Italian Citizenship and the Republican Tradition Luca Baccelli Some Years Ago, During the Debate on German Reunification, Jürge

Italian Citizenship and the Republican Tradition Luca Baccelli Some years ago, during the debate on German reunification, Jürgen Habermas pointed to the dangers of "a national identity not based, first of all, on a republican self-understanding of constitutional patriotism"1. The well known original fatherland of the republican tradition in early modern political thought is Italy. Or, at least, that northern-central part of it where, at the beginning of the millennium, the political experience of city republics developed. This holds true whether this origin, following John Pocock's account, is traced back to fifteenth century Florentine 'civic humanism' or, following Quentin Skinner, is anticipated to fourteenth century 'neo-roman' political thought. An Italian is the eponymous author of republican political thought, the champion of the 'Machiavellian moment'. And it is in Italy that, after the establishment of national monarchies, some republican experiences still persisted, if not flourished, during the eighteenth century. Venice remained for a long time the paradigm of a republic, and when, in 1651, Hobbes introduced his deliberately anti-republican conception of negative liberty, his target was the word libertas on the wall of the city-republic of Lucca2. This paper will try to answer this question: did republican political thought influence Italian national identity and the Italian concept of citizenship? And is it still relevant today? 1. Republican patriotism In my view there is much more than a family resemblance between the political language of the republican tradition and the early literary appearance of an Italian national identity. More than six hundreds years ago Francesco Petrarca complained about the 'deadly wounds' afflicting the 'beautiful body' of the fatherland, and urged Italian governors to give the 'ancient value', still living in the 'Italians' Hearts', an opportunity to express itself3. It is impressive that the most important lyrical poet of fourteenth century Italy speaks this way. Italy was part of the Empire, which was actually fragmented in a number of state entities; Italy had been divided since the sixth century Longobard invasion, and was characterised by deep regional linguistic differences. The only, already remote, unitary experience had been the hegemony of Rome and then the Roman Empire. In Italy there was no such thing as the embryos of national monarchies which were forming in such countries as France or England. Nor did Italy have an ideological drive similar to the Reconquista carried out against Islam by the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. Thus it is highly significant that in such a country a sense of national identity is expressed so strongly, as a grief for the subjection to foreigners. Petrarca's poetry is remarkably nerved by the myth of the ancient Rome, notably republican Rome. The grief for the foreign domination of Italy, and the denounce of the poverty of its governors, are a persistent thread in the history of Italian literature. About two hundreds years later, these verses of Petrarca's will be echoed in the dramatic final chapter of the Principe, where Niccolò Machiavelli wishes the liberation of Italy, for "everybody smells this barbarous domination"4. After another three centuries of heavy foreign domination Machiavelli, the theorist of republican liberty, is among the national heroes celebrated by Ugo Foscolo in his I sepolcri5. In Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis Foscolo denounced the treason of Bonaparte who, with the treaty of Campoformio, had handed over his republic-fatherland, Venice, to the Absburg empire. More generally, he complains about the fate of Italy. And, addressing Florence, he writes that such characters as Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, Petrarca, whose graves are in the church of Santa Croce, are the only national eminences6. In Ortis Foscolo referred to Venice with the word 'fatherland' ("the sacrifice of the fatherland has been accomplished")7, while bemoaning that "we Italians wash our hands in Italians' blood"8; in I sepolcri Florence, owing to foreign invasion, has lost the 'fatherland': the term clearly refers to a wider national perspective. This literary patriotism goes hand in hand with a significant theoretical elaboration, associated with the Roman tradition: to Cicero's idea that "omnium societatum nulla est gravior, nulla carior quam ea, quae cum re publica est uni cuique nostrum"9. In the work of Machiavelli, from the theoretical writings to comedies, to poems, to letters, 1494 - the year of the French invasion of Italy - occurs with a nearly obsessive frequency10. And the last phrase of Istorie fiorentine is marked by the allusion to the "bad seeds which brought, and are still bringing, Italy to ruin"11. Machiavelli's writings are pervaded by a sense of belonging to the Florentine fatherland which he declares he loves "more than his own soul"12; but this republican city patriotism is intertwined with a national patriotism13. And serving as a politician and a diplomat in the camp