GARDINER, STEPHEN. - Prelate and English politician, b. at Bury St. Edmunds between 1483 and 1493, d. at Whitehall on 12 Nov. 1555. A student at Cambridge, he graduated in law. He became secretary to Cardinal Wolsey in 1525.
In 1528 he was sent to Clement VII to obtain papal consent to the annulment of the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Appointed by Henry VIII as his secretary, he soon acquired great influence. In 1531, upon Wolsey’s death, he succeeded him as Bishop of Winchester. Still for Henry VIII, he was present at Marseille at the meeting between the Pope and Francis I (1533), and two years later he was summoned with other bishops to justify the new title of Supreme Head of the Church of England, which the King had assumed. He did so with *De vero oboedientia*, the best-known of his defences of royal supremacy over Rome.
However, although he had supported the supremacy and the king’s independence from the papacy, G. opposed the doctrines of the Reformation, so much so that he was considered the most tenacious defender of the Catholic faith. When Edward VI ascended the throne, G. was imprisoned for a sermon he delivered on 29 June 1548 in defence of the real presence in the Eucharist. Released and restored to his see when Mary came to the throne, G. was appointed Lord Chancellor and crowned the Queen. During this period he retracted what he had upheld in the time of Henry, regarding the supremacy of Rome and Henry VIII’s divorce.
the adventurous life at sea, he came into contact with exiles and conspirators; in 1833 he was initiated by Barroult into the Saint-Simonian sect and by Mazzini into Young Italy. He enlisted in the Sardinian navy and in 1834 took part in the insurrectional attempts in Genoa, was tried and sentenced to death. Escaping the penalty, he first moved to France and then to America, where he took an active part, at the head of a legion of Italian volunteers—among whom stood out the first company of redshirts—in the long war that Uruguay waged against Brazil (1839-46). It was here that Garibaldi’s heroic valour and military genius first manifested themselves. Upon hearing of the reforms granted by Pius IX, he addressed a letter to the nuncio Bedini, offering his sword to the Pope; in April 1848, repatriating with 63 companions, he rushed to Lombardy, where the First War of Independence against Austria was being fought, but found himself met with distrust by Charles Albert.
Proclaimed the Roman Republic, G. fought as a general against the Bourbons at Palestrina and Velletri, and against the French at Porta S. Pancrazio. With the fall of the Republic, he left Rome with a few faithful companions (2 July 1849) and took refuge in San Marino. Setting sail from Cesena, he was forced to land at Migliavacca, where his wife Anita died, having followed him in his adventurous flight. After dramatic events, he emigrated to the United States (July 1850), devoted himself to industry, and reappeared in Genoa on 7 May 1854, with modest savings which he invested in the purchase of half of the uncultivated island of Caprera, which he soon managed to make entirely his own and improved by intensifying agriculture and pastoral activities.
With the outbreak of war against Austria in April 1859, G., who had already been given command of the Alpine Hunters, valiantly fought at Varese, San Fermo, and the Stelvio. At a meeting in Milan the following August, he proposed to Victor Emmanuel II an expedition into central Italy, and the King promised his support but with delay. Mazzini and the National Society prepared the ground: G. was to invade the Papal territory with two divisions and take command of the revolt. Fear of a reaction not only from France but also from the Italian states, unwilling to tolerate such a coup, dissuaded the King from backing the enterprise: he therefore ordered General Fanti to dissuade G., or at least to leave him to act at his own risk. From a new meeting with Victor Emmanuel in Turin on 29 October 1859, G. gained the impression that the King would not disapprove of such an enterprise, at least to show Napoleon III how untenable the situation in central Italy had become, especially since England was encouraging bold action with overt displays. But Napoleon III, informed that a coup by G. was being plotted in the Marches, put an end to these designs with a threatening telegram to the King. The latter then sent General Solaroli to Bologna, and G. at first yielded, but later, yielding to the insinuations of friends, withdrew his assent, until summoned by the King to Turin on 16 November, when he allowed himself to be persuaded to reserve his forces for a better opportunity and to retire to Caprera. However, upon arriving in Nice, he issued a proclamation to the friends of central Italy, calling for the subscription of a million *fuochi* for a million-strong army, and in a letter to the King, he claimed his own freedom of action. Convinced that Victor Emmanuel fully adhered to his plans, he urged him to rid himself of Cavour and assume a dictatorship to mark the liberation of Rome. On 28 December he met with him again and it seems they reached an agreement on this; but then Victor Emmanuel, alarmed by the possible consequences, withdrew his assent, limiting his support to weapons and money for an expedition to Sicily. Thus, despite Cavour, who feared both Napoleon’s wrath and the predominance of the republican faction, the Expedition of the Thousand took place (May 1860) with prosperous success, under the auspices of the King and with the motto: “Italy and Victor Emmanuel.” The two protagonists kept in touch during the enterprise through Trecchi. But when G. was about to cross the Faro and leap upon Naples and then Rome, where he deluded himself into proclaiming a republic, he departed from Turin and stopped at Caprera, where he found himself on 1 August 1860, and went to Rome for a final visit.
