CAVOUR, CAMILLO BENSO, Count of. – Statesman, b. in Turin on 12 Aug. 1810, d. there on 6 June 1861. His parents were Marquis Michele, police vicar in Turin, a man of the ancien régime, devoted to throne and altar; and Adele de Sellon, a Genevan convert from Calvinism, highly cultured and pious. As a boy he was admitted among the pages of Charles Albert, and since his cadet status did not allow him to form a family of his own, he embraced—like so many others in his position—the military career without vocation; he resigned on 12 Nov. 1831 with the rank of sub-lieutenant in the engineers. After several years spent in idle and worldly life, in 1835 he devoted himself with ardent passion to agricultural progress on the family estates at Grinzane, his habitual residence, ranging from private speculation to problems of general economic and social interest.
His religiosity, shaped by family tradition into rigid formalism, experienced moments of enthusiasm under the influence of Lamennais in his early manner; 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. These evolutions in Cavour’s religious conscience were certainly influenced by his stays in Switzerland with the de Sellon family, the charm of the mystic Cécile, the pastor Alexandre Vinet, and his beloved cousin de la Rive. He claimed to have felt, in these Protestant environments, almost by a sudden impulse of nature, a renewed sense of religiosity, a loftier conception of Christianity, which he now regarded as the religious form most adequate to the present state of humanity: that is, as a sublime form of religiosity, capable of further perfection under the breath of that indefinite progress in which he, like his uncle de Sellon, placed unwavering faith. He advocated a great Catholic reform, as the great mystery of the century. These ideas and sentiments found further reinforcement in Paris, through contact with the leading exponents of the French liberal Catholic movement, Ozanam, Abbé Coeur, and others. Yet, according to Ruffini, Cavour never recovered from the crisis that, when he was barely eighteen, led him to crude rationalism, and despite various fluctuations, he never regained full possession of the faith of his ancestors. Jemolo, and even more harshly Cappa, acknowledge that his repeated professions of Catholicism, and even the arrangements he made in 1855 to ensure he would not be denied the last rites of religion at the hour of death, should not be taken as sincere expressions of orthodox sentiment, but rather as attitudes dictated by practical considerations. “Historians,” says Jemolo, “never tell us whether he went to Mass or received the Sacraments; we only know of the episode of the religious consolations at the hour of death.”
The Church interested him as a “historical institution, a living and active organization,” and this led him “to examine the history and law of the Church, to scrutinize its institutions closely, to distinguish those that seemed capable of bearing new and beneficial fruit from those that appeared as dead branches” (A. C. Jemolo, op. cit., pp. 134 ff., 504, 554).
On 5 Dec. 1847, when he launched the newspaper Il Risorgimento, the organ of the moderate liberal party, which in its early phase, until the decline of Neo-Guelphism, won the sympathy of much of the constitutional and reformist clergy, Cavour took care not to adopt Jacobin postures on religious matters; yet
Cavour, Camillo Benso, Count of – Portrait.
from that time onward he began to advocate certain ideas that neither that fraction of the clergy nor even some of his best friends, such as Sclopis, Thaon di Revel, and Balbo, were prepared to share. When the Statute was proclaimed, he upheld freedom of worship in the sense of “perfect equality” between the Catholic religion, declared the religion of the State, and the other cults merely tolerated. For the rest, Cavour rarely addressed religious questions in the newspaper, reserving for himself matters of an economic nature. These were left entirely to Pier Carlo Boggio, who early on began to advocate in its pages the thesis of the separation of the two powers: something he could hardly have done had he not been a faithful interpreter of Cavour’s mind. In his practical attitudes he showed himself deferential to the clergy, rose to defend its prerogatives and sacred institutions, and even, in the name of liberty and humanity, took up the cudgels in defence of the persecuted Jesuits; and though he attacked Archbishop Fransoni, he did so with moderation and restraint. In 1831 he protested, in the name of freedom of teaching, against a bill that sought to bar seminary instruction in order to safeguard theological teaching in the university. In 1853 he even supported the exemption of clerics from military service: and this for social reasons, so that the ecclesiastical career might remain more readily accessible to the less well-to-do classes.
