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JGC revised this file
(http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/ac/brunetti.htm) on
September 9, 2004
Please E-mail comments or suggestions to chastain@www.ohiou.edu
© 1997, 2004 James Chastain.
ANGELO BRUNETTI (1800-1849). Known by the nickname "Ciceruacchio,"
Angelo Brunetti, the son of a blacksmith, was born and lived all
his life in
the Roman district of Campo Marzio. He did well in the
business of carting wine to Rome from the vineyards of the
surrounding hills and owned a tavern outside the Porta del Popolo,
the city's northern gate. Active with the local carbonari, he
joined Giuseppe Mazzini's "Young Italy" movement in the 1830s.
While not an intellectual himself, Brunetti was in contact with
radical democratic intellectuals like Pietro Sterbini during the
years of conspiratorial politics in the 1830s and early 1840s.
Brunetti's political talents flowered in 1846 and 1847 when the
election of Pope Pius IX seemed to promise political reform in the
Papal States; the prosperous wine carter emerged as a key figure in
the public mobilization of the Roman populace to the liberal cause.
His methods were distinctive, emphasizing collective sociability
with moderate liberal content. In July 1846 at a demonstration to
express gratitude to the pope for granting freedom to political
prisoners, Brunetti contributed several barrels of wine and built
a bonfire in the great square next to the Porta del Popolo. During
the spring and summer of 1847 Brunetti organized festivities that
would appeal to a popular audience and would encourage the pope on
his liberalizing course. He gave a picnic for four hundred lower
class leaders at his tavern and had them carry civic banners in the
annual religious procession to St. Peter's on Holy Saturday; he put
on a "national banquet" for six hundred guests to mark the yearly
celebration
of the founding of Rome; he organized a parade to bring
the pope greetings on his birthday and led an even more elaborate
procession to mark the anniversary of the pope's election, inviting
out-of-town participants to his tavern to banquet afterwards. When
conflict broke out between the Roman populace and the Roman Jewish
community, Brunetti, throwing a picnic for 2,000 people, deployed
his "politics of conviviality" to calm tensions. He was hailed by
noblemen and cardinals who believed he kept the unruly masses under
control. From mid-1847 to late 1848 Brunetti's role changed as
informal liberal institutions like political "circles" and a civic
militia were established in Rome. Slowly weaned from allegiance to
the pope, Brunetti's activism in this phase was marked by efforts
to build institutions in which the common people exercised power.
He was a standard-bearer and leader of the militia contingent from
the Campo Marzio neighborhood and the political work that he did
with other neighborhood militia captains may have contributed to
the education of these lower class leaders in the liberal cause.
This paid off in November 1848 during the tense moments following
the assassination of Pope Pius IX's minister, Pellegrino Rossi, the
event that precipitated the pope's flight from Rome and the
establishment of the Roman Republic, when the civic guard showed
that it would not turn out to defend the papacy. During the Roman
Republic of 1849 Brunetti remained prominent in the civic militia
and was sent on political missions by the national assembly. In
April 1849, in the first democratic municipal elections in Rome's
history, Brunetti was elected to the hundred-member city council.
He helped to defend the republic and, as French armies prepared to
enter Rome on July 2, 1849, he joined Garibaldi in his flight
across Italy. Six weeks later Angelo Brunetti and his two sons
were caught in Venetian territory and executed.
Laurie Nussdorfer
Bibliography