RATTAZZI, URBANO. - Piedmontese statesman, born in Alessandria on 20 June 1808, died in Frosinone on 5 June 1873. He first practiced law with success; elected deputy on 17 April 1848, he sat on the left in the Subalpine Chamber.
He was the rapporteur for the laws on the union of Lombardy with Piedmont and at that time supported the idea of convening a constituent assembly pleasing to the Lombards, not to Cavour and other Piedmontese. Minister in the Casal cabinet (27 July–8 August 1848), he then moved into opposition; he returned to government with the Gioberti ministry (16 December 1848) and held the Interior portfolio in the Chiodo cabinet (February 1852). After the abdication of Charles Albert, he worked to form a center-left group in the Chamber: even then, R., a staunch supporter of the dynasty, took on the difficult task of reconciling the monarchical principle with parliamentary democracy. He supported the d’Azeglio ministry after the Proclamation of Moncalieri, when the Siccardi laws of 1850, by abolishing the ecclesiastical forum and prohibiting new acquisitions of property by moral bodies without the consent of the civil authority, favored—much to the detriment of the Church—a coalition of liberal-laicist forces and interests. This led to the fusion of the left-center of the Chamber with the right-center gathered around Cavour: the so-called “connubio.” R. rose to the vice-presidency and then to the presidency of the Chamber; he was Minister of Grace and Justice in 1853 and of the Interior in 1855. On 28 November 1844, he had presented to the Chamber a bill for the abolition of religious corporations, except those with educational and charitable functions.
Rejected was the proposal of Senator Bishop Nazari di Calabiana, who, on behalf of the clergy, offered a sum to cover the expenses of worship, thereby freeing the State from this burden: overcoming the resistance of Catholic opinion and even that of the King, thanks to the prevailing trend, the law passed both the Chamber and the Senate, and a new Cavour and Rattazzi ministry was formed. The “law on the friars” provided the occasion for a not particularly fruitful assertion of principle, in which the State, against the deep convictions of the great majority of the believing Catholic people, drew all the consequences of the doctrine of the supremacy of civil power over ecclesiastical power and revived the tradition of the most rigid jurisdictionalism, inspired by the models of Josephinist Absolutism.
Coming into conflict with Cavour, R. returned to the political scene with the La Marmora ministry in July 1859 and embodied an administrative centralizing approach in the provincial and communal law, which passed under his name and was extended with the annexations to the new provinces of the Kingdom of Italy. Having left power to Cavour in 1860, he was again president of the Chamber. After the fall of the Ricasoli ministry in March 1862, R. found himself in government amid the impatience of the Action Party and the constraints imposed by the economic and political situation of the new State. After a first clash with the Garibaldians at Sarnico, R. attempted to arrest Garibaldi in Sicily, but his orders were not carried out, resulting in Aspromonte. Having failed a diplomatic initiative with the French government to resolve the Roman Question, R. resigned on 1 December 1862. In April 1867, R. again faced the difficult task of confronting Garibaldi: even this time, the Garibaldian initiative, which he himself had covertly provoked and favored at the outset and then vainly tried to cool, Mentana (v.).
Noteworthy was the debate that took place in Parliament over the liquidation of ecclesiastical assets while R. was in government; R. revealed himself to be a good tactician but devoid of scruples, ridding himself of a valuable collaborator, F. Ferrara. In the last years of his life, R. moved further from Piedmontese particularism toward a more openly “Italian” stance, so much so as to attract the sympathies of southerners and Sicilians toward the Young Left (De Sanctis defined him as “the most Italian of the Piedmontese”).
Cavour had already reproached R. for a certain weakness of character and lack of initiative; and this weakness is held against him by the most authoritative historians, though they acknowledge that to him is owed the establishment of parliamentary government in Piedmont and the creation of that left-center which, through the “connubio,” made possible Cavour’s own political success.