In the name of the people. Italy’s first step towards liberty in the revolt at Penne in 1779

Descrizione

On 23 May 1779 a mob in Penne, Italy, composed of laborers, farmers, and tradesmen, concerned about an impending threat of famine, attacked three residences of wealthy men, demanding that they keep the grain they owned in the city for the use of its people. The next day these members of what was then society’s lowest class forced the city’s governor and other civic leaders to hold a special election in which a man from the civil, or middle class, Don Giacinto Mazzaccone, was elected as the city’s chief executive officer, removing power from the nobles who had always ruled the city.
This uprising, known as the “Bread Revolt,” has never been thoroughly examined before now. Using unpublished contemporary sources including the court records from the investigation that followed these events, the story is reconstructed here in detail for the first time. What the sources reveal is that while the fear of starvation was the motivation of many participants, behind the scenes Don Mazzaccone was working to remove both power and wealth from the nobles and promote equality and liberty for the lower classes.
The philosophical ideals that inspired his actions are shown to be the same as those that inspired the contemporary American Revolution and the French Revolution that would take place shortly afterwards. The revolt in Penne, though small in scale and directed only against local nobles, was one of the very first actions seeking to implement these ideas into Italian society, ideas that would continue to guide revolutionaries in Italy through the following century and beyond.