From Arcadia to Revolution: The Neapolitan Monitor and Other Writings (Volume 67) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [1 ed.] 0866986162, 9780866986168

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Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel

From Arcadia to Revolution:

The Neapolitan Monitor and Other Writings E D I TE D A ND TR A NS L ATE D BY

Verina R. Jones

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 67

FROM ARCADIA TO REVOLUTION

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 67

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEXTS AND STUDIES VOLUME 558

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens Volume 1, 2009. Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder Volume 2, 2009 Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde Volume 3, 2010 Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera The True Medicine Edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Volume 4, 2010 Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda Edited and translated by Janet Levarie Smarr Volume 5, 2010

Pernette du Guillet Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Karen Simroth James Translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 6, 2010 Antonia Pulci Saints’ Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Elissa B. Weaver Translated by James Wyatt Cook Volume 7, 2010 Valeria Miani Celinda, A Tragedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky Volume 8, 2010 Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers Edited and translated by Lewis C. Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Volume 9, 2010

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sophie, Electress of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence Edited and translated by Lloyd Strickland Volume 10, 2011 In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing Edited by Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino Volume 11, 2011 Sister Giustina Niccolini The Chronicle of Le Murate Edited and translated by Saundra Weddle Volume 12, 2011 Liubov Krichevskaya No Good without Reward: Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Brian James Baer Volume 13, 2011 Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell The Writings of an English Sappho Edited by Patricia Phillippy With translations by Jaime Goodrich Volume 14, 2011

Lucrezia Marinella Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please Edited and translated by Laura Benedetti Volume 15, 2012 Margherita Datini Letters to Francesco Datini Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Volume 16, 2012 Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix English Women Staging Islam, 1696–1707 Edited and introduced by Bernadette Andrea Volume 17, 2012 Cecilia del Nacimiento Journeys of a Mystic Soul in Poetry and Prose Introduction and prose translations by Kevin Donnelly Poetry translations by Sandra Sider Volume 18, 2012 Lady Margaret Douglas and Others The Devonshire Manuscript: A Women’s Book of Courtly Poetry Edited and introduced by Elizabeth Heale Volume 19, 2012

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Arcangela Tarabotti Letters Familiar and Formal Edited and translated by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater Volume 20, 2012 Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Emily C. Francomano Volume 21, 2013 Barbara Torelli Benedetti Partenia, a Pastoral Play: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Lisa Sampson and Barbara Burgess-Van Aken Volume 22, 2013 François Rousset, Jean Liebault, Jacques Guillemeau, Jacques Duval and Louis de Serres Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) Edited and translated by Valerie WorthStylianou Volume 23, 2013 Mary Astell The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England Edited by Jacqueline Broad Volume 24, 2013

Sophia of Hanover Memoirs (1630–1680) Edited and translated by Sean Ward Volume 25, 2013 Katherine Austen Book M: A London Widow’s Life Writings Edited by Pamela S. Hammons Volume 26, 2013 Anne Killigrew “My Rare Wit Killing Sin”: Poems of a Restoration Courtier Edited by Margaret J. M. Ezell Volume 27, 2013 Tullia d’Aragona and Others The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Julia L. Hairston Volume 28, 2014 Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza The Life and Writings of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza Edited and translated by Anne J. Cruz Volume 29, 2014 Russian Women Poets of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Amanda Ewington Volume 30, 2014

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Jacques Du Bosc L’Honnête Femme: The Respectable Woman in Society and the New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women Edited and translated by Sharon Diane Nell and Aurora Wolfgang Volume 31, 2014 Lady Hester Pulter Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda Edited by Alice Eardley Volume 32, 2014 Jeanne Flore Tales and Trials of Love, Concerning Venus’s Punishment of Those Who Scorn True Love and Denounce Cupid’s Sovereignity: A Bilingual Edition and Study Edited and translated by Kelly Digby Peebles Poems translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 33, 2014 Veronica Gambara Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Critical introduction by Molly M. Martin Edited and translated by Molly M. Martin and Paola Ugolini Volume 34, 2014

Catherine de Médicis and Others Portraits of the Queen Mother: Polemics, Panegyrics, Letters Translation and study by Leah L. Chang and Katherine Kong Volume 35, 2014 Françoise Pascal, MarieCatherine Desjardins, Antoinette Deshoulières, and Catherine Durand Challenges to Traditional Authority: Plays by French Women Authors, 1650–1700 Edited and translated by Perry Gethner Volume 36, 2015 Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa Selected Drama and Verse Edited by Patrick John Corness and Barbara Judkowiak Translated by Patrick John Corness Translation Editor Aldona Zwierzyńska-Coldicott Introduction by Barbara Judkowiak Volume 37, 2015 Diodata Malvasia Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and Their Miraculous Madonna Edited and translated by Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh Volume 38, 2015

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Margaret Van Noort Spiritual Writings of Sister Margaret of the Mother of God (1635–1643) Edited by Cordula van Wyhe Translated by Susan M. Smith Volume 39, 2015 Giovan Francesco Straparola The Pleasant Nights Edited and translated by Suzanne Magnanini Volume 40, 2015 Angélique de Saint-Jean Arnauld d’Andilly Writings of Resistance Edited and translated by John J. Conley, S.J. Volume 41, 2015 Francesco Barbaro The Wealth of Wives: A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual Edited and translated by Margaret L. King Volume 42, 2015 Jeanne d’Albret Letters from the Queen of Navarre with an Ample Declaration Edited and translated by Kathleen M. Llewellyn, Emily E. Thompson, and Colette H. Winn Volume 43, 2016

Bathsua Makin and Mary More with a reply to More by Robert Whitehall Educating English Daughters: Late Seventeenth-Century Debates Edited by Frances Teague and Margaret J. M. Ezell Associate Editor Jessica Walker Volume 44, 2016 Anna StanisŁawska Orphan Girl: A Transaction, or an Account of the Entire Life of an Orphan Girl by way of Plaintful Threnodies in the Year 1685: The Aesop Episode Verse translation, introduction, and commentary by Barry Keane Volume 45, 2016 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi Letters to Her Sons, 1447–1470 Edited and translated by Judith Bryce Volume 46, 2016 Mother Juana de la Cruz Mother Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534: Visionary Sermons Edited by Jessica A. Boon and Ronald E. Surtz. Introductory material and notes by Jessica A. Boon. Translated by Ronald E. Surtz and Nora Weinerth Volume 47, 2016

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Claudine-Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin Memoirs of the Count of Comminge and The Misfortunes of Love Edited and translated by Jonathan Walsh Volume 48, 2016 Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán, Ana Caro Mallén, and Sor Marcela de San Félix Women Playwrights of Early Modern Spain Edited by Nieves Romero-Díaz and Lisa Vollendorf Translated and annotated by Harley Erdman Volume 49, 2016 Anna Trapnel Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea; or, A Narrative of Her Journey from London into Cornwall Edited by Hilary Hinds Volume 50, 2016 María Vela y Cueto Autobiography and Letters of a Spanish Nun Edited by Susan Laningham Translated by Jane Tar Volume 51, 2016 Christine de Pizan The Book of the Mutability of Fortune Edited and translated by Geri L. Smith Volume 52, 2017

Marguerite d’Auge, Renée Burlamacchi, and Jeanne du Laurens Sin and Salvation in Early Modern France: Three Women’s Stories Edited, and with an introduction by Colette H. Winn. Translated by Nicholas Van Handel and Colette H. Winn Volume 53, 2017 Isabella d’Este Selected Letters Edited and translated by Deanna Shemek Volume 54, 2017 Ippolita Maria Sforza Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations Edited and translated by Diana Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater Volume 55, 2017 Louise Bourgeois Midwife to the Queen of France: Diverse Observations Translated by Stephanie O’Hara Edited by Alison Klairmont Lingo Volume 56, 2017 Christine de Pizan Othea’s Letter to Hector Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Earl Jeffrey Richards Volume 57, 2017

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville Selected Philosophical, Scientific, and Autobiographical Writings Edited and translated by Julie Candler Hayes Volume 58, 2018 Lady Mary Wroth Pamphilia to Amphilanthus in Manuscript and Print Edited by Ilona Bell Texts by Steven W. May and Ilona Bell Volume 59, 2017 Witness, Warning, and Prophecy: Quaker Women’s Writing, 1655–1700 Edited by Teresa Feroli and Margaret Olofson Thickstun Volume 60, 2018 Symphorien Champier The Ship of Virtuous Ladies Edited by Todd W. Reeser Volume 61, 2018 Isabella Andreini Mirtilla, A Pastoral: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Volume 62, 2018

Margherita Costa The Buffoons, A Ridiculous Comedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Sara E. Díaz and Jessica Goethals Volume 63, 2018 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Poems and Fancies with The Animal Parliament Edited by Brandie R. Siegfried Volume 64, 2018 Margaret Fell Women’s Speaking Justified and Other Pamphlets Edited by Jane Donawerth and Rebecca M. Lush Volume 65, 2018 Mary Wroth, Jane Cavendish, and Elizabeth Brackley Women’s Household Drama: Loves Victorie, A Pastorall, and The concealed Fansyes Edited by Marta Straznicky and Sara Mueller Volume 66, 2018

Bust of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, by Marisa Ciardiello. Courtesy of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali © Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli Reproduction prohibited

ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL

From Arcadia to Revolution: The Neapolitan Monitor and Other Writings •

Edited and translated by VERINA R. JONES

Iter Press Toronto, Ontario Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tempe, Arizona 2019

Iter Press Tel: 416/978–7074

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 416/978–1668

Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tel: 480/965–5900

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 480/965–1681

Web: acmrs.org

© 2019 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jones, Verina R., editor, translator. | Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora, 1752–1799. Selections. Italian. | Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora, 1752–1799. Selections. English. Title: Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel : from Arcadia to revolution: the Neapolitan Monitor and other writings / edited and translated by Verina R. Jones. Other titles: Monitore napoletano. Description: Toronto, Ontario : Iter Press ; Tempe, Arizona : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2019. | Series: The other voice in Early Modern Europe : the Toronto series ; 67 | Series: Medieval and Renaissance texts and studies ; Volume 558 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018047352| ISBN 9780866986168 (paperback) | ISBN 9780866987516 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora, 1752-1799--Criticism and interpretation. | Parthenopean republic--History | Jacobins--Italy--Naples (Kingdom)--History. Classification: LCC PQ4688.F66 Z63 2019 | DDC 851/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047352 Cover illustration: Searching Eleonora Pimentel’s House. Painting by Domenico Battaglia (1842–1921), oil on canvas, 105 x 160 cm / Private Collection / De Agostini Picture Library / R. Pedicini / Bridgeman Images DGA1088521. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting and production: Iter Press.

I ti cariad, eto

Contents Acknowledgments

xvii

Editor’s Note

xix



Introduction: The Other Voice of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel

1

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution

3

Poet, Mother, Jacobin

3

The Kingdom of Naples from Enlightenment to Jacobinism

15

Arcadia and Beyond: Poetry, Letters, Politics Sonnet and Letter to Michele Lopez (1776) Dedicatory Letter to Pombal (1777) Sonnets on the Death of Her Only Son (1779) Ode on a Miscarriage (1779) Letter to Alberto Fortis (1785) Sonnet on the Chinea (1788) Letter to Michele Vargas Macciucca (1789) Introduction to Caravita’s No Right Pertains to the Supreme Pontiff over the Kingdom of Naples (1790)

24 31 34 39 41 50 52 56

The Neapolitan Republic Jacobinism, the People, Jacobins and the People Neapolitan Jacobins and Their Republic

64 64 69

Anatomy of a Journal: The Monitore Napoletano Editor and Author A Political Project A Note on the Text

80 80 84 91

59

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) No. 1: Saturday, February 2, 1799

93

No. 6: Tuesday, February 19, 1799 118

No. 2: Tuesday, February 5, 1799

99

No. 8: Tuesday, February 26, 1799 127

No. 3: Saturday, February 9, 1799 104

No. 9: Saturday, March 2, 1799

129

No. 4: Tuesday, February 12, 1799 109

No. 10: Tuesday, March 5, 1799

130

No. 5: Saturday, February 16, 1799 114

No. 11: Saturday, March 9, 1799

135

No. 12: Tuesday, March 12, 1799

139

No. 26: Thursday, May 9, 1799

170

No. 14: Saturday, March 23, 1799 141

No. 27: Saturday, May 11, 1799

176

No. 15: Saturday, March 30, 1799 144

No. 28: Tuesday, May 14, 1799

180

No. 16: Tuesday, April 2, 1799

149

No. 29: Saturday, May 18, 1799

181

No. 18: Tuesday, April 9, 1799

151

No. 30: Saturday, May 25, 1799

183

No. 19: Saturday, April 13, 1799

154

No. 31: Saturday, May 25, 1799

185

No. 20: Tuesday, April 16, 1799

158

No. 32: Saturday, June 1, 1799

189

No. 21: Saturday, April 20, 1799

161

No. 33: Saturday, June 1, 1799, Addendum

No. 24: Saturday, April 27, 1799, Addendum No. 25: Saturday, May 4, 1799

192

167

No. 34: Wednesday, June 5, 1799

194

169

No. 35: Saturday, June 8, 1799

197

Epilogue: A Woman Apart

203

Glossary of Places

209

Chronology

217

Bibliography

223

Index

239

Acknowledgments I owe a special debt of gratitude to Margaret King, whose support and understanding encouraged me to continue working on this project through some very difficult times. And I want to thank her too for always responding so promptly and precisely to my numerous queries over the last few years. But at the beginning there was Claire Honess. I had been drawn to Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel for a long time. I gave papers at conferences (starting with Glasgow and ending at Grenoble via Melbourne). But when I decided to develop my research into a book-length project it was Claire who pointed me in the right direction. After Albert Rabil accepted my proposal for this series he was for a while my “line manager,” always helpful and supportive. They both deserve my thanks. Much of my research involved working in libraries and archives in Naples, where everyone was invariably cooperative and helpful often beyond the call of duty: Immacolata Di Nocera and Gaetano Damiano at the Archivio di Stato, Susi Sebastianelli at the Fondazione Benedetto Croce, Paola Milone at the Library of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Maria Gabriella Mansi, Mariolina Rascaglia, and Giuseppe Tranchino at the Biblioteca Nazionale. I would like to mention also Ivana Stazio of the Biblioteca “Roberto Stroffolini” of the Department of Physics at the University of Naples, and Lucia Ferrara of the Engineering Department Library. They went out of their way to obtain for me copy of an article which was proving virtually impossible to find. I thank Anna Bull for giving me helpful suggestions on the historical aspects of my work, as well as for her precious friendship over the years. Other friends old and new have helped in a variety of ways: Luciano Cheles with his endless enthusiasm for details that I might have missed, Gilles Bertrand who gave me some valuable material, Daniela De Liso with her expertise of Fonseca Pimentel’s poetry, Gia Caglioti and Patrizia Antignani who went out of their way to help me trace some essential documents, Sylvie Mollard who first alerted me to the splendid sculpture by Marisa Ciardiello in the Biblioteca Nazionale, and Marisa Ciardiello who became my friend. Two friends have read my manuscript. Rosemary Chapman and Margaret Majumdar both contributed in their different ways to making my work more presentable, even though it goes without saying that any errors or omissions are my sole responsibility. Rosemary Chapman in particular has followed this project closely all the way to completion, and I cannot thank her enough for her support and intellectual companionship. I am deeply grateful to Joe Chapman and Nicola Thomas whose technical expertise was invaluable when preparing the manuscript xvii

xviii Acknowledgments for submission. Joe also offered a clever solution to a translation problem that seemed unsurmountable, as did Rachel Stott. A number of friends have supported me in many ways over recent times, helping me to find a way forward. So, a huge thank you to Joe Chapman and Nicola Thomas, Rosemary and Graham Chapman, Dafydd Elis, Margaret Mcpherson, Diana Tohatan, Patricia Brewerton, Teresa Succo, Andrea and Ulrico Angeletti. My first and most exacting reader was my husband, Barry Jones. I especially valued his poet’s scrutiny of my translations of the poetry in this volume. He did not live to see the whole manuscript, but he had from the beginning accompanied my work with passionate interest, and this book is dedicated to him.  

Editor’s Note Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel is often referred to as Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel. While this was certainly her birth name, she came to discard the particle which marked her as a member of the aristocracy. Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was clearly her name of choice in the last year of her life, and for this reason she appears as such in this volume.

xix

Introduction The Other Voice of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel (1752–1799) was the first Italian woman to write overtly about politics. Descended on both sides from Portuguese aristocrats, she became the chief journalist and opinion maker of the Neapolitan Jacobin Republic of 1799, and one of its most outspoken, imaginative and hard-hitting political commentators. Her prominence was acknowledged by the returning monarchical regime, when they included her among the Jacobins who were put to death by hanging after the Republic was overturned. Her political involvement dated back to the period of sovereign-led enlightened reforms, which she supported in a series of essays on political and economic matters. She had been a writer all her adult life, producing poetry from a very young age, and was admitted into membership of the prestigious poetic academy Arcadia in 1768, when she was just sixteen. For the next twenty years, experiencing marriage, motherhood, and the wrenching loss of her one child, she labored prodigiously, writing letters, essays, and verse, even as the autocratic Neapolitan state evolved through a series of political reforms. By the 1790s, she was a fullfledged Jacobin, who saw revolutionary politics as the only possible road to the future. Her fiery devotion to that cause is evident in the pages of the Monitore Napoletano (Neapolitan Monitor), the biweekly newspaper she wrote and published, recording the events of the short-lived Neapolitan Republic of January to June, 1799. Fonseca Pimentel is a tantalizing figure, presenting contradictory images. As a poet she conforms to the canon of women’s writing in eighteenth-century Italy, poetry being the genre most frequented by women, regardless of their other writings. But she infringed the canon in that, unlike most other women essayists of her century, she ignored gender issues. Thus she is both typical woman and aberrant woman; indeed, twice aberrant. She infringes both the traditional male-made gender model by being a protagonist not a victim—and a protagonist in a revolution at that—and the feminist canon by not tackling any questions of particular relevance to women. Nor did she ever attempt, as most women writers did, to justify herself for meddling in “unwomanly” things. She wrote as if her sex did not matter. The absence of explicit feminist concerns in her writings has been perceived as problematic by recent feminist scholarship, an issue to be addressed later in this volume. For now, it might be useful to keep in mind that women writers who addressed the woman question completely ignored the plight of women below the 1

2 Introduction educated classes. Fonseca Pimentel chose to focus her attention on the impoverished masses, to which the vast majority of women belonged. Part One of this volume tracks Fonseca Pimentel’s career against the backdrop of the history of the Neapolitan state: from her youth as a member of the academy Arcadia until her maturity as a Jacobin agent. Part Two presents selections from the Monitore Napoletano, the vehicle by which she expressed her ardent advocacy of the revolutionary agenda. The Epilogue reviews the directions in modern studies of Fonseca Pimentel’s literary works and political career. The many places both in Naples and Italy more broadly named in the text are identified in the Glossary of Places, and a Chronology summarizes important dates in tabular form.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Poet, Mother, Jacobin As her name suggests, Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel was not of Italian origin. Her mother, Caterina Lopez de Leon, was of a Portuguese family who had lived in Rome since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Her father, also Portuguese although of a family who were originally Spanish, had settled in Rome two years before Eleonora was born on January 13, 1752. In 1760, the family went to live in Naples.1 Fonseca Pimentel’s multicultural environment made a difference to her outlook. She retained a special interest in Portuguese affairs, as shown in her celebration of the policies of the Marquis of Pombal, the Portuguese chief minister, as the epitome of enlightened reforms.2 She was certainly at ease with written Portuguese, as well as French, English, and, of course, Italian. What language, or more likely, languages she spoke at home, one can only surmise. Interestingly, she appears to have learned enough Neapolitan dialect to enable her at least to write a sonnet in it.3 Her family belonged to the minor Portuguese nobility, and was granted the status of full subjects of the Kingdom of Naples in 1778.4 She received an impeccable classical education according to the most traditional male curriculum: she 1. In July 1760, the Portuguese ambassador in Rome had instructed all Portuguese subjects to leave within three months, on account of the deteriorating relationship between Lisbon and the Roman curia following Portugal’s expulsion of the Jesuits. Benedetto Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799: Biografie, racconti, ricerche, ed. Cinzia Cassani, 2 vols. (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1998–1999), 1:26. For more details of Fonseca Pimentel’s maternal and paternal families, see Franco Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina: Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel (Naples: Schettini, 1973), 9–13. 2. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal; see 34. Fonseca Pimentel and her family were clearly perceived as Portuguese, at least during her early years in Naples: the Tuscan writer Domenico Saccenti referred to her as a “giovine gentildonna portoghese di circa sedici anni” (“a Portuguese young lady about sixteen years of age”), and the celebrated poet Metastasio called her “l’amabilissima musa`del Tago” (“the very charming muse from the Tagus”) in his letter to her dated July 11, 1776. For Saccenti’s comment, see Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:27–31; for Metastasio, see Pietro Metastasio, Lettere, in Tutte le opere di Pietro Metastasio, vol. 5, ed. Bruno Brunelli (Milan: Mondadori, 1954), letter no. 2251, 397. She also acknowledged her Portuguese roots when she referred to Portugal as “a nation where I was not born, but whose daughter I am” in her 1777 letter to Pombal. See 39. 3. See 52–56. 4. On January 11, 1778, her father, Clemente Henriquez de Fonseca Pimentel, obtained from the king a guarantee that all family members born in Naples would enjoy the full prerogatives of their aristocratic status. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:27.

3

4 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution was taught not only mathematics, natural history, ancient history, but also Latin and Greek; that is to say, she was given the tools to reach a level of intellectual knowledge such as was rarely accessed by women, even women from cultured families. One cannot overestimate the impact that her family environment had on her upbringing and outlook. Not only were the Fonseca Pimentels cultured and appreciative of culture, to the extent of hosting conversazioni with men and women of letters who gathered at their home to exchange news and views, but they were also very well connected within the enlightened, cosmopolitan circles that dominated the Neapolitan elite at the time. And Naples itself had for some time been not unfavorable to learned women.5 Who were the teachers of the young Fonseca Pimentel? Typically for welleducated women, she was encouraged by sympathetic male family members: her father, who continued to give her invaluable support throughout the vicissitudes of her personal life, and her maternal uncle, Antonio Lopez. He was her first tutor. Many others followed. It is fascinating to try and unravel her educational itinerary, closely intertwined as it was with the world of the Neapolitan progressive elite in what was seen as an age not only of peace but also of enlightened reforms. Among them was Gianvincenzo Meola, lawyer and writer, who taught her classical Greek, and the mathematician and philosopher Filippo Maria Guidi, who tutored her in those subjects at the behest of her father. Both Meola and Guidi frequented the gatherings hosted by the Fonseca Pimentels. Also, both would be among the witnesses who spoke in her favor at the court case that saw her and her father pitched against her husband some fifteen years later.6 Some of the literary salons that operated in Naples at the time functioned as academies, namely places of learning, often endowed with magnificent libraries, but also as meeting places for foreign scholars who were visiting Naples—places of learning and places of networking, crucial levers for the advancement of clever 5. Scientists Faustina Pignatelli and Maria Angela Ardinghelli and philosopher Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola were Neapolitan, and so was sociologist Matilde Perrino, a near contemporary of Fonseca Pimentel who wrote a socioeconomic survey of Apulia based on her own research undertaken during a trip to the region (Lettera di Matilde Perrino ad un suo amico, nella quale si contengono alcune sue riflessioni fatte in occasione del suo breve viaggio per alcuni luoghi della Puglia [Naples: Nella Stamperia Simoniana, 1787]). On Pignatelli and Ardinghelli, see Marta Cavazza, “Minerva e Pigmalione: Carriere femminili nell’Italia del Settecento,” The Italianist 17 (1997): 5–17, and Paula Findlen, “Translating the New Science: Women and the Circulation of Knowledge in Enlightenment Italy,” Configurations 3 (1995): 184–91. On Barbapiccola, see Paula Findlen’s introduction and translation in Maria Gaetana Agnesi, et al., The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women’s Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy, ed. and trans. Rebecca Messbarger and Paula Findlen, with an introduction by Rebecca Messbarger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 37–66. It was in Naples that Francesco Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame, ovvero Dialoghi sopra la luce e i colori was first published in 1737, the most famous among the books written at this time with the specific aim of reaching a female readership. 6. See 10–11.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 5 and ambitious young intellectuals. One such salon was that of the Marquis of Vatolla, Don Michele Vargas Macciucca. It was here that, as a very young woman, probably under the age of fifteen, she recited her first poems. Vargas Macciucca’s salon was also frequented by Domenico and Giuseppe Cirillo, who would reappear alongside her, some twenty-five years later, as protagonists of the Jacobin movement. Fonseca Pimentel was undoubtedly a polymath, writing in both verse and prose, on topics that apparently included science and economics.7 Her extant writings cover three areas: poetry, political tracts, and journalism—in that order. She was a poet and a political essayist—two roles that complemented each other— during her younger years, when she was part of the coterie of enlightened intellectuals who gravitated around an enlightened Bourbon court. She was a journalist in the very last months of her life, a life now solely dedicated to the Jacobin cause. It was as a poet that she became known and celebrated as a young woman, and she regularly recited her poems.8 Her first published work, Il tempio della gloria (The Temple of Glory), appeared in 1768, when she was sixteen years old. It was a lengthy verse composition celebrating the wedding of the king of Naples, Ferdinand IV, with the Austrian archduchess Maria Carolina. It appeared under the name of Epolnifenora Olcesamante—a (quasi) anagram of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel—which was her given name as a member of the Accademia dei Filaleti. Soon after came another sign of recognition, membership of the most prestigious of Italian poetic academies, the Accademia dell’Arcadia, with the given name of Altidora Esperetusa: a name, interestingly, allusive to the classical names—Esperia and Lusitania—of the two nations that she felt were her own, Italy and Portugal.9 7. One finds mention of a book on a project for a national bank written by her in the 1780s, but it was apparently never published. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:40. 8. Croce mentions an occasion when the one sonnet recited by Fonseca Pimentel, interestingly referred to as “la Portoghesina,” was judged to be way above the other six, recited by as many priests, in that her thinking was vastly superior. This recitation took place on May 5, 1780, at the opening of the Accademia delle Scienze e Lettere and in the presence of the king. The source of this comment was a manuscript document kept in the Vatican Archive and published by the Jesuit priest Ilario Rinieri in Dall’Arcadia al capestro: Di Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca letterata e giacobina (Rome: A. Befani, 1900); cf. Benedetto Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura (Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1942), 2:372–73. See also the testimonies given at the Fonseca/Tria court case: Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Gran Corte della Vicaria, fascio 133, fascicolo 43, tra D. Pasquale Tria de Solis e D. Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca; cited henceforth as ASN. This document lay buried in the National Archives in Naples, unknown even to Croce, until it was discovered by Franco Schiattarella in the 1960s. This discovery led to his volume La marchesa giacobina, cited above, note 1. It is from this document that we learn much about Fonseca Pimentel’s studies and poetry recitals as a young girl (testimonies by Vincenzo Meola, Filippo Maria Guidi, and Francesco Mazzarella Farao, fols. 90, 95, and 104). 9. The Accademia dell’Arcadia, founded in Rome in 1690, was highly influential in the formation of a new shared poetic canon, which opposed the previously prevailing Baroque style in the name of order, clarity, and decorum. As Giovanna Gronda has pointed out, such principles were generic enough to

6 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Fonseca Pimentel continued to write poetry along similar lines, namely poetry eulogizing the reigning monarchs, for a number of years. It would be only too easy to dismiss this kind of poetry as pointless, and it is certainly not the kind of writing that appeals to our modern penchant for unaffected authenticity. Yet it is evident that her fulsome praise of the monarchs was clearly focused on their policies of reform. Fonseca Pimentel’s poetry is part and parcel of her political persona, which at this stage was typical of the many enlightened intellectuals who believed in the project of enlightened despotism and gave it their active support. As time went on, she wrote less poetry and more on political issues, supporting more and more openly the sovereigns’ policy of reforms. Interestingly, she made her first foray into political writing in her prose preface to a poem, Il trionfo della virtù (Virtue Triumphant), written in 1777 and dedicated to the Marquis of Pombal, whom she praises as the epitome of the enlightened minister working side by side with an enlightened sovereign.10 We find tantalizing references to what would have been a revolutionary poem, an Inno alla libertà (Hymn to Freedom), written in January 1799 in the castle of Sant’Elmo immediately prior to the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic.11 Unfortunately, like many of her earlier writings, it is lost. Her writing, especially her poetry, won her increasing signs of recognition, among which was the inclusion of one of her sonnets in the prestigious Rime di donne illustri (Poems by Illustrious Women) published by Luisa Bergalli in 1773.12 And she was very adept at forging links with people that mattered. One of the friends of the Fonseca Pimentels was Don Giuseppe de Souza, secretary to the Portuguese ambassador in Naples. In August 1772, he was transferred to the Portuguese embassy in Vienna, where Pietro Metastasio then lived. Fonseca Pimentel was quick to use the de Souza connection to make contact with Metastasio, who was at the time the unchallenged authority among Italian literati. Her letters to him are lost, but we have Metastasio’s own letters to her, twelve over a six-year period (1770–1776). She had sent him her first published works, and in the lengthy correspondence that ensued he poured boundless admiration on her verse.13 Later, probably around 1775, she started a correspondence with Voltaire,

satisfy a widely felt need for change and renewal. Giovanna Gronda, ed., Poesia italiana del Settecento (Milan: Garzanti, 1978), Introduction, xi–xii. 10. See 36–39. 11. This Inno alla libertà is mentioned in No.14 of the Monitore Napoletano, to be cited henceforth in these notes as MN. Several editions are listed in the Bibliography. 12. Rime di donne illustri, a S. E. Caterina Delfin cavaliera e procuratessa Tron nel gloriosissimo ingresso alla dignità di Procurator per merito di San Marco di S. E. Cavalier Andrea Tron, ed. Luisa Bergalli (Venice: Pietro Valvasense, 1773), 34. 13. Metastasio, Lettere, nos. 1890, 2037, 2059, 2111, 2126, 2136, 2175, 2186, 2214, 2229, 2251, 2262.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 7 who wrote a charming octet in response to a sonnet of hers, in which he called her Beau rossignole de la belle Italie (Beautiful nightingale from beautiful Italy).14 By her early twenties, Fonseca Pimentel was clearly a very successful woman, highly cultured, productive, ambitious, well-connected, both with prominent writers and with the enlightened coterie who gravitated around the enlightened court, and widely admired—an exceptional woman, even within the parameters of the elite environment in which she lived. She also evidently enjoyed a close and warm relationship with her blood family. But even before the whirlwind of revolution wrenched her away from her golden youth, other more personal tragedies cast their shadows on her life. However we choose to view her public successes, her private life was very heavily conditioned by her sex. Not only did she have to endure seven years of marriage to Don Pasquale Tria de Solis, a boorish and probably violent man, she also lost her only child, who died at eight months of age. The marriage ended in 1785 after a lengthy and extremely acrimonious court case. The papers related to the Fonseca/Tria court case are an invaluable source of information on her life up to this point, covering as they do, through the testimonies of various witnesses, not only the events that were directly related to the separation case, but also her earlier years.15 They span a period of ten months, starting with September 1784, when the first skirmishes between the two parties began, and ending with the actual conclusion of the court case in June 1785. Included in this document are lengthy statements both by herself and her husband, as well as declarations by witnesses cited by the two parties, writers and diplomats 14. The full text of the poem appears in several collections of Voltaire’s works, including the Voltaire Foundation edition: Les oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Nicholas Crank (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1980– ), vol. 78A (2010), 336. This is where the matter becomes problematic: the text of the poem reproduced in this edition is prefaced by a dedication to an anonymous male (“A Monsieur ***”), and the editor states that it has been impossible to “discover the addressee,” claiming also that the poem was first published in the “Kehl edition,” that is to say in the Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, and Jacques Joseph Marie Decroix, vol. 14 (Kehl: Imprimerie de la Société littéraire typographyque, 1785), no. CLXXXVI, 429. The version in this edition is indeed identical to the one published by the Voltaire Foundation. But there was in fact an earlier, and most likely first, version of the poem, published in the Giornale letterario di Siena 2 (1776): lxxi, entitled “Versi del Sig. di Voltaire responsivi ad un Sonetto della nobile ed egregia donzella Eleonora Fonseca di Pimentel abitante in Napoli” (Poem by Monsieur de Voltaire in response to a Sonnet by the noble and excellent young lady Eleonora Fonseca di Pimentel who lives in Naples). This version of the poem is identical to the one reproduced in the Voltaire Foundation edition, with the exception of “italie” instead of “Italie” (line 4 ), “païs” instead of “pays” (line 5), and “& privé de génie” instead of “et surtout sans génie” (line 4). This version of Voltaire’s poem, with the dedication to Fonseca Pimentel, was first discovered by Franco Venturi: see Venturi, “Il Portogallo dopo Pombal: La Spagna di Floridablanca,” in Settecento riformatore, vol. 4, part 1: La caduta dell’antico regime, 1776–1789 (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 228. 15. See above, note 8.

8 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution on her side, shopkeepers and artisans, the “people of Naples,” on her husband’s side. Unfortunately the documentation relating to her later years is much scarcer, the glaring omission being the transcripts of the trial that ended with her death sentence, destroyed four years after her execution on order of the restored King Ferdinand.16 Fonseca Pimentel’s match with Tria de Solis had been arranged by her father when she was twenty-four years old.17 There had been a previous engagement, to her cousin Michele Lopez—also arranged as was the custom—which had lasted three years (1773–1776) but then came to nothing. Why was the engagement terminated? Some have speculated that he might have been put off by her “overconfidence” and excessive concentration on her “books and studies.”18 Quite simply we do not know, although it would be not unusual for a man—an eighteenth-century man, of course—not to be too keen on an intellectually superior wife. If the engagement with Michele was indeed broken because of Fonseca Pimentel’s perceived intellectual hauteur, then her father could not have chosen worse when he married her off to Tria de Solis. A forty-four-year-old army officer and member of the very minor Neapolitan nobility, he appears to have been the type of “plebeian nobleman”— ignorant and proud of it, dialect-speaking and popular with the plebs—that, according to Benedetto Croce, had taken shape in the city of Naples from around the middle of the century,19 the opposite end of the spectrum from the cultured, enlightened aristocratic circle to which the Fonseca Pimentels belonged. Besides, while they were careful with their money, the Trias de Solis aspired to live in luxury, and most definitely above their means, a habit that would have dire consequences. A major source of conflict from the beginning appears to have been Fonseca Pimentel’s intellectual activity, which Don Pasquale found pointless at best, threatening at worst, and in any case unsuitable for a lady. Another was his profligacy, which resulted in his de facto bankruptcy and the family being forced to move out of their patrician palazzo at the Pignasecca in central Naples to a far more modest place on the outskirts of the city. Not long after the death of her baby son, she became pregnant again, but suffered a miscarriage which very nearly killed her.20 Another pregnancy followed, which also ended in a miscarriage, possibly caused by her husband’s physical violence. Episodes of spite, humiliation 16. On the destruction of this documentation see Giuseppe Galasso. “I giacobini meridionali,” in Giuseppe Galasso, La filosofia in soccorso de’ governi: La cultura napoletana del Settecento (Naples: Guida, 1989), 520. 17. The marriage was celebrated in February 1778, after lengthy negotations which began in 1776. 18. This claim is made by Bice Gurgo in Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel (Naples: Cooperativa Editrice Libraria,1935), 37–38, and supported by Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina, 31. 19. Benedetto Croce, Storia del Regno di Napoli (Bari: Laterza, 1925), 178–79. 20. See her sonnets on her son’s death, and her ode on a miscarriage,

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 9 and violence seem to have intensified as time went on. In the court case, Fonseca Pimentel testifies how Don Pasquale’s three unmarried sisters had been living with them from the start of the marriage—three sad women, one of them mentally unbalanced, who tormented their brainy sister-in-law and fueled the flames of their brother’s suspicion of her scholarly friendships. From her testimony a portrait transpires of an infernal marriage between a cultured woman, keen not only on acquiring books but also on maintaining her links with the cultured coterie among which she had grown up, and a man who would at best deprive her of the necessary money to purchase books, and at worst actually scatter and destroy them, accuse her of adultery with fellow writers who might visit, and beat her and even threaten to have her killed. Besides, he who falsely accused her of adultery was himself guilty on this count.21 Tria de Solis in his turn retorted by trying to portray his wife in a very different light, skillfully interweaving with her persona the assumptions of a patriarchal society. In a tone that manages to be both unctuous and intimidating, he presents himself as an “honorable officer of good family” who is being “assaulted and slandered by a foolish capricious woman such as is his wife.” Not only did she want to live according to “current fashions” against her husband’s wishes, but responded to his disapproval by redoubling her slanderous assaults instead of “falling silent and mending her ways” (ah, the silence of women). Had she not shown “insubordination” towards her intended from the start? Had she not offended her sistersin-law by living “as she pleased”? Had she not falsely blamed her miscarriages on his maltreatments, when in fact these were clearly the result of a congenital physical malformation? And had she not been obsessed with reading and studying, instead of seeing to her duties as a wife and homemaker? And besides, the books she devoured with so much relish were of the kind that upheld the modern subversive doctrines condemned by the church. Moreover, she who had dared to accuse him falsely of adultery had in fact herself been guilty of infidelity. As proof of this charge, Tria de Solis produced ten letters to Fonseca Pimentel by Alberto Fortis, as well as a draft of a letter she had written to Fortis.22 Don Pasquale skillfully ended on a supposedly magnanimous note: a caring husband such as he was could only wish for his wife’s “redemption,” and he was therefore pleading for her to be “confined to a nunnery, so she would restrain her ways and learn upright doctrines and her duties, prior to returning home.”23 Fonseca Pimentel’s accusation of adultery against her husband concerned the coming into their marriage of “one Angela Veronica from L’Aquila.” Angela Maria Veronica had at first worked as a cuffiara (milliner) with financial help from Don Pasquale, then little by little wormed her way into the Tria-Fonseca 21. ASN, fols. 77–89. 22. For Fonseca Pimentel’s letter to Fortis, see 51. 23. ASN, fols. 48–50.

10 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution household, making and mending clothes, making herself generally useful, and ingratiating herself with Don Pasquale’s sisters. While Fonseca Pimentel appears to have been sympathetic and willing to help at first, she became increasingly uncomfortable and suspicious when Angela brought in her three-year-old daughter (was she Don Pasquale’s child?), and took to spending long periods as their guest. Some of the details of this cohabitation sound bizarre to say the least. According to Fonseca Pimentel’s testimony, her husband made the two women share the marital bed, while he slept in a small bed in the same room.24 In response, in September 1784, before things came to a head and her father initiated the court case for separation, she had decided to take action, using her connection with the Portuguese diplomat don Giuseppe de Souza—he who had put her in touch with Metastasio—to obtain an audience with Sir John Acton, the commander-in-chief of the Neapolitan military, asking him to arrange for the expulsion of this “evil woman” from “Naples and its hinterland,” in the name of the “decorum” of an officer in the royal army. A lengthy court case had ensued, at the end of which Angela Veronica was found not guilty.25 Angela Veronica’s life appears rather typical of a certain type of woman of poor origin who was determined to make her fortune by whatever means available to her. In some ways she was not unlike her contemporary Amy Lyon, later to become Emma Hart, and later still Lady Hamilton, and best known as Horatio Nelson’s lover.26 Originally from the Abruzzo, Veronica had married, been in prison for perjury, and taken various lovers—one of whom, the lawyer who helped her with the court case, she shared with her sister. She might even have been involved in a murder. She eventually left these and other troubles behind by escaping to Naples, where she managed, on the recommendation of a marquis, to obtain a post as maidservant with a noble family. When it transpired that she was, as the saying went, a “woman of easy virtue,” she was sacked. She reinvented herself first as a haberdasher, and then a milliner. At some point she ran a milliner’s shop with her sister. This account emerges both from Fonseca Pimentel’s own testimony and those of the witnesses who spoke in her favor, while a rather different story emerges from the witnesses on the opposite side. The court case entailed a series of well-documented accusations and counteraccusations. Both sides produced witnesses. Among those who testified in favor of Fonseca Pimentel were her old tutors Vincenzo Meola, Filippo Maria Guidi, Vincenzo Mazzarella Farao, and the Portuguese diplomat don Giuseppe de Souza, who all confirm that she was a highly cultured woman above all suspicion, 24. ASN, fols. 80, 81, and 84. 25. ASN, fols. 7–8 and 1–5. 26. On Emma Hamilton, of a large literature, see most usefully in this context Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:303–12. The British Admiral Horatio Nelson was in Naples during 1799–1800 in charge of the naval campaign against the French.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 11 who had been maltreated and maligned by her husband and his sisters. They paint a picture of a woman who was ever more isolated as her friends became reluctant to visit because of her husband’s insane and ill-founded jealousy; and they all emphasize her desperate need for books and his cruel refusal to let her have the money to buy them, to the extent that she was reduced to buy a particular set of volumes containing poems by Petrarch and Guidi only when she won a “small amount on the lottery.” And they all concur in portraying Angela Veronica as not only Don Pasquale’s lover but as meretrice (harlot), or indeed puttana (whore).27 Belonging to the enlightened elite did not prevent them from indulging in sexualized attacks on women. Don Clemente himself, for that matter, had submitted, in defense of his daughter, a written document that purported to prove the “depraved lives of such women” (Angela Maria Veronica and her sister) through the evidence of two “professional midwives” who “having examined the private parts of Angela Rosa Veronica [Angela’s sister], found her to have been ravished and used since a very long time.”28 But while the Fonseca Pimentels were well connected with intellectuals and diplomats, the Trias were able to draw on the support of shopkeepers, small artisans, barbers, market traders, coach drivers—the common people who lived in their neighborhood. They all supported his claims against his opponents, just as they had supported Veronica in the case that Fonseca Pimentel had attempted to bring the previous year, and they all portrayed the milliner, as well as her sister, as “honest women.” Their testimonies—which, betraying the writers’ illiteracy, are not surprisingly signed with a cross or occasionally with a very wobbly hand— have a strikingly formulaic quality that suggests they may have been prompted to repeat a prepared text. This court case that pitched Fonseca Pimentel and her family against her husband was also, patently, a showcase of class issues cutting across gender issues, featuring a clash between an enlightened upper class on the one hand, and on the other, an (un)holy alliance between the popular classes and the reactionary aristocracy. Fonseca Pimentel was encountering in her personal life, probably for the first time, questions that she would later confront at a political and ideological level. After Fonseca Pimentel’s attempt to be rid of the woman whom she viewed as her husband’s lover, his behavior towards her, she said, became more and more offensive and abusive. It was at this point that her father intervened with a view to obtaining a separation from her husband. This intervention necessitated, first of all, his obtaining authorization from the Royal Council for his daughter to leave the marital home. If Fonseca Pimentel had been the victim of gender-specific abuse in the course of her marriage, now she had to rely on the sympathetic support of another man to try and remedy the situation. To begin, she had to be 27. ASN, fols. 105, 96, and 92–95. 28. ASN, fol. 113.

12 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution formally entrusted to her father, as the law did not allow for a woman to take legal action, so she returned to live in the Fonseca Pimentel family home. Though compelled to subordinate herself in this way, she was nonetheless fortunate to have a sympathetic father to sue for separation on her behalf. Fonseca Pimentel ran a very real risk of ending up being “confined to a nunnery,” as her husband had advocated, since it is very likely that the judge would have felt compelled to pronounce against her—such was the apparent strength of her husband’s case—had Don Pasquale not suddenly declared, quite unpredictably, on June 26, 1785, that he was withdrawing all his previous submissions, also retracting all accusations against his wife, whom he now acknowledged to be “a thoroughly blameless woman beyond all suspicion.” Don Clemente de Fonseca Pimentel had died on May 14.29 With the end of the court case, Fonseca Pimentel was free to return to her favorite occupations, studying and writing. She was also still on very good terms with the royal court. In August 1785, finding herself in financial difficulties, she applied for, and through their support obtained from the Banchi di Napoli a monthly grant of twelve ducats, with the explanation that the lady showed “extraordinary talents superior to the range of her sex.”30 In the same year she produced the last of her eulogizing pieces, Il vero omaggio (True Homage), to celebrate the royal couple’s return from a trip to Sicily. But more and more, she focused on political and jurisdictional matters. In 1786, she wrote a book, now lost, on a project for a national bank, and between 1790 and 1792, she produced essays that made important contributions to the heated debate on the respective powers of state and church—in particular to the anticurial campaign of the Kingdom of Naples, aimed at rescinding all remaining feudal dependence on Rome.31 Further, in 1789, she had contributed a sonnet to a collection of poems written with the specific aim of celebrating the establishment of the San Leucio settlement, a manufacturing enterprise based on strictly egalitarian principles.32 Its establishment was the pinnacle of King Ferdinand IV’s reformist forays. It was to be also its swan song. 29. ASN, fols. 116–17. Don Pasquale’s declaration was in response to a request by Fonseca Pimentel to be allowed to continue living with her paternal aunt and uncle now that her father was dead and her brother had left Naples. On being told by Judge Tontolo that a reconciliation would be the best solution, Don Pasquale stated that while a reconciliation would not be possible, he agreed to her request, confident as he was in her “good conduct and blamelessness.” Elena Urgnani hypothesizes that, following the death of her father on May 14, she might have used her inheritance to bribe Tria de Solis. Elena Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel (Naples: La Città del Sole, 1998), 31. 30. Registro of Banco della Pietà, vol. 301, 137, quoted in Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 3:3. 31. See 27–28 and 59–64. 32. The sonnet is in Componimenti poetici per le leggi date alla nuova popolazione di Santo Leucio da Ferdinando IV re delle Sicilie (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1789), 123.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 13 For 1789 was, of course, the year of the storming of the Bastille. Soon news of events in Paris would put an end to the long honeymoon between enlightened sovereigns and progressive intellectuals. Enlightened reforms under the hegemony of the sovereigns were no longer possible; enlightened despotism had run its course. The process of polarization that took place during the 1790s pushed rulers to adopt policies of defensive repression against francophile intellectuals, while at the same time, some enlightened reformers moved towards Jacobinism, a more radical ideology of democracy and equality. Fonseca Pimentel was among them: the monarchist reformer of earlier years turned to revolutionary conspiracy in the 1790s. It is difficult to reconstruct her biography in detail for the period 1790–1798. But it is known that sometime after 1789, she was dismissed from her position she had held since 1775 as librarian to Queen Maria Carolina, consort of Ferdinand IV. It is known that she was involved with Jacobin activists who gathered at her house to discuss the news from France, which she was able to glean from the journal Le Moniteur, the major French newspaper published during the Revolution, obtained through her contacts with Portuguese diplomats. And it is known that in 1798, she was charged with reading prohibited books and holding seditious meetings, for which offenses she was arrested and jailed in the Vicaria prison.33 In January 1799, the sovereigns having fled to Sicily, French armies entered Naples. Now Fonseca Pimentel took a leading role in the establishment of the Repubblica Napoletana (Neapolitan Republic), the last to be established of the Italian Jacobin republics. Soon after she was put in charge of the Monitore Napoletano, which was to be its chief political journal. Like the Republic itself, it only lasted for five months. It appeared for the last time on June 8, 1799. On June 13, the peasant army of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo entered Naples, the Republic fell, and the Bourbon Kingdom was reestablished. Fonseca Pimentel, together with other prominent leaders of the Jacobin Republic, was arrested and kept prisoner for a while in a ship anchored in the bay of Naples. These prisoners were supposed to be given safe passage into exile, an agreement guaranteed by British Admiral Horatio Nelson, who then reneged on the agreement. On August 12, some of the prisoners were removed to the Vicaria prison and put on trial. On August 17, Fonseca Pimentel and ten others were condemned to death. Four of these were reprieved. Fonseca Pimentel and the other six were hanged in the Piazza del Mercato on August 20, 1799. Before being given burial, her body was left hanging from the gallows for a whole day, to be scorned and mocked by the populace of Naples. Her execution by hanging and the exposure of her body soon became the subject of a popular song:

33. See Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:374–78; Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:45–48.

14 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution A signora donna Lionora,

Madam lady Lionora,

che cantava ncopp’o triato,

She who sang in the theater,

mo abballa mmiezo o Mercato.

Now she dances in the market square.

Viva viva u papa santo,

Long, long live the Holy Father,

ch’a mannato i cannuncini,

Who has sent the cannons

pe scaccià li giacubini.

To throw out the Jacobins.

34

Singing in the theater is something that Fonseca Pimentel had never done. It is an allusion to the immoral reputation of actresses, and canterine (singers) in particular: in other words she is being called a whore.35 This is how popular culture perceived the woman who had lived as the protagonist of a revolution; the attack focuses not on her deeds, but on her sexuality. Sexualized attacks against “unconventional” women, far from being the monopoly of the reactionary underclass, were common currency at the opposite end of the social and political spectrum as well. This is what a Jacobin poet, Gian Lorenzo Cardone, wrote the following year, this time about Emma Hamilton: Na picazza di tiatru

A foul theatrical magpie

Na scrufazza furasteri

A filthy foreign sow

……………………….

……………………….

Idda po nfi dintu all’occhi

She then deep inside her eyes

Si fà futturi da tutti

Gets herself fucked by all and sundry

Viva Deu di Sabautti.36

Viva God of Sabaoth.

Cardone had lived in Naples during the Republic, and was then condemned to exile. His Te Deum, written in Calabrese dialect, was an attempt to write “for the people” in their own language and using popular rhetoric, as indeed Fonseca Pimentel repeatedly insisted one should do in order to harness popular culture to the progressive cause. When he bemoans the outcome of the Neapolitan revolution, quite properly venting his rage for Nelson’s betrayal of the Jacobin prisoners, 34. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:79. For a full discussion of contemporary Neapolitan political songs, see Benedetto Croce, “Canti politici del popolo napoletano,” in Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:140–53. 35. Croce speaks of the charge of whore made against actresses at various points in I teatri di Napoli: Dal Rinascimento alla fine del secolo decimottavo, 2nd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1916), especially chapters 15 (“L’opera buffa e le canterine,” 176–83), 18 (“Il Teatro San Carlo nei primi anni di Re Ferdinando,” 208–19), 20 (“Giambattista Lorenzi e l’opera buffa,” 234–41), and 22 (“Il teatro in provincia,” 248–56). 36. Antonio Barbuto, La protesta, l’utopia, lo scacco: Il “Te Deum de’ calabresi” di Gian Lorenzo Cardone (Rome: Bulzoni, 1975), 69. The Te deum laudamus is a Latin hymn of praise often recited on ritual occasions in the Catholic church; the shortened form of its name (Te Deum) is used to designate a service of thanksgiving.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 15 he diverts his hatred instead on to Nelson’s lover, Emma Hamilton, focusing on her sexuality. The obscenity of his attack should not hide the similarity with the popular attack on Fonseca Pimentel. Both are “women of the theater”; both are whores. Fonseca Pimentel at least is spared being called a foreigner.

The Kingdom of Naples from Enlightenment to Jacobinism When the Fonseca Pimentels moved from Rome to Naples in 1760, they were crossing an international border. Rome was the capital of one of several states that covered the Italian peninsula. On its Southern border stood the Kingdom of Naples, the largest of the Italian states, encompassing the present-day regions of Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, and the island of Sicily. Things had changed considerably since the beginning of the century: the treaty which sealed the end of the war of Spanish Succession in 1714 had put an end to a long period of Spanish rule over much of Italy, and the treaty of Aix-laChapelle, ending the war of Austrian succession in 1748, ushered in a half century when the peninsula would, exceptionally, enjoy total peace. The Kingdom of Naples came into being in 1734, under the sovereignty of Charles of Bourbon, who would be succeeded by his son Ferdinand in 1759. It was to continue as an independent state until 1861, when, following the successful campaign of Giuseppe Garibaldi, it was assimilated into the newly founded Kingdom of Italy under the sovereignty of the Piedmontese Savoy dynasty. The very fact that Italian unification was achieved through the subjugation of the Bourbon-ruled Kingdom of Naples generated a dominant historical model portraying the South as a backward region that the more advanced North would modernize. While this view became an unquestioned element in the forging of an Italian national identity after unification, a rather different, more nuanced picture has emerged from recent historical studies.37 37. The traditional established view of southern inferiority vis-à-vis a superior north was perpetuated until relatively recently through a series of complex and even contradictory factors. For very illuminating analyses of this continuing process see Gabriella Gribaudi, “Images of the South,” in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 72–87, and Marta Petrusewicz, “Before the Southern Question: ‘Native’ Ideas on Backwardness and Remedies in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1815–1849,” in Italy’s “Southern Question.” Orientalism in One Country, ed. Jane Schneider (Oxford-New York: Berg, 1998), 27–49. For a critical if sympathetic analysis of historical revisonism on the Southern Question, see John A. Davis, “Casting Off the “Southern Problem”: Or the Peculiarities of the South Reconsidered,” in Italy’s “Southern Question,” 54–86. For a penetrating overview of the history of Southern Italy from the mideighteenth century, mindful of revisionist historiography, see Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions, 1780–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). More recently, Gianni Oliva has produced an excellent popularizing history of the Southern Kingdom which challenges traditional negative views: Un Regno che è stato grande: La storia negata dei Borboni di Napoli e Sicilia (Milan: Mondadori, 2012). On the Kingdom of Naples during the eighteenth century, see

16 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution In his magisterial work on the history of Southern Italy, Giuseppe Galasso dismisses the “black legend” of a backward South as a “historiographical distortion,” but equally dismisses any attempt to forge an opposing “golden legend”;38 for the South was admittedly “a somewhat backward periphery of Europe… with many specific problems to do with its economic and social structures, political and administrative balances, and…underdevelopment…backwardness and poverty.”39 John Davis, as well, cautions against a simplistic juxtaposition of southern backwardness and northern advancement, writing that “the neat contrasts between a modernizing North and a backward South are anachronisms that have subsequently come to distort the history of the North before Unification no less seriously than that of the South.”40 Many of the problems that beset the Neapolitan Kingdom, numerous and daunting though they were, were not specific to that region but rather typical of ancien régime (Old Regime) Europe. The difficulties facing “enlightened despotism” (as the season of eighteenth-century sovereign-led reforms became known) prior to 1789, as well, were European-wide. As elsewhere, the Kingdom of Naples proceeded along the road to reform in a nonlinear way. Elvira Chiosi talks about “alternating rhythms marked by chain actions and reactions, crisis and reformist zeal, pauses and fast-moving action”41 as features typical of political progress in Southern Italy and beyond in the age of reforms. Nor is the myth defensible that Naples had great thinkers but lacked serious reforming rulers: Naples did not lack great thinkers, but neither did it lack reforming rulers. The newly independent Kingdom of Naples was faced with the task of remolding the political structures of the state without the tools available to other European sovereigns, whose modern states were based on a firm alliance between monarchy and bourgeoisie against feudal power. In Southern Italy, in contrast, a compromise had long prevailed between feudal power and monarchy. The Spanish kings who had taken control of the region in the sixteenth century retained political control by relinquishing social and economic authority to the feudal barons.

also Franco Venturi, “La Napoli di Antonio Genovesi,” in Settecento riformatore, vol. 1: Da Muratori a Beccaria (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), 523–644. 38. Giuseppe Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, vol. 4: Il Mezzogiorno borbonico e napoleonico, 1734–1815 (Turin: UTET, 2007), 38. 39. Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, 4:39. See also Giuseppe Galasso, L’altra Europa: Per un’antropologia storica del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, rev. ed. (Naples: Guida, 2009), and Giuseppe Galasso, Intervista sulla storia di Napoli, ed. Percy A. Allum (Bari: Laterza, 1978). 40. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 8. 41. Elvira Chiosi, “Il Regno dal 1734 al 1799,” in Storia del Mezzogiorno, ed. Giuseppe Galasso and Rosario Romeo, vol. 4.2: Il Regno dagli Angioini ai Borboni (Naples: Edizioni del Sole, 1986), 373–467, at 404.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 17 Not only did traditional feudal institutions limit the sovereign’s power in Southern Italy more than elsewhere, so too did another, rival, source of authority: the Roman church. After the Normans invaded Southern Italy in the eleventh century, the pope had legitimized their regime in exchange for an agreement that the Kingdom of Naples would remain in perpetuity a feudal domain under papal authority. In addition, like the feudal aristocracy, the church owned vast tracts of land, while it constituted a kind of parallel state. The clergy were subject only to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical, not secular courts, and they were exempt from the payment of any taxes. Since the number of clergy was large, and determined exclusively by church procedures, many people living in the territory of the secular state were both untouched by the law and exempt from taxation. These circumstances impinged not only on the ability of a state to exercise its authority, but also on the economic and social fabric of the country. In Southern Italy, where feudal property was “more extensive than in any other part of Italy or indeed Western Europe,” feudal barons were the de facto rulers in most rural areas: they both exercised autonomous jurisdiction in their own domains, and were “entitled to raise levies over the local communities subject to their feudal jurisdiction.”42 Moreover, alongside the church, they owned most of the land, and they owned it indefinitely. The vast landed estates known as latifundia that covered the map of the South were regulated by a legal framework guided by the principle of mortmain. A keystone of feudal administration, mortmain signified a wide range of rights held by feudal lords and ecclesiastical institutions, and the imposition of a corresponding range of duties and obligations on the peasants. One fundamental aspect of mortmain was the practice of fideicommissum, whereby possessions, especially real estate, would be bequeathed to an heir for one or more generations, or in perpetuity, making those possessions the inalienable property of particular families. Consequently, most real estate was unavailable for trade and circulation of wealth. On these lands, owned partly by feudal lords and partly by the church, under a system of subsistence farming, peasants planted grains, grazed livestock, and cultivated vines and olive trees.43 A small group of merchants controlled production and marketing and provisioned the city of Naples. As early as the sixteenth century, the feudal barons chose to live in the capital, entrusting the day-to-day running of their estates to entrepreneurs, who were for the most part “foreigners”— that is to say, Genoese, and later French, English, Swiss, and German merchants, who managed the export trade and what little manufacturing industry there was.44 The eighteenth century saw a huge demographic surge all over 42. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 19. 43. Chiosi, “Il Regno dal 1734 al 1799,” 421–25. 44. Stuart J. Woolf, A History of Italy, 1700–1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (London: Methuen, 1979), 59.

18 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Europe, but while the more advanced European nations were moving towards industrialization, Southern Italy failed to do so, and required the importation of most commodities. Dependence on international trade and finance was, together with feudalism, as Galasso notes, the constant and enduring cause of underdevelopment in Southern Italy.45 Historians debate whether a significant indigenous bourgeoisie existed in Southern Italy. The traditional view is that the only bourgeoisie was the so-called borghesia degli uffici e delle professioni—lawyers and professionals, that is, not an entrepreneurial class engaged in commerce. Galasso, however, maintains that a small but important “economic bourgeoisie” did develop to some degree, engaged in agriculture, manufacturing, and trade.46 Nonetheless, as he himself reaffirms, feudal power successfully coopted what small bourgeoisie had emerged in the countryside, precisely because its agents were largely those involved in the dayto-day management and administration of feudal lands. Moreover, because such tasks extended downwards to the lower strata of rural society, a powerful “social bloc” took shape which had a vested interest in the continuation of the status quo.47 In consequence, not only did no genuine alternative to the feudal regime exist, but any attempt at its abolition faced formidable obstacles. Below the feudal aristocracy and the thin layer of a middle class, most people lived in absolute poverty. The rural poor, subject to the caprice of feudal overlords, suffered endless abuses, especially the withdrawal or restriction of traditional access to common lands for grazing, or to waterways and forests, which were indispensable to the fragile economies of peasant communities. Periodically, when waves of famine and disease swept through the country, they might be plunged from a precarious level of subsistence into total indigence.48 These pressures resulted in the proliferation of day laborers, an increase in begging, and a surge of migration to the capital. As destitute people flooded into Naples from the starving provinces, their needs stressed the city’s fragile provisioning system. 45. Galasso, Intervista, 113. 46. Galasso, Intervista, 50. 47. Galasso, Intervista, 41; also Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, 4.2:449. 48. One particularly devastating outbreak of famine followed by an epidemic occurred in 1763–64. On this see Franco Venturi, “1764. Napoli nell’anno della fame,” Rivista storica italiana 85 (1973): 394–472. An invaluable detailed account of the 1764 famine and epidemic, which pays close attention to both medical and political and sociological factor, is in Antonio Pepe, Il medico di letto o sia Dissertazione storico-medica su l’epidemica costituzione dell’anno 1764 in questa città di Napoli accaduta (The Bed-side Doctor, that is to say A Historical-Medical Dissertation on the Epidemic of 1764 in this City of Naples) (Naples: Giuseppe Severino Boezio, 1766). On the whole question of recurring famine in eighteenth-century southern Italy, see Franco Venturi. “Tre terre italiane di fronte alla fame: Napoli, Roma, Firenze” in vol. 5, part 1 of Settecento Riformatore (Turin: Einaudi, 1987), 221–305.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 19 Since the seventeenth century, the city of Naples had grown uncontrollably: it constituted the “monstrous head of a fragile body,” as Elvira Chiosi describes the relationship between the city and its hinterland.49 The city provided cheap bread to hungry newcomers, controlled food prices, and permitted various exemptions from taxation which eased their condition. In addition, the presence of the royal court and many aristocratic palazzi meant more jobs for artisans, tradesmen, and domestic servants. Cooks, laundrywomen, childminders, hairdressers, gardeners, coachmen, and such were in high demand. But the very availability of some kind of employment created a vicious circle which ultimately made the life of the poor ever more precarious: the ever increasing influx of destitute masses who were attracted by the prospect of finding work created a competitive market which kept wages extremely low. So while a minority were able to reach a certain level of wellbeing, most survived on incredibly low levels of income. Many slept in caves on the sides of the many hills which dotted the city, or else underneath or on top of market stalls, or outside the front doors of houses. Many were only able to stay alive by begging (the very presence of a large aristocracy with their palazzi, as well as a great number of religious houses, meant that alms were readily available) or by petty thieving. It was at this time that the image was forged of the Neapolitan plebeian as a dirty, noisy, thieving, superstitious, fanatical creature living in utter squalor. As Galasso reminds us forcefully, this image, however stereotypical, was based on a reality of “incalculable indigence and suffering.”50 Cheap bread might have been readily available, but hunger was a constant, unrelenting feature of the life of the Neapolitan poor. Both sovereigns, Charles and his son Ferdinand, who ruled over the Kingdom of Naples in the eighteenth century made repeated attempts at grappling with the issue of state authority vis-à-vis both feudal and ecclesiastical power, and the economic and social implications thereof. Their action was accompanied and supported by a distinguished group of thinkers. Eighteenth-century Naples was one of the most eminent centers of European Enlightenment culture. And, as in the rest of Europe, Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers researched and analyzed the economic, jurisdictional, and political problems and put forward plans for their solutions. Their relationship with the sovereigns was one of cooperation and mutual encouragement. As in France, the Habsburg lands, and other Italian states, “enlightened despotism” became the order of the day. In 1754 a cattedra di commercio (chair of political economy) was created at the University of Naples for the philosopher and economist Antonio Genovesi, the first such chair in Europe. He was initially a follower of the doctrine of “mercantilism,” which advocated protectionist economic policies. Ten years later, following the dreadful famine which killed thousands partly as a consequence of the 49. Chiosi, “Il Regno,” 380. 50. Galasso, Intervista, 64–66.

20 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution inefficient system of food distribution, he converted to “physiocracy,” the theory of the “power of nature,” that is to say the belief that “natural” market forces left to themselves would produce the best possible outcome.51 The attack on mercantilism came especially in the works of another giant of the Neapolitan Enlightenment, Ferdinando Galiani, with his Della moneta (Concerning Money) published in 1751. In 1770, in the dialogues which he wrote in French Sur le commerce des blés (On the Grain Trade), he argued the case for giving equal importance to commerce and industry and criticized what he viewed as the present excessive reliance on agriculture. In 1789 Gaetano Filangieri’s Scienza della Legislazione (The Science of Legislation) launched a violent onslaught on the feudal system, and advocated the transformation of feudal barons from local potentates to modern landowners. This transformation was to be predicated on the abolition of all restrictions on private ownership of the land, and communal lands would of course be sold off in the process. In 1723, eleven years before the establishment of the Kingdom of Naples, Pietro Giannone had published his Storia civile del reame di Napoli (Civil History of the Kingdom of Naples). This book amounted to a scathing attack on papal claims on the Kingdom of Naples. It was to lay the foundations for a vigorous policy of anti-ecclesiastical reforms aimed at freeing the state from its centuries-old feudal obligations to the Holy See. In 1782 the Inquisition was abolished; ecclesiastical privileges were, if not abolished, at least restricted; much real estate belonging to religious institutions was sold off; and in 1767, the Jesuits, those “paladins of papal authority and ecclesiastical control of education,”52 were expelled. As a symbol of the state’s rejection of papal control, in 1788 King Ferdinand IV abolished the chinea, the annual custom by which a horse carrying a treasure chest stooped in front of the pope. Historians generally agree that the strengthening of the state vis-à-vis ecclesiastical institutions was the real achievement of Bourbon reforms. These reforms enjoyed a broad base of support from the more progressive sectors of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and sections of the clergy. Less successful was the attempt to deal with feudal power, which was deeply entrenched within the fabric of rural society. While both reformers and the sovereign, and to a certain extent the rural communities themselves, were agreed that feudal practices were not working, their apparent unity of purpose concealed profound differences regarding aims and means: as Davis points out, there were “complex and often contradictory alignments.”53 The sovereign would have liked to change some as51. The writings by Genovesi, as well as Filangieri and other Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers, can be found in Riformatori napoletani, ed. Franco Venturi, vol. 5 of Illuministi italiani (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1962). 52. Woolf, History, 75. 53. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 54.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 21 pects of feudalism with the aim of strengthening the central power of the state. The local communities wanted their traditional rights reinstated, and protected against the abuses of the feudal lords. The reformers wanted to abolish feudalism altogether rather than modify it, and institute a free market economy with private land tenure. These contradictory impulses not only made it impossible to proceed to effective reforms, but they laid the ground for further conflicts, which would come to a head when the Republic made a serious attempt at radical reforms.54 While Europe generally in the 1770s witnessed significant movement against feudal practices, in Naples proposals remained limited to such matters as the abolition of feudal jurisdiction or, at most, the devolution of fiefs to the Crown with the extinction of the male line. At the end of the century, feudal jurisdiction still covered seventy percent of the population in the provinces, and the barons, while being encouraged to modernize and develop production, retained their privileges. Nonetheless, some concrete results did follow from the call by Filangieri and others for the transformation of feudal barons into “modern landowners.” Rather than rescind all feudal privileges, reformers found it easier to proceed with the abolition of all restrictions on private property, propelling the selling off of communal lands—causing thereby the loss of traditional grazing rights— so as to generate new groups of small landowners. But ironically, the sale of land benefited wealthy landowners rather than the rural poor, who lacked the capital to purchase even small plots.55 So the reforms, such as they were, not only failed to help the rural masses, but on the contrary made things worse for them. As Davis points out, the reformers, focusing on the “creative force of the market,” did not concern themselves with the “moral economies of the rural communities.”56 Traditional rights of access to communal grazing lands, waterways, and forests, were absolutely essential to the subsistence of rural workers. While the feudal barons had frequently encroached on such rights, the new reforms abolished them altogether, in a pattern similar to the enclosure movement in England and Wales or the “clearances” in the Scottish Highlands, which proletarianized the peasantry and drove waves of impoverished crofters to emigrate across the Atlantic. The peasants of the Kingdom of Naples were driven to begging, to emigrate to the capital, or to starve, their hardships caused by, and perceived to be caused by, the actions of the enlightened reformers. Here lay the root of the peasants’ visceral hatred of all reformers, which would prove an unsurmountable obstacle for the Jacobin republic. 54. On the debate leading up to the feudal laws during the 1799 Republic, see 76–77. 55. A case in point was the experience of the Cassa Sacra, a fund created in Calabria in the aftermath of the devastating 1783 earthquake with the aim of selling lands belonging to religious orders and thereby creating a new “class of sturdy peasant farmers”; see Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 61–62. On the Cassa Sacra, see also Chiosi, “Il Regno dal 1734 al 1799,” 296–300. 56. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 53.

22 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Reformers also attempted to stimulate trade and manufacturing, but without success. At the end of the period of reforms, the Kingdom of Naples was still heavily dependent on international trade and finance. While retail trade was in the hands of locals, wholesale trade remained a monopoly of foreigners, which meant that imports far overtook exports. With the exception of building, driven by the demand of aristocrats for prestige properties, local manufacturing remained limited to the artisan level. Despite these intractable economic and social problems, Naples was one of the most splendid and culturally alive of European cities. The university flourished and acquired a new venue, while a Botanical Garden, an Astronomic Observatory, and a Veterinary School were established. In 1780, the Reale Accademia di Scienze e Belle Lettere (Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters) opened its doors, as did the Reale Biblioteca Borbonica (Royal Bourbon Library) in 1783. For the progressive elite in the 1780s, life was exciting and hopeful. Many among the younger generation would soon be transformed from monarchist reformers to Jacobin revolutionaries, as Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel would be. But in the meantime, Enlightenment ideals enjoyed widespread support among the progressive sectors of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the clergy, who believed in the reform program led by their sovereign. Things changed abruptly as a consequence of events in France. The storming of the Bastille in 1789 and of the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793 pushed European sovereigns, including the Bourbons of Naples, to ally against the threat posed by revolutionary France. The execution of the Queen Marie Antoinette nine months after that of the king had a particularly poignant impact on Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, who was her sister. At first, some reformers hoped that the threat of revolution would trigger an intensification of the reforms in order to stave off more ominous upheavals. But this did not happen. By 1794, all projects for state-led reforms had been shelved and a harshly repressive regime initiated. While some of the reformist intellectuals recoiled from the revolutionary violence unleashed in France, many others moved over to opposition. They now embraced Jacobinism, that is to say, a radical ideology of democracy and equality, explicitly, if somewhat naively, based on the belief that “doing like in Paris” was what needed to be done, and that the Grande Nation (the “Great Nation”), as they now called France, should be the model for Italian revolution and progress.57 As in the rest of Italy, revolutionary clubs sprang up and functioned as channels for the diffusion and discussion of French propaganda. Prominent among the Jacobins were members of the aristocracy, as Pietro Colletta notes, commenting on the presence of members of the noble Carafa and 57. For a more detailed discussion of Jacobinism, see 64–65.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 23 Serra families among the dissidents in the 1790s. Indeed, much of the opposition to feudalism had come from within the feudal families themselves, and many aristocrats would support the Jacobin Republic of 1799. Colletta added poignantly that these were “the young to be sure, not the heads of the families”58—that is to say the younger sons excluded from inheritance by feudal law. Gaetano Filangieri, for example, one of the leading reformers, was the third son of a princely family. The Jacobin activities led to a spate of arrests that culminated in a big show trial in 1794–1795, the Gran Processo dei Rei di Stato (Great Trial of the Enemies of the State). Almost all of those charged were found guilty; most were sentenced to either jail or exile; three were executed. A vicious circle was thereby set in motion: the repression strengthened the Jacobin movement, which in its turn pushed the monarchy on to more repression. As the progress of the revolution in France led European sovereigns to form an anti-French coalition, Europe found itself divided into two camps: the counterrevolutionary monarchies opposing, on the one hand, revolutionary France, but also targeting, on the other, the revolutionary “patriots”—as they began to call themselves—within their own states.59 In April 1792, Prussia declared war on France, and gradually the anti-French coalition coalesced around it: England and the Netherlands joined in 1793, followed by Spain and the major Italian states, including the Kingdom of Naples. As the fortunes of the war began to turn against the coalition forces, France developed a policy of what was termed revolutionary expansionism, consisting in the annexation of conquered territories as “sister republics.” By 1795, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Rhineland had been so annexed. When the French armies began to occupy Italy in 1796, they were led by General Napoleon Bonaparte. He represented the regime of the Directoire (Directory), the five-member executive committee that held power in France from 1795 to 1799, which suppressed the French Jacobins and sought to stabilize the French Republic. But Italian Jacobins interpreted the French invasions as wars of liberation—as did the celebrated poet Ugo Foscolo in May 1797 in his Ode a Bonaparte liberatore (Ode to Bonaparte, the Liberator)—and participated enthusiastically in the republics that were set up under French protection: in October 1796 the Repubblica Cispadana, covering Reggio, Modena, Ferrara, and Bologna; followed in July 1797 by the Repubblica Ligure, the Repubblica Veneta, 58. Pietro Colletta, Storia del Reame di Napoli dal 1734 sino al 1825, ed. Anna Bravo (Turin: UTET, 1975), 231; originally published Capolago: Tipografia e libreria Elvetica, 1834. 59. Italian revolutionaries especially chose to call themselves “patriots” rather than “Jacobins,” which was then the designation used, disparagingly, by their monarchist opponents. On the language used at this time and its political connotations, see Erasmo Leso, Lingua e rivoluzione: Ricerche sul vocabolario politico italiano del triennio rivoluzionario, 1796–1799 (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1991).

