NEOGUELFISMO. – The antecedents of N. must be sought in the Romanticism that asserted itself in various forms within the new post-revolutionary culture and politics throughout Europe. The interweaving of historicist motifs with the revaluation of popular traditions, with the liberal and patriotic ideology born of the French Revolution itself and of the wars of the Napoleonic period, provided its essential premises. The defence of historical rights led, among the first counter-revolutionary Neoguelfs, to legitimist-conservative arguments, as in De Maistre’s essay on the Pope, written on the eve of the Piedmontese liberal revolution of ’21. But among the new generations, the papacy’s “national mission,” the concepts of “freedom of the Church” and “national freedom,” of “civilization” and “Christian progress,” already acquired an entirely different meaning. When Foscolo celebrated the
spiritual force of the papacy, abandoning sensationalist premises, and Rosmini doctrinally perfected Romantic spiritualism with motifs drawn from currents of Christian natural law, true N. was born, with its characteristic historiographical and political “myths.”
The various regional nuances are noteworthy: in Piedmont there could be the Catholic-Italian legitimism of a Vidua, or the liberal legitimism of a Cesare Balbo; in Lombardy-Venetia, Rosmini’s polemic against jurisdictionalism; in Naples, or among Neapolitan émigrés, the use of a Vichian inheritance—which nevertheless cannot make us forget the traditional anti-Curialism, as is already evident in an article by Cuoco, although it was intended to praise Napoleon’s concordat policy, recalling that the Church preached “humanity and liberty” in the Middle Ages: Scritti vari, I, Bari 1924, p. 66.
The central nucleus of Neoguelf culture, which progressively became a political force, remained the new outlook or new historical sense, matured through attentive study of the Christian Middle Ages, the “sacred age” of religious and political origins: the Church, mother of nations and civilization; the glories of the free Communes and of the Lombard League, a model of national confederation; the fruitful conflict between Church and Empire—these were the great historical symbols around which revolved the passionate discussion of the “Catholic-liberal” school, from Manzoni to Balbo, Troya, Tosti, and Capponi. Gioberti, with the “gallant book” on Primato italiano, inaugurated the great “literary conspiracy” of the moderate Neoguelfs in 1843; but the elaboration of a rhetorical-political myth also closed off and limited the process of elaboration and enrichment of the movement in its broader cultural and moral significance. An internal opposition then arose between liberal Catholicism and N., whose terms are not easy to define.
The principal element of dissent, which prevented the formation of a unified Neoguelfo-liberal political current, and even less of the embryo of a party—quite apart from the political situation in the individual Italian states before ’48—was precisely the differing approach that individuals and groups scattered among the various political and cultural centres brought to the problem of temporal power: for some Neoguelfs, Rosmini for example, temporal power had performed a positive function beyond the Renaissance itself, and even into the Risorgimento period. The polemic against the Jesuits was the second myth that Gioberti aroused, with the famous Prolegomeni of 1845, in order to attach a broader group of educated liberals to the Neoguelf current (G. Montanelli, Memorie..., I, Torino 1853, p. 133). The most acute opponents of Giobertism were not mistaken when they regretted the sincerity of earlier attitudes—Correnti, in ’46, recalled the philosophy of Genovesi, who “sincerely aspires to religion,” whereas others now seemed to him to submit to a religious tutelage not deeply felt: Scritti scelti, I, Roma 1891, p. 482—nor were those mistaken who, like Galeotti, deemed it appropriate to descend from the “magnanimous dream” to more concrete analyses. Even one who approached the problem of nationality in terms of natural law, such as the Jesuit Fr. Luigi Taparelli, could bring forward arguments that were, in a certain sense, realistic, against Giobertian ideology. Gioberti retained the initiative of penetrating more deeply into the demands of the immediate polemic and of sometimes freeing himself even from the dogmas of the doctrinaire.
The election of Pius IX (1846), who possessed and cultivated far-sighted Neoguelf sentiments, and the first years of his pontificate marked the beginning of a new phase, or indeed constituted the prologue to the entire European revolution of 1848. Tommaso and Cattaneo, from different standpoints, came to conclude that the myth of the papacy’s national mission had profoundly stirred the popular soul; nor were genuinely religious demands lacking alongside the political and national ones. Even the uncertain “Catholic separatists” aimed rather to spiritualize the Church than to create an agnostic state: many Neoguelfs wished to “harmonize the two institutions, to see them live in symbiosis” (Petrocchi). The conflict between national policy and the policy of legitimacy and treaties, which seemed better suited to the requirements of Catholic universalism, undermined from the outset the efforts of Pius IX and of the pro-Italian advisers, from Corboli Bussi to Rosmini. In the catastrophe of ’48, the hopes placed in the weak reformism of the regional states and the sometimes fraudulent equivocations concerning the task to be entrusted to the “liberal pope” perished.
Ettore Passerin
#### NEOKANTISMO: V. NEOCRITICISMO.