Carboneria

CARBONERIA.- A secret political and pseudo-religious society which, having appeared at the beginning of the 19th century, had a vast expansion and a notable influence in Italy. Like Freemasonry, it too surrounded itself with remote and legendary origins, but it is certain that it did not arise before the beginning of that century, or at most at the end of the preceding one: precisely when, how and where, opinions and hypotheses are extremely varied. There are those who trace it back to Neapolitan Freemasonry, or to other similar sects, transformed under French domination into clubs of innovators and intellectuals; those who trace it to English Freemasonry, intent on creating obstacles for Napoleon; those who trace it to the legitimist reaction of 1799 in collusion with old Jacobins and with English agents in opposition to the policy of the First Consul. It would have been created as a substitute for Freemasonry, supinely subservient to France. Now, after the masterly studies of Martin Saint-Léon on the compagnonnage in France, the most accredited opinion traces it back to one of those associations that flourished in Franche-Comté in the second half of the 18th century, with the very name of charbonnerie, and with rites, statutes, initiations, and secrecy that have no few affinities with those of the Carboneria. It is supposed that this society served to camouflage anti-Napoleonic political machinations under innocent forms, and that it therefore passed with the French troops to Naples, where it would have been transformed and adapted to the new climate. General Giuseppe Rossetti, in a document published by Sorigi, affirms that he had been affiliated with the Carboneria in Franche-Comté in 1802. Pardi has unearthed documents that would trace its existence in the Kingdom of Naples back at least to March 1804. Colletta, who had close relations with the Carboneria, attests instead that before 1807 it gave no signs of vitality. Certainly its progress was very rapid, and in a few years it had not only penetrated into almost all the regions of the kingdom, but had gained ground also in Sicily, in the Papal State and elsewhere. If what Joachim Murat wrote to Napoleon in 1809 were reliable, from that time it would have had branches in almost all the principal cities of Italy, and was hatching plans of insurrection in a Bourbon and anti-French sense.

The organization, the rites, the symbolism, the oaths, etc., show evident affinity with Freemasonry, but it is difficult to say whether all this comes to it as an immediate inheritance, or should be explained by the common origins in the compagnonnage and in the ancient trade guilds, as Martin Saint-Léon would have it. Clearly distinct, on the other hand, are the political and moral tendencies: Freemasonry has a predominantly doctrinal character, and addresses itself by preference to the higher and more influential classes of society, preserving the naturalistic and Enlightenment imprint of the century in which it was born, for which reason it tends to undermine Christianity as it does every other positive religion: the Carboneria, instead, has essentially practical programs, is open to all classes but by preference to the bourgeoisie, the military, officials and the common people, and preserves a mentality very consonant with that of the social elements it welcomes, traditionally religious and Catholic, and by instinct averse to the impious and subversive spirit of Jacobinism. The Great Master of the Universe, whom it honors as the supreme being, is to be identified with Jesus Christ the Savior; in the diplomas of the sect a Cross surrounded by the symbols of the Passion and of the Redemption is placed in the position of honor; the Carbonaro catechism is entirely pervaded with religious and Christian symbolism; as patron of the sect is invoked St. Theobald, Count of Champagne (1017-66), who abandoned comforts to lead a hermit's life in the woods practicing the art of the charcoal burner. Admission to the sect took place through initiations and degrees (apprentice, master); and the hierarchy was formed of a regent, two assistants, an orator, a secretary, a treasurer, an archivist; there were expert or terrible masters, whose task it was to subject the candidates to the ritual tests; and coverers for the internal discipline of the assemblies, which were distinguished into chambers of honor (partial assemblies) and barracks (general assemblies).

Members were given the appellation of good firsts or good cousins. A regularly constituted nucleus was called a vendita; a group of vendite of a given region constituted a mother vendita; at the top there was a supreme hierarchy called the high vendita. The terminology proper which Freemasonry derived from the mason's art was, in the Carboneria, drawn from the charcoal burner's trade: hence we hear talk of axe, woods, wolves, furnaces, barracks, and so on. What above all, however, distinguishes the Carboneria from Freemasonry lies in their respective political ideals. The former loves to influence society through the constituted powers, and therefore strives to align itself with rulers and with persons influential over power, and willingly supports them; whereas the Carboneria has few but well-defined principles, from which it rarely departs, such as the abolition of despotism, the institution of democratic and constitutional forms, the right of peoples to their own self-determination, national independence: a program, that is, essentially practical, autonomous and revolutionary.