24 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution and the great Repubblica Cisalpina, incorporating the territory of the Cispadana and Lombardy; and even in Rome, the Repubblica Romana in February 1798. The last of all was the Repubblica Napoletana (Neapolitan Republic), which was proclaimed on January 21, 1799. The Neapolitan Jacobins were now in charge, faced with the task of tackling huge unresolved problems of poverty, inequality, financial bankruptcy, and unreformed feudalism. All this amid endemic popular hostility and in a country occupied by French armies.

Arcadia and Beyond: Poetry, Letters, Politics Writing poetry in the eighteenth century did not always mean, in fact hardly ever meant, being just a poet. Poetry at this time was “a tool of social interaction,” flourishing as it did within academic and social milieus, relying as it did on public recitals, and often written with a celebratory aim.60 If this was true of poetry writing in general, it was even more so in the case of poetry written by women. Not only was poetry the genre that allowed women the most secure and confident position as writers, but women poets in Italy were by now firmly embedded in the canon. They gained full membership of the Arcadia in 1708, and were clearly regarded with approval by the male establishment. Moreover, writing verse was almost a form of cultural or societal obligation for women interested in writing, “part of the baggage of cultural good manners, like being able to play a musical instrument.”61 In fact, verse writing appears to have been practiced by most women writers irrespective of their main focus of interest. Poetry was written not only by the women who are known principally as poets, such as Faustina Maratti Zappi, Petronilla Paolini Massimi, Silvia Curtoni Verza, Paolina Grismondi, Angela Veronese, and others, but also by other learned women: for example, Diamante Medaglia Faini, author of thoughtful reflections on philosophical matters and women’s role in their study; Eleonora Barbapiccola, translator of Descartes’ Principia philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), who was a pupil of Giambattista Vico and herself a philosopher;62 and Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, political writer and journalist.

60. Gronda, Poesia italiana, vii. 61. Luisa Ricaldone, La scrittura nascosta: Donne di lettere e loro immagini tra Arcadia e Restaurazione (Paris: Honoré Champion; Fiesole: Cadmo, 1996), 39. On Italian women’s poetry in the eighteenth century, see also Ricaldone, “Eighteenth-Century Literature,” in A History of Italian Women’s Writing, ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 95–106, and Giulio Natali, “Gli studii delle donne,” in Storia letteraria d’Italia, vol. 8, Il Settecento, ed. Giulio Natali, part 2 (Milan: Vallardi, 1929), 132–90. 62. On Barbapiccola, see Agnesi, The Contest for Knowledge, 37–46.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 25 The nature of poetry as “a tool of social interaction” came to the fore in the “deluge of rhymes” unleashed by occasions such as weddings, births, admissions to a nunnery, and such like, that is to say what the English language rather euphemistically describes as “occasional poetry.” The Italian expression poesia encomiastica (celebratory, or eulogizing poetry) is more precise: this was its function, to sing the praises and win the favor and support of the addressee. It was, indeed, poetry as “social interaction.”63 Much of Fonseca Pimentel’s verse was of this sort.64 After her first published work Il tempio della gloria, written to celebrate the wedding of King Ferdinand, she composed various sonnets related to weddings, funerals, social advancements, and a birth: that of a second baby daughter to Queen Maria Carolina. The latter was followed by a much grander, and longer, work to mark the birth of the queen’s first son in 1775. Entitled La nascita di Orfeo (The Birth of Orpheus), it was a libretto of over six hundred lines for a musical cantata that would be put to music and performed two years later.65 In 1777, Fonseca Pimentel published a theatrical piece of four hundred lines entitled Il trionfo della virtù, this time in praise of a foreign dignitary, the Portuguese chief minister the Marquis of Pombal, who had survived an assassination attempt. In 1780, she published a sonnet in a collection marking the reopening of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters, and in 1782, La gioia d’Italia (The Joy of Italy), a four-hundred-verse cantata apropos of a visit to Naples by the grandduke and grandduchess of Russia, accompanied by a sonnet in praise of the Russian empress Catherine II. In 1785, she wrote another 63. On this point see Carla Cacciari and Giuliana Zanelli, Faustina Maratti: Tra Roma ed Imola: Immagine pubblica e tormenti privati di una poetessa italiana del Settecento (Imola: La Mandragora, 1995), 54–55. An interesting case of a woman’s outburst of resentment at the social obligation of writing eulogizing poetry instead of tending to loftier matters is the sonnet composed in the 1760s by philosopher and scientist Diamante Medaglia Faini, in Versi e prose di Diamante Medaglia Faini con altri componimenti di diversi autori e colla vita dell’autrice, ed. Giuseppe Pontara (Salò: presso Bartolomeo Righetti, 1774), 163. Its first eight lines make the point: Io che finor tanti a altrui richiesta / Fatti ho sonetti, stanze, e madrigali / Per medici, per sposi, per legali, / E per chi cinse velo, o sagra vesta: / Nò più non voglio rompermi la testa / Senza profitto, e dietro a cose tali / Gettar il tempo; che di mover l’ali / A più alto segno in me desìo si desta (I, who so far have written / on order sonnets, stanzas, madrigals, / For medics, brides and bridegrooms, and attorneys, / And those who took the veil, or holy garments: / I do not want to split my head no more / Without advantage, and on matters such / To waste my time; as I am yearning now / To lift my wings to higher things indeed). 64. The following pages present an overview of Fonseca Pimentel’s literary production prior to the Monitore Napoletano. A full list of her writings is found in the Bibliography at the end of this volume. 65. Carlo Schmidl, Dizionario universale dei musicisti, vol. 2 (Milan: Sonzogno, 1929), 282. Schmidl states, in a short entry under “Pimentel (marchesa di Fonseca) Eleonora” containing this and other inaccuracies, that the cantata was put to music by either “De Majo or Sale” and performed in Naples in August 1777. Nicola Sale, a frequent composer for court-linked celebratory cantatas, would seem to be more likely to have set to music Fonseca Pimentel’s cantata, not least because Gianfrancesco De Majo died in 1770.

26 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution cantata of about the same length, Il vero omaggio (A True Homage), to celebrate the return of the king and queen from a trip to Sicily. In 1789, she wrote three sonnets praising King Ferdinand’s efforts at political reform, and in 1792, her last eulogizing work: La fuga in Egitto (The Flight into Egypt), a sacred oratorio of almost six hundred lines dedicated to a Bourbon princess. She may have written one last sonnet in 1794, entitled Sull’eruzzione [sic] vulcanica del monte Vesuvio (On the Volcanic Eruption of Mount Vesuvius), on the occasion of that terrifying seismic event; or possibly it had been written in 1779, to mark the first of two volcanic eruptions she herself witnessed. This sonnet was discovered by Daniela De Liso, who thoroughly examines the arguments for one or other date of composition, but reaches no firm conclusion.66 Amid this quantity of eulogizing poetry, the sonnets written in the late 1780s stand out for their openly political message. They pay tribute to two concrete examples of Ferdinand’s policies as enlightened despot: the establishment of the San Leucio Settlement, an institution prefiguring the phalanstery later advocated by French social theorist Charles Fourier, where working men and women would work and live according to precise quasi-religious rules;67 and his defense of the jurisdictional independence of the state from papal claims. But Fonseca Pimentel’s support for the reformist thrust of enlightened despotism is evident from the very beginning of her poetic career. It is not that she conceals a covert political message in her eulogistic poetry—poetry as “social interaction” —but rather that her “social interaction,” at this stage in her life, was entirely situated within the parameters of an enlightened aristocracy fully committed to the reformist project of the enlightened sovereigns. She praises the sovereigns for doing what she, and her whole social circle, believed to be the right thing to do, and so encourages them in their mission. In Il tempio della gloria, accordingly, the sixteen-year-old Fonseca Pimentel praises King Ferdinand as one who helps the oppressed, carefully including in the encomium his bride’s mother, the great reforming Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa. Seven years later, in 1775, in the cantata celebrating the birth of the first male child of the Neapolitan queen Maria Carolina, La nascita di Orfeo, she encodes in classical mythological references an affirmation of the skills required of an enlightened sovereign seeking to construct a society based on mutual cooperation. Two years thereafter, in 1777, in Il trionfo della virtù, written ostensibly to celebrate Marquis of Pombal’s survival of an assassination attempt, she explicitly states her 66. Daniela De Liso, “Un sonetto inedito di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel,” Critica letteraria (2000): 577–87. 67. On the San Leucio experiment see Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 31; also Mario Battaglini, La fabbrica del re: L’esperimento di San Leucio tra paternalismo e illuminismo (Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1983); and Giovanni Tescione, San Leucio e l’arte della seta nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia (Naples: Montanino, 1961).

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 27 support for enlightened reforms: she outlines her vision of a reformed state, praising the Portuguese minister’s policies of limiting the powers of the clergy and the aristocracy. It should be noted, too, that this long poem in praise of an enlightened politician marks her first foray into political prose writing, in the form of the dedicatory letter addressed to Pombal himself. Her next cantata, Il vero omaggio, written in 1785, contains the following lines underscoring the relation between the greatness of the ruler and the welfare of the ruled: Ma se felice è il regno/ Sol quando il Rege è prode;/ Sol quando il regno ha lode/ È glorioso il Re (But if a happy kingdom/ needs a valiant king;/ only a worthy kingdom/ gives glory to the king).68 Then for a while no more poetry. Instead, Fonseca Pimentel turned to an ambitious project concerning jurisdictional policy: the translation of a work published in Latin in 1707 by Nicolò Caravita with the self-explanatory title Nullum ius Pontificis Maximi in Regno Napolitano (The Supreme Pontiff Has No Right over the Kingdom of Naples), to which she penned a substantive introduction. This work came out in 1790, and was followed in 1792 by another on the relations between church and state. It was once again a translation, this time of a work by a Portuguese writer, Antònio Pereira de Figueiredo, which had appeared the previous year with the title Analyse da Profissão de Fè do Santo Padre Pio IV.69 In Fonseca Pimentel’s version, it bore the title Analisi della professione di fede del Santo Padre Pio IV (An Analysis of the Holy Father Pius IV’s Profession of Faith), and was prefaced by her discussion of the relationship between faith and politics, calling for a sharper division between matters ecclesiastical and political. Fonseca Pimentel’s extant political essays published prior to the Monitore bear witness, first, to her general support for enlightened reforms by enlightened despots (the preface to the poem dedicated to Pombal, Il trionfo della virtù), then specifically for their policies concerning church-state relations. Although these prose works are undoubtedly in a minority compared to her large verse production, she had acquired, as Croce reminds us, a reputation as a formidable all-rounded scholar. She was admired, for example, by Vincenzo Cuoco, who wrote that “poetry was but one of the many skills that adorned her.”70 At the same time, she aroused the antipathy of the archeologist bishop Federico Münter, who, following a visit to Naples in 1785, commented with some distaste in his diary on her tendency to talk

68. Il vero omaggio, Cantata per celebrare il fausto ritorno delle loro Maestà di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel [Naples: s.p., 1785], 11. 69. Analyse da Profissão de Fè do Santo Padre Pio IV, por Antònio Pereira de Figueiredo, Deputado da Real Meza dea Commissão Geral sobre o Exame, e censura dos Livros (Lisbon: na Offic. De Simão Thaddeo Ferreira: Vende-se na loja da Viuva Bertrand e filhos, Mercadores de Livros, junto á Igreja dos Martyres ao Xiado em Lisboa, 1791). 70. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:38: “in Eleonora, come ben disse Vincenzo Cuoco, ‘la poesia formava una piccola parte delle tante cognizioni che l’adornavano.’ ”

28 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution too much—a loquacity that flaunted her huge erudition.71 Croce describes as her main area of intellectual activity studi di economia e di diritto pubblico (economics and public law)—so not only law, but economics, too. In addition, he suggests that she wrote a volume on a project for a national bank, although this work may never have been published, or at least it is not to be found in any library.72 The pages of the Monitore dedicated to the discussion of the financial predicament of the Republic certainly bear witness to her expertise in this field. Yet oddly, Fonseca Pimentel’s last extant work prior to the Monitore was a composition in verse, and on a distinctly religious topic: the 1792 oratorio on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt (La fuga in Egitto). What are we to make of this? It is tempting to see it as just a final eulogizing piece—indeed as nothing but a eulogizing piece—perhaps composed with a view to retaining the financial support of the royals at a time when she was already involved in the Jacobin movement. But it is not unlikely that the religious theme was triggered by the fact that, at the same time, she was translating Figueiredo’s work, and was therefore immersed in theological matters. Perhaps, as Urgnani has suggested, one might even detect, in an oblique reference to lamenting the failings “of all but specially of kings (lines 308–9), an echo of Fonseca Pimentel’s present state of disillusion with the Enlightenment dream.73 If most of her poetry was a mixture of eulogy and politics, Fonseca Pimentel also penned compositions to mark traumatic events in her personal life as a woman: five sonnets on the death of her child and an ode on a subsequent miscarriage. This kind of writing was not unusual. It was both personal and public: personal because it was triggered by private distress, and public inasmuch as it was written for publication. It was devoid of any aspiration to forge a novel poetic language, written as it was with strict adherence to the prevailing poetic canon—which in Italy, as indeed in much of Europe, meant the Petrarchan model. It has been suggested that it might have been precisely this “filtering” of “raw life experience” through the strict parameters of the literary poetic tradition that made for its “comforting,” even “therapeutic” function.74 The ode describing her miscarriage is also an unusual, possibly unique, example of a verse composition on a scientific matter written by a woman. 71. Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:406. 72. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 1:39–40, quoting from the contemporary Italian-born diplomat and author Giuseppe Gorani, who states, following a visit to Naples between 1786 and 1788, that Fonseca Pimentel had “composé un livre sur un projet de banque nationale où il y a des vues trèsprofondes qui pourroient intéresser les hommes les plus instruits dans ces matières.” Joseph Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, des gouvernemens, et des moeurs des principaux états de l’Italie (Paris: Buisson, 1793), 1:76–77. 73. Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 235–37 and 322–27. 74. Cacciari and Zanelli, Faustina Maratti, 55.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 29 Fonseca Pimentel also wrote a poem, one of her last, in Neapolitan dialect: the sonnet in praise of King Ferdinand’s refusal to bow to papal demands. In addition, she wrote many letters: some very formal, which may have been meant for publication, some less so, and some very informal indeed, giving us a tantalizing glimpse of aspects of her personality not apparent from her other writings. These letters were never collected in her lifetime and, as a consequence, are scattered: they are found in the Naples State Archives among the papers relating to the court case that led to the separation from her husband, and in various other archives and libraries, both in Italy and Portugal, and not necessarily among papers marked with the author’s own name; one is even in the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli. Clearly many are lost, or at least not found yet, among them her own letters to Pietro Metastasio and Voltaire (while theirs to her are available).75 Because of this state of affairs, it is not impossible that more will be found in the future. Indeed, as recently as 1999, Giorgio Fulco discovered eighteen letters by Fonseca Pimentel written to Alberto Fortis.76 Born in Padua in 1741, Fortis was, at the time of the correspondence with Fonseca Pimentel, an established scholar in the fields of geology, archeology, and what we would now call anthropology, and had worked in journalism as a collaborator of Elisabetta Caminer Turra.77 In 1783–1784, he was in Southern Italy pursuing a research project sponsored by the government into the saltpeter deposits of the region. As much of his time was spent in Naples, it is not surprising that Fortis and Fonseca Pimentel should have met: both were well connected and keen to pursue further contacts within the Neapolitan circle of enlightened intellectuals. Some of their contacts indeed overlapped: for example, accompanying Fortis in his travels through Dalmatia, documented in his famous Viaggio in Dalmazia (Travels in Dalmatia, 1774), was 75. See 6–7. 76. In December 1999, in a seminar given at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Naples, Fulco talked of his plans for the publication of these letters “with an introduction and notes” in the course of the following year, adding also, somewhat tantalizingly, that only then would he reveal the details of the “private collection” that contained them. He died unexpectedly soon after, so the letters remain unpublished, nor does it seem that there are any prospects for further developments in the foreseeable future. All we know about them comes from Fulco’s presentation, the text of which was published in Giorgio Fulco, “Diciotto lettere inedite di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel ad Alberto Fortis, 1784–1791,” Notiziario dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli 5 (1999): 51–64. 77. On Caminer Turra, see the splendid volume Elisabetta Caminer Turra, Selected Writings of an Eighteenth-Century Venetian Woman of Letters, ed. and trans. Catherine M. Sama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). On Fortis, see especially Luca Ciancio, “Fortis, Alberto,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 49 (1997), 205–10 , and Gianfranco Torcellan, “Alberto Fortis,” in Riformatori delle antiche repubbliche, dei ducati, dello stato pontificio e delle isole, vol. 7 of Illuministi italiani, ed. Giuseppe Giarrizzo, GianfrancoTorcellan and Franco Venturi (Milan: Ricciardi, 1965), 281–390.

30 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Domenico Cirillo, who had known Fonseca Pimentel for most of her life and who would, like her, be executed as a Jacobin after the defeat of the Republic. The letters of Fonseca Pimentel that Fulco discovered are dated between 1784 and 1791, that is to say, from the start of the court case that would result in the end of her marriage to the beginning of her Jacobin activity. They offer beguiling glimpses of the private persona intertwined with her public involvement. She alludes to scientific matters of interest to them both, and talks about what she “says to” the king, especially on jurisdictional matters—a king who emerges here with traits of human fragility suppressed in her public writings. Strikingly, she gives expression to her pain at what she calls the affare grande (big affair) of the court case with her husband, accompanied by flashes of self-reflection verging on self-deprecation. We see here a woman intent at times on looking inside herself—at one point she defines herself as belonging to the category of people who are burbere (severe) and scabre (brusque)—but at other times indulging in recollections of a charmed childhood (being taken to a picnic by a spring), or tales of hilarious events such as an attempt to talk to her coachman, which resulted in her falling from the coach. She was saved, she says, by having rather short legs. From these letters, in fact, we learn virtually all there is to know about her body and her physical afflictions: she had short legs, her eyes sometimes troubled her, and she suffered from a skin affliction—erysipelas—which made her feel weak to the point of obliging her to take to her bed. And always her cryptic, allusive, even mischievous tones, her penchant for word games, which recur also in her other letters when she writes as a personal friend. All the letters by Fonseca Pimentel known as of 1998—that is to say, excluding the letters discovered by Fulco—are published by Urgnani.78 Of these eight letters, five are written in Italian, one in French, and two in Portuguese. Two of the Italian letters (to her cousin, Michele Lopez, and to Michele Vargas Macciucca) are of a personal nature, as is the one in French to Alberto Fortis. The other three letters, in Italian, include two addressed to the king and a royal councilor regarding the dispute with Angela Veronica; one requesting financial support from the court following the separation from her husband; and one exchanging pleasantries with the Venetian poet Silvia Curtoni Verza. Of the letters in Portuguese, one, addressed to Bishop Manuel de Cenaculo, contains an intriguing account of current educational projects in the Kingdom of Naples, while the other, addressed to Antònio Pereira de Figueiredo, concerns some details of her translation of his work. The selection given here of eight of Fonseca Pimentel’s writings prior to the Monitore comprises poetry, political essays, and letters. They are presented chronologically, rather than by genre, in order to outline her development both

78. Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 273–96.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 31 as a writer and as a private person. In translating her poems, the attempt is made, while ignoring the rhyming schemes, to maintain the rhythm. Sonnet and Letter to Michele Lopez (1776)79 The sonnet addressed to her cousin Michele Lopez was written when Fonseca Pimentel was twenty-four years old, and was probably not meant for publication. Lopez was then her intended husband, although he later broke the engagement.80 At this moment he had gone to Malta in order to obtain a knighthood. The sonnet is written as a preface to her letter to her neglectful fiancé, who has been silent for two months. Although the psychology of the relationship is impenetrable at this distance, the mixture of resentful and playful tones, verging on the flirtatious, might suggest that it was more than filial duty that led Fonseca Pimentel to accept this engagement arranged by her father. It is quite true, nonetheless, that writing in playful and allusive, and sometimes cryptic, tones appears to be a constant in her personal letters.81 Napoli, 19 ottobre 1776 Cugin, due mesi son che non scrivete,

Naples, October 19, 1776 Cousin, two months it is since you last wrote,

e cosa in voi straordinaria è questa;

and this misdeed is not like you at all;

forse di Malta già su per la testa

perhaps in Malta you have filled your head

gli altèri fumi o il gran catarro avete?

with haughty fumes and far too much catarrh?

Cugino! E pure voi mi conoscete!

Cousin! And nonetheless you know me well!

che se in me si risveglia un po’ d’agresta,

you know that if my patience I should lose,

de’ miei dardi frizzanti alla tempesta

like sparkling darts my fury will explode

e Rodi e Smirne scomparir vedrete.

and all will vanish in a mighty storm.82

E s’io mi metto a far da Solimano,

And if I should become a Suleiman,

misero fraticel di linci e quinci,

you poor little friar of much pretence,

voi cercherete un Carlo quinto invano.

in vain will you search for Charles V.83

79. First published in Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura (1942), 2:370–72, from which the sonnet is here reprinted. Croce had obtained a copy of these texts from Michele Curri, a Roman phyician, who gave him permission to publish them. 80. See 8. 81. See for example, the letter to Michele Vargas Macciucca at 58, and especially the letter to Fortis at 51. 82. Literally: “if some unripe grapes awaken inside me, you will see both Rhodes and Smyrne vanish in the storm of my sparkling darts.” 83. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) greatly expanded the Ottoman realm, besieging Vienna in 1529, from where he was repelled by an alliance of European armies. As Holy Roman

32 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Ma dove Malta sta, star non vogl’io;

I do not want to be where Malta is;

fra lei scegliete e me pria ch’io cominci,

between her and myself decide you must,

od altriment io vi scugino. Addio.

or else I will uncousin you. Farewell.

And now in the prose appendix I will tell you in all honesty that we are all outraged by your uninterrupted silence, and I in particular who have sent you many letters that you have not even acknowledged receiving. Is it that, in order to show your affection for Malta, you are waging war on Monsignor della Casa?84 Perhaps this prelate was not quite noble enough for you? He is a great friend to me even if not to you, and do be thankful if I do not now tell you any of the many things you deserve to hear. At the smallest spark from me “Malta on fire amidst the waves you’ll see.” You must expect to find me armed like a hedgehog, and venomous like a basilisk; and such will be the outburst of sarcasm and scorn exploding red hot from my forge of female wrath, that you will be forced to return to Malta in despair. Return to Malta! Heaven forbid that you should commit such a grave sin because of me; I could not bear to be even the remotest cause of another’s errors. So I shall have to pardon your flaws, and in order to achieve the right frame of mind for this, I shall disregard the fact that you have lived in Malta for four months, recalling only that it was our most admirable Mr. Balì85 who took you there. And such a respectable name bestows on you a superabundance of merits, so as to beget you a plenary indulgence without even causing you to blush at being rebuked for your faults. We were already familiar with your stories both public and private, but so as not to offend the rights of justice, I shall wait till lovely Parthenope86 is granted the pleasure of seeing the lord knight Carvalho again, so he will be the holy man of his religion, and pay for you, himself, and her. The selfsame gentleman has written to Father that he has forgotten how badly I treated him (his own words). I did not know that the lord knight Carvalho made common cause with the flaws of Malta. However, be that as it may, tell him that I greatly desire to keep his memory very much alive in these parts, and shall always Emperor from 1519–1556, Charles V was active in fending off the Ottoman advance. 84. Giovanni Della Casa was the author of Il Galateo, overo de’ costumi, first published in Venice in 1558. This slim “book of manners” acquired a status of absolute primacy in matters of etiquette, so much so that its title, originally a proper noun, entered the vocabulary of Italian as a common noun meaning “rules of good manners.” So here Eleonora is accusing Michele of being rude to her. 85. The man she playfully refers to as “Mr. Balì” was probably Francesco Ghedes, a family friend of the Fonseca Pimentels. “Balì” was a title (roughly the equivalent of Knight Commander) that he held in the Order of the Knights of Malta. He and the “lord knight Carvalho” had accompanied Michele to Malta in the spring of 1776, the aim of the journey being the acquisition of a knighthood for Michele. Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina, 30. 86. Parthenope was the ancient Greek name of the city of Naples. It may also contain an allusion to Fonseca Pimentel herself, as its meaning is “virgin,” or “young woman.”

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 33 strive to do so: meanwhile I call myself highly offended by his public assertion of the negligible weight of my words with him. I demand reparation for this affront at the court of law of Mr. Balì, and perhaps on this occasion Malta will see a recurrence “dos doze d’Inglaterra e o seu Magriço.”87 I shall not include here any accolade to the abovementioned Mr. Balì since this venomous letter would be an unseemly venue for such. Do therefore avail yourself of the authorization you have received from me in previous letters to fulfill this rightful duty, and tell me whether the knight his nephew has agreed to act on my behalf, and to do so on your departure. Well! Quite apart from the fact that he now feels restless, I do not want a knight of Malta to speak for me. So, will you please ask Mr. Balì…, no, I do not want my request to pass through you either; I shall implore him myself to call on his generosity and grant me a place in his memory, just enough to present my sincere and devoted regards to himself every day. The certain proofs I have of his goodness convince me that he will not recoil from granting me this new favor. I will end here, and in spite of having every reason to be very angry indeed with you, so as not to veer from the amiability of my sex I will once again declare myself to be Your very affectionate cousin ELEONORA PIMENTEL P.S. You are not telling me anything of your oeuvre, I will tell you nothing of my compositions. You hold your tongue, I hold my tongue. Dearest cousin: after closing this, I receive your much treasured letter of September 9. It’s too late to start a new letter, so take this as you will, as long as you see it as a true sign of affection for you or true friendship and admiration for the people mentioned. So farewell.

87. “of the twelve of England and their Magriço.” This is a quotation from the sixth canto of Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads), the epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões first published in 1572 which came to be regarded as the Portuguese national epic (the Lusiads being the sons of Lusus, that is to say, the Portuguese). Magriço (the skinny one) was the nickname of Àlvaro Gonçalves Continho. He is the hero of a chivalric tale within the poem, which narrates the story of twelve Portuguese men who traveled to England to defend twelve English ladies who had been insulted by twelve English knights.

34 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Dedicatory Letter to Pombal (1777)88 The letter to Pombal translated below appeared as a preface to Fonseca Pimentel’s Il trionfo della virtù.89 This is a one-act allegorical drama in two scenes: while the first is set in a mythical place, the second, which is three times its length, takes place in the Piazza del Commercio (Praça do Comércio) in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, a place strongly symbolical of enlightened progress, where a statue of King Joseph I is about to be erected. The pedestal bears a round medallion containing a bust of Marquis of Pombal. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo was put in charge of foreign affairs when Joseph I ascended to the Portuguese throne in 1750, and served as chief minister from 1756 to 1777. He was given the title of marquis in 1770, and it was under this designation, Marquis of Pombal (from the name of his native town), that he became famous as the great reformer of Portugal.90 A charismatic figure, Pombal presided over the reconstruction of Lisbon after the devastating earthquake that struck in 1755, reformed higher education, pursued economic policies that benefited trade, and promoted vigorous colonial expansion in Africa and South America. On June 6, 1775, he was the victim of an assassination attempt precisely in the Praça do Comércio. In Il trionfo della virtù, the celebration of Pombal’s survival expands into a celebration of his policies as the embodiment of sovereignled Enlightenment. Emblematic in this respect are the lines sung by the Chorus of Marine Deities of America and Africa, which oppose the previous dura schiavitù (harsh slavery) to the present libera soave servitù (free sweet servitude), a glorious oxymoron epitomizing precisely that: the “freedom” conferred by enlightened despotism.91 When Il trionfo della virtù was published, Pombal’s fortunes and popularity were in decline, and the populace of Lisbon had even destroyed his portrait. So, 88. The letter to Pombal is published in Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari: Laterza, 1943), 201–24; Giuseppina Scognamiglio, “Il trionfo della virtù,” in Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel: Una donna tra le muse, ed. Daniela De Liso, et al. (Naples: Loffredo, 1999), 177–206; and Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 134–56. 89. Il trionfo della virtù: Componimento drammatico dedicato all’Eccellenza del sig. Marchese di Pombal primo ministro segretario di stato ecc. ecc. del Re fedelissimo di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel [Naples 1777]. 90. On Pombal and his reforming policies, see Kenneth Maxwell, Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Franco Venturi, “Delle cose del Portogallo,” in Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. 2: La Chiesa e la Repubblica dentro i loro limiti, 1758–1774 (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 3–28, especially at 6–8, 13–14, 20–21, and 26–27. See in addition David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 81–98; and entry “Pombal” by Jorge Borges de Macedo in Joel Serrão, Dicionário de história de Portugal, 4 vols. (Lisbon: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1965–1971), vol. 3 (1968):415–23. 91. Il trionfo della virtù, 30.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 35 in a sense, Fonseca Pimentel’s work is anachronistic in relation to the events it describes. This anachronism should not detract from its political meaning: the real Pombal might have lost his influence over Portuguese affairs, but Pombal the model of enlightened policies remains, and she proposes it as a powerful ideal for her own country.92 The first part of the letter is a flagrantly hagiographic survey of the history of Portugal, focusing on that country’s successes in the early fight to eject the Moors who had occupied the region since the eighth century, the exploration of Africa in advance of other European nations, and the formation of a colonial trading empire that stretched to Africa and Asia. It scurries swiftly over the sixtyyear-long period of Spanish domination (1580–1640) that ended with the installation of the Portuguese dynasty of Bragança (Braganza), followed by a period of institutional, cultural, and financial decay which then culminates in the glorious revival initiated by the present “judicious” sovereign, Joseph I, and his “prudent and forceful minister,” the Marquis of Pombal. Naive and partial this might be as a history of Portugal, its real interest lies in the aspects it singles out for special emphasis, and by implication in what it says, obliquely, about the Italian situation to an Italian readership. A dominant theme is the linkage of sovereign, minister, and people, which both opens and ends the letter, a transparent allusion to the model of government called enlightened despotism then prevalent in Naples (and elsewhere), where enlightened reformers would advise an enlightened sovereign to implement policies that would work for the good of the people, and in harmony with the people; note the repeated assertion of the link between the sovereign and the will of the people. Furthermore, Portugal is presented as a land that was “never subjected to the abuses of feudal laws, which still affect the most cultivated kingdoms of Europe,”93 and where therefore all are “equally dependent on the throne, as well as entitled to the same privileges.” Portugal is portrayed here as an ideal model of enlightened governance.

92. Pombal as the reformer par excellence was the object of widespread and lively debate in Italy both during and after his period of influence over Portuguese politics. For a detailed and illuminating discussion of the writings published in Italy on Pombal after his demise see Franco Venturi, “Il Portogallo dopo Pombal,” Rivista storica italiana 95 (1983), 63–101, at 74–86. This article by one of the greatest modern historians of the Italian eighteenth century also contains a poignant and tender portrayal of Fonseca Pimentel as “ ‘estrangerada’ portoghese e patriota italiana” (Portuguese expatriate and Italian patriot) who cast “a slender but solid bridge between the age of Pombal and the age of the Neapolitan republic” (89). Venturi also situates along a continuum her composition in honor of Pombal, her preface to her translation of Caravita’s work in support of the sovereign’s anticurial campaign, and her translation of the Portuguese writer Pereira de Figueiredo’s Analysis of the Holy Father Pius IV’s Profession of Faith challenging the claim of papal infallibility. On this see also, by Venturi, “Il Portogallo dopo Pombal: La Spagna di Floridablanca.” 93. My italics.

36 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution At the end of the dedicatory letter, Fonseca Pimentel affirms her Portuguese “identity” by referring to Portugal as “a nation where I was not born, but whose daughter I am.” Nevertheless, the whole composition is written in Italian rather than Portuguese, and the author signs herself as “Eleonora” not “Lenor,” the Portuguese version of her name, and apparently the name she used in her dealings with her own family. These choices are a clear confirmation that this twenty-fiveyear-old Italo-Portuguese woman wrote this piece about and to the Portuguese statesman for an Italian public, and very much with Italian issues in mind. Your Excellency, Nothing is more difficult to find, nor more agreeable to the eyes of heaven and earth, than the sight of a just king served by a wise minister, where the former is as committed to following the latter’s advice as the latter is unwavering in his devotion to serve the former. Because, while the king is the image of the deity, as the dispenser of eternal justice and eternal providence, the minister is not only the image of the king, as the one through whom all civil reason reaches the people from the throne, but also the image of the people, the one through whom the people’s dreams and prayers rise to the throne. Therefore, in this dual delicate office he becomes the firm foundation equally of the dignity of royal power and the constancy of public happiness. Portugal now offers a splendid example of this truth in the glorious government of the wonderfully faithful94 Joseph I and the diligent ministry of Your Excellency. This nation began admirably by supporting her prince or king in the act of marching towards an immense and terrible infidel army, then confirmed her own boldness with an illustrious victory, and begot her empire and her laws as progeny of her valor.95 But even more worthy of note is the fact that, while she was founded, enlarged, and forced to sustain herself through arms, she did not in any way mix military rule with her civil administration, and, never subjected to the abuses of feudal laws, which still afflict the most cultivated kingdoms of Europe, she made her subjects equally dependent on the throne, as well as entitled to the same privileges. Small it was, but utterly self-reliant, and, as if she alone were watching over the safety and 94. Sua Majestade Fidelíssima (His most faithful majesty) was King Joseph I’s title. It had been conferred on the Portuguese monarchs by Pope Benedict XIV in 1748, during the reign of his predecessor João V. 95. The “prince or king” refers to Afonso Henriques, who called himself “prince of Portugal” in 1128, and later “king of Portugal” in 1139. In 1128, he had clinched his ascent to power by winning the battle of Sâo Mamede in the north of present-day Portugal (to which the “illustrious victory” probably refers), which opened the way for extending his power to the south. The “marching towards an… infidel army” is a likely reference to what was in fact a lengthy and somewhat tortuous process of capturing land occupied by Muslim rulers, which engaged both Portugal and Spain, known as the Reconquista (Reconquest).

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 37 greatness of Europe, while Europe was divided against herself, the Portuguese were conquering the coasts of Africa, discovering the seas and deserts of this uncultivated region, and opening the sea routes to the East Indies, offering thereby a powerful diversion to Turkish assaults. Maybe they showed the way for others to advance to greater accomplishments: they developed one quarter of this earth, and by awakening in other nations the emulation of commerce, they drove them to more substantial studies, new arts, and new institutions. Lastly, the untimely death of a king who, overconfident in his own valor, perhaps seduced by treacherous advice, took the best and strongest in the realm to die with him, was the first step in the decline of such happy dispositions. The nation, jealous of her own honor, even while succumbing to a foreign prince, upheld her privileges, regained her freedom and swiftly offered the crown to the ancient blood of her own sovereigns. And when the most august house of Bragança received the scepter from the hands and the will of the people, it gloriously joined together on the throne its legitimate birth rights with the universal acclamation of the subjects.96 Nevertheless, the state had been weakened, its institutions demeaned, its activities enfeebled, and the minds of its citizens tarnished, as a consequence of the disruptions in the Indies, the abuses that were introduced with the aim of sowing mistrust and dividing the people, the lamentable debasement of learning, especially the neglect of mathematical sciences, which, through the efforts of the royal princes themselves, had so enhanced navigation and opened the way wide to the glories of the realm (seeing as in enlightened nations the level of happiness is to be measured in terms of the advancement in these sciences). All this led immediately to the decay of commerce, and to the prejudices and disorders that suppress all the virtues of a body politic. Portugal, which had been as glorious in its own reestablishment as in its original foundation, ever self-reliant in its own destiny, appeared to be plunging from that heroic era into a kind of inertia, the only sign of greatness its excessive generosity in conceding to its allies. And the other peoples, haughtily proud of the new enlightenment and forgetting its origins, affected a remembrance almost purely based on tradition of the fact that India had been discovered by the Portuguese.

96. In 1578, the Portuguese King Sebastian, bent on an ill-advised campaign against Morocco, was killed at the battle of Alcacer Quibir, a veritable rout that resulted in the death of more than 8,000 Portuguese soldiers. There being no heir, a dynastic crisis ensued resulting in the coronation in 1580 of King Philip II of Spain as King Philip I of Portugal. Spanish rule lasted until 1640, when the Duke of Bragança, who was a descendant of Portuguese King Manuel I (r. 1495–1521), was by popular acclaim named king of Portugal as João IV.

38 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution The ever victorious and ever august Joseph I finally came to bring about a new era of enlightenment and greatness to the monarchy. And Your Excellency, prudent and forceful minister to such a judicious sovereign, armed with the magnanimity that befits a man chosen to change the face of a nation, grasped the intricate and remote causes of so many lamentable effects, applied swift and firm remedies, and with the energy of your innovative mind succeeded in conquering the times and the circumstances, restoring the great national genius to its original vigor. In this way, in the alternation of events as disposed by providence in its wisdom, Europe began to imitate Portugal as the recognized model and matrix of unexpected changes. And Portugal, endowed with powerful armies, filled with new arts, a new agriculture and new commerce, expanding the study of sciences and law, now bestows on its citizens the twofold happiness of being happy and acknowledging their happiness, and is at last arising, and almost at a stroke approaching perfection amid such calamitous events as should have crushed even the most flourishing nations.97 But it was precisely in the midst of these events that Your Excellency, never taken by surprise by any occasion, towering above all else as an intrepid philosopher,98 indefatigable minister, wise citizen, unwaveringly and single-mindedly sustaining king and kingdom, became with zeal and dedication the steadfast guardian of the throne. In those terrible moments of confusion and horror, when nature shook within itself and appeared to be threatening the capital and the future of the realm as a whole, with your vigilance you were a buttress against public desolation, you ensured that the survivors would inherit the wealth of the dead, poured out royal munificence upon the afflicted subjects, and amidst the wreckage of the devastated city, you searched and safeguarded the properties of its inhabitants, so that the most beautiful feature of the risen Lisbon is that, while renewing itself, it preserved the rights of the original owners. The prompt and benevolent provisions in such public misadventures, the freedom restored to the slaves and the distribution of land, and the new honors bestowed on the Americans, speak to all peoples and all times.99 The Portuguese name will reach 97. The “calamitous event” alluded to was the devastating earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755. 98. That is to say, follower of the principles of the Enlightenment. See 94, note 5. 99. This statement echoes what the author writes in her own footnote to the section of the poem quoted above (see 34), which opposes the previous harsh slavery to the present free sweet servitude conferred by the present enlightened regime: “This is an allusion to the very clement laws which prohibit the use of slaves in the kingdom of Portugal, confer freedom to the children of slaves, and extend all the prerogatives of the Portuguese to American subjects” (Il trionfo della virtù, 30). Things were not in fact quite as glorious as that. Pombal did issue a decree in 1761 that abolished slavery in mainland Portugal and the Portuguese colonies in India, but the slave trade between Africa and Brazil was left undisturbed. Portugal was unique among European powers as the owner of huge tracts of land on both sides of the Atlantic (Brazil and, in Africa, the area corresponding to present-day Angola), and Brazil continued to import slaves from Africa to meet shortages of labor. Complete abolition of slavery

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 39 future generations clad in the dual glory of being first to lead the nations to new discoveries through oceans unknown, and then setting for them the example of ruling with virtue over realms conquered with valor. And impartial philosophy and grateful mankind will immortalize in their chronicles and glorify the great names of Joseph and Carvalho100 along with righteous kings and excellent ministers who preceded them as Poetry and History raised those of Augustus and Caesar to imperial dignity. I was not able, my Lord, to restrain the powerful enthusiasm that was aroused in me both by the awesome sight of things so extraordinary, and the tender feeling for their happening in a nation where I was not born, but whose daughter I am. This was the inspiration for this theatrical work, which I dedicate to Your Excellency. From Naples on March 15, 1777 Your most devoted, obedient, and respectful servant, ELEONORA DE FONSECA PIMENTEL

Sonnets on the Death of Her Only Son (1779)101 Fonseca Pimentel’s only son, named Francesco Clemente Maria Nicola Tria de Solis, was born on October 31, 1778 and died at the age of eight months on June 25, 1779. The loss of a child was, tragically, a frequent occurrence at a time when infant mortality rates were very high, even among the privileged circle to which she belonged. She was not the only woman to write poems on the death of a child: about half a century earlier Faustina Maratti Zappi and Petronilla Paolini Massimi had done so. There are some suggestive echoes of Maratti Zappi’s sonnet on her child’s death in Fonseca Pimentel’s own, especially the third sonnet, which reproduces Maratti Zappi’s scheme of imagining the presence of the lost child. Also, Fonseca Pimentel’s sonnets contain some possible verbal reuses of Maratti Zappi’s phrases (“sweet,” “darling son”).102 Fonseca Pimentel’s five sonnets on the death of her son appeared in a pamphlet entitled Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio. Two of in all Portuguese colonies was not achieved until 1869, and Brazil, which gained independence from Portugal in 1822, only abolished slavery in 1888. On this topic see especially João Pedro Marques, The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth-Century Portugal and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, trans. Richard Wall (New York: Berghahn, 2006). 100. The birth surname of the Marquis of Pombal. 101. Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio (Naples, 1779), 1–5; reprinted in Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio, ed. Benedetto Croce (Naples: Tipografia Melfi e Joele, 1900), 12–16. Sonnets II and III are reprinted from the 1779 edition. 102. Paolini Massimi’s canzone on the death of her son is in Bruno Maier, ed., Lirici del Settecento (Milan-Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1959), 34–43. Maratti Zappi’s poem is in Cacciari and Zanelli, Faustina Maratti, 57, as well as in Maier, Lirici del Settecento, 65.

40 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution the five sonnets, numbers II and III, are reprinted here. It should be noted that the pamphlet’s title follows the Petrarchan model: in morte di means both “on the death of ” and “after the death of,” just as Petrarch’s sonnets were subdivided into two groups, those written during Laura’s life (in vita di Laura) and those composed after her death (in morte di Laura). II Figlio, mio caro figlio, ahi! l’ora è questa,    Son, darling son, alas this is the time Ch’i’ soleva amorosa a te girarmi;        when I would turn to you with love, E dolcemente tu solei mirarmi           and you would fondly look at me A me chinando la vezzosa testa.          your pretty head bending towards me.

4

Del tuo ristoro indi ansiosa, e presta       Then eagerly and swiftly I’ ti cibava; e tu parevi alzarmi           I would feed you; and you seemed to raise La tenerella mano, e i primi darmi        your tender hand, giving me the first Pegni d’amor: memoria al cor funesta!     tokens of love: recalls my heart in agony.

8

Or chi lo stame della dolce vita      Now who cut through the thread Troncò, mio caro figlio, e la mia pace,      of your sweet life, my darling son, and ended 11 Il mio ben, la mia gioia ha in te fornita?    with you my peace, my joy, my bliss? Oh di medica mano arte fallace!         Oh fallacious craft of doctor’s hand! Tu fosti, mal accorta in dargli aita,      inept at helping him you were, Di uccider più, che di sanar capace.      at killing more adept than healing.

14

III Sola fra i miei pensier sovente i’ seggio,      All alone with my thoughts I often sit E gli occhi gravi a lagrimar inchino,      lowering my leaden eyes to cry anew, Quand’ecco in mezzo al pianto a me vicino when suddenly, amidst the tears, I see Improvviso apparir il figlio i’ veggio.      my son who by my side appears.

4

Egli scherza, io lo guato; e in lui vagheggio He plays, I look at him, in him I glimpse Gli usati vezzi, e ‘l volto alabastrino;      his usual winsome ways and face so fair; Ma come certa son del suo destino,      but as I know with certainty his fate, Non credo agli occhi, e palpito, ed ondeggio. I disbelieve my eyes, tremble and shudder. 8 Ed or la mano stendo, or la ritiro,      And I stretch out my hand, then to withdraw it, E accendersi, e tremar mi sento il petto      I feel my breast in turmoil and on fire Finchè il sangue agitato al cor rifugge.      till the blood surges forward to my heart.

11

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 41 La dolce visione allor sen fugge;   

Now the sweet vision vanishes;

E senza ch’abbia dell’error diletto,      my foolish dream has given me no joy, La mia perdita vera ognor sospiro.         for ever over my real loss I grieve.

14

Ode on a Miscarriage (1779)103 The pamphlet Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa cited above also contains an ode that Fonseca Pimentel wrote on the occasion of a miscarriage she suffered in 1779, after her son’s death. Much verse was written in the eighteenth century on scientific matters, often with didactic aims. A subgenre within this area was poetry on the human body, its illnesses, and their remedies.104 It was very much a maledominated genre, not only in terms of authorship but also in terms of topics. No other woman, so far as is known, wrote scientific poetry, and the only other poem concerning a miscarriage, Per un aborto, written four years later by Giovanni Fantoni,105 is very different from Fonseca Pimentel’s ode: not only does it ignore any physical detail, but also it takes the point of view of the father of the unborn child, mourning the death of his wife in the course of the miscarriage. Fonseca Pimentel, on the other hand, writes about her own personal experience of miscarriage, focusing entirely on her own point of view (she describes what she sees and hears of the distress and sighs of her family). She also gives a very precise narration and description of the various phases of a miscarriage, however much these are conveyed through the tropes and metaphors of classical mythology, as Arcadian poetic demanded. When she is twenty weeks pregnant (lines 33–40), the fetus ceases to stir inside her (lines 65–72); after ten days, her waters break but she fails to expel the fetus (lines 73–80); the doctor brings out the dead fetus (lines 121–28); and she suffers a severe hemorrhage which very nearly kills her (lines 151–52). The ode also focuses on her feelings during this pregnancy for the child who had died in infancy, whom this new birth would somehow replace. This motif generates some intertextual points of contact with the sonnets written a few months previously, especially sonnet II. Words are borrowed and rearranged: “darling son, “tender,” “token,” “sweet” (sonnet II, lines 1, 7, 8, 9) and 103. Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel, Ode elegiaca della medesima per un aborto, in Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa, 6–21; reprinted in Croce, Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa, 17–31. The Ode given here is reprinted from the 1779 edition. 104. The most famous of these poems was Giuseppe Parini’s ode L’innesto del vaiuolo (The Inoculation of Smallpox), written in 1765; see Giuseppe Parini, Le odi, ed. Nadia Ebani (Milan: Fondazione Pietro Bembo; Parma: Guanda, 2010), 6–22. On the whole genre of poetry on scientific matters in the eighteenth century, see William Spaggiari, “Let Newton Be!: Scienza e poesia nel Settecento,” in Spaggiari, Geografie letterarie da Dante a Tabucchi (Milan: LED Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto, 2015), 15–51. 105. Giovanni Fantoni, Poesie, ed. Gerolamo Lazzeri (Bari: Laterza, 1913), 295–97.

42 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution “loss” (sonnet III, line 14) reappear in the ode as “sweet and tender token,” “loss,” “lost son,” “darling (name)” (lines 38, 39, 44, 48). Moreover, the contrast between the failure of the earlier doctor to save her child’s life and the present doctor’s success in saving hers is expressed through a careful verbal rearrangement and reversal: the “sweet life” of her child lost due to the “fallacious craft of doctor’s hand” which was inept at “helping him” (sonnet II, lines 10, 12–13) reemerges in the ode in the “life” recovered by the “skilled medical hand” which bestows “help” on her (lines 6–8). ODE ELEGIACA ELEGIAC ODE DELLA MEDESIMA PER UN ABORTO,

BY THE SAME AUTHOR OVER A

NEL QUALE FU MAESTREVOLMENTE MISCARRIAGE ASSISTITA

IN WHICH SHE WAS

DA Mʳ PEAN IL FIGLIO MASTERFULLY ASSISTED

BY M. PEAN THE YOUNGER.106

Musa deh vieni, e tempera

Oh Muse, now come and tune

L’usata cetra ormai,

the lyre I played of old,

Che polverosa, e inutile

which dusty and unused

Giacque sul suolo assai.

has lain for long aground.

Vieni, la nuova cantisi

Come, let us sing the newly

4

Riacquistata vita; recovered life anew; Cantiam l’esperta e medica

the skilled medical hand

Man, che ne porse aita.

which bestowed help on us.

E tu, paese florido,

And you, flourishing country,

Ov’han le Grazie albergo,

where the Graces reside,

Cui Senna in lenti vortici

whose noble shore the Seine

Irriga il nobil tergo;

waters with sluggish stream;

8

12

106. D. Renato Michele Pean is cited in the 1779 Court calendar as “Surgeon to the Queen”: Calendario e notiziario di corte per l’anno 1779, che contiene le notizie geografiche ed astronomiche (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1792), 107. At this stage in her life, Fonseca Pimentel was still linked to court circles, which would explain her having access to the services of such a distinguished doctor. He was French, not English, in spite of what Croce says in his 1900 reprint of the 1779 pamphlet. The mistake might have been triggered by the particular way in which his title is indicated: Mʳ could easily be read as Mr (i.e. Mister), when in fact it was used until the eighteenth century as the equivalent of M (i.e. Monsieur). Pean’s nationality would appear to be confirmed by the reference to the Seine in line 11 of the ode as the river that “waters” the “shore” of the doctor’s native country.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 43 E tu, città, ch’imperio

and you, city, which sovereign

Hai nell’illustre terra,

are of the noble land,

U’ a’ grand’ingegni il tempio

where the learned goddess opens

La dotta dea disserra.

her temple to great minds;

Voi, che del sesso amabile

you who in your tender care

Più tenere al periglio,

for the ills of the fair sex,

Per lui sudate, e provvide

you who for us will labor,

A noi mandaste il figlio.

and sent to us your son.

Udite i nostri moduli,

hear our tunes,

Udite i nostri accenti,

our melodies do hear;

Fra i mari e i monti s’aprano

let the winds find their way

Il gran cammino i venti.

amidst mountains and sea.107

E di una grata lingua

And let the righteous anthems

Ora i giust’ inni, e i voti,

in the most gracious tongue,

Alto echeggiando arrechino

echoing on high reach

A’ popoli mal noti;

the nations little known.

E ovunque il sesso splendere

and wherever the sex

Mira del sole il raggio,

sets eyes on the sun,108

Rendan mal noti popoli

let little known nations

Al vostro nome omaggio.

pay homage to your name.

Già cinque volte Cintia

Five times had Diana

Fuor dell’argenteo velo

from her silvery veil

Il puro volto, e candido

uncovered from the sky

Spiegato avea dal Cielo;

her face pure and fair;109

Io troppo dolce, e tenero

I carried in my womb

Pegno nel seno avea,

the sweet and tender token,

Onde recente perdita

which of my recent loss

Ricompensar credea.

I thought would recompense.

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107. The last four stanzas are addressed to France and its capital city, whose superior academic establishments produced the great doctor who was then generously sent to treat the women (the “fair sex”) of Naples. 108. “The sex” stands for women, who in the fifth stanza were designated as “the fair sex.” 109. In the original Diana is called “Cintia,” from Cinto, which was the name of a hill on the island of Delos, with strong links to the cult of Apollon and Diana. This elaborate metaphor is used to say that the full moon (that is to say, Diana with her face uncovered) had come round five times; in other words, Fonseca Pimentel was twenty weeks pregnant.

44 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Giva il pensier sollecito

My watchful thoughts would wander

Tutto bramoso, e vago

with the most eager longing

Già del perduto figlio

picturing the image

Pingendo in lui l’imago.

of my lost son in him.

Immaginar piaceami

I would fondly imagine

In lui lo stesso sesso,

the same sex in him,

Ed a chiamarlo usavami

and I would even call him

Col caro nome istesso.

with the same darling name.

Oh come allor pareano

Oh how slow and sluggish

A’ miei desiri ardenti

the swift wings of time

Del tempo i vanni rapidi,

appeared then to my

E neghittosi e lenti!

longing and desires!

E, stanca omai d’attenderli,

And weary at length of lingering,

Oh quante volte, e quante

oh how many times

Io sospirosa finsimi,

in my craving I lived through

Il desiato istante!

the moment I desired!

E la crudel memoria

And so the cruel memory

Rattemperava intanto,

meanwhile became assuaged,

Ed i miei dì passavano

and amid hope and tears

Fra la speranza, e ‘l pianto.

my days would go by.

Ahi la speranza amabile

Alas! the cruel Fate

Parca crudel recise,

tore through my lovely dream,

E dentro il chiuso carcere

inside the closed confinement

L’atteso frutto uccise.

my yearned for child it killed.

Dieci fiate al gelido

Ten times did the Dawn summon

Sposo segnò la traccia,

her frosty bridegroom through,

Dieci l’Aurora accolselo

ten times her shining arms

Nelle lucenti braccia.

held him and embraced him;

Io di me stessa in dubbio,

I wonder in my weariness,

Non sento più da’ noti

I am no longer stirred

Internamente scuotermi

inside me by the movements

Soavi, e lenti moti.

sweet, gentle and familiar.110

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110. Another elaborate metaphor is used here to indicate the passing of time. Ten days had gone by—the sun had succeeded darkness ten times—since she had felt the fetus move in her womb. Daybreak is expressed in terms of the Dawn embracing her spouse Titon, which name, in classical

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 45 Alfin gl’istanti giunsero,

At length the moment came,

In cui del vano incarco

when nature tried in vain

Tentò natura sciogliersi,

to shed the fruitless burden,

Ma senza aprirgli il varco.

but did not make the way.

E fra dolenti spasimi

And among painful spasms

Quel, che ne serba in vita

alone found its way out

Umor potente, e vivido

that potent vibrant fluid

Sol ritrovò l’uscita.

which preserves our lives.111

Pallida larva orribile,

At the bedside invisible

Morte del letto ai lati

and silent hovers death,

Erra non vista, e tacita

a horrid pallid specter,

Tende gli oscuri agguati.

laying his evil snares.

Dal freddo gelo io sentomi

Already in my breast

Già ingombrato il petto,

gripped by frost I feel,

Ed il mio rischio annunciami

the wan look of my family

De’ miei lo smorto aspetto.

reveals the danger still.

A lenti passi aggirasi

In the adjacent chamber

Per la vicina stanza

paces with listless steps

Il genitor, cui sangue

my father, whose face barely

Appena in volto avanza.

shows any sign of blood.

Ad una sedia appoggia

Silent, pale and motionless

L’abbandonato fianco

my somber uncle leans

Il mesto zio, immobile,

his side against a chair

Ammutolito, e bianco.

in abandonment still.

Sedesi al letto in faccia

My cousin’s spouse at times

Ne’ begli atti pietosa,

gives me a timid glance,

Talor furtiva guatami

she sits looking compassionate

Del mio cugin la sposa.

at the foot of the bed.

Poco in disparte taciti

A little to one side

I miei germani stanno,

stand my silent brothers,

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mythology, stands for the night. Moreover, Titon, who is turned into a horrible old man, signifies death. 111. The amniotic fluid which protects the fetus in the womb. In other words, her waters broke but the fetus would not come out.

46 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution E in dubbio moto e trepido

they come and go unsure,

Vengono incerti, e vanno.

fearful and in doubt.

Di se sostegno porgemi

My old nanny gives me

L’antica balia, e intanto

her comfort, and meanwhile

Per non mirarmi volgesi

she turns away in order

E per celarmi il pianto.

to hide away her tears.

Le fide ancelle corrono

The faithful maids are scampering,

Confuse nei lor moti;

in disarray and turmoil;

Delle cognate timide

my husband’s bashful sisters

Odonsi lungi i voti.

are praying from afar.

E a’ necessarii ufficii

And at this time my consort,

Presta la man tremante

in his double dejection,

Il doppiamente misero

to help as necessary

Consorte in quell’istante

offers his trembling hand.112

Tace ciascun; ma il lugubre

All are still and quiet,

Silenzio ogni momento

but moans of fear and sorrow

Rompe sommesso sibilo

softly at every moment

Di tema, e di lamento.

the doleful silence rupture.

Di sè sicura, l’abile

Only the skillful hand,

Mano, al soccorso intenta,

poised on giving help,

Sol si conserva intrepida

swiftly and boldly tends

E il dotto oprar non lenta.

to the expert task;

E dalle cieche latebre,

and from the blind recesses

Per non mirar la luce,

brings out into the air

All’aere aperto il livido

the lifeless pallid fetus,

Estinto feto adduce.

ashen for lack of light.

Oh troppe vane angoscie,

Oh the futile torments,

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Inutile periglio, threats to my life in vain, 112. The portrayal of Fonseca Pimentel’s husband as a caring and helpful man is in stark contrast to the harsh light in which he appears in her deposition during the separation court case. There, as well as stating that “M Pean” saved her life, she blames the miscarriage on his physical violence (“he grabbed me and threatened to throw me out of the window”): ASN, fol. 78. Not only do the conventions of the genre impose a benevolent rewriting of real life but also the elaborate encoding in poetic tropes of her experience of miscarriage, which in the court deposition she expresses in plain even crude terms as “mi sconciai …di feto anche estinto” (I rid myself of an already extinct fetus). ASN, fol. 80.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 47 Dovea la vita io perdere,

I was about to lose it

E non la diedi al figlio!

yet to my son not give it!

Oh degna pur d’invidia,

Oh how I envy her

Quella, cui dà la sorte

whom fate allows to give

Altrui la vita porgere,

life to another while

Nell’ottener la morte!

attaining her own death;

Che il caro frutto stringere

her who can hold the darling

Può de’ tormenti sui,

fruit of her own torments,

Gli avidi sguardi pascere,

her eager gaze on him,

E riprodursi in lui.

in him herself to live;

Ch’ode i vagiti teneri,

who hears the tender cries;

Che labbro a labbro unita

who dies while passing on

Spira, ed in lui trasfondere

this fleeting life to him,

Può la fuggente vita!

her lips on his own lips!

Morte, che vinta videsi,

Death saw himself defeated,

Stupì; arse di scorno;

dismayed, consumed with shame,

E le nere ombre orribili

cruel he spread about me

Fiera mi sparse intorno.

his horrible black shades.

Fredda sul core avventami

He flings towards my heart

La man bagnata in Lete,

his cold hand bathed in Lethe,113

Ed al commosso sangue

and tears the hidden vessels

Squarcia le vie segrete.

of my tumultuous blood;

Stende sul letto rapida

Swiftly his stiffened limbs

Le membra irrigidite

over my bed he spreads,

E sopra gli orli spingemi

over the edge he pushes me

Della profonda Dite.

into the depths of Dis.114

Un solo momento avvanzami;

One moment only is left me;

Ma in quel momento ardita

but in that moment, boldly

La dotta man frapponesi,

the expert hand steps in,

E mi mantenne in vita.

so keeping me alive;

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113. In classical mythology this was the river of the underworld. The situation is, literally, lethal, death is imminent. 114. In Dante’s Inferno, Dis (Dite in Italian) is the name of the infernal city. Fonseca Pimentel has had a heavy loss of blood and has fainted.

48 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution La dotta man, ch’imperio

the expert hand, accustomed

Usa ad avere in Morte,

to power over Death,

Da me la svelse e chiusela

wrenched him from me and locked him

Nelle tartaree porte.

behind the infernal gates.

Fa nelle vene gelide

Into my frozen veins

Il sangue allor ritorno;

the blood again returns;

Ritorna ai lumi languidi

to my languishing eyes

L’abbandonato giorno.

returns the abandoned light.

Di gioja un grido levano

All at that very moment

Tutti in quel punto istesso,

cry out in their delight,

Tumultuosi affollansi

tumultuously they gather

Al letto mio d’appresso;

close by around my bed;

E chi la destra strigemi [sic],

Some clutch my hand, and some

Chi nello smorto viso

torn between sobs and laughter,

I lieti baci replica

time after time joyfully

Pur fra i singulti, e il riso,

they kiss my pallid face,

E su la fronte spargersi

and still I see the signs

Del mio LIBERATORE

of fear and trepidation

I segni ancor i’ veggio

unfolding yet all over

Di affanno, e di timore.

my LIBERATOR’s brow.

Musa deh vieni, e tempera

Come, oh Muse, and tune

Per lui l’aurata cetra;

for him your guilded lyre;

L’onor di sua vittoria,

let us raise to the sky

Musa innalziamo all’etra.

the glory of his victory.

Non sulle vette altissime

Not on the highest peaks

Spogliò di neve i monti,

did the snow melt away,

Non ricercò le fervide

it did not seek the fiery

Vene dei caldi fonti.

veins of the boiling springs.

Quello, che l’uva accoglie

That which the grapes embrace

Raggio del sole ardente,

ray of the burning sun,

Raggio, che poscia formasi

the ray which then becomes

Dolce liquor possente,

liquor sweet and potent,

Quello in virtù dell’abile

that, by virtue of the skillful

Medica man, fu solo

medical hand, alone

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Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 49 I fuggitivi spiriti

managed to stop the fleeing

Atto a fermar nel volo.

spirits in their flight.

O più, che manna, e dittamo

Oh more than manna sweet,

Almo liquor vivace,

exquisite lively liquor,

Almo liquor benefico,

exquisite fine liquor,

Vita dell’uomo e pace.

peace and life of mankind.

Te pura offerta bramano

For you the Gods are longing

Sovra gli altari i Dei,

sole offer on their altars,

Tu alle bell’opre stimolo,

a spur to fair exploits,

Dono del Ciel tu sei.

a gift from heaven you are.

Musa, non più di lauro

Oh Muse, not of the laurel

Cerchiam ombra o corona;

we seek the shade and crown;

Siano i ridenti pampani

may the joyful vine leaf

La fronda d’Elicona.

be leaf to Helicon.115

Cinta di lor le tempia,

Crowned with the leaf of Bacchus

Gustiam del bel liquore,

let us savor the liquor,

Ed intoniamo i cantici

and let us sing the praises

Al mio LIBERATORE.

of my LIBERATOR.

Ai nostri canti applauda

May the lovely maiden

La vaga donzelletta,

praise our poetic feat,

Che vergognosa, e timida

while she, timid and bashful,

Il sacro imene aspetta.

her nuptial rites awaits.

I nostri canti replichi

May our song be echoed

La giovanetta sposa,

by the young bride anew,

Che de’ futuri, e teneri

who for her tender progeny

Germi si mostra ansiosa.

anxiety may feel.

E fin che in noi conservasi

As long as we preserve

La riacquistata vita,

our reacquired life,

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115. Helicon was the name of the mountain that was considered sacred to the muses and to Apollo. The poem takes on a Bacchic tone: vine leaves, which adorned the drunken Bacchus, instead of laurel leaves, normally associated with Apollo, will crown the poet. What is not totally clear is the precise role of wine in the medical procedure which restored Fonseca Pimentel to health. Or is she saying that it was the sunlight which made it possible for the physician to keep her alive? In which case the praise of the sun slides imperceptibly into a paean to wine, via the reference to the sun’s power in the transformation of grapes into wine.

50 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Musa, cantiam la medica

let us sing the praises

Man, che ne porse aita.

of him who gave us help.

224

Letter to Alberto Fortis (1785)116 This is an extraordinary letter. Written in French, it only exists in the form of a handwritten rough copy, complete with crossings out and illegible marks, and does not always make sense. Even when it does, its literal meaning is probably misleading. The letter formed part of the evidence brought against Fonseca Pimentel by her husband, who apparently intercepted it, together with the letters written by Fortis to her, and then used them somewhat skillfully as “proof ” of his wife’s inappropriate behavior, or even out-and-out adultery. From Fortis’s letters undoubtedly transpire feelings of warm personal friendship and concern for her emotional well-being. In one letter that he wrote from Vicenza in January 1785, he tells her how much he misses her, and refers to her disastrous marriage by calling her the “unhappy victim of a brute.”117 Thus the letter provides clear evidence that Fonseca Pimentel had confided in him, which was certainly a godsend to her husband in the court case. And what of her letter to Fortis? What was she really trying to say to him? And why is it written in French? Is it possible that she decided to adopt a medium that perhaps her husband would not be able to read? But it may simply be part of Eleonora’s and Alberto’s private idiom. In a letter he wrote in 1784, we catch a glimpse of this: he teases her for calling him a “barbarian” for preferring to write in French, which is why he now writes to her in Italian, her “protected language” even though this “weighs down heavily” on him.118 So is her use of French now her playful response? Much of what she writes is impenetrable, partly but not exclusively because of the very provisional nature of the script. One point however should be reasonably clear: the “linen” she mentions having “mended” is unlikely to be real linen, as a woman of her social standing would not normally mend linen. It is more likely a coded reference to her reading over something he had written. What is also clear, however, is that this is a letter to a close and trusted friend. Did they have an affair, as her husband tried to claim? Both Schiattarella and Urgnani do their best to uphold an image of Fonseca Pimentel as a woman

116. The original of this letter is in the papers relating to the Fonseca/Tria court case: ASN, fol. 63. A full Italian translation, accompanied by the text of the French original, is in Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 280–81, and a facsimile of the manuscript, with a partial translation into Italian, is found in Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina, illus. 36 and pp. 79–80. The translation given here, while taking into account both the versions provided by Urgnani and Schiattarella, is based on the original. 117. ASN, fol. 51. 118. ASN, fol. 65.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 51 above all suspicion, arguing that there is no evidence that they were lovers.119 We shall probably never know, but I rather hope that they were. I am sending you your linen. I have mended it as best I could although not as well as one should have done. But I trust in your fairness, confident that you will take into account the state of my eyes, and my hands, as well as those of Don Peppino,120 and I will know that my work has pleased you if you give me another opportunity to render this small service to you. I can only offer you my feeble capability, both to you and to your friend, and no standing on ceremonies. I wouldn’t have given back to you the shirt in question yesterday after dinner, but I wanted to see if one could in some way conquer your bashfulness,121 which is unrelenting. It has nevertheless yielded a little, and I have not redoubled my offensive, fearful of being accused of negligence, we shall see another time, when I will reveal to you the means by which I flatter myself that I will be able to overcome it. I hope that you have decided to put up with the ministerial fare, following the example of those pleasant ladies, who are said to comply at times with the will of others in order to win for themselves the right to oblige everyone to comply with theirs. In my opinion there are three things in the moral and civil world which are absolutely alike, the beautiful coquette, the learned man, and the statesman: I expect that you will not want to agree with me, so here is a topic for conversation, since, now it has been decided that we must never agree with each other, we must find topics that will allow us to be at odds with each other greatly without any blemish appearing on any woman’s robe: I will expect you then [crossed out] farewell then till we see each other again; my compliments to Monsieur the Count, and lest I repeat myself, I…

119. Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 279; Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina, 81. 120. The original has “D. Pepp,” followed by either “o” or “u” with a sign that would indicate a shortening. Schiattarella interprets this as “D. Peppa,” which would suggest a maidservant: La marchesa giacobina, 79. This would make sense within a literal reading of the sentence (real linen having been really mended, not very well, by Eleonora and a servant, both affected by weakness in their eyes and their hands). I am more inclined to accept Urgnani’s allegorical interpretation, not least because, as she points out, a maidservant would not be called “D.,” that is to say “Donna.” If this alludes to a “Don Peppino” (or “Peppe” or “Giuseppe,” which is the primary version of this name), Urgnani thinks, quite reasonably, that this could be Don Giuseppe de Sá Pereira, Portuguese consul to Naples and longstanding friend of the Fonseca Pimentel family, or possibly some friend of Fortis who would normally go over his writings; see Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 281n6. 121. My interpretation of this word differs from Urgnani’s in La vicenda letteraria e politica, 280: she reads the original as “esubescence,” which she then translates as “esuberanza,” that is to say “exuberance,” while I am reasonably convinced that it is “erubescence,” in other words “going red,” “blushing.” I am grateful to my friend Dr Patricia Brewerton, whose expertise in paleography was invaluable in deciphering the text of this letter.

52 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Sonnet on the Chinea (1788)122 The sonnet that follows is, as far as is known, the only piece Fonseca Pimentel ever wrote in Neapolitan dialect. Italian dialects are not variants of Italian, but rather parallel Latin-derived languages, specific to particular regions, which for a variety of reasons acquired connotations of inferiority. While being the sole language of the uneducated, they were also the normal spoken language of all. But these regional spoken languages also generated literatures of their own in both prose and verse, side by side with the more prestigious writings in standard Italian.123 Underpinning much dialect literature is the belief in its unique capacity to capture the language, and thus the culture, genuinely expressive of a people, often with the aim of addressing the lower classes. During the eighteenth century, concern with the problem of reaching out to the uneducated generated a certain amount of political poetry in dialect, both by supporters of the Enlightenment and by Jacobins.124 The rhetoric employed in her one known dialect composition suggests that Fonseca Pimentel was subscribing to this aim. One might add that it was unusual, if not unique, for a woman poet to write in dialect. She was certainly, as far as is known, the only woman to write a political poem in dialect.

