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Depending on what
sources you read, you will get different opinions.
Roman Catholic sources will tell you that Tanucci
was an anti-clerical zealot responsible for
establishing the supremacy of the state over the
church in southern Italy in the mid-1700s. Precisely
for that reason, say others, he helped bring
enlightened government to the Kingdom of Naples
right on the heels of the French Enlightenment—a
perfect time for it. Your call. Tanucci was born
in Arezzo in Tuscany and educated in Pisa where he
became a law professor. At the beginning of the Bourbon rule of the
kingdom of Naples in the 1730s, he found his way
into the service of the first monarch, Charles III.
Tanucci became first councilor of state, minister of
justice, foreign minister, and then in the 1750s,
prime minister. He provided skilled and shrewd
council to the king, who truly valued Tanucci’s
service. He was especially valuable when Charles
abdicated in 1759 to return to Spain, leaving the
throne to his nine-year-old son, Ferdinand, a
numskull kid who matured into an oaf and who would
eventually rule until well after the Napoleonic wars
(!) having established himself as the Re
lazzarone (roughly, “Beggar King”) one of the
least capable European monarchs in history. Tanucci
was the regent, providing valuable service to the
child king as he had to the father. Tanucci was so
good at what he did that Ferdinand—even after he
reached majority and was allowed to make his own
decisions—left government pretty much in the hands
of Tanucci, who remained in constant contact with
Charles back in Spain. Tanucci was the
mainstay in the kingdom of Naples of the
Enlightenment commitment in much of Europe to
diminish the power of the Church. The balance of
power between Church and State in Europe lasted more
than one-thousand years (from the establishment of
the Papal States in
756 to their demise in 1871) and is beyond the scope
of this entry; suffice it to say that by 1760, the
power of the church was in severe decline. In Naples,
Tanucci was zealous in abolishing the feudal
privileges of the Church and restricting its legal
jurisdiction and prerogatives. He closed convents
and monasteries, reduced the taxes to be forwarded
to the pontifical Curia, and was pivotal in the expulsion of the Jesuits
from the kingdom in 1767, an episode that resulted
in his being ex-communicated (at which point, he
closed two more monasteries). He was also
responsible for reforming the legal code of the
kingdom by setting up a commission of jurists (whom,
today, we would call “a bunch of lawyers”, but in
the mid-1700s it was a progressive move). It was an
age of “benevolent absolutism” and Tanucci help
shape Naples in that mold and break the mold of the
kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. It was under
Tanucci’s guidance that the local version of the
Enlightenment flourished, people such as Gaetano Filangieri and Antonio Genovesi. In 1774, Queen Caroline joined the Council of State (as her marriage contract specified she might do as soon as she bore an heir to the throne). Tanucci, then 76 years of age, was no match for the energetic and ambitious Caroline. He retired in 1777 and died in Naples in 1793. His enemies claim Tanucci and people like him paved the way for revolutions. That's what his friends say, too. to main index to history portal |