Yet when it came to matters of principle, one immediately encountered a mindset that was distinctly secular. He did not hesitate to say that if unilateral decisions by the State could help resolve a controversy between the two powers, there was no difficulty in the State legislating; for, in his view, the deciding authority was always that of the State. In 1850 he supported the Siccardi Laws against the opposition of the moderates, and it can be said that their triumph was chiefly due to him. Indeed, his speech of 7 March 1850 in defence of the Siccardian laws was his first great parliamentary success, which led to his assuming the leadership of the party.
Liberal and placed him on the path that culminated in February 1852 in the famous *connubio* with Rattazzi, and with the definitive break from moderate Catholics.
Having entered on 20 April 1851 to take part in the d’Azeglio ministry with the portfolio of Agriculture, then also of the Navy and Finance, he had only rare occasions to intervene in ecclesiastical matters; yet his policy, though more circumscribed, did not deviate from the directives outlined above. On 4 November 1852 he was entrusted with forming the new cabinet, and from that moment until his death he remained at the head of the government, save for a few brief crises, exercising almost absolute control over the fate of the State. His rapidly rising star held the attention not only of Piedmont and Italy but of all Europe. There was a widespread sense that this restless little man would not let Europe sleep in peace until his ideals were realised.
CAVOUR’s ecclesiastical policy followed the path already laid down by his predecessor, with the greater resolution and energy one might expect from a man of his mettle. King Victor Emmanuel II, who had watched with deep regret the direction taken under the d’Azeglio government and wished to preserve the friendly relations with Rome that were traditional in the House of Savoy, before entrusting the mandate to Cavour had sought to impress upon him, as he had vainly done with d’Azeglio, his intention ‘to enter into negotiations with the Roman court to resolve, in agreement with it, the outstanding questions, and above all that of civil marriage’. He also arranged a meeting between Cavour and Monsignor Charvaz to discuss practical ways of achieving this end. Cavour succeeded and refused to accept the mandate unless he were granted full freedom of action. Nevertheless, without promising to withdraw the civil marriage law, he agreed not to make it a matter of cabinet policy; thus he allowed it to lapse by a single vote of majority. As for agreements with the Holy See, however, he immediately made his intentions clear by recalling the representative in Rome, Count de Sambuy, and quietly shelving the negotiations he had begun for an amicable settlement of affairs. A peaceful coexistence with Rome was not at all part of the Count’s far-sighted designs; and so long as he remained in power none of the many questions pending since 1848 was brought back to the table. He would not hear of a new concordat—since the old one, after so many violations, had become a dead letter—the only means, that is, of giving the relations between the two courts a lasting normal direction. And if the aggressive policy of the previous ministry was softened, the relentless pinprick warfare continued, and there were even major battles, such as that over the law suppressing and confiscating the property of religious orders, which Pius IX condemned in the allocution *Cum saepe* of 26 July 1855. Among the few institutes to escape the general wreck were the Visitandines, founded by St Francis de Sales: Philippine de Sales, Cavour’s paternal grandmother, was the daughter of a brother of the Saint, and he set great store by such noble lineage. As Jemolo rightly observes, Cavour’s ecclesiastical policy, as evidenced by the cited law of 29 May 1855, was anything but a rigorous application of separatism. It ‘rests on the principle that the State judges which ecclesiastical bodies are useless and suppresses them, which are sufficiently useful to be preserved, and which deserve protection’: in other words, it consists in a veritable encroachment by civil authority upon the sphere of spiritual authority, a new form of Gallicanism (op. cit., pp. 167–68). This is not the only instance revealing the inconsistency of the criteria adopted in this matter. Despite his repeated declarations of wishing freedom for all, of rejoicing to see the clergy participate in the new constitutional life, and of abhorring any anti-clerical persecution, when the political elections of 1857 returned results highly favourable to the conservative party with the support of the clergy, the party led by Cavour invalidated the majority of those appointments; and he himself supported in the Chamber a proposal for an inquiry into alleged clerical abuses, and in a speech delivered on 30 December he lashed out against these supposed abuses as if it were not the duty of pastors to warn the faithful against parties and candidates advocating doctrines contrary to divine law. This vacillation in Cavour’s thought must be attributed to the fact that, however high-minded and clear-sighted a man of firm principles he was, more than a theorist he was a pragmatist, a man of action. Of the fierce conflict between State and Church that marked his ministry, it was not the doctrinal aspect but the practical aspect that concerned him, in his drive to bring about national unity.