122. It is to be found at the end of an anonymous eighteenth-century booklet entitled Il viaggio dell’internunzio, ossia Memoria su lo scioglimento di un matrimonio, con un sonetto al re (s.l., s.n., 1788?), 16. Croce, who says the sonnet first appeared as a broadsheet, reprints it in La rivoluzione napoletana, 84. It is here reprinted from the original. 123. The question of standard Italian versus local dialects is discussed more fully at 68. The secondary bibliography on Italian dialect literature is vast. In English, see Hermann W. Haller, The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), and Verina R. Jones, “Dialect Literature and Popular Literature,” Italian Studies 45 (1990), 103–17. 124. The most distinguished writers of political poems in dialect were Ventura Cartiermetre and Edoardo Ignazio Calvo, the latter a committed Jacobin, the former a follower of the Enlightenment. Both were Turinese, and wrote in Turinese dialect. Their poems can be read in Edoardo Ignazio Calvo, Poesie piemontesi e scritti italiani e francesi, ed. Gianrenzo P. Clivio (Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 1973), and Gianrenzo P. Clivio, Per un’edizione critica delle poesie piemontesi di Ventura Cartiermetre (Ivrea: Tipografia Vittorio Ferraro, 1995). On the political dimension of their poetry, see Marco Cerruti, “Edoardo Calvo o la ‘favola’ della rivolta,” in Cerruti, Neoclassici e giacobini (Milan: Silva, 1969), 181–226; Vittorio Favretto, “I ‘toni’ di Ignazio Avventura: Un caso di poesia illuminata nel Piemonte del maturo Settecento,” Studi piemontesi 22 (1993): 295–313; Verina R. Jones, “Una lettura dell’Artaban bastonà di Edoardo Ignazio Calvo,” in Atti del Rëscontr antërnassional dë studi sla lenga e la literatura piemontèisa: Quinsnè 14–15 magg 1994, ed. Gianrenzo P. Clivio, Dario Pasero, and Censin Pich (Ivrea: Tipografia Vittorio Ferraro, 1994), 67–74; and Verina R. Jones, “Tra illuminismo e giacobinismo: Percorsi intertestuali da Cartiermetre a Calvo,” in Quem tu probe meministi: Studi e interventi in memoria di Gianrenzo P. Clivio: Atti dell’incontro di studi, Torino, Archivio di Stato, 15–16 febbraio 2008, ed. Albina Malerba (Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 2009), 63–72.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 53 This sonnet was composed in 1788, specifically and explicitly in praise of King Ferdinand IV as enlightened sovereign. The context is the dispute between church and state: the Vatican persisted in its claim to some feudal suzerainty over the Kingdom of Naples, a suzerainty expressed in the symbolic act of an annual presentation of a treasure chest to the pope. The chest was laid on the back of a horse who would then stoop in front of the pope: hence the name chinea, from the verb chinarsi, that is, to stoop, or kneel down. King Ferdinand abolished the chinea in 1777. The ensuing debate, in which Fonseca Pimentel took part,125 continued for about ten years. The sonnet employs a different rhetoric from that used in her other poems. Arcadian classical imagery is shunned in favor of an earthier and more concrete language. It is her first foray into the difficult task of bridging the communication gap between intellectuals and the ordinary people of Naples, a task that will be one of her principal objects of concern as editor of the Monitore. At the head of the sonnet is a brief dedicatory statement: “TO OUR KING FERDINAND IV—MAY GOD PRESERVE HIM FOR US—IN THE NAME OF THE MOST LOYAL NEAPOLITAN PEOPLE —FABBEJONE.” Who or what is “Fabbejone”? Every word in this inscription is in capitals, which makes it possible to treat “Fabbejone” as a common noun or adjective—except that this line of enquiry does not appear to lead anywhere. The word fabbejone is not found in any of the Neapolitan-Italian dictionaries, nor is it known to any of the large number of native speakers of Neapolitan who have been consulted. In fact a number of sources treat it as a proper noun, even going as far as implying, or assuming, that this was the name of the author. Thus Pietro Martorana, writing in 1874, states categorically that among the many writings appearing in connection with the chinea dispute was “a sonnet in honor of the king, written in the name of the most loyal Neapolitan people by Fabbejone.”126 And as late as 1962, the first version of the Collective Catalog of Italian Libraries gives Fabbejone as the author of the sonnet, with a query as to whether this might be a pseudonym.127 But the authorship of the sonnet is not really in any doubt. That Fonseca Pimentel wrote it is confirmed by the compelling evidence of an eyewitness to the events. Writing in 1806 from his Parisian exile, having escaped from Naples where he had been a member of the provisional government of the Neapolitan republic, Domenico Forges Davanzati gives a detailed account of the copious literature generated by the chinea dispute. Having mentioned the Caravita tract, “translated … 125. See 59–60. 126. Pietro Martorana, Notizie biografiche e bibliografiche degli scrittori del dialetto napoletano (Naples: Chiurazzi Editore, 1874), 3, 245. 127. Primo catalogo collettivo delle biblioteche italiane (Rome: s.n., 1962–1979), 1:20. This catalog does not appear to have ever gone beyond the letter B, and subsequent editions of the collective catalog do not list Fabbejone at all.

54 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution by the learned lady Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel,” he goes on to add that “on this occasion the nation was so strongly excited against the court of Rome that even the basso popolo and the lazzaroni had not only learned by heart and went singing in the streets of Naples all the verse that had been composed against the pope, but especially the sonnet crafted in the Neapolitan language by madam Fonseca Pimentel.”128 One might add that Fonseca Pimentel herself mentions the sonnet in a letter to Alberto Fortis, one of the letters discovered by Giorgio Fulco and still unpublished. The lengthy quotation reproduced in Fulco’s article opens a window into its origins, but at no point does she specifically acknowledge it as hers. She tells Fortis that she is enclosing a copy of the sonnet, that it had been given to the king in draft form “by accident,” and that the king was much taken with it, so much so that he copied it out in his own hand, read it out to his courtiers, and decreed that it should be printed immediately and that a million copies be brought to him. In addition, she notes that as he was reading the sonnet, when he got to the line “God gave him to us and we rush to his defense,” he was so overwhelmed by emotion that he had to wipe his eyes. “Someone who receives such expressions ought to witness them”: such is her conclusion, allusive and tantalizing as ever.129 But who or what is Fabbejone? And why Fabbejone? Unfortunately, we can only surmise, with the aid of some rather unsubstantial evidence. The name, if a name it was, appears, albeit in the form “Fabbione,” in a letter dated January 1793, by a “Peloso secondo” to a “Fabbione primo.” This letter is part of a collection of anti-French, that is to say anti-Jacobin, compositions, written mainly but not exclusively in Roman dialect in the 1790s, the context being the French invasions of Italy, the support given by Italian Jacobins, and the bitter conflict with the anti-Jacobin majority. This collection has been published recently with the title Il misogallo romano (The Roman Francophobe). The editors tell us that Peloso and Fabbione were, respectively, the boss of the populace of a particular Roman neighborhood, and the “Capo Lazzaro,” the boss of the populace known as lazzari in Naples. This letter, consisting of largely scurrilous anti-French rantings in Roman dialect, written as it was in 1793, could clearly not have been the inspiration for the “Fabbejone” of Fonseca Pimentel’s sonnet of 1788; but if Fabbione was indeed the name, or more likely nickname, of the boss of the Neapolitan lazzari, it is possible that Fabbejone’s name was inserted in the dedication of the sonnet 128. Domenico Forges Davanzati, Vie d’André Serao [sic], ėvéque de Potenza, dans le Royaume de Naples, ou Histoire de son temps (Paris: Imprimerie de la rue de l’echiquier, 1806), 70. This is a biography of Andrea Serrao, one of the priests who supported the Neapolitan republic, with copious details about the political context. Forges Davanzati was himself one such priest, and at the time of the chinea events was bishop of Canosa in Apulia. The work, originally published in French, was translated into Italian by Ada Croce and published with the title Giovanni Andrea Serrao, vescovo di Potenza, e la lotta dello Stato contro la Chiesa in Napoli nella seconda metà del Settecento, ed. Benedetto Croce (Manduria-Bari-Rome: Lacaita, 1999; orig. 1937). 129. Fulco, “Diciotto lettere,” 61.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 55 to enhance its popular credentials. Indeed, a footnote to the misogallo romano hypothesizes as plausible “an equivalence with the Fabbeione” mentioned in the sonnet.130 But, as Michele Rak reminds us, the very fact that the composition in question was a sonnet, a poetic form alien to the popular tradition, with frequent references to the written cultured tradition, excludes any suggestion of popular authorship.131 A LlO RRE NUOSTO

To our King Ferdinand IV—may God

FERDENANNO IV

preserve him for us— in the name

DDIO NCE LO GUARD’,

of the most loyal Neapolitan

E MMANTENGA

people—Fabbejone

A NNOMME DE LO FEDELISSIMO PUOPOLO NAPOLETANO FABBEJONE E biva132 lo Rre nnuosto Ferdenanno:

Long live our King Ferdinand,

Guappone, cche ssa ffà le ccose belle;

great lad, who knows to do good things;

Ma vace cchiù dde tutte ll’aute cchelle

but greatest of all others is the business

Chella chinea, cche nn’ha frusciat’aguanno. of that white horse, which he has this year got shot of. Romma è no piezzo, cche nce stá zucanno,

Rome has been for ever sucking our blood,

E nc’accide co bolle, e sciartapelle,

and killing us with bulls and parchments;

Mo ha scomputo de fà le ghiacovelle;

now she has stopped playing these silly

Nc’è no Rre, cche ssa dice e ccomm’, e cquanno.

games: now there’s a king who briskly speaks his

mind. Lo ffraceto de Romma lo ssapimmo

Rome is all rotten as we know so well;

Lo Rre è Rre, e non canosce a nnullo;

the king is king, and battles on regardless:

Dio nce ll’ha dato, e nnuie lo defennimmo.

God gave him to us and we rush to his

defense. 130. Marina Formica and Luca Lorenzetti, eds., Il misogallo romano (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999), 25. On the intricate and ultimately still unresolved question of identifying Fabbejone, I was aided immeasurably by my friend and colleague Daniela la Penna. 131. Michele Rak, “Educazione popolare e uso del dialetto nei periodici napoletani del 1799,” in Teorie e pratiche linguistiche nell’Italia del Settecento, ed. Lia Formigari (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 294. 132. The author may be attempting to reproduce what would be the Neapolitan speakers’ pronunciation of “viva.”

56 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Oie Rò, vi ca no Rre mo n’è ttrastullo:

Now Rome, you see a king is not a joke:

Dance lo nnuosto, pocca nce ntennimmo,

give us ours, so we hold on to him,

E nnon ce stà a ccontà Lione, e Cciullo.

and leave off telling us tall stories.133

Letter to Michele Vargas Macciucca (1789)134 At the time of writing this letter to Vargas Macciucca, Fonseca Pimentel had just completed the translation of Caravita’s work Nullum ius Pontificis Maximi in Regno Napolitano, and was working on a lengthy introduction analyzing the relationship between church and state.135 She was dealing with a not entirely trustworthy printer, but was clearly elated about her work, and much of the letter tells how things are to an old and trusted friend. She is sending him copies of the part so far available of what we would now call the first proofs, rejoicing at being able to show him her work, joking that otherwise he might not believe that she has really done it, and venting her frustration with the printer’s less than flawless performance. She also asks him for books that she needs for writing the introduction, and reports on her health: she has only just got out of her sick bed and is still feeling weak. Obviously, this letter is written to someone she knows well: she speaks in playful, mischievous, allusive tones, and addresses him with the familiar tu rather than the more formal voi, even though he was some twenty years older than she was. Michele Vargas Macciucca, Marquis of Vatolla (1733–1795), had known her all her life; indeed it was in his house, which functioned as a prestigious literary salon, that as a teenager she had recited her first poems. And he was very much part of the network of local intellectuals who befriended and sustained her through all her vicissitudes. Of particular interest in the context of the letter translated below is his friendship with Vincenzo Mazzarella Farao, who was one of the witnesses who testified in her favor at the court case that resulted in the separation from her husband a few months before this letter was written.136 As well as being a prominent patron of local intellectuals, Vargas Macciucca was himself the author

133. A literal translation would be “do not tell us about Lion and Ass.” This is an allusion to the fable by the ancient Roman author Phaedrus “The Ass and the Lion,” on the ultimate pointlessness of boasting about one’s exploits when none such exists. 134. An anastatic reprint of the original text of the letter in the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele in Rome is in Domenico Gnoli, Catalogo della mostra storica del Risorgimento italiano ordinata nella Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele in occasione del venticinquesimo anniversario dell’unione di Roma al regno d’Italia MDCCCLXXXV (Rome: Stamperia Forzani, 1895), 19. It is edited and published in Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 87–88. The translation given here is based on Croce’s edition. 135. See 61–64. 136. See 10–11.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 57 of several volumes on Neapolitan history and archeology, his most distinguished work being a weighty survey of the whole history of Naples.137 What is to be made of Fonseca Pimentel addressing Vargas Macciucca as “Musaeus” (“Museo” in the Italian) and referring to herself as “your Eritrea”? The most likely explanation lies in an allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid, where, in book 6, Musaeus appears, tallest among a crowd of bystanders, and is singled out as a privileged addressee by the Sibyl.138 Musaeus is a mythological character normally associated with Orpheus—sometimes as his son, sometimes as one of his followers. The Sibyl is the Sibyl of Cumae, the prophetess who acts as Aeneas’s guide to the underworld, also identified as the Eritrean, or Erythraean Sybil—hence, as Fonseca Pimentel writes, Eritrea.139 Far-fetched though this kind of allusion might appear to twenty-first-century readers, it would have been effortlessly understood by an eighteenth-century man and woman who were steeped in the classical tradition. They would also have been familiar with matters to do with “Museo” and its multitudinous meanings— “Museo” and the Sibyl, the Sibyl and Cuma (which is in the immediate vicinity of Naples), the Cumaean Sibyl and the Eritrean Sibyl. Vargas Macciucca himself, in the first volume of his massive work on the ancient settlers of Naples, dedicates considerable attention precisely to the question of the Sibyls, their numbers, and their different designations. He discusses the fact that the Cumaean Sibyl and the Eritrean Sibyl are often treated as one and the same, and ultimately affirms that the Eritrean Sibyl was indeed the Cumaean Sibyl. Vincenzo Mazzarella Farao, furthermore, who was a close mutual friend, had written a work precisely about the intricate question of who “Museo” was.140 In the introduction he discusses various possible etymologies of his name, as well as various views as to when Museo lived, and discusses Museo’s role in book 6 of the Aeneid. In a footnote he mentions “il noto Cav. Duca Vargas” as author of works on the ancient history of Naples which acknowledge his (Mazzarella Farao’s) claims to have discovered that Musaeus was in fact not Athenian but…Neapolitan. Fanciful though these interpretations might have been, they point to a milieu where such ideas belonged to the common culture. 137. Michele Vargas Macciucca, Delle antiche colonie venute in Napoli, ed i primi si furono i Fenici (Naples: Presso i fratelli Simoni, 1764), and Delle antiche colonie venute in Napoli, ed i secondi furono gli Euboici (Naples: Presso i fratelli Simoni, 1773). 138. sic est affata Sybilla / Musaeum ante omnes: medium nam plurima turba / Hunc habet, atque humeris exstantem suspicit altis / Dicite foelices animae: Aeneid 6:666–69. In the splendid 1604 translation of Sir John Harrington: “But namely to Musaeus shee addrest / her speech for hee in ranke the highest stood”: The Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid, edited by Simon Cauchi, translated and commented on by Sir John Harrington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 46. 139. Sir John Harrington calls her “Sybilla Erethrea or Cumana”: The Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid, 65. 140. Di Museo il Grammatico, gli amorosi avvertimenti tra Ero e Leandro, trans. Francesco Mazzarella Farao (Naples: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Perger, 1787).

58 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution The primary meaning of the noun museo in Italian is “museum,” but it can also be used in the sense of “person of extraordinary erudition.” And the etymology of “Eritrea” is the Greek “erythra,” that is to say “red.” Fonseca Pimentel, as Eritrea, tells Vargas Macciucca, as Museo, that she has been ill, and that this is “her first day up from her sick bed, and she still has very little strength.” In a letter she wrote to Alberto Fortis in December 1785, she had complained of being “bedridden, because of a sort of erysipelas … which makes me feel utterly weak and fatigued.”141 Erysipelas is a streptoccocal infection which presents with a raised temperature and bright red blotches on the skin. Is she suffering from erysipelas again? Is her face red from the illness? Is it possible that in addressing “Museo” as “Eritrea” she might have also been saying something like “You who know so much, please help your sick friend”? Because, as we well know, she was not averse to word games. From home November 29, 1789 Dear Musaeus, I have been waiting in vain for the other copy of those scribblings of mine so I could send them to my friend who is a bit of a Doubting Thomas and will only believe what his eyes tell him.142 So I am sending you the copy that I have used myself, having had it transcribed sheet by sheet. It contains glosses and corrections in my own hand, and once you have satisfied your curiosity I would like to have it back. But I need urgently the books I requested in that card, my dear Musaeus, because one I need for the preface that I am in the middle of writing, and the other for a footnote I want to write to refute the Breve Istorico.143 The translation is only missing two pages, which that rogue of a printer would not print either last week or this week, claiming he had too much to do, and promises to get everything done next week. Forewarn my friend about the phrases between asterisks: they are my variants or additions to the text, which I introduced so as to avoid talking of Austrian rights, and adapt the work to our present situation. I discuss this point in my preface. The Roman numbers refer to the notes, which will follow. As for your Eritrea, today is her first day up from her sick bed, and she still has very little strength for writing. I shall end with the usual plea. My good Musaeus, help help. 141. Fulco, “Diciotto lettere,” 57. 142. The friend who is “a bit of a doubting Thomas” is, of course, the letter’s addressee. 143. The Breve Istorico Fonseca Pimentel names refers to a book written in defense of the pope’s claims over the Kingdom of Naples: Stefano Borgia, Breve istoria del dominio temporale nella Sede Apostolica delle due Sicilie, 2nd ed. (Rome: s.n., 1789). The book, which had just been published, she would refute in her introduction to Caravita’s work; see 63.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 59 Yours ever ever ever144 I was forgetting to tell you that at the end there is an exquisite jewel of a peroration to make you lick your fingers. For His Excellency the Lord Duke Vargas—at his home

Introduction to Caravita’s No Right Pertains to the Supreme Pontiff over the Kingdom of Naples (1790)145 Caravita’s book affirming the principle of the absolute independence of the state from papal jurisdiction appeared originally in 1707.146 It was viewed as a classic of Neapolitan anticurialism, and as such an ideal tool in the Bourbon monarchy’s renewed campaign against the stranglehold of the church. While such jurisdictional issues were very much alive elsewhere in Italy and beyond, rescinding the feudal links to the papal state was particularly crucial in the Kingdom of Naples, where the eleventh-century acceptance of papal sovereignty by the Normans had produced a dire situation in terms of both political power and economic underdevelopment. The sovereigns’ vigorous campaign against papal domination had culminated in 1777 in the abolition of the chinea, whose symbolism acknowledged papal suzerainty in what was probably the most conspicuous expression of Neapolitan homage to the church.147

144. The original has Tuissima, a nightmare of a word to render into English. A literal translation such as “your very own” would not render the breezy familiarity of Tuissima. A friend, the composer Rachel Stott, suggested “Yours ever ever ever.” It is notable that Mazzarella Farao, translator of Di Museo il grammatico, used a Latin version of tuissima (tuissimus) in his Latin dedication to Fonseca Pimentel (whom he addresses as Musarum decuma, “the tenth muse”) of his translation into Neapolitan dialect of the pseudo-homeric Batrocomiomachia: La Batracommeiomachia (a lo ddì de la ggente) d’Ommero, aliasse la guerra nfra le Rranocchie e li Surece sportata ‘n lengua Napoletana (Naples: presso Giuseppe Maria Porcelli, 1789). 145. Fonseca Pimentel’s Italian translation of Caravita’s work, Niun diritto compete al sommo pontefice sul Regno di Napoli. Dissertazione istorica-legale del Consigliere Nicolò Caravita, tradotta dal latino ed illustrata con varie note (Aletopoli [Naples], s.n., 1790), on which the English translation of the introduction given here is based, is found in the libraries in Naples of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria and the Fondazione Benedetto Croce. The introduction was reprinted in Il Monitore Repubblicano, ed. Croce, 236–55, and in Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 201–16. 146. Niccolò Caravita, Nullum ius Pontificis Maximi in Regno Napolitano: Dissertatio historico-juridica (Alethopoli [Naples]: s.n., 1707). 147. On the whole question of ecclesiastical privileges and attempts to challenge them see Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. 2, chapter 9, 214–36. On jurisdictional issues in the Kingdom of Naples see Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, 4:506–26, and Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. 2, chapter 7, 163–84. On this matter and on the chinea in particular, see also 67 and 20.

60 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Fonseca Pimentel’s contribution to the dispute took the form, first, of the 1788 sonnet celebrating precisely the abolition of the chinea (see above), and soon after, the weightier Italian translation of Caravita’s book. It appeared in 1790, printed ostensibly in “Aletopoli”; significantly, the fictitious place of publication with its allusion to truth (since “Alethopoli” in the Latin, or “Aletopoli” in the Italian version, means “the city of truth”) is retained from Caravita’s original. Fonseca Pimentel wrote a lengthy introduction to the translation of the text that strengthened Caravita’s jurisdictional message by inserting it firmly within the tradition of Neapolitan regalist writings.148 The introduction is preceded in turn by a brief dedication to “S.R.M.”: Sua Reale Maestà, that is to say, His Royal Majesty King Ferdinand. It is dated Naples June 29, 1799, and signed “Your most loyal subject Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel.” A sonnet and a scholarly work: two very different media, which nevertheless converge in their popularizing ambition, one that would preoccupy Fonseca Pimentel more and more in the future. To this end she uses Neapolitan dialect and a populist rhetoric in the sonnet, as has been seen, while in the very first paragraph of her introduction to Caravita she states her intention to make Caravita’s Latin text “accessible to all” by translating it into Italian. This is not the only point of convergence between the two works: while scorching contempt for Rome (which is “all rotten” while the “king is king”) pervades the sonnet, the reference to “our court and the one in Rome” at the very beginning of the introduction contains a muted but not imperceptible allusion to the Vatican, which should be considered not really a court at all, as it is not an appropriate center of temporal power. Unlike the sonnet, the introduction to Caravita’s translation is a piece of thorough and well-researched scholarship. Nevertheless, it is not primarily a scholarly work. Its tone, language, and style is not that of a historical scholar but rather of a political polemicist, guiding readers towards a particular understanding of Caravita’s work so as to establish as inevitable the rightness of the royalist position. Fonseca Pimentel dwells on the Norman Investitures, the documents acknowledging papal superiority, so crucial for the standing of the Southern Kingdom vis-à-vis the pope, only to affirm that “feudal dependence” was never intended. She treats the whole notion of the pope’s “temporal superiority” with breezy scorn, dismissing it as nonsense. Not that her dismissal should be taken as implying irreverence towards the pope; not at all. In dealing with this thorny issue, Fonseca Pimentel resorts to the well-known device of focusing all blame on those who advise him, the dense “advocates” hoodwinking the “devout and enlightened mind of the glorious reigning supreme pontiff,” who does not know what is being done in his name. Even so, she manages to put the papacy in its place by pointedly juxtaposing the “greatness of the pontiff ” of recent times with 148. The bulk of this text is taken up with a lengthy critical survey of major works on jurisdictional matters published over the course of the century. This section is not reproduced in the present translation.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 61 an ancient era when he had “no temporal influence over civil matters,” “confined as he was to the sacred functions of first bishop.” With these words and arguments, Fonseca Pimentel pours out her expression of total loyalty to the sovereign and his just fight against ecclesiastical encroachments, affirming the king’s power so long as his exercise of power is tempered by respect for “his peoples’ rights.” A younger and more naive Fonseca Pimentel had affirmed the principle of the link between sovereign and people in her address to the Marquis of Pombal in 1777. Now her affirmation is stated in words both more nuanced and more confident, at a time when the link between people and sovereign is about to be shattered forever. The introduction to Caravita’s work ends on a rather affecting personal note, as Fonseca Pimentel explains the difficulties she has encountered with publication, as well as with her illness. She had already talked about these matters at length in her letter to Vargas Macciucca written on November 29, 1789—four months after the storming of the Bastille. Among the many works published in connection with the present controversy between our court and the one in Rome, it seemed to be generally thought desirable that one should bring back to light one that was written with much erudition at the beginning of this century, that is to say in 1707, by Nicolò Caravita, a distinguished member of the Council of Santa Chiara.149 There were very few extant copies of this, and the few were kept under lock and key by their owners. Therefore its notoriety was based on tradition rather than widespread direct knowledge. A zealous citizen who was a lover of good studies had indeed procured a reprint. It nevertheless appeared that there was a common desire for a translation from the Latin language, in which it was written originally, into our own, so as to make it easily accessible to all. ………… Writing in 1707 our author …. set out to demonstrate that the supreme pontiff has no right over the Kingdom of Naples,150 basing his argument on the rights of peoples, and the rights of sovereignty, its nature and function, and the ways in which sovereignty is acquired or transmitted. No less profound in politics than excellent in jurisprudence, he corroborated his arguments and proofs not only with theories, but also with the most eminent authorities of both public and private law. Indeed, drawing equally on prudent critical judgment and sound jurisprudence, he scrutinized the Norman 149. The Council of Santa Chiara, with jurisdictional and consultative functions, was a branch of the Camera of Santa Chiara, established only in 1735, eighteen years after Caravita’s death. Fonseca Pimentel is probably confusing this with his real roles as royal councillor and advocate fiscal of the Giunta di giurisprudenza (Commission for Jurisprudence). 150. Italics in original.

62 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Investitures and examined their circumstances, he discovered that they did not carry any sign whatsoever of feudal dependence, being at best liable to being viewed as personal pacts;151 and considering, inasmuch as was required by the task at hand, the ancient imperial donations to the Holy See, he observed that these never included our province. ………… Meanwhile, the frequent spectacle in the early part of this century of two princes claiming Investitures with similar arguments, while the Investiture was from time to time deferred and conferred to both, and the chinea was sometimes welcomed and sometimes rejected,152 had the inevitable effect of drawing the peoples’ attention to considering how the Investiture was a useless tool in the hands of princes who wanted to have their rights recognized, as well as a useless shield to themselves against arbitrary changes. While this natural impression was increasing apace through the works published on various occasions, whether to challenge the Investitures, or to clarify points of jurisdiction, side by side with the endeavors of our most distinguished magistrates, it was further reinforced and expedited in 1768 by the famous Monitorio di Parma.153 And therefore, not only did all Catholic sovereigns, and above all the august Bourbon princes, play a part in this dispute, but our excellent writers, because of the more complicated relationship between our court and that of Rome, progressed from a discussion of the rights of jurisdiction to the rights of temporal power. As well as the two works by Brussoni and Grimaldi, which have been mentioned briefly above, there were many Memoirs presented specifically to the court concerning the crown’s ancient rights over Benevento, Ponte Corvo, Terracina, Ascoli etc. Because each and every one of these papers examines the Investitures, and because these opinions have been exchanged and bandied about with ever increasing fervor from one end of the kingdom to the other, that which started at the beginning of the century as the opinion of the learned, and then of the wise, ended up becoming seamlessly everybody’s opinion. Whereupon the Roman Court took it upon itself to mingle, in a spirit of irksome chicanery, the idea of its own temporal superiority with the present disputes, nor were

151. Italics in original 152. On the chinea, see 53. 153. The Monitorio di Parma (officially Litterae in forma brevis) refers to Pope Clement XIII’s injunction against the duchy of Parma’s attempts to reign in ecclesiastical privileges. The duchy of Parma in northern Italy was ruled by a Bourbon dynasty, and it is likely that the pope focused his censure on the rulers of Parma because he did not dare to take on the far more powerful Bourbon-ruled states in Southern Italy, France, and Spain. The pope’s initiative provoked furious reactions culminating in a general weakening of papal powers over secular states. On the whole question see Venturi, Settecento riformatore, vol. 2, chapter 9, 214–36.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 63 its advocates, burdened by age-old customs and rituals, slow in coercing the devout and enlightened mind of the glorious reigning supreme pontiff to endorse it.

………… But if such ways were, with magnanimous indifference, ignored by the prince, not so the peoples, who responded with harsh resentment, and each with their own strength rushed en masse to refute them. From this unrest sprang that multitude of writings, which we do not need to account for since they are in everybody’s hands. As is always the case with a large number of writings, they are certainly not all of the same value or equally praiseworthy, nevertheless they are all equally worthy of praise in their strong recognition of no temporal superiority other than that of one’s own sovereign. It has been said in Rome that our present writers contradict one another, each following a different system; as if in a case which presents so many facets one could not arrive at the same point through different routes, each believing theirs to be the best. We can reply that for Neapolitans reaching all the same conclusion is good enough: may the Romans take it as they see best, either by interpreting an ancient event or manifesting the present will. We shall see later if our own writers, or rather the author of the Breve istoria,154 contradict themselves; meanwhile we invite readers to reflect on two points. Firstly, seeing as all our writers, almost as if by mutual agreement, have maintained the great principle that a prince must not infringe his peoples’ rights, and should he find them infringed can and must restore them, the Roman advocates have always cunningly evaded this point. Secondly, all those, both here and abroad, who have made it their business to fight against Rome’s temporal powers display a critical system that has guided their judgment or interpretation of facts, and judgment or rejection of documents, and have inferred appropriately from established principles. The same cannot be said of the Roman advocates. Viewing as they do the greatness of the pontiff as if it had its head clad in a veil, like the Hindus river, and was lost in the mist of centuries past, they are compelled to utilize and produce haphazardly inordinate amounts of papers, some of them definitely fake, some clearly interpolated, amidst the ones that are dubious and the truthful ones, and also facts that range from the contrary to the contradictory, ambiguous, or favorable, according to whether they took place at the time when the Roman pontiff, confined as he was to the sacred functions of first bishop, had no temporal influence over civil matters, or the time when he was beginning to acquire it and therefore wavered between advancing and retreating, or indeed the time when he was able to stretch it widely above the trampled over contrary opinions. ………… 154. See 58, note 143.

64 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Future generations will regard the question of a kingdom’s feudal dependency as an object of amazement or laughter, and as a topic appropriate for erudite researchers rather than politicians or experts in public law. As for us we shall always be duty bound to respect and admire those who have been capable of foreshadowing these future times in their own minds, and bring them to us through their writings. Finally we must forewarn our readers about a not insignificant flaw regarding the quotations, besides the plentiful errors in the text. This has happened because, due to my frequent bouts of ill health, often the tedious job of transcribing them out had to be entrusted to others, hence the occasional discrepancies in the reproductions of the same quotation. In fact, initially they were all reproduced as they were in the original, that is to say in Latin, and by the time we became aware of this it was too late to remedy it. But for this, as for any other error which might have tarnished so excellent a work due to our carelessness or ineptitude, we beg, and by virtue of the readers’ magnanimity hope to obtain, gracious indulgence.

The Neapolitan Republic The Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed on January 21, 1799, amidst fierce fighting by the people of Naples against the Jacobins and their French allies. Five months later it would be overthrown by Cardinal Ruffo’s peasant army. This popular hostility to the revolutionary mission was the chief problem encountered by Italian Jacobins. Paradoxically, the very people the revolution aimed to liberate were those who opposed that aim. Popular hostility was endemic in the Jacobin republics of 1796–1799, and yet “the people,” an ill-defined, nebulous concept, were ostensibly the Jacobins’ chief concern: their ideology was based on their conviction of the need to free the people from tyrannical oppression. Hence their emphasis on the need to educate the masses and so persuade them that the Jacobins were on their side. Jacobinism, the People, Jacobins and the People As is well known, the Jacobins acquired their name from an accident of history: the club des Jacobins met initially in November 1789 in the deconsecrated Parisian Dominican monastery of St. Jacques, and it was from the Latin version of Jacques (Jacobus) that they acquired their name: Jacobins in French, and Giacobini in Italian. The term was not their invention, but was applied to them, with a derisory intent, by their opponents. But it was later appropriated with pride: in 1792, the Société des Jacobins amis de la liberté et de l’égalité was formed, the most radical and intransigent wing on the revolutionary spectrum, underpinned by an uncompromising ideology of democracy and equality.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 65 Born in France, Jacobinism rapidly spread to the rest of Europe. In France itself, the period of Jacobin hegemony over the revolutionary process was confined to less than a year (autumn 1793 to summer 1794). Following the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, the Jacobin party was suppressed in November 1794, and had become irrelevant to the policies of the French government by the time of the French invasions of 1796–1797 and consequent installation of “sister republics” in various parts of continental Europe. Yet European Jacobins were generally perceived as not only dangerous subversives intent on dechristianizing their countries on the French model, but also, and especially, as French lackeys. That perception was a powerful weapon in the hands of their opponents. What is more, while French Jacobins could rely to some extent on mass support, European Jacobins could not, and were therefore forced to operate in a conspiratorial fashion rather than as a mass movement.155 In the case of Italy, in particular, Michel Vovelle, while acknowledging that Italian Jacobins were “one of the most vigorous branches of the European movement,” describes them as being, at least prior to the establishment of the Jacobin republics in the so called “Jacobin triennium” of 1796–1799, a “Jacobinism of waiting … a Jacobinism of conspiracies, of plots and covert networks.”156 And even when the French conquests and the resulting establishment of Jacobin republics gave them the opportunity for overt action, they remained a minority elite, somewhat detached from the mass of their fellow citizens. It is precisely this chasm between the revolutionary leaders and the masses that generated that unique flourishing of pedagogic activities—in the form of clubs, journals, and revolutionary catechisms—which distinguishes the Italian Jacobin republics. “True patriots” wrote Neapolitan Jacobin Matteo Galdi in 1798, “must explain the principles and the advantages of democracy to the people both of the cities and the countryside,” relentlessly preaching freedom and equality, in order to involve them fully in the revolution.157 Thus the creed and rhetoric of the sovereignty of the people would triumph.158 But who were the “people”? The term, ideologically and emotionally powerful though it was, was not defined by the protagonists of the Jacobin movement. An astounding variety of implicit definitions can be identified, but at the cost of oversimplifying a complex issue, three main lines of meaning, often used by 155. On French Jacobinism and its fundamental differences from its European derivations, see especially Michel Vovelle, Les Jacobins: De Robespierre a Chevènement (Paris: La Découverte, 1999). 156. Vovelle, Les Jacobins, 94 and 95. 157. Matteo Galdi, Saggio d’istruzione pubblica rivoluzionaria, in Giacobini italiani, vol. 1, ed. Delio Cantimori (Bari: Laterza, 1956), 221–251, at 224 and 247. 158. For an illuminating discussion of the notion of popular sovereignty on both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the eighteenth century, as well as a biting critique of recent reductivist views of the link between popular sovereignty and totalitarianism, see Luciano Guerci, “Giacobinismo e giacobini nella rivoluzione francese,” in Il modello politico giacobino e le rivoluzioni, ed. Massimo L. Salvadori and Nicola Tranfaglia (Scandicci [Florence]: La Nuova Italia, 1984), 66–80.

66 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution the same authors even at the same time, can be discerned.159 The “people” were sometimes taken to indicate all those below the aristocracy.160 Or they could be understood as those below the middle classes. Or they might be seen as, quite simply, the “population.” Thus “people” was an ambiguous, shifting concept—just as ambiguous and shifting were the social and political programs of the revolutionary leaders. The first two of these definitions of “the people” are both descriptive and analytical, designating those who had been excluded from power; though the identifying of one or other of these groups as at once the privileged subject and object of revolution reflects the different and often confused political aims of Italian Jacobins. When “people” was understood to mean “population,” in the third definition above, again there was nothing simple or straightforward about it. In this case, the “people” might be seen as all those who were, in a sense, worthy of being the people, or even the People. Or else the emphasis would be placed on their status of citizens in a united society, as did the Neapolitan Michele Natale, for example, in his revolutionary catechism of 1799, who defined the popolo as the “union of all citizens who compose society.”161 Here the “people,” a category with strong ethical connotations, are, potentially, all who live in a given place, but only insofar as they are citizens (as opposed to subjects) and united (not divided into factions). The large number of writings aimed, in their different ways, at “educating,” or “enlightening,” “the people,” produced both by northern Italian and Neapolitan Jacobins, indicates clearly that what they had in mind was the mass of the underprivileged. That understanding underlies such works as Venetian Melchiorre Cesarotti’s pamphlet Istruzione d’un cittadino a’ suoi fratelli meno istrutti (A Citizen’s Instruction to His Less Educated Brothers); or Florentine Girolamo Bocalosi’s Dell’educazione democratica da darsi al popolo italiano (On 159. For an analysis of the concept of popolo and its implications, see Marina Formica, “Tra semantica e politica: Il concetto di popolo nel giacobinismo italiano, 1796–1799,” in Studi storici 28 (1987), 699– 721; Luciano Guerci, Istruire nelle verità repubblicane: La letteratura politica per il popolo nell’Italia in rivoluzione, 1796–1799 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), especially chapter 1: “Scrivere per il popolo, parlare al popolo,” 19–70; and Leso, Lingua e rivoluzione. 160. This definition was suggested in the Encyclopédie: “Peuple était l’état général de la Nation simplement opposé à celui des grands et des nobles”; as quoted by Formica, “Tra semantica e politica,” 699. 161. Natale, Catechismo repubblicano per l’istruzione del popolo, e la rovina de’ tiranni ([Naples]: s.n., 1799). Luciano Guerci argues that this work, long attributed to Michele Natale, bishop of Vico Equense, was a reissue by Natale of an anonimous catechism originally published probably in Venice in 1797: Guerci, “I catechismi repubblicani a Napoli nel 1799,” in Napoli 1799 fra storia e storiografia: Atti del convegno internazionale, Napoli, 21–24 gennaio 1999, ed. Anna Maria Rao (Naples: Vivarium, 2002), 453–54. The Catechismo is reprinted in Umberto Corsini, Pro e contro le idee di Francia: La pubblicistica minore del triennio rivoluzionario nello Stato Veneto e limitrofi territori dell’arciducato d’Austria: Con appendice di testi (Rome: Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1990), 237–44.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 67 the Democratic Education To Be Bestowed on the Italian People); or indeed the aforementioned tract by Neapolitan Matteo Galdi, the Saggio d’istruzione pubblica rivoluzionaria (A Tract on Public Revolutionary Education).162 That the Jacobins identified the lower classes as the popolo is further evidenced in the great number of revolutionary catechisms published both in the northern Republics and in Naples. Among them are the anonymous northern Catechismo repubblicano di un curato della Vall’Intelvi (Republican Catechism by a Parish Priest in the Intelvi Valley); or Ferdinando Marescalchi’s Catechismo al popolo Bolognese (Catechism for the People of Bologna); or Francesco Astore’s Catechismo repubblicano (Republican Catechism); or Onofrio Tataranni’s Catechismo nazionale pe’l cittadino (National Catechism for the Citizen); or indeed Michele Natale’s Catechismo repubblicano, mentioned above.163 While all these writings address the problem of reaching the minds of the less educated, some distinctions emerge. Cesarotti, for one, identifies his popolo as the “hard working, honest and industrious craftsmen,” suggesting city dwellers.164 Astore, on the other hand, sometimes distinguishes between a lesser plebs and a higher popolo, and sometimes identifies the two. Tataranni mentions, without defining it, the category of the basso popolo (common people), one also employed by Stefano Pistoja in his Catechismo nazionale pel popolo per uso de’ parochi [sic] (National Catechism for the People To Be Used by Parish Priests).165 For the celebrated Neapolitan Jacobin Vincenzio Russo, the popolo, lowercased, only acquire the sacred name of the Popolo, uppercased, when they become politically mature, much as Mario Pagano defines the Popolo, in his proposal for a Constitution for the Neapolitan Republic, as “the kind of People who have acquired a clear awareness of their true interests,” as opposed to the plebs who are “mired in ignorance.”166 162. Cesarotti, Istruzione d’un cittadino a’ suoi fratelli meno istrutti, in Corsini, Pro e contro le idee di Francia, 265–80; Bocalosi, Dell’educazione democratica da darsi al popolo italiano, in Giacobini italiani, vol. 2, ed. Delio Cantimori and Renzo De Felice (Bari: Laterza, 1964), 5–205. Galdi’s Saggio d’istruzione pubblica rivoluzionaria is cited above, note 157. 163. Anonymous, Catechismo repubblicano di un curato della Vall’Intelvi: Diviso in dodici articoli (Como: Stamperia di Carl’Antonio Ostinelli, 1797); Marescalchi, Catechismo al popolo Bolognese (Bologna: Stamperia di Jacopo Marsigli ai Celestini, 1796); Astore, Catechismo repubblicano (Naples: s.n., 1799), reprinted in Mario Battaglini, ed., Atti, leggi, proclami ed altre carte della Repubblica napoletana, 1798–1799 (Salerno: Società editrice meridionale, 1983), 3:1634–61; Onofrio Tataranni, Catechismo nazionale pe’l Cittadino (Naples: s.n., 1799), for which see MN, No. 12, 141. Natale’s Catechismo repubblicano, is cited above, note 161. 164. Cesarotti, Istruzione d’un cittadino, 265. 165. Pistoja, Catechismo nazionale pel popolo, in Libertà, uguaglianza, religione: Documenti del Giacobinismo cattolico, ed. Mario Battaglini (Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1982), 44–56. Astore, Catechismo repubblicano, and Tataranni, Catechismo nazionale, are cited above, note 163. 166. Russo’s Pensieri politici (Rome: Poggioli, 1798), reprinted in Cantimori, Giacobini italiani, 1:255–377. Mario Pagano, Progetto di costituzione della Repubblica napoletana presentato al Governo

68 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Inasmuch as the popolo designated the vast indigent masses, the subaltern classes of society, the great coming together between the people and their leaders never happened. Huge cultural barriers existed between them, in terms of language, rhetoric, and modes of thought; the irrational beliefs of the masses powered fear and hatred of the Jacobins; enemy agents and some of the clergy mounted a vigorous anti-Jacobin propaganda campaign. But there were also concrete reasons for the failure to mobilize the popolo in the revolutionary cause, which the Jacobins on the whole failed to address or even to recognize. Italian Jacobins generally took it for granted that their programs were right and in the people’s interest—if only the mass of the people were capable of understanding. The mass of the people were quite simply illiterate and therefore totally impervious to written propaganda.167 But equally incomprehensible to them would be the Jacobins’ spoken word. Until relatively recent times, that variant of Tuscan that we call the Italian language was not a spoken language but merely the medium of the literary tradition. Italians spoke to each other in their local languages (Neapolitan, Venetian, Turinese and so on), the so-called dialects. While diglossia was the norm for the educated elite, who would use the local dialect when talking about everyday matters and Italian for writing and for public speaking, the majority were not only unfamiliar with the written word but also strictly monolingual in their local dialect. The majority of Italian Jacobins viewed this state of affairs as plainly unfortunate. Dialects were merely an element of both geographical and social division and would have to be combated and eliminated as part of their project for national and social unification. A new common language would be created for the whole of Italy, a language that would be simple, clear, and “energetic,” unlike the literary Italian of the Tuscan tradition.168 When faced with the need to attract the support of the subaltern classes, the Jacobins mostly addressed them in the only language available to them for public speaking, that is to say high Tuscan. Paola Sgrilli’s splendid analysis of Jacobin language points out their constant use Provvisorio dal Comitato di Legislazione (Naples, 1799), vi, reprinted in Mario Battaglini, Mario Pagano e il progetto di costituzione della Repubblica napoletana (Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi, 1994), 243–318. 167. It has been hypothetically calculated that illiteracy in Southern Italy was at ninety-five percent, a little above the highest level for ancien régime Europe: Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, 4:588. 168. Prominent among the proponents of a fight against dialects in the name of a uniform Italian language were Matteo Galdi with his Necessità di stabilire una repubblica in Italia (Venice: G. Storti, 1797), in Armando Saitta, Alle origini del Risorgimento: I testi di un “celebre” concorso, 1796, 3 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1964), 1:263–329; and Girolamo Bocalosi in his Dell’educazione democratica. On the debates regarding language and dialect in eighteenth-century Italy and their political implications, see Vittorio Criscuolo, “Per uno studio della dimensione politica della questione della lingua: Settecento e giacobinismo italiano,” in Critica storica 16 (1979), 25–152, and Verina R. Jones, “Dialect and the Politics of Language between Enlightenment and Romanticism,” in Italian Dialects and Literature, ed. Emmanuela Tandello and Diego Zancani (London: Institute of Romance Studies, 1996), 47–52.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 69 of abstract terms—such as “equality,” “freedom,” indeed “people” and “tyranny”— and of neoclassical imagery. This type of language would have strong emotional connotations both for the Jacobin orators and their educated audiences, who were in any case already in agreement with the Jacobin message, but would be ineffective at capturing the attention and support of an uneducated audience.169 A significant minority of Jacobins, however, took a different approach, advocating the use of dialect in their propaganda in order to reach the masses in whose name they fought their political struggle. This approach was especially favored in Naples, where Fonseca Pimentel probably put forward the most imaginative and advanced proposals. She envisaged not only using dialect, but also adopting a new rhetorical code, producing “gazettes” (newssheets) to be read aloud in public places so they could be accessible to an illiterate audience, and even making use of the traditional channels of popular culture.170 But there were others. The Giornale Patriotico della Repubblica Napoletana published a piece in Neapolitan dialect by Sergio Fasano; Michelangelo Cicconi produced a gazette in Neapolitan likening Republican principles to those of the Christian gospel; Antonio Gualzetti published a broadsheet in Neapolitan in May 1799 that tried to give a historical context to the rise of monarchical governments; and the people of the market were addressed in Neapolitan by Domenico Piccinni and Luigi Serio—who had long advocated the use of the true lingua del popolo, di marciajuole, di lazzarune (language of the people, of the petty street trader, of the lazzaroni)—with his narrative poem Lo vernacchio (Blowing a Raspberry).171 But all the available evidence points to the failure of all attempts at reaching out to the masses. Whatever the shortcomings of the propaganda efforts of the Neapolitan Jacobins, there were also other, more substantial reasons why the impoverished masses withheld their support. Neapolitan Jacobins and Their Republic In the course of the 1790s, revolutionary clubs developed in Naples as in the rest of Italy, constituting veritable hubs of Jacobin activism in opposition to the reactionary policies of the Bourbon monarchy. After the Great Trial of the Enemies of the State held in 1794–1795 to crack down on Neapolitan Jacobins, three defendants were executed, many were imprisoned, and a large number were condemned to exile. Among this latter group was Carlo Lauberg who “in exile in 169. Paola Sgrilli, “Codici linguistici e codici retorici: Un caso esemplare di interferenza,” in Retorica e scienze del linguaggio: Atti del X Congresso internazionale di studi: Pisa, 31 maggio–2 giugno 1976, ed. Federico Albano Leoni and Maria Rosaria Pigliasco (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979), 235–58. 170. For a detailed discussion of her proposals, see 86–89. 171. On Fasano, see MN, No. 3, 104-105; on Cicconi, see No. 20, 161; on Serio, Piccinni and Gualzetti, see No. 31, 188–189.

70 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution Paris … would soon become the pivotal figure in the diaspora of the Neapolitan ‘patriots,’ ”172 and would later become one of the most prominent protagonists of the 1799 Republic. In 1796, French armies moved into Italy in an effort to establish “sister republics” under their hegemony, as they had previously done elsewhere. By February 1798, these reached as far south as Rome, leaving the Kingdom of Naples isolated and vulnerable. It had been part of the anti-French coalition since 1793, and now the proclamation of the Roman Republic brought the French armies to its borders. King Ferdinand decided to attempt a military solution, which was successful at first: his troops forced the French to abandon Rome, and Ferdinand made a triumphant entry into the city on November 29, 1798. But within less than a month, the Neapolitan troops were forced to withdraw, and Ferdinand ran back to Naples, pausing there “only long enough to collect his family, closest courtiers, the crown jewels, and the cash deposits of the public banks.”173 On December 23, he and his court fled to Palermo in Sicily, having left Marquis Pignatelli vicario generale (vicar general) in charge in Naples.174 On January 12, 1799, Pignatelli signed an armistice with the French, and four days later decamped to Palermo to join the royals. Anarchy ensued in Naples as the mob stormed the castles and prisons, releasing prisoners who included not only common criminals but also Jacobin dissidents. This group included a number of women, Fonseca Pimentel among them. The eyewitness Diomede Marinelli, observing the women prisoners released by the mob, tells of the “amazing sight” of the “female detainees…lowered from the uncommonly high window by means of ladders.”175 But we do not know who these women were, or how they might be involved with the life of the Republic. What data we have testify mainly to their suffering at the hands of the returning Bourbons after the fall of the Republic. Most appear to have been punished not for their own actions, but as the sisters, wives, daughters, and mothers of Republican men, while those who were punished for actions they took had participated in auxiliary roles—by collecting funds, planting the tree of liberty in their country

172. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 76. 173. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 75. 174. Francesco Pignatelli of Strongoli had held the title of Royal Vicar General with emergency powers in connection with the 1783 earthquake in Calabria and Sicily. 175. Diomede Marinelli, I giornali di Diomede Marinelli: Due codici della Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, 1: 1794–1800, edited by A. Fiordelisi (Naples: Ricc. Marghieri di Giuseppe, 1901), 30. Marinelli, author of an invaluable diary of events during the Neapolitan republic, was a doctor who also had a keen interest in recording political events. While by no means a Jacobin, he was not totally unsympathetic to the Republic, his position best described as one of moderate liberalism.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 71 estates, or providing food, clothing, or shelter to male Republican refugees.176 The two Carafa sisters, Maria Antonia Carafa, duchess of Popoli, and Giulia Carafa, duchess of Cassano, who were condemned to seven years of exile for collecting funds for the Republican cause, are a case in point. Giulia Carafa, it should be noted, was the mother of Gennaro Serra, President of the Legislative Commission in the Provisional Government, who was hanged on August 29, 1799 alongside Fonseca Pimentel. But there were others, including a Maria Luisa Arezzo, duchess of San Clemente, arrested in October 1799 and exiled in 1800 for her fundraising activities and for allowing the tree of liberty to be raised in one of her farms. There were likely several others, possibly from the middle classes as well as the aristocracy.177 The references to women participating actively in the Republic are few, and, interestingly, found mainly in the Monitore Napoletano. So on March 14, 1799, we are told that “citizen Laurent Prota” spoke passionately in the Hall of Public Education at its 4 Ventose session (February 22), just before “citizen Pimentel.” She 176. In her thought-provoking 1977 article, Annarita Buttafuoco states that Fonseca Pimentel and other women were involved in the events that took place in the castle of Sant’Elmo and the proclamation of the republic that followed, and since their names are not known, she surmises that some must have been among the women who were later condemned to exile after the fall of the republic, as listed by Schiattarella: Annarita Buttafuoco, “Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel: Una donna nella rivoluzione,” Nuova DWF: Donnawomanfemme 3 (1977): 51–92, at 75. Schiattarella does indeed give a list of thirty-two women who were so condemned, and five who were imprisoned: La marchesa giacobina, 302. And it would appear that many were in fact raped and killed by the frenzied mobs after the fall of the republic. Pietro Gargano gives a detailed list of women who were in various ways involved, and of the ones who were killed or imprisoned: Eleonora e le altre: Le donne della rivoluzione napoletana (Naples: Magmata, 1998). Earlier, Croce had mentioned a few aristocratic women who were arrested and exiled: Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:412–13 and 3:1. 177. Maria Antonia Carafa and Arezzo are both mentioned by Croce (Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:412–13 and 3:1), and information on both Carafa sisters is given by Pietro Colletta in Storia del Reame di Napoli, 353, and Carlo De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1798–1825, ed. Renata de Lorenzo (Naples: Luigi Regina Editore, 1999), 1:157, 250, 368, and 2:102, referring to them variously as duchess of Montemiletto, princess of Montemiletto, and princess of Piedimonte (Maria Antonia), and duchess of Cassano (Giulia). De Nicola’s Diario napoletano is an invaluable source of information for all events that took place during the short life of the Neapolitan Republic. De Nicola, a lawyer by profession, was basically an apolitical, peaceloving man with a horror of disorder and violence. His was very much the position of a neutral candid observer who looked on the dramatic events taking place in his city with intelligent curiosity. Both Carafa sisters are also mentioned, alongside many more, in Schiattarella, unfortunately with no indication of sources, and Gargano, where sources are mentioned somewhat erratically. Anna Maria Rao provides much valuable information in Esuli: L’emigrazione politica italiana in Francia, 1792–1802 (Naples: Guida, 1992). While mentioning by name a number of women among the Neapolitan (and other) political refuges to France, Rao does not specify whether they were following their menfolk into exile or had been condemned to exile in their own right. The volume is nevertheless an indispensable point of departure for a study of women’s involvement in the Neapolitan Republic.

72 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution “harangued against selfishness, which she described as a worm gnawing away at the tree of liberty, exhorted to altruism, and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared selflessness to be the true fruit of virtue. … and she suggested various instruments of public prosperity—agriculture, commerce, arts and crafts.”178 The February 19 issue mentions a woman in Calabria, Vittoria Pellegrini, “a respectable mother of a family…[who] put herself at the head of the People, notwithstanding her old age and uncertain health, and went to intone the Te Deum for the proclamation of the Republic.”179 Gargano also talks of women in the province of Potenza who not only took care of injured men, but who, “wearing men’s clothes, fought side by side with their husbands and brothers, deceiving the enemy through their valor rather than their attire.”180 Whether or not there was a significant number of “fighting women” in the Republic of Naples,181 it seems likely that women’s involvement was greater than the presently available data suggest, that Fonseca Pimentel was not a mere flower in the wilderness. The released prisoners immediately took possession of the Castle of Sant’Elmo in the center of the city. They set up a committee which made contact with the Neapolitan exiles fighting with the French, and negotiated a plan for cooperation with the “People’s Generals,” as the two men appointed leaders of the people, the prince of Moliterno and the duke of Roccaromana, were now designated.182 On January 21, 1799, this committee proclaimed the Neapolitan Republic; on the following day, General Championnet183 entered the city at the head of the French army, and on January 23 established a Provisional Government, drawing names from a list presented to him by the “Neapolitan patriots.” Headed by Carlo Lauberg, it consisted of twenty-five representatives who operated in six Committees (Legislative, Internal Affairs, Finance, Police, Military, and Central

178. MN, No. 14, 143. 179. MN, No. 6, 122. 180. Gargano, Eleonora e le altre, 63. 181. For a discussion of the whole phenomenon of the woman soldier in the Jacobin period and the rhetoric that accompanied it, see Elisa Strumia, “Rivoluzionare il bel sesso: Donne e politica nel triennio repubblicano (Naples: Guida, 2011). Strumia’s splendid volume on women’s political involvement in the Republican period, although it mentions Naples, focuses mainly on Piedmont and the Cisalpine Republic. A comparable study on Southern Italy is much needed. 182. Girolamo Pignatelli, prince of Moliterno, and Lucio Caracciolo, duke of Roccaromana, were among the Neapolitan aristocrats who moved from their positions within the Bourbon establishment to support for the Jacobin republic. Two months later, Moliterno would be part of a delegation from the provisional government which attempted, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with the French government in Paris. On both see Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 14, and Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 1:386–95. 183. General Jean-Antoine Etienne Championnet, who was charged with defending the Roman Republic in 1798, then proceeded to march into Naples.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 73 Committee).184 Its decisions would only be valid once sanctioned by Championnet as General-in-Chief of the French occupying army.185 The street rioting continued for a while, escalating into fierce popular resistance to the French occupation and its allies, the Neapolitan Jacobins. Yet one man of the people supported the French presence: Michele Marino, wine seller, marched in front of the French troops into Naples shouting “Viva Gesù, Maria, San Gennaro, la libertà” (Viva Jesus, Mary, Saint Gennaro, freedom). He was known by the nickname il pazzo (the madman), and was hanged in the Market Square on August 29, 1799, alongside Fonseca Pimentel and others.186 The Neapolitan Republic of 1799 has long been viewed as a failure, a verdict tinged with a romantic veneration of its quixotic martyrs. According to this view, loosely based on the judgment of Vincenzo Cuoco pronounced in his history of the revolution published two years after the event, it was bound to fail from the start because it was a “passive” revolution, one imposed by a foreign power rather than arising from local conditions.187 Yet it is important to note the distinctive features of the Neapolitan Republic relative to the other Italian Jacobin republics. The Neapolitan Jacobins acted to a notable extent independently of the French: it was they who proclaimed the Republic on January 21, one day prior to Championnet’s entry; and they consistently sought to retain a measure of autonomy from the dictates of the Directory. Moreover, far from being naïve idealists, many members of the Provisional Government were returning exiles, and as such experienced revolutionaries either in France or in other Italian Jacobin republics. Giuseppe Abbamonti, Matteo Galdi, Saverio Massa, and Ferdinando Saverio Salfi had been involved in the Cisalpine Republic, and Mario Pagano and Vincenzio Russo had 184. On the events leading to the formation of the Neapolitan Republic, see Mario Battaglini, La rivoluzione giacobina del 1799 a Napoli (Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1973); Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana; Galasso, “I giacobini meridionali”; and Anna Maria Rao, “Guerra e politica nel ‘giacobinismo’ napoletano,” in Esercito e società nell’età rivoluzionaria e napoleonica, ed. Anna Maria Rao (Naples: Morano Editore, 1990), 187–245. See also the classics originally published, respectively, in 1801 and 1834: Vincenzo Cuoco, Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli, ed. Antonino De Francesco (Manduria-Bari-Rome: Lacaita, 1998); originally published as Saggio sulla rivoluzione di Napoli (Milan: Tipografia Milanese in Strada Nuova, anno nono repubblicano [1801]); and Pietro Colletta, Storia del Reame di Napoli. On Lauberg see in particular Benedetto Croce, “La vita di un rivoluzionario: Carlo Lauberg,” in Benedetto Croce, Vite di avventure, di fede, e di passione (Bari: Laterza, 1953), 361–439. On the functioning of the Republic, see Mario Battaglini, Il “pubblico convocìo”: Stato e cittadini nella Repubblica napoletana del 1799 (Naples: Vivarium, 2003); also Antonio Cestaro and Antonio Lerra, eds., Il Mezzogiorno e la Basilicata tra l’età giacobina e il decennio francese: Atti del convegno di Maratea, 8–10 giugno 1990, 2 vols. (Venosa: Edizioni Osanna, 1992). 185. See Galasso, Storia del Regno di Napoli, 4:802–9. 186. See Luigi Conforti, Napoli nel 1799: Critica e documenti inediti (Naples: Ernesto Anfossi, 1889), 163; also De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1:104. 187. Cuoco, Saggio storico, 325.

74 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution taken part in the setting up of the Roman Republic. Carlo Lauberg, a former priest who had been exiled to Paris, was according to Davis, a “pivotal figure in the diaspora of Neapolitan patriots.”188 The experience of exile had strengthened “the Jacobin notion of the masses as both object and primary subject of revolutionary action and democratic governance,”189 Rao comments, contributing to their acute awareness of the need for consensus and popular participation in the life of the Republic. These experienced revolutionaries enacted a comprehensive program of revolutionary governance. They established debating clubs and public education halls, created welfare structures, and promoted the use of dialect. They introduced laws reforming the financial and legal systems, and sought to design a fairer system of landownership and taxation. Yet they faced huge problems that soon proved insurmountable. The financial situation of the state was catastrophic, and made worse by the financial contributions demanded by the French and the expense of maintaining troops. The main sources of food supply having been cut off—Sicily was held by the Bourbons, and Apulia was in a state of constant revolt—the city could not be adequately provisioned. In addition, the size of Naples, a teeming metropolis of nearly half a million inhabitants, made any attempt at introducing revolutionary measures more difficult than in the smaller urban environments of the northern Italian Republics. That problem was exacerbated by the ever-increasing insurgencies in the provinces, which led to the virtual isolation of the capital. In the capital itself, middle-class support was far from solid, while the destitute masses were always a “huge question mark” as Galasso puts it.190 Finally, and perhaps inevitably, there were divisions among the members of the government, driven partly by ideology but also by significant class tensions arising from the predominance of aristocrats among the Neapolitan Republicans, both as supporters and as members of the executive.191 The French presence, as well, crucial as it had been for the formation of the Republic, imposed limitations and introduced difficulties. Clearly, the “sister republics” were exploited by the French, who not only required contributions, but also brashly plundered national assets.192 Spouting the rhetoric of revolution and freedom, France now operated as a great power bent on expansion. In Naples, it demanded obedience and financial contributions: the Provisional Government had to raise 2,500,000 ducats from the capital and a further 15,000,000 from the 188. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 76. 189. Anna Maria Rao, “La repubblica napoletana del 1799,” in Galasso and Romeo, Storia del Mezzogiorno, 4.2:469–539, at 478. 190. Galasso, Intervista, 132–33. 191. On the fraught question of the social composition of the Neapolitan Republicans, see Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 102–6. 192. Giuseppe Galasso, “Il 1799 e l’Europa,” in Rao, Napoli 1799, 23–62, at 37–38.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 75 provinces to pay the indemnity to the Directory.193 Furthermore, the French troops often behaved like an occupying army—robbing, pillaging, and raping. Their behavior aroused the resentment and even hatred of the masses, especially in the countryside. That resentment and hatred extended to the Neapolitan Jacobins, viewed as allies of the French, and served as a powerful weapon in the relentless propaganda war waged by opponents of the revolution. The paradoxical result was a de facto class war of the masses against the Jacobins and their French allies. Moreover, the Neapolitan Jacobins could not act freely because of their subordination to the French. Paris closely controlled the Provisional Government, at first, through the agency of the local French General-in-Chief, and later through that of the Commessario organizzatore (Organizing Commissar), a position created in February 1799, who had the power of imposing reorganizations of the Neapolitan executive and legislative committees. As a result, any shifts of power in France, in their turn reflected in changes of crucial French personnel on the ground, constrained the Neapolitan Jacobins. Two different French Generals-inChief, as well as two different Organizing Commissars, succeeded each other over the first three months of the Neapolitan republic—until April 27, 1799, that is, when the French, pressured by the Austro-Russian offensive in the North, decided to withdraw their army from Naples altogether. First to go was General Championnet, much loved by the Neapolitan Jacobins. On February 27, 1799, he was arrested for disobeying orders. Rumors flew about the cause of his fall. The local Jacobins were inclined to believe that he was penalized for his conspicuous Jacobin sympathies; accordingly, the Provisional Government sent a delegation to Paris with the remit of challenging his dismissal and protesting about the “more austere and severe ways” of General Etienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre Macdonald, duc de Tarente [Taranto], appointed Championnet’s successor General-in-Chief. The French government refused to receive them, and a second attempt on March 12 met with the same fate.194 General Macdonald remained in his post until he was ordered to abandon the city in early May 1799. The first appointee to the post of Organizing Commissar was Guillaume Charles Faypoult, who was at loggerheads with Championnet and might well have been instrumental in his removal. Faypoult remained in his post for a month until, on March 28, 1799, he was replaced by André Joseph Abrial, who pursued a vigorously interventionist policy to control what he perceived as a chaotic situation. He proceeded to a reorganization of the Provisional Government, which was now to operate through two separate commissions, a Legislative and an Executive. The twenty-five-member Legislative Commission included men such as Pagano, Cirillo, and Galanti, who had had prominent positions from the start, and the Executive was comprised by Abbamonti, Ercole 193. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 82. 194. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 84.

76 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution d’Agnese, Albanesi, Ignazio Ciaja, and Melchiorre Delfico.195 It was also stipulated that the Executive Commission could only issue orders with the approval of the Organizing Commissar. By the time Macdonald and Abrial departed in May 1799, leaving the Neapolitan government to its own devices, much had been achieved: a new law on the legal system had been debated and would be approved on May 14; the reform of the financial system was finalized on May 9; and most importantly, the law abolishing the feudal system was formally approved on April 25 and published on April 26. It envisaged the suppression, without compensation, of all the barons’ jurisdictional and fiscal rights over individuals, and assigned the baronial tolls and monopolies regarding the use of such facilities as mills, ovens, and olive presses to the comuni (communes).196 The downgraded barons were left with “only those lands that were not subject to the right of devolution to the crown”—that is, those which they possessed as private property, which did not confer feudal privileges.197 The debate on the abolition of the feudal system had started on February 18, 1799, when two alternative plans had been submitted, one by Albanese and Forges Davanzati and another, more moderate, by Pagano. The main point of contention was the question of compensation. The debate continued on February 25, with a widening split between radicals and moderates. A first compromise draft was approved on March 7, and on March 26, it was submitted to Macdonald, who deferred any decisions until the arrival of the new Organizing Commissar Abrial two days later. The final version of the law (approved on April 25, 1799) was not, as has often been said, a watered-down compromise solution. On the contrary, it was more radical than the original one, the crucial difference being the elimination of a significant concession to the former barons of part of the feudal demesne. While the first draft stated that “a fourth part” of the feudal demesne should remain with the “so-called barons,” the definitive version assigned the feudal demesnes

195. Giuseppe Maria Galanti was a distinguished economist and historian of Southern Italy. Giuseppe Abbamonti had been actively involved in the Cisalpine Republic in 1798. Ercole D’Agnese was married to Abrial’s niece. Giuseppe Albanesi (or Albanese) had been imprisoned by the Bourbons as a political dissident and was a main proponent of the abolition of fideicommissa. He was hanged on November 28, 1799. Ignazio Ciaja, a poet, was hanged on October 29, 1799. Melchiorre Delfico, a pupil of Genovesi, published extensively on economics and jurisprudence. He was exiled briefly after the fall of the Republic. 196. See Anna Maria Rao, La repubblica napoletana del 1799 (Rome: Newton Compton, 1997), 35. An Italian comune (commune) is the smallest local administrative unit, such as a town or municipality. 197. Mario Battaglini and Augusto Placanica, eds., Leggi, atti, proclami ed altri documenti della Repubblica napoletana, 1798–1799 (Cava de’ Tirreni: Emilio di Mauro, 2000), 2:132–33.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 77 “to the Commune in their entirety.”198 The more benevolent attitude to the barons in the March version had been the expression of the more moderate faction of the Neapolitan Jacobins, who were acting, according to Galasso, not so much out of a particular “ideological orientation” but rather pragmatically, aiming to avoid a conflict between the revolution and the barons, many of whom were sincere patriots and were committed to the new regime.199 On March 28, 1799, the Provisional Government addressed a letter to “citizen Macdonald General-in-Chief of the French Army” expressing “the greatest disquiet” at his delay in responding to their request for his endorsement of what turned out to be the first draft of the law on the abolition of feudal domains— a law that, it confidently claimed, could not fail to “dispel the insurrections as the sun chases away the clouds, and bind the people firmly to the revolution.”200 Such was the belief of the Neapolitan Jacobins in the magic power of the abolition of feudalism to quell popular hostility. But their confidence was an illusion, for which they would pay dearly. The law on the abolition of feudalism, even in its final, more radical version, did not generate any popular support for the revolutionary government. Not only did it come far too late—it was not published until April 26, and the difficulty in communications meant that in some areas it hardly became known at all—but above all it was a law that, if implemented, would have benefitted the nascent rural bourgeoisie rather than the dispossessed masses. No agrarian reform was attempted alongside the suppression of the feudal system. To accomplish such reform, a more egalitarian attitude was needed but was manifestly absent. The “progressive” line pushed by the Neapolitan Jacobins would have resulted in creating a modern, market-based economy in the countryside, which would have been ruinous for the small peasant economies thereby deprived of the traditional benefits they had enjoyed under feudalism. For that modern economy, the peasants were not equipped either as producers or as consumers.201 In any case, there was hardly time even to begin to implement the new law. When it was published at the end of April, 1799, the Republic was only a few weeks away from being overthrown, and the hostility of the masses grew greater with the departure of the French armies which had kept it in check. As Davis puts it, by April “the end had already begun”: not only had “the Russian-Austrian offensive in the North forced the Directory to withdraw its armies from Italy” but “in the South the royalists had already taken control of the provinces and on 2 April Nelson’s warships had begun to blockade the Bay of Naples.”202 Popular 198. Texts of the two versions are reprinted in Giuseppe Galasso, “La legge feudale napoletana del 1799,” in La filosofia in soccorso de’ governi, 633–60, at 640. 199. Galasso, “La legge feudale,” 653–54. On the barons who supported the Republic, see 22–23. 200. Quoted in Galasso, “La legge feudale,” 650. 201. On this point see especially Galasso, Intervista, 130–31. 202. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 87–88.

78 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution insurrection in the streets of Naples had accompanied the birth of the Republic and, while subsiding in Naples itself, it was to remain endemic in the provinces, creating a situation, as Rao comments, where the government was virtually besieged in the capital.203 While the reasons behind this state of affairs were complex and contradictory, popular hatred of the Jacobin modernizers never abated. In many cases, Jacobin rituals enacted locally by loyal republicans or emissaries sent from Naples—raising of the tree of liberty with songs and dances, destruction of royal flags, distribution of republican rosettes (the rose-shaped badge worn as a sign of support for the Jacobin cause), even legitimation by priests who would preach under the tree, all ending in solemn processions to the parish church where a Te Deum would be celebrated—would be followed almost immediately by popular rituals performed in opposition: where the tree might be destroyed and replaced with a cross and a Te Deum would be celebrated in honor of the monarchy. Such ritual events might then be followed by assaults, the ransacking or even torching of the houses of local republicans (or people who were presumed to be such), but also the plundering of grain stores, and even the invasion of feudal lands. Poverty and hunger propelled the masses alongside a deep-rooted attachment to old rituals and customs that the Jacobins failed utterly to understand and accommodate. While both sides sought ecclesiastical legitimation, spates of presumed miraculous events supported the counterrevolutionary revolt. Not infrequently, popular rage degenerated into atrocities, sometimes accompanied by ritualistic elements.204 Soon, in vast areas of the former Kingdom of Naples, the counterrevolutionary insurgence acquired sound military organization. As early as February 8, 1799, Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo landed in Calabria and launched a campaign projected as a holy crusade. Although he was viewed as an arch-reactionary by the Neapolitan republicans, he had in fact reasonably progressive credentials, having collaborated with King Ferdinand IV over the S. Leucio royal silkworks, one of the projects undertaken as an enlightened reform. Moreover, he was endowed with the kind of political intelligence that the Jacobins often lacked. He understood the fears and aspirations of the masses, and was an astute enough politician to do what it took to win over their support. While acknowledging their suffering, he worked on the assumption that this could not be remedied by making enemies of the landowners. This approach was intended to win over to the monarchical cause, in Davis’s words, “those sections of the propertied and privileged classes

203. Anna Maria Rao, “La questione delle insorgenze italiane,” Studi storici 39 (1998): 325–47, at 340. This issue of Studi storici is fundamental to an understanding of the whole phenomenon of popular insurrections against the Jacobin Republics throughout Italy. 204. See especially Rao, “La repubblica napoletana del 1799,” 502–4.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 79 who had rallied to the republic”205—his ultimate aim being to win back support rather than launching a frontal attack—as well as harnessing the support of the landless masses. Appointed Vicar General by King Ferdinand IV on January 25, 1799, with the mission of reconquering the Kingdom, by the beginning of March Ruffo had put together an army of 1,500 men, made up of soldiers from the former royal army, priests, wealthy landowners, workmen, peasants, as well as “assassins and robbers.”206 “Santafede” (Holy Faith) was the name he chose to give to his campaign, lending it a religious legitimation which would appeal to the peasant masses. On June 13, 1799, Ruffo’s troops entered Naples. The republicans put up a heroic resistance, but areas crucial to the defense of the city were soon forced to surrender, while the populace unleashed a hunt of those perceived as Jacobins, massacring many even before the royal forces arrived to take their revenge. The republicans attempted to fight back from the castles of Sant’Elmo (where the Republic had been proclaimed five short months before), Castel dell’Ovo, and Castelnuovo, but were forced to surrender. On June 21, they formalized their capitulation with Cardinal Ruffo. The Bourbon monarchy was restored immediately, and retribution was swift and ruthless. On June 15, 1799, Ruffo established a Giunta di Stato (State Commission) with the remit of bringing to trial those accused of treason. The returning sovereign confirmed its creation on July 21, replacing the judges appointed by Ruffo. While Ruffo would have preferred a policy of leniency, King Ferdinand was relentless in his pursuit of his opponents. The new Giunta tried thousands of people for treason, including those who had initially been escorted to Nelson’s ship anchored in the bay with a promise of a safe-conduct into exile, but had then been handed back to the restored authorities. While pointing out that it would be unwise to supply precise figures given the often contradictory data available, Rao surmises that well over a hundred people were executed and several thousand jailed or exiled.207 In addition, many more republicans were pursued by the mob in the name of what came to be known as “giustizia sanfedista” (Holy Faith justice) against those who had betrayed “throne and altar.” This form of retribution was encouraged by the Giunta, which stipulated that “all who knew of Jacobins in hiding” should “make it known on promise of secrecy, as, were the information to prove true, a reward would be given.”208 The repression would continue well into

205. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 119. 206. Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 116–18. 207. Anna Maria Rao, “La prima restaurazione borbonica,” in Galasso and Romeo, Storia del Mezzogiorno, 4.2:541–74, at 544–45. 208. Anna Maria Rao, Esuli, 243–44.

