APOSTOLATO DANTESCO. — Under this name, through the inspiration and encouragement of a learned man of letters from Monsampolo, Nicola Gaetani Tamburini, who wished to educate Italians to liberty through the veneration of Dante, a political association opposed to temporal power was established at Ascoli in 1855, under the guise of a literary academy. Its title and its veneration for the supreme poet recalled Mazzini, but its forms still bore the imprint of Carbonari models. Such were the noms de guerre (Ferruccio, Michelangelo, Galileo, Arnaldo, Bruto, Masaniello) of the “founding brothers,” as well as the rituals of the meetings and the ties linking the members of the various provinces. Around Tamburini gathered former liberals and young students, including a Selva, employed at the delegation, a Baldacelli, of the customs service, an Orazi, municipal secretary of Cestorano, a Corsini, a Palmarini, a Menghi, a De Tomassi, and many others, among whom the best known was Temistocle Mariotti. The activity of the Apostolato Dantesco within the broad conspiratorial movement of the Marches was not extensive, and it may be said that when, in November 1857, the papal authorities proceeded to arrest its members, it was already inactive in practice. The “Ascoli case of lèse-majesté, namely, of membership in a secret society,” ended with the verdict of 17 December 1858, by which Tamburini, Baldacelli, Palmarini, Menghi, and Orazi were sentenced to ten years in the galleys, while the others received lesser sentences. A woman, the young Giulia Centurelli, was acquitted through the intervention of the good bishop Belgrado. Between the spring of 1859 and the summer of 1860, they were all pardoned.
Alberto Maria Ghisalbeni