MANIN, DANIELE. – Patriot and statesman, born in Venice on 13 May 1804, died in Paris on 22 September 1857. He devoted himself to legal, historical, and philological studies; in 1831 he made known his fierce patriotism by exhorting his fellow citizens in a proclamation to rise up against the foreigner.
His action achieved more effective results a few years later, when he undertook what he himself called a “legal struggle” against Austrian despotism, denouncing with irrefutable evidence Austria’s continual and open violations of the Constitution that it had itself granted to the populations of Lombardy-Venetia. M.’s arrest in January 1848 determined the revolt of the Venetians, who loudly demanded his release. Once liberated, he set about implementing the idea, matured during his imprisonment, of proclaiming the Republic of St Mark, in order to enable Venice to participate actively in the great movement for national unification. This proclamation took place on 22 March 1848, and M. was acclaimed its president, an office he retained until the painful moment of the capitulation, which occurred on 22 August 1849, when, after the Piedmontese defeat at Novara (23 March), Venice had remained alone in resisting the Austrians. M. then had to go into exile; but from Paris, where he had taken refuge, he always followed the fortunes of his homeland, and in 1855 he once again asked the Republican Party of Venice to sacrifice its ideals for the triumph of the national cause, which required the united forces of all Italian patriots under the Savoy monarchy. Indifferent in religious matters, if not openly hostile: he appears to have been enrolled in Freemasonry.