80 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution the following year. It was a deliberate attempt to destroy a whole generation of progressive intellectuals.

Anatomy of a Journal: The Monitore Napoletano On January 29, 1799, eight days after the proclamation of the Republic and six days after the formation of the Provisional Government, Carlo De Nicola wrote in his Neapolitan Diary: “the publication is announced of a Monitore Napoletano which will report on all the government’s actions.”209 Only in his entry of February 25 would he mention “citizen Eleonora Fonseca” as the person who was to be its editor.210 The “announcement” was carried in a broadsheet entitled “Monitore Napoletano,” which describes it thus: It will give an account of all the government’s actions. It will be published every time the courier departs in order to avoid unnecessary delays in reaching all the communes of the Republic. Subscriptions will be received at the printing house belonging to Citizen Gennaro Giaccio which is situated at the fosse del grano; the cost will be six carlini per quarter to be paid to the said Citizen, who will be answerable for this to the subscribers, and will keep a record. The first issue will be published on Saturday at midday 14 Pluviose year 7 (February 2, 1799).211 And so the Monitore Napoletano was launched. It would be published in thirty-five issues between February 2 and June 8, 1799, with Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel the editor and author.212 Editor and Author The “first issue” did indeed appear on February 2, 1799. But who was in charge? The broadsheet was signed “C.L.,” which Battaglini plausibly identifies as the initials of Carlo Lauberg, newly appointed President of the Provisional Government. On this basis, Battaglini concludes that the Monitore was “almost certainly… 209. De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1:38. 210. De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1:61. 211. This announcement is reproduced in Battaglini’s introduction to his edition of the journal: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Mario Battaglini, 2nd ed. (Naples: Guida, 1999), 15. 212. Monitore Napoletano (Naples: Nella Stamperia Nazionale [previously Stamperia Reale], [1799]). An exemplar is held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, S.Q.24.K21. It is henceforth cited in narrative and notes as MN.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 81 founded” by Carlo Lauberg “around the end of January 1799.”213 At no point, however, does Battaglini doubt the identity of the person who compiled and managed the journal from the start. If Lauberg initially intended to be the director, he must have decided, at some point before the first number of the Monitore appeared on February 2, to hand that responsibility over to Fonseca Pimentel. Her role is confirmed by the testimony of Diomede Marinelli, the other diarist of the Republican period, who states that he will narrate the French conquest of Naples “with the very words of the Monitore Napoletano written by Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel dated February 2, 1799.”214 In the end, who decided that there should be a journal detailing “all the government’s actions” does not really matter. All are agreed that from the beginning it was Fonseca Pimentel who wrote it.215 It was normal practice at the time that the editor of a journal was the sole, or almost sole, writer. Fonseca Pimentel wrote the whole of the Monitore, the only exceptions being the texts of various edicts, proclamations, and speeches by others included in the journal. From No. 26 of the journal, dated May 9, 1799, she began to insert her initials “E.F.P.” at the end. At this point, changes also appeared in the masthead, which from now on included the phrase MAJESTAS POPULI (Majesty of the People). At this point, as well, the original printer was replaced by the Stamperia Nazionale (National Printing House), previously the Stamperia Reale (Royal Printing House). The parallelism here is notable: just as the printing house is no longer royal, but national, so “majesty,” the attribute of royalty, shifts to the people. Royal sovereignty is replaced by popular sovereignty. Why Fonseca Pimentel should have been chosen to head the Monitore is not explained anywhere. But as she had no direct government responsibility and was generally viewed as not belonging to any of the Jacobin factions, she might have been seen as the ideal person to direct a publication with the clear aim of both reporting on events and influencing public opinion, and thereby broadening the spread of consensus to the Jacobin regime. The prominence of her role in this respect cannot be overestimated, nor did it escape the attention of the Republic’s enemies. When she accepted the editorship of the Monitore, she was de facto signing her own death sentence. The Monitore was by no means the only periodical published in Naples during the brief duration of the Republic, but it was the first to appear, lasted longer, 213. Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 16. 214. Marinelli, I giornali, 39. 215. Godechot goes as far as saying, without however citing any sources, that Fonseca Pimentel was appointed “editor” on January 29, 1799, the establishment of the journal having been decided by the provisional government on January 23: Jacques Godechot, La grande nation: L’expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde de 1789 à 1799, 2nd ed. (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1983), 318. Addeo challenges Battaglini’s reading of “C.L.” as “Carlo Lauberg,” claiming that it is more likely to stand for Cittadini Liberi: Girolamo Addeo, Libertà di stampa e produzione giornalistica nella Repubblica Napoletana del 1799 (Naples: Loffredo, 1999), 382–83.

82 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution and, unlike others, appeared regularly. It also had the good fortune of escaping the restored king’s order of destruction of such infami stampati (vile publications).216 Each issue consists of what we would now call an editorial, followed by news reports, mainly on domestic events but also on foreign matters. Some numbers end with a section called “Varietà,” a miscellany of scientific or literary information, which occasionally includes items of local news. Some issues carry a section entitled “Avvisi,” devoted mainly to advertising the publication of books. The various pieces do not have titles, nor are they clearly separated from each other, although some stand out by their italic typeface. The journal appeared twice a week, usually on Saturdays and Tuesdays. This regularity broke down towards the end: after May 18 we find two numbers (30 and 31) appearing on the same day, Saturday May 25; followed by another two (32 and 33) again on the same day, Saturday June 1; then number 34 on Wednesday, June 5; and finally number 35 on Saturday, June 8. That date fell five days before the fall of the Republic, and the situation had been for some time tragic in the extreme. According to Battaglini, about four hundred copies of each issue of the Monitore Napoletano were printed. What happened to them is far from clear. It seems likely that a few copies would have reached Rome, as well as Turin, Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Paris.217 The hoped for circulation in “all the communes of the Republic” envisaged in the broadsheet announcement of January 29 seems unlikely to have happened on a regular basis, however, given the parlous state of the road and communication network. The sources used for accounts of events would have included a combination of official texts issued by the provisional government, and possibly the occasional prepublication manuscript version; Fonseca Pimentel’s own direct eyewitness experience; information gathered on the street; letters sent to the journal and travelers’ accounts of what happened in the provinces; and, for foreign affairs, mainly the French namesake Le Moniteur, the journal that had been a major source of inspiration for Fonseca Pimentel and other Jacobin dissidents during the final years of the Bourbon regime. The information given in the Monitore is not always totally accurate, given the diversity of sources and the lack of sufficient checks due to the speed at which the journal needed to be produced. In addition, the editor’s bias might have affected her reporting. It should not be forgotten that she was a committed political journalist, not an impartial spectator. 216. For a full list of the periodicals published in Naples between February and June 1799, see Addeo, Libertà di stampa, and Mario Battaglini, ed., Napoli 1799: I giornali giacobini (Rome: Libreria Alfredo Borzi, 1988). For a wider picture of Jacobin-inspired journalism in Italy, see especially Carlo Capra, “Il giornalismo nell’età rivoluzionaria e napoleonica,” in Carlo Capra, Valerio Castronovo, and Giuseppe Recuperati, eds., La stampa italiana dal Cinquecento all’Ottocento, 2nd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1999), 373–537. 217. See Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 24.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 83 To complicate matters further, it appears that two editions of the Monitore were regularly printed, which in some cases contained significant differences. Battaglini discovered this dual publication when he set out to produce the critical edition of the journal, and realized that the copy held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (which he labels copy A) differed in some cases from the copy in Benedetto Croce’s own library (labeled copy B). This disparity, of course, raises the issue of identifying the original version, as well as determining the reasons behind the existence of two different copies. Battaglini argues convincingly that copy A was the original, on the basis of the existence of misprints in copy A which are made good in copy B. But some of the differences between the two copies are more substantial: copy B, for example, tones down some of the exhortations to refrain from a scorched earth policy towards insurgents, as in No. 3 (February 9, 1799). The alteration would likely have been made to avoid giving any offence to the French occupiers, whose troops were involved in the counterinsurgency actions. Battaglini surmises that the person behind the changes seen in copy B is Giuseppe Logoteta, who was quite close to Fonseca Pimentel, and whose speeches are often reported in the journal and in a sympathetic light. Both, moreover, were fairly detached from the internal dissensions among local Jacobins, and Logoteta, unlike other Jacobins, was present in Naples throughout the period when the journal, in its two versions, appeared. It is therefore plausible that, as Battaglini hypothesizes, Fonseca Pimentel asked Logoteta to deal with the proofreading, and that he might have extended his corrections from mere typos to some amendments of substance. Each number of the journal carries the date according to the Republican calendar, while also giving, in parentheses, the equivalent date according to the traditional system. This new calendar had been devised by the French revolutionaries in 1793 to provide a rational and natural approach to the measuring of time, doing away with all religious and regalist connotations. The year was divided into twelve months, each made up of three periods of ten days each. Days lost their names, which were replaced by numbers, and the new names of the months reflected the agricultural cycle. So the days were called primidi (first day), duodi (second day), tridi (third day), quartidi (fourth day), quintidi (fifth day), sextidi (sixth day), septidi (seventh day), octidi (eighth day), nonidi (ninth day), and decadi (tenth day). The year began with the grape harvest, so the first month of the year was vendémiaire (grape harvest), followed by brumaire (mist), frimaire (frost), nivôse (snow), pluviôse (rain), ventôse (wind), germinal (sprouting of seeds), floréal (blossoms), prairial (grass), messidor (harvest), thermidor (heat), and fructidor (fruit). Finally, the years were numbered from the onset of the revolution, 1793 being Year 1. This calendar was in use in France from October 1793 to the end of 1805, and in other European countries as they were conquered by the French armies, where, it appears, it was perceived very much as a French imposition. “It seems

84 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution likely,” Matthew Shaw comments, “that other than republican officials, eager local Jacobin sympathizers and the military, the practical impression made by the calendar beyond France was minimal at best. If the calendar travelled at all, it did so on the mastheads of pro-republican newspapers.”218 And so it does, indeed, on the masthead of the Monitore, where the year is designated as Year I of the Neapolitan Republic and Year VII of liberty, thus bringing together the Neapolitan and French revolutionary eras. The bond with France dominates the very first number of the Monitore. The jubilant opening words “Finally we are free” are predicated on the founding myth of Italian Jacobins of France as the Mother Republic. There follows the near-quotation of the famous three principles of revolutionary France: “we can utter the sacred words of liberty and equality,” with the third term, “fraternity,” transparently encoded in the Neapolitans’ self-definition as “worthy brethren” of the “free people of Italy and Europe.”219 But the explosion of joy is followed a few lines below by the painful recollection of the fierce street fighting by the people of Naples against the French and their Neapolitan allies which preceded the proclamation of the Republic. This, the terrible problem of popular hostility, a hostility that often took the form of armed insurrection, would feature in almost every number of the Monitore. Fonseca Pimentel never ceases to try to make sense of that popular resistance and find ways to overcome it. At the beginning she saw the question in terms of ignorance, which in its turn made people vulnerable to reactionary propaganda, and put all the blame on the clergy and the vicar general, that is to say the enemy agents. In addition, she identified the principal interests of the people to be their religion, their property, and their women. As her thinking evolved over the ensuing weeks and months, she developed a more nuanced analysis. The myth of France also lost some of its glitter as the reality of French occupation encroached increasingly on the ideal of French primacy, to the point where she would salute the departure of the French troops in May 1799 with a paean to independence and self-reliance.220 A Political Project On January 12, 1799, the Monitore printed an explicit statement of its aim as “furnishing material to history by preserving the memory of current events.”221 218. Matthew Shaw, Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV (Woodbridge, UK: Royal Historical Society; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2011), 50. On the republican calendar see also Bureau des Longitudes (France), Le calendrier républicain: De sa création à sa disparition suivi d’une concordance avec le calendrier grégorien (Paris: Éditions de l’Observatoire, 1989). 219. MN, No. 1, 93. Italics in original. 220. MN, No. 28, 180–181. 221. MN, No. 4, 109.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 85 This is undoubtedly one of the significant functions of the Monitore: it remains to this day one of the important sources of information about what actually happened during the Neapolitan Republic, not only with regard to major political issues—such as the details of the debates leading to the abolition of the feudal system, the reform of the financial system, or the changes affecting the Provisional Government—but also to more mundane but no less essential matters such as the vagaries of the price of cheese and other foodstuffs.222 Hand in hand with this went the mission of molding public opinion and thereby enlarging consensus to the new regime. But the Monitore goes well beyond the immediate project of opinion making. Quite simply, with her journal Fonseca Pimentel embarks on a thoroughly political project. She wants to find a way forward, to discern the ways in which the republican project can succeed. Toward this end, she constantly analyzes trends and events, offering criticism and advice to the government where she sees fit. Her approach was on the whole not so much ideological as pragmatic: her comments, observations, and criticisms are not dictated by principles in themselves, but rather by a concern with finding effective ways to translate those principles into reality. She exercises her democratic right to “contribute ideas of public value” as early as February 5, 1799 (No. 2), when she challenges the current (Frenchinspired) icon of the Republic—a woman—and wants it replaced by a man clothed in an attire suggesting a farmer and soldier.223 Shocking as this proposal sounds to twenty-first-century women—and no doubt many men—her recommendation needs to be seen as an attempt to achieve support in a social context where men are presumed to be dominant. In another instance of Fonseca Pimentel’s pragmatic approach, she challenges the government’s plans for a mounted National Guard on the grounds that its creation would entrench inequalities, since only the well-off would be able to procure uniforms, horses, and weapons. Since “a mounted National Guard can only consist of wealthy people,” it would in effect produce an oligarchy, and so reproduce the aristocratic system of old. Again, her concern is not with abstract principles, but rather with the need to “give proper consideration to the consequences.”224 Fonseca Pimentel’s concern with “the consequences” of actions taken by Republican leaders dominates her analyses of the problems that beset the Republic. She frequently laments the “sluggishness of military operations” against the insurgencies, but her harsh critique is aimed at the failure to find an effective way to deal with them. She is absolutely opposed to a policy of armed repression, 222. See for example, on the feudal issue MN, Nos. 2, 4, 11, 15, 18, 31, 32; on finances, Nos. 12, 15, 27; on food prices, Nos. 2, 27, 35. 223. MN, No 2, 103–104. 224. MN, No. 21, 163–164.

86 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution which fails to single out those who can be won over to the republican cause, and so produce a long-term solution.225 Similarly, as late as June 1, 1799 (No. 33), Fonseca Pimentel attacks a law that envisages compensating the “Defenders of the Motherland” with half the property of the defeated insurgents, supplying a close critique of its likely consequences.226 Exasperated, she upbraids the government harshly for failing to make the most of the apparent “approval of Heaven” when the relic of the patron saint Gennaro’s blood performs its usual blood miracle even during the Republican administration.227 Fonseca Pimentel’s principal aim is to find a remedy for the popular hostility to the Republican regime. Her initial explanation in terms of ignorance and misinformation persists: she is and remains a woman of the Enlightenment, never indulging in a mythical view of the people as the possessors of a spontaneous, earthy, pure, and superior wisdom, as the Romantic generation would. She never doubts that the Jacobins are right; never questioning their ideology or intent, her critique of the government is always in terms of the speed and effectiveness of its actions. And yet, her short-term project—finding remedies for the popular hostility to the Jacobin government—leads her to put forward the outline of a longterm project. Out of the urgent search for the means to popular support for the Jacobin cause in the here and now, a fairly sophisticated and novel understanding of the parameters of popular culture begins to emerge. Acutely aware of the need for communication in a democracy, Fonseca Pimentel is at the same time struck by the failure of Republican leaders to communicate with the greater part of the population. She sees the linguistic and cultural chasm that divides the Jacobin elites from the masses, and strives to find solutions which will work through rather than against this state of affairs, solutions that, far from ignoring the real situation, will be firmly rooted in it and be effective in the current situation. The usual Jacobin attempt to persuade the populace is insufficient. She aims rather to win the people over by delivering the Jacobin message through the mechanism of popular culture. For the people have a culture, Fonseca Pimentel believes, something that most of her contemporaries ignore. As a daughter of the Enlightenment, she may deplore the people’s “blindness to reason,” but as a politician she seeks to locate the strengths that make it possible for the people to keep the Jacobins and their French allies at bay so successfully for so long: the people have “vigor of character,” a capacity for “imagination,” “vigorous and decisive spirits,” “strength of character.” These qualities were displayed in the gritty way they fought against the French and the Republicans, and while their strength was “badly applied,” 225. MN, No. 15, 146–148. 226. MN, No. 33, 193–194. 227. MN, No. 26, 172.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 87 nevertheless “strength of character” it was. Their strength is badly applied because their character is “disfigured by so many centuries of an absurd political system, and by the recent corruption by the most profoundly corrupt of all despotic governments”; but just as their character has been warped by unfortunate circumstances, so it can be “rectified” once it has been “corrected … by wholesome Republican laws.”228 The mentality of the people is now anti-Jacobin, but once remedied, a “happy future” will result. Naïve optimism? Perhaps, but only in part. Fonseca Pimentel is enough of a realist to acknowledge the huge chasm that separates the popular mind from the mental structures of high culture. Nor does she propose to alter this situation, at least not in the immediate future. For the present, the Jacobins will have to adopt not only the language of the people, that is to say Neapolitan dialect, but also the mental structures of popular culture and the means by which it is diffused. Fonseca Pimentel was one of the few Jacobins who understood that, in order to achieve their aims of a new, more equal society, they would have to employ a different rhetorical code from the one in which they themselves spoke and thought, and to plug into the traditional channels of transmission of popular culture. To this end, she repeatedly advocates the composition of gazettes in Neapolitan dialect, shunning the “high” Neapolitan of the elites in favor of the real language of the people. Her awareness of the widespread illiteracy of the masses and of the particular nature of oral communication, typical of popular culture, leads her to advocate what, without hesitation, may be called a cultural revolution. The intellectuals of the revolution must learn to use the language and rhetoric of the people, and thereby to control them. It is in this light that she puts forward detailed proposals for the public reading of such gazettes, both in the city and in the provinces, envisaging a wide network of oral communication inspired and controlled by the Jacobins. On March 5, 1799 (No. 10), pursuing her plan, Fonseca Pimentel proposes “the drafting, in the vernacular language for the time being, since this is the only language understood by the ordinary people, of a small weekly journal” which would provide “a summary of all our news, and also of the foreign news that might appear important,” as well as “a summary of all the most interesting among the Government’s laws and deeds, each with suitable explanations and clarifications.” This small journal would have to be read out loud on feast days in all churches both in the city and the countryside, by people specifically employed by the municipalities to do so. This proposal contains all the typical features of Fonseca Pimentel’s approach: one must go as far as possible in adopting the modes of popular culture (the dialect, oral communication, and a religious setting), clearly not to exalt it, but because they define the cultural world in which action must be taken at present. But this utilitarian and pragmatic approach goes hand in hand with an affirmation of a fundamental principle, that of the essential 228. MN, No. 10, 130–131.

88 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution value of popular democracy: “not only is it useful but indeed an intrinsic duty in a democracy, that the people should be acquainted with the facts, and put in a position to form a judgment.”229 It is in the same light that one ought to read the role that she proposes for the clergy. The “small weekly journal” must be read in all churches, since the linchpin of the envisaged network of oral communication has to be the clergy: for it is their traditional role to serve as the chief mediators between high culture and popular culture, in which role they had long been skillfully used by conservative forces. She assigns to the clergy a further task as well: to preach the continuity between the Gospel and the principles of the Republic, in the sense that “the fraternity demanded by the Gospel is the fraternity and equality that the Republic demands; in one word it is true democracy.”230 The propaganda of reactionaries had falsely portrayed the Jacobins as godless monsters; now it was up to the clergy to prove otherwise. Fonseca Pimentel employs a similar approach with regard to popular celebrations such as the Corpus Christi procession (June 1, 1799; No. 32), and especially to the uniquely Neapolitan feast of San Gennaro. Each year, it was believed, the blood of this protector saint of the city would liquefy and flow forth from two ampules kept in the cathedral, a miracle in which she likely did not believe, as her Enlightenment education would have taught her to view such things as superstition. But when the usual miracle occurred in the presence of the Republican and French authorities in May 1799, she was delighted, for she knew it would be read as a good omen, a kind of seal of approval of the Republic by no less than San Gennaro himself. The May 9 number of the Monitore (No. 26) reports this episode in jubilant detail. For once the populace of Naples appears to be at one with the Republic: there are shouts of “Even San Gennaro has turned Jacobin!”; there is fraternizing with the National Guard; and from the local taverns can be heard the singing of the Carmagnole, the song of the revolutionary masses of Paris. But at the same time, she voices her dissatisfaction at the failure of the Republican leaders, as she sees it, to make the most of such a godsend.231 Just as she celebrates the Republican appropriation of a popular cult, Fonseca Pimentel urges the appropriation of historical popular figures like Masaniello, who in 1647 had led a Neapolitan revolt against Spanish rule, as latter-day Republican heroes, and rejoices when President Lauberg does just that.232 In essence, she pleads for all traditional forms of popular street culture to be channeled towards a pro-revolutionary message, and so reports with approval the motion presented at the National Institute for a redirection of such cultural forms as 229. MN, No 10, 134. 230. MN, No. 6, 126. 231. MN, No. 26, 172. 232. MN, No 6, 125.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 89 Neapolitan songs, storytelling at street corners, and puppet theaters towards the propagation of “democratic topics.”233 Fonseca Pimentel’s outbursts of enthusiasm when the people of Naples appear to be amenable to the Jacobin message are very real, but one should not forget that ultimately, popular culture always retains in her view a subaltern role. Its malleability is precisely what makes it vulnerable to manipulation by the forces of reaction. But equally, because of this malleability, it can and should be reshaped by a different, and progressive, ideology. For now the intellectuals of the revolution must “stoop to speaking like plebs,”234 but ultimately the people must be lifted from their present condition, along an upward journey from “plebs” to “People” or even “Citizens.” But who exactly are “the people” whose support is so essential to the Republic? This was, of course, the complex issue that confronted Italian Jacobins everywhere.235 Fonseca Pimentel’s reflections do not amount to a coherent theory of popular mobilization, but as she struggles continuously with the distressing reality of popular hostility toward the Republic, she produces a fascinating provisional analysis, supple enough to change as new and unexpected facets of the problem are encountered. Fonseca Pimentel talks of popolo (people), and also basso popolo (common people), popolo minuto (ordinary people), minuta popolazione (ordinary folk), plebe (plebs), and Popolo (People).236 Basso popolo and popolo minuto are never defined, but appear to be interchangeable with plebe, and sometimes also with popolo, and even Popolo. Plebe on the other hand she defines as “this section of the People, which we will have to continue calling plebs until a better education raises it to the true dignity of being People.”237 This is her formulation as early as February 9, 1799 (No 3). It suggests that the plebs is a special part of the people, or People, a lower stratum of the population, both urban and rural, that she views as the foundation of any regime. Just as they provided a solid foundation to the monarchy, they can and must become the power base of a democratic state. The better education which will bring about this shift will lift them out of the condition of plebs into that of Popolo. But there is an implication that in rural areas there is an even lower stratum, the less “respectable” ones. Only the people, or People, are ever understood as carrying strongly ethical undertones; indeed, the term People at times even acquires the status of a purely ethical category, devoid of any class connotation. Or is she saying that “we,” we the enlightened intellectuals, are the 233. MN, No 6, 126. 234. MN, No. 3, 105. 235. On the approach of the Italian Jacobins to the “people” question, see above, 67–69. 236. These terms have been translated in this way in order to establish a consistency that might help the reader grasp the complexity, and even the inconsistency, of Fonseca Pimentel’s terminology. 237. MN, No. 3, 105.

90 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution real People, who should lower ourselves to the level of the plebs in order to lift them up to the level that we have already achieved? In the February 9 (No. 3) issue, while advocating the use of dialect and popular rhetoric, she talks overtly in terms of the dichotomy between plebs and People: “until the plebs, through the establishment of a National education, comes to think as People, the People will have to stoop to speaking like plebs.”238 In the May 9 issue (No. 26), which reports joyfully the episode of San Gennaro and the conciliation of the leadership with the people of Naples, Fonseca Pimentel abandons the term “plebs” with its built-in negative connotations. The urban crowds who rejoice over the miracle and fraternize with the National Guard she calls People, or ordinary people, not plebs. It is also in this issue that the journal carries for the first time the heading MAJESTAS POPULI (Majesty of the People). On May 25 (No. 31), moreover, she would refer to the market traders who come to give their support to the Republic as “Citizens from the Market.” These men have acquired “democratic sentiments” and are therefore truly citizens.239 Fonseca Pimentel’s reflection on the question of who were the people of the lower strata of society, their concerns and their potential, wavers between emotional and rhetorical outbursts at one end, and at the other, attempts to reach an objective understanding. In the same May 9 number of the journal that exults over the San Gennaro episode, she also singles out one particular section of the People as the most likely power base of the Republicans. These are the “property owners,” even if only the proprietors of a small shop or workshop, who will therefore have more genteel ways and a vested interest in law and order, and might be the best channel for the downward transmission of the revolutionary message: “Let us cultivate the support of the most upright among the People.”240 Her ultimate aim is to form a nation where all are citizens; and citizens are what the former plebs become when they embrace the ideals of republican freedom. Much of Fonseca Pimentel’s reflection on these matters is based on the urban population. The rural masses remain a veritable black hole for her as for the rest of the Jacobin intellectuals. With regard to this mass, the rural destitute who were seen to be invading the city for survival, the fear of the unknown emerges in her thinking. While there might appear to be some hope for conciliation between the urban masses and the Jacobin intellectuals, popular armed resistance was endemic in the provinces, soon increasing to full-blown warfare. Fonseca Pimentel was fully aware of this insurgency; in every single issue of the journal she reports on it, with increasing anguish and dismay, and attempts to make sense of this widespread hostility and to find remedies for it. Her approach is consistent: she 238. MN, No. 3, 105. 239. MN, No. 31, 187. 240. MN, No. 26, 173.

Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution 91 urges the government—and its French masters—to avoid using repression against the masses; to make an example of their leaders while giving the masses “factual proofs” of the government’s action for their benefit; to be on their side and to be seen to be on their side. In other words, she supports a political rather than the military solution favored by the French. The “factual proofs” of the government’s actions amount to, in her mind, the enactment of the new law abolishing feudalism. Like the rest of the Republican establishment, she was convinced that the abolition of the feudal system would magically resolve social tensions. Clearly, she had no understanding of the lives of the impoverished rural masses, and the negative repercussions that the new law might have on them.241 The impassioned optimism of Fonseca Pimentel continues right to the end. She is both aware that Cardinal Ruffo’s peasant army has effectively encircled Naples—giving details of where the fighting is taking place and how the enemy is closing in—and determined to see a light at the end of the tunnel, highlighting the valiant resistance by the National Guard.242 Only once does the terrible reality of the situation break through: almost inadvertently, amid her reassurances, she emits the heartbreaking words, “And every day, war” in the midst of the frantic and confident tone of her reporting.243 The last number of the journal ends on a non finito note: she tells readers that help might be at hand—a Hispano-French fleet is ready to sail from Toulon—French troops have arrived north of Naples— and more details will come in the next issue. But it was the end. Five days later, Ruffo’s army took control of the city.

A Note on the Text A partial and seriously flawed edition of the Monitore appeared in 1884.244 Benedetto Croce published the first modern edition of the journal in 1943.245 This edition was an anthology, based on the exemplar of the original held in Croce’s own library. Some thirty years later, Mario Battaglini produced a critical edition, with copious footnotes and a substantial introduction, based on the exemplar of the original 1799 text held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.246 A second 241. MN, Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35. 242. MN, Nos. 34 and 35, 196 and 197. 243. MN, No. 35, 198. 244. Monitore Napoletano, in Pietro Abondio Drusco, Anarchia popolare di Napoli dal 21 dicembre 1798 al 23 gennaio 1799: Manoscritto inedito dell’abate Pietrabondio Drusco ed i Monitori repubblicani del 1799, corredati di note del medesimo autore per chiarire le verità dei fatti, ed. Michele Arcella (Naples: G. de Angelis e figlio, 1884), 61–248. 245. Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce. 246. Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini.

92 Part One: From Arcadia to Revolution edition by the same publishers appeared in paperback in 1999. The 1999 edition is not identical to Battaglini’s first edition: it introduces some revisions especially in the footnotes, and contains some typographical errors, possibly due to the pressure to produce the volume in time for the bicentenary of the Neapolitan Republic. In 2006, Antonio Lerra brought out another edition of the Monitore, also based on the exemplar held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.247 This volume aims at preserving as far as possible the typographical layout of the original, reproducing the original headings and the indication of the printer for each number, while the notes are intentionally focused on the text’s references and allusions to classical culture. The text of the Monitore is also available online.248 The translation that follows is based on the Battaglini editions, also taking into account the original edition held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples. It is a selection from thirty of the thirty-five issues of the Monitore, which excludes, with a few exceptions, material that was not written by Fonseca Pimentel, such as texts of laws, edicts, proclamations, speeches by various politicians and generals. A certain amount of what she wrote is also omitted. The aim has been to include those passages that best illustrate her approach to the issues of the day. The Monitore displays an interesting, sometimes bewildering, range of typographical usages: unexpected capital initials or their absence, italicizations, abbreviations, abound in idiosyncratic ways. While their significance is not always obvious, they often contribute to the meaning of the text. For this reason, they are faithfully reproduced.

247. Monitore Napoletano, 2 febbraio–8 giugno 1799: L’antico nella cultura politica rivoluzionaria, ed. Antonio Lerra (Manduria-Bari-Rome: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2006). 248. Monitore Napoletano .

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) FIRST QUARTER

No. 1: Saturday, February 2, 17991 14 PLUVIOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Finally, we are free.2 For us, too, the day has come when we can utter the sacred words liberty and equality, and we can tell of our freedom to our Mother Republic and the free peoples of Italy and Europe, and thus rise to be her worthy offspring and their worthy brethren.3 1. In this presentation of MN, for the more legible identification of each issue, the heading begins with issue number (No. 1, No. 2, etc.), followed by the day and date in the traditional format, and finally by the date according to the Republican calendar (see above, 183–184). In the original, however, with the exception of this first issue, the heading gives the Republican date first, followed by the traditional date and day in parentheses, and ending with the issue number. The heading of the first issue of the MN, exceptionally, gives the date according to the Republican calendar preceded by the day of the week, “Saturday,” in traditional style. According to Battaglini, this was probably a printing mistake, not picked up at the proofreading stage because of the lack of familiarity with the new system: “Storia di un giornale giacobino,” in Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 51. 2. This formulaic incipit of the Monitore echoes the first words (“Finally you are free”) of General Championnet’s proclamation to “the inhabitants of the former Neapolitan Kingdom,” which was printed in this first issue of the journal. It also finds an echo in an anonymous undated proclamation (“from citizen M … to the Neapolitan People”), which begins with the words “People of Parthenope” (Parthenope being an ancient Greek name for Naples), “finally you are free. The magnanimous, generous, great, unvanquished French Nation has broken your chains.” This proclamation was published in the first number of the Giornale Patriotico [sic] della Repubblica Napoletana, which also reproduces bilingual versions of Championnet’s proclamation, with a slightly different beginning: “Neapolitans: finally you are free.” The Giornale patriotico is little more than a digest of various pro-republican broadsheets which appeared in Naples between February and March 1799. The edition that came out on February 18 (30 Pluviose) begins with a “Chat” in Neapolitan dialect aimed at monolingual Neapolitan speakers, an early example of a concerted attempt by some pro-republicans to reach out to the people of Naples in their own language: “For those who do not understand Tuscan and in the midst of merriment are like a donkey surrounded by noise,” dated 15 Pluviose. In the next issue of the Monitore, MN, No. 2, 100 (February 6), Fonseca Pimentel would refer to this as a praiseworthy initiative to be imitated. 3. At this stage the myth of France as the freedom-giving “Mother Republic,” and the fraternity among the various Jacobin republics established by the French armies reigns supreme, as is evident also from

93

94 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL For close on nine years, as the odious past government practiced unparalleled mindless and vicious persecution, this Nation of ours generated a great number of martyrs, who were subjected to the harshest treatment in the most horrible prisons, and were ever unmoved by the constant threat of death, and by all promises of impunity and rewards. Our Nation responded to the vices of that tyranny with as many virtues, private and public.4 Poison was injected for years into the more ignorant section of the people through all manners of seduction: religious sermons, public edicts, instruction from the clergy, had tarred with the blackest brush the philosophical5 generous French nation. The Vicar General Francesco Pignatelli, whose very name evokes his hateful infamy, succeeded through his evil manipulations in making this ignorant section of the people fear that the French army would overturn their religion, rob them of their properties, and ravish their women. And so the beautiful endeavor of our regeneration has been stained with blood. Many of our territories rose to attack the French garrisons, and were therefore exposed to military devastation. In others, people killed several of their fellow citizens, believing them to be well-disposed towards the French, and rose in riotous armed insurrections, being then beaten back by superior force.6 The teeming population of Naples, cajoled, instigated, and inspired to frenzy by the lackeys of the vicar general, having got hold of all arms and occupied all garrisons, unleashed seven days of the fiercest and bloodiest anarchy, killing, looting, and threatening all honest citizens without distinction, and daring to oppose and resist the French army for two and a half days. The sparse French columns found themselves bombarded in country lanes and city streets by invisible enemies from roofs, windows, and hedges, and were forced to fight through inch by inch, more by dint of cunning and courage than physical force. But a novel and shining example of virtue triumphing over fury the account that follows of the fighting between French troops and the people of Naples. 4. The “vices of that tyranny” is a reference to the Bourbon regime’s harassment and incarceration of dissidents after the events of the French Revolution triggered their abandonment of the principles of enlightened despotism; see above, 23. Battaglini surmises that the beginning of these “nine years” probably coincides with King Ferdinand’s edict of November 3, 1789, which ostensibly reactivated previous edicts against Freemasonry but in fact extended its remit to all those who formed or supported any association without regal approval. This policy culminated in 1794–1795 with the infamous Gran Processo dei Rei di Stato (Great Trial of the Enemies of the State), which resulted in three executions: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 93–94, note 2. See also 69. 5. That is to say, inspired by the principles of the Enlightenment. The term “philosophical” was commonly used by progressive thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe to designate attitudes and actions perceived as rational, scientific, enlightened, as opposed to those viewed as bigoted and prejudiced. 6. Francesco Pignatelli had been left to rule the Kingdom of Naples after the king and the court fled to Sicily on December 23 1798 (see Rao, “La repubblica napoletana del 1799,” 471–76). At this early stage in the life of the Republic, Fonseca Pimentel analyses popular antagonism exclusively in terms of the effects of propaganda.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 95 came to pass: as the misguided plebs laid down their arms in the city streets, the generous victors embraced their raging attackers. On January 19 and 20, a few intrepid citizens entered the castle of Sant’Eramo7 by a ruse, locked themselves in, swearing to either bring about liberty or be buried under its ruins, raised the tree of liberty, and, speaking in the name of the Patriots who were scattered and prevented from gathering there, proclaimed and swore in the one and indivisible Neapolitan Republic on the morning of January 21, a date that is now memorable. Finally, on the twenty-third day of the month at two in the afternoon, the conquering army of victors appeared. How beautiful it was to see the fraternizing between victors and conquered instead of rage and blood, and the generous General Championnet confirm our liberty on behalf of his unvanquished Nation, recognize the proclamation of our Republic, establish our Government, and issue repeated proclamations guaranteeing everyone’s property and safety. It is well known how the banished Despot made his bombastic entry into Rome, followed by a cowardly flight to Palermo aboard an English vessel, taking with him all the spoils that he had despotically accumulated by plundering both public and private assets, thereby committing the ultimate robbery towards the Nation, despoiled of the last remnants of its currency reserves.8 But the detailed account of what happened next will have to be postponed to the next issues, as there are so many interesting proclamations and edicts that we must publish here. We will just mention briefly that on Monday, January 21, one hour before midday, the first French columns appeared on two flanks, in Foria and Poggioreale. They made an immediate attack on the plebs, who were lying in wait with a few hundred Schiavoni9 and other soldiers of our army who had been forced to join 7. Sant’Eramo, generally known as the castle of Sant’Elmo, is situated on a central height overlooking the city. Fonseca Pimentel clearly recalls the events largely from the viewpoint of Sant’Elmo, where she was involved with the proclamation of the Republic. All the places she mentions were then visible from that height. From Sant’Elmo, she would be able to see the “first French columns” making their way towards the city from the eastern outskirts of Foria and Poggioreale, and the fires lit in Capodimonte, on a height about one and a half miles north of Sant’Elmo. Her perspective then moves closer, to the skirmishes between the Jacobins and the “mutinous plebs” at S. Giovanni a Carbonara, northeast of Sant’Elmo just off the present-day Via Carbonara; to the Incurabili hospital, a little closer, on present-day Via Maria Longo, and the Madonna de’ Sette Dolori, just below the castle; then back a little, to the Largo dello Spirito Santo, half way between the Incurabili and the Madonna de’ Sette Dolori; and down to the adjacent Via Toledo, to this day one of the main streets in the city. The next day her eye follows the French unit climbing up Via dell’Infrascata (present-day Via Salvator Rosa), one of the scale (stairways) which twist their way up on the northern side of the castle, and then swings round to Santa Lucia del Monte (the site of the Madonna de’ Sette Dolori), and further out to the Largo delle Pigne (present-day Piazza Cavour) beside the Incurabili hospital. 8. See above, 70. 9. According to Croce, the Schiavoni, popularly known as camiciotti, were the soldiers of the king’s Albanian regiment: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, 14. See also Giuseppe Antonio Tedeschi

96 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL them. From 21 hours10 for almost one hour and a half the French began to retreat slowly, aiming to draw the plebs out into open country. But the Patriots in Sant’Eramo, who were unaware of this plan, observing the French retreat, fired a few shots over those who were resisting in both Foria and Poggioreale with the aim of protecting them. And from high up in the castle one could see them open out and scatter immediately. From then on, and definitely towards evening, the French fire became much more intense, and at one hour of the night11 the soldiers of the most advanced detachment, moving forward swiftly just as they had pretended slowly to retreat, managed to entrench themselves in Foria. From then on there were no more hostilities for the rest of the night. The Patriots in Sant’Eramo could see the fires lit in Capodimonte, a sign of the presence of troops, and, because of the regular pattern of the fires surmising them to be French troops, they dispatched citizen Ruggiero12 in the dead of night to Capodimonte, which he reached via a roundabout route because of the insurrection in the countryside, to check the situation and negotiate with the French. At dawn on the following day, January 22, the two Generals, former Prince Moliterni and former Duke of Roccaromana,13 wrote to the city and its Cardinal, exhorting them to get the people to abandon a resistance that was bound to become the more harmful to them the longer it continued, with a warning to the ringleaders and an offer to mediate between the people and the generous French army. Meanwhile, at 16 hours in the and Ermenegildo Tedeschi, Diario 1799–1829 di Ascoli Satriano, ed. Mario Simone (Foggia: Amministrazione provinciale di Capitanata, 1963), 23. 10. About 2:30 p.m., since the day was set to begin at sunset—a peculiarity of Italy; at times, Fonseca Pimentel herself refers to “Italian time.” Travelers often commented on the peculiarities of the Italian timekeeping practice, whereby “an hour after sunset … [the clocks] strike one, and so progressively to twenty-four”: John George Keysler, Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain, translated from the German, 2nd ed. (London: A. Linden and T. Field, 1756–1757), 1:301. On the history of time management in different cultures, see Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Samuel L. Macey, Clocks and the Cosmos: Time in Western Life and Thought (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980); Francesco Maiello, Storia del calendario: La misurazione del tempo, 1450–1800 (Turin: Einaudi, 1994). From now on the approximate equivalent of the time indicated will be given in footnotes, approximate for the obvious reason that we cannot know the exact time of sunset on any given day. 11. About 6:30 p.m. 12. Eleuterio Ruggiero, later to become a colonel in the army of the Republic, had, according to one source, offered to travel to the French encampment dressed as a hermit. After the Republic was overturned, he was put to death in January 1800. See Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 14n2, and Drusco, Anarchia popolare, 64n1. Drusco was an eyewitness to the events. 13. On Pignatelli and Roccaromana see above, 72 note 182; also Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 14, and Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 1:386–95. From the very first issue of the journal, scrupulous attention is paid to using the new designations under the Republican regime: Pignatelli’s and Caracciolo’s aristocratic titles are indicated as “former” titles, just as Eleuterio Ruggiero, mentioned above, is “citizen” Ruggiero.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 97 morning,14 hostilities started again, more ferocious than ever. Those Patriots who had remained in Naples and managed to hide from the plebs and arm themselves, gathered in various positions and so managed to help the French army enter the city from different parts. They were shooting at the mutinous plebs, some from S. Giovanni a Carbonara, some, especially the medics, from the Incurabili hospital, and some from other spots along the route. And from time to time Sant’Eramo fired their shots again. Between 21 and 22 hours,15 a section of the French unit from Capodimonte reached Sant’Eramo with the guide who had been dispatched to join them. After a brief rest they, together with fifty Patriots, moved down the Madonna de’ Sette Dolori with the aim of joining up with another French unit at the largo dello Spirito Santo. But they encountered fierce resistance on the street named after Toledo, and besides, night was falling. When the French sounded retreat, they were not heard by those of our side who were most involved in the fighting, and two brave young men, Francesco Palomba and N. Moscadelli,16 lost their lives, and Gaetano de Curtis was injured. The French troops withdrew to Sant’Eramo, where they were joined by another French unit, which had climbed up the via dell’Infrascata from the via de’ Studj; and another unit established itself on the heights of Santa Lucia del Monte, while another took position at the Largo delle Pigne. The General had issued orders that no house should be harmed, and only the ones that had harbored resistance should be torched. A few houses in one place only were set on fire, whether because of this order or because they were hit by a shell fired from Santa Lucia del Monte, and it was impossible to avoid harming several families in the ensuing scuffle. On the Wednesday morning the French army was readying itself to strike and shell the city from all sides should it continue to resist; but after a few limited attacks the plebs surrendered and began to throw down their weapons. The French units that had spent the night in Sant’Eramo with a good many Patriots came in the early hours of the morning, together with other good citizens who had joined up with them along the way, to conquer the other castles. General Championnet dispatched an adjutant to Sant’Eramo with an order to fire at them if they did not lower the royal standard within the hour. They did fire at the three castles, Nuovo, dell’Ovo, and del Carmine,17 which proved to be the most obdurate, and also at a mob which had gathered outside the former royal palace, intent on plundering it. Two hours 14. About 9:30 a.m. 15. About 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. 16. Francesco Palomba came from the Basilicata region; N. Moscadelli probably came from Trani in Apulia, assuming he was the same person who is referred to as Antonio Moscadelli on March 9 in MN, No. 11; see 138. See also Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 15. 17. All three castles had the function of protecting the city from attacks from the sea. The first two still exist. Castel Nuovo is now known as Maschio Angioino, while Castel del Carmine, which was situated near Piazza del Carmine to the east, has since been demolished.

98 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL after midday the city was calm, and General Championnet was able to make his glorious peaceful entry, and ride through it peacefully at the head of a cavalry unit, after which he withdrew for the night into the Santobuono palace.18 On the same day an edict was posted ordering that all arms should be handed in, and the next day, January 24, all shops were instructed to reopen, and the following proclamation was issued. ………………19

SUPPLEMENT to No. 1 ………………20 On Saturday, January 26 (7 Pluviose), the new Municipality took possession of the palace of the Comune, and the provisional Government of the Theater hall in the former royal palace.21 Its first act was distributing itself over the various government committees, that is to say over six Committees, one of them the central committee, and the others presiding over legislation, general policing, military matters, finances, and interior administration. The central committee consists of five members, and each of the others of four including the president, whose term of office will be of one month. The president of the central committee is also president of the whole provisional government, and has the right to attend all committees and share in their decision making. The current president is citizen Carlo Laubert.22 Each committee has various bureaus, and a secretary who is present at its deliberations and who, together with the president, ratifies the endorsement of official acts. We shall in due course report on the configurations of the laws. On that night and the following two nights there was lighting all over the city, by oil lamps only, however, by order; and equally front doors 30 paces apart 18. The Santobuono palace is located on present-day Via Carbonara, not far from the Porta Capuana, and therefore in a spot of strategic importance. 19. The rest of this first issue reprints Championnet’s proclamation, his edict outlining the provisional structure of the new Republic’s representative and legislative bodies, and the texts both of his address to the newly-nominated provisional government and of the speech given in reply by its president Carlo Lauberg. 20. Much of this supplement to the first issue of the Monitore summarizes or reproduces Chanpionnet’s proclamations and nominations of members of the municipality of Naples. 21. The symbolism of the newborn Republican government taking over what had been the royal palace is plain to see. The palace of the Comune was not really a palace; rather, the assembly of city deputies who constituted the comune met in the monastery of San Lorenzo. 22. On “Laubert” (but in fact Lauberg) see above, 138.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 99 were supposed to display a lighted lamp. Also, by order of Brigadier Dufresse, commandant of the city and fortresses of Naples, inns, eating places, and coffee shops close down by three o’clock;23 we point out here that this order has been misinterpreted with the result that shop owners also close down, with enormous inconvenience to our large population. On Sunday morning, after the public singing of a Te Deum in the cathedral church, the tree of Liberty was planted outside the former royal palace, accompanied by a gun salute and in the presence of general Championnet. It was a large pine tree with all its roots and some of its leaves, topped with a cap of liberty and flanked by a national flag tied to it with tricolored bands.24 The Patriots from Sant’Eramo had received a special invitation to this event and danced around it. In the evening a patriotic anthem was sung in the San Carlo national theater amidst the most joyful salutes to Liberty and the loudest curses of the expelled tyrant. ………………

No. 2: Tuesday, February 5, 1799 SEPTIDI 17 PLUVIOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE The situation of this capital City is not yet what good Patriots would wish it to be, but it does improve by the day: the few disagreeable isolated incidents are as nothing compared to the general calm and order. Public spirit was already widespread here, other than among the cowardly lackeys and parasites of the past government, and among that pitiful section of the People who because of its ignorance is 23. About 8:30 p.m. 24. This is the first instance of the raising of that major symbol of the Republican revolution, the Tree of Liberty. It is not clear whether it displays, intertwined together, the Neapolitan Republican flag and the French revolutionary colors (the blue, white, and red “tricolor”), or simply the Neapolitan Republican flag tied up in its own colors, which were red, yellow, and blue. The Tree of Liberty, the patriots dancing around it, the revolutionary revelries in the theater. All is well, or so it appears. The custom of erecting Trees of Liberty originated in France and then spread to the rest of Europe. It involved dressing a tree trunk with various decorations, standard among them a red beret on the top and a tricolored flag on the trunk itself, as well as flower garlands and tricolored ribbons. Around the tree there would be singing, dancing, banquets, and speeches. In Naples itself there were several episodes of raising of the Tree of Liberty, many but not all of which are mentioned in the Monitore. After the fall of the Republic, Jacobins were often stripped and searched for the telltale tattoo of the tree etched on their skin, usually on the thigh or the sole of their feet, and many were slaughtered by the mob below these trees, now designated as “infamous,” and the trees themselves were often dug up, knocked down or burned, and often replaced with a cross. On the Trees of Liberty in revolutionary Naples, see Addeo, L’ albero della libertà.

100 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL the more obdurate in its ways and the more easily misled. That public spirit now manifests itself with even greater vigor, no longer repressed by Tyranny. Every day eloquent public pronouncements aimed at the People are published by many zealous Citizens; it would nevertheless be desirable to see some such pronouncements specifically aimed at that section of it which one calls plebs, written in a manner appropriate to their intelligence, preferably even in their own language. We are accustomed to religious missions; now I call on the Government to establish civic missions, and I call on our numerous ecclesiastics whose civic zeal is on a par with their learning, and who are experienced at popular persuasion, to embark on this task even without the Government’s bidding. Those who stray because of ignorance are never fully to blame; therefore justice demands that we should bestow education on the plebs rather than condemnation. This is a task of the greatest urgency.25 In the meantime we can announce with civic delight that a coal merchant named Gabriele Stendardo, immediately after the proclamation of liberty, began to sell coal at a lower price; his civic action was emulated by cheese merchants, among them one called Vincenzo Altieri, who have lowered the price of white cheese, which is sold mainly to the people. Our Municipality has named them and praised them in a proclamation, even decreeing that their names should be displayed in the assembly room of the Municipality.26 Many people have come to return the goods that they had managed to salvage from pillage by the populace and royal larceny.

25. While MN, No. 1 is devoted to narration and rejoicing, No. 2 focuses on problems and exhortations to solve them. The first problem Fonseca Pimentel addresses is that of the People, here mentioned for the first time, and especially the plebs, which had been mentioned in the first issue of the Monitore. Her description of “the situation of this capital City” improving “by the day,” and “public spirit” being on the whole “widespread” betray some wishful thinking But she does recognize the lack of such public spirit in at least a section of the People, which at this stage she explains exclusively in terms of their “ignorance” and consequent vulnerability to hostile misinformation. Her suggested remedy is education. But she also introduces here for the first time an element of criticism of the actions of the Jacobin elite. “Zealous” the Citizens might be in their “eloquent public pronouncements,” but they need to do much more. The “plebs,” in particular, have a different level of understanding, even a different language. There is much to learn, as well, from the clergy, that category of people most experienced at “popular persuasion.” This topic will become a burning question in later issues of the Monitore. Now she is simply thinking in terms of adapting the revolutionary message for the benefit of the masses, and possibly using the Neapolitan dialect rather than standard Italian. Soon her analysis and her suggestions will become more sophisticated and more trenchant. 26. Here Fonseca Pimentel may be indulging, to some extent, in wishful thinking. She wants the Municipality to publicize the names of the worthy members of the “popolo” (merchants in this case) who are pursuing pricing policies that will benefit the poor, in accordance with the principles of the revolution. In fact, the Municipality had apparently just announced that “some citizens … have virtuously striven for the public good,” without mentioning names. Carlo Colletta, Proclami e sanzioni della Repubblica napoletana pubblicati per ordine del Governo provvisorio (Naples: Stamperia dell’Iride, 1863), 51.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 101 General Championnet himself played his part in arousing civic sentiments in those among the misguided plebs who had put up the most stubborn resistance, by attending the raising of the Tree of Liberty on Sunday in the market by the small pier, and generously urged them to enroll in the navy under our national flag, offering them also the more prestigious French patent.27 On that same Sunday morning the tree of liberty was raised in Santojorio, by public invitation of the municipality, and to the delight of all the citizens who witnessed the ceremony. Five hundred communes have already advised us of their democratization and loyalty to the capital.28 The provisional government is now dealing with the organization of Departments; for the time being it will appoint in every department a Commissar of the executive, three administrators, and six electors. ………………29 A few days ago a disguised English corvette chased three vessels of ours all the way into our inner harbor. Two of them, which were loaded with gunpowder and military equipment, managed to get away under the cannons of Castel dell’Ovo and the fort of Granatello,30 but the third was unable to maneuver properly, and its cargo was plundered. It had been laden with foodstuffs. All our guns

27. Fonseca Pimentel still deems the plebs “misguided.” The remedies offered by Championnet are entertainment (once again, the highly symbolic raising of the Tree of Liberty) and the offer of more secure jobs. Battaglini inclines to interpret this slightly unclear sentence as meaning that Championnet was addressing the sailors who lived in the neighborhood of the small pier, inviting them to go to sea under French “sailing patents,” which carried greater prestige than others among seamen: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 122. 28. This is the first time Fonseca Pimentel mentions the provinces. Their loyalty to the new government was always doubtful, and as time went by, they became more and more inclined to insurrection; see above, 74–78. The raising of the Tree of Liberty (in this case in Santojorio, which is likely to correspond to present-day San Giorgio del Sannio, formerly Santo Jorio di Montefusco, about forty miles inland) was not in itself a sign of generalized support, and the news of “five hundred communes” pledging their loyalty is to be taken with a pinch of salt. The situation was actually seriously unstable: see Antonio Lerra “Le Municipalità repubblicane del 1799 nel Mezzogiorno continentale: Assetti di governo, gruppi dirigenti, amministrazione,” in Vita quotidiana, coscienza religiosa e sensibilità civile nel Mezzogiorno continentale tra Sette e Ottocento: Atti del convegno, Lecce, 10–11 ottobre 2005, ed. Francesco Gaudioso (Galatina: Congedo, 2006), 39–47, and further on in MN, No. 2, 74–78. Fonseca Pimentel shows a keen and distressed awareness of the whole question of insurrection. Here she indulges in some excessive optimism expressed in typical Republican rhetoric, uncritically accepting a report of “democratization.” 29. Omitted here: details regarding the composition of the various committees of government. 30. This fort is situated in the southern outskirts of Naples, in the direction of Portici.

102 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL fired on the corvette, but it was already too far out to be damaged, and it got away with its loot. A law has been issued concerning the forced loan of two and a half million to be paid to the French army as part payment of the military contribution imposed on this City and its surrounding area. Our Municipality has made several civic representations to the Government on this count, and yesterday a meeting was held with the most upright citizens whom it had designated to undertake the collection of this contribution, in order to devise the means that would be the least onerous for our impoverished population. A law has been issued ordering all public officials to resume their activities on a provisional basis. Our courts of justice opened yesterday, with the lawyers and members of the judiciary dressed in their ordinary clothes rather than formal wear, and decrees were drafted no longer in Latin but in the Italian language. Next Thursday the University will reopen. Our stagecoaches to the Abruzzo were unable to get through because of a troublesome insurrection arising in Sulmona, where all the old informants and seditious troublemakers of those ex-provinces with their rural areas, together with a handful of malcontents, upset the peaceful lives of the local people and infest the public roads.31 Troop reinforcements will be sent without delay, and we anxiously await further news. We do, however, feel consoled by the better news from the ex-province of Lecce, where the patriotic party has thwarted all the evil plots of the party of the ex-governor Marulli.32 Yesterday saw the return of Citizen Giuseppe Cestari, who is rather well known in the Republic of Letters and in the History of the nation for his writings always imbued with devotion to the public, and even better known in the history of persecution as its first victim.33 31. At this stage, Fonseca Pimentel views insurrection exclusively as a problem generated by “troublemakers” and “malcontents” linked to the old regime, and in any case as a minority phenomenon to be set against the “peaceful lives of the local people.” Here she calls it merely “troublesome,” while later she will find it “painful” and “distressing”: MN, No. 3, 106; No. 4, 111. 32. Francesco Marulli had been governor of Lecce in Apulia from 1787. He may or may not have been hatching “evil plots” in February 1799. According to a memoir published by his descendant Gennaro Marulli, on becoming convinced that the cause of the king was lost, he committed suicide on January 13: Gennaro Marulli, Ragguagli storici sul Regno delle Due Sicilie dall’epoca della francese rivolta fino al 1815 (Naples: Luigi Jaccarino, 1844–1846), 1:335–64. On the other hand, according to another source, Marulli actually gave his support to the Republic, and committed suicide when he found himself unable to restrain the local populace who were rioting in protest at his refusal to reinstate the monarchical regime: Saverio La Sorsa, Storia di Puglia (Bari: Tipografia Levante, 1953–1962), 5:81–83. Battaglini inclines to La Sorsa’s version of events: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 125n22. 33. Giuseppe Cestari was one of the priests who gave their support, first, to the progressive cause during the last years of the Bourbon regime, and later to the Republic. He was one of the dissidents who were exiled in 1794, and was later imprisoned in 1797. He died fighting against Ruffo’s army.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 103 ………………34 The bill regarding the abolition of fideicommissa was debated and passed yesterday. We shall talk about it at length in the next issue.

SUPPLEMENT to No. 2 ………………35 The emblem, or coat of arms of our Republic is similar to the French one. Below is a letter from one of our fellow Citizens who had proposed a different one to the Provisional Government.36 Citizen President Seeing as in a Democracy the right of petition pertains to every individual, and all individuals owe it to the state to contribute their ideas when these may contain elements of public value, I would ask you to convey the following points to the Provisional Government. The emblem of a Republic ought to be, if at all possible, like a pictograph, in that it should, through a quick and brief syllogism, remind Citizens of their duties, On Cestari, see Benedetto Croce, Uomini e cose della vecchia Italia (Bari: Laterza, 1927), 2:140–42, 149, 152, and 154; and Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 1:331–32. The “Republic of Letters” refers to the international intellectual community of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and America among whom circulated the ideas of the Enlightenment. 34. Omitted here: texts of new laws and Championnet’s instructions. 35. Omitted here: general instructions by President Lauberg, and particular instructions to the Chiefs of Courts of Justice 36. Although Fonseca Pimentel refers to herself obliquely as “one of our fellow Citizens,” she nonetheless signs the letter with her full name. This is the first of several instances in which she exercises her democratic right to disagree with governmental decisions. The emblem of the Neapolitan Republic that she wants modified consisted of a “half-naked woman leaning her right hand on a consular fascia surmounted by an axe, and flanked on her left by a long rod surmounted by a red beret”: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 133n6. She wants it replaced by the picture of a man, and her argument in favor of such change rests entirely and uncritically on the assumption that human beings are generically male, as was the norm for the era in which she lived—an assumption also evident in her use of the adjective “virile” to describe the ideal Republic, especially ironic in that “republic” is a feminine noun in Italian. Instead of a “half-naked woman,” this self-designated cittadina (woman citizen) proposes an almost naked man to represent the ideal citizen, understood to be a righteous farmer and soldier.

104 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL and at the same time remind Foreigners of the principles on which it rests, as well as its fundamental tenets. So, because our Republic must arise active, industrious, full of virile and generous spirits; and since every citizen has an intrinsic natural disposition, together with an intrinsic task and duty in society, to till and defend the soil he lives on and the motherland; and given that this same motherland must ensure through the justice system that he reap the fruits of his labors, balancing against this the occasions when he must be armed for his own and the common defense; and seeing as toil and sobriety are the physical and moral sources of civic virtues, I am inscribing all these essential truths in the emblem that I propose. A sturdy man, of an age between youth and adulthood, standing almost naked, covered only by a Roman toga just pinned on the shoulders, with the right band shortened and wrapped around his left side, suggesting a man in procinctu,37 that is to say, a man about to go into action, or always ready for action; underneath the toga or cloak the military strap with the scabbard will be visible; with his right foot he will trample with disdain all the symbols of refinement and opulence, leaning his left hand on a spade, and holding in his right hand the hilt of a naked sword with its tip facing the ground. A Genius with the scales of justice will be in the upper right-hand side; and agricultural and military tools will be scattered on the ground; all round the motto Aratro, gladio, justitia, stat Civitas, & crescit.38 The toga, or cloak, could be either yellow (the national color), or perhaps blue, like the color generally worn by our country folk, pinned on the shoulders with two clasps in the national colors, with tricolored bands wrapping the whole picture. God bring joy to the Republic, yourself, and the Provisional Government. Year VII of Liberty, day IV of the Neapolitan Republic. Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel

No. 3: Saturday, February 9, 1799 PRIMIDI 21 PLUVIOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE While we were urging, in the past issue, the publication by some zealous citizen of civic addresses in our Neapolitan vernacular, in order to spread civic education to that section of the people whose sole language it is and who understand none other, our wish was being fulfilled by the aptly composed address that appeared 37. In Latin in the original. 38. “On the plow, the sword, and justice, the State stands and prospers.” The term “Genius” refers to a religious or mythological figure acting as a guardian spirit.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 105 on the fifteenth of the rainy month at the hand of the friend of men and patriots.39 In the name of all Patriots let us therefore all give thanks to this great fellow citizen of ours, exhort others to imitate his example, and himself to continue. This section of the People, which we will have to continue calling plebs until a better education raises it to the true dignity of being People, comprises not only the numerous ordinary folk of the city, but also those, more respectable folk, who live in the country: and while in a monarchy the strength of the State rests on this section, in a Democracy not only does its strength but also its dignity rest upon it. Here a huge chasm, perhaps greater than anywhere else, separates this section from the rest of the People, for the very reason that there is no common tongue. If we look for the causes of our recent troubles, we will see that they are specifically linked to this division; fomenting this division is the secret tool of all tyrannies, more so of ours; our secret tool must be its swift destruction. So, until the plebs, through the establishment of a National education, comes to think as People, the People will have to stoop to speaking like plebs. Therefore every good citizen who finds it easy to talk and mingle with the plebs because they share the local common tongue, fulfils a useful task, indeed a duty.40 With the next news from the Abruzzi we learned that the former Royal Auditor Cipicchia, worthy minister of that worthy Court, hand in glove with one Proni d’Introdacqua, a frequently mentioned name among the local émigrés,41 had managed, by misappropriating the title of Holy Faith,42 to put themselves at 39. The phrase “of the rainy month at the hand of the friend of men and patriots” is given in Neapolitan, the date, corresponding to February 3, expressed in a Neapolitan equivalent of the Republican calendar (15 of the month when it rains). The “address” was reprinted in Giornale Patriotico: see above, note 2. 40. Fonseca Pimentel’s use of the term “plebs” here still has negative connotations. The plebs are uneducated, and therefore unable to resist the divisive ploys of “troublemakers.” They are not, or not yet, “people,” or rather “People.” But they can be redeemed, and lifted into becoming “People” through a nationwide education program. Until this aim can be fulfilled, the “People” must lower themselves into the language and cultural parameters of the plebs. There is a clear and explicit acknowledgement here of the linguistic chasm between plebs and “People,” who appear to be, in this case, the rightthinking supporters of the Republic. In these observations, placed between the praise for the “civic discourses” produced in Neapolitan dialect and the extended reporting and analysis of the insurgency in the provinces, she addresses for the first time the huge question of the rural populations. In the country, as she sees it, there is an unspecified layer of population below the “plebs,” which term designates the more respectable section of the rural poor. 41. On Giuseppe Pronio d’Introdacqua, see Luigi Coppa-Zuccari, ed., L’invasione francese negli Abruzzi, 1798–1810 (L’Aquila: Vecchioni, 1928), 1:821–76. According to Battaglini, Cipicchia was one of the leaders of the insurgency in Abruzzo: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 150n3. 42. “Holy Faith” (Santa Fede) was the slogan adopted by Cardinal Ruffo for the peasant army he recruited to fight against the Neapolitan Republic: see above, 79. At this point, Ruffo had just landed in Calabria. The assumption here is that the “holy faith” slogan would be exploited also by other bands of insurgents with the aim of misleading the rural populace into the false belief that they were the true upholders of the Christian faith.

106 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL the head of almost 2,000 men and about 700 men respectively, while the French had regrouped their forces in L’Aquila and Pescara. With the latest news received this last Thursday, February 7, we learned that the French had beaten and pursued the insurgents into Ascoli itself, where they slew 300 of them. More painful is the situation in the Molise, where seditious troublemakers in various Lands have been pursuing the Patriots, of whom many were killed, and the others, having been subjected to threats, fear for their lives.43 The young Patriots, both from the Molise and the Abruzzi, filled with that brave fervor that comes from love of the motherland, together with the wish to protect their families, on hearing this dreadful news hastened to present a joint plea to our Government asking them to obtain for them permission from the General-in-Chief to arm themselves, as well as to appoint a military Commander, who would lead them posthaste to assist their native Lands, themselves being ready to set off within 24 hours. Their request has not yet received a response. On the other hand, one hears that 3,000 men have been dispatched by the abovementioned General-in-Chief, and we are therefore confident that these disturbances will soon be quelled. And because there are many good Patriots scattered about these lands, we are hopeful that there will be no military executions, because this remedy is worse than the disease: for every torched village thirty more turn against us, the punishment falls indiscriminately on good and bad people, destitution spreads to the whole district, and even the most ardent patriot is pained at the sight of his native village going up in flames. Lastly, there is no doubt that alongside many seditious troublemakers there are many who are simply misguided; the loss of even one man who could see the error of his ways is a true loss in a Democracy; and those who weaken a friendly population allied with us weaken themselves. Being under the protection of France, we share with her both friends and enemies, our strength is her strength, the French army is well-established among us, and resistance against her is merely insurgency against ourselves. Therefore, healthy politics requires not military devastation, such as was employed in the very different circumstances of the initial arrival of the French army against the populations who opposed it, but the individual punishment of culprits, which is also the only punishment that befits French generosity and civilization, the fundamental principles of their constitution, and the very interests of France itself.44 43. The insurgency, still explained in terms of hostile propaganda (produced by “seditious troublemakers”), is now perceived as “painful.” Later it will be called “distressing” (disgustosissime); see, for example MN, No. 4, 111; No. 5, 114. 44. Fonseca Pimentel’s perception of the insurgencies has become more nuanced. While she still engages in wishful thinking—she remains confident, for instance, that the disturbances will “soon be quelled”—she now distinguishes between those who are irredeemable enemies and those who are just “misguided,” and might come to recognize their error. More significantly, she identifies indiscriminate repression as a major cause of further rebellion. She also begins to doubt the efficacy and wisdom of

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 107 As against the abovementioned insurgencies, however, we are delighted that in the valiant Calabrias, as the Courier dispatched by the Government passed through and left his instructions, all those communes were municipalizing and raising the tree of liberty. We have news that the same has already happened even in Cosenza. This was happening in Apulia as well; at the end of this issue we print our Representative Logoteta’s impassioned address to his fellow Calabrians and the two letters to the Government by the communes of Trani and Barletta in which they announce their democratization, with the Government’s replies.45 On Thursday morning, February 7, there took place a general inspection of the French army, the Infantry opposite Castel nuovo, and the Cavalry outside what has now become the national Palace; then, following various rumors and reports concerning hidden weapons, an order on behalf of General Championnet was again broadcast through the streets requesting their voluntary surrender, with a promise of 24 lire to those who gave information about a few weapons, and a bigger prize for information about a bigger cache. The soldiers then remained on armed alert, and Patriots were invited to accompany the French patrols on their house-to-house searches. All was accomplished peacefully, and very few arms were found: in the house of a poor man a bag was discovered with various parts of a musket, and one with a few cartridges and some powder, four sabers and four swords. They did find over thirty rifles in an underground store in Pizzofalcone, while in Piazza di Porto and the Molo piccolo, two neighborhoods that had been especially targeted by informers, nothing was found. A few of their inhabitants were nonetheless arrested on suspicion of hiding weapons.46

the policy of blanket repression by the French army, which she sees as a betrayal of the very principles of “French civilization.” The myth of the Mother Republic is still alive, but only in part. 45. Part of Calabria, mainly the area bordering on the Tyrrhenian coast and the inland mountain ridge of Sila, supported the Republican government, while the western end of the region overlooking the island of Sicily remained fiercely hostile. On attitudes to the Republican government in Calabria, see Gaetano Cingari, Giacobini e sanfedisti in Calabria (Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1957). The situation in Apulia was different: it was one of the first areas to embrace republican principles, probably because of the fierce conflict that arose when duties imposed by feudal lords on the poor generated the latter’s initial support for the Jacobins, who in Apulia had championed the demands of the poor—a rare case of Italian Jacobins operating with mass support. This support, however, soon turned to bitter opposition when taxes increased and other impositions were mandated under the French occupation. On the situation in Apulia, see La Sorsa, Storia di Puglia, 5:67–171; and Antonio Lucarelli, La Puglia nella rivoluzione napoletana del 1799: Storia documentata, 2nd edition, ed. Mario Proto (Manduria-BariRome: P. Lacaita, 1998). 46. De Nicola’s diary paints a rather less rosy picture of the response of Neapolitans to the search for arms by the French troops. He talks of a city closing in on itself, where streets are “deserted” and people are dominated by “agitation” and even “terror”: Diario napoletano, 1:49–50.

108 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Following a few disturbances caused by some French soldiers while roaming through the City at night, four of whom were arrested during the night of 15 Pluviose (February 3), the General-in-Chief, given the indiscipline and rowdy behavior of the army, has issued a severe ruling, dated February 16, for the implementation of which the major generals and the fortress commanders will be held personally responsible, and he further proclaims that he will be inflexible.47 ……………… Our municipality has been divided into six Committees so that it may better fulfill its different tasks. These are the Central Committee, and the Committees in charge of Food Supplies, Finances, Policing, Military Matters, and Public Institutions. Also, vigilant over everything that could improve public morals, it has entrusted our worthy Representative Giuseppe Logoteta with the task of reviewing theatrical librettoes.48 Moreover, mindful that in a representative Republic, Democracy relies entirely on freedom of the press, by virtue of which all Citizens, through free votes and free censorship exercise their individual share of the common sovereignty, it has proclaimed the freedom of the press with the public edict that follows. It is for the wisdom of the Legislators to determine what kind of productions exactly are to be considered seditious, incendiary etc., so that this will not be left to the vague arbitrary whims of the Judges, and freedom of the press will not turn into slavery of the press, and of individuals.49 ………………

47. Championnet’s ruling was but one of many issued with the aim of improving the relationship between the local population and the occupying French army. The latter’s arrogant and overbearing behavior, which not infrequently degenerated into robbery and physical violence, provoked the generalized hostility of Neapolitans, and never really found a satisfactory solution: see Marc-Antoine Jullien, Lettere e documenti, ed. Mario Battaglini (Naples: Vivarium, 1997). 48. This is one of several complimentary references to Logoteta, who might have been, according to Battaglini, the person responsible for the alteration to the text of the Monitore found in copy B: see above, 83. Theatrical censorship under the Neapolitan Republican was intended to prevent “the people” from being inspired by any sentiments other than “patriotism, virtue, and healthy morals,” as in the program drafted by Minister for Internal Affairs Luigi Conforti: see Battaglini, ed., Atti, leggi, proclami, 1:466. 49. The public edict both proclaims freedom of the press and condemns “license” and “abuses.” It specifies that all citizens are free to publish without prior checks and authorization, but are required to sign their names to any writing that they wish to publish, so that the government will be in a position to both applaud works inspired by “patriotic zeal” and “retaliate” against those that are “seditious, incendiary, prejudicial to the republican spirit and morals.” Fonseca Pimentel’s comments are somewhat ambiguous: she clearly doubts the judiciary’s competence and integrity, while she is also skeptical about this distinction between “freedom” and “license.”

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 109 No. 4: Tuesday, February 12, 1799 QUARTIDI 24 PLUVIOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Since in our times public newssheets take over the role once performed by Chronicles, hence furnishing materials to history by preserving the memory of current events, so it will be fitting here to preface the promised account of what occurred between the despot’s flight and the proclamation of the Republic with the narration of a few preceding anecdotes.50 While the former King was still encamped in San Germano,51 and his ama52 zonic wife, in her impatience to wear the third crown and so achieve her own triregnum,53 urged him to march on Rome, he, whose fear made him less ambitious than his wife, sent for General Colli54 to come from Naples, and asked again for his views. Colli came, inspected, and praised the troops, but nevertheless reiterated what he said before;55 namely, that it was a fine-looking army, but it was inexperienced, and so his advice was not to risk war but keep it for border protection only. Maria Carolina was there, and she disliked this judgment. She treated the General in a somewhat ill-tempered manner, and so managed to get him to leave the encampment; but this had no effect on her husband, whose timidity engendered sound counsel, and who therefore, mindful of the General’s words, absolutely refused to set forth. Whereupon there took place the timely arrival of Cabinet courier Ferreri,56 who already held a not insignificant position among the queenly spies, bearing a letter from Giansanti,57 the Secretary to the Vienna Legation. The letter reported that a peace settlement with the [Habsburg] Empire 50. This is the first explicit statement of the intended function of the Monitore to document historical events. 51. San Germano was the old name of modern-day Cassino. 52. Fonseca Pimentel appends the following note to the designation of Maria Carolina as “amazonic”: “N.B. Maria Carolina Mater Castrorum [Mother of encampments] went around in San Germano dressed like an Amazon in a jacket styled in military fashion, military buttons bearing the lily [the lily appeared on the Bourbon flag], and wearing a hat with a feather.” 53. This is the beginning of a viciously sarcastic piece about the former sovereigns, where Ferdinand is portrayed as a pathetic and cowardly imbecile, while Maria Carolina is the real villain, driven by insane ambitions. Here she is presented as pushing her reluctant husband to keep fighting to conquer Rome because she wants to wear the triregnum, the papal tiara signifying the pope’s immense sovereignty. At this time, Pope Pius VI was languishing in France, a prisoner of Napoleon 54. Marquis Michele Colli was an Austrian General. 55. There may be a muted allusion here to Julius Caesar’s famous triumphant dictum veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered), which serves by contrast to highlight the near farcical situation of a pathetic sovereign caught in inglorious circumstances. 56. Alessandro Ferreri, courier to the court, was killed by a mob in December 1798. 57. Abbot Nicola Giansanti.

