Giacomo MARGOTTI. — Priest and journalist, b. at San Remo on 11 May 1823, d. at Turin on 6 May 1887.
The life of Fr. M. is indissolubly linked to that of the newspaper *L’armonia della religione con la civiltà*, which he founded and edited from 1848 to 1863.
An organ of Catholic opposition to liberalism, *L’Armonia* defended with extreme determination the rights of the Church and the Holy See, unhesitatingly opposing that laicistic and anti-papal jurisdictionalism with which, deliberately and at all costs, it was sought to colour the advent of the national Risorgimento. The domestic and foreign policy of the Kingdom of Sardinia—and more particularly its ecclesiastical policy—inspired in Fr. M., a polemicist of exceptional fibre who could not be swayed, hundreds of most vehement articles, in which he fearlessly confronted the continual seizures of the newspaper and the personal harassment that more than once culminated in his arrest for insulting the institutions.
A chivalrous opponent of Cavour—who personally held him in great admiration—Fr. M. devoted a moving obituary to the premature death of the minister. Elected deputy in 1857, he was unable to take his seat in the Chamber because he was a canon, the government having declared canons ineligible along with parish priests. At the express wish of Pius IX, in 1863 he relinquished the editorship of *L’Armonia*, which was later transferred to Florence, in order to found and edit, with greater moderation, *L’Unità cattolica*.