Pompeo di Campello

Pompeo di Campello, dating unknown

Pompeo Conte di Campello (also: Pompeo Graf von Campello) (born February 15, 1803 , † June 24, 1884 in Spoleto ) was an Italian poet and politician . In 1848/49 he was briefly Minister in the Papal States and from April 12 to October 20, 1867 Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Italy .

Life

Growing up in a noble family in Umbria , which at that time still belonged to the Papal States , di Campello received the usual upbringing for young noblemen from private tutors, especially in ancient languages and literature. A university course or the like has not been handed down. As a young man he began to write plays, especially tragedies . He earned his first literary fame with a volume of poems in honor of Pope Leo XII. who came from the area around Spoleto. By marrying Giacinta, b. Princess Ruspoli, di Campello finally became part of the "better society" of the Papal States in 1827, as his father-in-law was an auditor at the Sacra Rota , the highest civil and criminal court of the Catholic Church . The marriage had two children, Paolo and Maria, but Giacinta died in 1830. During the exile from 1831 di Campello worked almost exclusively literary, from 1835 to 1840 he lived with relatives of his mother in Florence . During this time he made the acquaintance of Vincenzo Gioberti's ideas, later called Neoguelfism . At the beginning of 1846 he made a long journey with stops in Turin , Trieste , Vienna , Milan and Venice , during which he also had contact with Alessandro Manzoni and Niccolò Tommaseo .

After the defeat of the republic on July 3, 1849, di Capello first tried to hide in the country, because he hoped for a pardon thanks to powerful friends in the curia . Eventually he was granted safe conduct and went into exile via Corfu and Tuscany to Turin in the Kingdom of Sardinia . Here he initially devoted himself to literature and theater. In the 1850s he made frequent trips to France, where his son's father-in-law, Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte , with whom he had been a member of parliament in Rome, now thanks to his kinship with Emperor Napoleon III. had come to influence. The extent to which di Campello's meetings with the emperor took place on behalf of the Turin government can no longer be traced. In 1859 he finally settled in Florence, which was united with Sardinia-Piedmont that year.

Since his son Paolo had been elected member of parliament in 1867, his father left him with political activities after his resignation as foreign minister and retired into private life, combined with regional honorary posts.

Political career

In 1824 the government appointed him deputy governor of his hometown. This was an honorary position with only very few powers, which the young man used to get to know the administration better and to start thinking about reforms. During the unrest in the wake of the French July Revolution , which also affected the various Italian states, di Campello became commander of the civil guard in his hometown in February 1831 and a few days later president of the provisional government in Spoleto, known as the "People's Council". He was also involved in the drafting of the Provisional Constitution of the Papal States, which was promulgated on March 4, 1831. Due to the close personal relationship with the then Archbishop GM Mastai-Ferretti of Spoleto, who later became Pope Pius IX. For the time being, this had no consequences for di Campello. For his hometown he was even called to the "Consulta", a parliamentary assembly made up of people appointed by the Pope with a purely advisory role. However, the Consulta was dissolved again on March 26th, di Campello was exiled to his estates for two years and received a permanent ban on residence in Rome (lifted in 1840).

In the autumn of 1847 di Campello was again for his hometown in the under the new Pope Pius IX. called the newly formed Consulta and devoted themselves to reforming the papal army. When the first Italian War of Independence broke out in the spring of 1848 , he accompanied the papal contingent as general director . After his election to the parliament, now known as the "Council of Deputies", he returned to Rome and became de facto minister of war in place of Prince Doria-Pamphili, who was then in office only in name. At the end of July / beginning of August 1848 he was ousted from this position because his anti-Austrian policy no longer corresponded to the views of the Pope. Street riots in Rome after the murder of Pellegrino Rossi in November demanded his (re-) appointment to the Muzzarelli Ministry, so that di Campello was officially Minister of War and the Navy until his resignation on March 16, 1849. Subsequently he was employed in a subordinate position in the Ministry of Finance until the end of the now proclaimed 2nd Roman Republic .

The next phase of political activity began in early 1860, when di Campello became president of the Commissione direttrice delle province romane ( Government Commission of the Roman Provinces ), which prepared the annexation of the Papal States to the Kingdom of Italy. After Umbria and the Marches were annexed to Italy in September 1860, he was briefly royal commissioner in Spoleto before being appointed senator for life on January 20, 1861 . However, he only took part in the work of the Senate at irregular intervals, as the administration of the family property and his literary interests were in the foreground. In 1867 he was appointed foreign minister in the Rattazzi cabinet (2nd) , because the government hoped for a better relationship with the Second Empire because of his family connections . Together with the entire government, he had to resign after six months without having achieved anything significant during this period.

Others

In his hometown of Spoleto there is a Via Pompeo di Campello in his honor .

Publications

• Componimenti drammatici. 3 volumes. Florence 1863.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Campello, Pompeo. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani . Volume 17, 1974.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Campello, Pompeo. In: C. Donzelli (Ed.): L'Unificazione italiana. Treccani, Milan 2011.