110 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL was imminent, and that the Emperor was utterly averse to restarting the war. The former queen, together with her minister Acton, who regularly intercepted and opened letters when no one was looking, and were adroit in the game of altering or even fabricating them at will, … concealed the genuine letter and replaced it with another. The bogus letter alleged that the Emperor had already declared war, and eighty thousand men were already at the Italian borders. Now our readers will remember the rumor that spread widely among us at the time: not only were those eighty thousand men said to be on their way, but soon after they were supposed to have arrived in Rimini.58 This letter gave courage to faint-hearted Ferdinand, who produced his encyclical to his beloved sons and subjects, and on November 22, headed out to Rome so he could offer a third crown to his wife, and restore Pius VI to his see.59 ……………… What happened in Rome is already common knowledge, and does not belong with this narrative. It is well-known how Ferdinand fled in secret and at lightning speed one day after summoning the Viceroy and the Magistrates who were to govern in his name, and how on December 10, or 11, his belligerent wife received the unexpected news of the defeat. At this point, a new phenomenon occurred. Maria Carolina together with her minister,60 anticipating what was about to happen, and made aware by their own shame of just how deeply they were hated by the public, swung from immense audacity to terror and panic, and so, no longer feeling safe in Naples, thought rather of escaping to Palermo. Ferdinand on the other hand, being no less of a tyrant but more stupidly a tyrant, was spurred by his stupidity to feel confident about staying. 58. Battaglini argues in Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 168–69, on the basis of King Ferdinand’s diary, that the story of the fabricated letter is a mere legend. Perhaps, rather, this whole piece on Ferdinand, Maria Carolina, and Acton and their misdeeds should be read not so much as an objective account of events—in spite of Fonseca Pimentel’s initial statement—but rather as a demonstration of savage political journalism aimed at discrediting the former court. A similar verbal assault is found in MN, No. 6, at 118–121. The context is the European-wide war against France by the coalition of European sovereigns, including the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. 59. The irony continues: Ferdinand is presented as a kind of mock pope (only popes issue encyclicals), and Maria Carolina, the “former queen,” continues to be the chief villain—the one whose insane ambition spurs Ferdinand to reach for unattainable aims. Pope Pius VI would die in France, and never returned to his see. 60. An oblique reference to Acton, who is mentioned explicitly below as the chief accomplice in Maria Carolina’s evil plots. Further down more names are added to the list: Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma (on whom see above, 10 and 14–15) and Admiral Nelson, commander of the anti-French fleet, whose treachery would be instrumental, six months later, in bringing Fonseca Pimentel to the scaffold: see above, 13.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 111 Nonetheless, the decision to flee was made in the little private Council of Maria Carolina and Giovanni Acton, and in order to mislead, in fact endanger the Peoples, the famous appeal was issued for a mass army, with the promise to the people of the Abruzzo that Ferdinand in person would make haste with a powerful army. Meanwhile, those two busied themselves at night loading onto English ships the spoils they had stockpiled through their joint plundering. The finest jewels, medals, and cameos were loaded with 14 paintings from the museum at Capodimonte in 8 chests, and the best items from the museum in Portici were packed in 59 chests, which were also spirited away.61 Once all was set for departure, they made plans for what was to happen after they had gone together with admiral Nelson, the English Minister Hamilton, and the selfsame’s famous wife, whose fame was even greater as a subsidiary to Maria Carolina’s intrigues … Lastly they put their minds to contriving some ruse to impel the confused, feeble, and ever undecided Ferdinand to pack up and depart. ……………… The news we receive from our hinterland is distressing in the extreme, and what is worse, unclear. We reported that the French troops had vanquished the seditious troublemakers of the Abruzzi, slaughtering 300 of them in Ascoli, where they had taken shelter. Such was the Government’s understanding. But now it is said that Proni has been either arrested or killed; some say he has gone into hiding. Various coachmen and others coming out of these lands, on the contrary, report various instances of abduction, imprisonment, and killing of the worthiest of Patriots in many of these communes. There are rumors of the theft of public funds, of the arrest in Chieti of Citizen ex-Baron Nolli, nor is there any news of the worthy representative Melchiorre Delfico. Even worse disturbances are taking place in the Basilicata, and the five Albanian communities of the Molise are ravaging town and country with armed raids, plundering and slaughtering. Public letters from the towns of Trani and Barletta were relayed to the Government. Now it is reported that Forges’s brother and the other deputies who drafted the letters and democratized these towns have been thrown into jail. All the old informants, spies, and criminals come together into these armed bands, which then break into the Communes, extort contributions, seize public funds, and coerce peaceful Citizens to take up arms and join them. The news we gave last Saturday of three thousand French troops marching to the Abruzzi was premature. This morning General Duhesme left at the head of the first division of five thousand men; apparently they will set up their headquarters in Serra Capriola and fan out from

61. On this instance of royal robbery, see above, 70.

112 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL there as the need arises. The good patriots of the Abruzzi and the Molise, whom we mentioned in the previous issue, will join him there.62 In the last issue we did not feature the law on fideicommissa because the printed copy available was in fact apocryphal, more like a draft of the law than the law itself. We shall not mislead the public on this point. What follows is the text of the law, together with an account of the discussion that took place before its approval. Citizen Giuseppe Albanese, one of the Representatives of the legislative Committee, proposed the law concerning the abolition of fideicommissa, which was then opened to debate. Representatives Mario Pagano and Domenico Forges maintained that, after the abolition of fideicommissa, assets should be assigned in equal parts to the firstborn and other siblings, on the grounds of the equality that ought to exist among all siblings, who should have the same rights, given that it is the duty of all good legislation to treat everyone according to their rights. Representative Bassal spoke next. He argued that, since all new laws must be about the future rather than the past, and given that the firstborn had acquired their rights over their fideicommissa, while the other siblings had acquired their rights over their leases only, it would be unjust to destroy the rights of the former in order to provide for the latter. He therefore concluded that each and every one should retain the ownership of what they had already acquired, and maintained that the ownership of the estates should rest with the firstborn, leaving their leases to the others. Representative Albanese concurred with the principle of representative Bassal’s position, but not with the details of its application. He contended that the nature of owned assets must be in keeping with the free conditions of their owners. He added that, since for the time being the faculty of making wills remained in existence, fideicommissa must be viewed as mere testamentary dispositions free of the fideicommissal obligation. Therefore all who were named in testamentary wills should retain the ownership of what they had acquired, being, however, free of added constraints, and the shares due to the other siblings should be calculated according to their leases, on the basis of a three per cent rate.

62. Antonio Nolli, who had acquired the title of baron from his father and bought feudal lands jointly with him, was typical of that class of new landowners who supported reforms and, later, the Republican regime. On Nolli, see Roberto Tomassetti, Antonio Nolli, Barone di Tollo (Lanciano: Rivista abruzzese, 2005). Melchiorre Delfico was President of the Supreme Council of the city of Pescara. Forges is Giuseppe Forges Davanzati, brother of Domenico Forges Davanzati, who was a member of the Legislative Commission, on whom see above, 53–54. The “five Albanian communities” are the townships in the Molise which were, and are to this day, inhabitated by a population of Albanian origin. For the first time, Fonseca Pimentel has to face a situation of total disaster in the provinces.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 113 This position was supported by the other Representatives, and accordingly the law was approved with a plurality of votes.63 ……………… Last Sunday evening on the twelfth of this month (10 pluviose),64 a hall of Public Education was opened in the Meeting Hall at the University.65 Because no advance notice of the opening had been given, many Citizens who would have wanted to attend were unable to. There were, nevertheless, very many of them, as well as many members of the Provisional Government. The President, Citizen Carlo Laubert, gave the inaugural speech, a speech full of that love of freedom and motherland that the whole of Europe acknowledges in him, and of that experience which he has acquired through taking a major part in other revolutions. The task of supervisor was assigned to Citizen Vincenzo Russo. The hall will be open on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings at 23 hours

63. This was the first stage of an ongoing debate on the ways and means of abolishing the feudal system. The following April would witness an attempt to achieve an all-encompassing resolution of the matter, which would be amply reported and discussed in the Monitore; see MN, No. 18, 151–154. On the vicissitudes of the law on the abolition of feudalism, see above, 76–77. 64. This is a mistake: since this issue of the journal is dated 24 Pluviose, Tuesday, February 12, the previous Sunday would be 22 Pluviose, February 10. 65. The Meeting Hall would acquire a central role in public debate, and become the focus for ever more radical attacks on government policies. Halls of Public Educations, Meeting Halls, Educational Societies, a whole range of establishments which then came under the broad designation of “Popular Societies,” were set up by Italian Jacobins, following the French model, during the period preceding the formation of the Jacobin Republics. They flourished under the Republics, with the explicit function of promoting debate and political education, in keeping with the Jacobin ideal of popular involvement. Many were formed in Naples, although they were viewed with some suspicion by the French authorities. Typically, their meetings consisted mainly of speeches delivered by highly-educated supporters of the Republic. Members of the Government would sometimes attend. But their aim remained that of educating the people (see, for example, the motion in favor of establishing puppet theaters to portray “democratic topics” reported in MN, No. 6, at 126), and sometimes offering welfare initiatives. On April 12, new rules were introduced, and the Hall of Public Education was renamed Patriotic Hall, possibly as a consequence of fears that political debate might become too radicalized. Fonseca Pimentel remains fairly neutral with regard with the various positions taken, but does nevertheless mention the Halls once more: on March 23, with regard to contributions made by the Frenchwoman Rosalie Laurent Prota and indeed herself, among others (MN, No. 14, 143), and then again on May 9, when she reports that all existing Patriotic Societies have been amalgamated into one. This amalgamation was apparently done in order to keep closer control over what was said. Even so, radical voices continued to be heard, according to Rao, who views the presence of members of the lower classes reported in MN, No. 31, at 187, and No. 35, at 198, as evidence of some direct popular participation. On this topic see especially Anna Maria Rao, “Popular Societies in the Neapolitan Republic of 1799,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3 (1999): 358–69; also Battaglini, Atti, leggi, proclami, 3:2078–85.

114 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL of Italy.66 More halls will be opened in other neighborhoods of the capital, and in other important towns of the Republic. ……………… More arm caches have been discovered, but these are not very many. Many are the daily complaints regarding the tax introduced because of the notorious levy imposed by the General-in-Chief, with which the majority of Citizens are in no position to comply. Last Saturday the Patriots were due to attend the raising of the tree of Liberty, having arranged it at their own expense, but were not present as a military unit. General Championnet was there with his general staff; and also a Deputation of Members of our Government escorted by Patriots, who were, however, unarmed. French Cavalry tasked with maintaining public order encircled the piazza; and on a well-decorated podium sat the General and the Deputation from the Government. Citizen President Laubert addressed the People, as did the celebrated ardent Patriot Nicola Palumbo, who had organized the event.67 ………………

No. 5: Saturday, February 16, 1799 OCTIDI 28 PLUVIOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Still distressing in the extreme is the news from various parts of the hinterland of the Republic. In point of fact it appears that the Abruzzi are now much more peaceful; but as against this, many of those seditious troublemakers have gone over to lend support to those who were infesting the neighboring Lands of the former Contado of the Molise.68 Moreover, because the evil seed has spread to the former provinces of Basilicata and Apulia, we hear devastating rumors of various tragedies occurring in many of those Communes. How did such a sudden fury arise from amid such a sweeping hatred of the Tyrant, and after such a swift espousal of democratization, that the plebs are rising 66. Approximately 4:30 p.m. 67. Apparent here is the first stirring of Fonseca Pimentel’s less than enthusiastic attitude towards the French. It is expressed, first, with regard to their imposition of taxes, and then, less explicitly but in juxtaposition to the former, in her depiction of the disparity between the French in full military glory and the local Patriots, who had paid for the raising of the Tree of Liberty, but who were ordered to come unarmed. 68. A contado was an administrative division under the previous regime.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 115 everywhere, felling the trees of liberty, and are furiously attacking all those civili whom they had once peacefully supported? The nature of the body politic is such that the outlying regions of the State normally follow the example and impulse of the Capital; and the plebs go along with the plebs, just as the other orders of Citizens go along with their own counterparts. The news of the insurrection by the plebs of Naples was magnified by rumors when it reached the Abruzzi, and incited the local plebs to make common cause with them; and this situation was exploited by the swarm of spies, informers, agents, that is to say the abominable servants of the past government. Those among the former provinces that are closest to the capital, on hearing of the arrival of the French army and of the proclamation of the Republic, had certainly followed the example of the capital and embraced democratization; but many of those ruffians have since infiltrated them, and now link up with the many ruffians who were there already, and with others who had managed to slip through the net because of our excessive indulgence, or sheer negligence. This lot has been joined by gangs of fugitives and criminals from all the neighboring provinces in the hinterland, and together they have been, and still are, spreading rumors to the effect that Naples has made a counterrevolution, and that a powerful English army has landed and has taken possession of Naples in the name of the Tyrant, who is expected back at any moment. On which account, the wretched plebs of the provinces, fearing his familiar fury, think that they can save themselves, and wash away the guilt of their espousal of the change of government, by attacking those who persuaded them to do so, and sacrifice all to him. On top of this turbulence, is the plundering by murderers and by agents of the previous government. Such people used to pillage and murder with impunity, unencumbered by the government. Now they have taken up arms so as to follow their instincts, and just as this foul combination produced so many murders in our lands, so now they are equally full of massacres and devastation. But what will be the remedy for such a huge and terrible evil? Torch the Communities? Shoot all who bear arms? No! In many communes, peaceful citizens have been obliged to take up arms by the insurgents themselves, and have had to obey on pain of being shot on the spot; in many others, they have taken up arms in order to defend themselves. Therefore what needs to be done is punish the mutinous troublemakers, and disabuse the majority. So, the French troops should be accompanied by our Citizens, acting as Commissars for the Government. They should have the power, as ministers of peace, publicly to pardon the communes who return to obedience, and to proclaim, in the name of the Government, a law that is beneficial to the provinces, that is to say, the abolition of the feudal system. In this way, and by their very mission, they would give factual proof that Naples

116 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL has a Republican Government, and that this Government is more beneficial to the People everywhere.69 Let us recall that, after the notorious massacres of Avignon at the very beginning of the French revolution, while the Convention was going to respond with punishment, that eloquent man Vergniaux70 demonstrated that, in certain extraordinary public disturbances, it is advisable to bring citizens to peace by softening their feelings through forgiveness, instead of exacerbating them and instigating and arousing revenge from revenge through chastisement, and always leaving, through resentment, the seed of fresh crimes in the human heart, thereby placing the government in the ever reemerging need to punish. In this way he won over the whole of the Convention. Let us recall how Robespierre utterly failed to pacify the Vendée with terror, whilst General Hoche71 succeeded through a mixture of a show of military strength and the issuing of proclamations. It might be useful to look to the example of times long gone, when the Athenians, a people more skilled than us in the art of government, on regaining their liberty from the thirty tyrants, declared a pardon for all past private massacres and vendettas, and actually coined the well-known word amnistia, which simply means a total oblivion of the past.72 69. Fonseca Pimentel is greatly distressed by the terrible news of the insurgency in the provinces: how could all this happen when the plebs and the Patriots had a common enemy in the Tyrant, and the plebs had initially supported the revolution? It is worth noting, apart from her usual excessive optimism with regard to the attitude of the lower classes, that the word Fonseca Pimentel uses to describe the supporters of the Republic in the provinces (civili) is one that is used still in Southern Italy to indicate a group of people who are in possession of education or at least social graces—in other words those who are not “plebs.” When she attempts to explain the root causes of such distressing events, she dwells not only on the work of “seditious troublemakers,” the agents of the past regime, but goes further: she suggests that misinformation by enemy agents might be generating fears that the old regime was about to be reinstated, and hence a desire to stave off reprisals against those who had supported the Republicans; and the possibility of a class-oriented copycat effect, with the rural plebs imitating the urban plebs in fighting against the French army. When it comes to proposing remedies, she is adamantly and passionately opposed to a scorched-earth policy. Not only should punishments be confined to the “mutinous troublemakers” whom she clearly views as a minority, but a concerted effort should be made to win over the majority of the population. For the first time, she urges here not so much persuasion and education, but an effort to offer concrete evidence that the Republican government is doing what will benefit the people at large: accomplish the abolition of the feudal system. She has passed beyond the need to persuade to the need to do. The risky assumption, however, is that abolishing the feudal system will, in and of itself, benefit the rural poor. 70. Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud (not Vergniaux) was a deputy in the French Revolutionary Assembly. 71. Lazare Hoche was a General in the French Revolutionary army. 72. Fonseca Pimentel here supports her argument for a policy of selective mercy as opposed to generalized repression with examples taken from the two great historical models revered by Italian Jacobins: the recent revolutionary events in France, the “Mother Republic,” and the republics of classical antiquity. The “massacres of Avignon” refers to the slaughter in October 1791 of a large number of citizens

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 117 If the punishment is to be useful, and produce amends rather than destruction, one must pardon the general population, while punishing a few individuals. Please let us not plant the seed of spite and resentment in the hearts of our provincial plebs. Because of the tenacity with which all plebs, and especially the rural plebs, retain impressions once forcefully received, this seed could live on through the generations, and keep them forever apart from, and resentful of the rest of the citizenry, and thereby pave the way for a long-lasting series of private crimes and public calamities. I submit these thoughts to our Government, which is composed almost entirely of illustrious martyrs in the People’s cause, who have suffered specifically in order to improve the fate of this especially valuable section of the People which is always subjected to oppression in monarchies.73 May they submit them to all good patriots who are in a position to put them into practice. Meanwhile, we continue to receive wonderful news from the Calabrias; and such will certainly be the news from all parts where it is known, or it is explained, that Naples is a Republic, and that Ferdinand not only is not coming to Naples, but is about to flee from Palermo.74 ……………… The news has just reached us that the two Communes of Spinazzola and Potenza have become democratized through the offices of that devout and learned Bishop Andrea Serrao, who is famous for his work de claris catechistis and even more famous for the persecution to which he was subjected by the Papists as a result.75 In Calabria Ultra, peacefully and with unanimous fervor have Catanzaro, of Avignon by the French army in response to the killing of the Secretary to the Municipality by a local mob. While the moderate response of the French revolutionary government is cited in this case as an example to be followed, the ferocious policy of repression adopted by Robespierre in 1793 against the recalcitrant inhabitants of the Vendée (a region on the western seaboard of France), whose resistance has since become synonymous with counterrevolutionary reaction, is singled out as an example of what not to do. In the case of ancient Athens, the reference is to the overturning of the pro-Spartan oligarchy (the Thirty Tyrants) imposed on the city after its defeat in the Peloponnesian war in 404 CE. Whether or not the word for amnesty was invented at this time, an amnesty was effectively declared, and no vendettas took place. The root meaning of the term “amnesty” is indeed “oblivion.” 73. This is the second instance of Fonseca Pimentel exercising her democratic right to proffer her advice to the government. The first was her submission of a proposal for an emblem for the Republic: MN, No. 2, 103–104. There will be more. 74. These rumors were unsubstantiated, and the former king and family did not leave Palermo. But what Fonseca Pimentel writes here conveys the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that gripped the Republic. De Nicola, as well, reports rumors of the former king and queen fleeing to England, with their family making for Vienna: Diario napoletano, 1:56. 75. Andrea Serrao was appointed bishop of Potenza in 1782, having been a strong supporter of the king’s anti-curial policies. Potenza was one of the first townships to declare for the Republic, with the

118 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Sanseverino, and Viggiano also become democratized. In the next issue we shall print the dispatch of January 22 by the infamous Castel Cicala to the Governor of Calabria Citra, which has also just reached us from there.76 ………………

No. 6: Tuesday, February 19, 1799 PRIMIDI 1 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Virtually foreshadowing the announcement that we shall soon give to our Readers about our sister Sicily purging itself of the presence of Ferdinand and co., we shall start this issue with the promised dispatch by Castel Cicala to the Governor of Cosenza. It will not come amiss however to recall briefly for our Readers its author’s political-moral exploits.77 The fatuous toff Prince Castel Cicala, having bishop’s support. He was, however, on the whole unsympathetic to the peasants’ pressing and tumultuous requests for the redistribution of land. His wavering on this issue, which was seen as amounting to a de facto support for the status quo, would cost him his life. On February 24, he was killed in his bed, probably at the behest of the local feudal lord, by a former civic guard who supposedly announced himself with the phrase “Monsignor, the people want you dead.” The “people,” or at least part of them, would go on to attack and kill the local moneyed gentry, who were identified with the new Republican rulers. While the details of the events leading up to Serrao’s murder are by no means clear, this episode would appear to be emblematic of the contorted and contradictory relationship between the landless masses and the new Republican regime. Serrao’s De claris catechistis (On Illustrious Writers of Catechisms), published in Naples in 1769, was the object of disapproval by ecclesiastical authorities (the “Papists”) on the grounds of its supposed Jansenism (a heretical movement in early modern Catholicism) and very nearly cost him the appointment to the bishopric. On Serrao, see especially Elvira Chiosi, Andrea Serrao: Apologia e crisi del regalismo nel Settecento napoletano (Naples: Jovene, 1981); also Forges Davanzati’s biography Giovanni Andrea Serrao. 76. After the heartening reports of the “democratizations,” the anticipatory announcement of the brutal attack on the arch-reactionary Castelcicala, which will open the next issue of the Monitore, leaves the reader in suspense. 77. Fabrizio Ruffo, Prince of Castelcicala, was secretary of state under the Bourbons and ambassador to Lisbon from 1788 to 1790, and then to London until 1795. He was involved in the negotiations with the British government aimed at obtaining protection by their fleet from what was perceived as the threat represented by the arrival in the bay of Naples of a French fleet in December 1792. That fleet, led by Admiral Latouche-Tréville, was instrumental in spreading information about French republicanism to Naples. When King Ferdinand and the court left Naples in December 1798, Ruffo went with them. As an active member of the Bourbon circle that was trying to mastermind a counterrevolution from Sicily, he was viewed with particular hostility by Republicans. The portrait of Castelcicala presented here is savage, bristling with a mixture of sarcasm and exuberance. Strikingly, the presentation starts with a classic topos of irony: his evil doings are designated as “exploits,” their very opposite.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 119 taken to the legal profession hoping to make a fortune when in fact he was but a thoroughly asinine Pettyfogging Loudmouth,78 while advising Acton on a forensic case, revealed his disposition to intrigue and servility so skillfully that Acton spotted him immediately and assigned him to the Spanish Court as his spy, without any public title. But that Court, having got wind of the subject as well as the object of that mission, declared that it did not want in its midst a person with no public title but rather someone of greater dignity who was, as well, endowed with a public title. So it refused to receive him and forestalled the plan. In order to console him, Acton and Maria Carolina destined him as plenipotentiary to Lisbon, where he immediately made such an exhibition of his folly and impertinence, and disgraced himself to the extent that, in order to remove him from the widespread contempt of the Portuguese and give him an opportunity to deploy his sole skill as an underhand meddler, he was passed on to the Court of St. James. While he was there, Ferdinand signed his first treaty with France, with her Minister Makau and rear-admiral la Touche. This treaty included the undertaking to send an envoy to France to recognize the Convention, and make apologies for the antagonism shown towards her at the inner chamber of St. James (Castel Cicala’s intrigues), and at the Ottoman Court.79 While in London, Loudmouth received Ferdinand’s order to go to France, and Maria Carolina’s and Acton’s order not to go. As the crafty man that he is, he calculated his chances and refused to go to Paris. And so the assignment lost momentum and faded away. In the meantime, political reasons moved Acton to appoint two Directors to his Secretariats for foreign affairs and war. Our servile Loudmouth accepted the former, that is to say, he agreed to be first officer and aide to Acton in that Secretariat, a post that was refused by the more dignified Marquis of Gallo, and as a prize for his servility and almost out of spite to del Gallo, he was then awarded the red sash of San Gennaro.80 Once he was in post, even his protector Maria Carolina called him the 81 pest, but he curried favor with her and indeed made himself indispensable by revisiting all the trials of the so-called State convicts. He read them and reread them, scrutinized them, annotated them, learned them off by heart, became spirit 78. The epithet with which Fonseca Pimentel designates Castelcicala is “Rabula,” i.e., “someone who barks” in Latin. It was used to indicate a lawyer who was not much good at his job and only capable of shouting. 79. Fonseca Pimentel’s spelling of the names of Mackau, Latouche-Tréville, and Castelcicala is retained. The italicized words in parentheses are her own aside. 80. This was the insignia of the prestigious order of knighthood named after the patron saint of the city of Naples. 81. Seccatore in the original. In fact, Maria Carolina called him piccoso, that is, “prickly,” in a letter of March 18, 1797 to Marquis del Gallo. But she calls him piccoso in a sentence which describes him as “honest … but confused, and liable to ‘detestation’ because of his unfortunate manners”: quoted in Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 207n6. Interestingly, and predictably, Fonseca Pimentel selects the negative aspect of the queen’s judgment only.

120 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL and mind of all the intrigues of persecution and espionage national and foreign, always steeped in all the slyness of a Pettyfogging Loudmouth, the malice of a cop, and the stupid brutality of an obtuse careerist. The rest is known in Naples, Italy, France, indeed no doubt the whole of Europe: let us take our pleasure with the dispatch.82 Copy & c. The King commands me to write to Your Illustrious Lordship that in the present circumstances His Majesty counts very strongly on your zeal and attachment to Religion and the State. His Majesty has always known you as an honorable officer, and His Majesty is confident that you will employ all the most effective ways to rouse this population to defense against the enemy, and to conserve it in the due loyalty and devotion to the august Monarch. The King is confident in the loyalty of Calabria Citra,83 (constant tyrannizing hand in hand with a constant belief in being loved, is but one example of Ferdinand’s stupidity, nay one of the effects of his crass self-conceit, on a par with his crass ignorance), but if ever ill-minded people were to come to pass, you are to punish them militarily, and you are to this end granted the most extensive powers. A few wicked heads made to fall by you (The wicked one is yourself, are people’s heads oranges, or pears? If wicked heads must be made to fall, let yours be the one; but no, you revolting mass of filth, your fellow citizens of both Sicilies84 will only stoop to sink you in your stench) will stem and terrorize the few ill-minded people, and at the same time calm and reassure the good 82. What follows is the text of the dispatch by Castelcicala to the Governor of Cosenza mentioned at the beginning; see above, 118. Battaglini casts doubts on the authenticity of this document, surmising that it might have been drafted and circulated by unknown authors of pro-Bourbon sentiments with the aim of keeping alive loyalty to the monarchy among the inhabitants of Calabria. As for the manner of its reaching Fonseca Pimentel, he is inclined to think that this was via strictly unofficial channels, a veritable journalist’s scoop: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 207–9, note 8. His hypothesis might find confirmation in the way she structures the reproduction of the dispatch, intersecting it with her own comments in italics, written very much in the triumphant and scathing tone of the consummate journalist. 83. The opposite was the case, Calabria Citra and Cosenza in particular being especially receptive to revolutionary politics; see Cingari, Giacobini e sanfedisti, especially chapter 3. Fonseca Pimentel’s comment, therefore, is apt. 84. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies would only come into being with this precise designation in 1816, after the Congress of Vienna, with Ferdinand as its sovereign with the designation of Ferdinand I. The notion of Sicily and the mainland territory amounting to “two Sicilies,” however, originates from the thirteenth century, when it became customary to talk of Sicily “beyond the lighthouse” as opposed to Sicily “this side of the lighthouse”—in other words, the lands on either side of the straits of Messina. A King of the Two Sicilies existed briefly in the fifteenth century when Alfonso V of Aragon, one of numerous foreign rulers to reign in that region, formally unified Sicily with his newly conquered mainland domains and gave himself the title of Rex utriusque Siciliae (king of both Sicilies). Fonseca

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 121 people, who are the majority (definitely, and all against you). Make the most upright and most zealous clergy preach (they have preached; and they have preached, and are preaching, the freedom of oppressed and lacerated Peoples), and make them instill in the Peoples invariable steadfastness in our Holy Religion and inalterable constancy in the loyalty due to our most gracious Sovereign. (Religion confounds you and the likes of you, it commands that men be reinstated in their rights, every man’s inalterable constancy in upholding them, the loyalty due by all to the motherland). You must strive your utmost for the tranquility of the Province, and if you have something to propose, do it immediately, expounding it to His Majesty and also to the Duke of Salandra (how dare you link a decent and honorable man with yourself?)85 or to whoever His Majesty might have appointed to lead the Royal army that covers Calabria (not even a royal fly, except the royal spies). Should you need money for the defense of the Province, and to keep internal tranquility (The two non-provinces, but departments, have kept it and are keeping it by themselves, and will soon move to bring it to their brethren in Sicily, purging it of yourself the ancillary, your despot Ferdinand, and your Chief-despots Acton and Maria Carolina), His Majesty authorizes Your Illustrious Lordship to take it from the royal Tax Collectors and Treasurers of Calabria Citra; but do it with great parsimony, since the Royal Chests must be used for the upkeep of the Royal Army. Your Illustrious Lordship will send to His Majesty here in Palermo all possible news in his possession both of this Province and others in the Kingdom, and will address the written communications to Lieutenant General Danero in Messina who will be responsible for forwarding them here. You will inform of anything that might affect Calabria Ultra. Governor Winspear Royal Palace January 22, 1799 To the Governor of Cosenza. The Prince of Castel Cicala.

The 22nd is a fateful date for Ferdinand: on November 22 he marched on Rome, on December 22 he embarked on his flight from Naples, on January 22 he sent his announcement to the Calabrias (when the French army was already entering the suburbs of Naples), on February 22 we shall hear that he has fled from Sicily, as news arriving from there has it that he was about to board ship.86 Meanwhile, Pimentel might be using this formula here to emphasize that Sicily (at this stage ruled by the fugitive king) and the mainland (in Republican hands) are one and the same. 85. Lieutenant General Duke of Salandra Revertera was an unusual figure. He remained steadfastly and ostentatiously loyal to the king, to the point of dressing in mourning during the Republic, but at the same time his reputation for integrity and personal kindness kept him in high regard. On Salandra, see Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 3n1. 86. Fonseca Pimentel continues in a tone of exhilarated optimism: King Ferdinand had indeed set out to invade Rome, fled from Naples, and sent an announcement to the Calabrias on the twenty-second

122 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL let our Readers hear what were the effects of that announcement. Democracy, as if it were a shaft of light, spread in an instant over the whole of Calabria. I have already talked about Cosenza (the home town of our Representative Bisceglia, and of the famous exile Francesco Saverio Salfi, and I need say no more about how well rooted the spirit of liberty is there87), and the whole of Calabria Citra, and in the previous issue I mentioned the democratization of Catanzaro. As soon as this town gave a signal, the whole of Calabria Ultra followed suit. Not only are both parts of Calabria already democratized, but full of republican enthusiasm. In Monteleone the citizens themselves have placed a price of several hundreds on the head of a certain Fiore, who was presuming to recruit soldiers for the tyrant.88 In Cortala a respectable mother of a family, Vittoria Pellegrini, put herself at the head of the People, notwithstanding her old age and uncertain health, and went to intone the Te Deum for the proclamation of the Republic.89 All that valiant youth, who had either managed to avoid military conscription or else had deserted the army, every one of them and everywhere, were shouting, now we want to be soldiers in order to show the tyrant that we want to fight not for him, but against him. In the midst of this general turmoil Cardinal Ruffo, whose family’s fiefs are in Calabria, either having been anointed, or claiming to have been anointed Viceroy, had passed through those lands in order to gather soldiers and arms, but it is given as a certain fact that he was arrested as soon as he landed in Reggio. Whether this days of as many months, or thereabouts (in reality on November 23 and December 23 respectively): see Chiosi, “Il Regno dal 1734 al 1799,” 456, and Rao, “La repubblica napoletana del 1799,” 471. But this is February 19, and one could only surmise when exactly he would flee from Sicily. In point of fact he did not, but there were persistent rumors that he would. De Nicola reports on these at length, starting with the false reports of the former king fleeing Sicily for England on February 12 (Diario napoletano, 1:56), followed by the “whisper” that he was due to board ship on February 22, perhaps heading for Trieste (1:59). 87. Domenico Bisceglia had been imprisoned for his involvement with the Jacobin opposition in 1794. A member of the provisional government, he was hanged on October 28, 1799: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 39–40. Francesco Saverio Salfi belonged to that category of priests who supported the Jacobin cause. He had gone into exile to Genoa and then Milan, then returned to Naples with General Championnet. He managed to flee to France before the fall of the Republic. On Salfi, see Carlo Nardi, La vita e le opera di Francesco Saverio Salfi, 1759–1832 (Genoa: Libreria Editrice Moderna, 1925). 88. Angelo di Fiore had been involved in putting Jacobins to trial in the period prior to the formation of the Republic. He would soon accompany Cardinal Ruffo’s peasant army, pursuing a policy of repression against opponents so ruthless as to attract the concern of the cardinal himself. Later he would be heavily involved in issuing death sentences against Jacobins after the fall of the Republic. On Fiore, see Cingari, Giacobini e sanfedisti, 112–15, 267–70, and 329–33. 89. The episode of Vittoria Pellegrini leading a Republican procession is mentioned only by Cingari, Giacobini e sanfedisti, 159, who quotes from the Monitore as evidence. This is one rare instance of Fonseca Pimentel focusing on the action of a woman. It is interesting to note, however, how she draws attention to Pellegrini’s status, age, and health, rather than her sex.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 123 is true or not, a brigand, whatever the color of his Hat, matters little to Calabria, all united as it is in its fight for self-defense, and soon to be joined by a good French unit which has already set off by way of Salerno, and whose first division spent the past night in Castellammare.90 It is true that Apulia as a whole does not present as joyful a picture. Nevertheless, in many communes democracy holds fast and peaceful; and Trani, Barletta, and other communes which were deceived and induced to rise mainly by false announcements put out by individuals in the pay of the despot, as if he had issued them himself after his return, become pacified as it becomes clear that this is untrue, and those Populations begin to acknowledge, indeed to be reassured that they need fear no revenge from Ferdinand. The Government has received delegations from many Communes which are not only democratized, but where order has not been disturbed at all. I have already mentioned what happened in Potenza by virtue of their Bishop.91 The Citizens of Spinazzola, moved by their love of liberty and motherland, not only have democratized themselves, and created their own Municipality, but have contributed to the democratization of the nearby Communities of Banzi, Genzani, and Acquatetta. The same has been done at Cerignola, first among all the Towns of the Apulian plain, which indeed became a haven for all the patriots who had to find shelter from the disturbances of some nearby Communities. The Government has responded to both these Communities who have so well deserved of the motherland, with forceful letters full of joy and praise, which I am unfortunately not able to print because of the massive amount of material to report. On the 7th of this month, Foggia raised the tree of liberty.92 This week at last the stagecoach from the Abruzzi has arrived. All the news consistently show that in Chieti there has not been any unrest; in fact the good people of Chieti shut the Town gates and drove back the ruffians from the district. The worst disturbances have been in the Province of Aquila; we have no news yet of the situation in Town, but we know that Cipicchia was on the rampage in the surrounding area. Also, around Sulmona, at the head of a mob of bandits and brigands, Proni had entered various Communes, pillaged the Houses of the Patriots, arrested some Citizens and taken them off to his camp at Introdacqua, which he called his command center. Among others, he had seized the elderly father and uncle of the well-known patriot and martyr of the revolution, Stanislao 90. On Ruffo, see above, 78–79. This is the first time the Monitore mentions the man who more than any other was instrumental in bringing about the fall of the Republic. A formidable enemy, here he is dismissed as merely a “brigand” of little consequence. 91. On bishop Andrea Serrao and events in Potenza, see above, 117. 92. A description of one episode of raising of the Tree of Liberty in Naples is given in this issue, MN, No. 6. But this is not the first mention of this most iconic of Jacobin symbols: the Tree of Liberty had appeared in the supplement to MN, No. 1.

124 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Melchiorre.93 Nonetheless, the detainees were not being abused, and their number was decreasing by the day. I here call on our philosophical Government and our fellow Citizens to reflect. These insurgents have committed serious crimes, in terms of rising in revolt, pillaging the houses of the patriots, attacking the people of the Municipality, and placing them under arrest: but it could have been worse, they could have taken their lives. Now it has to be a principle of legislative and administrative justice that one should take into account all atrocities that the culprit could have committed, but did not. This is because it benefits society that the culprit, even while committing a crime, should hold back instead of going to the extreme. In this way, the culprit shows that either he still has inside him some glimmer of humanity, or else that a healthy fear is restraining him; in either case he shows a capacity or at least an aptitude for pulling back. So, if the aim of the law is the improvement of every man, and the lessening of particular atrocities as far as possible; and administrative justice has to pay more attention to protecting Citizens by preventing crime, or the worst excesses of crime, rather than avenging them; then morality, reason, as well as the well-being of Citizens themselves, demand that one should make a sharp distinction between Proni, who pillages and arrests, but spares the Citizens’ lives, and those who have killed, or will kill.94 In the midst of this general threat to Patriots, many zealous citizens have asked us to convey their desire for a law that would safeguard the persons and property of patriots by granting them reimbursement for damages received from the property of those who have produced or caused them, and by guaranteeing their lives against the lives of those who attack them. Since in some former Provinces there was much antagonism and rivalry between families, which might have had, or might be having, an impact on the troubles in some communes, Citizens believe that such a law would be both an excellent remedy, and a preventative. On Sunday, the tree of liberty was raised first in the Tannery, and then in the Market, at the expense of the local Capo-lazzari.95 General Championnet on 93. Salvatore Melchiorre had been involved with the Jacobin movement prior to the formation of the Republic. At this point, he was in charge of organizational matters in the Abruzzo. After the fall of the Republic, he was put on trial and sentenced to life imprisonment in a Sicilian castle: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 42n2. On Cipicchia and Pronio, see MN, No. 3, 105 and note 41. 94. Fonseca Pimentel’s outlook here is cautiously optimistic, as she finds things are not so distressing in the provinces as they were. However unrealistic her assessment might be at this stage, it is worth noting her renewed rejection of blanket punishment. The aim of justice must be the prevention of crime, and not revenge. 95. Fonseca Pimentel’s tone continues optimistic and exultant. Things are improving in the provinces, and in Naples, as well, the lazzari, the multitude, the crowd of citizens (no “plebs” here) are at one with the Republic. Trees of Liberty are raised, music, food, and drink are proffered and enjoyed. Much of this is taking place at the Market Square (Piazza Mercato), where Fonseca Pimentel would be hanged

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 125 horseback with his general staff, and a deputation from our Government, went to witness both events. At the market, they found a sumptuous stage that had been prepared specially for them, even though a large crowd of citizens climbed on to it. The big square, the narrow lanes that spread out from it, and all the balconies, windows, and terraces were bursting with a joyous multitude of all ages and sexes. A select orchestra provided entertainment, and president Laubert addressed the crowd with a wonderful speech, reminding the People of their Massaniello. He explained that the present revolution is but what Massaniello wanted to do but was prevented from achieving by the treachery of a Tyrant.96 Below, at the foot of the tree, were cakes and select foreign wines. Many more were distributed from the stage. The General was presented with a basket of pigeons, one of which carried a message of thanks for the guarantee of liberty; he kept this one alone for himself, and gave away the others. The Lazzari asked him to grant permission for church bells to ring; he replied that hopefully it would come about soon, and for the time being, gave permission for the festivities to be enhanced by the ringing of the bell of their parish Church, the Carmine. But the parish priest, on receiving the instruction verbally from the Lazzari rather than in writing, refused to implement it. Meanwhile the Lazzari were so enraptured with delight that they forgot all about bells and bell-ringing, and by the thousands accompanied the General to his residence opposite the national palace, and he in his turn had money in no small amount thrown out to them. Even before he left the Market, the inhabitants of Porta Capuana had invited him to be present at their own raising of the tree six months later. The term lazzari, or lazzaroni, is used to this day to designate the most destitute among Neapolitans. The term usually carries negative connotations, and on that account, in later issues of the journal, Fonseca Pimentel would reject this designation in favor of “citizens from the Market”: MN, No. 31, 187. On the lazzari of Naples, see Benedetto Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:428–39; and on their contorted and conflicted relation with the Republic, Domenico Scafoglio, Lazzari e giacobini: La letteratura per la plebe: Napoli 1799 (Naples: Guida, 1981). Francesco Benigno challenges the stereotype of the Neapolitan lazzari as roguish individuals living in abject poverty, capable of malice and brutality but filled with childlike vitality and merriment. In his analysis of their role in the Masaniello revolt of 1647–1648, he examines both the history of the term lazzari and its disputed etymologies, reinterpreting them as “both an armed band and a radical political position”: Mirrors of Revolution: Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols 2010), 233–324; original Italian edition, Specchi della rivoluzione: Conflitto e identità politica nell’Europa moderna (Rome: Donzelli, 1999). 96. Masaniello or Massaniello (Tommaso Aniello) was a young fisherman who had a leading role in a popular revolt against the Spanish occupiers which began in July 1647 and ended in defeat the following April. He may or may not have been the true leader, as against the intellectual Giulio Genoino, but he soon acquired a lasting aura of myth which portrayed him as a genuine man of the people leading a popular insurrection. Hence the leaders of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 attempted repeatedly to present their own revolution as the fulfilment of what Masaniello had started but failed to accomplish. On the reality and the myth of Masaniello, see in particular Silvana D’Alessio, Masaniello: La sua vita e il mito in Europa (Rome: Salerno 2007); and Benigno, Specchi della rivoluzione, 276–85.

126 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL next Thursday, or next Sunday, and those of Santa Lucia are now getting ready for a similar function. A few days earlier, a deputation of clergy went to thank General Championnet for securing the liberty of the Motherland, to which they also paid homage in the persons of her Representatives. If other Peoples, and France herself, were hindered in their pursuit of liberty by the false principles and private passions of their clergy, as we can see from their bulletins, we must applaud and take pride in our own. The past Government did succeed in deceiving the People through the ministry of some members of the clergy; but the Court repressed and silenced the good ones among them—of whom many, both among the regular and the secular clergy, have been martyrs—and only allowed the few bad ones to speak and act. But in the Republic these are as nothing compared with the huge mass of good ones. All of them have long been waging war against the popish prejudices, all feel that their charity begins in the motherland, and that Priesthood, far from detaching them, connects them more intimately with her; they all feel that the duty of a Priest involves a special obligation to set an example of loyalty and obedience to the laws of the motherland, and that the fraternity demanded by the Gospel is the fraternity and equality that the Republic demands; in one word it is true democracy. Meanwhile our Government has charged a group of the most learned clergy to work towards a more rapid instruction of the People.97 ……………… A proposal was submitted [at the National Institute] requesting that those who entertain the ordinary people in the public squares with portable puppet theatres should portray democratic topics, and that those storytellers who likewise sing the tales of Rinald and Roland in the public squares should now sing instructive Neapolitan songs.98 The proposal was approved, and a list was made of various people who should be put in charge of writing such songs. Even before 97. Fonseca Pimentel had already mentioned briefly (in MN, No. 2, 100) the desirability of coopting the clergy in the battle for the hearts and minds of the ordinary people. Here she makes the point more forcefully. On the role envisaged for the progressive members of the clergy in the Neapolitan Republic, see above, 88. 98. This is the most explicit statement to be found in the Monitore concerning the Republican program to rework popular culture. Rinald (Rinaldo) and Roland (Orlando) are characters from two famous Renaissance epic poems, Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. While these were meant for a cultured readership, they also generated and overlapped with a tradition of puppet theater and oral narration by storytellers in open spaces, a form of entertainment that was hugely popular with illiterate audiences. On popular storytelling in Naples, see Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:421–27. According to Croce, however, there is no record of puppet theater and similar entertainments having been reworked with a Republican slant. Rather, the lower classes produced and consumed anti-Jacobin ditties and songs during and after the Republican period,

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 127 this proposal, a beautiful song had been composed by Sergio Fasano, who is the author of the harangue in the Neapolitan language at the hand of the friend of men and patriots,99 which we praised in No. 3. ………………

No. 8: Tuesday, February 26, 1799 OCTIDI 8 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE In the edifying picture offered by our Clergy and our Bishops, who nearly everywhere in the Republic are preachers of liberty and peacemakers, the wickedness of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo is the only stain. This despicable man, who because of his ambition came to be a courtier of Ferdinand, trampling on his duties towards Pius VI and the then College of Cardinals, spurred by that same ambition is now trampling on his Sacred Ecclesiastical Ministry, the sacred love of the motherland and of his fellow citizens. It was thought that this monster had been captured and was safely held by the inhabitants of Reggio, just as former President Winspear was believed to be held in Catanzaro. Yet because fate never allows unadulterated good fortune, both managed to flee to Sicily. Winspear has landed at Pizzo with a band of armed retainers, has roused that Commune to rebellion, and bolstered by all the villains at the pay of the former government, is wreaking havoc in that area. His brutality has gone as far as prohibiting the treatment of injured Patriots who are taken prisoners in battle.100 The monster Cardinal with another band of men has landed on the beach of Pizzo, and has made for Bagnara, formerly a family fief; he then advanced on Palmi, shooting, on entering each Commune, all the honest Citizens who are Patriots. And so, what Proni and his émigrés refrain from doing, is done by Winspear and Cardinal Ruffo at the head of Ferdinand’s soldiers. Just as the name Fabrizio has reached us from the glory of ancient Rome stamped with all the splendor of civic virtues, now in the nascent Republic of Naples it is stamped with the infamy of all vices. Fabrizio is the name of the brigand chief self-styled Cardinal Ruffo,

one of the most infamous among them the song about Fonseca Pimentel’s body hanging from the scaffold quoted in Part One: see Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:149–53, and above, 14. 99. See MN, No. 3, 104–105. 100. Antonio Winspeare (not Winspear), one of the main collaborators of Cardinal Ruffo, is on that account the butt of Fonseca Pimentel’s indignation.

128 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Fabrizio is the name of the odious tyrant—Rabula Castel Cicala.101 But through that providence, which always summons eminent virtues in opposition to great vices, that department of Sagra, formerly known as Calabria ultra, has not belied the energy innate in both gallant parts of Calabria. That Tribunal still functioning in Catanzaro, immediately placed a ransom on the heads of Winspear, the Cardinal, and that Fiore who was mentioned in an earlier issue.102 Nearly all the Communes have prepared themselves for armed defense, the Commune of Monteleone has immediately conscripted two thousand people, and nominated as their commanding officer its intrepid citizen Giovanni Pietro Fabiani, commandant of their National Guard; it has sent to the same Tribunal a written request for more troops, to be paid 3 carlini per day in the case of privates, rising to 5 for the leaders. On hearing all this, and given the evil deeds committed by the abovementioned Ruffo and Winspear, and by a certain former Captain Carbone, our government has made provisions against the son of that despicable Winspear, and has sent written instructions to the abovementioned Fabiani to set out immediately with his troops to seize the Commune of Pizzo, a place of great importance for the Republic. He was further instructed to purge all those parts of the lackeys of tyranny, and to take special care to make sure that the iron from the Stilo mines is not transported to Sicily but is carefully guarded for the good and the advantage of the Republic. At the same time, he was advised that, on the arrival of either the commander of the French force or of the Government Commissar, he should consult with them without delay over the complete implementation of the task, and was assured that his much appreciated services to the Motherland would be born in mind and remunerated. As for the Abruzzi, we knew that another Gallo-Cisalpine company was marching in via the Piceno. News has just reached us that the insurgents, four thousand of them, were apparently encircled, coerced into Guardiagrele, and there eliminated. No one was spared, and the village was also razed to the ground.103 101. On Castelcicala see MN, No. 6, 118–121. Fonseca Pimentel’s contempt for Ruffo knows no bounds. Earlier she had called him a “brigand” (MN, No. 6, 123), now she repeatedly calls him a monster. 102. Angelo Di Fiore was mentioned in MN, No. 6, note 88, 122. 103. At dawn on February 25, the French commander Coutard, having marched south through the Piceno, launched the assault on the mountain town of Guardiagrele (northeast of Sulmona) from the neighboring town of Lanciano. Alongside the French troops who conducted the assault were some inhabitants of nearby townships (especially Orsogna), who were spurred by a tradition of rivalry with the people of Guardiagrele. When the Guardiagrelese refused to submit, the town was sacked and torched, although care was apparently taken to spare the houses of “good and loyal” citizens. About seven hundred people died. On these events, see Raffaele Colapietra, “Le insorgenze di massa nell’Abruzzo in età moderna,” Storia e politica, 1 (1981): 11–15; Coppa-Zuccari, L’invasione francese negli Abruzzi, 1:178–84; Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 114; Rao, “La repubblica napoletana del 1799,” 505. The cautious optimism Fonseca Pimentel has so far expressed, accompanied by her advocacy of a political rather than repressive approach to the insurgency, gives way now to stark reporting of a

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 129 Any minute now we are awaiting confirmation of the beneficial effects of the arrival in Apulia of the French troops and the great number of volunteer patriots who have gone with them. Indeed, this morning the Bishop of Troja called on General-in-Chief Championnet with a deputation bearing a letter from General Duhesme. ………………

No. 9: Saturday, March 2, 1799 DUODI 12 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE It beggars belief how eagerly our youth, and indeed older people of all professions and of what would have been the most different classes, want to contribute to the formation of the National Troop and want to serve in it. We have already formed the gendarmerie, all brimming with lively and genial youth, and Generals Wirtz and Federici are now hard at work organizing two Infantry legions and two Cavalry legions.104 Tuesday last after midnight a courier arrived with an order to General Championnet to return to Paris without delay en route to his assignment as General in the Hannover region. And he did set off thereto the next day, Wednesday, at 23 hours.105 ………………

veritable massacre. This harder line towards the insurgencies and their remedies will continue in the next issues of the Monitore. 104. General Wirtz was to die in battle on June 12, and General Federici was beheaded on October 23. The whole question of a Neapolitan national army was a thorny one. While Championnet had been favorable, the same cannot be said of General Macdonald, his successor, or indeed of the French authorities in general, who both obstructed the formation of such an army and failed to supply the various corps, such as cavalry and infantry, that did come into being. Battaglini also points out, in Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 260, that the situation was made worse by the fact that the Ministry of War was ruled by the Frenchman, Jacques Philippe Arcambal. It is therefore significant that this fervent praise of the military zeal of the Neapolitans should be juxtaposed with the curt announcement of Championnet’s departure. On Championnet and his successors as generals-in-chief, see above, 75. 105. About 5 p.m. According to Battaglini, there is no evidence that Championnet was recalled to Paris to take up another command. He was simply invited to Paris to attend the Ministry of War, and while on his journey was arrested on March 11 in Milan. Battaglini suggests that the explanation given here might have been put out with the aim of avoiding disturbances, given Championnet’s popularity in Naples: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 261n3.

130 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL General Magdonald (sic),106 successor to General Championnet, arrived on the same Wednesday, and has gone to inhabit the same residence as his predecessor, formerly the dwelling of Minister Acton. As early as Thursday morning he received the compliments of the entire body of our government, which he returned yesterday by visiting at the National Palace. He confirmed viva voce what General Championnet had indicated in his letter, that is to say France’s endorsement of the independence of our republic, urged the swift institution of armed forces both of land and sea, and finally attested that our insurgents had been beaten everywhere.107 Our Constitution will be published shortly.108 ………………

No. 10: Tuesday, March 5, 1799 QUINTIDI 15 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Whichever point of view one adopts, whether in terms of civic zeal, or the cooperative attitude of good people, or the evil resistance of the bad ones, our Nation displays vigorous and decisive spirits. While the tragic insurgencies in the Departments are the result of strength badly applied, they are nevertheless a sign of strength of character. While we bemoan the distressing results of a character 106. Fonseca Pimentel will spell Macdonald’s name correctly from the next issue. The spelling used here may originate in the likely pronunciation of Neapolitan speakers. 107. Macdonald’s speech was neither quite so utterly optimistic regarding the defeat of the insurgents nor so wholeheartedly supportive of the Republic’s independence and military self-reliance as claimed here. The familiar occasional wishful thinking applied to the insurgencies also prevails in dealing with the attitudes of the French authorities who succeeded Championnet. They are presented as operating along a continuum from their predecessor, when in fact they, not only Macdonald but also Organizing Commissars Faypoult and Abral who replaced him on March 28, took a far less sympathetic line towards the Neapolitan Republic. The text of Macdonald’s speech is in Battaglini, Atti, leggi, proclami, 1:409. It is interesting to trace Fonseca Pimentel’s mentions of Championnet and his successors in this and subsequent issues of the Monitore. They amount to a concerted attempt both to glorify Championnet and suggest his continuity with his successors. He is presented as the man who understands and values Italian cultural traditions, having given instructions for a monument to Virgil (138) in a manner that puts him on a par with none less than Napoleon Bonaparte. Fonseca Pimentel reports on the changes of personnel and his demise either with no comment, as for the arrival of Faypoult (MN, No. 11, 138) and then Abrial (MN, No. 15, 147), or, in the case of his arrest, starkly but with just a hint of his likely innocence: MN, No. 15, 148. 108. This is the first mention of the Constitution of the Neapolitan Republic. More details concerning its publication will be given in MN, No. 15, 147.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 131 disfigured by so many centuries of an absurd political system, and by the recent corruption by the most profoundly corrupt of all despotic governments, let us take comfort by looking to a happier future, when this same character, corrected and regulated by wholesome Republican laws, will be aimed not at the annihilation but at the support and defense of the motherland.109 Someone who managed to arrive here from L’ Aquila tells us that the Town is still quiet, but the same cannot be said of the surrounding area. Twice the émigrés attempted to penetrate the Town, and they had once even broken through a gate, but the French positioned in that Castle, although few in number, managed to drive them back, terrifying them to such an extent that they never tried again. After the events of Guardiagrele, many Communes in the area were pacified. The town of Lanciano wanted to resist, but 2,500 French troops arrived via Pescara, and after repeatedly asking the rebels to surrender, in the end wiped them out. The punishment of that Commune injected some wisdom into the Commune of Vasto, which came to implore clemency, and obtained it, apparently in exchange for a financial contribution. It seems that the small bands attacking Sangermano and Sora are not causing much concern; nonetheless the Tullia Legion has left for Capua to fight against them. Since there is no doubt that the seditious troublemakers of the Abruzzi were combining forces with those of the adjoining department of the Clitunno in Roman territory, and were beaten there as well (see the item in Variety), we have reason to hope that calm will prevail in both.110 The resistance encountered by General Duhesme in Apulia was more spirited than expected. Those rebels, made up of convicts, deserters and disbanded soldiers from the former royal army, and of the frenzied populations of Sansevero, a Commune of 13,000 to 15,000 souls, and other neighboring populations, formed almost a small army of several thousand people, some of them on horseback. General Duhesme found them fortified as for war on a hill covered in olive groves, overlooking a vast and uninterrupted plain, which was protected by guns situated at the main entryways to hold off a cavalry charge. If the knowledge and skills of a haphazard motley crew are always ephemeral opposite an organized troop, 109. In anticipating that the “strength of character” of ordinary people can be redirected from insurgency to support of the motherland, Fonseca Pimentel’s optimism returns. She sees their actions as misguided due to cultural malformation, and predicts a better outcome in a different cultural context. 110. This overview of insurgency in the provinces moves from the Adriatic coastal towns of Pescara and Vasto across the mountains and well into the western territory of the Republic. Capua, the initial destination of the legion intent on fighting the insurgents, is just a few miles inland from Naples. In this prolonged account, Fonseca Pimentel’s optimism fades. Gone, at least momentarily, are the condemnation of blanket repression and pleas for a policy of mercy and reconciliation (see MN, No. 3, 106; No. 5, 115–116; No. 6, 124). The rebels include, as before, “convicts, deserters and disbanded soldiers” from the royal army, but they are joined by the “frenzied” populace. The talk of “wiping out,” “slaughtering,” “torching,” and “pillaging” is the language of utter condemnation and subjugation.

132 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL they become annihilated when faced by French troops. The fighting was stubborn and bloody, but the French soldiers, accustomed as they are to beat the most powerful regular armies of Europe, soon broke up that seditious rabble, blocked their retreat, and slaughtered them relentlessly almost to the end of the day. And this slaughter would have continued had the women and children who had the previous day fled the Town, not hurled themselves between the soldiers and the rebels, begging for mercy and forgiveness; in this way they put an end to the massacre, and at the same time were granted an assurance that the Town would not be torched, or pillaged. General Duhesme counted 3,000 dead; he has dispatched to Naples the standards of their cavalry; their infantry had none, having used altar cloths instead. However, that Commune was not devoid of a large number of excellent patriots; the brutal insurgent section had of themselves indicated the manner of their own punishment, by slaughtering them and torching their houses, even imprisoning their own Bishop, because he was preaching peace and recommending surrender. Manfredonia, Sanmarco, Torremaggiore, and all the neighboring towns came to ask for forgiveness, and obtained it. No less lively a battle took place in Salerno, outside the gate called Frattamaggiore. According to an eyewitness, six hundred rebels had entrenched themselves there, a mill on their right and a coppice on their left. The French troops under General Olivier were no more than 80 infantry and 30 cavalry, and with them were our patriots Nicola Pierri from Corfù, formerly an officer with the Grenadiers of the Macedonian regiment, and Orazio Pelliccia from Tropea. The rebels were grouped around their flag, whence they fired relentlessly. General Olivier turned towards the abovementioned citizens, who were both on horseback, and told them of his wish that a brave person would seize the flag. Having grasped what the General wanted, they both volunteered, and at once rode towards it at the gallop, sabers in hand. Pelliccia’s horse, which was the less strong, was held back by the stubble in the ground, while the more fortunate Pierri, protected by the French who were riding behind, plucked out the flag and carried it off. General Macdonald himself, in his speech to our government, made a public tribute to the valor of both these Citizens. At the sight of this brave action, the seditious troublemakers took fright, and began to retreat and disperse. French valor pursued them everywhere, and attacked them in the town of Santalucia. Here they opposed a furious resistance, and it became necessary to torch the town, as well as other houses where many had retreated to, and dared to resist. The same fate befell the rebels in Nocera, where, alongside five men, three women were shot, who had taken part in the firing of individual houses, and in the looting. Their good parish priest came himself to ask, as a matter of urgency, permission from the Government for the formation of a national troop in that Commune,

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 133 seeing as many of those seditious troublemakers had taken shelter in the mountains and threatened the peace. These difficulties have prevented the French troops from advancing towards Calabria; now the excellent ardent patriot Giuseppe Schipani has been nominated General, and will leave immediately with a large reinforcement of troops and artillery.111 Meanwhile, four flags that had been removed from the Nocera rebels, one of them a former royal flag, unwisely brought to Naples in a carriage last Wednesday towards evening, very nearly triggered a disturbance. The common people saw them and imagined each to belong to a different despot, and seeing them waving on the carriage, thought they were the flags of the victors, not of the defeated. At this point some, whether out of malice or out of ignorance, began to say that Ferdinand, or his son, had arrived with three emperors; the knowledge that General Championnet had left lent credibility to the stupidity of what was being said; others repeated it, a crowd gathered, some to see and some to hear; some shouted long live the king, whereupon armed units rushed in to subdue them; all this brought about a commotion, a murmuring, a disquiet, which increased apace; some secret emissaries, and some troublemakers tried to exploit the situation. All those who live in the areas around Porta Capuana shut themselves up, messages were sent to the Government, the French troops spent the night on the alert, the patrols, both on horseback and on foot, were doubled throughout the City, the national troop rushed in everywhere, and met up with the French. And why all this commotion, this fracas, which could have escalated even further? Because of the people’s ignorance of facts and events.112 I have several times, and to several Citizens, suggested a gazette in the vernacular with the aim of informing the ordinary people of true facts, and true circumstances. Now I dare to put this proposal to the government. I propose therefore the drafting, in the vernacular language for the time being, since this is the only language understood by the ordinary people, of a small weekly journal. This should carry a summary of all our news, and also of the foreign news that might appear important; furthermore, it should carry a summary of all the most interesting among the Government’s laws and deeds, 111. According to Croce, Schipani was an officer in the royal army who, having joined the dissident movement, was imprisoned, then led a number of unsuccessful military operations under the Republic, and was hanged on the island of Ischia on July 19, 1799: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, 61n1. 112. This is the first mention of urban insurgency after the formation of the Republic. Fonseca Pimentel identifies its cause as lack of information, for which the suggested remedy is a gazette in the vernacular to be read in public. While she harks back to her earlier analysis of the cultural and linguistic hiatus between the Jacobin elite and the people, in this case the problem is simpler, and can be addressed by providing accurate information.

134 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL each with suitable explanations and clarifications. This paper should be read on feast days in all Churches, both urban and rural; each of our six Municipalities should have men who are paid specifically to read in the afternoon to groups of people, and in the departments as well as in the capital. I would remind our worthy Representatives that not only is it useful but indeed an intrinsic duty in a democracy, that the people should be acquainted with the facts, and put in a position to form a judgment. How could they take an interest otherwise? Let us remember that the Constituent Assembly,113 our first Mother and generator of the public spirit, employed these very methods to activate it. Finally, I conclude that while theoretical instruction will produce a few philosophers, only practical instruction will build nations. ……………… The Flautina printing house at San Giuseppe has published the celebrated Constitution of the French Republic of the year 1795, both in French and Italian. This Code of Humanity and reason has been the model for the individual Constitutions of the other Italian Republics, and will be the model for the Neapolitan Republic. Having the French Constitution to hand is tantamount to having them all. Its rightful foundations are liberty and equality, and therefore all nations that adopt it cannot fail to flourish. It is on sale at the abovementioned printing house, and also at Citizen Stasi’s Bookshops opposite the Church of San Gregorio Armeno, where it can be purchased for twenty grana, a reasonable price for a substantial volume in two languages.114 ………………

113. This reference is to the Constituent Assembly of the French Republic, as is indicated by its designation as “our first Mother,” revolutionary France being the constant model of Neapolitan Jacobins. 114. This was the constitution approved on 5 Fructidor (August 22) 1795, which became known as the Constitution of Year III. More conservative than the Constitution of Year I, it established a five-man committee, or “Directory” with executive powers. Hence the period of French history that follows is called the Directory or Directoire, which would last until it was overturned by the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire (November 9) 1799 that installed Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul. The Constitution of Year III was the model for the constitutions of the Italian Republics established in the Jacobin triennio 1796–1799. Its article 1 contains the statement that the “French Republic is one and indivisible,” clearly the model for the designation of the Neapolitan Republic which appears at the head of each issue of the Monitore. On the constitutions of revolutionary France, see Antonio Saitta, Costituenti e costituzioni della Francia, rivoluzionaria e liberale, 1789–1875 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1975). Grana was a unit of currency that corresponded to a tenth of a carlino.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 135 No. 11: Saturday, March 9, 1799 NONIDI 19 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Citizens, in so many Communes are your hands stained with each other’s blood, and you shamelessly share with gallows fodder and common criminals the ugly title of Insurgents against the motherland. Why do you fight, and for whom? Not for the aristocracy and the barons, whom you have always opposed; not for the runaway despot, whom you all detested and despised; not for our faith, our Religion, which is untarnished and unharmed for all to see; not for your possessions, since by fighting each other you are bringing them to mutual devastation. What shameful contrast with your forebears in the days of the great Masaniello!115 Unenlightened by the knowledge and examples that you now have at your disposal, Naples initiated, and your forebears continued, the general insurrection against despotism, proclaimed the Republic, attempted to introduce democracy, and, inspired only by an innate capacity for reason, demanded the rights of Man. Now it is the nobles who uphold equality and democracy, and the populations disdain them! Do you not see that your Bishops, your Parish Priests, are joining the Republic and encouraging you to support it as it is beneficial to you? What delirium has taken hold of you that you still fear the name of the disgraced runaway despot? If only, from among your mutual hatred and the crimes into which you plunge, you would make room for factual truth to reach you, you would know that the English squadron is no longer in Sicily, and the despot, fearful, defenseless, divested of troops and resources, and no less hated there than here, far from being able to come and support you, cannot find anyone to help and sustain him, and is about to flee, or else be arrested in Sicily. It distresses me to see the rivalries, resentment, and jealousy among you, and the civic hatreds that they incite. It is quite understandable that under the past system, based on divisions and privileges, which furthermore were exacerbated by capricious favoritism, seeing as the yoke of servitude was unfairly laid upon you, those who were oppressed more would harbor resentment against those who were oppressed less. It is indeed excusable that this should generate rivalries and jealousy among you. But what jealousy, what resentment can there be in the Republic, where all distinctions have been eliminated, and you are all regarded equally, you can all proceed equally unfettered in your trades, you can purchase and retain your possessions securely, you are all entitled to the same rewards, and those who commit offences are all subject to the same punishments? What does it matter to you if someone were to obtain a position or a privilege in preference to 115. On Masaniello and the myth of Masaniello, see MN, No 6, 125.

136 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL you? Do you not know that in the Republic all privileges and all positions are in perpetual rotation? If you had received them before or were in possession of them today, you would have to prepare to relinquish them to another. If another has had or will have them, he must prepare to relinquish them to you. Forsake, therefore, rivalries and quarrels which then redound to yourselves and to your children. If today you plunder your enemy’s house, tomorrow he will plunder yours; with so many men killed, yours and other people’s fields will remain uncultivated; so much reciprocal devastation will impoverish all; and yours and other people’s families will fall into destitution. And finally, you will fall subject to the Nation’s terrible Revenge. The Republic forgives those who repent, but is merciless with those who persist in their wrongful ways.116 ……………… A few nights ago, on the street of the Annunciata, our national troops made an arrest that was difficult, dangerous, and long desired by the municipality. The man seized was Domenico Benedetto; he had committed many crimes, and was a seditious party boss in that neighborhood. His supporters all ran riot, and tried, but in vain, to oppose his capture by throwing stones. Almost all the individuals who made the arrest belonged to the second company, which takes charge of the most awkward police operations with the utmost zeal, even when it is not on duty, as on this occasion.117 An even more important arrest was made by the gendarmerie, which rivals the national troops in zeal and dexterity: they took by surprise and arrested about a hundred between so-called Camisciotti and Lazzari, who were hiding in a small house outside Porta Capuana.118 116. Fonseca Pimentel’s heartfelt appeal to the rebels is rather curious. Who exactly is it meant for? Surely it was not meant for the bulk of the rural population, who would have been unable to read it. The mention of “your trades” and “your possessions” might suggest she is speaking to artisans or small landowners. She addresses the insurgents as “citizens,” and tells them that they have always opposed “the aristocracy and the barons” and the “runaway despot,” language that suggests either the landless peasants or the small group of new landowners who had emerged from the limited reforms of the feudal system put in place during the period of enlightened reforms. But then the appeal to the myth of Masaniello would suggest an addressee of lesser social rank. Perhaps this piece should be read as a personal expression of puzzlement and frustration combined with a vision of what ought to be: a Republic comprised of loyal citizens, where all are equal. This appeal to the “citizen rebels,” though, ends on an unmistakably threatening note: repent or else. 117. Battaglini points out that there is no mention of this event in any of the sources compiled by eyewitnesses: Il monitore napoletano 1799, 313n7. 118. The gendarmerie had the specific function of preserving public order. The Camisciotti, also known as Schiavoni, were the Albanian troops of the Bourbon army: see MN, No. 1, 95, note 9. The stark tone Fonseca Pimentel adopted when reporting on the repression of the insurgency in the provinces is

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 137 Former Marshal de Gambs, former Lieutenant-Colonel Federici (no relation to General Federici), former Brigadier Bock, and various others have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy. Last Thursday the high military commission passed its first sentence. In accordance with the General-in-Chief’s decree of 16 Pluviose that any individual who brings unrest to the City shall be brought in front of the Council of war, and shot, it condemned to death for insurrection and disturbances in the market neighborhood four individuals, and handed over a fifth to a known person. The sentence was passed in public, printed, displayed in public places, and distributed in a thousand copies, and carried out the same day. On that same Thursday, the flags of the insurgents were burned in front of the National Palace.119 In the morning of the same day, the second public Session was held over the abolition of Feudal rights. Once the Session was over, the discussion continued in private. We shall give a detailed account of it once a decision has been made.120 Among the victims sacrificed by Maria Carolina’s wrath to Marie Antoinette’s infernal spirit in October 1794 was Emmanuele Dedeo. A youth of not yet twentyone years of age, he distinguished himself during the trial for his virtuous silence and loyalty towards his comrades, and further distinguished himself in his last utterances for his filial devotion, and for his serene composure when faced with execution. Yesterday Representative Forges proposed to the Government that it should erect a column at its own expense in front of the Castle where he was executed, and this column should display the name of Emmanuele Dedeo, as well as the names of Antonio Moscadelli from Trani and Francesco Palumbo, who both died fighting for the cause of liberty in their sorties from Castel Santeramo, and of Representative Pepe, who was slaughtered by the Insurgents in his home town of Acquaviva. The Government, whose intentions fully concurred with the echoed here in this account of “insurrection and disturbance” in the capital, which culminates in four public executions. 119. The text of the sentence was published in the Giornale patriotico. There had been several episodes of anti-Republican, or at least anti-French sentiments in Naples, with ensuing retributions, as we learn from De Nicola’s Diario napoletano: French soldiers hit with stones on February 11 (1:52); a former royal constable shot on February 20 (1:58); rumors about an attempt to storm the castle of Sant’Elmo in early March (1:67), followed by clashes at the Market resulting in the death of French soldiers and members of the National Guard, and disturbances at Porta Capuana (1:70); the shooting of two men deemed guilty of (perhaps) promoting riots on March 6 (1:72), with subsequent publication of the sentence that found them guilty of killing a French soldier (1:73). 120. The previous session dedicated to the feudal question was discussed in MN, No. 4, 112–113. While a “detailed account” will have to wait until April 9 (MN, No. 18, 151–154), it is noteworthy that this brief mention of the debate over the abolition of feudal rights, an action that promised a better future, is inserted between two reports of a quite different kind: the first dealing with the suppression of opponents, and the second with the celebration of martyrs to the Republican cause.