Before long the Neapolitan Carboneria began to be troubled by opposing currents, one Masonic and Muratist, subservient to Murat's policy; the other Anglo-Bourbon, with the intent of restoring Ferdinand IV to the throne of Naples. Thanks to the skill of Lord Bentinck, who knew how to persuade the Bourbon to meet Carbonaro aspirations by disguising himself as a constitutional king and champion of Italian independence and unity under the Bourbon scepter, this second current prevailed, fusing together liberal demands and reactionary tendencies, and making the Carboneria a formidable weapon in the hands of England against Murat's government. The latter reacted with measures of extreme rigor in the edict of proscription dated 14 Apr. 1814, whence followed inquisitions, trials and no few capital sentences. With the fall of Napoleon, the princes dethroned and restored by the Congress of Vienna immediately provided, with laws of exceptional rigor, to save their backs from the secret societies, and from the Carboneria in particular, which was already spread throughout almost the entire peninsula, and considered the most dangerous of all. Even Cardinal Pacca, pro-secretary of State of Pius VII, who confesses (cf. Il mio secondo ministero, in A. Quacquarelli, La ricostituzione dello Stato pontificio, Città di Castello 1945, p. 168) that on his arrival in Rome he did not know even the name of the Carboneria, on 15 Aug. 1814 issued an edict of condemnation: «it was learned to our great surprise, he says, that the Carbonari were circulating a pretended brief of the Pope, in which their secret society was approved. It was necessary therefore to refute such an imposture and to put the peoples on their guard». There followed therefore the first emigrations, for the most part voluntary, of Carbonari, who thus became disseminators and apostles of the sect in almost all the Mediterranean countries, especially in France, Spain and Portugal. Disappointed in its hopes by the Bourbon, the Neapolitan Carboneria threw itself once again into the arms of Murat and seconded him in his mad enterprise of making himself king of Italy. At the tragic epilogue of that adventure, a severe reaction followed, and the prince of Canosa, appointed minister of police, «dared to propose in full council to favor the sect of the calderari, so that it might serve as a counterweight to that of the carbonari» (W. Maturi, Il principe Canosa, Florence 1944, pp. 129-33).

The Congress of Vienna, which was supposed to heal the wounds of Italy opened by the French government, did nothing but inflict new ones upon her. By placing the peninsula at the mercy of Austria, it offered just grounds for discontent and an incentive to conspiracies; these now surrounded themselves with a more seductive light, inasmuch as they appeared suffused with noble and generous ideals that seduced peoples and even sovereigns. Filippo Buonarroti (1761-97), an old conspirator and Freemason, saw to it in Geneva to rejoin the threads of the Carboneria, to unite its innumerable congregations, to strengthen its discipline, its ritualism, and its secrecy with terrible sanctions. As he was at the head of the high supreme vendita, the Masonic, Enlightenment and anticlerical influence became more pronounced with him; and the Carboneria gradually took on a certain form of internationality. Wherever there were political or civil claims to be promoted, as in Spain so in France, in Greece and in more distant countries, the Carboneria took root, more or less covertly, and ranged itself alongside the other societies.

From the Carboneria innumerable sects were spawned, with the most varied denominations, among which the foremost were the Latin confederation, widespread and powerful in the Legations; the federation, in the subalpine lands; the Adelfia, especially in the Papal States; the Guelfia, believed to have been inspired by Bentinck. Attempts at insurrection on a vast scale were not long in coming, especially in lands already predisposed to more inflammable movements, such as the Romagna, the Marches, the Abruzzi, and the Kingdom of Naples: the most notable were those that broke out between 1816 and 1817 in the Marches and those of 1817 in Terra d'Otranto. The success of the Spanish revolution infused greater daring into the Italian Carboneria; and from it resulted the revolution of Naples in 1820 and that of Piedmont in 1821. But the difficulty of coordinating scattered and heterogeneous forces, together with the inexperience of the men who found themselves at the head of the movement, made it easy for Austria to carry out the task entrusted to her by the great powers assembled at Troppau, of smothering those movements and re-establishing absolute governments. Thus came to nothing the fruits, not entirely reprehensible, of that first period of conspiracies.

