NEOGUELFISM. — The antecedents of the movement must be sought in Romanticism, which variously asserted itself in the new culture and new politics of the post-revolutionary period throughout Europe. The intertwining of historicist motifs with the reevaluation of popular traditions, with the liberal and patriotic ideology born of the French Revolution itself and of the Napoleonic wars, provides its essential premises. The defense of historical rights led, in the first neo-Guelph counter-revolutionary writings, to legitimist-conservative arguments, as in De Maistre’s essay on the Pope, written on the eve of the liberal revolution in Piedmont in 1821. But in the new generations, the “national mission” of the papacy, the concepts of “freedom of the Church” and “national freedom,” of “civilization” and “Christian progress,” take on a quite different meaning. When Foscolo celebrates the spiritual force of the papacy, abandoning seismic premises, and Rosmini gives doctrinal perfection to Romantic spiritualism with motifs attentive to the currents of Christian natural law, true Neoguelphism is born, with its characteristic historiographical and political “myths.”
Notable are the various regional nuances: in Piedmont, the possibility of a Catholic-Italian legitimism in a Vidu, or the liberal legitimism of a Cesare Balbo; in Lombardy-Venetia, Rosmini’s polemic against jurisdictionalism; in Naples, or among Neapolitan émigrés, the appropriation of a Giuccian legacy (which, however, cannot make one forget the traditional anti-Jansenism, as is evident even in an article by Cuoco, though aimed at praising Napoleon’s concordatary policy, recalling that the Church had preached “humanity and freedom” in the Middle Ages: *Scritti vari*, I, Bari 1924, p. 66).
The central core of Neoguelph culture, which progressively transforms into a political force, remains the new historical vision or sense, which matures through careful study of Christian medievalism, the “sacred age” of religious and political origins: the Church, mother of nations and civilization, the glories of the free Communes and the Lombard League, a model of national confederation, the fruitful conflict between Church and Empire—these are the great historical symbols around which the passionate debate of the “Catholic-liberal” school, from Manzoni to Balbo, Troya, Tosti, and Capponi, revolves. Gioberti, with the “seductive book” *Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani*, inaugurates in 1843 the grand “literary conspiracy” of moderate Neoguelphs; yet the elaboration of a rhetorical-political myth also closes and limits the process of development and enrichment of the movement in its broader cultural and moral significance. An internal opposition thus arises between liberal Catholicism and Neoguelphism, the terms of which are not easily defined.
The principal element of dissent—preventing the formation of a solid Neoguelph-liberal political current, let alone an embryonic party (quite apart from the political situation in the individual Italian states before 1848)—is precisely the differing approach taken by individuals and groups scattered across various political and cultural centers to the problem of papal temporal power: for some Neoguelphs, such as Rosmini, temporal power had a positive function beyond the Renaissance and even into the Risorgimento era. The polemic against the Jesuits is the second myth that Gioberti arouses with his famous *Prolegomeni* of 1845, in order to bind a broader circle of liberal intellectuals to the Neoguelph current (G. Montanelli, *Memorie...*, I, Turin 1853, p. 133). The most acute adversaries of Giobertianism are not mistaken in lamenting the sincerity of earlier stances (Correnti, recalling in 1846 the philosophy of Genovesi, who “sincerely aspired to religion,” while others now seemed to submit to a religious guardianship not deeply felt: *Scritti scelti*, I, Rome 1891, p. 482), nor those like Galeotti, who judged it opportune to descend from the “magnanimous dream” to more concrete analyses. Even one who frames the question of nationality in terms of natural law, such as Fr. Luigi Taparelli, SJ, could advance in a certain sense realistic arguments against Giobertian ideology. Gioberti retains the initiative of better penetrating the exigencies of the contingent polemic and sometimes freeing himself even from the dogmas of the *doctor angelicus*.
The election of Pius IX (1846), who nourished far-sighted Neoguelph sentiments, and the early years of his pontificate mark the beginning of a new moment or are indeed the prologue to the entire European revolution of 1848. Tommaseo and Cattaneo, from different perspectives, conclude that the myth of the national mission of the papacy deeply stirred the popular soul; nor are purely religious exigencies lacking alongside political and national ones. Even the hesitant “Catholic separatists” aim rather to spiritualize the Church than to create an agnostic state: many Neoguelphs wish to “harmonize the two institutions, to see them live in symbiosis” (Petrocchi). The conflict between national politics and the politics of legitimacy and treaties, which better suited the exigencies of Catholic universalism, undermines from the outset the efforts of Pius IX and his pro-Italian advisers, from Corboli Bussi to Rosmini. In the catastrophe of 1848, the hopes placed in the feeble reformism of the regional states and the sometimes fraudulent misunderstandings about the task entrusted to the “liberal pope” perish.