BONCOMPAGNI di MOMBELLO, CARLO. — Politician, b. in Turin on 25 July 1804, d. there on 14 December 1880. Having graduated in law in July 1824, he entered the state administrative service.
Being particularly well versed in questions concerning the education and instruction of the young, and a promoter in Piedmont of infant schools, for whose establishment he sought the advice of Aporti, Lambruschini, and Rayneri, B. became minister of education in the first constitutional cabinet of C. Balbo (1848), and held the same position in the Alfieri ministry, formed in the second half of that same year. In this capacity, on 4 October he submitted to the king for signature the law on the administration of public education, by which all genuine freedom for Religious Orders in matters of teaching was abolished, every just possibility of ecclesiastical authorities’ supervision in state schools was removed, and the validity of studies completed in seminaries was restricted to those intending to devote themselves to the priestly ministry. In d’Azeglio’s second cabinet (May–November 1852), in addition to the education portfolio, he also held that of grace and justice. As keeper of the seals, he proposed the law on civil marriage, which also provided for the establishment of civil registration, subsequently introduced with the Code of 1865; the 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, also through conspiracies and uprisings, the union of the states of central Italy with Piedmont. After 1860 he dealt several times in Parliament with relations between Church and State, and maintained the necessity of resolving the Roman question through the suppression of the Papacy’s temporal power.