 April 1906 Salvadori wrote to Fogazzaro: “I don't understand very well what they have wanted to condemn in your novel” (Lettere).
83 Scotti, Gallarati, La vita di Antonio Fogazzaro (Milan, 1934), p. 334Google Scholar.
84 Salvadori, to Gallarati, Scotti, 6 01 1921, LettereGoogle Scholar.
85 To Gallarati Scotti he wrote on 22 January 1918, “Nothing, however, is more necessary now than to prepare the defense against the arts and the calumnies … of those perverse forces that await the explosive moment to act and overturn the country, as has happened in Russia” (Letters).
86 Salvadori to Gallarati Scotti, 6 January 1921, ibid.
87 Salvadori, , Ricordi dell'umile Italia (Turin, 1918)Google Scholar.
88 See Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modem Memory (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; and Wohl, Robert, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar.
89 Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 184Google Scholar.
90 Unpublished letter. See “II Secondo Canzoniere” in Vian, , Amicizie e incontri, p. 157Google Scholar.
91 Salvadori, to Fadda, Rita, 31 12 1918, LettereGoogle Scholar.
92 Ibid.
93 Salvadori to Giovanni Gentile, 19 September 1928, ibid.
94 See Trompeo, Pietro Paolo and Vian, Nello, eds., Lettere di Giulio Salvadori (Florence, 1945)Google Scholar. The process of his beatification has already been launched. See the Enciclopedia cattolica (1953).
95 See Are's, Giuseppe excellent introductory essay in cattolici e la questione sociale in Italia: 1894–1904 (Milan, 1963)Google Scholar for a comparative analysis of Toniolo and Murri.
96 See Webster, Cross and the Fasces, chapter 8, “The Clerico-Fascists and Their Mediation between the Church and the Fascist Regime.”