A Martyr for the Resistance and the New Republic: The Uses of Giacomo Matteotti’s Memory, 1943 to 1947

ABSTRACT

When Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, Giacomo Matteotti’s memory burst back into public space after almost twenty years of clandestine commemoration. This article focuses on the uses of Matteotti’s memory during the Resistance and the transition to a new democratic Republic. It argues that Matteotti was both Italian and reformist, not revolutionary, and thus his memory appealed to partisans as a symbol of national anti-Fascism and to the Allies because he represented parliamentary democracy. The article begins by establishing the qualities of Matteotti’s commemoration after his death in 1924, before examining the daily uses of that memory by those involved in Italy’s fight for liberation from 1943. Finally, it identifies how representatives of Italy’s new democratic institutions transposed the language of sacrifice used to remember Matteotti onto the Italian people during the construction of the Republic, representing Italians as victims, rather than perpetrators, of Fascism.

KEYWORDS:

• Antifascism
• Giacomo Matteotti
• resistance
• World War II
• Allies
• Fascism

Introduction

One-hundred and thirty-eight days after Mussolini’s execution, the Corriere della Sera put an end to a rumour circulating in liberated Italy.¹ First broken by the Chicago Sun, rumour had it that one of the sons of the murdered socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti had fired the bullet that had killed Mussolini, avenging his father’s murder twenty-one years earlier. Though entirely false – Matteo and his brother, Carlo, were in Rome and Venice respectively that day – the son of the most prominent anti-Fascist martyr was the one figure worthy of putting the final nail in Fascism’s coffin and securing the nation’s freedom. The rumour provided a neat symbolic conclusion to the Fascist period, an act of redemption that put Italy’s anti-Fascist lineage in the spotlight and re-nationalised the nation’s liberation story by making an Italian citizen its protagonist.

The timing of the story is significant. Fierce debates were underway in government and on the streets about the country’s future as a monarchy or as a republic, and the Allies continued to play a large role in national governance, particularly with regards to the upcoming elections for both local administrations and government. Post-war Italy was not yet autonomous, and remained subject to the influence of foreign powers. The country’s liberation had occurred thanks to Resistance and Allied intervention, and political negotiations (and concessions) between the two groups were tense. As Alessandro Portelli notes, without the Resistance, ‘Italy would have been only the object, not the subject, of its liberation – which is not a good start for the foundation of a free country’.² The insertion of Matteotti’s memory into the story of Italy’s liberation re-nationalised the narrative, but it also underlined the values of reformist, rather than revolutionary, democracy – the very values for which Matteotti had died. As such, it appealed to those who wished to celebrate Italy’s historic anti-Fascism and to Allied forces, opening up an important shared symbolic space.

The period under consideration in this article, 1943 to 1947, begins with Mussolini’s resignation because, as Pavone writes: ‘The fact that Mussolini’s overthrow and the Armistice did not coincide created the feeling that, if the war was not over, Fascism was not well and truly over either’.³ This distance cleaved open a space in which the symbols of historic anti-Fascism would play an essential propagandistic role in the day-to-day battle to end Fascism fought by partisans and Allied forces. This article begins by analysing the characteristics of commemoration after Matteotti’s death to demonstrate his immediate representation as a martyr – a narrative of sacrifice that returned during the Resistance and was subsequently applied to the Italian people. I then address the daily uses of Matteotti’s memory as a powerful symbol to encourage participation in the Italian Resistance, and to unite partisans and Allied forces alike. The final section considers the uses of Matteotti’s memory by those involved in the construction of the new Republic, who drew on the image of private reverence of Matteotti’s memory during the dictatorship to suggest that Italians had retained the moral courage to honour their anti-Fascist values despite the repressive regime – a narrative that transposed suffering and sacrifice onto the Italian people, positioning the nation as the victim rather than the perpetrator of Fascism.

This article thus contributes to the field of scholarship that examines the uses of narratives of patriotic sacrifice since Italian unification. Riall's work identified the creation of ‘martyr cults’ by religious and nationalist movements during the Risorgimento – a theme further developed by Mancini in his monograph on the evolution of the secular martyr paradigm from Unification to the fall of Fascism.⁴ These Risorgimento-era narratives of patriotic sacrifice for the nation’s freedom were resurrected and applied to Matteotti’s memory, as this article demonstrates. Italy’s first experience fighting an international war as one nation has been approached from the perspective of national and family mourning by Janz in the collection of essays on patriotic death edited with Klinkhammer and Balzani.⁵ Several scholars have analysed the diversion of martyr narratives towards the ideological project under Fascism from a national and transnational perspective.⁶ Rusconi’s examination of ‘patriottismo espiativo’ – the post-war reconfiguration of national identity based on the idea that Italians had suffered unimaginable crimes during the war years – has demonstrated how Italy’s experience of wartime crimes was remembered as an act of atonement for more than two decades of Fascist rule.⁷ Rusconi’s work also underlines the transposition of these exculpatory narratives of sacrifice onto the collective body in post-war Italy – a theme analysed closely in the context of literature addressing the wars fought by Fascist Italy from 1943 to 1945 by Bartolini.⁸ This article is interested in the place of Matteotti’s memory during the construction of the new Republic within a broader narrative of Italian sacrifice. It also examines the uses of Matteotti’s memory during the fight for Italy’s liberation and, as such, it addresses themes analysed by Gundle in his work on the civic religion of the Resistance and the partisan martyr paradigm, and Schwarz’s study of the new Republic’s commemoration of its dead after 1945.⁹

