Antonio Bresciani | |
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 Antonio Bresciani | |
| Born | Antonio Bresciani Borsa (1798-07-24)24 July 1798 |
| Died | 14 March 1862(1862-03-14) (aged 63) |
| Resting place | Church of the Gesù, Rome |
| Pen name | Tionide Nemesiano |
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| Language | Italian |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Period | 1838–1862 |
| Genre | |
| Literary movement | |
| Notable works | L'Ebreo di Verona |
| Parents | Leonardo Bresciani and Vittoria Bresciani (née Alberti) |
| Part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Italy |
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Literature |
Antonio Bresciani Borsa (Italian pronunciation:[anˈtɔːnjobreʃˈʃaːniˈborsa]; 24 July 1798 – 14 March 1862) was an ItalianJesuit priest, novelist and journalist, mostly known for his reactionary diatribes againstliberalism and theRisorgimento.[1]
Antonio Bresciani was Born into an impoverished noble family in Ala, nearTrento, in 1798. In 1814, he moved toVerona and attended the St. Sebastian College. Following the completion of his studies there, in 1818 he joined theSeminary of Verona, where he studiedtheology. Ignoring his father's wishes that he become a lawyer,[2] in 1821 he was ordainedpriest inBrixen. Once ordained, he travelled to Rome with the intention of entering theSociety of Jesus. In 1824, he was admitted to the Jesuitnovitiate of St. Andrew. In 1826, Bresciani gained his father's permission to enter the Jesuit order and in 1828 he made hisreligious vows as a Jesuit in the house of novitiate inChieri.[3] Then he was sent toGenoa to the Jerome’s Academy. Between 1834 and 1848 asrector, he moved from one college to another around Italy: in 1834 at the Carmine College inTurin, in 1837 at the College of St. Bartholomew inModena and in 1846 at thePontificio Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide.
On 9 January 1850, he was invited toNaples to take part in the first meeting of theeditorial board of the reviewLa Civiltà Cattolica. His task was to write novels. When he joined the founders ofLa Civiltà Cattolica Bresciani already had a large literary production and was a member of the prestigiousAcademy of Arcadia, under thepseudonymTionide Nemesiano.
During his tenure asliterary editor atLa Civiltà Cattolica, Bresciani launched hisserialisedtrilogy ofanti-Masonic novels:The Jew of Verona (1851),The Roman Republic andLionello (1855). All of them becamebestsellers. They dramatised how Freemasonry and related sects were working in secret to bring aboutanarchy, Christianity's destruction andSatan's triumph.
The typical elements of the feuilleton-novel, such as police intrigue,murder, rape, love, and betrayal were all central themes in Bresciani's novels.[4] The Risorgimento was portrayed as the result of a “satanistically inspired conspiracy by secret societies”.[5]Liberals andnationalists would bring “moral corruption, political disorder and devil worship”.[5] The secularism and liberalism of theFrench Revolution and the Risorgimento were connected toProtestantism and pinned to the heinous motives of a foreign occupation and invasion.
Antonio Bresciani published extensively onsocio-economic issues inLa Civiltà Cattolica. He died in Rome on 14 March 1862, at the age of 63. Hiscomplete works in seventeen volumes have been edited in 1869 byCiviltà Cattolica.
Antonio Bresciani was a prolific writer and a novelist. His novels were published in serial form in thefeuilleton section ofLa Civiltà Cattolica — at that time the paper with the widest circulation in Italy, with more than 60,000 subscribers.
Bresciani had understood that to keep Italian youth close to the Catholic Church it was not enough to providelives of the saints,catechisms and moral literature, but full scale 'lay' novels whose religious content was far more subtly inserted.[6]
The dominant tone of Bresciani's fiction waspolemical. The villains represented the forces ofJacobinism, thesecret societies of the earlyRisorgimento, andFreemasonry.Conspiracy was a constant theme. Indeed, the leitmotifs of anti-Jesuit polemic depicting the Society of Jesus as an occult conspiratorial organization were in turn deployed by the Jesuit writer against Freemasonry.
His novelL'Ebreo di Verona, published in the first six volumes ofCiviltà Cattolica from 1850 to 1851,[7][8] was enormously popular and was quickly translated into most European languages, includingEnglish,French,German, andPortuguese.[9] The novel went through at least seventeen editions from ten publishers in five cities.[9] Bresciani's title is an ironic reference to the anti-Jesuit novel byEugène Sue,The Wandering Jew, a favorite among Italian liberals.L'Ebreo di Verona treated the influence of secret societies during the ItalianRevolution of 1848, revealing the presence of dark Masonic forces working behind the scenes to foment the nationalist movements that would erupt into mass revolt.
In 1850 Bresciani published anethnographic book in two volumes,Dei costumi dell'isola di Sardegna, comparing theSardinian life and customs with the “oldest oriental peoples.” Bresciani's comparison relied mainly on theBible,Homer,Herodotus and other ancienthistorians, but also on the works of modern scholars, such asBochart andVico.
Bresciani was a polished literary prose writer.[10] A follower of Antonio Cesari, the most renowned among Italianpurists,[11] Bresciani was a staunch opponent ofRomanticism, that he coinsidered an outgrowth of liberal, revolutionary ideology.[12] In a treatise on Romanticism (1839), he asserted: “Romanticism is not natural in itself ... is not natural to Italian taste ... [and] is harmful to the Christian religion, to good political regimen and tomorality”. Despite his anti-Romantic stance, however, Bresciani’s fiction betrayed many influences from the Romantic culture of the Risorgimento that he claimed to despise.[5][12] Severely criticized by De Sanctis, Bresciani's style was admired by several Italian writers, includingAlfredo Panzini, who, in a passage of hisVita di Cavour [Life ofCavour], called the Jesuit father "a powerful narrator."[13]
TheMarxist intellectualAntonio Gramsci uses the terms “Brescianism” and “Father Bresciani's progeny” to describe literature of a conservative andpopulist bent.[14][15] According to Gramsci, Bresciani is the paradigm example of a particular type of Italian intellectual characterized by a reactionary attitude towards modernity. Gramsci draws a parallel between Bresciani’s reaction to 1848 and that of the bourgeois press to theOctober revolution.[16] Gramsci condemns Bresciani for fighting against thedemocratization and unification of Italy and defending the traditional order. To this end, in his essay entitled “Reaction and Revolution,” Gramsci cites the nineteenth-century literary criticFrancesco De Sanctis, who, in a harshly critical review of Bresciani's novels, wrote that Bresciani expropriated revolutionary language for the cause of reaction, presenting Catholicism as the “true liberty” and calling the liberals “libertines”.[17]
Bresciani's theories are characteristic of the “paranoid style” in politics, positing a Satanic conspiracy among secret societies and Jews to undermine the Christian order.[5] According to some scholars, Bresciani's highly popular novelL'Ebreo di Verona shaped religious anti-Semitism for decades in Italy, as did his work forLa Civiltà Cattolica, which he helped launch.[18][19]
Antonio Bresciani served as an inspiration for the creation of Father Bergamaschi, one of the main characters ofUmberto Eco's novelThe Prague Cemetery.[20]
Every historical period of struggle and profound social transformation has its Jesuits; this seems to be a law of human development. The liberals and Mazzinians had Father Antonio Bresciani; the communists have the renegades from socialism who have installed themselves in the editorial offices of the bourgeois press
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