BONCOMPAGNI di MOMBELLO, CARLO. - Politician, b. in Turin on 25 July 1804, d. there on 14 Dec. 1880. Having graduated in law in July 1824, he entered the state administrative career.
As he was particularly well-versed in matters concerning the education and instruction of youth, and as a promoter in Piedmont of infant schools—whose implementation he sought through the advice of the Apostoli, Lambruschini, and Rayneri—B. became minister of education in the first constitutional cabinet of C. Balbo (1848), and held the same office in the Alfieri ministry, formed in the second half of the same year. In this capacity, on 4 Oct. he submitted to the king’s signature the law on the administration of public education, by which all real freedom for religious orders in matters of teaching was suppressed, every just possibility of ecclesiastical authority’s oversight in state schools was removed, and the validity of studies completed in seminaries was restricted to those intending to dedicate themselves to the priestly ministry. In the second d’Azeglio cabinet (May–Nov. 1852), he held, in addition to the education portfolio, that of grace and justice. As keeper of the seals, he proposed the law on civil marriage, which also envisaged the establishment of civil status, later introduced by the Civil Code of 1865; this bill was approved by the Chamber but rejected by the Senate. President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1853 to 1856, and Sardinian plenipotentiary minister to the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1857, he prepared and carried out, even through conspiracies and uprisings, the union of the central Italian states with Piedmont. After 1860, he repeatedly addressed in Parliament the relations between State and Church, advocating the necessity of resolving the Roman Question by suppressing the Papacy’s temporal power.