CAVOUR, Camillo Benso, Count of. - Statesman, b. in Turin on 10 Aug. 1810, d. there on 6 June 1861. His parents were Marquis Michele, police commissioner in Turin, a man of the ancien régime, devoted to throne and altar; and Adele de Sellon, a Genevan converted from Calvinism, highly cultured and pious. As a boy he was admitted among the pages of Charles Albert, and since his condition as a cadet did not allow him to start a family of his own, he embraced without vocation, like so many others of his condition, a military career; he resigned from it on 12 Nov. 1831 with the rank of second lieutenant of engineers. After some years spent in idle and worldly life, in 1835 he applied himself with burning passion to agricultural progress on the family estates of Grinzano, his usual residence, ranging from private speculation to problems of general economic and social interest.
His religiosity, shaped by family traditions, of a rigid formalism, had vibrations of enthusiasm under the impression of the early La Mennais; it then wavered under the influence of Constant and Guizot, or rather of the juste milieu mentality, and took the form of a religious rationalism with evangelical tendencies. On these evolutions of C.'s religious conscience there certainly weighed the stays in Switzerland with the de Sellon family, the fascination of the mystic tant Cécile, of the pastor Alexandre Vinet, of his beloved cousin de La Rive. He claimed to have felt reawakened, in these Protestant circles, almost by a sudden impulse of nature, a renewed sense of religiosity, a higher concept of Christianity, which he now regards as the religious form most adequate à l'état actuel de l'humanité: that is, as a sublime form of religiosity, susceptible of further perfection, under the breath of that indefinite progress in which he, like his uncle de Sellon, nourishes an unshakable faith. He looked forward to a great Catholic reform, as the grande mystère du siècle. Concepts and feelings that would receive new reinforcement in Paris, in contact with the leading exponents of the French liberal Catholic movement, Ozanam, the abbé Coeur, etc. However, according to Ruffini, C. never recovered from the crisis that led him, at barely more than eighteen, to a crude rationalism, and, despite his various waverings, never regained full possession of the faith of his forefathers. Jemolo, and even more bluntly Cappa, acknowledge that his repeated professions of Catholicism, and the very provisions he made in 1855 so that the last comforts of religion might not be denied him at the point of death, are not to be understood as a genuine profession of orthodox sentiments, but rather as attitudes suggested by motives of a practical order. « Historians, says Jemolo, never tell us whether he went to Mass and approached the Sacraments: only the episode of the religious comforts at the point of death is known to us ». The Church interested him as a « historical institution, a living and operating organization », and this « drove him to look at the history and the law of the Church, to examine its institutions attentively, to sift out those that seemed to him susceptible of new and beneficial fruits and those that appeared to him dead branches » (A. C. Jemolo, op. cit., pp. 134 ff., 504, 554).
On 5 Dec. 1847, when he founded the newspaper Il Risorgimento, organ of the moderate liberal party, which at first, that is until the decline of Neo-Guelphism, won the sympathies of a good part of the constitutional and reformist clergy, C. took good care not to assume Jacobin poses in religious matters; nevertheless he began from that time to champion certain ideas that not only that fraction of the clergy, but not even some of his best friends, such as Sclopis, Thaon di Revel, Balbo, felt able to share. When the Statute was proclaimed, he upheld freedom of worship in the sense of a « perfect equality » between the Catholic religion, declared the religion of the State, and the other cults merely tolerated. Moreover C. dealt only rarely in the newspaper with religious questions, reserving economic matters for himself. Those were left in the full domain of Pier Carlo Boggio, who early on began to champion there the thesis of the separation of the two powers: something he could hardly have done had he not been a faithful interpreter of his mind. In his practical attitudes he shows himself rather deferential to the clergy, rises in defense of its prerogatives, as well as of sacred institutions, even breaks a lance, in the name of liberty and humanity, in defense of the persecuted Jesuits, and if he attacks Archbishop Fransoni, he does so with moderation and restraint. In 1851 he rises, in the name of freedom of teaching, against a bill in which, in order to protect the theological teaching of the university, that of the seminaries was to be forbidden. In 1853 he even supports the exemption of clerics from military service: and this for social reasons, that is, so that the ecclesiastical career might remain more easily accessible to the less well-off classes.