From his earliest years Cavour had cherished the hope of seeing the peninsula reunited in political unity. In reality, until Plombières his patriotic ideal was far more modest and still distinctly Piedmontese in character: it was limited, that is, to the expansion and enlargement of the Sardinian kingdom at the expense of Austria and the duchies. Piedmont’s participation in the Crimean War (1855) opened a wider prospect for his hopes, but the outcome of the Congress of Paris in 1856 left him somewhat disappointed. The famous meeting of July 1858 with Napoleon at Plombières gave him the idea of plans of almost limitless boldness. In those talks it was agreed that Austrian domination and influence were to be completely eliminated from Italy. A great Savoyard state was to be created, absorbing the Lombard–Venetian territory along with the Legations and the duchies. The rest of the peninsula was to be reconstituted into three principalities: Central Italy, comprising Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches; the Papal State reduced to Rome and a small hinterland; and the Kingdom of Naples, to remain intact (so the Emperor said) out of deference to Russia, which insisted on II. Cavour immediately saw that the incongruous plans dreamed up by Napoleon opened the way to far greater achievements. At the last moment Napoleon III, alarmed by European diplomacy and unpopularity of war in France, sought to back out or at least postpone indefinitely its execution, but Cavour threatened the gravest consequences and forced him to keep his word.
The outcome of the Franco-Sardinian war against Austria (1859), which ended with the Peace of Villafranca, allowed only a partial implementation of those designs and left Cavour’s aspirations greatly disappointed. Resigning his post, he withdrew to Leri in a show of fury. Perugia, which with help from Florence had rebelled against the Pope, was quickly subdued; the Legations, left completely defenceless by Austria’s stubborn obstinacy, fell easily into the hands of the insurgents. The Treaty of Villafranca and the Congress of Zurich restored the Italian princes to their former territories, but with the proviso that force was not to be used; a clause that rendered the condition entirely ineffective and meant that the Legations were to be considered as definitively lost. Indeed, following a popular plebiscite, Tuscany, Parma and Modena were annexed to Piedmont in March 1860.
The clouds that troubled C.’s good relations with Napoleon III (with Victor Emmanuel there was never any good feeling, especially in 1859, because of the obstacles he placed to the marriage with the Countess of Mirafiori) soon dissipated. In the autumn of 1860 he resumed the reins of power at the express wish of the Emperor, and great events soon began to take shape once more. It is not out of place to mention here C.’s relations with the Italian freemasonry that revived in 1859 in 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 committees of the National Society, was undermining the ground in the territory still belonging to the Pope, amid the constant danger of uprisings and the threat of invasion. Under the pretext of restoring order, on 11 September General Fanti invaded the Marches and Umbria with 15 Piedmontese divisions, and on 18 September he forced the small papal army commanded by Lamoricière to surrender. Napoleon III, who, as the drama reached its climax, had made himself scarce, reappeared on the scene after the deed was done, returning from a cruise in the Mediterranean. He hurled the thunderbolts of his wrath at the King and his minister and promised aid that always arrived 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—that he had been informed of everything, and that to the two envoys sent from Turin, Farini and Cialdini, he had given his approval with the famous phrase: Bonac chance, mais faites vite!
