SANFEDISM. – The Jacobin invasion of 1796–98 was far from arousing in Italy the universal enthusiasm that liberal historiography has mythologized.
While the freedom brought by the French on the points of their bayonets was welcomed by certain bourgeois circles, steeped in rationalism and Voltairean thought, the aristocratic classes and, even more so, the popular masses rose in unison to defend thrones and altars, which the Revolution threatened from elsewhere: hence the uprisings in Piedmont even after the authorities had yielded and the royal family had been forced to flee to Sardinia; the heroic resistance of the Marchese families in the Brescian valleys (Val Trompia and Val Sabbia), loyal to the Republic of San Marco; the bloody episode of the Veronese Easters; the exploits of the Insurgents of Tuscany, the mountains of Tolfa, and the Marches – who gathered under their banners with General Lahoz and wrested the fortress of Ancona from the French – and of the Abruzzi. Particularly imposing was this reaction – as it was called – in the Kingdom of Naples, where the Lazzari were massacred in the streets of the capital by the French and their supporters, even after the King’s flight to Sicily, and where the brief life of the Parthenopean Republic was constantly undermined by the revolt of the provinces, devoted to monarchy and religion. It was these rebels of the Mezzogiorno against the republican order who first called themselves “Sanfedists,” i.e., soldiers of the Holy Faith; and it was on them that Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo relied most heavily to strengthen his army, which advanced victoriously from the farthest reaches of Calabria to the walls of Naples; and it was indeed to Ruffo and his Sanfedists that the republican government surrendered under honorable terms, unfortunately violated by Nelson.
The tragic events that followed are not, as everyone knows, to be blamed on the cardinal, yet they were unjustly laid at his door, whereas any fault must be attributed, if at all, to the poor judgment shown in enlisting entire bands of brigands eager for a new start, who did not fail to commit crimes no less lamentable than those perpetrated by the so-called “liberators.” It is therefore necessary to distinguish clearly the responsibilities of individuals and groups in order to restore to the original and authentic movement its undeniable merit of having represented, in southern Italy, the spontaneous resistance of deeply Catholic populations devoted to legitimate authority against the abuses, violence, and de-Christianizing efforts of a government imposed and sustained by foreigners, in contempt of all local political and religious traditions. Of this, an unimpeachable witness is Vincenzo Cuoco (cf. *Saggi storici sulla rivoluzione napoletana*, 1799, especially chs. 16, 19, and 21). With balanced judgment, W. Maturi (*Enc. Ital.*, XXX, 639) has written that Sanfedism constitutes a “Vendée of Italy, on a social scale larger than that of France, an expression of a patriotism more local than national, yet no less worthy of admiration.” Liberal historians, intent on casting Sanfedism in a bad light, have arbitrarily extended the original meaning of the term to include later Bourbon supporters, morally complicit in the ruthless reaction, and, in general, all advocates of absolutism in the south of the Peninsula. The name “Sanfedists” was later adopted by adherents of certain secret societies – about whose activities, moreover, little is known – which formed in the Papal States immediately after 1815 in opposition to the Carbonari; yet their actions were disavowed by the government for obvious reasons of expediency and justice.