Margotti, Giacomo

MARGOTTI, GIACOMO. - Priest and journalist, b. at San Remo on 11 May 1823, d. at Turin on 6 May 1887.

The life of don M. is indissolubly linked to that of the newspaper L'armonia della religione con la civiltà, which he founded and directed from 1848 to 1863.

As the organ of Catholic opposition to Cavourian liberalism, L'Armonia defended with extreme determination the rights of the Church and of the Holy See, unhesitatingly exposing that laicist and anti-papal jurisdictionalism with which the advent of the national Risorgimento was deliberately and at all costs made to appear attractive. The domestic and foreign policy of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and more particularly its ecclesiastical policy, prompted don M., a polemicist of exceptional temper whom nothing could bend, to write hundreds of highly vehement articles, fearlessly facing the continual seizures of the newspaper and personal harassment, which more than once extended to arrest for vilification of the institutions.

A chivalrous adversary of Cavour, who personally harbored a great admiration for him, M. dedicated to the minister's untimely death a moving obituary. Elected deputy in 1857, he could not take his seat in the Chamber because he was a canon, the government having declared canons ineligible just like ecclesiastics with the care of souls. At the express wish of Pius IX, in 1863 he left the direction of L'Armonia, which later moved to Florence, in order to found and direct, with greater moderation, L'Unità cattolica.

Renzo U. Montini