But when it comes to questions of principle, one immediately finds oneself faced with a clearly lay mentality. He did not hesitate to say that if unilateral decisions on the part of the State could help the solution of a controversy between the two powers, there was no difficulty in the State legislating; since, according to him, the authority that decides is always that of the State. In 1850 he supported the Siccardi laws, against the opposition of the moderates, and it may be said that their triumph is due principally to him. Indeed it was precisely the speech of 7 March 1850 in defense of the Siccardi laws that was his first great parliamentary success, which brought him to the leadership of the liberal party and set him on the path that concluded in Feb. 1852 in the famous « connubio » with Rattazzi, and in the definitive break with the moderate Catholics.
Having entered on 20 Apr. 1851 into the d'Azeglio ministry with the portfolio of Agriculture, then also of the Navy and of Finance, he had only rare occasions to intervene in ecclesiastical matters; but his policy, albeit with greater circumspection, did not deviate from the guidelines set out above. On 4 Nov. 1852 he is charged with forming the new cabinet, and from that moment until the end of his life, he, except for some momentary crises, will remain at the head of the government, almost absolute arbiter of the destinies of the State. The star of his fortune, which rises rapidly, keeps bound to itself the attention not only of Piedmont and Italy, but of the whole of Europe. Everyone has the feeling that that small restless man will not let Europe sleep peaceful sleeps until he sees his ideals realized.
The ecclesiastical policy of C. continued along the path already traced by his predecessor, with that greater resoluteness and energy that was to be expected from a man of that temper. Victor Emmanuel II, who had seen with deep regret the bad turn that affairs had taken under d'Azeglio's government, and who loved to preserve with Rome those friendly relations that were traditional in the House of Savoy, before entrusting the mandate to C. wished to manifest to him too, as he had done in vain with d'Azeglio, his intentions, namely to «enter into negotiations with the court of Rome in order to resolve by agreement with it the pending questions and first of all that of civil marriage». He also arranged a meeting between him and Msgr. Charvaz on the practical ways of achieving the goal. He refused, and did not bend to accept the mandate except with full freedom of action. Nevertheless, without promising to withdraw the law on civil marriage, he consented not to make it a Cabinet question; thus he let it fall by a single vote of majority. But as for agreements with the Holy See, he immediately made his intentions known, recalling from Rome the representative, Count de Sambuy, and tacitly letting drop the negotiations begun by him for a friendly settlement of affairs. Peaceful coexistence with Rome was not at all part of the count's far-sighted designs: and as long as he was in power, none of the many questions that from '48 onward awaited a solution was brought back to the table. Of a new concordat (the old one having, after so many violations, become a dead letter), the only way to give the relations between the two courts a normal and lasting direction, he would not hear speak. And if the aggressive policy of the previous ministry was somewhat softened, the war of pinpricks nevertheless continued without respite, nor was there lacking some major battle, such as that over the law for the suppression and confiscation of the property of the religious Orders, which Pius IX condemned in the allocation Cum saepe of 26 July 1855. Among the few institutes that were saved from the general shipwreck were the Visitandines, founded by St. Francis de Sales: Philippine de Sales, the C.'s paternal grandmother, was the daughter of a brother of the Saint: and he set great store by so noble a descent. Jemolo says with reason that C.'s ecclesiastical policy, as it results from the aforementioned law on the convents, 29 May 1855, is anything but a rigorous implementation of separatism. It «rests on the concepts that the State evaluates which ecclesiastical bodies are useless, and suppresses them, which are sufficiently useful to be able to be preserved, which are worthy of protection»: that is, it consists in a veritable intrusion of the civil powers into the proper sphere of spiritual authority, that is, in a new form of Josephinism (op. cit., pp. 167-68). It is not the only case that reveals the inconsistency of the criteria adopted in this matter. Despite his repeated declarations of wanting liberty for all, of seeing with pleasure the clergy participating in the new forms of constitutional life, of abhorring any anticlerical persecution, nevertheless when in 1857 the political elections gave, with the support of the clergy, results highly favorable to the conservative party, the party of which he was the head invalidated the greater part of those appointments; and he supported in the Chamber a proposal for an inquiry into the alleged abuses of the clergy, and in a speech made on 30 Dec. he inveighed against those presumed abuses, as if it were not a duty of pastors to admonish the faithful to oppose the parties and candidates that advocate doctrines contrary to divine law. This wavering of Cavourian thought is due to the fact that he, although a man of high and subtle intellect and of firm principles, was more than a theorist a practical man, a man of realization. Of all that fierce dissension between State and Church that constitutes the characteristic note of his ministry, it was not the doctrinal aspect but the practical one that interested him, in order to give life to national unity.