Now exposed, caught in the very act of lying, the Emperor flew into a rage, declared that his words had been given a meaning they did not possess, and from that moment a period of tension began that would not cease until C.’s death. What stung him most was to see his whole elaborate plan for reorganizing Italy shattered to pieces. Yet this did not prevent the occupied territories from being annexed to Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel from being proclaimed King of Italy (17 March 1861), and Rome from being declared the capital (27 March).
The “Roman Question” now loomed 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 force, hemmed in by a hostile power, and thus insufficiently guaranteed in the free exercise of his ministry—demanded urgent measures. Indeed, various projects for a modus vivendi were proposed and aired by Spain, Austria, and even France. Napoleon and C. discussed the thorny problem at length without reaching any agreement; from the French side there soon emerged a compromise scheme that, in essence, came to fruition with the September 1864 convention, though it was far from pleasing 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 interfering, and it would certainly find its best solution on the day when Rome was reunited with Italy.
At first he listened willingly to the conciliatory ideas and suggestions of Dr. Diomede Pantaleoni and the ex-Jesuit Carlo Passaglia, a man versed not only in theology but also in matters of ecclesiastical public law. They formulated a plan of reconciliation that, without clashing with Catholic doctrine or canon law, came as close as possible to Cavour’s formula: “a free Church in a free State,” a formula notoriously coined by Montalembert and taken up and interpreted by C. in a sense exactly opposite to that of its inventor. At the same time, they flattered C. with the hope that, thanks to their high connections in Rome and the authority that Passaglia enjoyed among the ecclesiastical estate, it would not be too difficult to create a strong current of support around him. C. was satisfied with this (Quest. ram., I, Bologna 1930, pp. 93, 105), invited Passaglia to Turin, and the matter was discussed between them in all its aspects. The ideas agreed upon there are summarized in a memorandum that Passaglia sent to the Count at the end of January 1861 (loc. cit., p. 239). In return for the Pope’s “passive acquiescence” to the annexation of Rome, the State was to assume solemn commitments to guarantee the dignity, freedom, decorum, and independence of the head of the Church: it was to recognize sovereign prerogatives and honors for him, including inviolability and active and passive diplomatic representation; it was to provide for the decorum and maintenance of the Papal court and the Sacred College; it was to recognize the right of the Pope and the bishops to property and free disposition of ecclesiastical goods; and it was to abolish all restrictions on ecclesiastical jurisdiction deriving from concordats or other titles, particularly regarding the election of bishops.
C. prided himself on wishing to inaugurate a new method in the relations between State and Church, founded on a regime of absolute liberty such as had never been seen in past centuries, one that would close the era of jurisdictional disputes for good. And he did so not without the intention of embarrassing Napoleon, who attached great importance to the Organic Articles still in force in France. Yet while so much was said of liberty, the government’s policy was taking on an increasingly oppressive and anticlerical hue. The concordats of Lombardy and Naples were abolished, old regal prerogatives existing in the Two Sicilies were maintained, the anti-clerical laws were extended to all Italy, priests, bishops, and even cardinals were imprisoned.
The Holy See neither encouraged nor opposed the mission of Passaglia, but ordered him to maintain strict secrecy on the matter, fearing it might be exploited to its detriment. As indeed happened; for as soon as Passaglia arrived in Turin, the newspapers began to speak of ongoing reconciliation negotiations. Thus, a note in the official Roman gazette came to deny the unfounded rumors and to put an end to the initiative, in which so little good faith was seen. Overwhelming evidence shows that at the very time he was beginning these proceedings, he did not shrink from weaving intrigues to bribe Cardinal Antonelli and other influential prelates with money. The instructions he then sent to the two negotiators in Rome, along with the related draft chapters (op. cit., pp. 253, 260, 275), appear to have been conceived in a spirit entirely different from that of the bases agreed upon with Passaglia, although C. claimed to have remained in full agreement with him on all points.