Creating a National Martyr

Born in Fratta Polesine, Rovigo, in 1885, Giacomo Matteotti was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) in 1919, representing Ferrara-Rovigo. He was re-elected in 1921 and 1924. A ‘consistent and rigorous reformer’, Matteotti saw reform as a means of overturning capitalist society and improving the lives of workers without the need for revolutionary politics.¹⁰ Critical of the PSI’s turn towards Communism, he left the party a few days before Mussolini’s March on Rome in October 1922 to found the reformist Partito Socialista Unitario (PSU) with Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves, and Giuseppe Modigliani. The PSU’s programme was ‘gradualist and democratic’ and emphasised the importance of democracy in achieving social and economic progress.¹¹ This association with a reformist rather than revolutionary approach was one reason his memory was such an important symbol in the post-war reconstruction of Italian democracy.

Matteotti was keenly aware of the violence endemic to Fascism having watched it develop in Polesine, and he raised awareness abroad, travelling to conferences in Europe and writing for international papers.¹² A year after the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) took power, he published Un anno di dominazione fascista, which refuted every achievement the regime claimed in its first year.¹³ At the time of his assassination, Matteotti was preparing a dossier of Fascist criminal activity, with translations into English and French underway. According to Mack Smith, ‘Mussolini had found a combative, resolute, and well-prepared adversary in the young Socialist deputy’,¹⁴ and he stood directly in the line of fire as a result.

The details of Matteotti’s death on 10 June 1924 are well known.¹⁵ The regime survived the delitto by distancing itself from what it presented as violent actions of an uncontrollable sub-stratum of the party – an idea bought into by the international press. Writing in The Times on 18 June, one correspondent wrote: ‘There is no doubt that Fascismo has greatly suffered from what is happening, but I think that it may perhaps recover if it is purified from the bottom’.¹⁶ Describing the ‘small gang of criminals’ within the party, a Daily Mail article declared: ‘Every great movement has such parasites; Socialism is certainly not free from them’.¹⁷ Thanks to court corruption, strategic resignations, the timely introduction of new laws and an amnesty, the regime emerged stronger than ever.¹⁸

Matteotti’s body was not found until 16 August, six weeks after his kidnapping. Many of the condolence letters sent to his widow, Velia, refer to the spontaneous strikes and ceremonies organised by workers throughout Italy throughout this six-week period.¹⁹ These demonstrations were met by counter-demonstrations from Blackshirts, who cried insults and sang chants including ‘con la carne di Matteotti ci faremo i salsicciotti!’ as they walked past the site of Matteotti’s kidnap and onwards to his family home in the Flaminio area of Rome.²⁰ Despite the presence of Blackshirts, tributes were laid, removed, and replaced at the kidnap site, creating a grassroots site of memory that included a cross on the embankment wall, red wreaths, and red carnations – material symbols of emerging antifascist commemorative culture. Throughout the morning of Sunday 15 June, a constant stream of mourners visited the site, many leaving a flower as an act of resistance against Fascist violence.

Demonstrating Matteotti’s immediate ascension to an existing pantheon of martyrs who died at the hands of the state, Avanti! compared these floral tributes to those left in Piazza della Signoria, Florence, each year on the anniversary of the execution of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, ‘un altro martire di libertà e di moralità’.²¹ Savonarola was condemned to death in 1498 after years of protest against the Duke of Milan and Pope Alexander VI, and his ashes were thrown into the Arno river. That night, flowers were laid at the site of Savonarola’s death in protest against this violence, marking the beginning of a tradition known as La Fiorita that continues today. To end this cycle of protest against state violence expressed through the symbolic laying of flowers, the Fascist regime moved to suppress Matteotti’s memory, banning flowers and commemorative ribbons, and stating that nobody could stop within ten metres of the kidnap site.²² Velia was summoned to the police headquarters in Rome and instructed to abandon her mourning clothes as the country now ‘wanted to forget’ her husband’s death.²³ Suppressing even the mention of his name, a friend of Matteotti’s son was imprisoned after he cried ‘Long live Giancarlo Matteotti!’ when his friend gave the correct answer in a maths lesson.²⁴

