Note 104 — Chapter XIX · FREETHOUGHT IN THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES

Italy, however, had done her full share, considering her heritage of burdens and hindrances, in the intellectual work of the century; and in the names of Galvani and Volta stands the record of one more of her great contributions to human enlightenment. Under Duke Leopold II of Tuscany the papacy was so far defied that books put on the Index were produced for him under the imprint of London;104 and the papacy itself at length gave way to the spirit of reform, Clement XIV consenting among other things to abolish the Order of Jesuits (1773), after his predecessor had died of grief over his proved impotence to resist the secular policy of the States around him.105 In Tuscany, indeed, the reaction against the French Revolution was instant and severe. Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor of Austria in 1790, but died in 1792; and in his realm, as was the case in Denmark and in Spain in the same century, the reforms imposed from above by a liberal sovereign were found to have left much traditionalism untouched. After 1792, Ferdinando III suspended some of his father’s most liberal edicts, amid the applause of the reactionaries; and in 1799, after the first short stay of the revolutionary French army, out of its one million inhabitants no fewer than 22,000 were prosecuted for “French opinions.”106 Certainly some of the “French opinions” were wild enough; for instance, the practice among ladies of dressing alla ghigliottina, with a red ribbon round the neck, a usage borrowed about 1795 from France.107 As Quinet sums up, the revolution was too strong a medicine for the Italy of that age. The young abbate Monti, the chief poet of the time, was a freethinker, but he alternated his strokes for freedom with unworthy compliances.108 Such was the dawn of the new Italian day that has since slowly but steadily broadened, albeit under many a cloud.