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 GIOBERTI 817 roan Catholic Europe, being elected by Provi- dence to guard the second dispensation, as Israel was to guard the first. He affirms that the priesthood has attempted to retain the people in tutelage beyond the proper time, after it has lost its former moral and intel- lectual superiority over them. Hence a fatal schism exists between the ecclesiastical and temporal orders, between spiritual and secu- lar culture, which is the source of all the evils that afflict modern society. He proposes a voluntary cession by the priesthood of a do- minion which has become incompatible with modern civilization, and a thorough alliance of sacerdotal and lay culture. He calls upon the Italians and the Italian clergy to inau- gurate this new civilization, urging the latter to put themselves at the head of social move- ments, and to be the champions and not the enemies of the demands of the age for free in- stitutions. He claims for the pope an arbitra- torship in the affairs of the European nations, founded on his spiritual authority. The pro- gramme which he proposed for immediate Italian politics was: a confederation of the states ; the introduction of reforms ; a religious head, the pope ; a military head, the king of Sardinia ; a capital, Rome ; a citadel, Turin ; and above all, a sentiment of nationality in the Italian princes. From the publication of the Primato, Gioberti was regarded as the lead- er of the moderate liberal party. Few works have been received with greater enthusiasm, or have wrought a greater influence upon the public opinion of a nation. It was, however, distrusted by the Jesuits, to whom Gioberti re- plied in the Prolegomeni of the second edition (Brussels, 1845). In 1846 he removed to Paris. The accession of Pius IX., who had studied with favor the writings of the exiled philoso- pher, and the liberal measures which he grant- ed at the same time that constitutional princi- ples were proclaimed by the court of Turin, promised to Gioberti the speedy realization of his ideal. He wrote a severe and passionate answer to the attacks of the Jesuits, under the title of II Gesuita moderno (5 vols., Lausanne, 1847), which was followed by their expulsion from Sardinia. At the revolution of 1848 he returned to Italy after an absence of 15 years, and Turin was illuminated in his honor several nights in succession. He advocated a union of the states under the supremacy of the house of Savoy, and he visited the principal cities of the peninsula, haranguing the troops, the universi- ties, and the populace, and was everywhere re- ceived with enthusiasm. But Mazzini, the head of "young Italy," was his rival in popularity and his bitter opponent ; and discord prevailed also among the princes, some of whom with- drew the forces which they had sent to aid Sar- dinia against Austria. Gioberti, elected to the Piedmontese parliament (which assembled on May 8) by both Genoa and Turin, placed him- self at the head of the constitutional royalist party in the chamber of deputies, and was ap- pointed its president by acclamation. In July he entered the Casati ministry, which after the military reverses of Charles Albert gave place to that of Revel, which accepted an armistice that resembled an abandonment of the war of independence, and therefore was at once un- popular. Gioberti united with his opponents of the extreme democratic party in efforts to overthrow this ministry, and at the same time resumed his idea of a political league, and became president of the society for an Italian confederation, representatives of which from all parts of Italy assembled in Turin in October. His conduct won general admiration, even from "young Italy," and he was enthusi- astically placed at the head of the cabinet which in December succeeded that of Revel. Though he had announced a new campaign in Lombardy, he was convinced that it could only be fruitless, and broke with the party which had yielded to him and shared with him the ministry, ab- sorbed in himself all the energy and responsi- bility of the cabinet, and, renouncing the war of independence, resolved to employ the Pied- montese armies in restoring the thrones of the peninsula which had been carried away by the popular commotions. He designed to surround them with constitutional guarantees, and to make them not less liberal than anti-republican. Two obstacles prevented his beginning the ex- ecution of the plan : the refusal of the Italian princes to trust their restoration to the court of Turin, and the energetic resistance of the other Piedmontese ministers to such a move- ment. The king himself formally opposed the programme, and Gioberti resigned his office on Feb. 21, 1849, declaring that with him had fallen the cause of Italian renovation. After the disaster of Novara (March 23), he entered the new cabinet as minister without a portfolio, and was soon after sent to Paris as plenipoten- tiary. The mission being hardly more than an honorable exile, he solicited the appointment of a successor, and retired from public life. He resumed his studies, and published his Del rinnovamento civile d 9 Italia (2 vols., Paris and Turin, 1851), in which he criticises the conduct of parties in the movement of 1848, and affirms that he repents of no counsel which he gave or political act which he performed during his public career. The end of his efforts he de- clares to have been "to establish in Italy a Piedmontese hegemony, and in Europe the moral supremacy of Italy." He resided from this time in Paris, and was engaged in a phi- losophical work on Protologia, or first science, when his death occurred suddenly by apo- plexy. Gioberti refused to submit to the papal condemnation of his Gesuita moderno, and all his works have been placed on the index at Rome. Besides those already mentioned, he wrote letters in French Sur les erreurs reli- gieuses de M. de Lamennais (Brussels, 1840), and Sur les doctrines pUlosopUques et poli- tiques de M. de Lamennais (1842), and a treatise Degli errori filosofici di Ant. Kosmini (1841),