He then launched a vibrant proclamation to the Italians, with the cry: “Rome or death.” The King at first tried to placate him; seeing, however, that he grew ever more insolent, even against him, with a decree dated 3 August he banished him. It was commonly believed that Rattazzi was privy to the scheme; documents published by Luzio, however, show that Rattazzi had given orders, which were not carried out, to prevent such a reckless move. Yet there was no little surprise when, on 29 August, G. was stopped by royal troops at Aspromonte, wounded and taken prisoner, and confined in the fortress of Varignano, then brought back to Caprera. There were those who would have demanded that the King, whom they held responsible for these events, abdicate the throne: but everything concluded with a simple cabinet crisis.
In March 1864 G. went to London and was reconciled with Mazzini, from whom he had been estranged by his most loyal Savoyard allegiance. In 1866 he took part in the campaign against Austria at the head of three thousand volunteers and achieved successes at Monte Suello, Condino, and Bezzecca (4, 16, and 21 July). With the armistice, he issued his famous “obbedisco,” evacuated Trentino, and retired to Caprera. Once Venice had been joined to Italy, only Rome with its tiny Papal State remained; driven by his exacerbated passion, in the spring of 1867 G. appeared on the peninsula from Caprera, launching a tour of stridently anticlerical propaganda in northern Italy under the cry of “war on the priests: Rome is death.” He waged such a fierce campaign against Minister Ricasoli—whom he disliked for his conciliatory tendencies toward Rome—that it provoked a crisis which brought Rattazzi back to power. New plots against the ecclesiastical state then resumed, exploiting the meager forces at its disposal after the withdrawal of the French garrison following the September 1864 Convention. He attempted a coup by concentrating bands of volunteers at the borders. A handful of Redshirts was dispersed near Terni in March by royal troops; but in the autumn, with stronger forces, they pushed as far as Sinalunga, south of Orvieto, where they were halted on 24 September and driven back to the island.
The exact agreements between G., the King, and Rattazzi remain unclear, but there is no doubt that the latter, at least, was secretly behind these attempts to present Europe with a fait accompli. Indeed, despite repressive measures and a wave of hostile demonstrations against the government, G. was greeted with demonstrations of sympathy, almost a plebiscite in favor of the occupation of Rome. While volunteer bands led by Nicotera and Menotti Garibaldi violated the papal borders at several points, others secretly penetrated into Rome, where within a few days there occurred sensational episodes: the attack by Monti and Tognetti on the Serristori barracks (22 October), those by the Cairoli brothers (23 October) and the Ajani household (25 October), revealing a coordinated plan of action, just as Vittorio Emanuele and Rattazzi had envisaged.
G., having secretly left Caprera, landed at Livorno on 18 October and joined his men at Monterotondo, where he had a first clash with the papal forces—about two thousand strong under General Kanzler, reinforced by an equal number of French troops—who inflicted a decisive defeat on the Garibaldians at Mentana (3–4 November). G. was arrested at Figline and taken back to Caprera on 25 November. The royal government was forced to withdraw from Viterbo and Civitavecchia, which it had occupied, and Rattazzi resigned on 20 October. The French foreign minister then declared that Italy would never go to Rome.
The occupation of Rome, following the collapse of Napoleon III, instead took place on 20 September 1870 by the regular troops of General Cadorna. At that very time G. was landing at Marseilles on 7 October to offer his arm in defense of the newborn French Republic. He took part in that campaign with his usual valor, though it ended without much glory for him, amid the ignoble scenes in the Bordeaux Parliament on 8 March 1871. Disgusted, he retired to his lonely island, where he might have led a more serene life had he not surrounded himself with shady speculators who, taking advantage of his inexperience, involved him in grandiose schemes—the redemption of the Agro Romano, the reclamation of the Tiber Valley, the embankment of the Tiber—which would have required technical preparation and a financial base that he lacked.
These last years of his life, spent in inaction, were also the most wretched morally. G. could do no better than vent his sorrows in prose and verse, mostly insipid works overflowing with vulgar insults and denigrations against the clergy and the Pope, and with bombastic declamations against a society that had the misfortune, in his eyes, of not taking his dreams seriously—dreams clouded by old anticlerical obsessions and petty masonic ideals.
Devoid of any genuine religious formation, G. had passed through all the pseudoreligious fads of his age. He was in turn called a pantheist, a syncretist, and quite early, together with his faithful followers, he threw himself into Freemasonry. To counterbalance the Masonic-Cavourian current, in 1862 he was made perpetual Master of the Grand Orient of Palermo, in opposition to the Grand Orient of Turin. The 4th Masonic Constituent Assembly, held in Florence in 1864 with the (unsuccessful) aim of uniting all Masonic forces, confirmed him as Grand Master of Italian Freemasonry and appointed A. Mordini as Deputy Grand Master, succeeded in 1867 by L. Frapolli. But G.’s role, as Valori observes, had become almost purely verbal and literary. Long before his final hour, when the ashes of his body—he had requested to be cremated on a pyre of lentils—were scattered to the wind, he was already a man out of his time. His name served as a pretext for sectarian anticlericalism to inflame old resentments that divided Italian hearts.
Nevertheless, it must be noted that within him there never quite died a spark of faith and veneration for the Divine Redeemer, which surfaced in his finest hours. At the time of the successful Expedition of the Thousand, perhaps drawn by the Christian atmosphere that surrounded him, he too gave voice to sentiments of faith and piety that seem sincere.