138 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Representative, agreed to his request, and decreed that he should be declared officially one who has deserved well of the motherland.121 As we mentioned in No. 8 of the journal, the Government likewise intends to erect monuments to our fellow Citizen writers who have in this century given enlightenment, destroyed prejudices, and improved the reason of our populations. Meanwhile, General Championnet has given instructions, just as General Bonaparte did in Mantua before his departure, for a monument to Virgil near the Cave of Pozzuoli, where according to tradition his grave lies. If this site is to be known as Virgil’s tomb, it must needs be rightly adorned with some kind of monument. This to honor the site rather than the poet: since what monument could one erect to a great poet that could equal his own Poem, which outshines the ages of marble and bronze. Besides, if one is going to erect statues to great Poets, we would remind our Citizens that our great fellow citizen Torquato Tasso deserves one no less than Virgil, since he was born in Sorrento, and only comes after Virgil in the sense that Virgil preceded him chronologically.122 ……………… Following General Championnet’s departure, Civil Commissar Faypoult has arrived here. ………………

121. Dedeo was one of the Jacobin dissidents put on trial and executed in 1794: see Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 203–7, and Nico Perrone, Il truglio: Infami, delatori e pentiti nel Regno di Napoli (Palermo: Sellerio, 2000). He could have saved his life by informing on his fellow dissidents, but refused to do so. The allusion to Maria Carolina’s wrath refers to her rage at the execution in 1793 of her sister, the French queen Marie Antoinette. Moscadelli and Palumbo were mentioned in the first issue of the journal: see MN, No. 1, 97. 122. Virgil, the author of the Aeneid, the epic poem which established the notion of the continuity between ancient Troy and the foundation of Rome, was born near Mantua in northeastern Italy and was, according to legend, buried at Pozzuoli, having died at Brindisi on the Apulian coast after a voyage across the Adriatic. Tasso was especially famous as the author of Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), a late sixteenth-century epic poem celebrating the crusader leader who captured Jerusalem and restored Christ’s sepulcher to Christian hands. The association between Virgil and Tasso, a natural one in that Tasso is after all “our fellow citizen,” also has a textual basis: Tasso’s poem begins with the line Canto l’arme … e il capitano (“I sing of arms … and the leader”), a near quotation of the first line of the Aeneid: Arma virumque cano (“I sing of arms and the man”).

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 139 No. 12: Tuesday, March 12, 1799 DUODI 22 VENTOSE YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE ……………… General Duhesme and the Chief of the First legion Ettore Carafa have returned; even though the latter had to leave again soon after, while the former kept his Headquarters at Avellino. General Olivier’s division, which covered the department of the Sele, has advanced towards the Capital, and has now taken up quarters in Castellamare. They say that General Forest is moving along the Adriatic coast from the Terra d’Otranto. Two light carriages have actually arrived from Chieti, without any unpleasant encounters. But the Abruzzo Ultra is in turmoil. The land between Sulmona and L’Aquila is constantly infested. Proni, who was not in Guardiagrele, is nevertheless still at the head of his band. But he is not perpetrating atrocities. Somebody who came from Rome maintains that six thousand French troops arrived there, and will come to join the general army in Naples split into two columns of equal size, one of them via the Abruzzi.123 Ettore Carafa’s letter specifically referred to Captain Roselli.124 The deeds of this valiant Citizen deserve special mention. This is what he himself wrote to his uncle Giuseppe Sciascia. Having advanced further than the rest with only four comrades at the battle of Montuoro, he was fighting his way into retreat with them; but after firing his last cartridge, he was shot at by over fifteen volleys together. None of these injured him, but he was stunned and fell to the ground. His comrades were able to get away, while he was captured, and then condemned to be shot; with his eyes already covered, he showed no fear, and said intrepidly that he did not care about dying, but wanted first to say a few words. This was granted. So he said to the Chief, “Shooting me, a defenseless man, will make you twice guilty. I shall be avenged by my side, and by the French troops, and I shall die glorious, and also happy because I am dying for the Motherland, which you do not know, since I do not understand what Devil you are fighting for.” The Chief of those insurgents was moved by the word “Motherland” (and to whom is this word 123. This brisk review of the insurgency situation ranges over much of the territory of the Republic: the news is not good, and the counterinsurgency is largely in the hands of the French. 124. Carafa’s letter, which is printed in No. 11 of the Monitore, gives a highly emotive account of the battle of Montuoro, near Avellino: see Antonio Colombo, Memorie di Montoro in principato ultra (Naples: M. Gambella, 1883), 81–82; and Coppa-Zuccari, L’invasione francese, 1:915–17. Clino Roselli would be found guilty of taking arms for the Republic and hanged on November 28, 1799: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 68.

140 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL not sweet?125). He embraced Roselli and took him home. The people were seething at first, and wanted to torch his house, but then calmed down and saw the errors of their ways. They all felt the power of that name, and pleaded with Roselli to be the one to intercede for them with the Chief of the legion. This he did in a wise manner, and Montuoro is now among the Communes loyal to the Republic. PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT The matter of the Banchi is now of paramount concern to the Public and the Government.126 There are two points at issue. One is finding a prompt remedy to the shortage of metal currency, which at the moment means that we have to suffer the enormous 65 percent return given in exchange for metal over and above its value; moreover, the backing given by the Government to the Banchi’s debit benefits almost exclusively the stockjobbers. The other is accumulating funds so as to secure our financial position, with a view to swiftly extinguishing the polizze. Yesterday a public session was held on these questions, and all Citizens are invited to enlighten the Government with their views. ……………… 125. The patriotic rhetoric of this account of Roselli’s deeds is enhanced by what would be for contemporary readers an instantly recognizable allusion to the famous line dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“it is sweet and right to die for the fatherland”); Horace, Odes 3.2.13. Once again, a classical reference is enlisted in the aid of political action. 126. The Neapolitan Banchi, established in the fifteenth century as private businesses with the function of lending money at interest, were almost entirely replaced by public Banchi in the sixteenth century. At that time there were seven of them. Private individuals could deposit money with them, and receive loans at reasonable interest rates. In exchange for money deposited, the Banchi would issue a fede di credito (certificate of credit). These were guaranteed issue and could be used as currency. A holder of a fede di credito could issue an order of payment, called a polizza, based on the fede di credito for any sum less than the stated face value. This system of transactions was tantamount to the circulation of a paper currency and was in successful operation until 1792, when the Bourbon court appropriated the Banchi, with disastrous consequences. The money in deposit was used to cover the court’s extravagant financial commitments, and when the existing funds were no longer sufficient, fresh fedi di credito, backed by no collateral, were issued. The final blow came when King Ferdinand fled Naples taking with him the whole of the state mint’s metal reserves, which left the Republican government in dire financial straits. This crisis gave rise to an avalanche of pamphlets and broadsheets proposing various solutions. The goal that emerged from this debate was to increase the circulation of metal currency, while safeguarding the interests of small investors as well as those of the state and the wider community. The plan that was actually adopted by the government is discussed in MN, No. 15, 145–146. This summary is based on Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 329–31 and 381–82. On the Banchi, see also Marina Morani Tagle, Il problema dei Banchi nella Repubblica napoletana del 1799 (Naples: Edizioni Stampe Sud, 1970).

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 141 The Committee for Internal Administration has given a prize (the first literary prize bestowed by the Government) to Citizen Onofrio Tataranni, who is well known as the writer of various literary pamphlets, and especially the work entitled Essay by a Political Philosopher, the Friend of Man, which was published ten or eleven years ago, the work of a true philosopher and philanthropist. In this way they have at once honored knowledge, age, virtuous indigence, moral virtues, civic sentiments, and a publication which is beneficial to the Motherland. Now, his mind further inflamed by the sacred name of liberty, he has composed and donated to the Motherland a National Catechism for the Citizen, in which he employs the simple question-and-answer method to clarify the working of the social system, making plain the relevant duties and how they are to be fulfilled.127 ………………

No. 14: Saturday, March 23, 1799 TRIDI 3 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Two letters are circulating, one purporting to be from the Tyrant to the People, the other to the Barons. Neither has escaped the watchful vigilance of the Government, and the General-in-Chief has addressed the People through a long and timely proclamation on such falsehoods employed by their enemies in order to mislead them. Various individuals have been arrested. Letters that have arrived from Cerignola inform us that a man from Barletta named Vincenzo Barracchio, together with a Corsican who bears some resemblance to Francesco, the son of the pretender to Naples, have been going around the coastal areas of Apulia 127. Tataranni’s Saggio d’un filosofo politico, amico dell’uomo (5 vols.; Naples: Presso Giuseppe di Bisogno, 1784–1789). Republican catechisms, modeled on the traditional catechisms in question-andanswer format used by the Catholic church to teach Christian doctrine, were one of the tools employed by Jacobins in their effort to win consensus among the lower classes. The first Republican catechisms were produced in France, where the practice was well-established by the time it was adopted by the various Italian Jacobin Republics. Although the catechisms aimed to reach the lower strata of the population, the language employed was excessively abstract: although their intended readership was the common people, their implied reader was not. It is, however, only fair to add that such catechisms were probably meant to be used by educated mediators who would transmit their message to the common people, although it is not known to what an extent this actually happened. On the whole genre in Italy, see Guerci, Istruire alle verità repubblicane; on Naples, see Guerci, “I catechismi repubblicani a Napoli.” The catechism of Onofrio Tataranni, one of the category of ordained priests who supported the Republic, is reprinted in Pasquale Matarazzo, ed., Catechismi repubblicani: Napoli 1799 (Naples: Vivarium, 1999), 101–89. See also Giovanni Caserta, Onofrio Tataranni: Teologo della rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, ed. Michele Saponaro (Naples: Vivarium, 2003).

142 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL claiming that the Corsican was the true Francesco, and the other man was his Secretary. Both were claiming to be travelling in order to put together an army, for which they needed money. And in order to make their tale more credible, the selfstyled son of the pretender went dressed in a monk’s habit, under which he wore the sash of San Gennaro. Both carried proclamations fabricated in the printshop in Polignano. In this way they managed to collect about thirty thousand ducats, but on arriving in Bisceglia they were unmasked and arrested, and the money was taken from them. A Scribe named Pellicano forged Representative Forges’s handwriting, and sent his brother inflammatory letters promoting rebellion. And finally, other Scribes from the former court of law in Trani, seeking to delude and deceive poor folk, are heating six-carlini coins to forge seals on documents so that they look like official dispatches.128 ……………… The Ecclesiastical commission has sent Parish priests and other clergy in the departments of the Neapolitan Republic a request that warns preachers not to stray from the explanation of Scripture and the teaching of catechism. They are also required to inform the Commission of any who abuse their Holy Ministry, or distort the true meaning of Scripture, and bewitch the ignorant People with theatrical rants, or put forward stories unsupported by solid proof and devoid of authority and common sense, or dupe consciences with the opinions of religious authorities or with disgraceful buffoonery. All parish priests are kindly invited to sign the directive to signify their consent. ………… Hall of Public Education Not having received the relevant reports on time, we cannot give a precise account of each of the learned and instructive addresses which were delivered there; so we 128. This conspiracy, which took place in the coastal area of Apulia, was a sensational ploy to keep alive the Bourbon presence and thus prepare the way for the dynasty’s return. Seven Corsicans were involved, who took on various fictitious roles (crown prince, king’s brother, duke of Saxony, assorted courtiers). After the fall of the Republic, Vincenzo Durante, a lieutenant in the Bourbon army, published an account of these events in his Diario storico delle operazioni di guerra intraprese nelle due provincie di Lecce e Bari contro i nemici dello Stato e del Trono da due offiziali anglo-corsi D. Gio. Francesco De Boccheciampe e D. Gio. Battista De Cesari (Naples: Manfredi, 1800). The name of Vincenzo Barracchio, mentioned above, does not feature in Durante’s book, but appears in De Nicola’s Diario napoletano (1:87) as “a surgeon named Barracchi,” and in Marinelli’s Giornali (63) as “someone from Barletta named Vincenzo Barracchio.” De Nicola cites the Monitore as his source. Apocryphal letters and proclamations from the former king appeared with considerable frequency: see Coppa-Zuccari, L’invasione francese, 1:723–28. On the whole matter, see Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 361n1.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 143 shall only mention some which stood out because of their particular character. On the evening of 4 Ventose, citizen Laurent Prota harangued against selfishness, which she described as a worm gnawing away at the tree of liberty, exhorted to altruism, and with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, declared selflessness to be the true fruit of virtue. She embellished the solidity of her reasonings with lively images and a graceful style, and she suggested various instruments of public prosperity—agriculture, commerce, arts and crafts—and concluded, let us combine our physical and moral strengths in order to be free.129 On another evening, Citizen Pimentel recited a hymn to liberty that she had composed in Sant’Eramo, when liberty was first proclaimed by the brave Citizens who were imprisoned there with her, and also a sonnet written during her imprisonment at the Vicaria. The entire hall repeated with her the verses inspired by hatred of Kings and undying love of liberty. Then, before descending from the podium, she added: Democracy, and therefore true liberty, make populations gentle, indulgent, generous, and magnanimous. From the indulgence that you have shown in listening to me, and the generous benevolence that you have bestowed on me with your cheers and your applause, I know that Naples is free. In one of the sessions, Citizen Vincenzo Rossi said that rights are according to needs: if needs are satisfied, there is equality. That is because, once there are no needs, the weak and poor are not dependent, are not subordinate, are not slaves. He ended his speech on a suggestion of four principles of revolutionary logic: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Of books written under the tyranny one should take no notice. If we read them at all, we should read them with caution. In a democracy there is no need for commerce, which unbalances equality. Strict adherence to the law is the foundation of tranquility so that decent folk can live in peace and security. Changing the government is of no use if people do not change their ways.

On one occasion, Saverio Simoni argued in favor of an equal division of inheritances, and in another session, Raffaele Vittoria supported this view and added that one should abolish wills and donations between living people, concluding that the law should dispose of everything, and when the law disposes, the 129. On women’s involvement in the Republic, see above, 70–72. Rosalie Laurent Prota, a Frenchwoman who had been living in Naples for a while and was a strong Jacobin sympathizer, was among the Republican women who suffered public abuse and imprisonment after the fall of the Republic: see Gargano, Eleonora e le altre, 84–85, and Francesco Lomonaco, Rapporto fatto al Cittadino Carnot Ministro della Guerra sulle segrete cagioni, e su’ principali avvenimenti della catastrofe napoletana (Lugano: Tipografia Ruggia, 1835), 75 and 150.

144 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL citizen lives secure in its shadow. Both views were ardently contested by Francesco Lauria.130 ………………

No. 15: Saturday, March 30, 1799 DECADI 10 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Last Monday we were presented with a sight most enjoyable to the eye, and most delightful to the heart of the true Citizen. The General-in-Chief, on reviewing the French and Cisalpine troops, reviewed our National troops as well. The three legions that have so far been formed marched through several neighborhoods, and then drew up in two lines from the largo di San Nicola alla Carità to the largo delle Pigne. They presented the most amazing, agreeable, and majestic prospect. The warlike and lively look on their faces, the very diversity of their attire, which, lacking as it did complete military uniformity, signified that this was indeed a civic troop where all bear arms not as soldiers but as citizens; their fluttering plumes, the crowds of onlookers on balconies and in the streets; the overcast day unmolested by sun, wind, or rain; everything concurred to enhance the jubilation. The hubbub of the military marches and the spectacle of this troop, created swiftly as though by a miracle of liberty, inspired tenderness and wonder at the same time. What mother did not then feel like saying, as the Spartan women did when they presented their sons with shields, “come back with this or on this”? Which maiden did not long to be given by the Motherland as a prize to the strongest man, as the Samnite women were? New looks, new features, new faces: we begin at last to understand through concrete images the ancient Greeks’ descriptions of the looks and demeanor of their heroes. These heroes, and those who described them, were free men.131 130. “Vincenzo Rossi” is clearly a mistake; it should be Vincenzio Russo. The points he is reported making in his address to the Hall of Public Education are based on his wide-ranging exposition in Pensieri politici, which had been published in Rome in 1798, and is now reprinted in Cantimori, Giacobini italiani, 1:253–398. 131. An amalgam is given here of historical references to heroic peoples of pre-Roman Italy and ancient Greece: the Samnites, an indigenous Italic population settled in an area straddling the Apennines southeast of Rome, who fought repeatedly against Rome and, although eventually subjugated, acquired a reputation as great warriors; and the Spartans, an austere and warlike people of the Peloponnesian peninsula, in contrast to the cultured Athenians. The association between ancient Spartans and preRoman Samnites was already present in the Roman tradition. These chilling idealizations of mothers exhorting their sons to return from war as either victors or corpses, and of young women clamoring

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 145 After the two public sessions held by our Government over the abolition of feudal rights, the law was finally drafted through many private discussions, and sent for ratification to the General-in-Chief. He asked the Government for clarification on several points, which have now been settled. In the next issue, we shall explain the underlying principles of the new law, and give details of the discussion that preceded it.132 If what they are saying is true, that the former Barons are trying to prevent the ratification of the new law, I would say that they misconstrue their own interests. The first decrees of all new Governments are always the meekest and mildest, since at its start every government wishes for harmony and peace and reconciliation among citizens, and therefore sacrifices as little as possible the interests of individuals to the Community at large. On the other hand, if out of resentment of some of these sacrifices, an Order, or a Party, conspires or attempts in any way to obstruct these decrees, the Community at large is outraged, because it feels that its generosity has been in vain. Its outrage increases with the annoyance at feeling defeated, and becomes exacerbated with the passing of time. Therefore, at the first favorable opportunity (and in a revolution, when the popular interest is at stake, such an opportunity arises easily), the Community at large takes revenge on the party that has presumed to be superior to it. And the decree, first born out of equity, becomes then the progeny of that supreme entitlement born of a supreme affront, and in this way that party loses the advantages that it would have gained before, and is all the more subjected to national animosity. During the recent holy week, the Republic has distributed generous alms. The law on the new configuration of the courts has been tabled. Among the many projects presented to the Government for the elimination of bank bills, the most notable have been one proposing a tontina, and to be given as prizes to victorious warriors, derive from works by Greek authors Plutarch and Strabo: respectively, Plutarch’s “Sayings of Spartan Women,” in Plutarch’s Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: W. Heinemann, 1931), 465; and The Geography of Strabo, trans. Duane W. Roller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 251. The myth, or as it has been called, the “mirage” of Sparta had a deep influence on Jacobin thinking: see the seminal work by François Ollier, Le mirage spartiate: Étude sur l’idéalisation de Sparte dans l’antiquité grecque de l’origine jusqu’aux Cyniques (Paris: Boccard, 1933); also Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). 132. The next issue of the Monitore gives a detailed account of the debates leading to a new law on feudal matters, but Fonseca Pimentel’s position is essentially laid out here. Not only does she have little sympathy with feudal lords, but she does not hesitate to demand that they conform to the new regime. This is one of the rare instances where she does, in a sense, take sides: many of the barons were influential supporters of the Republic (see above, 22–23 and 77), and she was probably concerned that their participation would hinder the democratic development of the revolution. Her fear of an oligarchy emerging is also voiced in her letter to President of the Legislative Commission Gennaro Serra concerning the formation of a mounted National Guard: see MN, No. 21, 162–164.

146 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL another one drawn up by Citizen Luigi Targioni.133 This latter proposal envisages a forced loan up to a sum of ten million, in as many bank polizze, to be liquidated and destroyed immediately. This loan would yield five percent to those who contribute and it would be guaranteed against the entirety of public assets; in exchange for the relinquished polizze, their holders would receive a written document guaranteeing their annual income; the levy would pay the interest, and the sale of national assets would cover the liquidation of the capital. In this way, ten million paper bills would be quickly taken out of circulation; the return given in exchange for metal currency would decrease; and both the cash in circulation and the value of national assets would increase. The Government rejected this proposal, finding it coercive, and instead has adopted the tontina proposal. Soon it will allocate to the Banchi the funds to cover their debt, which is not supposed to be more than thirteen million, and will arrange for the immediate issuance of bonds for purchase. We would, however, point out that the goal in the sale of such assets should be not so much to resolve the present economic distress as to fulfil the political aim of securing for the future the democratic foundation of the Republic. A delegation has approached the Government with several complaints on behalf of the patriots. The complaints concerned the sluggishness of military operations, the lack of vigor in repressing the many insurgencies that afflict the Republic, the failure to operate a proper scrutiny of prospective incumbents, the preference shown to aristocrats, and, finally, the fecklessness in upholding the interests of the Nation vis-à-vis the French civil Commission. (Citizens, if you want to strengthen the Government, do not weaken it yourselves, do convey your opinions and your wishes, but support it with your trust.) The Government has not given in to the civil commission, and it is said as a near certainty that it will send a mission to Paris to deal directly with the excessive demands of the commission. An unconfirmed rumor has it that another similar mission has been sent to General Macdonald, asking that the members of the future governing committee should include the former Prince of Sant’Angelo, the former Prince of Columbrano, Luigi Medici, and the two Representatives Rotondo and Laubert. This rumor has thrown the country into turmoil.134 133. The tontina took its name from the Neapolitan financier Lorenzo Tonti, who devised it for the French court in the seventeenth century. It was an early form of life insurance: individuals could buy bonds from the state, which guaranteed the payment of interest at maturity, providing the purchaser with liquid funds at a set future date. This system was formally adopted on May 6, but never implemented. At this stage, Fonseca Pimentel only raises a general reservation, but offers a more elaborate critique in MN, No. 27, 176–178. 134. Fonseca Pimentel here expresses her increasing disquiet regarding the effectiveness of the government’s endeavors, the political and ideological standing of some of its members, and its capability to take a firm line vis-à-vis the French. These were fundamental problems for the new rulers: the provinces were suffering endemic insurgency, the government was divided into factions, the loyalty

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 147 Following a request by the General-in-Chief, a deputation of three Representatives will visit the departments with the aim of pacifying them. The Government is thinking of first sending another deputation of three in order to strengthen their own presence. Instructions have already been given for the printing of the draft Constitution, so that copies can be distributed to every member of the Provisional Government, and it can be debated without delay.135 Citizen Abrial arrived two days ago from Paris in the capacity of organizing Commissar. Accompanying General Duhesme in his expedition to Apulia is a Committee of our fellow citizens, with the title of revolutionary committee. The actions of this committee have earned it the praise and gratitude of the Government. One gathers from its official letters that a national guard has already been formed in Barletta. It consists of 2,000 men divided into two Battalions with a Commander, an Inspector, two Heads of Battalion, and three aides-de-camp. Also, we gather that the inhabitants of Trani, together with those from Andria, attacked the population of Minervino. Minervino was defended by a group of good patriots who managed to stop the attackers from entering the Town; nevertheless, much of the borough was sacked, and those populations and individuals who suffered losses are now asking for compensation from the assets of the murderers from Trani and Andria, and from the natives of Minervino who had assisted them. One should remember that, when citizen Garrat was due to arrive here as French ambassador to Ferdinand, some Corsican émigrés were expelled from these states at the request of France, while others were permitted to remove to the coastal towns of Apulia, under the pretext that there it would be easier for them to find passage abroad. These Corsicans were in the pay of England, and most of the recurrent ills of these Departments may have been due to them. According of its officials was by no means assured, the occupying French were pursuing their own interests, and the government was often unable to assert itself. These circumstances would certainly be a source of distress for Fonseca Pimentel, who at the same time wishes above all to avoid further damage to an already precarious situation, so she tempers her account of the discords with an appeal for unity and support, albeit critical support, for the government. The political activist prevails over the political analyst. The divisions were in fact quite deep, and ultimately unsurmountable. The mission to Paris, which proved to be unsuccessful, consisted of two former princes, Moliterno and d’Angri Doria, and two councillors, Leonardo Pansini and Francescantonio Ciaia: see Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 1:324–26. Moliterno had been involved in the negotiations that led to the ceasefire at the time of the proclamation of the Republic; see MN, No. 1, 96. 135. The text of this constitution, entitled Progetto di costituzione della Repubblica Napoletana presentato al Governo Provvisorio dal Comitato di Legislazione (Draft Constitution of the Neapolitan Republic submitted to the Provisional Government by the Legislative Committee), based on the French Constitution of Year 3, was drafted by Mario Pagano in its entirety. Although debated, it was never finalized.

148 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL to the same letter from the revolutionary Committee, many Communes, influenced by seven of these Corsicans, fell under aristocratic control, a thousand insurgents joined them from Taranto, Massafra, Francavilla, Ostuni, Gioja, Castellana, Mottola, Grottaglie, Ceglie, Fasano, and other places, and on March 15 proceeded to devastate the lands of Martina, a respectable Community of the former province of Lecce, which had been unanimously and joyously democratized since February 8. They then returned on the following day, with eight artillery pieces. The patriots were bravely defending themselves, but were betrayed, as the letter tells us, by the agent of the former duke Michele Gorza, who would not allow them to position a gun on the roof of his house, and then opened his house to the insurgents, who plundered the Commune and committed all manner of atrocities.136 ………………… General Championnet has been arrested in Turin and will be brought to judgment by a military court on the charge of profligacy; he has written asking for documents that will justify his conduct.137 …………………

136. Fonseca Pimentel continues to be concerned with the provinces, their uncertain loyalty, and the insurgencies. Here we are told of an expedition to Apulia led by the French General Duhesme, but strengthened by a “revolutionary committee” of Neapolitan citizens. The news is mixed: Trani (a coastal town) and Andria (a few miles inland) are in the hands of insurgents, while in Minervino (a hill town about twenty miles inland), the “patriots” hold sway. Much of what is reported here of the Apulian expedition is based on the evidence contained in letters from this revolutionary committee, which may not be completely reliable. Battaglini maintains, in Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 383n11, that very little is known even about the remit of this “Patriotic Revolutionary Committee with the left Wing of the Army of Naples,” especially since there is no trace of written records regarding its foundation, and he attributes this confusion to the “administrative chaos” that engulfed the Republic. He also casts doubt on the accuracy of the reference to General Duhesme being in Apulia at that time. Inaccuracies are only to be expected especially with regard to news from the provinces, given the parlous state of the roads and means of communication. Also, as ever when tackling the issue of enmity to the Republican government, Fonseca Pimentel veers between analysis, exhortation, and wishful thinking. It is significant here that she uses the episode of the Corsican émigrés to explain away the insurgencies over a vast area surrounding the inland hill town of Martina Franca in the Salento peninsula at the extreme south of Apulia. On this situation, see Lucarelli, La Puglia nella rivoluzione napoletana del 1799. 137. Championnet was arrested in Milan on March 11, taken to Turin, and from there to Grenoble. On July 5, all proceedings were suspended and he was nominated commander-in-chief of the army of the Alps, but was to die on January 9, 1800: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 260n2.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 149 VARIETY Extract from the Mercurio Galante de’ Campi Elisi of 3 Germinal Dialogue between HIPPOCRATES, LUCIAN, and DEMOCRITUS Lucian. Good day Hippocrates. I have been looking for you and could not find you. I have an important question to ask you. Hippocrates. Good day Lucian. You look halfway between gloomy and scornful. Why? Being in the company of Democritus you should be entirely in good spirits. Lucian. Tell me, Father of Medicine, when you were on this earth, if you saw the patient getting worse with a certain type of treatment, what did you do? Hippocrates. I would change the treatment. Lucian. And yet in the new Republics up here, the disease of Insurgencies is only treated with armed repression. The disease is getting worse and yet the treatment stays the same. Are you not laughing, Democritus? Democritus. No. I feel like crying myself.138

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No. 16: Tuesday, April 2, 1799 TRIDI 13 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE ……………… VARIETY 138. Battaglini inclines to think that this publication, of which nothing is known, is likely to be a strenna (a collection of writings published near the beginning of the year): Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 385n31. Might it not, in fact, be fictitious? Might the Campi Elisi (Elysian Fields) not simply contain an allusion to the heights of perfect wisdom from which the three great Greek sages look down on the pitiful state of affairs regarding the Republic’s attempts to deal with the insurgencies? The allegorical meaning of this dialogue, that the current policy toward unrest in the provinces is failing, corresponds with what we know to be Fonseca Pimentel’s own views on the matter. It should be noted that 3 Germinal, the presumed date of this issue of the Mercurio Galante, happens to be the date of the previous issue of the Monitore, which had included the report of her own address to the Hall of Public Education: see above, 143. The pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus, originator of the atomist theory, was generally known as the “laughing philosopher,” having a broadly optimistic outlook, in contrast to his contemporary Heraclitus, who for his pessimism was called the “crying philosopher.” The point of this dialogue is that current circumstances are so bad that even Democritus, the optimist, cries. Lucian is Lucian of Samosata, the second-century CE author of dialogues and famous for his wit and satire. Hippocrates is the famous ancient physician and originator of the principles of the Hippocratic Oath.

150 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL ……………… Citizens’ commendable deeds deserve to be made known, and we will make one such known without naming the person, knowing that perhaps notoriety would displease him, and with the sole aim of holding this deed as an example to other members of his profession, and inducing others to value and love their Motherland. A few days ago, a Professor of Surgery was approached in Via Toledo by a distressed father. This man, beside himself with anguish, distraught, covered in sweat, said to him: “My wife has been in labor for hours; the fetus is presenting with an arm, and the two midwives I sent for have not so far been able to help her. Will you come to see her?” The Professor immediately forgot his other commitments, and rushed with the man to his home in the vicolo delle chianche. As soon as he arrived, he reassured the fearful woman with words of comfort and hope, and set out to perform the difficult procedure. Within minutes he delivered a baby girl, whom they all thought had died in the womb, left the woman in the care of the two midwives and set out to resuscitate the child. He blew his breath into her mouth, efflavit super faciem ejus spiraculum vitae,139 massaged her body, felt her heart awaken, redoubled his efforts, and the baby began to sigh. At this point he cried out with delight: “Be of good cheer, she is alive, she will live.” Then came the crying which marks the beginning of life, and which often continues throughout it. Whereupon the Professor turned his attention to the mother, who had not yet expelled the placenta and was bleeding profusely, and delivered it successfully. The parents, Citizens Francesco Valerio and Angela Sorrentino, named their daughter after the Professor, as he refused to accept any remuneration, and he took his leave from them exultant with joy at having been able to help them. We should like to reassure our readers that the Surgeon was born in the territory of the Republic and was educated in Naples, and that both Angela Sorrentino and her baby are in excellent health.140 139. “He blew his breath into her mouth” translates words from the Latin Vulgate Bible at Genesis 2.7, where God brings Adam to life: formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terrae et inspiravit in faciem eius spiraculum vitae et factus est homo in animam viventem; in the NIV translation, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The intervention to save life is reminiscent of New Testament passages reporting episodes of near death and healing: for instance, when Jesus raises a dead girl and heals a sick woman, told in Matthew 9.18–26; Mark 5.21–43; Luke 8.40–56. 140. Here Fonseca Pimentel concludes a salutary story of class solidarity culminating in a happy ending, an episode that can be read as a vision of a future society where not only will breech presentations no longer result in death, but all will be “citizens,” be they distinguished surgeons or ordinary people like Valerio and Sorrentino. Such distinguished surgeons, moreover, will be Neapolitan born and bred rather than foreigners; a circumstance recalling her experience of twenty years before when the French

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 151 ………………

No. 18: Tuesday, April 9, 1799 DECADI 20 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE Debate on feudal lands After the collapse of the monarchy, reason demanded that feudal oppression be eliminated immediately in our Republic. And in fact representative Albanese, who was then a member of the Legislative Committee, swiftly put forward a bill, and our Government, mindful of the need to free Citizens from the shameful yoke of usurpation, and the descendants of the feudal lords from total indigence, has dealt with the problem seriously both in two public sessions and in many other private ones. Citizens were invited to contribute their suggestions, and the response was so huge that it would take too long to detail. We shall therefore simply give brief accounts of the most cogent views of our Representatives, which correspond more or less to those expressed in other written submissions.141 All agreed that one should abolish without indemnity personal rights, that is to say rights which include personal servitude and labor servitude. There remained the issue whether the Barons should retain the so-called real rights [rights pertaining to the land]: that is to say, the ownership of feudal lands, and the tributes that may be collected, such as tithes, vigesime [twenty percent taxes], land rent, and fida [rent on land over which grazing rights have been acquired], that Citizens may be required to pay to the Baron because of his title to the estate. Also subject to debate was the question whether, if these rights were eliminated, the Barons should be indemnified, and how. physician M. Pean saved her life following a miscarriage, while a presumably Neapolitan doctor had failed to save her son’s life. It would be impossible to ignore the strong personal resonance of this story alongside and intertwined with the political message. Not only is the skill of this caring surgeon the opposite of the “fallacious craft of doctor’s hand … at killing more adept than healing” that resulted in her son’s death (see above, 40), but the whole narrative contains echoes of her 1779 Ode on a Miscarriage (see above, 42–50), providing a similarly precise description of bodily details. The private pain that this story would trigger seeps through in that aside on crying which, while marking the beginning of life, “often continues throughout it.” One additional note: the vicolo delle chianche (butchers’ alley) where the lifesaving event took place was in the neighborhood where Fonseca Pimentel had lived most of her life. 141. The reporting on the fraught vicissitudes of the struggle to abolish the feudal system, which started on February 12 (see MN, No. 4, 112–113), is concluded here. At this stage, the new law is not yet finalized. Its definitive text would be printed on April 27 in No. 24 of the Monitore, the day after its formal publication.

152 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL The servitude of the land [that is, the servitude that laborers on the land endured, which had been imposed by landowners] was a natural consequence of the servitude of the nation [that is, the servitude that the citizens of a state endured, which had been imposed by rulers]. Everyone knows that those lands had been usurped by the victor, who had seized them from the vanquished. Everyone knows that in primitive times, all lands had teams of slaves whose task it was to till them. Then, in the name of religious principles, or because of the kindness of individual lords, or the imperceptible mitigation brought about by the passing of time, greater or lesser concessions were made to such serfs, whereby they began to be allowed to cultivate for themselves the lands that they tilled, in exchange for rendering all sorts of tributes to their masters. This was the origin of all the various such things as land rent, tithe etc. On this basis, some took the line that the ownership of feudal lands was a depraved consequence of the servitude of the Nation. They therefore believed the predial tributes, in their turn consequent on both National and personal servitude, were effectively annihilated with the proclamation of the Nation’s liberty and the reinstatement of its rights. For this reason, they wanted the lands redistributed and the tributes abolished, on the grounds that, after centuries of subjugation, the Nation should not pay compensation to the families of its oppressors in order to recover its own rights; indeed, it was being more than generous not to demand compensation from the landowners, and to let them keep the many other assets they had accumulated through the long generations of their oppression of the people. Representative Cestari was a main proponent of this view. …………………… There were others who maintained that the ownership of such lands, previously the property of either the Communes or free Citizens, had resulted from the victor’s usurpation, and was therefore tainted by the same depravity that had instituted national servitude. Nevertheless, since the lands have cash value, they considered whether, if the barons were able to produce legal proofs of their de facto purchase, they should be viewed as bona fide owners; they also surmised that the predial tributes had often been established by particular contracts agreed to between the barons and their former vassals. Nonetheless, as they could not disregard the view that, in many cases, landownership was a result of usurpation and abuse of power, they wanted the Barons to appear before a special Commission in order to substantiate their title to ownership. Thus they would either keep their property as freelyowned land, as is right and proper in a democracy, or else lose it altogether. Prominent among those who held this view was representative Mario Pagano.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 153 …………………… The outcome of these more moderate stances would be, (1) that the Nation would always be owed compensation; (2) that many Barons, unable to provide incontrovertible proof of their entitlement, would be utterly dispossessed of their property; and (3) that the search for proof would involve them and the Communes in complicated and costly litigations, which would moreover give rise to intrigues and prolong individual hostilities. Therefore, taking into due account and comparing these and other more radical views, the Generality of Representatives considered that a law that introduced distinctions between different Baronial families would be invidious. As befits a legislative body, they have taken a broader approach, and looked at the baronage in general, rather than scrutinizing particular families. They have pondered, on the one hand, the national rights, and that supreme salus populi,142 the intrinsic dignity that goes hand in hand with a free People, and on the other, what equity suggests should be owed to the Barons, and they recognize that it is to the advantage both public and private of Citizens that each and every one should swiftly acquire absolute certainty regarding the free ownership of their lands, without the encumbrance of either litigation or uncertainty. They therefore wanted to treat all baronial families equally, whatever the origin of their feudal properties, whether sale, usurpation, gift, or fraud. They have put all on the same plane, and applied the same conditions to all. It is known that the law is based on the Nation’s relinquishing the right to devolution, and indeed all rights on such properties, and the former barons only retain one quarter of the so-called feudal lands, over which they have perfect and free ownership. …………………… In order to evaluate this law one must first of all leave on one side all the income that the Barons accrued from the prohibitive rights over persons and labor—such rights, detrimental to the rights of men, could not be eligible for compensation—and focus exclusively on predial rights and possessions. Next, one needs to consider how many families might be able to provide proof of their legitimate entitlement to these, and how many would not, and what would be the position of those who were not able to provide proof, and balancing the situation of both groups, give global consideration to the future of the baronage. As a consequence of this law, some families would probably find themselves in a worse predicament than others. They would then be entitled to special assistance from national funds, and to special provisions, not as barons but as disadvantaged families and citizens: this will be the object of distributive justice, whose task it is to remedy the particular disadvantages that all laws will produce, since 142. The people’s well-being.

154 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL they only concern themselves with general relations, and all the more so in the case of laws aimed at reforming deeply-rooted abuses and injustices. Before leaving this topic one must observe how, the rest of Italy having received the feudal system from Charlemagne, and we from the Normans, both we and the rest of Italy are now abolishing the people’s servitude to both private and public interests under the auspices and the protection of France. Providence is guiding the unvanquished generous French nation to make amends as a free nation for those wrongs it once committed as a Nation enslaved to a King.143 ………………

No. 19: Saturday, April 13, 1799 QUARTIDI 24 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE ……………… On Friday night, our distinguished Citizen Luisa Molina Sanfelice informed the Government of an impending conspiracy.144 The conspirators, who were few, 143. The Republican rhetoric employed so far (reason vs. feudal oppression, the servitude of the Nation vs. the Nation’s liberty, a free People) culminates here in a rhetorical flourish with the blazing myth of the Grande Nation, as the present-day French Republic offers atonement for the historical sins of royal France. The feudal practices established in Italy by Charlemagne, the eighth-century Frankish king who became the first Emperor of what would later be known as the Holy Roman Empire, and the Normans, who hailed from the French region of Normandy, are now wiped out under the providential guidance of the glorious new France. 144. Luisa Molina Sanfelice was a well-known and well-connected figure in the Neapolitan Republic. Although she was instrumental in alerting the government to a conspiracy about to be set in motion by Gerardo Baccher and others intent on reinstating the monarchy, all available evidence points to her complete lack of political involvement. The first to make this point was her contemporary Vincenzo Cuoco, who states in his history of the Neapolitan revolution that “her only crime was revealing Baccher’s imminent coup to the government”; and that “she had no part either in the revolution or the government”: Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli, 486. It seems likely that the information about the conspiracy was the result of pillow talk by and to Sanfelice’s lovers. Cuoco himself, who was Procurator General to Sanfelice’s husband, was probably involved in the uncovering of the conspiracy. After the fall of the Republic he was arrested and jailed for a while, and then condemned to exile. It was while in exile in France that he penned his Saggio storico. Sanfelice was condemned to death by the Giunta di Stato on September 13, 1799, but the sentence was not carried out until a year later. De Nicola describes at length the vicissitudes of the suspension of sentence. Sanfelice claimed she was pregnant, and initially, “having been examined by midwives and surgeons, was found to be truly pregnant as she had asserted”: Diario napoletano, 1:328. But eventually, on September 11, 1800, she was beheaded. Her fate was horrendous, all the more so since she was almost certainly the victim of

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 155 more foolish than evil, relying on the presence of the English flotilla, or even possibly in collusion with them, intended to massacre the Government and the good patriots on the Saturday, and then attempt a counterrevolution. At the head of this insane and heinous project was one Baccher, of German origin, who worked at the Merchant Abbenanti’s. He was arrested on that very night, and led away the next morning, dragging under his arm the royal flags that had been found in his possession. Safe conducts were also found, which were to have been distributed, or were similar to the ones that already had been distributed, to those who were intended to be saved, the rebels having condemned all the rest (in their imagination) to be massacred. It is said that these papers are marked with Ferdinand’s coat of arms and the English lion. Many more were then imprisoned, and they will be held in the nunnery of St. Francis (vacated by the nuns who have moved to the convent of D. Alvina), since it is like an island and hence suitable as a place of detention. The detainees so far include the abovementioned Baccher and his sons, the curate of the Carmine, the ex-Prince of Canosa, the two Magistrato brothers, Bishop Jorio, and the other Magistrato Gio. Battista Vecchione. A cache of 150 rifles was discovered immediately, and another of various types of arms and munitions has been found hidden in the custom house. In his commentary on Hosea, St. Jerome says that man must be in a state of total insanity to want to live under a King.145 How egregiously insane, then, are those who are seeking to live under a King like Ferdinand, who imagine they can reinstate him by landing a handful of galley slaves in the City which the whole of Italy acknowledges as having the greatest number of ardent and determined patriots, face to face with a National Guard whose number, fervor, and valor is held in awe by its own fellow citizens, in a City guarded by scores of French troops and no less than General Macdonald? and who indeed hope that Ferdinand can be a judicial mistake, having found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time; she was a victim, not a protagonist. Nonetheless, she was constructed as the female icon of the Neapolitan Republic. She became the subject of various novels and theatrical pieces—notably Alexandre Dumas’s La Sanfelice (1864) and Francesco Mastriani’s Luigia Sanfelice (1870)—and also of a well-known iconography. As late as the mid-twentieth century, many Italian middle-class homes were graced with a reproduction of Gioacchino Toma’s portrait of an obviously pregnant Sanfelice in her prison cell. It is perhaps ironic that both her terrible death and her subsequent fame might have been triggered by the fulsome praise poured on her by the very woman whom she displaced, for a while, as the symbol of the Neapolitan Revolution. On Sanfelice, see especially Benedetto Croce, Luisa Sanfelice e la congiura dei Baccher: Narrazione storica con giunta di varii documenti (Trani: V. Vecchi, 1888), and Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 133–204; also Mario Battaglini, Luisa Sanfelice: Martire involontaria della rivoluzione napoletana (Naples: G. Procaccini, 1997). 145. This is a reference to Hosea 13.9–11, where God mocks Israel for having wished for a king who now cannot save them. This passage in turn echoes 1 Samuel 8:4–22, where God himself, through the prophet Samuel, warns the people of Israel, who clamored for a king, that a king would enslave them.

156 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL reinstated in Naples by the English, who have not even managed to keep Corsica for themselves? Now, if the Roman senate not only granted liberty to the slave who uncovered the conspiracy of Brutus’s sons, but immortalized his name by calling the most solemn act of emancipation of the slaves vindicta from his name, Vindicius, likewise does our Republic have a duty to immortalize the deed and name of this illustrious Citizen. Neglectful of her own glory, she fervently requests that we should make it known that Citizen Vincenzo Cuoco has equally been welldeserving of the motherland in the uncovering of the conspiracy.146 Yesterday the Benedictines, both black and white, have been advised of their abolition; the white Benedictines had in fact offered their assets to the Nation at the very beginning of the Republic, and sought their own suppression through a fair reassignment.147 Soon the Carthusians will also be abolished. All these assets will perhaps be assigned to the debt of the banks and the extinguishment of bonds. Soon a revolutionary Committee will leave for the Abruzzi. Twelve Commissars have been nominated for the 12 districts of the capital. We often hear the cannon of our flotilla of gunboats engaging some English frigate which is trying to advance; besides the multiple batteries in this inlet, a new one has been set up in a place called “smoke” between Baja and Pozzuoli, protected by our National Guard, this battery targeting precisely the present position of the English ships. The English are using lighters to try to hinder the erection of a battery planned for this location, and have even attempted a landing. The valiant youth of our National Guard took three of them prisoners on Thursday evening, and no fewer than 42 yesterday morning. Yesterday, with more lighters and a Brig, they produced such a barrage of fire as to make it impossible for us to continue with our work on the battery. And the blast of the cannon was relentless. Another battery is being erected to protect the gulf of Salerno. Schipani with his troops has attacked and seized the township known as La Rocca, which the insurgents had heavily fortified. The able Patriots under his command captured a hill which dominates the township, and thus forced it to 146. The glorification of Sanfelice continues: not only did she uncover the conspiracy, Fonseca Pimentel writes, but she displays commendable humility by crediting Cuoco; on Cuoco’s role, see above, note 144. According to Battaglini, Livy is inaccurate in his account (in The History of Rome, 2.5) of the derivation of the designation of the act of emancipation of slaves from the name of the slave who uncovered a conspiracy: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 447n4. 147. Fonseca Pimentel’s euphoria over the Sanfelice episode informs the triumphalism of the rest of this issue of the Monitore. Religious orders are being successfully and seamlessly abolished, naval skirmishes are being fought and won, insurgents in the provinces are being defeated and punished ruthlessly. No longer does she argue for compassion and political solutions. All is well, or so it seems. Benedictine monks were often called “black” monks, after the color of their habits; Cistercians, originally a reformed branch of Benedictine religious, were called “white” monks, after the color of theirs.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 157 surrender. The planned departure for Calabria of the Young General Francesco Pignatelli has been deferred for the time being, because of a new plan of military operations, which envisages our troops entering Apulia. Brigadier Broussier, Commander of the mobile column in Apulia, reports that he attacked Carbonara, a major gathering place for the rebels, who fiercely opposed the French offensive: 800 people have been put to the sword. The Town has been put to the sack and burnt to the ground. The flags and cannons are in the hands of the victors. Those who had managed to escape the soldiers’ fury took shelter in Legli,148 where they linked with other rebels to mount a joint defense. A unit charged with pursuing them marched so swiftly against them that they hardly had time to organize their defense. The troops entered Legli, massacred all the rebels, and likewise torched the township. Our readers will remember the story of a Corsican who went around swindling the people of Apulia by posing as the ex-crown prince, together with one Vincenzo Barracchio, who claimed to be from Barletta (to the annoyance of a Patriot from Barletta, who maintains he is in fact from Monopoli) and pretended to be his Secretary, and that both were reported to have been arrested in Bisceglia, in possession of almost thirty thousand ducats that they had accumulated.149 However, one has to say that either he escaped from prison, or else the same happens to hereditary princes in Apulia as to the ancient Gods of Egypt, who sprang up in every kitchen garden, seeing that, according to General Broussier’s report, a false hereditary Prince, at the head of more local rebels, was advancing with his army towards Casa Massima, towards Rotigliano, and was expected in Mola. The French troops engaged with him in the vicinity of Montrone, and in a fierce battle 200 of the rebels were killed and the rest were routed, whereupon Montrone was set on fire. In spite of all this the false Prince gathered the rebels in Rotigliano and was subjected to another fierce attack, but was again defeated, and his mob massacred. What was left of this rabble took shelter in the Town, where they were totally annihilated. ……………… VARIETY ………………

148. Legli is a misnomer for Ceglie del Campo. 149. The reference is to the March 23 issue, MN, No. 14, 141–142. For a discussion of the phenomenon of impersonations of royal personages, see above, note 128.

158 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL It was a long time since witty and refined publications had appeared in Naples. But now things have changed, and the Nation will make up for lost time. The Flautina Printing House at S. Giuseppe has published Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism, translated from French into Italian. The author’s name is praise enough for the book, which is accessible to all. With his tales Voltaire would always spread the seeds of philosophy, liberty, and equality. The Author’s elegance, wit, and dazzling style are very well-known, and therefore the Publishers are confident that the book will be well-liked by everybody. It is on sale at the abovementioned Printing House at S. Giuseppe, and in Citizen Stasi’s bookshops opposite S. Gregorio Armeno at the price of two carlini per copy. Fraternal greetings.150 ………………

No. 20: Tuesday, April 16, 1799 SEPTIDI 27 GERMINAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE … Yesterday the Organizing Commissar Abrial dissolved the provisional Government established by General Championnet, and instituted a new one. While this is still a provisional government, the division between the Executive and the Legislative does lay the foundation for a future constitutional system in form, if not in numbers. The two bodies, being provisional, are named Commissions, consisting of 5 and 25 members respectively. Our announcement of the nomination of Luigi (not Gennaro) Carafa, former duke of Jesi, as one of the Five was truthful, but he turned it down, as have many more who had been invited to join the legislative Commission. Among them Bernardo la Torre, Bishop of Lettere and Gragnano, and Gaetano Carcani, Director of the National Printing House. Below is an account of this important event. Yesterday morning, 26 Germinal, the various committees received invitations to cease functioning, as the Government established by General Championnet had been dissolved. On the previous advice and request of Organizing Commissar Abrial, all the elected members of both Commissions went to General Macdonald’s palace, where they were joined by the Organizing Commissar himself. Whereupon the General, accompanied by two Adjutants, escorted the new Representatives to the National Palace, walking past a double line of French troops. The plan was to begin by installing the legislative Commission, but 150. Fonseca Pimentel offers lavish and warm praise for Voltaire’s famous satire on philosophical optimism, arguably the most influential of Enlightenment tracts. While her enthusiasm is entirely to be expected from this daughter of the Enlightenment, it should be read as well in the context of the past friendship between the two authors, and the poem he wrote in her praise; see above, 6–7.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 159 since the hall was not yet ready, they moved to the hall of the former Provisional Government, which will now host the Executive Commission. Here, surrounded by a multitude of Citizens, at the head of the large table stood the Organizing Commissar on the right, General Macdonald with his two adjutants behind him on the left, and the elected Members all around them. The Organizing Commissar read the proclamation and the decree, in French, that is printed below, instituting the new Government; then Vincenzo Russo, newly elected member of the legislative Commission, read it in Italian. Whereupon each of the new members took the tricolor sash, the symbol of their position, which was laid out before them on the table. They all sat down, the Organizing Commissar gave a brief speech on the matter at hand, and the five members of the Executive Commission raised their hands and took the oath. Thereafter, the Organizing Commissar with the General and his two Adjutants, accompanied by the two Commissions, proceeded to install the Legislative Commission in its venue, which is the former court theater. Another large table had been prepared in this hall. At its head sat the Organizing Commissar on the right and the General on the left, with his two Adjutants standing behind him, and all the Members of the two Commissions around them all. A huge crowd of Citizens filled the Galleries and the hall. The Organizing Commissar reread the proclamation, and the decree instituting the new government, in French, followed by Representative Russo reading the Italian version. All the members of the legislative Commission took the oath by raising their hands. The organizing Commissar gave another brief address, concluding that the Representatives’ well-known love of the motherland and of freedom, their experience of the ills resulting from the mixing and abuse of powers that should be separate, reassured him that neither Commission would cross the boundaries of its particular mandate. Representative Pagano, whose nomination was at the top of the list, was appointed President. He rose and eloquently thanked the Commissar, pledging also, on behalf of all, love of Liberty and attachment to the French Nation. At this point the Organizing Commissar and the General withdrew with the Executive Commission, and after a while returned to the residence of General Macdonald, again walking past a double line of French troops. Going into private session, the Legislative Commission invited the Citizens to leave.151 151. Championnet has now been gone almost two months, replaced as General-in-Chief by Macdonald on February 27, and Abrial, having been nominated Organizing Commissar on March 28, has now restructured the Provisional Government according to his more interventionist approach to Neapolitan affairs. Championnet had been viewed as a hero by the Neapolitan Jacobins, while his successors were not. Fonseca Pimentel’s previous mentions of the changes of personnel at the top had veered between a pretense of continuity and a purely factual account; see above, note 107. Here, reporting on the changes introduced by the new French bosses, while steering clear of overt censure, she abstains from comment altogether. The rhetoric employed, however, points to a muted glorification of the once great Championnet and belittling of his successors. She refers twice to the new government as the result of the disbanding of the previous government “established by General Championnet,” with the

160 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL ………………152 NEWS In our first issues we urged good Patriots to produce newssheets in the Neapolitan language with the aim of instructing the People. But we forgot to announce the appearance of a fine Neapolitan gazette which fulfills that aim admirably, entitled La Reprubbeca spiegata co lo Santo Evangelio. In this newssheet, amid the vernacular jokes, are to be found healthy maxims, and suitable songs as well. It is sold at Angelo Trani’s and Giuseppe Augiero’s.153 ……………… From Citizen Saverio d’Onofrio Publisher of the Gazzetta di Firenze and Gazzetta di Lugano in S. Liguoro, and from all vendors of the above, one can purchase the following books: Dell’Anima delle Donne, e della Libertà del Vestire, discorsi second statement a virtual chiasmus of the first. In contrast, while Championnet is consistently cited with both his name and title, she mentions Macdonald by name only three times, while on four other occasions, she refers to him merely as “the General”; and though she gives name and title for Abrial twice at the beginning of the first two paragraphs, thereafter she omits his name altogether, referring to him nine times as just “Organizing Commissar.” On the changes of French personnel, see above, 75. 152. Omitted here are texts of Abrial’s proclamation to the Neapolitan people and a decree concerning the new setup. 153. The title of this newssheet translates as The Republic Explained through the Holy Gospel. The author was Michelangelo Cicconi, an ordained priest who supported the Republic from the start. He appears to have preached and talked at length to the plebs of Naples in their own language about Republican principles and the Christian Gospel. He also produced written versions of his talks, a Spiega de lo Santo Evangelio a lengua nosta (Explanation of the Holy Gospel in Our Own Language), followed by a second Spiega, in the form of broadsheets, which he then printed in the gazette mentioned in the Monitore. He appears to have been a skillful communicator, engaging his audience, exploiting the rhetoric of religious sermons and the mindset and prejudices of a popular audience, and charging the Neapolitan dialect with shared emotional overtones by referring to it consistently as lengua nosta (our own language). The message he communicates—the king was bad, our rule is good—is the same as that conveyed in cultured propaganda, but it is transmitted through the system of beliefs embraced by the popular audience, with the aim of steering them towards acceptance of his message. On Ciccone’s pieces, see Scafoglio, Lazzari e giacobini, which also reproduces the two broadsheets. Extensive quotations from the gazette are in Esther Taliento, Appunti storico-bibliografici sulla stampa periodica napoletana durante le rivoluzioni del 1799 e 1820–1821 (Bari: Società tipografica editrice Barese, 1920). Michelangelo Ciccone was hanged on January 18, 1800. Fonseca Pimentel clearly views Ciccone’s works as part of her cherished program for a cultural revolution that would win over the masses by adopting their language and cultural assumptions in order to harness them to the Jacobin cause: see above, 86–88. They would address in particular her concern to emphasize the continuity between the Gospel and Republican principles: see MN, No. 6, 126. In a similar vein, she would six weeks later praise another broadsheet in Neapolitan dialect which attempted to link the principles of democracy with Biblical history: MN, No. 31, 189.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 161 del Cittadino F.M.,154 and Memoria degli Avvenimenti Popolari seguiti in Napoli in Gennajo 1799, in small format, small enough to enclose with a letter. Both cost five grana. ………………

No. 21: Saturday, April 20, 1799 PRIMIDI 1 FLORÈAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE We remind our subscribers that their three-month subscription will expire next Saturday. Those who wish to renew it ought to do so immediately. The formation of the National Guard is without any doubt one of the most wonderful deeds of the Revolution, fulfilling as it does a primary need. Tyrannies surround themselves with armed mercenaries over an unarmed and defenseless people. A National Guard, by arming all able-bodied Citizens, makes them all equally responsible for the defense of their rights, and capable of the task. And through this service, to which they are all equally called, as well as through the activities and the internal defense with which they are all equally associated, it makes them all concretely aware of both their mutual rights and their duties. But if one part of this National Guard has a distinction or an advantage over the other, equality is destroyed. If one part is stronger and overwhelms the rest, the aim is destroyed, and that part which is preponderant can become the means for the tyrannical power of some, or even of one person, instead of safeguarding the FREEDOM of all. ………………155 One of our women Citizens, while paying homage to the honorable intentions of the promoters, all of them young people of well-known civic spirit, has nonetheless sent a petition opposing the establishment of a National Guard. And the excellent young member of the Commission Gennaro Serra has replied with a 154. Women as such are rarely mentioned in the Monitore, and books about women are never mentioned, except on this occasion, when Fonseca Pimentel names a work whose title in English can be translated as “On the Soul of Women, and Their Freedom to Dress as they Wish.” Why this particular book is singled out is puzzling. It belongs to a tradition of misogynistic tracts, theorizing the inferiority of women on the basis of the biblical account (Genesis 2) in which woman’s creation from Adam’s rib posits her secondary status. 155. Omitted here: text of a proclamation regarding the formation of a mounted National Guard.

162 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL letter explaining the reasons why it may be useful in the present circumstances, while agreeing that it ought to be abolished in the future. Seeing as this is a matter of such public interest, we reproduce below both the petition and the letter.156 TO THE LEGISLATIVE COMMISSION CITIZEN PRESIDENT The right of petition belongs to all individuals in the Republic. Every heart must be ablaze with the sacred fire of Freedom, which will of itself enlighten every mind. And the august watchful protection of public Freedom is entrusted to the love and vigilance of everyone. The proclamation and rules regarding a mounted national force are circulating in the City. Every Citizen wanting to join the abovementioned Corps will have to acquire a uniform, a horse and harness, and weapons at his own expense. This new development, unheard of in all other Republics, not even in the mother Republic, is a threat to public Freedom; I am petitioning the Legislative Commission to pay immediate attention to the considerations I am submitting on this topic. That the Republic should be able in case of necessity to strengthen its permanent Cavalry, so as to have, so to speak, a reserve Cavalry in the national Cavalry, is the argument in favor of its formation. But we must stop and weigh other, more important, considerations.

156. This is not the first time Fonseca Pimentel exercises her democratic right to criticize the government’s decisions. On February 5, in MN, No. 2, 103–104, she had opposed a vigorous challenge to the current icon of the Republic. She would do so again on May 9, in MN, No. 26, 172–173, in connection with the government’s response to the San Gennaro episode, and on June 1, in MN, No. 33, 193–194, responding to the policy of using the property of defeated insurgents to offer compensation to Republican fighters. In both No. 2 and here in No. 21, when she pens a formal letter of criticism, she refers to herself in the third person as “one of our women Citizens.” On both occasions she signs the letter with her full name, while here she also scrupulously reproduces Serra’s reply. Battaglini argues that her attack on the plan for a mounted National Guard is so absurd as to justify the accusations leveled against the Neapolitan Jacobins that they dealt in abstractions, not realities, especially given the desperate situation of the Republic, now practically besieged: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 474n3. Her position in this case reflects an obstinate optimism that is characteristic of Fonseca Pimentel’s thinking in these last stages of the Republic. It might be said that she is thinking in the long-term, when short-term solutions were desperately needed. A close reading of her analysis, however, shows her to be not so much lost in abstraction as alive to the reality of inequality, which would be legitimated by the creation of a mounted National Guard. The citizens of Brescia, she points out, and she is “not mistaken,” had rejected the proposal for a mounted force, but had rather proposed, in April 1797, a National Guard entirely devoid of cavalry. Acutely aware that the revolution had not yet been accomplished, Fonseca Pimentel saw that the process leading to its realization was fraught with the danger of regression, not least because of the presence among the revolutionary elite of aristocrats—including the addressee of this letter, Gennaro Serra, former duke of Cassano, who would be hanged alongside her on August 20, 1799.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 163 The secret of public freedom, the true concept of the oft-repeated, though not yet perfectly understood, maxim of the BALANCE OF POWERS, consists precisely in the fact that with the mass of the people belongs the physical strength that comes with numbers. As against this, since equality of fortunes is not possible, and with greater fortunes comes greater enlightenment, stands the ensuing civic and moral strength. If we join together the civic and moral strength that derives from greater wealth and enlightenment with physical strength, and reconcentrate all three in the same hands, then public freedom is threatened. This is Aristocracy, which easily becomes more and more restricted and degenerates into the strength of the few, that is to say Oligarchy, worst among tyrannies. Aristocracy does not consist in the abstract strength conferred by a piece of parchment, which vanishes with the loss of regard, but in the concrete strength of wealth, so when we say Aristocracy, we should understand not only the former nobles, but also the wealthy. The National Troop is responsible for internal order and internal defense; on it rests the preservation of public Liberty. However, inside a city a unit of mounted National Troop is preponderant over a National Troop on foot. A mounted National Troop can only consist of wealthy people, and is therefore both an Aristocratic corps and a preponderant corps. Is our public spirit already so wellestablished and consolidated that we have nothing to fear from such a corps? Do those who own most of civil resources not always, by their own nature, tend to take control of political resources? Do these general considerations not carry all the more weight in a City where the misconception of birth was so deeply rooted and is not yet completely eradicated? I do not fear Royalism, which once destroyed is destroyed for centuries. I fear Aristocraticism, an ill that lingers in the Republic and can grow spontaneously at any time. What is the antidote to this disease? A wholly homogeneous National Guard, where no part is preponderant over another, and where, therefore, the greater strength lies with the greater number, that is to say with the plurality of the people: therefore, no cavalry. It is through education and custom that we will be able to reconcile this system of absolute necessity for public freedom with the advantages mentioned above of a mounted reserve force. Let the youth who can afford it have one or more horses. Let them exercise them in races, games, and displays of horsemanship. Let them invite the less privileged youth who cannot afford horses, let them mingle and train together. Let everyone forsake the offensive practice of appearing in the streets in chaises and carriages. Public opinion and the derision of their contemporaries ought to shame those young people who go around in Carriages. On foot through the City, on foot or on horseback in the countryside: these are the coaches of young true Republicans. In this way, the young learn to become supple, fast, tough, adept at marches and drills, both on horseback and on foot. I will say this once again: no other Republic, not even the mother Republic, has a mounted National troop, so why should we? Would the idea have escaped them, were it of true public value? If I am not mistaken, it was proposed

164 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL in Brescia, and it was about to be implemented, when it was stopped in its tracks by the good sense of the people. If our people do not have the same good sense, ought we not to instruct them, rather than forsake their interests? I am certainly not condemning the advocates of the mounted National Troop (they are like precious seedlings of the Republic). Their good intentions are beyond doubt, but they have failed to give proper consideration to the consequences, carried away as they are by the fervor of their civic zeal. But while freedom is brought into being through fervor and the particular character of some, it is preserved through general principles quite detached from particular characters. To conclude: in the Roman Republic, the Republic itself provided both horses and fodder to that which we might well call its National Cavalry—but from that same mounted National Troop arose a distinct body, a distinct Order within the state, the Order of Knights. Considering, then, that the formation of a mounted National Troop tends to introduce an odious division between Citizens who are well-heeled and those who are not, in that it tends to bring together the former in one body which then becomes preponderant; Considering, it would ignite a rivalry between this troop and the National Troop on foot, which would be pernicious and humiliating to the latter; In the name of public Freedom and salvation I submit an urgent petition that the Legislative Commission should not only veto the Mounted National Troop that is now in the process of being established, but also declare any future plan for such a troop unconstitutional. And considering that it is beneficial to the Republic that the Young should learn to become sturdy and tough, equally adept at marches and drills both on horseback and on foot, I submit a petition: That the Legislative Commission should with its proclamations inspire the Young to train in horsemanship, and reproach those Young men who indulge in the effeminacy of the carriage, thus debasing both their youth and those customs that are imperative in a Republic of sound foundations. God bless the Republic and Yourself. 28 Germinal Republican year VII. year I of the Neapolitan Republic. Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel

Letter by Gennaro Serra to Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel Citizen, The interest that you are taking in our revolution, or more precisely our happiness, gives you the right to demand clarifications concerning a project for a national cavalry,

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 165 which in a perfect democracy is only justified by the current circumstances. We must, in my opinion, begin with reality before considering a better reality. We unfortunately still have many enemies, against whom the only defense at our disposal is a newly formed National Guard. I have no doubt that it will save the nation, its zeal and courage vouch for this; but in the meantime let us strengthen our means of defense, let us join together the national infantry with a national cavalry, providing that the latter consists of firm patriots, originating from the former. Lastly, let us remember that a cavalry is absolutely necessary for the protection of such a vast Capital. When the Government has managed to organize a field army, it will then be able to decide that the national guard on foot is sufficient by itself, and compensate with military ranks those who have distinguished themselves in our cavalry. Let us hope that the People, who are broadly good but partially misled, will soon recognize their own rights. Then all provisional measures will become redundant, as the people themselves will be in sole charge of their own defense. The soundest shield of a sovereign people is the love of Motherland. Continue in your concern with her and continue with your work of enlightening her children, citizen, and join together with those who resemble you in their patriotism in opposing the disorganization that is, unfortunately, increasing among us. Let not a single block be removed from the building of our regeneration without replacing it with another, or else the crash will be inevitable. Please accept the sentiments of esteem that you inspire in me, and which are due to those who, like you, love their motherland. Gennaro Serra

Giving their rightful weight to the arguments advanced by Citizen Serra in terms of the present circumstances, and in order to bestow an exceptional remedy on an exceptional ill, it seems to us that there is only one way in which the request of the commission could be acceptable; that is to say— That, given the exceptional urgency of the present moment, a limited number of members of the National Guard should be permitted to serve on horseback, on specific conditions, with the obligation, however, of resigning and returning to the National Guard on foot as soon as the Republic has a legion of field cavalry, while retaining the firm constitutional principle that the National Guard should be exclusively on foot. Only in this way, it seems to us, will we be able to combine the present advantages and the future certainty of liberty; otherwise, a permanent mounted National Guard would sow the seeds of a distinct body and distinct social order, which is incompatible with the system of Equality, and must encounter the opposition of all true and loyal Citizens. We would remind them that in the formation of the united states of America, the title of Cincinnati was bestowed as a mark of

166 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL honor in gratitude to those who had distinguished themselves in the war that gave them Liberty, a title borrowed from the famous Roman Consul who moved from the plow to the curule chair.157 And yet, in spite of the fact that this title, through the recollection of the ancient example, emphasized civic equality, and was in any case seen as a recompense due to extraordinary circumstances, this distinction was nevertheless opposed by the best spirits of America, was condemned by the great Mirabeau in Europe, and the wise Americans eventually abolished both the distinction and the title.158 ……………… The English have stopped their unsuccessful incursions on the beaches of Baja and Cuma, and have headed towards Salerno, threatening that Commune, even though fruitlessly. But they are still blocking our harbor.159 These Kings of the sea, unable to forsake the Sovereignty of the Islands, last refuge of Former kings, as a token of their shared fortunes and power with the former king of Naples—now tottering king of Trinacria—have picked on one former Governor of Caserta who then migrated to Palermo, pulled him out of there and made him a Governor, this time of the three islets of Ischia, Procida, 157. The curule chair was reserved for high-ranking officials. 158. Here Fonseca Pimentel enlists the other great model for eighteenth-century European Jacobins, the American revolutionaries, in her argument against legitimating inequality. The Society of Cincinnati was founded in March 1783 as a hereditary military body, its membership restricted to officers. It attracted much criticism, in particular that of South Carolinian Judge Aedanus Burke, who, writing under the pseudonym “Cassius,” alluding to the ancient Roman tyrannicide, accused that Society of creating “a race of hereditary patricians or nobility.” The tract against the Society of Cincinnati written by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Count of Mirabeau, was a self-admitted imitation of Burke’s pamphlet. The Society of Cincinnati faded away after the death of its founders. For the above, see Il Monitore napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 475n8. 159. At this moment, the English navy is blockading the Neapolitan harbor, and the situation is fraught with danger; as De Nicola writes, the French “are about to leave us to our own devices with the English blockade, and royalist armies are coming closer, not to mention the people, who are ready to riot at the first opportunity”: Diario napoletano, 1:112. Fonseca Pimentel focuses, however, not on the success of the English, but their failures, aiming to make them look ridiculous. Her mocking account involves a series of triads: the three angles of the triangular island of Sicily, which produce the name “Trinacria” by which Sicily is often known, which is now the sole kingdom possessed by the former Bourbon sovereign of Naples; the three islets which face Naples; the three kingdoms (ignoring Wales), or “tri-kingdom,” of England, Scotland, and Ireland; the three-tiered papal tiara worn by Pope Pius VI who is referred to sneeringly only by his secular name; and the three boats that the English had seized as their meager spoils to date. This is not the first instance of sarcasm aimed at “tri-kingdoms.” On February 12, Fonseca Pimentel had poured scorn on the former queen’s desire for a third crown on a par with the Pope’s: MN, No. 4, 110.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 167 and Capri.160 Of course, these form another lovely tri-kingdom in the fashion of England, Scotland, and Ireland, indeed a second tri-kingdom for George III. On these tri-kingdoms rest the fortunes of Angiolo Braschi’s tri-kingdom. Their tri-royal highnesses have so far raided three boats (the number three keeps coming up with them—think of the popular proverb omne trinum est malandrinum) which were loaded with Sardinian cheese, the standard dressing for Neapolitan macaroni. But the Neapolitans are dressing their macaroni with the salt of Liberty, and thumb their noses at their maritime tri-royal highnesses.161 ………………

SECOND QUARTER

No. 24: Saturday, April 27, 1799, Addendum OCTIDI 8 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE All is abuzz with activity in our Republic. Various proclamations from the government constantly kindle and enliven the public spirit, and the various patriotic societies exercise a strict watch on the actions of evildoers and on the characters of particular individuals. They enlighten and direct the Government with useful proposals. The organization of the National Guard is being successfully completed. It fulfills flawlessly its role as regular troop in the service it gives in the Castles, and at the various batteries in its charge. The new Minister of War, in his proclamation of 3 Floreal addressed to General Federici, specifies the plan, the funds, and all that is needed for the troops of the Republic, as well as the contributions due from all Communes to the Military Units which are stationed or in transit, so as to avoid arbitrary requests. We shall give the details in the next issue. 160. Michele de Curtis, the former governor of Caserta, was made governor of the small offshore island of Procida prior to fleeing to Palermo. He was at this point in charge of liaising with the English fleet. See Il Monitore napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini, 476n14. 161. At this point the evilness of the series of triads named above is sanctioned by a popular maxim: “What comes in threes is no good.” Furthermore, the bitter loss of an essential item of the popular diet, Sardinian cheese, is concealed in a defiant affirmation of Republican pride.