The clergy are subjected to common law without any regard for the privilege of the ecclesiastical forum; the civil personality of religious corporations and institutions is denied; episcopal appointments are made subject to an elective system to be arranged between the two powers, with the government reserving in certain cases the right of veto and the right to intervene in the first appointments; the endowment of bishoprics, chapters, and parish churches is arranged autonomously; the number of bishoprics is reduced from about 260 to 80; ecclesiastical benefices are so tied up that they cannot be increased without the placet of the civil authority, and so on. If to all this is added the condition imposed on the Pope (do ut des) to renounce temporal power in such a way as to leave no doubt “as to the actual reality and effectiveness of the renunciation,” one may judge what ideal value can be given to Cavour’s formula: “A free Church in a free State.” With it, nothing more is asserted than the mentality of Marco Minghetti, who, starting from the principle that only the State, in the true and exclusive sense, possesses legislative and coercive power, and that every other authority operating within the State must be subordinate to it, implicitly excludes the thesis of the two powers and two freedoms, and places the religious society, like every other society, under the control and authority of the State; to which, indeed, though incompetent in the spiritual sphere, belongs the right to recognize the juridical personality of the Church and thus to subject its activity to control.
With the failure of the conciliatory mission undertaken by C., even before negotiations had begun, the modus vivendi devised by Napoleon III came back into play, based on a direct understanding between Paris and Turin, by virtue of which the king’s government was to bind itself to guarantee the integrity of the small territory remaining to the Pope, while leaving in abeyance the rights that the Holy See claimed over the other annexed territories; and it also bound itself to assume a proportional share of the public debt of the papal government corresponding to the annexed territories. The Holy See, remaining outside the agreement, could only take note of it, if it so wished, when it was communicated to II. After this, France withdrew its troops from Rome and accorded recognition to the Kingdom of Italy. One can well imagine how irksome such an agreement must have been to C.; but he had to bow to the emperor’s will. Everything was already ready, and nothing remained but the signing by the high parties, when the great statesman’s sudden death intervened.
It has remained shrouded in mystery whether C. died in the bosom of the Catholic Church. It was then officially announced that he had expired fortified by the Sacraments; of which Pius IX rejoiced and, as La Civiltà Cattolica reported, did not fail to offer suffrages for him. Funeral services had been celebrated in many churches, in Italy and abroad, when a statement appeared in the newspapers by the Marquis Gustavo, Camillo’s brother, denying the rumor of the count’s recantation before death. Several bishops and nuncios then turned to Rome for instructions; and from Rome the ecclesiastical authority in Turin was asked how things had actually transpired. But Fr. Giacomo da Poirino, who, as previously agreed, had been summoned to assist C. in his final moments, maintained a mysterious silence. Suspicions that this was due to fear of reprisals led to his being summoned to Rome and questioned in person by Pius IX. The friar, with the futile pretext that it was a matter of sacramental secrecy, would say nothing, limiting himself to declaring that, as far as he was concerned, he had done his duty. All that was then said and published in the newspapers about pressures and threats to which Fr. Giacomo was allegedly subjected to extract the secret is pure invention. It is now believed that Fr. Giacomo had been called to the dying man’s bedside when the latter was in a state of delirium, and that his ministry was merely pro forma, a mere political convention.
BIBL.:
G. Delletti, *Libera Chiesa*, etc., *genesi della formola cavuriana*, in *Nuova antologia*, 29 (1875), p. 566; G. Giacometti, *Die Genesi von C. S. Formel*, Aarau 1919; A. C. Jemolo, *op. cit.* Rapporti con la massoneria; P. Buscalione, *C. e la massoneria*, in *Rassegna contemporanea*, 8 (1914), pp. 213-43; A. Luzio, *La massoneria e il Risorgimento italiano*, I, Bologna 1925, pp. 265-87; P. Pirri, *C. C. Costantino Nigra e il rinascimento della massoneria italiana*, in *Civ. Catt.*, 1926, II, pp. 309-24. Deceased: M. Mazziotti, *Il c. di C. e il suo confessore*, Bologna 1916. Catholic literature on the subject is scarce. Pietro Pirri