of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, together with Guicciardini and Vettori, in an attempt to resist the Spanish invasion, is the last important opportunity for 'rolling a stone'14 in Machiavelli's life15. If Machiavelli feels himself a patriot, there emerges in his work a conception of belonging to a political community which is free of genealogical references and does not suggest a cultural homogeneity. Sure, Machiavelli cannot be thought of as a theorist of multicultural society: these questions are outside of his horizon, of course. Yet his idea of citizenship is clearly cast in political terms. Love of the fatherland, greater than the love of one's own soul, is first of all love of libertà and the institutions of vivere libero, protecting individual freedom and pursuing the public interest. The constitutive idea of this conception of citizenship is that, while one kind of dissensioni has a destructive impact and can make the republic enslaved and corrupt, another kind of conflict is required for the development of freedom. This kind of conflict is expressed by citizens' basic umori and leads to "laws and orderings beneficial to public liberty"16. Moreover, Machiavellian patriotism is far from being triumphal. Machiavelli recognises all the limitations of his fatherland and diagnoses its crises and weaknesses sternly. In Le istorie fiorentine the dissection of Florence's political and social pathologies is so merciless that one can seldom think it is a work written for the Medici17. And Machiavelli takes it to be a very important feature of Florence, so to speak an ineffaceable feature of its genetic code, that it was born 'servant', and begins his analytic reconstruction of its history with the first violent clash between two noble families18. A passage of Discorsi sums up the link between Machiavelli's patriotism, republicanism (and political realism): la patria è ben difesa in qualunque modo la si difende, o con ignominia o con gloria [...] dove si dilibera al tutto della salute della patria, non vi debbe cadere alcuna considerazione né di giusto né d'ingiusto, né di piatoso né di crudele, né di laudabile né d'ignominioso; anzi, posto ogni altro rispetto, seguire al tutto quel partito che le salvi la vita, e mantenghile la libertà19. Republican political culture becomes weaker and weaker, in sixteenth century Florence, with the advent of the familiar domination of the Medici, sanctioned by the establishment of the Granducato of Tuscany20. Yet this political culture still helps the last attempts at national renaissance against oppressive governments and foreign domination: I refer to the last republican experiences of sixteenth and seventeenth century, from Siena's resistance against the Medici to the Neapolitan revolution of 164721, but also to the 'Jacobin' republics of 1796-99, in particular to the Neapolitan republic of 1799. And to the Republics of Rome and Venice of 1848-49, to the deeds of Garibaldi and, less than a century later, to the Resistance. These historical experiences are often paralleled by significant theoretical conceptions. The thread of republican patriotism is not cut with Donato Giannotti: it can be found, after centuries, in the work of Paolo Mattia Doria, of Melchiorre Gioia, in Vincenzo Cuoco's very critique, up to such characters, opposed under some respects, as Carlo Cattaneo and Giuseppe Mazzini. Thus the republican tradition made a major theoretical and ideological contribution to the difficult, centuries old building of an Italian citizenship. In a forthcoming paper Massimo Rosati singles out four traditions in the history of national identity: the liberal patriotism of Risorgimento, moderate Catholicism, nationalism and the republican and radical democratic tradition itself. The key stage in the emergence of the latter in the late eighteenth century can be said to be the 'Jacobin three years' 1796-99. For it is in the language of Jacobin patriots that the theoretical seeds, already emerged in a fragmented way, grow ripe; it is the disappointment of Campoformio and the end of the Repubblica Cisalpina that arouse the patriots' new awareness22. In this situation, the first stirrings of unitary patriotism are marked by republican ideology. Among eighteenth century Jacobins, Melchiorre Gioia equates "the political dimension of patriotism [...] to the principles of liberty and equality"23, and claims again the importance of the 'negative' character of national identity: "everybody speaks about perpetuating the memory of republican virtues, so as to arouse their imitation: why not perpetuating the memory of tyranny, so as to make us hate it for ever?"24. In spite of the deep cultural gap between Jacobins' Enlightenment and their romantic mysticism, Giuseppe Mazzini revamps the idea of a close link between patriotism, republicanism, democratic constitutionalism and - notably - a positive view of conflict. Republic, says Mazzini, means "a public thing: government of the nation by the nation itself; social government: government by laws truly expressing people's will [...] political equilibrium, balancing of the three powers, orderly struggle of legal elements, mixed parliamentary rule, etc." (Rosati ccviii).

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