168 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Our maritime arsenal is working incessantly to refit our vessels, especially the gunboats. This morning five of them came out and made for Castell’a mare; we were able to see the combat that followed between them and an English vessel which had advanced that far. It is late in the day, and one can still hear the cannon.162 ………………………………163 Sunday evening 9 Floreal Yesterday morning over a hundred insurgents from Gragnano swooped down on Castellamare, making immediately for the fort opposite the quay. The three valiant navy Officers who were guarding it set to defend it, while the gunners were refusing to obey. One of the three, named Garofano, a daring and brave 24-year old youth standing near the cannon, draws his saber in order to force them to fire. They fire in the air, the valiant youth shouts the motherland is betrayed, jumps from the fort into a small boat, picks up the oars and begins to row away. The insurgents shower him with a volley of gunfire, and he dies shattered by multiple shots. Whereupon those monsters leap into the boat shouting viva the Holy Faith and the King, rip open the corpse, cut it to pieces, smash the head and pull out the brain, play a cruel game with these remains, and finally burn them. Another officer is injured by a bayonet strike to his head, and his side is hit by a rifle butt, but some citizens manage to extract him from the hands of these monsters and take him under their protection. Meanwhile, the English pirates manage to land with a vessel and a frigate, disembarking several hundred members of the former foreign regiment—insurgents from Cetara—and about twenty of their own troops. They seize the third officer and carry him to their ships. The insurgents had already turned their cannons on our gun boats. The commander, our heroic Caracciolo, left them where they were with the necessary instructions and came here in the evening to seek assistance. Soon General Sarazin left in the night with a contingent of infantry and cavalry, and this morning General Macdonald himself moved to the Tower of the Annunciata164 in order to be able better to give his orders. Also, two more gunboats, with two artillery boats, sailed for Castellamare. In the meantime, the insurgents and the Swiss had placed three cannons by the main road. The valiant French infantry cut through the fields and farms, 162. Fonseca Pimentel’s euphoric tone persists even as the attacks by the English fleet are intensifying, suggestions are heard of deals being struck between the English Admiral and General Macdonald, and news is arriving of insurgencies flaring up in the immediate vicinity of the capital: De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1:106–20. Castellamare is here given the unusual but etymologically correct spelling “Castell’a mare,” meaning “castle by the sea.” 163. Omitted here: text of the law on the abolition of the feudal system. 164. This is likely to refer to the town known as Torre Annunziata.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 169 attacked their flank, and having slaughtered them, immediately went on to recapture the fort on the quay. Our two artillery boats attacked the English vessel that had approached the Tower of the Annunciata. Soon it retreated towards the frigate, and together they sailed off at speed, aided by a slight sea storm which broke out at the right time for them, without either the vessel or the frigate firing a single shot or making the slightest attempt to gather their own troops, who were either killed or taken prisoners. When General Macdonald returned here at 23 hours,165 he carried with him in his carriage a flag taken from the enemy; soon after a Dragoon arrived carrying another. The General immediately sent an adjutant to report to the Government that while the infantry was retaking Castellamare, the cavalry was chastising Gragnano and Lettere. Likewise, the unit which was dispatched to Salerno on Thursday night had managed to enter the town after beating the local insurgents. Soon large groups of civic guards gathered together to dance the carmagnole166 around the tree in the national square, shouting Viva General Macdonald, viva the French Army, liberty, etc. This very morning, another English vessel attempted to land its launches near Baja, but was valiantly driven back by the Peniscola battery.167 ………………

Second Quarter. No. 25: Saturday, May 4, 1799 QUINTIDI 15 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE ……………… Naples 3 Floreal year 7 FROM THE LEG. COMMISSION TO THE EXEC. COMMISSION The ignorance in which the People lives, the mendacious rumors spread by Carolina’s henchmen in order to deceive it, and the ill-founded fear of a miserable future, have all 165. About 5:30 p.m. 166. The carmagnole was the most famous song, and dance, of the revolutionary masses of Paris. Its name is likely to derive from that of the short jacket worn by the proletarian revolutionaries known as sans-culottes (“without knee breeches,” the costume of the elite), and it may be linked to the Italian town of Carmagnola which gave its name to the Piedmontese peasant garment similar to that worn by the sans-culottes. The singing of the carmagnole will reoccur on May 9, this time by the proletarians of Naples momentarily turned into Jacobins by the miracle of San Gennaro: MN, No. 26, 172. 167. Fonseca Pimentel continues to speak in tones of defiant optimism even in the face of looming disaster. She will do so to the end, now just six weeks away.

170 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL hindered the progress of our auspicious regeneration and the advancement of the public spirit. Overcoming these obstacles is the task of a wise government. Let therefore the People be instructed, let it be enlightened on its own true interests. Then it will be capable of resisting evil allures, and rely on the certain and eternal continued existence of the Republic. It is the opinion of the L.C. that such a useful aim could be partly fulfilled by a periodic bulletin, containing the most interesting news, both national and foreign, written by a republican pen both in Tuscan and in our local vernacular, so as to be comprehensible to everyone. The first impressions that the Citizen receives on leaving home and before setting about his trade, are more likely to withstand the alluring rumors that tend to frighten him and lead him astray later in the day. The L.C. is therefore urging you, Citizens, promptly to form a committee of three honorable writers of republican sentiments, with the brief of preparing a regular bulletin in the two abovementioned languages on two columns, conveying the official news both internal and external. This bulletin should be displayed in the most crowded parts of the city, especially around the market, the small quay, and Santa Lucia. Every effort should also be made to appoint individuals with the specific task of reading these bulletins loud and clear and amid the sound of trumpets, even before they are displayed. Citizens, nothing should be neglected that might contribute to the consolidation of the Republic and the dissemination of enlightenment. Our common aim must be the happiness of the people and the banishment of all ills.168

Our readers will remember that we made a similar proposal long ago in No. 10, except that, instead of the public reading with the sound of trumpets, we advocated that there should be public reading from the pulpits, and also in the public squares. ………………

Second Quarter. No. 26: Thursday, May 9, 1799 DECADI 20 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI 169 168. This project put forward by the government is similar to the one Fonseca Pimentel had herself proposed two months earlier, as she reminds her readers, with a touch of exasperation, and an undertone of criticism, perhaps, of the failure in the government’s proposal to utilize the “Churches, both urban and rural” as the privileged spaces for communicating with the populace; see MN, No. 10, 133–134; see also 87–88). 169. “Majesty of the People.” On the changes introduced beginning with this issue of the Monitore, see above, 81.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 171 The response of the People on the occasion of the customary miracle of San Gennaro last Saturday should be of interest to every good Citizen, and deserves a place in the philosophy of History. We must relay their every single word.170 The Organizing Commissar General Macdonald, who had arrived specially from Caserta with his General Staff, and General Eblè, all marched on parade to the Archbishop’s palace, and from there they went to the Church of Trinità Maggiore to wait for the procession.171 When the Neapolitan People arose in the resistance, while showing themselves blind to reason, they displayed at the same time a strength of character that was unknown even to their own compatriots. They still retained, however, a certain bitterness towards the new system, the aftermath of the pain of defeat. Accepting that one is in the wrong is the most difficult thing for all humans. San Gennaro would now pronounce a visible judgment on the great clash between this system and the People. They were pleased to see the Commissar and the French General 170. The People have spoken! Fonseca Pimentel portrays the San Gennaro episode as the fulfillment of the great hope for a coming together of the people of Naples with the Republican revolutionaries. The People now have a place in history, indeed in the “philosophy of History.” 171. The event known as San Gennaro’s miracle consists of the supposed liquefaction of his blood during a ceremony held in the Naples cathedral. San Gennaro is to this day the patron saint of Naples. His bones and two phials filled with what is presumed to be his blood are kept in the cathedral and are exhibited three times a year: on the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May; on September 19; and on December 16. On these occasions, the blood is expected to liquefy, and huge crowds throng the cathedral in expectation. The liquefaction of the saint’s blood has been viewed, and is still viewed, as a positive omen, while its failure to liquefy is seen as portending disasters. This explains why on May 4, 1799, the crowds would be expecting that the usual miracle would not happen, on the assumption that a Catholic saint would look down with disdain on the godless Jacobins. When the miracle did happen, its occurrence was inevitably interpreted as a seal of approval by no less than San Gennaro himself on the Jacobin Republic: “Even San Gennaro has turned Jacobin!” Needless to say, the whole San Gennaro phenomenon has been viewed by many with considerable skepticism. Equally, its appeal appears to be deeply embedded in the collective Neapolitan psyche in a way that goes well beyond the circle of devout Catholic believers. Interestingly, Benedetto Croce reports on likely behind-the-scene arrangements aimed at ensuring that the expected miracle would take place: he quotes General Macdonald’s statement in his memoirs that he made sure that the miracle would happen “in our favor,” but at the same time is careful not to imply that the miracle was fraudulent, on the grounds that there is no proof that the archbishop would have wanted to prevent the liquefaction or that it happened as a consequence of threats. “The miracle of San Gennaro,” Croce concludes, “… is likely to be more of an unintentional than an intentional deception.” Thus speaks the doyen of Italian secular liberalism: La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 94–98. On the cult of San Gennaro and Italian patron saints in general, see Marino Niola, I santi patroni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). On the attitude of the French authorities, see Rao, Esuli, 150–51. On the tradition of the political exploitation of the San Gennaro event, see Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Identità sociali: La nobiltà napoletana nella prima età moderna (Milan: UNICOPLI 1998), 173–205. In his Il segreto di san Gennaro: Storia naturale di un miracolo napoletano (Turin: Einaudi, 2016), Francesco Paolo de Ceglia engages in a historical reconstruction in anthropological terms of the San Gennaro phenomenon.

172 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL pay homage to their holy Patron, and were so certain that the Saint would side with them and forsake the miracle, that they were cheering already, as if the presence of the Commissar and the General would add to their forthcoming triumph. But within a few minutes the fluid in the ampoule does liquefy. At first there is surprise and amazement! Then bewilderment. And finally, caution is thrown to the wind and jubilation prevails. Even San Gennaro has turned Jacobin! This is the first utterance from the People. And how can the People of Naples not be what San Gennaro is? Therefore…Viva the REPUBLIC. The devout women onlookers reflect that this is the first time they have been allowed to witness the miracle;172 their eyes fill with tears. And they claim that so did General Macdonald’s eyes, and that he wiped them away with a handkerchief. So the women’s gaze focuses on him, and sympathetic murmurs are heard, and talk of the king who never accompanied San Gennaro’s procession, and now the General is here, and the Organizing Commissar. The People fraternize with the National Guard, with a thousand endearments continuing all day Saturday and all of Sunday evening. And from then on, in the taverns, all are singing the carmagnole.173 The Government ought to have been present at that great juncture when the ordinary people were becoming reconciled with the new system, so as to reap the rewards of the approval of Heaven and the newly-found affection of the people. The occasion was not utilized as well as it should have been. On the following day, especially seeing as it was a Sunday, all pulpits ought to have been proclaiming the miracle that had come to pass, and that Heaven had quite obviously sided with the Republic. And one ought to have linked to this another two facts which had a strong impact on the popular imagination: the only clear days of a very wet winter were those from the Capua armistice to the peaceful entry of General Championnet, in contrast with the constant downpours and generally adverse weather during Ferdinand’s expedition to Rome. The weather was utterly adverse then, while being auspicious when the French marched into Naples. In addition, Mount Vesuvius, which had been dormant since 1794, glowed with a 172. At this point Fonseca Pimentel appends the following note: “When San Gennaro was nobile di sedile, and went to perform the miracle sitting on his seat, the only women who were allowed to attend were the aristocrats and the residents of the small Pier in their capacity of descendants of San Gennaro’s nurse.” The city of Naples had traditionally been divided into six wards known as sedili (literally “seats”). Their representatives ruled de facto over the city’s life. Five of these sedili were only open to the nobility. Pimentel is making her point about the democratization of San Gennaro by playing on the double meaning of the word sedile. 173. It is interesting how Macdonald is viewed here through the women’s gaze. This scene constitutes a rare instance of women being singled out, even though the emphasis is on class rather than gender; it is the first time that non-aristocratic women have been “allowed to witness the miracle.” The same point is reiterated on 173, where, in true Jacobin fashion, women are also allocated the role of persuaders of their men, of facilitators rather than protagonists. The singing of the carmagnole marks the apogee of the euphoria over what appears to be a great rapprochement between the Jacobins and the people of Naples. The analysis and criticism will follow. On the carmagnole, see above, note 166, at 169.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 173 gentle and almost joyful flame on the nights when lights were lit for the proclamation of the Republic. The former king would go to San Gennaro on the seventh day after the miracle. It seems to me that it would be good, indeed essential, for the Government to do the same. If we want to instruct the People, let us win their trust.174 The Corpus Christi procession will soon be taking place. Since the representatives of the City, including the representatives of the People, have regularly attended, I think it likely that our six Municipalities will take part—in which case I would propose that each should be accompanied by a deputation of heads of families, chosen from all the Guilds of the various districts, and selected from among the most temperate and mature, and especially among those in charge of shops or businesses. I would propose that this deputation should be composed of married men or widowers over 40 years old, elected by those who are over 21 years old. In this way, the People will have tangible proof of being held in greater esteem than before, will begin to savor the pleasure of electing and the privilege of being elected, and will become accustomed to respecting their elders and betters. Let us cultivate the support of the most upright among the People. They alone have the power to influence them. Besides, inasmuch as they are property owners, even though merely of a shop or small business, they have more urbane manners, and greater interest in public tranquility, and if only they move to our side over one thing, they will stay with us. Finally, in this way, one gets the People more and more accustomed to primary assemblies, that is to say, to the august functions of a Citizen. Something else that should not be neglected, because it is part of tradition and because it is a religious feast, is the illuminations at the Pennino with the so-called Catafalque, or lit up stage with music. In the old system only upper-class women, or women who lived as such, were able to attend. Now the women from the ordinary people will take part, and so the sheer novelty and pleasure of the feast will fill every woman’s heart with joy, so that each one of them will go back home a friend of the new system, and every woman who has been won over will in her turn win over her husband, father, brothers, sons, etc. Nothing brings together hearts and minds like public feasts and religious ceremonies. That is why the wise 174. Fonseca Pimentel exults here in the moment of civic unity, then shifts to plead once again with the government for a bolder exploitation of the opportunity to forge a link with the Neapolitan masses: the revolutionary leaders must immerse themselves totally into the popular culture and its myths, even descending to sheer superstition in interpreting the significance of meteorological incidents. Note in particular her emphasis on the need to use the clergy as privileged cultural mediators. Fonseca Pimentel’s reflections on the San Gennaro episode are the culmination of her theorizing both on popular culture and on the identity of the people. Now, starting from this issue of the Monitore bearing the subhead Majestas populi, “People’s Majesty,” she no longer calls them “plebs.” They are people, or People, or ordinary people, who have the capacity to become citizens. From May 25, in MN, No. 31, at 187, she will start to talk of “citizens from the Market.” For a discussion of Pimentel’s approach to the popular question, see above, 86–91.

174 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL ancients always joined the two together, thereby benefiting from the twofold efficacy of both. Objecting to the expense involved in the illumination would be both mean and unpolitical at the present moment: true thrift is being able to differentiate among objects and occasions for expense and economy.175 The Roman Senate, at the time of public calamities, far from diminishing traditional forms of entertainment, devised new ones, and designated them as SACRED. Last Monday saw the fitting punishment of those monsters who, during the days of popular anarchy, stained their hands with the blood of the two distinguished brothers Ascanio Filomarino, formerly Duke della Torre, and Clemente Filomarino. Readers will remember that the perpetrator of the crime was Ascanio’s despicable barber. While having his hair dressed, Ascanio received a letter sent from Capua by a relation of his, one Rospigliosi from Rome, advising him to be of assistance to Championnet. The barber read the name Championnet from behind, noted where Ascanio put the letter, and with that as a pretext he went out to stir the fracas which ended in the massacre of the two brothers, and the utter devastation of their dwelling, with the destruction even of the railings of the balconies. The High Military Commission, as soon as it received the reports from the Police Commission, having heard the Government Commissar and the Defense Lawyer of the culprits, convicted and thereupon sentenced to death the abovementioned barber: Giuseppe Maimone guilty as charged of incitement to sedition, of leading the People to the pillage of the Filomarino house and the arbitrary arrest of Ascanio Filomarino, Clemente Filomarino, and all their retinue, and consequently of being the primary instigator of the murders that were committed. Gioacchino Lubrano guilty as charged of complicity in the fracas which led to the said murders, and of aiming the first shot at the person of Clemente Filomarino, having explicitly requested that he be the one to murder Filomarino on the grounds that Filomarino had been first to arrest him. Salvatore Capuano guilty as charged of outrage perpetrated on the corpses of the slaughtered brothers Ascanio and Clemente Filomarino, tying their feet with a rope; of instigating all, as self-appointed leader, to take up arms, and of ordering the mob to buy pitch with twenty-four carlini taken from the body of Ascanio Filomarino, to be used as fuel to burn the corpses of Ascanio and Clemente Filomarino, and thereafter to drag and burn the said corpses. Candido Jalienti guilty as charged of fraudulently spreading alarming rumors against the Republic that had been established, of being the instigator of the insurrection which took place in his home town of Campolieti, and of pillaging the houses of Filomarino and Zurlo. Furthermore, after the execution the corpses of Giuseppe Maimone and Gioacchino Lubrano should remain hanging from the gallows for 48 hours. 175. Once again, Fonseca Pimentel’s discussion of women focuses on class rather than gender identity. Her assertion of the importance of “public feasts and religious ceremonies” will be a constant from now on in the Monitore.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 175 The sentence was printed, published, distributed, and posted up in Naples and in Campolieti, but the protracted hanging from the gallows was not carried out.176 The feast of the flags has been again postponed to next Sunday. The spirit of the revolt fueled by the English had taken hold in Sorrento as well. An envoy sent to negotiate with them was badly received, and so it became necessary to have recourse to arms. General Sarazin set sail with Caracciolo to attack from the sea while the army set off through the mountains. Once the attack had begun, the local inhabitants pleaded for surrender. The English had departed, taking with them one of the Guardati Citizens, who was from the Municipality, as prisoner on board ship. Castellamare, Massa, Vico, Sorrento have paid dearly, through the levies that have been imposed on them, for the crime of a few and the timidity of the others. Salerno and Cava have suffered even more. The insurgents were utterly trounced in Avellino by the French column from Monteforte in concert with the Patriots led by Domenico Muscati, and the correspondence of Costantino de Filippis, chief of the insurgency, was discovered there, and passed on to the War Secretariat, which has handed it over to the Police Secretariat. But he himself managed to escape arrest. The state of our coastal defenses is improving apace. Forty artillerymen with two officers have set up a fort in Sorrento, and another 60 with 4 officers have gone to form one in Salerno as well. A glacis needed filling in at the wharf battery, and an urgent appeal for help was sent out to Patriots. A great number of them, not content with the grueling indefatigable service that they perform as National Guards, soon rushed round and formed squads to carry stones and mortar. This is equality in action indeed. This is indeed true love of Motherland. Be of good cheer, you Italian youth; Italy will not be enslaved as long as such examples are given and received in every Italian city.177 A Patriotic Legion of Calabrian Youth resident in Naples has formed here; it is only a few members short of the 600 which are needed. It occupies Castel Nuovo, evacuated by the French last week and handed over to our own Artillery. Take heart you Calabrian Youth; your Motherland is still burdened with the monstrous presence of Ruffo. 176. Fonseca Pimentel’s euphoric account of the San Gennaro event spills over into the uncommonly triumphalistic account of the executions in January 1799 of those found guilty of murdering the Filomarino brothers during the days of “popular anarchy.” The events leading to the murders are described at length in Marinelli, I giornali, 33. 177. Fonseca Pimentel’s euphoric optimism continues unabated. The spirit of revolt has been “fueled by the English,” the places where it has occurred have been punished, and coastal defenses are getting better. And yet, if we look at the places of insurrection, they amount to a dangerous closing in towards the capital. The detail of National Guardsmen carrying “stones and mortar” to fill in the glacis is to be found, in nearly the selfsame words, in De Nicola, Diario napoletano, 1:130, except that he adds that enthusiasm was such that even “some ladies took part.” Fonseca Pimentel ignores this. Is she perhaps interested in women, rather than ladies?

176 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Last Tuesday, 300 carts were requisitioned for the French Army. The said Army is leaving for the Cisalpine republic, even though General Rusca is staying behind as Commandant of this Garrison, and Forts; a thousand men will still form a defense force in Sant’Eramo, as well as 1,500 in Capua and as many in Gaeta. Another mobile column is staying under the command of General Gerardon. On Saturday, General Federici will leave for the Apulian coast with a thousand of our own men, and corresponding artillery, also carrying weapons for another thousand commanded by Captain Florio, who will be joined by 200 mounted troops in Ariano di Puglia. Yesterday all Patriotic Societies merged into one. They gathered on the premises of the former academy of Knights, which have been allocated to them by the Government. Under discussion were the urgent needs of the Motherland, and it was resolved to undertake the military conscription of all Patriots, which in fact began immediately.178 ………………

E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 27: Saturday, May 11, 1799 DUODI 22 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI The law concerning the Banchi’s debt has not satisfied public expectations, nor fulfilled public needs. It does no more than confirm the law giving the Nation’s backing to the Banchi’s debt already passed by the previous Provisional Government. It does specify the size of the mortgage but fails to put in place a mechanism for speeding up the extinguishment of the polizze and reducing the size of the return by increasing the circulation of money.179 After the dreadful experiences of the administration of the Jesuitic Agency, of the Cassa Sacra, and indeed of all administrations,180 the prospect of the Banchi 178. The French are leaving, even though the details are as yet unclear. De Nicola talks about the alarm that is taking hold of the city: Diario napoletano, 1:130–31. The Monitore, on the other hand, passes quickly by this news to turn instead to the “military conscription of all Patriots.” Fonseca Pimentel’s tone is defiant, an attitude that will develop into a full-blown proclamation of self-sufficiency in the next issue: MN, No. 27, 179. 179. The question of the overhaul of the financial system had already been discussed on March 12, in MN, No. 12, 140, and March 30, in MN, No.15, 145–146. 180. The Jesuitic Agency had been created to deal with the assets confiscated from the Jesuit order in 1767. On the Cassa Sacra, see above, 21, note 55.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 177 administering a capital of twenty-six million frightens the public mind. The greater the assets, the greater the public anticipation that they will be squandered; equally, people fear that its sale will be all the slower, the greater the administrators’ own interest in slowing it down and not completing it. Given the law’s utter inadequacy to fulfill such a key public objective, we shall put forward the ideas gleaned from a good Citizen. They seem to us all the more useful as they would produce a speedier outcome. Neither he nor we should be censured for divulging them so late, seeing as the law was debated in a secret Committee, which made it impossible to foresee whether or not it would fulfill its purpose.181 The sale of assets should open immediately. A time limit should be set beyond which the polizze underwritten up to the end of 1798 would no longer be legal tender or in any way valid; in this way, those who own such policies, instead of vacillating or holding out hoping for better times, would rush to buy, and get rid of polizze soon to become worthless. Since polizze are now losing more than 60 percent when they are exchanged, on being sold they should lose a quarter, that is to say 25 percent, which is a gain in the present circumstances. Conversely this quarter, or 25 per 100, should be offered as a reward to those who within the same time limits buy all in cash, or else on the cash portion of the payment. In this way, the Nation would not lose out on the rewards it offers, it would reclaim and restore to circulation the money that lies buried in individual coffers, and the need to surrender polizze that are about to become worthless, combined with the urgency to procure cash in order to claim the reward, will produce a reasonable measure of exchange; and this exchange will also diminish as the money from the purchases returns into circulation. Once the prescribed period of time has elapsed, we will find that the Banchi’s debt has been almost completely eliminated, as well as almost all polizze, that metal currency has increased, and that assets have been redistributed. In this way, we will experience at once the advantages of foreign trade and a more regular revenue. The only problem lies in fixing the time limit. Were all Departments to be peaceful, I would say no more than six months. But since it is only fair that all Citizens of the Republic should be able to acquire the assets allocated to the Banchi, it would be unjust to bring forward a time limit that would give an advantage to the Citizens of the Vesuvius Department over and above those of others. So the time limit of six months should be fixed from the moment when tranquility has been established in the Republic, a moment which according to all signs is now imminent. Naturally, whatever the rush to sell and the present difficulties, we must always regulate sales in such a way as not to cause or increase large accumulations of wealth, which is an evil greater than all evils. 181. It seems very likely that the “good citizen” might be a fictional creation for the purpose of putting forward Fonseca Pimentel’s own views. It is very noticeable that the plan proposed by the “good citizen” is predicated on the need to prevent the enhancement of inequality.

178 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL In this regard I should point out that, as the law stands at the present moment, with the immense sum of allocated funds being managed through the Banchi, one should err on the side of caution and include the annual revenue from such funds in the capital assigned to the extinguishment of debt. For the reason that, while this revenue will decrease year by year because of sales, the very slowness of the sales will result in its remaining mainly with the Banchi. And I shall also note that in all Departments there are funds in various Towns which were established with the specific object of being assigned to various public Deposit Institutions, and that such funds must be looked after with care, without losing sight of their purpose. Not only must they not be used to increase the endowment of Naples Banchi, but rather they must, together with other funds that the Nation will be duty bound to contribute, be used as endowments for the Banchi which must be established in the Departments, according, of course, to different rules and regulations from the current ones in Naples. This plan and project was put forward as early as 1790, and it met with the approval of the famous Schmidt and our own Giuseppe Palmieri of renowned memory. We propose to submit it to the Government and the Public when circumstances arise which are favorable to its implementation.182 Another zealous Citizen wants it to be known that, when he toured the Neighborhoods of the Molo-piccolo, of the Market, the Pennino, the Borgo di Lurito, the Nunziata, etc., in order to read out to the People the two laws concerning the abolition of the duty on flour and of the feudal system, he found that everywhere those folks were completely unaware of the Government’s proclamations, edicts and undertakings, as if they lived a thousand miles away from us. What he found posted everywhere were the notices about taxes, but not a sign of the edicts and proclamations which show the paternal care of the Government towards the People. Good things are not publicized, only bad things. Therefore the Government is urging the Municipalities through this journal to remedy this sorry state of affairs as a matter of priority.183 General Federici was due to depart today with his Division, but now he will not because of ill-health. General Rusca was to have stayed behind as Commander of this garrison and Forts, but he left as early as last Wednesday. After the departure of Poitou, the abovementioned Federici had been put in charge of this garrison; now that 182. Fonseca Pimentel is likely referring here to her unpublished work on a project for a national bank, on which see above, 5, note 7, and 28. The “famous Schmidt” has not been identified. Croce thinks it is not a misspelled reference to Adam Smith, because he had died in 1790. Palmieri was a writer on both the economy and military matters who died in 1793: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 130n3. 183. We are not told who this “zealous Citizen” might be, nor do we know whether the Monitore is really acting as the government’s mouthpiece. The comment is, however, consistent with Fonseca Pimentel’s constant frustration with the regime’s failure to communicate its programs to the people.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 179 he is scheduled to leave, he has been replaced by our Calabrian Amato. In place of General Rusca, the garrison and Forts are under the command of General Gerardon. The whole army left Caserta on Thursday, complete with over 500 cows. Organizing Commissar Abrial has also left, not before conveying the totality of his tasks to the two Commissions of our Provisional Government. Then the Legislative Commission elected into membership Francesco Daniele and the former member of the previous Provisional Government, Vincenzo Bruno.184 Representatives of both Commissions, Patriots, Neapolitan Nation, You are now your own masters, in such felicitous circumstances as all other regenerated Nations have wished for in vain: this is the time to prove yourselves. Garner together your minds, your strength, your wills. Establish without delay your Constitution, which must embrace only the distribution of powers and the principles of Democracy, not their administration, and therefore can and must be swift and brief. The right to self-determination is for those who are wholly self-reliant: make the best of this fleeting moment: you will forever be as you show yourselves now. This moment will determine whether you will appear to the august French Nation and to Europe as worthy of being a free People or otherwise, and whether you will prove yourselves worthy of the respect and trust of the whole of Italy, or its everlasting contempt.185 184. The military situation is now somewhat chaotic. General Francesco Federici, who had been actively involved in the formation of a national army (MN, No. 9, 129) and had been appointed Commander of the Naples Garrison, is incapacitated by ill-health. After the departure of the French army for the Cisalpine Republic, General Rusca, a Frenchman who had commanded one of the four French columns in the battle for Naples in January (MN, No. 1, 95–97), and who had been initially appointed Commander of the remaining French troops in the local Garrison and Forts (MN, No. 26, 176), also leaves, to be replaced by General Girardon (not Gerardon). De Nicola claims that the French troops amounted to no more than a thousand, and the commitment of the majority of the national troops, who in any case amounted to no more than seven or eight thousand, was very uncertain. He believes that the chances of the city being able to withstand and repel an attack are nil, quite apart from the dire situation outside the capital, where insurgency is rampant: Diario napoletano, 1:132–33. Organizing Commissar Abrial has also left, triggering some changes to the composition of the Provisional Government. Vincenzo Bruno, who now returns to the cabinet, was arrested after the fall of the Republic and committed suicide on October 21. Lerra, Monitore Napoletano, 2 febbraio–2 giugno 1799, 423n36. 185. Fonseca Pimentel is not dismayed by the departure of the French, but greets it with defiant euphoria and a passionate exhortation to view it as a felicitous opportunity to prove the Republic’s worth and rise to the occasion. She will continue to display this attitude in the following issue with its paean to Neapolitan self-reliance. The Republic was about to die, but Fonseca Pimentel presents this juncture as a kind of second birth, even reusing rhetorical tropes employed in the triumphant beginning of the first issue of the Monitore. “Finally we are free” (MN, No. 1, 93) is echoed in “you are now your own masters,” which in its turn generates the more explicit “free People” a few lines down; and the appeal in the earlier issue to “our Mother Republic and the free people of Italy and Europe” (MN, No. 1, 93) reemerges here as “the august French nation and … Europe … [and] the whole of Italy.” Except that there is a twist: the Neapolitan Republic is now, in a sense, a cut above the

180 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL ……………… Extract of letter from Apulia Here the insurrection is growing. A massacre of the best people has taken place in Ascoli, for no apparent reason, and the unrest is spreading to various adjoining Townships. We are in total anarchy, with over a hundred people from various Communes held in our prisons on suspicion of leading the disorders, and yet with no Judges to put them on trial and give a verdict.186 E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 28: Tuesday, May 14, 1799 QUINTIDI 25 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI When the activity and courage of individuals increase apace as circumstances become more difficult, this is the prime sign of inner virtue, a sign which augurs well for the future destinies of a People. In this way men become accustomed to taking advantage of all their faculties, and can control situations and master events through the resources that they have forged for themselves. Happily, we are beginning to show such signs. Dispossessed of all resources because of past events, we are beginning to create them for ourselves; fervor and action increase by the day in Patriots, and among the ordinary people, the initial aversion or apathy towards the new system diminishes by the day. The sparse insurgencies are indeed distressing, and yet they spur good people to redouble their efforts, and educate all to be vigilant of public affairs. The present position of Italy is not a disadvantage: Italy will remain a warrior Nation, and will fight on her own, not relying on the armies of others. In this other sister republics, finding itself “in such felicitous circumstances as all other regenerated Nations have wished for in vain.” We were born to freedom with the help of the French, she implies; now we are reborn to freedom because the French are leaving. It is not clear what Fonseca Pimentel means by the “administration” of the Constitution,” which should be overlooked in favor of the “principles of democracy.” Battaglini surmises that she might be expressing a concern that to present anything beyond basic principles would generate further delays in an already much delayed project: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 570–71, note 11. 186. An element of despair intrudes on Fonseca Pimentel’s usual euphoria, but with regard to the most remote provinces, while she remains optimistic about the city itself.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 181 way, it will become apparent that a people only defends itself well when it does so by itself, and that an independent and free Italy is a useful ally, while a dependent Italy is a burden. One cannot love freedom by half; freedom only produces its miracles with Peoples who are wholly free.187 ……………… E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 29: Saturday, May 18, 1799 NONIDI 29 FLOREAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI On Wednesday at about 23 hours188 an English brig, or other craft, was spotted approaching from afar in the Procida waters, and signaling to their own vessels. These appeared not to notice, and so the brig signaled again by firing a cannon to attract their attention. Whereupon the vessels left hurriedly. Many believed that they had left the islands that they were occupying to go to the aid of Ferdinand in Sicily, where rumor had it that revolution had broken out.189 Someone who managed to get here from Procida has testified that this rumor was the one most widespread there after the vessels’ departure. Some, on the other hand, believe that they left because of the much talked about imminent arrival of the Gallo-Hispanic 187. Fonseca remains defiant, even celebrating for their energizing effects the dire circumstances threatening the Republic. 188. About 6 p.m. 189. De Nicola’s extensive report on this episode (Diario napoletano, 1:139–40) only partly coincides with Fonseca Pimentel’s account. He writes that according to some rumors, the former king fled Palermo because the local population had rebelled in support of the Neapolitan Republic, and the English ships, which might have had successful skirmishes with the Gallo-Hispanic fleet, had abandoned the islands of Procida and Ischia. Admiral Caracciolo thereupon attempted to destroy the fort built on Procida by the English, but was pushed back with some losses of men and vessels. Fonseca Pimentel’s account, while not overlooking the Neapolitan fleet’s losses, highlights their heroic enthusiasm and revolutionary zeal in the face of a better-resourced enemy. Francesco Caracciolo had been a high-ranking naval officer in the royal navy. In January 1799, he followed the king to Sicily but later resigned and offered his services to the Republic. He was hanged from the mast of a ship in June 1799, the first to be executed after the fall of the Republic. On Caracciolo see Francesco Barbagallo, “Caracciolo, Francesco,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 19 (1976), 360–62 ; Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 263–64; and Rao, Esuli, 244–45.

182 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL squadron. On Thursday morning, the Director General of the Navy Caracciolo promptly issued a proclamation summoning Patriots, and soon after midday two small Galleys, eight Gunboats, six Artillery Boats, and various Feluccas left under his command bound for Procida, which they reached the same night. The enemy had left behind one Frigate, two Corvettes, one equipped with a mortar, one Xebec, six Gunboats, one Artillery Boat, and another three boats which had heavy guns at the fore. Our side was smaller in number, and yet, inspired by faith in our cause and in their Commander, they did not lose heart: towards eight o’clock Italian time on the following morning,190 taking advantage of a motionless sea, they positioned themselves in a near semicircle and began to fire. They managed to hit the bows of the enemy Frigate and Corvette, thereby wrecking their decks and putting their Mortars out of action. Rejoicing in their victory, shouting Viva the Republic, long live Freedom, they continued their pursuit of the Frigate and managed to break its masts. But they did not notice that they were within range of the land Batteries, which were aiming just above the water surface, and one of our Gunboats suffered some damage. Meanwhile, the wind started to blow and the sails of the Corvettes began to fill, and so our boats withdrew, content with having put the Frigate out of action and drawn out the enemy forces. Our casualties came to five dead and three wounded. The launching pad for heating up the shells has taken a hit which barely left time to slam it on the beach, and we hope to recover the burner. Today a Mortar trained on Procida has been placed in the Miniscola battery, and detailed plans are being laid so that, as soon as the stormy seas subside, we will be able to go back into action and take control of this Island. ……………… At two hours past midnight our Infantry legions left for Apulia under Commandant Matera, and General Federici will set off within the next few days. A Courier from Bari reports that a few enemy vessels have appeared there, causing some disturbances by ill-intentioned people. While piracy and English intrigues shore up a few scattered bands of outlaws, nevertheless the courage and civic enthusiasm of good Citizens grows larger every day. On 21 Floreal, 500 insurgents went to attack Venafro, and this will remain a memorable date in this Commune. The inhabitants rose en masse and hurled themselves like tigers against the rebels, many of whom were either killed or wounded, while the rest were routed and dispersed. The defenders had few rifles and little ammunition; but (furor arma ministrat191) made do instead with stones, peasant tools, and the courage of the heroic women Citizens, fighting side by side with their husbands and brothers. This Municipality promptly requested 100 rifles and an appropriate quantity of ammunition for those brave Republicans who, 190. About 3 a.m. 191. Virgil, Aeneid 1:150: “Rage gets them arms.”

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 183 after this incident, are anxious to destroy the local insurgents and ensure that the route between the Abruzzi and the Capital via the Venafro ford remains open.192 ………………

E.F.P.

Second Quarter. No. 30: Saturday, May 25, 1799 SEXTIDI 6 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI On Sunday, at last, the public feast was held for the burning of the flags captured in various battles against the insurgents, and the flags donated by the Government to the National Guard were unfurled in the wind for the first time.193 Around the tree planted in the largo opposite the National Palace was an oblong-shaped stand, ready for the address to the People and the incineration of the previously-mentioned flags. The longer side of this stand measured 48 feet, the shorter side 36, and the height measured 18 feet. The shorter sides were divided by two flights of steps which led up to the stand. It was divided into two equal parts by a semicircular molding; the lower half was adorned with a trophy in low relief. The two longer sides of the higher half displayed two victories each, which held two plates with the following inscriptions: Towards the former Acton palace ETERNAL HATRED OF MONARCHY AND OPPRESSION Towards the wide street of Toledo ETERNAL GRATITUDE TO THE FRENCH REPUBLIC On the shorter sides by the flights of steps were four inscriptions on each side. The two most forceful were: 192. Alfonso Perrella gives a detailed and nuanced account of the Venafro events, quoting among other sources the Monitore Napoletano: L’anno 1799 nella provincia di Campobasso: Memorie e narrazioni documentate con notizie riguardanti l’intiero ex Regno di Napoli (Caserta: Vincenzo Majone, 1900), 259–74. He does not, however, mention women fighters. 193. Here in MN, No. 30, and in Nos. 31 and 32 that follow, the focus is on public feasts and pageantry, the last in the life of the Republic. The celebrations on the occasion of victories against insurgents dominate this issue and the next, to be followed by the religious feast of Corpus Christi in Nos. 32 and 33. The components of patriotic Republican rhetoric are all here: the slogans, the Tree of Liberty with its usual accoutrements, the ritual handing over and burning of insurgents’ flags, the national flags unfurled in the wind, the martial music, the parading of the National Guard.

184 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL OUR UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH TYRANTS BEWARE. ITALY IS FREE At the center rose the tree of liberty surrounded at an appropriate height by the six consular fasces. Higher up, it was adorned with tricolored sashes on which was inscribed the sacred name of FREEDOM, and from which protruded long branches of olive, oak, and laurel trees, with the national flag in the middle. Towards the top were two civic crowns and a triumphal crown, close together one above the other, and finally, at the very top, the republican cap with various tricolored ribbons fluttering in the wind. At the foot of the tree, in the middle of one of the longer sides of the stand, was a circular altar for the burning ritual, adorned with garlands, an oak wreath at its edge. All this had been designed by the architect and painter Citizen Enrico Colonna, and put together by the sculptor Citizens Valerio Villareale and Giuseppe Battistelli, and the engraver Carlo Beccale, who, no less valiant as Citizens than as craftsmen, on this occasion made a gift of their toil to the Motherland. A division of the national Guard had been receiving the banners from the Executive Commission and bringing them over with military pomp since the morning. At about five hours after midday, a French unit from the Sant’Eramo garrison was the first to appear and take its place in the National largo, accompanied by its own band. Next, after a while, came a squadron of our mounted Gendarmerie, and meanwhile, after drawing up in the largo delle Pigne, the national Guard began to advance in three Legions, preceded by the General and by all the General Staff looking magnificent on their horses, and followed by a mounted Squadron of the same national Guard. At the sound of brisk martial marches, it reached the national largo, dragging behind it as trophies the tyrant’s vanquished banners, and because of the nature of the ground, it positioned itself in such a way that it took the shape of a kind of trapezium, extending its line towards the street of Toledo. The National flags waving in the wind were beautiful to behold, filled with powerful mottos and emblems, devised and designed by the abovementioned Citizen Colonna. The three colors are divided diagonally, and in the middle are, clearly visible, the consular fasces with the cap and two oak branches. DEATH TO TYRANTS and WAR ON CRIME stand out on either side in large black characters against the yellow. NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC is written all over, gold on red. And the blue carries, also in golden characters, NATIONAL GUARD on one side and the number of the legion on the other. The General Staff and mounted Squadron of the National Guard entertained and captivated the eyes of the spectators for a while with various nimble maneuvers. Then various members of the National Guard dragged the banners

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 185 that were to be burned to the stand at the foot of the Tree. Whereupon, at the cry of LONG LIVE FREEDOM, LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC, DEATH TO TYRANTS, they tore them to a thousand shreds with their sabers, and even the poles were smashed, with the whole crowd echoing their cry. Some of these pieces were thrown into the fire on the altar, while some were given out to the people, who vied with each other to rip them further, passing them from hand to hand, emulating and indeed exceeding even the passion of the National Guard, and ever redoubling their joyous cries. One cannot imagine a spectacle more appealing both to the eye and the soul. The National Guard displayed pomp and military vigor. A huge crowd of People, such as one can only find in this and few other great European Capitals, conveyed a sense of strength and National majesty at the same time. The innumerable women watching from the neighboring balconies were wearing a variety of elegant yet austere ornaments, among which stood out, ingeniously intertwined, the National colors, ornaments which harked back to the Greek style, and to the times when we were free and Greek.194 The cries of LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DEATH TO TYRANTS, created an echo which expanded and then bounced back with greater force. The hats thrown into the air, their quivering feathers producing an effect as though of a dancing wave coming in and out of sight, and the white handkerchiefs that nearly all the women Citizens waved as a sign of jubilation along with the universal cry, appeared to be so many flags of peace and signs of happiness. (To be continued) ………………

Second Quarter. No. 31: Saturday, May 25, 1799 SEXTIDI 6 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI Continuation of the description of the National Feast The Spectacle had been up to that point joyful and vibrant, then suddenly it became tender and majestic. Thirty-two insurgents who had been captured in 194. The unity of the population on this momentous occasion cuts across both class and gender boundaries. Once again, all is well. Not for the first time, Fonseca Pimentel harks back to classical history and culture, in this case the tradition of freedom associated with ancient Greek city states. She alludes, as well, to the Greek origins of Naples, whose original name, Neapolis, meaning “new city,” is Greek. The theme of the city’s Greek origin will recur in MN, No. 31, 187.

186 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL various armed clashes were led to the National largo, where they were surrounded by the National Guard. Such a scene aroused not a little righteous anger among lovers of humanity. Although they find the punishment of a crime necessary, they find it no less necessary that people should never demean or take delight in a neighbor’s ills. Courteous civility alone secures cohesion and averts crimes. Nor can Liberty thrive where there is no Humanity, because Humanity is the basis of Equality, just as Equality is the basis of Justice and Liberty. This indignation mounted when they heard the wretched prisoners uttering the sacred names of Liberty and Republic, and sharing in the National rejoicing. The good Citizens, though they wanted to savor that moment, turned their eyes away from such unseemly spectacle.195 All of a sudden, there was some movement. The spectators wondered whether the prisoners were to be returned to their place of detention, when, at the foot of the steps leading up to the stand, they were seen receiving the fraternal embrace and kiss of the National Guards. The General of the National Guard Francesco Bassette (whom we have elsewhere mistakenly called Luigi, which is his brother’s name), inspired by generous and humane sentiments and wishing to make perfect the joy of that day, had sought and obtained the extension to these insurgents of the pardon proclaimed by the Republic, even though they had been captured before the pardon was issued.196 Unbeknown to the spectators, and unbeknown to the prisoners themselves, who had feared being led to the foot of the tree for entirely different reasons, the unexpected news was conveyed to both by that fraternal embrace, to the equal surprise of both. Then those wretches, dragged in an instant from the fear of death to the certainty of liberation, anxiously climb up to the tree in a throng, embrace and kiss it, and kiss and embrace each other and the National Guards; they dance, they shout, they rip the banners and trample on them with their feet, and again vie with each other in kissing and embracing; a white-haired old man, who earlier had aroused everybody’s deep commiseration, now attracts everybody’s gaze by the sprightliness of his movements. Then the Young Students of the Music 195. This episode is also reported by De Nicola (Diario napoletano, 1:143–44), who says the insurgents “received the fraternal embrace of the patriots,” the very words used here. But Fonseca Pimentel goes further. She frames her narration in a grid of allusions to the Jacobin maxim Liberty/Equality/ Fraternity, where humanity/Humanity takes the place of Fraternity, which in its turn reemerges in the “fraternal embrace” that seals the event. 196. Francesco Basset, whose name was often Neapolitanized as Bassette, was of French origin. He had been a captain in the royal army the previous year. As General of the National Guard, he had a vital role in the defense of the city at this stage, and his name will recur in the next issues of the Monitore. After the fall of the Republic, he was condemned to death but managed to survive by turning informant on fellow prisoners. On Basset, see Benedetto Croce, Varietà di storia letteraria e civile, 2 vols. (Bari: Gius. Laterza e figli, 1949), 1:201–11.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 187 Conservatory intone a patriotic anthem, composed by Maestro Cimarosa to words by the well-known Citizen and Poet Luigi Rossi;197 a scheduled public oration to the People was swept away by the general rapture; public joy turned at that point into more than intoxication, it became sacred passion and fury. The People hurled themselves at those shreds of banners not just to break them but even to tear them to pieces. The day was already drawing to an end, and the troops were withdrawing, yet the People’s craving was still not satisfied for tearing even the tiniest shreds, and shouting with ever greater enthusiasm their cheers for Liberty and the Republic and death to the tyrants. The altar recalled the altar of sacrifices, the base recalled the altar of the wretched, the singing of the anthem mixed with the sacred cry of LIBERTY, REPUBLIC, DEATH TO THE TYRANTS, evoked the ancient songs of battle and victory of free Greece; we were a Greek City, the emulators of Greek sweetness. ………………

PATRIOTIC SOCIETY On the day 22 Floreal,198 two Citizens from the Market, who would have been called Lazzaroni in the days of tyranny, rose to speak in the great Hall of the people’s Society. They were welcomed with a universal ovation. They went up to the rostrum, and from there, in the language of nature rather than of artifice, said: “We’ve come199 in the name of all the Citizens from the Market to declare our attachment to the Republic. We are happy with the present state, and we are ready to defend with our lives the freedom we have gained.” And they ended these brief but profound democratic sentiments with shouts of Viva the Republic, Long Live Freedom, and Viva San Gennaro. These the Hall echoed repeatedly with Viva the Republic, Long Live Freedom, and Viva San Gennaro. And by public acclaim it was decided that, as a token of the pleasure with which the Society had received these two brethren, the President on the rostrum should give 197. This anthem by the famous composer Domenico Cimarosa was entitled Inno del cittadino Luigi Rossi per lo bruciamento delle immagini de’ tiranni, posto in musica dal cittadino Cimarosa, da cantarsi nella festa del 30 aprile sotto l’Albero della libertà avanti il Palazzo nazionale (Anthem by citizen Luigi Rossi on the occasion of the burning of the tyrants’ images, with music by citizen Cimarosa, to be sung on the feast of April 30 under the Tree of Liberty in front of the national Palace). Rossi was hanged on November 28, 1799: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 143n1. 198. May 11. 199. The “language of nature” of these two men of the people is partly reproduced here. Fonseca Pimentel has them say not veniamo, as in standard Italian, but venghiamo. This is not Neapolitan dialect but rather a form typically used by the uneducated, what would normally be described as italiano popolare.

188 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL them, on behalf of all the members, a fraternal embrace. To this people responded with various shouts of Long Live Equality and Freedom.200 They then climbed back and took their seats in the Hall, and after a discussion of various useful motions, the meeting ended with the award of fraternal aid, and the invitation to attend future meetings, together with whoever else they might choose to bring. Nor did this invitation remain unheeded. Various other brothers from the Market came to the 25 Floreal201 session; one of them declared from the Rostrum that he would have brought an even greater number if, when they were all ready to leave, one of their number had not dissuaded them. Whereupon he was rewarded with a fraternal embrace, and a motion was proposed and approved to the effect that the man guilty of this error should be confined by the Police for several days to the house of one of the members of the Society, there to be provided for at the Society’s own expense, with the aim of educating him to his civic duties, and thereafter be released. To be sure, such a decision by our patriotic society ought to be immortalized by the pen of no less than a Thucydides or a Plutarch.202 ……………… Citizen Luigi Serio gave a Tribute in the Neapolitan language to the people of the Market, and invited all Citizens to stop saying Lazzarone, or Holy Faith.203 The meeting of 26 Floreal opened with the reading of two Patriotic Anthems, one by Luigi Rossi addressed to the Calabrian Legion, and the other by Citizen Piccinni in the Neapolitan language, addressed to the people.204 Both in their different manners were greeted with general applause, and it was resolved that the Society should make an honorable mention of both Authors, and that they should receive the President’s fraternal embrace on behalf of all the members. 200. In Fonseca Pimentel’s narration, class distinctions have vanished. Just as at the San Gennaro event a week earlier the plebs was no more, only people, so there are now no lazzari or lazzaroni (on Neapolitan lazzari see MN, No. 6, 124, note 95), all are citizens. Liberty and Equality again dominate the narrative, with Fraternity encoded in the “fraternal aid,” “fraternal embrace” (again), and “brothers.” 201. May 13. 202. Two great ancient Greek authors: the historian Thucydides and the moralist and biographer Plutarch. 203. The implication is that “Lazzarone” is an insult and “Holy Faith” a misnomer for the counterrevolutionary movement led by Cardinal Ruffo. 204. Just as there are no more lazzari, only citizens, so Neapolitan is now called a language, not a dialect. Luigi Serio died in battle on June 13. Domenico Piccinni, painter and dialect poet, survived the fall of the Republic. On Rossi, see above in this issue, MN, No. 31, 187, note 197. On Serio, see Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:453–58. On Piccinni, see Martorana, Notizie biografiche e bibliografiche, 331–32.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 189 ……………… An honorable tribute is long overdue to a new Neapolitan broadsheet, by Citizen Giacom Antonio Gualzetti. To this newssheet he adds another, which spells out in the vernacular the principles of Society, the rights of man and the Citizen, in other words all the fundamental principles and maxims of democracy. He combines in a down-to-earth manner both sacred and secular knowledge. Beginning with Adam he goes through the times of the patriarchs as far as the establishment of the Kings of Judah, assembling together from the holy Text all the passages which can show that Kingdom is oppression, and put it in the right perspective, that is to say in all its opprobrium. This is as far as the Author takes the reader in the newssheet that we have seen. We believe that the work has been continued, in the same felicitous vein.205 E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 32: Saturday, June 1, 1799 TRIDI 13 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI On Thursday of last week, the feast day of Corpus Christi, the usual pageant was held with the same ritual as under the court that is no more, and with as much pomp and circumstance. The National Guard deployed 12 Companies, which drew up in the customary places. The 4 members of the Executive Commission, together with General Gerardon and the Secretary general of the Commission, rode in the ceremonial coach of the former City to the Catafalque at the Pennino, as the former kings were wont to do, there to receive the blessing of the Archbishop, walking however some of the way and passing through the double wing of the National Guard which was drawn up in line at the Catafalque. Riding in the same coach, they then returned to Santa Chiara to attend Mass, sung by the best voices and with music by the famous Paisiello, Chapel Master of the Nation.206 On the right-hand side were five 205. The broadsheet was entitled Discurzo primo: Addò se parla de li primme govierne de lo munno, e comme venettero li Rrì (First speech: Where we talk about the first governments in the world, and how Kings came about), published on 17 Floreal (May 5). It is reprinted in Scafoglio, Lazzari e giacobini, 67–68 and 140–44. Gualzetti was condemned to death in December 1799, and hanged on January 4, 1800. 206. The famous composer Giovanni Paisiello, probably best known for his 1789 opera Nina ossia la pazza per amore (Nina, or the Lovelorn Mad Woman), had been Chapel Master at the Bourbon court from 1784, and was then appointed National Chapel Master on May 4, 1799.

190 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL armchairs covered in crimson velvet. There the General sat in the middle, flanked by the four members of the Executive Commission, with the Secretary general occupying a smaller chair. Opposite them on the left-hand side, in less sumptuous armchairs, sat the Ministers, the Generals, the Commissar of the Executive Power with the military High Commission, etc, and all around, almost forming a semicircle, the six Municipalities, the Government Commissar, the Magistrates, and all the usual authorities. If in the past the People might be dazzled by the lavish uniforms and embroideries of the so-called Knights of the Court, they now indeed beheld a similar display in the great uniforms of the Executive Commission, the Secretary and the Ministers, all alike and funded by the Republic, with the exception of the sash worn by the Commission only, embroidered as lavishly, and adorned alongside the band with long fringes and golden braids. You made her splendid, as you could not make her fair, said Apelles to a Greek Painter who had portrayed Venus adorned, but not beautiful. We are now making the Republic splendid, and then we shall make her strong as well: and if austere Citizens are displeased with this public expense on mere personal luxury, everyone knows that it was invented and willed by the famous Bassal, who dressed the twenty-five members of the past Provisional Government in grand uniforms, thereby preparing the grand and glorious destinies of the Republic. Once the Mass was over, a procession was formed, with the Magistrates at the head with the Municipalities and the Canons from the Cathedral. Behind them came the Consecrated Host,207 flanked by the President of the Executive Commission Dagnese on the right and General Gerardon on the left; then the other members of the Executive Commission and the Secretary general, and then the Ministers and the Generals. Everywhere the people appeared to be well-satisfied and delighted. Much public scandal was aroused by the sight of the Magistrates— still the same as before—none of whom had yet bent their souls to donning the national garb, almost all of them, and they alone, following the aristocratic custom of having a servant in attendance. Just as the sight of this caused indignation, much delight arose from the austere civic deportment of the members of the Municipality, which included the beautiful sight of a friar, Father Crisanto da Marigliano, President of the Municipality of the Canton of Masaniello, wearing his tricolor sash.208 207. The “consecrated host,” in Catholicism, is the bread, or wafer, that is transformed when an ordained priest says in the service of the Mass the words of Jesus Christ, “This is my body.” It is the central sacred object of the holy day of Corpus Christi, “the body of Christ.” 208. Here Fonseca Pimentel develops the theme of continuity and discontinuity with the royal past. Public religious rituals remain the same, with the same appealing pomp and circumstance, and with the lavish public displays of the past now transferred to the Republican setting. Other things have

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 191 Lastly there took place, truly the crowning glory of the day’s events, a dinner at what was indeed a splendid, magnificent public table, which had been arranged in the hall where the Maundy Thursday Dinner used to be held. The guests were General Gerardon and the Commandant of Sant’Eramo with 10 Officers, the General of the National Guard with another 10, the President and the Executive Power Commissar of the High Military Commission, the President and the Commissar of every Municipality, the Commandant of the Gendarmerie, and other officeholding Citizens. The President of the Legislative Commission should also have been present with another 6 members, but through the fault of the master of ceremonies they did not receive the invitation in time; and several women citizens were also present by invitation from the Directors. There were one hundred and two places, but the Public were welcome to take part, and many did, including several women Citizens from Santa Lucia and from the Market and the Molo piccolo. In fact huge numbers of ordinary People partook, many served their refreshments by the women and men Citizens who were sitting at the table.209 All enjoyed an abundance of coffee, ice cream, foreign wines, sweets, etc., to repeated cries of Long Live Freedom, Viva the Republic. ……………… Some Citizens arrived from Roccaraso as early as last Monday with the news that, since our Commander of the Fortress of Pescara Ettore Carafa had made sure that news of the Government’s wise laws, especially those concerning the abolition of the feudal system and the capitation taxes, spread throughout the Abruzzi, the peasantry had changed their minds. Realizing that they had been deceived by the aristocracy, not only had they ceased harassing the Republicans, but had in fact themselves arrested those selfsame despicable leaders and impostors. Later it transpired that, through the good offices of Citizen Delfico, who had gone to Ascoli with this specific objective, a French column had left Ancona for the Abruzzi. Moreover, it was said that 300 of them had already entered Pescara, and

changed: the Executive Commission and the General, who start by riding in the ceremonial coach like the former kings, but now walk at least “some of the way,” and a friar who wears the Republican sash. Other things still need to change: that is to say, the scandalous behavior of the Magistrates who still have servants in attendance. The juxtaposition of continuity and discontinuity will continue in the next issue of the Monitore. 209. De Nicola reports that women were involved, including some who “were plebs”: Diario napoletano, 1:185. In Fonseca Pimentel’s account, there are no plebs, just citizens. Once again the presence of women is viewed in terms of class rather than gender; it is the women from the poorer areas of the city who are highlighted. It is also worth noting that “women and men Citizens” sitting at the table are listed precisely in that order, as has become the custom in more gender-conscious cultures.

192 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL as a consequence, Pronio had withdrawn from the Vasto, taking with him 12,000 ducats that he had extorted from the local Population.210 ………………

E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 33: Saturday, June 1, 1799, Addendum ADDENDUM TO SATURDAY TRIDI 13 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI None of the ancient sacred pageants were omitted last Thursday, when the eightday festival of Corpus Christi closed with the customary parade known as the procession of the Four Altars, because each of the four Mendicant Orders erects an altar on the route of the procession where the Consecrated Host stops and gives the blessing. While all the Military and Civic officials have always accompanied this procession, nobody from the ex-Court did. This time the Consecrated Host was accompanied by the President of the Executive Commission d’Agnese, flanked by the General of the National Guard Citizen Bassetti [sic] and the Minister of the Interior Citizen De Filippis. Because this procession had been established and endowed by the Spaniards, the right of holding the tassels of the Banner rested with four families who had come here with Alfonso of Aragon, the Davalos, the Cardenas, the Guevara, and the Cavanilla. This privilege has gone the way of all other privileges; the sacred memory of the founder has given way to the sacred institution of equality. If there was a need to prove the favorable disposition of our ordinary People, the events of that day provide incontrovertible evidence. Three attempts to create alarm were made within little over an hour, by shouting run run. The first came after an accidental rifle shot while the Soldiers were marching past in the Largo Nazionale, and the other two soon after the start of the procession. In spite of this, the People remained calm throughout, with the more apprehensive just withdrawing indoors. But it soon became clear that it was a false alarm, the National Guard quickly restored order, and the procession continued to the end in the utmost calm. It is amazing how every time over the last five years this procession has been blighted by this kind of alarm. 210. According to Battaglini, this charge against Pronio is without foundation: Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, 646n8. But it is certainly a rumor that Fonseca Pimentel, and other Jacobins for that matter, would want to believe, given their conviction that the abolition of the feudal system would win them support.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 193 Yesterday we received the mail from Campobasso, and then also the mail from Castel di Sangro, which included several out-of-date letters from the rest of the Abruzzi. This means that they do not talk of the latest news, but all who arrive from the area confirm the arrival of a French Unit, as we mentioned in the previous issue. The Chief of Legion Belpulsi, who had left at the head of the vanguard, returned today. He was involved in a disastrous encounter with the insurgents at Marigliano. Yesterday he attacked and repelled them, which gave him the opportunity to enter Marigliano peacefully. But when he entered this morning he ordered, inexplicably, that the place should be torched and plundered; the Soldiers, scattered, were surrounded by the insurgents, who reappeared in greater numbers, and he was unable to reassemble his troop. At this point, according to the reports of some of his own Officers, all thought was on fleeing in disorder rather than retreating in order, with Belpulsi himself shouting every man for himself. As a consequence he lost his mortar, three boxes of ammunitions, and most of his troops. He has nevertheless surrendered himself at Castel Nuovo, promising to provide a full explanation.211 ……………… In the previous issue dated today we reported on the law, introduced by the Commission, stipulating that the Defenders of the Motherland should be compensated with half the property of the insurgents. I will respectfully observe that this law, very different from the one which the Patriotic Hall had requested, is partly unjust, and also potentially altogether misleading. This law sets the interest of the Republic, which consists in making a sharp distinction between the peaceful Citizen and the insurgent, in opposition to the interest of the troops, who are then obliged to wish for insurgents everywhere in order to ensure and increase their own reward, just as the General is perhaps obliged to find them in order to satisfy the troops. It favors a rash judgment in so fraught a matter, because how else could a General make decisions when he is forced by military action to rush from one place to another? and when, equally, he needs to avoid alienating those who are not so much his soldiers as his volunteer comrades-in-arms? This law therefore almost amounts to an incitement to war, an automatic condemnation of the private well-to-do Citizens of the rebellious Communes, who, as everyone knows, are always the peaceful group and are prevented from embracing the Republic as they would like by the fear of the insurgents—who are themselves, with the exception of a few bullies or ex-nobles, mainly people who are destitute and use insurgency as a pretext for robbery. 211. This assault on Marigliano was the last sortie against insurgents. It ends in an ignominious rout. Fonseca Pimentel reports the news with no comment, and persists in the dangerous illusion that the people of Naples will come round to the Republic.

194 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Moreover, if all, or nearly all, insurgents—assuming they could be aware of the law and how to make use of it—were to ask for pardon, what would be the troops’ reward? In the name of justice and magnanimity, the Nation should determine the reward to the defenders of the motherland out of the national assets, and then, through the due legal procedures in its Courts, declare and publicize that the assets of proven insurgents are national assets. And what applies to the troops should also apply to the indemnity rightly due to those who have suffered from the insurgency. Leaving aside the rivalry and jealousy that would be bound to arise between these Citizens and the troops were the General to be in charge of the division and distribution of those assets.212 ………………

E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 34: Wednesday, June 5, 1799 SEPTIDI 17 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI In the last few days, this Capital has suffered the kind of shock that recalls or reawakens the attention of all Citizens to the public necessity, and in this way rectifies judgments, exercises vigilance, increases and accelerates action, makes people search for and develop all their skills, and stimulates the political and moral strength of the state. Matera’s division was scattered and all hope in it lost; Spanò’s division was forced to retreat; Belpulsi’s expedition ended in disaster; the best of republican youth have been mowed down by superior forces, or fall everywhere to the murderous actions of the insurgents; an unspecified number of the tyrant’s hired murderers have landed in Apulia, invasion proceeds apace, extending into all departments, and the insurrection draws near to the Capital. All this created an extraordinary effervescence of proposals and ideas last Saturday night in the Patriotic Hall, which Gen. Wirtz, who was chairing the meeting, managed to calm, redirecting it to a healthier and more useful objective when he asked those present to implement military Conscription at once. On Sunday morning, we received bad news of the other expedition, which we said had set off on Saturday under the command of Minister of War Manthonè 212. Once again, Fonseca Pimentel exercises her democratic right to criticize government actions. Her analysis of this proposed law focuses on its likely consequences: that it will encourage military action and harm innocent citizens of the rebellious comunes. As before, she urges dealing with the insurgencies by political means rather than by suppression and punishment.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 195 as General–in-chief, but in which he was only a participant, the command having been left to the Chief of Legion Schipani. The latter was well received in the Commune of Sant’Anastasia from which he proceeded to position himself in front of the Commune of Somma, whose insurgents moved to attack him. Whether because of faulty execution or faulty command, our troops fought against each other without realizing it. Schipani led his troops back to the Bridge of the Maddalena. This retreat provoked the disgust of the Calabrian Legion, who refused to go anywhere under his command. The field was left open to the insurgents from Somma, who entered and devastated the Commune of Sant’Anastasia. In spite of such bad news, the French victories were still celebrated on Sunday evening. A cantata was held at the Fondo theater, and a cantata and ball at the national theater, the price of tickets having been lowered from 5 to three carlini so that more people would attend.213 On Monday morning the Government, not unaware of the accusations of mistaken actions and choices, held a meeting with the French Commanders; but later it transpired that the insurgents were near Resina, that is to say five miles away from us. Whereupon a new meeting was convened, which was attended by our Generals as well as the French Commanders. It was decided to test arrangements in the city, to assess properly our strength and the Citizens’ zeal by firing the three alarm gunshots, as per the public defense regulations … The effect was most positive: the cannon fired at 24 hours,214 people withdrew quietly into their houses, the National Guard and all good Citizens rushed to their respective quarters. The number of people at arms was counted at over fourteen thousand. Many flaws, organizational and military, came to light, which will be made good, and the salubrious terror inspired by these actions produced several confessions, whereby a network was uncovered of conspirators who had been in continuous correspondence with the insurgents. The first threads of that network were uncovered in Vico, and its seditious plan to take over the whole of the coastline.215 The Ministers, their Assistants, and all public Government Officials spent the entire night at their posts. The Executive Commission sat in permanent session, and was joined by all the Members of the Legislative Commission, with the aim not of making joint decisions, but of being prepared should the circumstances 213. Total disaster and chaos rule, and yet Fonseca Pimentel focuses on the galvanizing effects that this situation might have, and on the cantata and ball which will celebrate the victories of the French armies against the Austro-Russians on May 11 and 12 near the Po River in northern Italy. It is impossible to know whether her excess of optimism is the result of self-delusion or of her determination to salvage some shreds of morale. 214. About 7.30 p.m. 215. The insurgents are five miles away, the city is practically encircled, and the many “flaws, organizational and military” point ominously to a situation of total disarray. Fonseca Pimentel, as before, shifts emphasis quickly to commend the “salubrious terror” that these threats arouse.

196 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL require it. At dawn, the cannon was fired again, signaling that everybody was free to return to their duties. From that moment onwards, calm reigned supreme. ……………… Yesterday morning a Company of our mounted Guides, under the command of a French Chief of Battalion together with 200 French Infantrymen, went to attack a large body of insurgents who had had the temerity of advancing as far as Capodichino. The French troops gave our brave youth ample opportunity to show their valor. They proved themselves worthy of fighting side by side with them, and earned their universal praise. They drove back the insurgents as far as Casoria, in spite of attempts to ambush them in the countryside. In Casoria our troops, having been fired at from two houses, which were then left to burn, withdrew at about 22 hours.216 We lost a Sergeant of the Guides, and over 200 of the rebels were killed. Yesterday again there was fierce fighting around Torre dell’Annunziata. The cannon fire was heard from here for many hours. The Chief of Legion Carlo Muscari was making a frontal attack on a large body of insurgents, Schipani rushed to his help and struck from the rear, and the gunboats provided covering fire from the sea. Schipani reported that, after a huge number of them were slaughtered, the remnants of the insurgents had taken to the hills. While the battle was taking place in Casoria, a few ex-constables and other thugs from Aversa began to rampage and pillage. But the timely arrival of the French restored peace by suppressing these wretches. Today after twelve noon, a fresh Cavalry expedition was launched towards Afragola, Casale, which is beyond Casoria, and General of the National Guard Bassette has embarked on a fresh attack around Portici. We can hear the cannon. We await eagerly news of the outcome, which is bound to be joyful. It has been decided that each day a section of the Sant’Eramo garrison, together with our Patriots and the National Guard, will continue to attack, while another section from the Capua Garrison will strike from the rear, so that the insurgents will be caught between two fires and totally annihilated. The uncovering of the conspiracy brought to light the involvement of many of the coastal artillerymen, whose task it was to operate the coastal batteries, and those of our Castel Nuovo. Heinous scheming by the perfidious English.217 Many of those wretched coastal men who had been bribed and seduced were arrested today and brought here by our Cavalry.

216. About 5:30 p.m. 217. Verbless sentences, as well as the present tense and abbreviations, will become more frequent in the next issue of the Monitore as Fonseca Pimentel uses language that reflects the desperate urgency of the circumstances. It is faithfully reproduced.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 197 The Commander of Sant’Eramo Méjan, the Executive Commission, and the Legislative Commission never fail to sustain and arouse the courage of our troops with their proclamations. ……………… Today the Legislative Commission has abolished the duty on fish,218 and charged Palumbo and Gambale with drafting a law for the abolition of the duty on slaughtering and on home-reared animals. E. F. P.

Second Quarter. No. 35: Saturday, June 8, 1799 DECADI 20 PRAIRIAL YEAR VII OF LIBERTY: YEAR I OF THE NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE MAJESTAS POPULI This capital is continuing to enjoy the utmost tranquility. The movement one observes here is mainly aimed at the security and sustenance of the Republic, and has to do with the constant daily military expeditions against the insurgents. Their ravaging of the countryside is beginning to produce some shortages, for example of meat, oil, and salt cheese, but let us hope that much of this will soon be resolved through the victorious expeditions of our brave fellow soldiers.219 ……………… On Thursday General Bassette himself attacked again at Ponticelli, where he met a very stubborn and furious resistance, such that in the end that Hamlet had to be torched in order to deprive the wicked of a possible future shelter. General-inchief Manthonè with another column of young volunteers was stationed nearby, and was awaiting Bassette’s call to move in concert. The call did not come, he attacked vigorously on his side, and achieved some noticeable success. 218. Battaglini explains that the duty on fish was added to the cost of all fish, whether sea or freshwater, and irrespective of where and how it had been caught, and also of fish that had been salted or otherwise preserved: Il Monitore napoletano 1799, 677n8. 219. An alternation of illusion, acknowledgment of reality, and criticism of shortcomings (with regard to arrangements for dealing with injured fighters, and the negligence of the local clergy) dominates this last issue of the Monitore. At the same time, Fonseca Pimentel pays attention to matters of everyday life (food shortages, how to deal with fraudulent merchants, local taxation, the duty on fish sales and on meat production) as well as military matters.

198 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL Yesterday a French party attacked the insurgents in Melito. Our own have continued with their attacks towards Portici and Torre. And every day, war.220 This morning a Patriotic Deputation went to make a representation to the Legislative Commission about the fact that in the recent expeditions, especially the one to Barra, no thought had been given to sending carts to transport the injured, or surgeons, or stocks of straps and bandages to bind up their wounds, so that the injured had had to stumble back on foot, without any assistance. The Legislative Commission paid due attention to these grievances, and sent an urgent message to the Executive Commission to make suitable arrangements. PATRIOTIC HALL ……………… A motion was approved unopposed requesting that a deputation should travel to Capua to ask General Gerardon to provide a French Commander who would manage and supervise the war and instruct our Patriotic youth. Another Citizen remarked how in such circumstances as prevail now, Father Belloni, a foreigner, is the only cleric to be seen preaching in the public squares,221 while none of our Priests, none of our Bishops are deploying their Pastoral offices to lead back the People who have gone astray, temper their minds, and undermine the insurgencies. He then proposes a motion that Missionaries should roam the countryside to this purpose, and that Bishops should be instructed to promote this kind of preaching and undertake it themselves. Lastly, a Citizen from the Market remonstrates about the danger we are in of running out of flour, not because of shortage but because of the guiles of flour merchants who hide it so that the price will increase; and so he proposes that without violence one should pay them unannounced visits, to see whether they have flour in stock, and demand to know if and where they keep it; if they deny having any, or being able to obtain any, their shop should be closed down and the door sealed; he was in any case well-acquainted with the go-betweens who were informed and would inform on the secret flour stores. The motion was applauded and approved, and many Citizens took to making immediate arrangements with him to carry out the agreed-upon task.

220. The fighting is closing in. Here Fonseca Pimentel allows herself a brief emotional outburst in the face of impending disaster. I owe the phrase “And every day, war,” translating the original La guerra è quotidiana, to my friend Joseph Chapman. 221. Father Giuseppe Antonio Belloni hailed from Vicenza in northeastern Italy. He was hanged in July 1799.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 199 LEGISLATIVE COMMISSION 14 Prairial.222 It debates abolishing the duty on fish. It debates ways of compensating the interested parties. But given the small number of Representatives present, the discussion is adjourned. The matter of the fideicommissa is proposed for debate, but this also is postponed to more suitable times for the same reason. The Secretary reads a petition from the Municipality of Castellammare asking for the abolition of certain rights contrary to the freedom of the population. Pagano asks to speak. “Citizens,” he says, “in matters of freedom it is not right that one Commune should be inferior to another. While the past Provisional Government made it its business to release the baronial Communes from the oppression of feudal rights, it is imperative that this Commission should now complete the task by relieving from similar servile burdens those who at the time of despotism were Royal. It is beyond doubt that all these rights should be abolished absolutely; because the general system demands it. Therefore, any deliberation should only concern the different ways of implementing such abolition in particular cases. There are two types of contributions: those deriving from personal service and prohibition rights, and those deriving from other sources. The former, being directly opposed to the proclamation of freedom and the law that abolished feudal domains, must without any further deliberation remain extinct. Regarding the latter, I am of the opinion that one should wait for the formulation of the laws which will consolidate the Financial system, before determining the compensation due to those who will be damaged by the proposed abolition.” He then asks that a Commission be set up with the remit of producing a clear summary of all existing contributions in the Communes, divided according to the two Classes outlined above; which summary will offer reliable data for reaching the right decisions. The motion is approved. Filangieri adds that, in order to ease procedures, the proposed Commission should include members of the past Provisional Government, who made the law on the abolition of fiefs. This is approved; and the President nominates Representatives Forges, Palumbo, and Magliano to this Commission. Then the Secretary reads a proposal by cit. Luigi de Francesco to form a parade ground with Patriots dedicated to the defense and security of the Motherland. The proposal is universally applauded, and it is decided to ask the Executive Commission to make itself responsible for implementing it, with any modifications that might be agreed. Pagano, noting the republican spirit of its meritorious author, proposes a decree that he should receive an honorable mention in the minutes of the meeting. The Commission gives its approval, and so decrees. 222. June 2.

