ROSSI, PELLEGRINO. - Statesman, b. at Carrara on 13 July 1787, assassinated at Rome on 15 Nov. 1848.
A pupil of the Scolopi at Correggio, he took his degree in jurisprudence in 1806 at Bologna. He served briefly in the magistracy of the Kingdom of Italy as secretary of the general procurator's office of the Royal Court of Bologna, until, when barely more than twenty, he obtained the chair of criminal law at Bologna itself.
In 1815 he applauded the Murattian attempt. The author, it seems, of the so-called Proclamation of Rimini, he assumed, in the name of King Joachim, the Civil Commissariat of the four Emilian departments. After Murat's defeat, he withdrew to Switzerland, and after free courses he gave at the University of Geneva, he obtained in 1819 the official chair of criminal law, notwithstanding that the university statute expressly required of its teachers the profession of Calvinism. Having assumed Swiss citizenship, in 1820 he was elected to the Federal Council and then to the Federal Diet of Lucerne, where he was charged with drafting that constitutional charter of the Confederation which still governs Switzerland, save for a few later modifications. Meanwhile he gave to the press his classic treatise Du droit pénal and founded with Sismondi those Annales de législation et d'économie politique which in a short time assured him international renown. Invited to teach political economy at Paris in 1833, the following year he became professor ordinarius of constitutional law at the Collège de France. A free-trader in economics and a liberal in politics, his lectures aroused the widest echo, and King Louis Philippe, who attended them numerous times, proposed to the young and famous professor that he become a French citizen in order to be able to assume official posts. R. agreed: in 1839 he was raised to the dignity of Peer of the Realm, and in 1845 he was sent to Rome as ambassador to Gregory XVI. After the fall of the July monarchy, he remained in Rome as a private citizen, yet taking an active part in political life, and he encouraged with his approval and his suggestions the beginnings of Pius IX's constitutional experiment, persuaded of the opportunity of imparting new life, through wise reforms, to the Papal State.
Pius IX would have wanted him in the government immediately after the fall of the Mamiani cabinet (July 1848), but R. found insufficient support in Roman political circles and the post was then conferred on Fabbri; but at the Pope's insistence, after Fabbri's resignation, R. finally accepted the mandate (10 Sept.). While Cardinal Soglia-Ceroni remained President of the ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, R. took the portfolio of the Interior with the Interim of Finance and entrusted the other departments to Cardinal Vizzardelli (Education), to Cicognani (Justice), to Abbot Montanari (Commerce), to the Duke of Rignano (Arms and Public Works), to Galletti (Police), with Guerrini as minister without portfolio and Righetti as deputy at Finance. It was a liberal ministry, but tending, as one would say today, to the right in the sense and with the federalist aspirations of Neo-Guelphism. R. was above all determined to check the demagogy of the left, whose spokesman was Sterbini: hence the campaign of hatred that led to the tragedy of 15 Nov.
The ministry was formed during the recess of Parliament, so that R. governed without the support of the Chambers, to the ostentatious scandal of the press and of democratic circles: which did not prevent him from taking measures of notable importance, such as the suppression of the Ministry of Police, the beginning of telegraph installations, the imposition of a tax on ecclesiastical property, the issue of Treasury bonds guaranteed by mortgage on that same ecclesiastical property, the creation of a Court of Cassation; he planned the construction of railways, the reform of the judicial and penitentiary system, the institution of a statistical office, the creation of schools of economics and commercial law and other reforms of wide scope. To guarantee public order, he took severe measures against the agitators, replaced numerous officials of various ranks, entrusted positions of direction to persons in whom he had confidence, and decided to send to the Romagna the "Roman Legion", that is, the volunteers returning from the spring campaign in the Veneto, who by their factious and undisciplined attitude constituted a constant danger to public tranquillity. Hence, after the hesitant and remissive policy of Mamiani and Fabbri, the charge of dictatorship against R.'s firm and honest government.
A convinced federalist in foreign policy, R. feared, especially after the vain attempts at a league among the princes promoted by Pius IX, the aggrandizement of the Kingdom of Sardinia at the expense of the other Italian States. He therefore energetically opposed the plan, of which Rosmini became the interpreter at Rome, of a military league among Piedmont, Tuscany and the Papal State, which seemed to him an expedient for procuring for Charles Albert the support of the Tuscan and Roman armies. He proposed instead a confederation of the princes of the peninsula, including the Emperor of Austria as King of Lombardy-Venetia, under the presidency of the Pope. A confederation whose coordinating and propelling organ was to be a congress to be convened at Rome, with the task of assuring the independence of the contracting States, settling their possible disputes, safeguarding the maintenance of liberal institutions and "working for the regular and gradual progress of prosperity and civilization, of which the Catholic religion is a most principal part". A program that made enemies for R. of the supporters of Piedmont and of all those who desired that Pius IX abandon the policy of neutrality of 29 Apr. in order to declare war on Austria, as well as all the demagogues of the Mazzinian extreme left. Scornful of the hostile campaign of the democratic press, on 15 Nov. 1848 R. went to the reopening of the Chamber, in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, where, surrounded by a group of conspirators, without the public force intervening to protect him, he was brutally assassinated.
The material perpetrators of the heinous crime remained unknown, and well-founded suspicions weigh upon Luigi Brunetti, son of Ciceruacchio; the instigators and inspirers were Ciceruacchio himself, Sterbini, the colonel of the Roman Legion Luigi Grandoni and Luciano Bonaparte, prince of Canino. The assassination determined the insurrection which imposed, with the assault on the Quirinal of 16 Nov., the formation of the Muzzarelli-Galletti-Sterbini ministry, inducing the Pontiff shortly thereafter to leave Rome for Gaeta.
R. was buried, by the will of Pius IX, who loved him greatly, in S. Lorenzo in Damaso, in the tomb erected for him by Tenerani, with the beautiful epitaph: "Caussam optimam mihi tuendam assumpsi. Miserebitur Deus".
Bibliography10 works
Renzo U. Montini