RATTAZZI, URBANO. - Piedmontese statesman, b. in Alessandria on 20 June 1808, d. 5 June 1873 at Frosinone. He first practiced law with success; elected deputy on 17 Apr. 1848, he sat on the left in the Subalpine Chamber.

He was rapporteur for the laws for the union of Lombardy with Piedmont and at that time supported the idea of convening a constituent assembly pleasing to the Lombards, but not to Cavour and other Piedmontese. A minister in the Casati cabinet (27 July-8 Aug. 1848), he then passed into opposition: he returned to the government with the Gioberti ministry (16 Dec. 1848) and held the Interior with the Chiodo cabinet (Feb. 1852). After the abdication of Charles Albert he worked to form a center-left group in the Chamber: from that time on R., utterly loyal to 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, with the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum and the prohibition of new acquisitions of property by moral bodies without the consent of the civil authority, favored, to the great detriment of the Church, a coalition of liberal-secularist forces and interests. In this way the fusion was reached of the center-left of the Chamber with the center-right that gathered around Cavour: it was the "connubio." R. rose to the vice-presidency, then to the presidency of the Chamber; he was minister of Grace and Justice in 1853 and of the Interior in 1855. On 28 Nov. 1854 he had presented to the Chamber a bill for the abolition of religious corporations, excepting those that had educational and charitable functions. Having rejected 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, freeing the State from them: having overcome the resistance of Catholic opinion and of the King himself to the prevailing policy, the law passed the Chamber and the Senate and there was a new ministry of Cavour and R.: the "law of the friars" was the occasion for a certainly not fruitful affirmation of principle, in which the State drew, against the intimate convictions of the great mass of the believing and Catholic people, and therefore in an intrinsically illiberal sense, all the consequences of the doctrine of the supremacy of the civil power over the ecclesiastical, and took up again the tradition of the strictest jurisdictionalism, inspired by 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 centralizing administrative policy, in the communal and provincial law, which passed under his name and was gradually 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. When the Ricasoli ministry fell in March 1862, R. found himself in government between the impatience of the Party of Action and the difficulties created by the economic and political situation of the new State. After a first incident with the Garibaldians at Sarnico, R. attempted to arrest Garibaldi in Sicily, but his orders were not carried out and Aspromonte followed. Having failed in a diplomatic initiative with the French government to resolve the Roman Question, R. resigned on 1 Dec. 1862. In Apr. 1867 it again fell to R. to face the difficult task of dealing with Garibaldi: this time too the Garibaldian initiative, covertly provoked and initially favored by him, and then restrained in vain, ended by overwhelming him, concluding in the catastrophe of Mentana (v.). Notable was the discussion that had taken place in Parliament for the liquidation of the ecclesiastical property, while R. was in government: R. revealed 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 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").

Even Cavour reproached R. for a certain weakness of character and lack of initiative; and the most authoritative historians hold this weakness against him, recognizing however that to him is owed the establishment of the parliamentary regime in Piedmont and the creation of that center-left which made possible, through the "connubio," the political fortune of Cavour himself:

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: cf. the speeches of R., collected by Scovazzi under the auspices of the Chamber of Deputies (8 vols., Rome 1876-86): his letters in the correspondence of Cavour, of M. Castelli, of B. Ricasoli, of A. La Marmora, etc. Those published by his wife (M. S. Wyse Bonaparte) in R. et son temps. Documents inédits. Correspondence. Souvenirs intimes (2 vols., Paris 1881), are not reliable, being mutilated and distorted. A serious biography is lacking; useful nevertheless: A. Morelli, R., saggio politico, Padua 1874; A. Corbelli, A. La Marmora e U. R., in Carteggi di A. La Marmora, Turin 1929; A. Luzio, Aspromonte e Mentana, Florence 1935; P. Dalla Torre, L'anno di Mentana, Turin 1938. Notable are the judgments of De Sanctis, in Opere, edited by N. Cortese, 2 vols., Naples 1930-32; of L. Torre, in Mem. biogr. su U. R., Casale 1887. More recently S. Jacini, in La politica eccles. ital. da Villafranca a Porta Pia (Bari 1938), studies the "subversive policies" to which R. contributed, and defines his anticlerical tendencies. On this subject also I. M. Larocca, Il patrimonio degli Ordini relig. in Italia. Soppress. e incameramento (1848-53), Rome 1939; D. Masse, Il caso di coscienza del Risorgim. ital., Alba 1946, and particularly the correspondence publ. by P. Pirri, Pio IX e V. Emanuele II, etc. I. La laicizzazione dello Stato sardo (1848-56), Rome 1944; II. La Questione Romana (1856-63), 2 vols., Rome 1951, for the indirect references to R.'s policy.

Ettore Passerin

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Rattazzi, Urbano

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