200 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL The Secretary makes public the election, decided in general Committee, of Citizen Ignazio Buonocore (flour merchant at the Market, and former President of the Municipality of Masaniello) to membership of the Legislative Commission as a replacement of one of the absent members. He is congratulated by all, and the public Session comes to a close. 17 Prairial.223 The debate on the abolition of the duty on Fish continues. All agree that it should be abolished. The discussion is about the question of how to break the monopoly, and it is proposed that the storage vaults should be closed, on the grounds that fish would otherwise still be expensive, in spite of the abolition of the duty. Pagano comments that the times are not ripe for such novelty. Buonocore then proposes that the levy should be reinstated. He says, the objective of the law is to make fish affordable to the People; but if we leave the storage vaults open without imposing a levy, the price of fish will be determined by the greed of the few fishmonger Bosses on whose behalf it is sold, and the law will benefit them only, instead of benefiting the Public. But the levy, some will say, goes against the system of freedom; this would be true if this system had already been adopted in every field: we have a levy on meat, on salted foods, on fats, on dairy products, why not a levy on fish? freedom is good when it applies to everything; now, while we are obliged to impose levies on so many things, it should apply to fish as well. The President notes that the present issue only concerns whether or not the duty should be abolished, and calls for a vote on this. The outcome is abolition for the time being, postponing a more detailed scrutiny to better times. Then, on the question of compensation, the meeting adopts Colangelo’s motion that all the assets belonging to the consignees should be gathered into a fund, out of which they should receive a guaranteed income, based on, for example a 4 per 100 rate of interest, or a different rate to be decided. Regarding the calculation of such income, the meeting adopts Pagano’s motion that it should be based on the accumulation of five subsequent leases. Pagano is charged with drafting a bill. Then the Secretary reads out a petition from Citizen Andrea Giannozzi on behalf of all the farmers from Posillipo asking for the abolition of the duty on slaughtering and on home-reared animals. This petition is considered fair, and the President sets up a special commission made up of Citizens Palumbo and Gambale, also inviting Citizen Buonocore to contribute his expertise. The Secretary reads out a message from the Executive Commission asking for clarification on the law of 16 Floreal,224 which stipulates that national Treasurers and departmental excise officers should stand bail for the sum for which they are responsible. The Executive Commission puts forward queries as to whether (1) the bail should cover one year, or whether it should only concern 223. June 5. 224. May 5.

Part Two: Monitore Napoletano (The Neapolitan Monitor) 201 one month’s takings; (2) Whether the said bail has to be extraneous, or whether it could fall on the assets of those responsible. The Legislative Commission decides that the bail should be with reference to the takings of each month, and that it could fall on the assets of the Treasurers and excise officers themselves when these are in possession of adequate property, but should be extraneous when they hold little or no property. ………………225 VARIETY Citizen Aitori come from Messina tells that, because of the news of the exit of the Gallo-Hispanic Fleet, a general call-up had been ordered in Sicily; that this order had caused great agitation among all the people; that the English forces had all concentrated again in front of Palermo, and that one of their vessels, having left to take rations to Port-Mahon, had encountered a brig, and after negotiations, the vessel turned back, unloading the foodstuffs in Palermo; whereby it was surmised that those on the brig had received news of this Fleet, and the capture of Port-Mahon. People coming in from Procida confirm this; they say that in Procida also the same kind of story was going around.226 ……………… Yesterday over 84 insurgents were escorted here in various batches: some from Torre, others from Melito, others from Campobasso. These last, a large group, were escorted here by the Commissar of the Sangro Nicola Neri. On his way here he was attacked on many sides by other insurgents; while he and his troops were engaged in the scuffle, many of the prisoners unshackled themselves, grabbed hold of the nearest weapons, and fought strenuously against the insurgents, assisting in driving them back; at the end of the scuffle, they went to hand in their weapons to the Commissar, who rewarded their generous deed by setting them free.227

225. Omitted are texts of law on duties on foodstuff, the Executive Committee’s decrees on conscription, and an appeal to the citizens of Naples by the Commander of the Sant’Elmo fort. 226. Rumors of this elusive fleet abound, but there is no evidence that such a fleet ever existed. 227. According to Battaglini in Il Monitore napoletano 1799, 700n14, the “insurgents from Campobasso” were the local Republicans who had fled from the town, taking with them the Royalists who were held in jail. Similarly, Perrella mentions the flight to Naples on June 4 of the Campobasso Republicans “with the local and foreign Royalists who had been held in the jails,” but also talks of some of the captured Royalists fighting alongside the Republicans: L’anno 1799 nella provincia di Campobasso, 306–07 and 332–33. Nicola Neri, doctor and author on medical matters, was hanged in December 1799: Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799, ed. Croce, 134n2.

202 ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL A Sea Captain who arrived from Genoa via Gaeta this afternoon gave the following news to Citizen Gerolamo Passaro. “In Toulon 30 Vessels and 10 frigates, some Spanish some French, are ready to sail, and to this end Sailors have been rounded up in Genoa and the adjacent coastal area, with orders from Toulon to reach the Gulf of Spezia without delay. A Battle waged by the French with the trouncing of the Austro-Russians. Fourteen thousand Ligurians to the aid of the French Army. A General with 400 French troops has arrived in Gaeta. The Spanish Flotilla from Ferrol has put out to sea.

Other more detailed news is arriving, which we shall give in the next issue.228 E. F. P.

228. Toulon is a Mediterranean port in southwest France, and Ferrol is an Atlantic port in northwest Spain. The news conveyed to Citizen Passaro consists in more unsubstantiated rumor, which Fonseca Pimentel reports in a tone of frantic hope, her state of mind evident in her punctuation—the information delivered is preceded by a quotation mark but the quotation is never closed. In the same mode, the last sentence she writes looks to a future that would never come.

Epilogue A Woman Apart Poet, political journalist, revolutionary, martyr, reluctant feminist, cynical turncoat,1 even degenerate mother:2 the public image of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel has veered between these divergent labels, to this day. But first there was silence. For almost a century, the woman who had lived, and died, as the protagonist of a revolution was virtually ignored; and it was another woman, Luisa Sanfelice, a victim not a protagonist, who was constructed as the female icon of the Neapolitan Republic.3 In 1842, Pietro Ferri’s Biblioteca femminile italiana, a weighty index of Italian women writers over the centuries, lists her poems but none of her prose writings.4 Her political writings would only begin to emerge from the shadows in 1887, with an article by Benedetto Croce investigating her life and writings on the basis of extensive textual and archival research.5 In it, he viewed her for the first time as a crucial protagonist of the 1799 events—events that Croce saw as a “failed attempt” but one crucial to the creation of a model of revolutionary tradition for the new Italy. Croce’s engagement with Fonseca Pimentel and the Neapolitan Republic was ongoing. His initial piece was revised and enlarged several times, and the definitive version was published in 1998, forty-six years after his death, in a composite volume which includes critical editions of several of his writings on Naples 1799.6 He gradually brought to light most of her writings. In 1. Around 1999, at the time of the bicentenary celebrations of the Neapolitan Republic, some of the right-wing press in Italy presented Fonseca Pimentel’s transition from supporter of the sovereigns’ policies of enlightened despotism to Jacobin revolutionary as no more than a cynical, unprincipled move. 2. Gurgo’s 1935 Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, a fictional biography devoid of any historical value, claimed that she caused her child’s death by bringing him up according to Rousseau’s newfangled pedagogical theories. The book also invents an intelligent, cultured, caring husband, quite the opposite of Pasquale Tria de Solis. 3. On Sanfelice see MN, No. 19, notes 144 and 146. 4. Pietro Leopoldo Ferri, Biblioteca femminile italiana: raccolta, posseduta e descritta (Padua: Tipografia Crescini, 1842; anastatic reprint, Padua: Libreria Ai Due Santi, 1996). 5. Benedetto Croce, “Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel,” Rassegna degli interessi femminili 1 (Rome: Tip. della R. Accademia dei Lincei, 1887): 295–306. 6. Benedetto Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799. Croce is now somewhat out of fashion in Italy, and his pivotal role in the fortunes of Fonseca Pimentel is only reluctantly acknowledged. A philosopher and historian, he was an opponent of the Fascist regime for most of his life, but while he acted as a focus for cultural resistance during the Fascist period, his historicist idealism and his particular brand of aesthetics came to be seen as somewhat outmoded in the new post-war Italy, while his association

203

204 Epilogue 1900, he edited a reprint of the rare booklet containing the five sonnets about her dead son and the ode on her miscarriage,7 and in 1943, published a volume which brought together a substantial selection from the Monitore Napoletano with some of her poetry, essays, and letters.8 Although Croce published Fonseca Pimentel’s poems, he did not have a high opinion of them, seeing them as her minor works, “somewhat facile although not devoid of a certain sparkle.”9 He viewed her first and foremost as a political activist and writer. Croce entitled the 1943 collection of Fonseca Pimentel’s works Il Monitore repubblicano del 1799.This is not a mistake as some have thought; Croce knew perfectly well that the journal’s name was Monitore Napoletano. It should be read in the light of its date of publication, taking note of Croce’s own preface with its pointed emphasis on liberty and the uncertain future of the monarchy as an institution.10 Croce dates his preface July 1942, and the volume appeared in 1943. It was the middle of World War II, but for Italy it was also the tail end of the Fascist regime, which would collapse in July 1943. Clearly, Croce conceived his publication of Fonseca Pimentel’s writings as a projection towards a different future. In 1974, a complete critical edition of the Monitore would at last appear, edited by Mario Battaglini.11 A significant step forward in Fonseca Pimentel studies had been Franco Schiattarella’s book, published in 1973, which served to publicize his discovery in the Naples State Archives of the transcripts of the court case about the separation from her husband, casting light not only on her personal life but also on its political implications.12 In 1977, Annarita Buttafuoco published a seminal article focused precisely on those implications: her “Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel: Una donna nella with the right-of-center Italian Liberal Party made him appear more politically conservative than he was. But his monumental work of erudite excavation into history, especially Neapolitan history, remains invaluable. For a stimulating study of Croce in English, see David D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 7. Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio. For a discussion of these poems, see above, 39–40. 8. Croce, Il Monitore repubblicano del 1799. 9. Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 36 10. In the preface, Croce praises Fonseca Pimentel’s total dedication to “the civic advancement of her adoptive motherland, which she wanted to see redeemed in liberty, and it was for liberty that she worked and wrote, as it was for liberty that she died on the scaffold,” and closes with a veiled critique of the illiberal descent of the monarchy, a “shaky and unstable” monarchy which left one “uneasy and perplexed about its future”: Il Monitore repubblicano del 1799, 5 and 8. When Croce was writing, the Italian monarchy was perceived as tainted by its association with the Fascist regime. Italy would become a republic following the referendum of 1946. 11. Il Monitore napoletano 1799, ed. Battaglini. 12. Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina. For the court case, see above, 7–12.

Epilogue 205 Rivoluzione,”13 an uncompromisingly feminist analysis of Fonseca Pimentel the Jacobin revolutionary by a feminist historian writing in a militantly feminist journal. Buttafuoco offers a personal and political biography of Fonseca Pimentel where the personal and political are not only closely intertwined, but also carefully balanced: an equal number of pages are devoted to analyzing her personal life and her work on the Monitore. While Buttafuoco is hugely sympathetic, passionately so, to this woman in the revolution, she also conveys discomfort, even disquiet, at Fonseca Pimentel’s failure to express in her writings any specific concern with the plight of woman: she neither grasped the political connotations of her personal life as a woman (her marriage and subsequent separation), nor showed any interest, unlike other Jacobin women in Italy and elsewhere, in the debate on women’s emancipation. After Buttafuoco, the issue of Fonseca Pimentel’s lack of feminist consciousness could not be ignored. Writing in 1994, Laura Pisano voices uneasiness at this woman who “does not deal with the condition of women … but is nevertheless a political woman.”14 In 2011, in her book on women and politics in the Jacobin triennium, Elisa Strumia suggests that Fonseca Pimentel probably took it for granted that politics was not an exclusively male field of action.15 Probably the most useful comments came in 2006 from Anna Maria Rao, a historian who has done so much to shed light on the events of 1799. Writing in French on Fonseca Pimentel’s political involvement, she observes that while her “partial silence” on the question of women and politics might well have been due to her primary concern with concrete and immediate issues, her work as the chronicler of the Republic was at least partly “the result of an exclusion from the political positions which practically everyone still considered impossible for a woman.”16 In other words, the woman Fonseca Pimentel was a protagonist but “only” as a “de facto minister of propaganda,” not a maker of political events. It was Susan Sontag who had first called Fonseca Pimentel the “de facto minister of propaganda” in The Volcano Lover, published in 1992, a splendid novel which explores in ways not always open to academic studies the issues that were alive in Naples in the 1790s.17 Fonseca Pimentel is not the major character, and much of what Sontag writes is, of course, fiction, but out of this fiction, clearly based on a thorough knowledge of the historical material, emerge deep insights 13. Buttafuoco, “Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel.” 14. Laura Pisano and Christiane Veauvy, Parole inascoltate: Le donne e la costruzione dello stato-nazione in Italia e in Francia, 1789–1860: Testi e documenti (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1994), 34. 15. Strumia, Rivoluzionare il bel sesso, 178. 16. Anna Maria Rao, “Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, le Monitore napoletano et le problème de la participation politique,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 344 (2006): 179–91, at 191. 17. Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover: A Romance (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1992). Page references are to the 1993 Vintage edition.

206 Epilogue into the problematic issues that dominated her life. She appears at first almost surreptitiously, filtered through an entirely fictional personage, the perfidious Baron Scarpia of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca, as one who had come out of prison “prating about liberty and equality and the rights of the people,” comically ignorant of the fact that “the mob who had inadvertently liberated her” had other ideas.18 Then in the final section of the book, she reemerges as the first person narrator of her own life and death. There, her words become ambiguous when she says of her failure to tackle the woman question: “I did not, in my newspaper, ever raise the issue of the rights of women. I was independent … I did not think of myself as a woman first of all”; even “sometimes I had to forget that I was a woman to accomplish the best of which I was capable. Or I would lie to myself about how complicated it is to be a woman.”19 Sontag offers not a glorification of Fonseca Pimentel, but an empathetic attempt to understand this great and tragic woman trying to navigate treacherous and uncharted waters.20 A broader analysis of Fonseca Pimentel’s position with regard to women may begin with Rao’s assessment that her goal had been to find “the necessary ways and means to integrate the whole people—women included—in the republic and in citizenship.”21 While Fonseca Pimentel does not address the question of the rights of women as some of her contemporaries had done,22 she does not ignore women altogether. But the way she talks about them is totally different from the ways of the defenders of the rights of women, who on the whole, let us not forget, only concerned themselves with the upper strata of society.23 Fonseca Pimentel’s perspective is more comprehensive: she considers not only royal and aristocratic women, but also the women of the lower classes. In doing so, she esteems them or condemns them for their demonstrated words and actions. Queen Maria Carolina’s sex does not spare her condemnation, while Sanfelice’s supposed heroism is fulsomely praised. The Frenchwoman Rosalie Laurent Prota is mentioned in the Monitore as a speaker at a meeting of the Hall of Public Education, but no 18. Sontag, The Volcano Lover, 267. 19. Sontag, The Volcano Lover, 417 and 419. 20. Other fictional works about Fonseca Pimentel include Enzo Striano’s historical novel Il resto di niente (Naples: Loffredo, 1986), which later inspired a film with the same title; and Maria Antonietta Maciocchi’s Cara Eleonora: Passione e morte della Fonseca Pimentel nella rivoluzione napoletana (Milan: Rizzoli, 1993), a personal and political autobiography inspired by Fonseca Pimentel’s story. 21. Rao, “Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel,” 191. 22. For which see especially Agnesi, The Contest for Knowledge. The most famous of Jacobin women’s interventions on this issue was Carolina Lattanzi’s oration on women’s enslavement delivered in Mantua in July 1797: Schiavitù delle donne, ed. Gilberto Zacchè (Mantua: Edizioni Lombarde, 1976). Other similar writings by women, some anonymous, are found in Cantimori and De Felice, Giacobini italiani. 23. On this point see in particular Luisa Ricaldone, “Il dibattito sulla donna nella letteratura patriottica del triennio 1796–1799,” Italienische Studien 7 (1984): 23–46.

Epilogue 207 emphasis is placed on the fact that it was a woman giving a speech; nor, for that matter, does Laurent Prota talk of the rights of women, as women typically did at such gatherings in the other Italian Jacobin Republics, but exhorted her listeners to practice civic virtues.24 Moreover, when Fonseca Pimentel does focus on women as such, she emphasizes their class rather than their gender identity—as when she describes their presence at popular feasts; or rejoices because women from the lower classes at last have a chance to participate in public events. Alternatively, she foregrounds age and health, as in the case of the “mother of a family Vittoria Pellegrini,” who leads her fellow citizens to the Te Deum for the proclamation of the Republic in her Calabrian town.25 Her aim, it seems, was to seek a better future for the whole people, women and men. It was a dream that would not come true in her lifetime, not for a very long time, not ever perhaps, but a noble and precious dream nevertheless. In 1998, Elena Urgnani published La vicenda letteraria e politica di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, a volume consisting of a selection of Fonseca Pimentel’s works preceded by a lengthy interpretive chapter. The selection is unusual: only fifteen of the hundreds of pages of the Monitore are included as against all that were known at the time of her poems, essays, and letters. The reasoning behind this choice is explained in Urgnani’s introduction as well as in the preface by Laura Muraro, whom Urgnani identifies as her inspirer and research supervisor. The aim of this volume, says Muraro, is “initiating the grafting of Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel’s oeuvre onto her contemporary literary tradition” through a “rethinking of the canon in Italian literature.”26 This meant then focusing on her verse writing as an expression of her feminine typicality rather than her impact as an exceptional woman, political thinker, and activist. This stance, of course, allows Urgnani to bypass altogether the question of Fonseca Pimentel’s lack of concern for the rights of women. As a well-known theorist of second wave feminism, Muraro is concerned not so much with women’s equality as with women’s essential difference. Her adherence to this position spurs Urgnani to reconstruct Fonseca Pimentel as principally a poet, rather than a political activist. Whatever the merit of this approach at the theoretical level, Urgnani’s volume provides a useful tool in its publication of texts that previously had been scattered. Her book came out the year before the 1999 bicentenary of the Neapolitan Republic, which saw, as one would expect, a flourishing of publications of and about Fonseca Pimentel’s writings. It is difficult to say whether Urgnani’s book had a seminal role, but certainly 1999 saw the beginning of important studies of Fonseca Pimentel’s poetry, so one could say that the aim of inserting her oeuvre into the literary tradition was being fulfilled. Prominent among these publications 24. MN, No. 4. 109–111; No. 6, 119; No. 11, 137; No. 19, 154–155; and No. 14, 143. 25. MN, No. 26, 172 and 173; No. 32, 191; and No. 6, 122. 26. Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 11.

208 Epilogue is Una donna tra le muse (A Woman with the Muses), a composite volume of texts by Fonseca Pimentel and analyses of her poetry.27 Its editor, Daniela de Liso, who was also a contributor, subsequently discovered and published a hitherto unknown sonnet on an eruption of Vesuvius.28 These many studies of her poetry allow for a more complete picture of Fonseca Pimentel, even though the main focus remains on her work as political revolutionary. As it should. On January 8, 1999 a dramatic oratorio by Roberto de Simone entitled Eleonora opened the season at the San Carlo theater in Naples, with the great English actor Vanessa Redgrave portraying the protagonist, in impeccable Italian. It marked the beginning of a whole year of celebrations of the bicentenary of the Neapolitan Republic. The public memory of Fonseca Pimentel in her adoptive city, however, is meager. There is a secondary school named after her, the Liceo Statale Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca. And there is now a Via Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca. But there is no plaque with her name either in the Piazza del Mercato, to this day a place with a palpable aura of sadness, where she was executed, or at the Castle of Sant’Elmo where she proclaimed the Republic, and wrote a hymn to liberty. Nor does she appear to have become a household name. A while ago I was walking through the streets of Naples trying to retrace the places where she lived. At one point, as I was standing looking around, a woman’s voice addressed me from a first floor balcony: “Che ccerch?” (What you looking for?). I simply replied that I was trying to find the places where Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel had lived. The woman retorted “Che è n’amica tua?” (She a friend of yours?). And I said “Be’ sì un po’ ” (Well yes in a way).

27. Una donna tra le muse: La produzione poetica, edited by Daniela De Liso (Naples: Loffredo, 1999). 28. De Liso, “Un sonetto inedito.”

Glossary of Places In Naples Buildings Castel del Carmine (near Piazza del Carmine, now demolished), 97n17 Castel Nuovo (also Maschio Angioino, “Angevin Keep”), 97n17, 107, 175, 193, 196 Castel dell’Ovo, 79, 97, 101 Castel Sant’Eramo (Sant’Elmo), 6, 72, 95–97, 143, 176, 184, 196–97, 208 Church of San Giovanni a Carbonara (northeast of Castel Sant’Elmo), 95n7, 97 Church of San Gregorio Armeno (in Via S. Gregorio Armeno, off the Via dei Tribunali), 134, 158 Church of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori (below Castel Sant’Elmo), 95n7, 97 Fortezza del Granatello, 101 Monastery and church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, 98n21 Ospedale degli Incurabili, 96n7, 97 Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace), 97–99 Palazzo Santobuono, 98 Streets and squares Largo delle Pigne (Piazza Cavour), 95n7, 97, 144, 184 Largo di San Nicola alla Carità, 144 Largo dello Spirito Santo, 95n7, 97 Piazza di Porto: about a half mile inland from the Molo Piccolo (small dock), 107 Piazza del Mercato (Market Square): major public square and marketplace, 13–14, 124n95, 208, 222 Via dell’Annunciata: just below the Via de’ Tribunali, 136, 168–69 Via Carbonara, 95n7, 98n18 Via dell’Infrascata (Via Salvator Rosa), 95n7, 97 Via Maria Longo, 95n7 Via dei Studi, 97 Via Toledo, 95n7, 150 Via dei Tribunali Vicolo delle Chianche (butchers’ alley), 150 Other locations Borgo Santa Lucia: a neighborhood on the seafront in Naples, 126, 170, 191 209

210 Glossary of Places Molo Piccolo (small dock): a mile east of the Castel Nuovo (Maschio Angioino), 107, 178, 191 Pizzofalcone: a small hill near the Santa Lucia neighborhood in Naples, 107 Ponte della Maddalena: bridge in southeastern Naples, an entrypoint to the city, 195 In the provinces and beyond Regions Abruzzo: southcentral Italy on the Adriatic coast, north of Molise, 10, 15, 102, 105n41, 111, 124n93 Abruzzo Ultra (also subdivided into Ultra I and Ultra II): the northern and western zones of Abruzzo, 139 Apulia: southeastern Italy, on the Adriatic coast, 4n5, 15, 55n128, 74, 97n16, 102n32, 107, 114, 123, 129, 131, 138n122, 141–42, 147, 148n136, 157, 176, 180, 182, 194 Basilicata: southern Italy, between Apulia on the east and Calabria to the southwest, 15, 97n16, 111, 114 Calabria: extreme southwestern Italy, bordering on both the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian Seas, 15, 21n55, 71n174, 72, 78, 105n42, 107, 117, 120n82, 121–23, 128, 133, 157, 175, 179, 188, 195, 207, 221 Calabria Citra: the northern zone of Calabria, 118, 120–22 Calabria Ultra: the southern zone of Calabria, 117, 121–22, 128 Campania: southern Italy, bounded by Lazio, Molise, Apulia, and Basilicata, on the Tyrrhenian coast, 15 Emilia-Romagna: northeastern Italy, north of the Marche, on the Adriatic coast Lazio: central Italy, north of Campania on the Tyrrhenian coast, and west of Molise and Abruzzo The Marche: central Italy, north of Abruzzo on the Adriatic coast Molise: southeastern Italy, between Abruzzo and Apulia, on the Adriatic coast, 15, 106, 111–12, 114 Sicily: island off the southernmost tip of Italy, separated from the mainland by the narrow Strait of Messina, 12–13, 15, 26, 70, 74, 94n6, 107n45, 118, 120n84, 121, 124n93, 127–28, 135, 166n159, 181, 201, 221 Two Sicilies: medieval and modern denotation of unified entity of Sicily and the adjacent Italian mainland, 120n84 Veneto: northeastern Italy, extending from the Dolomite mountains to the Adriatic sea

Glossary of Places 211 Cities, towns, and departments Acquatetta: town in Basilicata, about thirty-one miles northeast of Potenza, 123 Afragola: town in Campania, about six miles north-northeast of Naples, 196 Ancona: capital city in the Marche, on the Adriatic coast, 191 Andria: town in Apulia, 147, 148n136 Ariano (Ariano Irpino): town in Campania, about forty-eight miles northeast of Naples, and twenty-three northeast of Avellino, 176 Ascoli Piceno: town in the Marche, about twenty miles from the Adriatic coast, 106, 111, 191 Ascoli Satriano: town in Apulia, about eighteen miles south of Foggia, 180 Avellino: town in Campania, about twenty-four miles east-northeast of Naples and sixteen miles north of Salerno, 139, 175 Aversa: town in Campania, about three miles north-northwest of Naples, 196 Bagnara: town in Calabria on the Tyrrhenian coast, about fifteen miles northeast of Reggio Calabria, 127 Baja (Baia, ancient Baiae): town in Campania, about ten miles west of Naples on the Gulf of Naples, 156, 166, 169 Banzi: inland mountain town in Basilicata, about halfway between Potenza and the Adriatic Sea, 123 Bari: port city and capital of Apulia, on the Adriatic coast, 182 Barletta: town in Apulia, 107, 111, 123, 141–42, 147, 157 Barra: town in Campania, about three miles east-southeast of Naples, 198 Bisceglie: town in Apulia, about twenty-one miles northwest of Bari, on the Adriatic coast, 142, 157 Brindisi: port city in Apulia, on the Adriatic coast, 138n122 Campobasso: town in Molise, 193, 201 Capodichino: town in Campania, about three miles north-northeast of Naples, 196 Capua: town in Campania, about eighteen miles north of Naples, 131, 172, 174, 176, 196, 198 Carbonara: town in Apulia, about three miles south of Bari, now part of its outskirts, 157 Casamassima: town in Apulia, about eleven miles south of Bari, 157 Caserta: town in Campania, about seventeen miles north-northeast of Naples, 166, 167n160, 171, 179 Casoria: town in Campania, about three miles northeast of Naples, 196

212 Glossary of Places Castel di Sangro: town in Abruzzo, about fifty-three miles southeast of L’Aquila, 193 Castellammare: town in Campania on the Gulf of Naples, about sixteen miles southeast of Naples; here occasionally spelled Castell’a mare, meaning “castle by the sea,” 123, 199 Castellana Grotte: town in Apulia, about twenty-two miles southeast of Bari, 148 Catanzaro: town in Calabria (Ultra), 117, 122, 127–28 Cava (Cava de’ Terreni): town in Campania, about twenty-four miles southeast of Naples, and four northwest of Salerno, 175 Ceglie del Campo (Legli): town in Apulia, about one mile south of Carbonara, 148 Cerignola: town in Apulia, about twenty-five miles southeast of Foggia, 123, 141 Cetara: town in Campania, about four miles southwest of Salerno, on the Tyrrhenian coast, 168 Chieti: town in Abruzzo, 111, 123, 139 Cortale: town in Calabria (Ultra), about fifteen miles southwest of Catanzaro, 122 Cosenza: town in Calabria (Citra), some fifteen miles from the Tyrrhenian coast, 107, 118, 120–22 Cuma: town in Campania, about eleven miles west of Naples on the Tyrrhenian coast, 57, 166 Fasano: town in Apulia, about forty-four miles northwest of Brindisi, 148 Foggia: town in Apulia, 123 Foria: neighborhood in the east end of modern Naples, formerly a town on the eastern outskirts of Naples, 95–96 Francavilla: town in Abruzzo, about eight miles east-northeast of Chieti, 148 Gaeta: town in Lazio, about forty-four miles northwest of Naples on the Tyrrhenian coast, 176, 202 Genoa: port city and capital of Liguria in northwestern Italy, 82, 122n87, 202 Genzani: town in Basilicata, about halfway between Potenza and the Adriatic Sea, 123 Gioja del Colle: town in Apulia, about twenty-two miles south of Bari, 148 Gragnano: town in Campania, about nineteen miles southeast of Naples, 158, 168–69 Grottaglie: town in Apulia, about ten miles northeast of Taranto, 148

Glossary of Places 213 Guardiagrele: town in Abruzzo, about sixteen miles south of Chieti, 128, 131, 139 Introdacqua: town in Abruzzo, about thirty-five miles southeast of L’Aquila, 123 Ischia: island in the Tyrrhenian Sea at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about twenty-one miles southwest of the city, 133n111, 166, 181n189 L’Aquila: town in Abruzzo, 9, 106, 139 Lanciano: town in Abruzzo, about seventeen miles southeast of Chieti, 128n103, 131 La Rocca (Rocca Calascio): town in Abruzzo, about fifteen miles east of L’Aquila, 156 Lecce: town in Apulia, 102, 148 Lettere: town in Campania, about nineteen miles southeast of Naples, 158, 169 Manfredonia: town in Apulia, about twenty-three miles northeast of Foggia, on the Adriatic coast, 132 Marigliano: town in Campania, about eleven miles northeast of Naples, 193 Martina Franca: town in Apulia, about thirty-three miles southeast of Bari, 148 Massa (Massa Lubrense): town in Campania, about seventeen miles due south of Naples on the Tyrrhenian coast, and two miles southwest of Sorrento, 175 Massafra: town in Apulia, about eleven miles northwest of Taranto, 148 Melito (Melito di Napoli): town in Campania, about five miles northnortheast of Naples, 198, 201 Messina: port city in northeast Sicily, separated from mainland Italy by the Strait of Messina, 121, 201 Minervino (Minervino Murge): town in Apulia, about nine miles southwest of Andria, 147, 148n136 Mola: town in Apulia, about twelve miles east-southeast of Bari, 157 Monopoli: town in Apulia, about twenty-five miles southeast of Bari, 157 Monteforte (Monteforte Irpino): town in Campania, about twenty-three miles east of Naples and four miles southwest of Avellino, 175 Monteleone (Vibo Valentia): town in Calabria (Ultra), near the Tyrrhenian coast, 122, 128 Montrone: town in Apulia, now part of Adelfia, about eight miles south of Bari, 157 Mottola: town in Apulia, about sixteen miles northwest of Taranto, 148 Nocera: town in Campania, about eight miles northwest of Salerno, 132–33

214 Glossary of Places Orsogna: town in Abruzzo, about eleven miles southeast of Chieti, 128n103 Ostuni: town in Apulia, about twenty miles northwest of Brindisi, 148 Otranto: town in Apulia, about twenty-seven miles southeast of Lecce Palermo: port city and capital of the island of Sicily, 70, 95, 110, 117, 121, 166, 167n160, 181n189, 201 Palmi: town in Calabria, on the Tyrrhenian coast about twenty-three miles northeast of Reggio Calabria, 127 Pescara: town in Abruzzo, on the Adriatic coast, 106, 113n62, 131, 191 Pizzo: town in Calabria on the Tyrrhenian coast, a short distance from Monteleone (modern Vibo Valentia), 127–28 Poggioreale: neighborhood in the extreme east end of modern Naples, formerly a nearby town, 95–96 Ponticelli: town in Campania, about three miles east of Naples, 197 Portici: town in Campania, about five miles southeast of Naples, on the Gulf of Naples, 101n30, 111, 196, 198 Posillipo: neighborhood in southwest Naples on the Gulf of Naples, 200 Potenza: inland mountain town in Basilicata, 72, 117, 123 Pozzuoli: town in Campania, about nine miles west of Naples, 138, 156 Procida: island in the Tyrrhenian Sea at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about fifteen miles southwest of the city, 166, 167n160, 181–82, 201 Reggio Calabria: city in Calabria, on the Strait of Messina opposite Sicily, 122, 127 Resina (Ercolano): town in Campania, about five miles south of Naples, on the Gulf of Naples, 195 Rimini: town in Emilia-Romagna region, on the Adriatic coast, 110 Roccaraso: town in Abruzzo, about forty-nine miles southeast of L’Aquila and forty-two miles southwest of Pescara, 191 Rutigliano: town in Apulia, about ten miles south-southeast of Bari, 157 Salerno: town in Campania, about twenty-nine miles southeast of Naples, on the Tyrrhenian coast, 123, 132, 156, 166, 169, 175 San Germano (Cassino): town in Lazio, about sixty-two miles northnorthwest of Naples, and eighty-five miles south of Rome, 109 San Marco (San Marco in Lamis): town in Apulia, about eighteen miles north-northeast of Foggia, 132 Sanseverino (Mercato Sanseverino): town in Campania, about eleven miles north of Salerno, 118 San Severo: town in Apulia, about eighteen miles north-northwest of Foggia, 131 Santa Lucia: town in Campania, about fourteen miles north-northeast of Salerno, 132

Glossary of Places 215 Sant’Anastasia: town in Campania, about seven miles east-northeast of Naples, 195 Santo Jorio di Montefusco (San Giorgio del Sannio): town in Campania, about eighteen miles north-northeast of Avellino, 101n28 Sele: department in Campania, northeast of Salerno, 139 Serracapriola: town on the Adriatic coast in Apulia, close to the border with Molise, 111 Somma (Massa di Somma): town in Campania about six miles east of Naples, 195 Sora: town in Lazio, about sixty-nine miles north-northwest of Naples, 131 Sorrento: town in Campania on the Gulf of Naples, about seventeen miles due south of the city, 138, 175 Spinazzola: town in Basilicata, about halfway between Potenza and the Adriatic Sea, 117, 123 Sulmona: town in Abruzzo, about forty-one miles southeast of L’Aquila, 102, 123, 128n103, 139 Taranto: port town in Apulia, about forty-nine miles south-southeast of Bari, on the Ionian coast, 75, 148 Terra d’Otranto: a region of Apulia, 139 Torre Annunziata: town in Campania on the Gulf of Naples, about fourteen miles southeast of Naples, 168n164, 196, 198, 201 Torremaggiore: town in Apulia, about twenty miles north-northwest of Foggia, 132 Trani: town in Apulia, about twenty-five miles west-northwest of Bari, on the Adriatic coast, 107, 123, 142, 147 Vasto: town in Abruzzo, about thirty-four miles southeast of Chieti, on the Adriatic coast, 131, 192 Venafro: town in Molise, about forty-five miles north-northwest of Naples, 182–83 Vicenza: town in the Veneto, 50, 198n221 Vico (Vico Equense): town in Campania, about sixteen miles southsoutheast of Naples and four miles northeast of Sorrento, on the Gulf of Naples, 66n161, 175, 195 Viggiano: town in Basilicata, about thirty-three miles south of Potenza, 118

Chronology Date

Life and Works of Eleonora

Other Events

Fonseca Pimentel 1018–

Norman conquest of Southern

1130

Italy

1442

Alfonso V of Aragon conquers Naples, rules as Alfonso I, “the Magnanimous”

1647

Popular hero Masaniello leads Neapolitan revolt against Spanish rule

1707

Nicolò Caravita’s anti-curial Nullum ius Pontificis Maximi in Regno Napolitano

1708

Women are admitted to the Accademia dell’Arcadia

1714

End of War of Spanish Succession Pietro Giannone’s Civil History

1723

of the Kingdom of Naples 1734

Establishment of Bourbon Kingdom of Naples

1748

End of War of Austrian Succession

1752

January

Birth of Eleonora Fonseca

13

Pimentel

1756–

Sebastião José de Carvalho

1777

e Melo chief minister in Portugal, from 1770 with title Marquis de Pombal

1759–

Ferdinand IV reigns as King

1799

of Naples

1760

Fonseca Pimentel family moves to Naples

217

218 Chronology 1763–

Famine followed by epidemic

1764

in Naples and vicinity

1767

Jesuits expelled from Kingdom of Naples Fonseca Pimentel’s Il tempio

1768

della Gloria; she is made a member of the academy Arcadia 1770–

Metastasio’s correspondence

1776

with Fonseca Pimentel

1773–

Fonseca Pimentel’s engage-

1776

ment to Michele Lopez

1775

Fonseca Pimentel’s correspondence with Voltaire, and Voltaire’s sonnet Fonseca Pimentel’s La Nascita

1775

di Orfeo 1776 1777

October

Fonseca Pimentel’s sonnet and

19

letter to Michele Lopez

March 15

Fonseca Pimentel’s Il trionfo della virtù, with dedicatory letter to the Marquis de Pombal

1778

January

Fonseca Pimentel fam-

11

ily granted full status of full subject of Kingdom of Naples

1778

February

Fonseca Pimentel married to Don Pasquale Tria de Solis

1779

Fonseca Pimentel’s five Sonnets on the Death of Her Only Son, and Elegiac Ode on a Miscarriage

1779

Fonseca Pimentel’s

or

Sull’eruzzione [sic] vulcanica

1794

del monte Vesuvio

Chronology 219 1780

Reale Accademia di Scienze e Belle Lettere established in Naples; Fonseca Pimentel publishes celebratory sonnet

1782

Inquisition abolished in Kingdom of Naples Fonseca Pimentel’s La gioia

1782

d’Italia 1783

Reale Biblioteca Borbonica established in Naples

1784–

Fonseca Pimentel’s correspon-

1791

dence with Alberto Fortis

1785

May 14

Death of Fonseca Pimentel’s father

1785 1785

after June

Dissolution of Fonseca/Tria

26

marriage Fonseca Pimentel’s Il vero omaggio Abolition of chinea in

1788

Kingdom of Naples 1789

Storming of the Bastille in Paris

1789

Fonseca Pimentel’s three sonnets praising Ferdinand IV’s reforms

after

Fonseca Pimentel dismissed

1789

from her position as librarian to Queen Maria Carolina, which she had held since 1775

1790

Fonseca Pimentel’s translation of Caravita, Niun diritto compete al sommo pontefice sul Regno di Napoli

220 Chronology 1792

April

Prussia declares war on France, launching War of First Coalition (1792–1797)

1792

Fonseca Pimentel’s translation of De Figueiredo, Analisi della professione di fede del santo padre Pio IV Fonseca Pimentel’s La fuga in

1792

Egitto 1793 1793

January

Execution of French king

21

Louis XVI

October

Execution of French queen

16

Marie Antoinette

1794–

Great Trial of the Enemies of

1795

the State in Naples

1794

Fonseca Pimentel’s last sonnet, on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

1794

July 27

Thermidor: fall of Robespierre brings to a close era of Jacobin predominance in France

1795–

Directory is executive power

1799

in France

1796–

Campaign of Napoleon

1797

Bonaparte in Italy

1796–

French “sister republics”

1805

formed throughout Europe

1796–

“Jacobin triennium” in Italy

1799 1797

Ugo Foscolo’s Ode to

May

Bonaparte, the Liberator 1798

Fonseca Pimentel arrested and jailed for reading prohibited books and holding seditious meetings

Chronology 221 1798

War of Second Coalition (1798/1799–1801/1802) against France launched

1798

December

King Ferdinand IV and Queen

23

Maria Carolina flee to Sicily with court

1799 1799

January

Neapolitan Republic

21

proclaimed

January

General Championnet enters

22–23

Naples and establishes a Provisional Government

1799 1799

January

Publication of a Monitore

29

Napoletano is announced

February

Fonseca Pimentel writes and

2–June 8

publishes thirty-five issues of the Monitore Napoletano

1799

February

Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo

8

arrives in Calabria and launches counterrevolutionary campaign

1799 1799

February

General Championnet ar-

27

rested for disobeying orders

April 2

British fleet under Admiral Nelson blockades Gulf of Naples

1799

April 25

Neapolitan Republic approves law abolishing feudal system

1799

April 27

French army withdraws from Naples

1799

May 9

Neapolitan Republic finalizes reform of financial system

1799

May 14

Neapolitan Republic approves new constitution

222 Chronology 1799

June 13

Army of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo retakes Naples, ending the Neapolitan Republic

1799

June 15

Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo establishes State Commission to prosecute Neapolitan revolutionaries for treason

1799

August 20

Fonseca Pimentel is hanged in the Piazza del Mercato, Naples

Bibliography Primary Sources Works by Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel Poetry, essays, translations (by date of first publication) Il tempio della gloria: Epitalamio nell’augustissime nozze di Ferdinando IV re delle due Sicilie con Maria Carolina arciduchessa d’Austria di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, tra i Filaleti Epolnifenora Olcesamante, Napoli, 1768, presso Giuseppe Raimondi. Sonetto, in Componimenti per le nozze dell’ecc.mo signore D. Gherardo Carafa Conte di Policastro ecc. con D. Maddalena Serra de’ Duchi di Cassano, e di D. Luigi Serra duca di Cassano ecc. con D. Giulia Carafa de’ Principi della Roccella, in Napoli 1770, 82. Sonetto, in Componimenti per la morte di Monsignor Giovanni Capece de’ baroni di Barbarano Patrizio del Sedile di Nido, vescovo di Oria, raccolti da Michele Arditi giureconsulto napoletano, in Napoli, presso i Raimondi, 1771, 39. Ad auctorem and Ad eundem, two Latin epigrams under the name of Altidora Esperetusa, prefaced to Fr. Victorio de Santa Maria, Doctrina christiaâ e rosario de Nossa Senhora composta en metro, en Napoles, na estamperia de Raimondi [1771]. Reprinted Rome, 1780. Sonetto, in Rime di donne illustri a S.E. Caterina Dolfin cavaliera e procuratessa Tron nel gloriosissimo ingresso alla dignità di procuratore per merito di S. Marco di S.E. Cavalier Andrea Tron, raccolte da Luisa Bergalli, in Arcadia Irminda Partenide. Venezia, P. Valvasense, 1773, 34. Sonetto a Maria Carolina regina delle due Sicilie per l’augustissimo parto d’una seconda bambina. Broadsheet, s.l., s.n. Later published in Un pugno di gemme: Raccolta di documenti storici e di versi inediti o dimenticati, edited by Cav. Michele Arcella (Naples: Tip. R. Rinaldi e G. Sellitto, 1890), 59. La nascita d’Orfeo: Cantata per l’augustissima nascita di S.A.R. il principe ereditario delle due Sicilie di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel fra gli Arcadi Altidora Esperetusa, in Napoli, 1775, presso i Raimondi. Sonetto, in Componimenti poetici per le felicissime nozze di S.E. il Signor Vincenzo Revertere Duca della Salandra con l’eccellentissima Signora D. Beatrice di Sangro, a cura di Ranieri Restelli, Napoli 1775, 16. Sonetto and Lettera to Michele Lopez, 1776. In Benedetto Croce, Aneddoti di varia letteratura, 2:370–72. 223

224 Bibliography Il trionfo della virtù: Componimento drammatico dedicato all’Eccellenza del sig. Marchese di Pombal primo ministro segretario di stato del Re fedelissimo ecc. di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel. [Naples, 1777]. Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio, Napoli 1779. The pamphlet includes the five sonnets on her son’s death at 1–5 and the Ode elegiaca della medesima per un aborto, nel quale fu maestrevolmente assistita da Mʳ Pean il figlio, at 6–21. Reprinted in Sonetti di Altidora Esperetusa in morte del suo unico figlio, edited by Benedetto Croce (Naples: Tipografia Melfi e Joele, 1900). Sonetto, in Orazioni e sonetti nella solenne riapertura della Reale Accademia delle Scienze e Belle Lettere in Napoli recitata nel dì 5 maggio 1780, Napoli, 1780 [broadsheet]. La gioia d’Italia, Cantata per l’arrivo in Napoli delle LL. Alt. RR. il Granduca e la Gran Duchessa delle Russie di Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel nei Tria de Solis fra gli arcadi Altidora Esperetusa. [Naples,1782]. Il vero omaggio, Cantata per celebrare il fausto ritorno delle loro Maestà di Eleonora de Fonseca-Pimentel. [Naples: 1785]. Letter to Alberto Fortis (1785). ASN, fol. 63, in French. A full Italian translation in Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 280–81; a facsimile of the manuscript with partial Italian translation in Schiattarella, La marchesa giacobina, illus. 36 and pp.79–80. Sonetto, in Componimenti poetici per le leggi date alla nuova popolazione di Santo Leucio da Ferdinando IV re delle Sicilie P.F.A., Napoli, nella Stamperia Reale, 1789, 123. Sonetto [on the abolition of the Chinea], in Il viaggio dell’internunzio, ossia Memoria su lo scioglimento di un matrimonio, con un Sonetto al Re [s.l., s.n., 1788?], 16. Reprinted in Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana, 84. Letter to Michele Vargas Macciucca (1789). Reprint of the original text of the letter in the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele in Rome in Domenico Gnoli, Catalogo della mostra storica del Risorgimento italiano ordinata nella Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele in occasione del venticinquesimo anniversario dell’unione di Roma al regno d’Italia MDCCCLXXXV (Rome: Stamperia Forzani, 1895), 19. In Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, 87–88. Niun diritto compete al sommo pontefice sul Regno di Napoli: Dissertazione istorica-legale del Consigliere Nicolò Caravita, tradotta dal latino, ed illustrata con varie note. Aletopoli [Naples]: s.n., 1790. Italian translation of Caravita’s 1707 Latin original, q.v. Fonseca Pimentel’s Introduction was reprinted in Croce, Il monitore repubblicano, 236–53, and in Urgnani, La vicenda letteraria e politica, 203–19. Analisi della professione di fede del santo padre Pio IV di Antonio Pereira De Figueiredo, ora tradotta dal portoghese con alcune dilucidazioni [da Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel]. Naples: Nella stamperia di Nicola Russo, 1792.

Bibliography 225 La fuga in Egitto, Oratorio sacro dedicato a S.A.R. D. Carlotta Borbone, principessa del Brasile. Naples, 1792. Una donna tra le muse: La produzione poetica. Edited by Daniela De Liso; introduction by Raffaele Giglio. Naples: Loffredo, 1999. Il Monitore Napoletano (by date of first publication) Monitore Napoletano. In miscellaneous volumes. Naples: Nella Stamperia Nazionale [previously Stamperia Reale], [1799]. A copy held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, S.Q.24.K21. Monitore Napoletano. In Pietro Abondio Drusco, Anarchia popolare di Napoli dal 21 dicembre 1798 al 23 gennaio 1799: Manoscritto inedito dell’abate Pietrabondio Drusco ed i monitori repubblicani del 1799, corredati di note del medesimo autore per chiarire la verità dei fatti, edited by Michele Arcella, 61–248. Naples: G. de Angelis e figlio, 1884. Il Monitore Repubblicano del 1799. Edited by Benedetto Croce. Bari: Laterza, 1943. Il Monitore Napoletano 1799. Edited by Mario Battaglini. Naples: Guida, 1974. 2nd edition 1999. Monitore Napoletano, 2 febbraio–2 giugno 1799: L’ antico nella cultura rivoluzionaria. Edited by Antonio Lerra. Manduria-Bari-Rome: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2006. Monitore Napoletano. .

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Index The following index contains subjects and names as well as important places dealt with thematically in the text (e.g., Italy, France, Naples). Readers should refer to the Glossary of Places for Neapolitan locations including buildings, streets, and squares, as well as towns, cities, and regions of Italy. 102n32, 103n36, 105n41, 108n48, 110n58, 119n81, 120n82, 129n104, 136n117, 140n126, 142n128, 148nn136–37, 149n138, 156n146, 162n156, 166n158, 167n160, 179n185, 192n210, 197n218, 201n227, 204; Monitore Napoletano history, 80–83 Bergalli, Luisa, 6 Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon Bourbons, 15, 26, 62n153, 69–70, 109n52, 166n159, 217; anticurialism, 59, 62; counter-revolutionary tactics, 22, 94n4, 118n77, 120n82, 142n128; court, 5; reforms, 20; return to Naples, 13, 79 bourgeoisie, 16, 18, 20, 22, 77 Brewerton, Patricia, 51n121 broadsheets. See periodicals Buttafuoco, Annarita, 71n176, 204–5

Abbamonti, Giuseppe, 73, 75 Abrial, André Joseph, 75–76, 130, 147; appointed organizing Commissar, 159n151; leaves Naples, 179; reorganizes provisional government, 158–59 academies, 1–2, 4–5, 22, 24–25; female membership, 24. See also Arcadia academy; Filaleti academy Acton, Sir John, 10, 110–11, 119, 121, 130 Addeo, Girolamo, 81, 99n24 Albanesi, Giuseppe, 76 Algarotti, Francesco, 4n5 Aniello, Tommaso. See Masaniello Arcadia academy, 1–2, 5; female members, 24, 217–18 Ardinghelli, Maria Angela, 4n5 Arezzo, Laria Luisa, Duchess of San Clemente, 71 aristocracy, 19, 27, 66, 71, 135, 136n116, 163; enlightened, 20, 22, 26; feudal, 17–18; reactionary, 11, 191 Astore, Francesco, 67

Cacciari, Carla, 25n63, 28n74, 39n101 Calvo, Edoardo Ignazio, 52n124 Caminer Turra, Elisabetta, 29 Camões, Luís Vaz, 33n87 Cantimori, Delio, 65n157, 67n162, 67n166, 144n130 Caracciolo, General Francesco, 181–82 Caracciolo, Lucio, Duke of Roccaromana, 72n182, 76n13, 168, 175 Carafa, Ettore, 139, 191 Carafa, Giulia, 71 Carafa, Luigi, 158 Carafa, Maria Antonia, 71

Balì, Mr. See Ghedes, Francesco Barbapiccola, Giuseppa Eleonora, 4n5, 24 Battaglini, Mario, 26n67, 67n163, 67nn165–66, 73n184, 76n197, 108n47, 113n65, 130n107, 154n144; Monitore Napoletano edition, 91, 93n1, 94n4, 101n27, 239

240 Index Caravita, Nicolò, 27, 35n92, 53, 56, 58n143, 59–64, 217, 219 Cardone, Gian Lorenzo, 14 Cartiermetre, Ventura, 52n124 Carvalho e Melo, Sebastião José: address from Fonseca Pimentel, 34–39, 218; as chief minister to Portuguese crown, 34, 217; as model reformer, 3, 6, 25–27, 34 Cassa Sacra, 21n55, 176 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 25 Catholic Church: clergy, 17; doctrine, 141n127; feasts and rituals, 14, 78, 171; place in Neapolitan Republic, 88–89, 99, 125, 134, 170n168; v. state, 12, 17, 27, 53–56, 59–64 Cesarotti, Melchiorre, 66–67 Championnet, Jean-Antoine Etienne: arrest of, 75, 148, 174, 221; in battle, 97–99; enters Naples, 72–73, 172, 221; orders, 101, 103, 107–8, 138; proclamation to Neapolitan Republic, 93n2, 95; provisional governing of Neapolitan Republic, 101, 122n87, 124–26, 129, 158–59; return to Paris, 129–30, 133, 138 Chapman, Joseph, 198n220 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 31 chinea, 20, 52–56, 59–60, 62, 219. See also Ferdinand IV, King of Naples: abolition of chinea; Kingdom of Naples: chinea dispute Chiosi, Elvira, 16, 17n43, 19, 21n55, 117n75, 121n86 Ciaja, Ignazio, 76 Cicconi, Michelangelo, 69, 160n153 Cirillo, Domenico, 5, 30, 75 Cirillo, Giuseppe, 5 Cisalpine Republic, 72n181, 73, 76n195, 176, 179n184 Colletta, Pietro, 22–23, 71n177, 73n184 colonialism, 34–35

Conforti, Luigi, 73n186, 108n48 Corsini, Umberto, 66n161, 67n162 Croce, Ada, 54n128 Croce, Benedetto: biography of Fonseca Pimentel, 5n8, 27–28, 42n106; on Emma Hamilton, 10n26; and Monitore Napoletano, 83, 91, 95n9, 204; on Neapolitan Republic, 14n34, 126n98, 133n111, 171n171, 178n182, 203; on Neapolitan women’s history, 14n35, 71nn176–77; publication of Fonseca Pimentel works, 31n79, 52n122, 56n134, 59n145, 203–4; recognition of Fonseca Pimentel, 203–4 Cuoco, Vincenzo, 27, 73, 154n144, 156 Curtoni Verza, Silvia, 24, 30 D’Agnese, Ercole, 75–76, 190 Davis, John, 15n37, 16, 20–21, 26n67, 74, 77–78 De Curtis, Michele, 167 De Felice, Renzo, 67n162, 206n22 Delfico, Melchiorre, 76, 111, 112n62, 191 De Liso, Daniela, 26, 34n88, 208 Della Casa, Giovanni, 32 De Majo, Gianfrancesco, 25n65 democracy, 13, 22, 64–65, 67, 74 De Nicola, Carlo, 71n177, 73n186, 80, 107n46, 117n74, 121n86, 137n119, 142n128, 154n144, 166n159, 168n162, 175n177, 176n178, 179n184, 181n189, 186n195, 191n209 De Simone, Roberto, 208 De Souza, Giuseppe, 6, 10 despotism, 135, 199, 203n1; enlightened, 6, 13, 16, 19, 26, 34–35, 53, 94n4. See also monarchy dialect: Calabrese, 14; diglossia, 68; and Italian Jacobinism, 53–54, 68–69,

Index 241 74, 87, 90, 160; Neapolitan, 52, 60, 68, 87, 105n40, 160, 170, 187n199, 188n204; and popular classes, 14, 68–69, 87, 90, 93n2, 105n40; and propaganda, 68–69; questione della lingua, 52n123, 68n168; Roman, 54; and standard Italian, 52n123, 68, 93n2, 170; Turinese, 52n124; women’s use of, 3, 52, 60. See also dialect literature; Fonseca Pimentel, works: in dialect dialect literature, 52–54. See also dialect; Fonseca Pimentel, works: in dialect diplomacy, 7, 10–11, 13, 28 Drusco, Pietrabondio, 91n244, 96n12 Enlightenment, 15–24, 34, 37–38, 52, 86–87, 94n5, 103, 138, 158n150, 163, 170; European, 19; Neapolitan, 19–20 Esperetusa, Altidora. See Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora: pseudonyms Fantoni, Giovanni, 41 Fasano, Sergio, 69, 127 Faypoult, Guillaume Charles, 75, 130n107, 138 Federici, General Francesco, 129, 137, 167, 176, 178, 179n184, 182 feminism, 1, 203, 205–7. See also Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora: feminism Ferdinand IV, King of Naples: abolition of chinea, 20, 53, 55, 59–60; court, 12, 61–62, 70, 94n6, 109, 118n77, 127, 189, 221; as enlightened despot, 53, 55, 219; flight to Palermo, 70, 95, 110–11, 117–21, 140n126, 181, 221; orders destruction of republican periodicals, 82; reforms, 12, 78, 219; reign over

Naples, 15, 19, 217; repression of defeated Jacobins, 79–80; restoration to the throne, 79; treaty with France, 119–20; war with France, 70, 109–10, 119–21 Ferri, Pietro, 203 feudalism, 18, 21, 23–24, 76–77, 91, 112–13, 145, 151–54. See also Neapolitan Republic (1799): abolition of feudal system Filaleti academy, 5 Filangieri, Gaetano, 20–21, 23, 199 Findlen, Paula, 4n5 Fonseca Pimentel, Clemente Henriquez de, 3n4, 11–12 Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora: ailments, 30, 56, 58, 61; appearance, 30; and Arcadia academy, 1–2, 5, 218; children, 1, 7, 28, 39–41, 203–4, see also Tria de Solis, Francesco Clemente Maria Nicola; death, 1, 8, 13–14, 124n95, 206, 222; education, 3–5; engagement, see Michele Lopez; family, 3–4, 7–8, 10–12, 217–19, see also Fonseca Pimentel, Clemente Henriquez de; Lopez de Leon, Caterina; feminism, 1–2, 203, 205–7, see also feminism; and Filaleti academy, 5; imprisonment, 13, 143, 220; Jacobinism, 1–2, 5, 13–14, 84–91, 100n25, 203–7; as librarian to the queen, 13, 219; marriage, 9–12, see also Fonseca-Tria court case; Tria de Solis, Pasquale; miscarriage, 8–9, 28, 41–50, 150n140; Monitore Napoletano editor, 1, 80–84, 221; Portuguese identity, 3, 36, 39; praise of Ferdinand IV, 6, 25–27, 53, 60–64; pseudonyms, 5, 39, 41; sexualized attacks against, 13–15; works, see Fonseca Pimentel, works

242 Index Fonseca Pimentel, works: Analisi della professione di fede del Santo Padre Pio IV, 27, 220; in dialect, 3, 29, 60; on economics, 1, 5, 28, 178; Il tempio della Gloria, 5, 25–26, 218; Il trionfo della virtù, 6, 25–27, 34, 29n99, 218; Il vero omaggio, 12, 26–27, 219; Inno alla libertà, 6; La fuga in Egitto, 26, 28, 220; La gioia d’Italia, 25, 219; La nascita di Orfeo, 25–26, 218; letters, 1, 6, 9, 29–31, 50, 54, 204, 207; political essays, 5, 27, 30; rhetoric, 52–53, 60, 69, 87, 90, 101n28, 140n125, 154n143, 159n151, 179n185, 183n193; sonnets, 6, 25–26, 28, 39–41, 204, 218–19; translations, 27–28, 30, 35n92, 56, 60, 219–20 Fonseca-Tria court case, 4, 5n8, 7–12; adultery accusations, 9–10, 50; and class, 10–11 Forges Davanzati, Domenico, 53–54, 76, 112 Forges Davanzati, Giuseppe, 111 Formica, Marina, 55n130, 66nn159–60 Fortis, Alberto, 9, 29–31, 50–51, 54, 58, 219 Foscolo, Ugo, 23, 220 Fourier, Charles, 26 France: coalition against, 23, 110n58, 220–21; invasion of Italy, 23–24, 54, 65; Jacobinism, see Jacobinism: in France; myth of, 84, 93n3; revolution, see French Revolution; sister republics, 23, 65, 70, 74–75, 83–84, 220 French Revolution, 13, 22–23, 83–84, 116, 134n113; as model for Neapolitan Revolution, 22, 116n72, 134, 141n127; revolutionary expansionism, 23; trees of liberty, 99n24

Fulco, Giorgio, 29–30, 54 Galanti, Giuseppe Maria, 75 Galasso, Giuseppe, 8n16, 16, 18–19, 59n147, 68n167, 73nn184–85, 74, 77, 79n207 Galdi, Matteo, 65, 67, 73 Galiani, Ferdinando, 20 Gargano, Pietro, 71nn176–77, 76 gazettes. See periodicals Genovesi, Antonio, 19, 76n195 Ghedes, Francesco, 32–33 Giannone, Pietro, 20, 217 Godechot, Jacques, 81n215 Gorani, Giuseppe, 28n72 Greece: ancient, 144, 149, 185, 187; literature, 144n131, 145, 149, 188; mythology, 43, 49n115, 190 Grismondi, Paolina, 24 Gronda, Giovanna, 5n9 Gualzetti, Antonio, 69, 189 Guerci, Luciano, 65n158, 66n159, 66n161, 141n127 Guidi, Filippo Maria, 4, 5n8, 10–11 Gurgo, Bice, 8n18, 203n2 Hamilton, Emma, 10, 110n60, 111; sexualized attack against, 14–15. See also Nelson, Horatio Harrington, Sir John, 57nn138–39 Hart, Emma. See Hamilton, Emma Henriques, Alfonso, Prince of Portugal, 36n95 Hippocrates, 149 Holy faith. See Santafede Il misogallo romano, 54–55 Italy: French invasions of, 23, 54, 70, 77, 195n215, 220; Jacobinism, see Jacobinism: in Italy; kingdom of, 15; Norman conquest of Southern, 17, 59–62, 154, 217; north-south

Index 243 divide, see Southern Question; papal power in, 59–62; Spanish rule of, 15; and time management, 96; unification, 15–16 Jacobin Republics, 64–65; Italian, 73, 78n203, 113n65, 141n127 Jacobinism: in Europe, 65; in France, 13, 23, 64–66, 220; in Italy, 13, 22, 65–69, 78n203, 82n216, 84, 93, 220; language issue, 14, 52, 68–69, 87, 102, 104–5, 133, 160, 170, 187–88; mass support, 65, 68–69, 75, 78–79, 86–87, 90, 107n45, 160n153; in Naples, see Neapolitan Jacobinism; origins of, 64–65; and the people, see people, the; and women soldiers, 71–72 Jesuits, 176; expulsion from Kingdom of Naples, 20, 218 João IV, King of Portugal, 37n96 João V, King of Portugal, 36n94 Joseph I, King of Portugal, 34–36, 38 Kingdom of Naples: and ancien régime Europe, 16, 68n167; anti-ecclesiastical reforms, 12, 19–20, 27, 61, 218–19; anti-French coalition, 23, 70; beginnings, 15–16, 217; bourgeoisie, 16, 18, 20, 22, 77; chinea dispute, 20, 52–56, 59, 219; enlightened despotism, 16, 19, 26–27, 35; feudal system, 16–17, 20–21, see also feudalism; Great Trial of the Enemies of the State, 23, 69, 94n4, 220; and historiographic issues, 15n37, 16; and jurisdictional issues, 12, 17, 19, 21, 27, 30, 59–64; land tenure, 21; Norman conquest, 17, 217; peasants, 18–21

Lambertini, Prospero Lorenzo. See Pope Benedict XIV La Penna, Daniela, 55n130 Lattanzi, Carolina, 206n22 Lauberg, Carlo, 69–70, 72, 74, 80–81, 88, 98, 103n35, 125 Laurent Prota, Rosalie, 71–72, 113n65, 143, 206–7 Le Moniteur, 13, 82 Lerra, Antonio, 73n184, 101n28; Monitore edition, 92, 179n184 Lisbon, 34; earthquake (1755), 34, 38 Logoteta, Giuseppe, 83, 107–8 Lopez, Antonio, 4 Lopez de Leon, Caterina, 3 Lopez, Michele, 8, 30–33, 218 Louis XVI, King of France, 22, 220 Lucian of Samosata, 149 Lyon, Amy. See Hamilton, Emma Macdonald, General Etienne Jacques Joseph Alexandre, Duke of Taranto, 132, 146, 155, 158–59, 168–69, 171–72; appointed General-in-Chief, 75, 130; and law on feudal domains, 77, 145; leaves Naples, 75–76 Maciocchi, Maria Antonietta, 206n20 Malta, 31–33 Manuel I, King of Portugal, 37n96 Maratti Zappi, Faustina, 24, 39 Marescalchi, Ferdinando, 67 Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, 5, 13, 22, 25–26, 109–11, 119, 121, 137–38, 206, 219, 221 Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress, 26 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, 22, 137–38, 220 Marinelli, Diomede, 70, 89, 142n128, 175n176 Marino, Michele, 73 Martorana, Pietro, 53, 188n204

244 Index Masaniello (Tommaso Aniello), 88, 125, 135, 136n116, 217 Mazzarella Farao, Francesco, 5n8, 57n140, 59n144 Mazzarella Farao, Vincenzo, 10, 56–57 Medaglia Faini, Diamante, 24, 25n63 medicine, 18n48, 70n174, 149, 201n227; women’s, 40–50, 150n140 Meola, Gianvincenzo, 4, 10 mercantilism, 19–20 Metastasio, Pietro, 3n2, 6, 10, 29, 218. See also Fonseca Pimentel, works: letters Monitore Napoletano: advice to government, 85, 103–4, 116–17, 163–64; circulation of, 82; editions, 83, 91–92, 204; editorship, 80–84; insurgencies, 105–7, 111–12, 114–16, 124, 128–33, 139, 146, 148–49, 168n162, 179n184, 180, 193–94, 198; law on feudal system, 112–13, 145, 151–54; and myth of France, 84, 93n3; popular culture, 86–89, 126n98, 173n174; printers of, 81; reform of financial system, 140, 145–46, 176–78, 199, 221; and Republican calendar, 83–84, 93n1, 105n39; sources used, 82; and women, 109–11, 119, 122, 137, 143, 154–56, 160–61, 172–73, 191. See also periodicals Münter, Federico, 27 Naples: and Enlightenment culture, 19–22; Jacobinism, see Jacobinism, Neapolitan Jacobinism; literary salons, 4–5, 56; poverty, 16, 18–21, 24, 78; revolutionary clubs, 22, 69; university, see University of Naples. See also Kingdom of Naples, Neapolitan Republic, Neapolitan Revolution

Napoleon, 23, 109n53, 130n107, 134n114, 220 Natale, Michele, 66–67 Neapolitan Jacobinism, 1–2, 21–24, 66, 69–79, 134n113, 159n151, 162n156; Great Trial of the Enemies of the State, 23, 69, 94n4, 220; peasants’ hatred of, 21, 68–69, 75, 77, 90–91, 117n75; use of dialect, 68–69, 87–90 Neapolitan Republic (1799): abolition of feudal system, 76–77, 85, 91, 112–13, 115–16; achievements of, 73–75; assessment of, 73–74; fall, 30, 70–71, 76n195, 82, 99n24, 122nn87–88, 123n90, 124n93, 142n128, 143n129, 154n144, 179n184, 181n189, 186n196, 188n204; financial system, 24, 28, 74, 76, 85, 98, 140, 176n179, 199, 221; French involvement, 74–75; insurgencies, 74, 78, 83, 85–86, 90, 105–7, 115–16, 124, 128–31, 133, 136–37, 139, 146, 148–49, 168n162, 179n184, 180, 193–94, 198; law on feudal system, 76–77, 91, 112–13, 115, 144–45, 168; popular anarchy, 174, 175n176; proclamation of, 6, 71n176, 72, 80, 84, 95, 98, 109, 115, 122, 147n134, 173, 207, 221; provisional government, 53, 71–75, 77, 80, 81n215, 82, 85, 98, 101, 103–4, 113, 122n87, 140, 147, 158–59, 176, 179, 190, 199, 221; storming of prisons, 70–72; women’s involvement in, 70–72, 172n173, 173, 182, 191, 205 Nelson, Horatio, 10, 13–15, 77, 79, 110n60, 111, 143, 221 newspapers. See periodicals Oliva, Gianni, 15n37

Index 245 Pagano, Mario, 67, 73, 75–76, 112, 147n135, 152, 159, 199–200 Palmieri, Giuseppe, 178 pamphlets. See periodicals Paolini Massimi, Petronilla, 24, 39 Parini, Giuseppe, 41n104 patriotism, 99, 102, 108nn48–49, 113n65, 140n125, 165, 183n33, 187, 193–94, 198; patriotic societies, 148n136, 167, 175–76 187–88 Pean, Renato Michele, 42, 46n112, 151n140 Pellegrini, Vittoria, 72, 122, 207 people, the: lazzari, 54, 124–25, 136, 188n200, 188n204; plebs, 8, 67, 89–90, 95–97, 100–1, 105, 114–17, 124n95, 160n153, 173n174, 188n200, 191n209; popolo v. Popolo, 65–68, 89 Pepe, Antonio, 18n48 Pereira de Figueredo, Antònio, 27, 30, 35n92 periodicals, 81–82; broadsheets, 52n122, 69, 80, 82, 93n2, 140n126, 160n153, 189; gazettes, 69, 87, 133, 160; newspapers, 1, 13, 84, 206; pamphlets 39–42, 66, 140n126, 141, 166n158 Perrino, Matilde, 4n5 Petrarch, 11, 40; Petrarchism, 28, 40. See also poetry Philip I, King of Portugal, 37n96 Philip II, King of Spain, 37n96 Piccinni, Domenico, 69, 188 Pignatelli, Faustina, 4n5 Pignatelli, Francesco, 70, 94, 96n13, 157 Pignatelli, Girolamo, 72n182 poetry: eighteenth century, 24; eulogizing, 6, 12, 25–26, 28; personal, 28; political, 52; scientific, 41; as tool of social interaction, 24–26; and women, 1–2, 5–6, 24–25

Pombal, Marquis of. See Carvalho e Melo, Sebastião José Pope Benedict XIV, 36n94 Pope Clement XIII, 62–63 Pope Pius VI, 109n53, 110n59, 166n159 Portugal: abolition of slavery, 38n99; Bragança dynasty, 35, 37; colonialism, 34–35, 38n99; decay, 35, 37; as model of enlightened governance, 34–39; Reconquista, 36n95; relationship with Roman curia, 3n1; Spanish domination of, 35, 37n96 Prussia, 23, 220 Puccini, Giacomo, 206 querelle des femmes. See women: woman question Rak, Michele, 55 Rao, Anna Maria, 66n161, 71n177, 73n184, 74, 76n196, 78–79, 94n6, 113n65, 121n86, 205–6 Redgrave, Vanessa, 208 Rezzonico, Carlo della Torre di. See Pope Clement XIII Ricaldone, Luisa, 24n61, 206n23 Robespierre, Maximilien, 65, 116, 220 Rome: ancient, 39, 56n133, 109n55, 127, 138, 156n146, 166 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 72, 143, 203n2 Ruffo, Cardinal Fabrizio: arrival in Calabria, 78, 105n42, 122–23, 127; counterrevolutionary campaign, 79, 127–28, 175, 221; defeat of Neapolitan Republic, 13, 64, 79, 91, 222; State Commission, 79, 222. See also Santafede Ruffo, Fabrizio, Prince of Castelcicala, 118–21 Russo, Vincenzio, 67, 73, 113, 144n130, 159

246 Index Saccenti, Domenico, 3n2 Sale, Nicola, 25n65 Salfi, Ferdinando Saverio, 73, 122 San Gennaro, 73, 86, 88, 90, 119, 171–73, 175, 187, 188n200 Santafede, 79, 105n42, 122n88, 188 Sá Pereira, Don Giuseppe de, 51 Schiattarella, Franco, 3n1, 5n8, 8n18, 32n85, 50, 51nn119–20, 71nn176– 77, 204 Schmidl, Carlo, 25n65 Sebastian, King of Portugal, 37n96 Serio, Luigi, 69, 188 Serra, Gennaro, 23, 71, 146n132, 161, 162n156, 164–65 Serrao, Andrea, 54n128, 117, 123n91 Sgrilli, Paola, 68, 69n169 Shaw, Matthew, 84 Sibyl, 57 slavery, 34, 38, 108, 143, 152, 154–56, 175, 206n22 Smith, Adam, 178n182 Sontag, Susan, 205–6 Southern Question, 15–18 Spain: domination of Portugal, 35, 37n96; Reconquista, 36n95; rule of Southern Italy, 15–16, 88, 125n96, 217; War of Spanish Succession, 15, 217 Stott, Rachel, 59n144 Striano, Enzo, 206n20 Strumia, Elisa, 72n181, 205 Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman Sultan, 31 Tataranni, Onofrio, 67, 141 Tria de Solis, Francesco Clemente Maria Nicola, 39 Tria de Solis, Pasquale, 7–9, 12n29, 203n2, 218

University of Naples, 19, 22, 29n76, 102, 113 Urgnani, Elena, 12n29, 28, 30, 34n88, 50, 51nn119–121, 59n145, 207 Vargas Macciucca, Michele, Marquis of Vatolla, 5, 30, 31n81, 56–59, 61 Venturi, Franco, 7n14, 15n37, 18n48, 20n51, 29n77, 34n90, 35n92, 59n147, 62n153 vernacular, 87, 104, 133, 160, 170, 189. See also dialect Veronese, Angela, 24 Veronica, Angela Maria, 9–11, 30 Virgil, 57, 130n107, 138, 182n191 Voltaire, 158; correspondence with Fonseca Pimentel, 6–7, 218; poem for Fonseca Pimentel, 29, 218 Vovelle, Michel, 65 women: arranged marriage, 8; education, 3–4; sexualized attacks against, 11, see also Fonseca Pimentel, Eleonora: sexualized attacks against; Hamilton, Emma: sexualized attacks against; and social class, 1–2, 4, 7–8, 11, 172n173, 173, 174n175, 191n209, 206; woman question, 1, 206; writers, 1–2, 24–25, 203, 206. See also academies: female membership Zanelli, Giuliana, 25n63, 28n74, 39n102