Radicati, Alberto

RADICATI, ALBERTO. - Count of Passerano and Cocconato, b. in Turin in 1698, d. at The Hague on 24 Oct. 1734. For several years he was a counsellor to Victor Amadeus II on all questions concerning ecclesiastical policy, which he informed with the conceptions of a rigid jurisdictionalism. This attitude, when an agreement was reached between the pontifical government and that of Turin, forced him to leave his homeland and take refuge first in London and subsequently in Holland, where he spent the last years of his life.

In his works, especially in the Recueil des pièces curieuses sur les matières les plus intéressantes (Rotterdam 1736), he reasserts the ideal of the ancient Christian Church as the only means capable of inspiring a true reform of ecclesiastical institutions, and elaborates a democratic conception, understood as the demand for the absolute equality of all men (abolition of the family, community of goods, etc.). Among the other works of R. are remembered: History of abdication of Victor Amédée II (London 1732); A philosophical dissertation upon death (ibid. 1732); Twelve discourses concerning religion and government inscribed to all lovers of truth and liberty (ibid. 1734).