Sanfedismo

SANFEDISMO. - The Jacobin invasion of 1796-98 was far from arousing in Italy the universal enthusiasm of which liberal historiography fantasizes.

If the "liberty" brought on the tips of French bayonets proved welcome to certain bourgeois circles, tinged with rationalism and Voltaireanism, the aristocratic classes and even more the popular masses rose up in concord to defend the "thrones and altars" that the Revolution from beyond the Alps threatened: hence the Piedmontese uprisings even after the authorities had yielded and the royal family had been forced to take refuge in Sardinia; the heroic resistance of the Marcheschi of the Brescian valleys (Val Trompia and Val Sabbia), faithful to the Republic of St. Mark; the bloody episode of the Veronese Easter; the exploits of the Insorgenti of Tuscany, of the mountains of Tolfa, of the Marches - who rushed with their band leaders under the flags of Gen. Lahoz and retook 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 had themselves 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 placed in difficulty by the revolt of the provinces, devoted to the monarchy and to religion. It was these rebels of the Mezzogiorno against republican institutions who first called themselves "Sanfedisti," that is, fighters of the Holy Faith; and it was above all on them that Card. Fabrizio Ruffo relied to strengthen his own army, which from the farthest Calabria arrived victorious to the very walls of Naples; and it was precisely to Ruffo and his Sanfedisti that the republican government surrendered, with the honorable capitulation, unfortunately broken by Nelson.

The mournful events that followed are not imputable, as everyone knows, to the cardinal, but they were wrongly made to fall back on him, whereas they are solely to be charged, if anything, to the scant discernment shown in welcoming into his own ranks entire bands of brigands eager to remake a life for themselves, who did not fail to perpetrate crimes no less deplorable than those committed by the so-called "liberators." It is therefore necessary to distinguish clearly the well-identified responsibilities of individuals and groups in order to restore to the s. original and authentic the undeniable merit of having represented, in southern Italy, the spontaneous resistance of profoundly Catholic populations devoted to the legitimate authorities against the abuses, the violence and the de-Christianizing work of a government installed and supported by the foreigner, in contempt of all local political and religious traditions: of which a witness beyond suspicion is Vincenzo Cuoco (cf. Saggio storico sulla rivolta, napolet. del 1799, especially at chs. 16, 19 and 21). With serene assessment, W. Maturi (Enc. Ital., XXX. 639) has written that the s. constitutes an "Italian Vendée, on a more grandiose social background" than the French one, the expression of a patriotism of local rather than national character, but not for that reason any less worthy of admiration. Historians of the liberal side, interested in casting the s. in a bad light, have arbitrarily extended the original meaning of the term, including in it also the later followers of the restored Bourbon, morally co-responsible for the ruthless reaction, and, in general, all the supporters of absolutism in the south of the Peninsula. Sanfedisti were likewise called, in a later period, the adherents of certain secret societies - about whose activity, moreover, little is known -, which were formed in the Papal State immediately after 1815 in opposition to the Carbonaro sects: but their action was disavowed by the government for evident reasons of expediency and justice.

Renzo U. Montini