THAON DI REVEL, OTTAVIO. — Statesman, b. in Turin on 26 June 1803, d. there on 9 February 1868.
The son of Count Ignazio, who—as viceroy of Sardinia, lieutenant general of Carlo Felice at the beginning of the reign, marshal of Savoy, and knight of the Annunciation—was one of the most distinguished personalities of the Savoyard state during the Restoration, Ottavio inherited from his father a profound religious piety and absolute devotion to the sovereign. Having entered the administration at a very young age, at twenty-eight he was deputy intendant general (minister) of Finance and
a few years later secretary of the Council of the Conference of Ministers, then directly presided over by the King. Particularly dear to Carlo Alberto, he sought to dissuade him from granting the Statute, only to change his mind and urge the King to grant the constitutional Charter when he learned that the King of Naples had embarked upon the path of reform. He sat in the first Sardinian parliamentary ministry, holding the Finance portfolio throughout the 1848 campaign, and then formed a government in his turn (the Alfieri-Revel ministry) after the Salasco armistice, with the programme of delaying the resumption of hostilities with Austria and defending the prerogatives of the crown—a programme harshly attacked by the “democrats,” headed by Gioberti. T. di R., who since 1847 had negotiated with the Holy See to establish the Italian Customs League proposed by Pius IX, worked in Rome to obtain the dispatch of papal troops to Lombardy upon the denunciation of the armistice, in accordance with the Rosmini plan, while postponing until the end of the war the proposed Italian league and the conclusion of a concordat. The negotiations failed, first because of the opposition of Pellegrino Rossi, and then because of the fall of the Alfieri-Revel ministry.
From then on he was one of the leading figures of the Catholic opposition to the governments that succeeded one another in Piedmont before and after Novara. In the debate on the Siccardi laws (1850), he asked the ministry to withdraw the measure, which seemed to him destined to divide the country spiritually; in 1852 he firmly opposed the legislation on civil marriage, and when the d’Azeglio ministry fell, he was considered a possible head of a new government, together with Cesare Balbo. Instead, Cavour came to power, and T. di R. resumed his noble battle, resolutely opposing the proposed law on the incorporation of ecclesiastical property and the suppression of religious congregations. Also in 1852, he negotiated a loan for the State with Hambro’s bank in London. Again designated for the presidency of the Council in 1857 after the result, favorable to the Catholics, of that year’s general elections, in 1860, although accepting a seat in the Senate, he voted against the proclamation of Rome as the capital of Italy, which he considered injurious to the rights of the Holy See, and later against the transfer of the capital to Florence. In the Senate as well, he raised his voice against the secularization of the institution of marriage (1865) and every other de-Christianizing measure of the State, while lending his support to the financial and economic policy of the new Kingdom.
Parallel to his political activity, he devoted himself, with competence and zeal, to the municipal and provincial administration of Turin, and presided over numerous charitable institutions, whose needs he generously met from his own means.
His brother GENOVA (1817–1910), a valiant soldier and an equally fervent Catholic, who was Minister of War with Rattazzi in 1867, found in him the most affectionate and enlightened counsellor during the difficult period in which the crisis of Mentana was being prepared. From his third marriage (to Carolina Clermont de Vars), the future great admiral PAOLO, Duke of the Sea (d. in 1948), was born in 1859.