From his earliest years C. cherished the hope of one day seeing the peninsula recomposed into political unity. In reality, until Plombières, C.'s patriotic ideal was far more modest and still of a purely Piedmontese stamp: it was limited, that is, to the expansion and aggrandizement of the Sardinian kingdom at the expense of Austria and the duchies. Piedmont's participation in the Crimean War (1855) opened a wider chink for his hopes, but the outcome of the Congress of Paris of 1856 left him somewhat disappointed. The famous meeting of July 1858 with Napoleon at Plombières made him conceive designs of boundless boldness. In that conversation it was agreed that the domination and influence of Austria were to be eliminated totally from Italy. A great Savoyard State was to be constituted which would absorb, along with the Lombardo-Veneto, also the Legations and the duchies. The remainder of the peninsula would be reconstituted into three principal ones: Central Italy, which embraced Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches; the Papal State reduced to Rome and a small hinterland; and the kingdom of Naples, preserved intact (said the emperor) in homage to Russia, which set store by it. C. immediately saw that the incongruous plans dreamed by Napoleon opened the way for him to far other realizations. At the last moment Napoleon III, faced with the alarm of European diplomacy and the unpopularity of the war in France, would have wanted to draw back, or at least to postpone its execution sine die, but C. threatened the most catastrophic consequences and forced him to keep his word.
The outcome of the Franco-Sardinian war against Austria (1859), which concluded with the peace of Villafranca, permitted only the partial realization of those designs, and left C.'s aspirations greatly disappointed; he, having tendered his resignation, withdrew to Leri, prey to simulated fury. Perugia, which with the aid sent from Florence had rebelled against the Pope, was immediately subdued; the Legations, which Austria's stubborn obstinacy had left completely ungarrisoned, easily fell into the hands of the insurgents. The Treaty of Villafranca and the Congress of Zurich established the restoration of the Italian princes to their ancient possessions, but with the clause that for this no use of force was to be made; which rendered that condition wholly ineffective, and brought it about that the Legations had to be considered as definitively lost. In fact, following a popular suffrage, together with Tuscany, Parma and Modena were annexed to Piedmont in March 1860.
