RATTAZZI, URBANO. – Piedmontese statesman, born in Alessandria on 20 June 1808, died in Frosinone on 5 June 1873. He initially practised law with success; elected deputy on 17 April 1848, he sat on the left in the Subalpine Chamber.
He was rapporteur for the laws concerning the union of Lombardy with Piedmont and at that time supported the idea of convening a constituent assembly, welcomed by the Lombards but not by Cavour and other Piedmontese. Minister in the Casati cabinet (27 July–8 August 1848), he then went into opposition; he returned to the government with the Gioberti ministry (16 December 1848) and held the Interior portfolio in the Chiodo cabinet (February 1852). After the abdication of Carlo Alberto, he worked to form a centre-left group in the Chamber: from that time R., ever most faithful to the dynasty, assumed 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, through the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the prohibition of new acquisitions of property by juridical bodies without the consent of the civil authority, favoured—at the Church’s entire disadvantage—a coalition of liberal-secularist forces and interests. In this way the centre-left of the Chamber merged with the centre-right, which gathered around Cavour: this was the «connubio». R. became vice-president and then president of the Chamber; he was Minister of Grace and Justice in 1853 and of the Interior in 1855. On 28 November 1854 he had presented to the Chamber a bill for the abolition of religious corporations, except those engaged in education and assistance. After the proposal of the senator-bishop Nazari di Calabiana, who offered in the name of the clergy a sum to cover the expenses of worship, thereby freeing the State from them, had been rejected; after overcoming the resistance of Catholic opinion and of the King himself to the prevailing policy, the law passed through the Chamber and the Senate, and a new Cavour-R. ministry was formed: the «friars’ law» provided the occasion for an assertion of principle that was certainly not fruitful, in which the State, against the innermost convictions of the great mass of the believing and catholic people, and therefore in an intrinsically anti-liberal sense, drew all the consequences of the doctrine of the civil power’s domination over the ecclesiastical power, and resumed the tradition of the most rigid jurisdictionalism, taking its inspiration from the models of Josephinist absolutism. Having come into conflict with Cavour, R. returned to the political scene with the La Marmora ministry in July 1859 and embodied a centralising administrative policy, in the municipal and provincial law that bore his name and was gradually extended, through the annexations, to the new provinces of the Kingdom of Italy. Having relinquished power to Cavour in 1860, he was once again president of the Chamber. When the Ricasoli ministry fell in March 1862, R. found himself in government amid the impatience of the Partito d’azione and the difficulties created by the new State’s economic and political situation. After an initial incident with the Garibaldians at Sarnico, R. attempted to arrest Garibaldi in Sicily, but his orders were not carried out, and Aspromonte followed. After a diplomatic initiative with the French government to resolve the Roman Question had failed, R. resigned on 1 December 1862. In April 1867 R. once again faced the difficult task of confronting Garibaldi: this time too, the Garibaldian initiative, which he himself had covertly provoked and initially encouraged, and then vainly attempted to restrain, ultimately overwhelmed him, Mentana (v.). Noteworthy was the debate that took place in Parliament over the liquidation of the ecclesiastical patrimony while R. was in government: R. proved himself a good tactician but unscrupulous, ridding himself of a valuable collaborator, F. Ferrara. In the last years of his life R. evolved further from Piedmontese identity towards a more openly «Italian» attitude, to such an extent as to attract the sympathies of southerners and Sicilians towards the Young Left (De Sanctis called him «the most Italian of the Piedmontese»).
Cavour had already reproached R. for a certain weakness of character and lack of initiative; and the most authoritative historians charge him with this weakness, while acknowledging that he was responsible for establishing the parliamentary regime in Piedmont and creating that centre-left which, through the «connubio», made possible Cavour’s own political success: