Philippe Buonarroti
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Filippo Giuseppe Maria Ludovico Buonarroti more usually referred to under the French version Philippe Buonarroti (1761 - 1837) was an Italian egalitarian and utopian socialist revolutionary, journalist, writer, agitator, and freemason; he was mainly active in France.
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[edit] Life
[edit] Early activism
Buonarroti was born in Pisa to a family of local nobility. He studied literature and jurisprudence at the University of Pisa, where, at about this time, he founded what was seen by the authorities of Grand Duke Peter Leopold as a subversive paper, the Gazetta Universale.
Encouraged by the outbreak of the French Revolution and under constant surveillance by the authorities, he travelled to Corsica to spread the revolutionary message which he did in the pages of Giornale Patriottico di Corsica (the first Italian language paper to openly support the French Revolution). In Corsica, Buonarroti joined the Jacobin Club, and became a friend of the Bonapartes.
[edit] Under the Convention
Buonarroti was expelled from the island in June 1791 and returned to his native Tuscany whereupon he was arrested and imprisoned. It is thought that he joined a Masonic Lodge some time in 1786.
In 1793 he travelled to Paris, and became a member of the Society of the Panthéon. Maximilien Robespierre placed him in charge of organising the expatriate Italian revolutionaries, which he did from a base in Nice. After denouncing Pasquale Paoli to the National Convention, he was rewarded for his revolutionary activities by a special decree of French citizenship in May 1793.
In April 1794, he was nominated National Commissioner in Oneglia, Imperia's port, the site of refuge for many pro-French Italians during the French attack on Northern Italy.
[edit] Babeuf conspiracy and later life
He was recalled to Paris in 1795, after the Thermidorian Reaction, whereupon he was imprisoned in the Plessis prison after his friends in office had been deposed by the Thermidorian Reaction. There he met Gracchus Babeuf, and became one of his most fervent supporters and co-conspirators during the time of their mutual imprisonment from March to October.
Buonarotti was rearrested by the French Directory on May 8, 1796, along with Babeuf and other conspirators. Babeuf was guillotined, and Buonarotti formally imprisoned in February 1797, and held on the island of Oléron. Napoleon Bonaparte allowed him to go free after he had become First Consul in 1799.
He exiled himself to Geneva during the Empire, and to Brussels during the Bourbon Restoration; he returned to Paris after the 1830 July Revolution. In 1808 Buonarroti formed a Masonic Lodge, Les Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits, to which only serving freemasons were admitted. Within this lodge he formed an inner circle which he used to further his political dreams and aspirations.
He died in Paris.
[edit] Influence
Buonarroti's revolutionary principles were to prove important during the 1830s and early 1840s; Auguste Blanqui learned many of his insurrectionary skills and tactics from Buonarroti, and the Conspiration pour l'Egalité dite de Babeuf, suivie du procès auquel elle donna lieu may be seen as an important text in this respect.
Later, the 1848 revolutionaries in France and elsewhere placed much emphasis on this work as a cornerstone.
[edit] Writings
- Histoire des sociétés secrètes de l'armée 1815
- Conspiration des égaux 1828
- Conspiration pour l'Egalité dite de Babeuf, suivie du procès auquel elle donna lieu 1828
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. In turn, it cites as references:
- Alexander Philippe Andryane, Mémoires d'un prisonnier d'état (1839), and Souvenirs de Genève (1839)