The clouds that disturbed C.'s good relations with Napoleon III (with Victor Emmanuel there was never good blood, especially in 1859, because of the obstacles the latter created to the marriage with the countess of Mirafiori) soon dissipated. In January 1860 he took up the reins of power again at the express wish of the emperor, and great events were not slow to ripen anew. It is not out of place to mention here C.'s relations with Italian Freemasonry, revived in 1859 at Turin, of which his most trusted collaborator, Costantino Nigra, was named "grand orient." While the king was plotting, in agreement with Garibaldi, the expedition of the Thousand and the fall of the throne of Naples, C., through the work of the committees of the National Society, was undermining the ground in the territory left to the Pope, amid the perpetual danger of uprisings and the threat of an invasion. On the pretext of restoring order, on 11 September General Fanti invaded the Marches and Umbria with 15 Piedmontese divisions, and on 18 September forced the small papal army commanded by Lamoricière to capitulate. Napoleon III, who, while the drama was moving toward its epilogue, had made himself untraceable, reappears on the scene once the facts were accomplished, returning from a cruise in the Mediterranean, hurls the thunderbolts of his indignation at the king and his minister, and promises aid that always arrives too late. Meanwhile, despite the most ample assurances given by Napoleon to Pius IX, among C.'s intimates it was said, even to those who did not wish to hear it, that he had been kept informed of everything, and that to the two envoys sent from Turin, Farini and Gialdini, he had expressed his approval, with the famous phrase: Bonne chance, mais faites vite! Now, finding himself discovered, in flagrant crime of falsehood, the emperor flew into a rage, declared that his words had been given a meaning they did not have, and from that moment there began a period of tension that would cease only with C.'s death. What stung him most of all was to see crumble into fragments that whole fanciful plan of reorganization of Italy conceived by him. This did not prevent the occupied countries from being annexed to Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel from being designated king of Italy (17 March 1861), and Rome from being proclaimed capital (27 March).
Now the problem of the "Roman question" presents itself in all its gravity. The abnormal situation in which the head of the Church found himself, reduced to a tiny territory, with insufficient resources, devoid of military forces, hemmed in internally by a hostile power, and therefore not sufficiently guaranteed in the free exercise of his ministry, demanded urgent measures. Various projects for a modus vivendi were in fact proposed and aired by Spain, by Austria, and also by France. Between Napoleon and C. the arduous problem was discussed at length without reaching a point of agreement: on the part of France a scheme of compromise soon made headway, which in substance came to port with the convention of September 1864, but which was not at all welcome to C. For C. the "Roman question" was and had to remain an Italian question and above all a question of liberty; it had to be resolved without the Catholic powers meddling in it, and it would certainly have had its best solution on the day when Rome were reunited with Italy.
At first he willingly lent an ear to the conciliatory ideas and suggestions of Dr. Diomede Pantaloni and of the former Jesuit Carlo Passaglia, most versed not only in theology but also in matters of public ecclesiastical law. These formulated a plan of conciliation which, without clashing with Catholic doctrine and with canon jurisprudence, came as close as possible to the Cavourian formula: "a free Church in a free State," a formula notoriously coined by Montalembert, and taken up by C. and interpreted in a sense exactly opposite to that of its inventor. They flattered C. at the same time with the hope that through their lofty connections in Rome and through the authority that Passaglia enjoyed in ecclesiastical circles, it would not be very difficult to create around it a strong favorable current. C. was satisfied with it (Quest. rom., I, Bologna 1930, pp. 93, 105), invited Passaglia to Turin, and the matter was discussed between them under every aspect. The ideas concerted there are summarized in a sheet that Passaglia sent to the count at the end of January 1861 (op. cit., p. 239). In compensation for the Pope's "at least passive acquiescence" to the annexation of Rome, the State was to assume solemn commitments to guarantee the dignity, liberty, decorum and independence of the head of the Church: it recognized in him sovereign prerogatives and honors, including immunity from accountability and active and passive diplomatic representation; it provided for the decorum and support of the court and of the Sacred College; it recognized in the Pope and the bishops the right of property and free disposal of ecclesiastical goods; it considered abolished every restriction of ecclesiastical jurisdiction deriving from concordats or from other titles, in particular regarding the election of bishops.
C. prided himself on wishing to inaugurate a new method in relations between the State and the Church founded upon a regime of absolute liberty, such as had never been seen in past centuries, such as to close forever the era of jurisdictionalist competitions. And this not without the intention of embarrassing Napoleon, who attached the greatest importance to the organic articles still in force in France. Yet, while so much was being said of liberty, the policy of the government was taking on an ever more vexatious and anticlerical tinge. The concordats of Lombardy and Naples were abolished, old regalist prerogatives existing in the Two Sicilies were kept in force, the subversive laws were extended to all Italy, priests, bishops and even cardinals were imprisoned.
(Int. Enc. Catt.)