A powerful reaction, directed by Metternich, served to break up and scatter the sectarian ranks and cast a good number of the compromised onto the path of exile. Sectarian affiliation was by Austria equated with the crime of high treason punishable by death. The gentle Pius VII, insistently urged by the courts to break with Naples and to second their repressive action with the aid of spiritual penalties, did not consent; and only after the fact, on 13 Sept. 1821, did he issue the bull Ecclesiam, by which the Carboneria was condemned by name, renewing against it the excommunication and the other penalties sanctioned against Freemasonry, with the declaration that the condemnation was not inspired by political motives, but by the pseudo-religious character that the sect flaunted, and because under the semblance of "a singular observance and a certain affected favor for the Catholic religion and for the person and doctrine of Jesus Christ" it inculcated impious doctrines and practices, and undermined respect for every positive religion, and championed an individual religion according to the opinions and tastes of each. The Apostolic Penitentiary then, responding to questions from the Neapolitan episcopate, on 8 Nov. 1821, declared that "in view of the wicked dogmas and precepts of that society, and in particular of granting everyone great license to form a religion according to his own whim," the Carboneria was to be considered as "a reckless and heretical sect," and therefore the papal condemnation was to be understood in the strictest sense. The condemnation was then confirmed by Leo XII with the bull Quo graviora of 13 March 1825, by Pius IX with the encyclical Qui pluribus of 9 Nov. 1846, by Leo XIII with the encyclical Humanum genus of 20 Apr. 1884, and inserted in can. 2335 of the CIC, with excommunication simpliciter reservata and other spiritual penalties.

To the reorganization of the Carboneria Buonarroti again devoted himself, together with Passano, constituting in Paris the central congregation, from which orders and directives thenceforth emanated. After the July revolution (1830), which had a very strong repercussion in Italy, as in all of Europe, a general action was again attempted. It began at Modena on 4 Feb. 1831, through the work of Ciro Menotti, who ended on the scaffold; then the insurrection spread from Bologna and the Romagna to the Marches and Umbria, almost to the gates of Rome. The agitators, having sought to attract to their program the two sons of Louis Bonaparte, former king of Holland — Louis Napoleon, future emperor of the French, and Napoleon Louis — with the mirage of a throne, were soon overwhelmed by the numerous veterans of the Napoleonic wars, who took the reins into their hands and gave those movements a character all their own. Elected pope, Gregory XVI invited Austria to restore order and in a short time the revolt was quelled. The failure brought the Carboneria a profound depression; Giuseppe Mazzini, who from 1827 had been serving in its ranks, from the recent events that unfolded before his eyes, and from the experience of the past, drew the conviction that the Carboneria bore within itself, that is, in its deficiency of ideas, of a well-defined program and of young and active energies, the causes of its own failure, nor was it any longer susceptible of reform. The men on whom the Carboneria relied, such as a Barthe, a La Fayette, were by now old and outmoded. He therefore decided to found Young Italy, which began in July 1831 at Marseilles, and rapidly drew to itself the best elements, thus dealing the Carboneria a mortal blow.

Exaggerated, however, are the assertions of many historians that after '31 the Carboneria disappeared. In France and in the most important centers of emigration — Corsica, Malta, Corfu, Tunis — and in certain regions of Italy, it reconstituted its ranks and resumed conspiring, alongside, and almost always in a spirit of antagonism toward, Young Italy, often destroying the one what the other built. Nevertheless in the movements of Romagna of 1843 and those of Rimini of 1845 they acted in concert. A Carbonarist revival in Calabria, through the work of the Romeo brothers, stirred up in 1847 those Calabrian-Sicilian movements which, with the revolt of Palermo, were the reveille of the national insurrection of '48. It, however, says Cattaneo, had allowed itself to be dragged by skillful Sardinian emissaries, among the first d'Azeglio, behind the Carlo-Albertine cause; and perhaps it was precisely "that royal faction" that armed the hand which murdered Pellegrino Rossi. After the fall of the Roman republic, the first nucleus of the national association that Mazzini thought of establishing before leaving Rome consisted of Mazzinians and Carbonari. "The Carboneria," De Cesare would later say (Roma e lo Stato del Papa, I, Rome 1907, p. 158), "had never died in Rome; indeed in the lowest strata of Trastevere one may say that it survives with its oaths, its ideals of equality and the symbolism of its forms." A Carbonarist rebirth occurred in Portugal in 1907, with its vendite, baracche, alte vendite, etc.: it played a great part in the establishment of the republic.

If the effectiveness of the Carboneria was not, in Italy, in proportion to its numerical strength, and if its course was turned not toward betterment, but toward disintegration and progressive degeneration, the causes must be sought in those intrinsic weaknesses mentioned above; in particular in the rivalries that always tore it apart, and in the corrosive action of informers that made it easy for the police to control it. One may say of it what has been said of Mazzini and of Young Italy: that it worked more for the profit of other parties than of itself, prepared the ground and others gathered its fruits.

Pietro Pirri