Moderate Party (Italy)

The Moderate Party (Italian: Partito Moderato), collectively called Moderates (Italian: Moderati), was an Italian pre-Unification political rally, active during the Risorgimento (1815–1861). The Moderates were never a formal party, but only a movement of liberal-minded reformist patriots, usually secular, from politics, military, literature and philosophy.

Moderate Party

Partito Moderato
LeaderVincenzo Gioberti
Cesare Balbo
Founded1848 (1848)
Dissolved1861 (1861)
HeadquartersTurin, Piedmont-Sardinia
IdeologyCatch-all
Confederalism[1]
Romantic nationalism[2][3]
Factions:
Savoyard monarchism 
Papal monarchism[4][5]
Republicanism (minority)[2]

History

Since the Congress of Vienna, inside the Italian Peninsula was diffused a reformist and Romantic moment, inspired from Jacobonism and Bonapartism and explosed in the revolutions of 1820 against the reactionary Congress System. Many patriots, soldiers and intellectuals who took part to the revolutions were definited "moderates".

The Moderates, with time, demarcated themselves from radical and republican organizations like Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy, Carboneria and others. The moderates and radicals disputed mainly for the methods to unified Italy: the Moderates supported secret pacts and strategic alliances between the patriotic movement and the other European powers, whereas the Mazzini's supporters called a popular revolution to establish a democratic Republic. After the failure of the Italian Revolutions of 1848, attempted by Mazzinians and republicans, the republican ideas declined for the Moderates' agenda. During this time, several politicians of other Italian states are members of the group: in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the leaders were Massimo d'Azeglio and Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, representing the parliamentary Right, and Urbano Rattazzi, representing the Left; in the Papal States the reform movement was headed by Terenzio della Rovere and Pellegrino Rossi, the last murdered by a republican plot in 1848; in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies prominent moderates were brothers Bertrando and Silvio Spaventa. When the Kingdom of Italy was founded in 1861, the moderates merged in the Historical Right and Left, the two Piedmontese parliamentary group that monopolized the politics of the new Italian state for almost half-century.

Tendencies and members

Differently by democrats and radical republicans, the Moderates were only circles of intellectuals, aristocrats, soldiers and businessmen with patriotic tendencies. However, the Moderate Party wasn't cohesive, because its members were of different political ideologies, from continental liberalism to soft conservatism. Initially, the party wasn't too nationalist, preferring a federation or coalition between the several Italian states, and support both reformist and law and order policies,[6] different by the republicans like Mazzini. When the possibility of an unified Italian state became real, a new question of division was the form that the new Italian State would have. Someone, like Vincenzo Gioberti, supported a confederation of states, led by the Pope.[6] other simply claimed for a centralized state headed by a monarch, without differences if a Savoy or other. There were three main tendencies inside the movement:

References

  1. DeAgostini, ed. (2011). I moderati: neoguelfi e liberal-radicali. Tutta storia. p. 311. ISBN 9788841864913.
  2. Formichi, Gianluca (2003). Giunti (ed.). Il Risorgimento: 1799-1861. p. 49. ISBN 9788809028616.
  3. Nascimbene Pasio, Clelia (1931). Zanichelli (ed.). Patriottismo romantico e patriottismo classico nei prodromi del risorgimento italiano. p. 104.
  4. Schiattone, Mario (1996). Dedalo (ed.). Alle origini del federalismo italiano. p. 76. ISBN 9788822061805.
  5. Fusilli, Raffaele (1969). Liberali, socialcomunisti e cattolici in lotta guelfa e ghibellina durante il fascismo, la monarchia e la repubblica: Saggio storico politico.
  6. "Partito Moderato". Encilopedia Treccani.
  7. Alessandro Manzoni (August 3, 2004). The Count of Carmagnola & Adelchis. JHU Press. p. 93. ISBN 9780801878817.
  8. Stelio Cro (February–May 1988). "L' idealismo neo-guelfo e il teatro nazionale in Alessandro Manzoni". Tetaro Contemporaneo (in Italian).
  9. Badaloni, Nicola (1974). Quaderni della Labronica (ed.). Il pensiero politico di Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. p. 67.
  10. Viglione, Massimo (2005). Città Nuova (ed.). Libera chiesa in libero stato?: il Risorgimento e i cattolici: uno scontro epocale. pp. 44–45. ISBN 9788831103398.
  11. Gnoli, Antonio; Sasso, Gennaro (2013). Giunti (ed.). I corrotti e gli inetti: Conversazioni su Machiavelli. ISBN 9788858764145.
  12. Firpo, Luigi (1972). Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese (ed.). Storia delle idee politiche economiche e sociali. 3. p. 291. ISBN 9788802040813.

See also

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