Father Luigi Virginio’s 1785 trip to Milan occurred under very different conditions than the one in 1784. He now had an enthusiastic supporter of Father Nicholas Diessbach in that city. Count Francesco Pertusati dedicated himself entirely to establishing a “colony” of Amicizia there. The Count’s fortune, social position, and influence greatly facilitated the foundation. The organization’s library was installed in his palace. The people Father Virginio met during his previous stay and thought might become members began frequenting the new library. The Milan branch was off to a solid start. It included Fathers Argenti, Bianchi and Prati, Count Pertusati and his wife, Maria Olgiatti, Knight Carlo Rosmini, a lawyer called Torti, and most probably Countess Trotti as well.
Around that time, a former Jesuit canon, Count Luigi Mozzi de’ Capitani, attended Milan’s Amicizia. As the century drew to a close, he started a new Marian Sodality in Bergamo, his hometown, with methods very similar to Father Diessbach’s. Between 1797 and 1814, the Count suffered as Napoleon unleashed religious persecution in Bergamo, as he did in every nation he conquered. Thus, Mozzi had severe problems with the imperial police.
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After installing and consolidating Milan’s sodality, Father Diessbach sent Father Virginio to Paris. There, Father Virginop attempted to create a nucleus that would serve as the standard and model for all their associations. He left for France in 1786 and carried out a remarkable apostolate there, especially by encouraging the formation of an Aa group. He spent several years in Paris helping Father Pierre Joseph Picot de la Clorivière, who had become his close friend. Father Picot was very well known for his influence on restoring the Society of Jesus after Napoleon’s fall in 1814-1815.
Since we aim to study Father Lanteri’s life, we will not cover Father Virginio’s activities in France. He reported on his Paris work in a document, which Father Candido Bona reproduced entirely in his book on the Amicizie.1
Reading this account, one sees that its author joined efforts with good French priests who opposed the revolutionary wave. Many of his assistants shed their blood during the Terror, and his promising apostolate was destroyed. This is one more crime to the long and dark list of horrors committed by the French Revolution.
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Father Virginio’s brief visits to Turin did not allow him to direct the Italian Amicizie. That job fell to Father Lanteri after 1786. Milan’s Amicizie, dependent on Turin’s Amicizie, also passed under his control. Additionally, he started others, including one in Florence, which was very important. Later, we will study it in more detail.
By the time Father Virginio returned to Italy, Father Diessbach had died. Father Virginio succeeded him in overseeing the work in Vienna. He concentrated all his zeal on this task.
Before moving on, let us consider Amicizia’s method for installing a nucleus. One can get a glimpse of it from the few available documents. This is confirmed by Father Diessbach’s ideas on the appropriate measures for combating the revolutionary principles that are infiltrating everywhere.
The three associations—Aa, Amicizia Cristiana and Amicizia Sacerdotale—were set up gradually. The locations were those cities indicated on Father Virginio’s “geographical map” as having the most significant possibilities of success. Theoretically, the “missionary” would begin by installing Aa, intended for young clergymen without habits that could hinder their adopting the lifestyle asked of them. Amicizia Sacerdotale was a natural consequence of Aa. Both would form selected priests with a solid knowledge of Catholic doctrine. Through the organization’s efforts, these men would become accustomed to recollection and gain mastery of Saint Ignatius Loyola’s spiritual exercises. With this background, they would then be capable of promoting missions for the people and directing lay members of Amicizia Cristiana. The latter was an elite association that recruited mainly nobles. While it could have priest members, it aimed primarily at the laity and the intellectual apostolate.
In practice, this order was not rigidly followed. It varied depending on circumstances and the people the “missionary” encountered.
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The three secret associations exited simultaneously and communicated with each other. These facts make it difficult to distinguish to which association the persons mentioned in members’ letters or other documents belonged, except for laypeople. Even then, it is often impossible to determine precisely any individual’s function in the complex work. In Milan, for example, Count Pertusati was the most active and prestigious personage during Amicizia’s entire existence. However, no one knows what position he occupied.
The Amicizia Cristiana primarily recruited its members from the upper classes. One can get an idea of the difficulties it encountered by reading Massimo d’Azeglio’s description of the Piedmontese nobility in his famous I miei ricordi [Things I Remember], published posthumously in 1867. The author was the Prime Minister of Sardinia, a son of Marquis Cesare d’Azeglio and brother of the famous Jesuit Father Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio.2 He writes:
“The Piedmontese nobility of the last and the early part of the present century was, rather than tyrannical, fastidious. My dear reader, I feel sure that more than once it has fallen your lot to have to do with someone who, in his attitude toward you, failed in nothing due to courtesy, who uttered no word to which you could object without being ridiculous of absurdly punctilious, and yet at the same time gave forth from his whole person such a clear ‘keep your distance,’ such an obvious ‘I’m what I am, and you don’t count,’ that, as there was no reason for getting angry and no possibility of putting up with it, one simply longed to get out of range and, if possible, never let oneself be caught again.”3
Such was the aristocracy among whom Amicizia had to develop its apostolate.
Footnotes
- Fr. Candido Bona, Le Amicizie – Società Segrete e Rinascita Religiosa (Friendships, Secret Societies and Religious Revival), 1962. Published in Italian, not translated into English.
- Father Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio (1793-1862) was a Jesuit scholar credited with coining the term “social justice.”
- Massimo d’Azeglio, Things I Remember (I Miei Ricordi). Originally published in Italian (two volumes) by G. Barbera (Firenze) in 1867. Translated by E. R. Vincent in one volume and published by Oxford University Press (London), 1966, pages 6-7.