As scholars including Zaghi and Caretti have noted, these conflicts around memory and the regime’s efforts to suppress it, which Caretti terms ‘la memoria negata’, were a significant part of the story in the wake of Matteotti’s murder.²⁵ These battles around memory became an issue of international interest in 1924, two weeks before Christmas. Leaving Stockholm for a League of Nations meeting in Rome, Sweden’s foreign minister, the social democrat Östen Undén, expressed his intention to lay a large wreath at the site of Matteotti’s kidnap – an idea he shared with the Italian authorities on his arrival in Italy’s capital.²⁶ Undén’s plan was swiftly rejected by the regime, the wreath he had brought with him was seized, and the Swedish ambassador in Rome was forced to make a formal apology. The restrictions the regime imposed forced memory into domestic spaces, turning commemoration into an everyday act of private resistance. Indeed, Velia received swathes of letters requesting photographs of her husband for inclusion in domestic shrines. The most commonly used image in these shrines was a formal parliamentary portrait of Matteotti taken shortly before his murder. Writing to Velia from Marmore di Terni on 26 June 1924, one woman described Matteotti’s photograph, ‘ch’io tagliai da un giornale “Il Messaggero”, raffigurante il Nostro Grande Martire’, which she positioned ‘in un luogo di preghiera, nella casa ove abito e dove spesso arde una lampadina’.²⁷ The Italian anti-Fascist cartoonist Giuseppe Scalarini depicted the creation of these shrines and the inclusion of Matteotti’s parliamentary portrait in Avanti! on 6 July 1924 (Figure 1).²⁸ Scalarini’s work shows a family standing in worship of Matteotti as one might stand before a painting of a saint in a church: respectfully and reverentially. The inclusion of his parliamentary portrait alongside votive candles and flowers suggests that what was being mourned was both Matteotti and democracy itself. As addressed later in this article, these stories of private reverence resurfaced during the construction of the new Republic as part of a broader representation of Italy as inherently antifascist and the Italian people as victims of a totalitarian dictatorship.

Figure 1. Scalarini depicted a domestic shrine to Matteotti in Avanti! the month after his kidnapping.

As Italians awaited confirmation of Matteotti’s fate, the whereabouts of his body captured the collective imaginary in Italy and abroad.²⁹ Demonstrating his immediate representation as a martyr, one Italian American socialist publication called for the body’s return ‘come a Maria non fu negato il corpo di Cristo’.³⁰ The lack of concrete proof of Matteotti’s fate created a space for rumour, conjecture, and myth. Letters between Filippo Turati and his partner Anna Kuliscioff, the Jewish anarchist revolutionary, point to the quickly emerging myth of Matteotti’s final confrontation with his assassins, when he was thought to have declared: ‘Uccidete me, ma l’idea che è in me non la ucciderete mai … La mia idea non muore … I miei bambini si glorieranno del loro padre … I lavoratori benediranno il mio cadavere … Viva il Socialismo!’³¹ Writing to Kuliscioff on 16 June, Turati asked if she was aware of Matteotti’s final words.³² In her reply the next day, Kuliscioff questioned if these words had ever been spoken by Matteotti: ‘sono verosimili’, she conceded, ‘ma credo che siano state inventate. Ciò che mi fece dubitare della loro verità è la invocazione alla vendetta, che faranno i suoi figli. Ciò non è in stile di Matteotti, e dinanzi ai suoi assassini non avrebbe voluto, per pudore di sentimento, nominare i propri figli’.³³

These words were first attributed to Matteotti on 16 June, the morning Turati wrote his letter, when L’Unità published a story saying an anonymous (but extremely reliable, the paper assured its readers) source had overheard one of the men immediately linked to the crime recounting Matteotti’s behaviour as he was beaten by his assassins. Describing Matteotti’s response as ‘spavaldo’ and ‘eroico’, Albino Volpi said he and his fellow assassins might have taken pity on their victim if he had only shown humility.³⁴ Instead, Volpi continued, Matteotti had repeatedly shouted ‘Assassini, barbari, vigliacchi!’, before making his final declaration. This eavesdropped account of Matteotti’s dying words was quickly picked up by other newspapers.³⁵ Turati repeated them during the ceremony he led in Montecitorio on the 27 June – a day of nationwide commemorative events held for Matteotti – suggesting they were true to Matteotti’s spirit and predicting their inclusion on commemorative plaques in the future (a hope that took more than two decades to become reality):

E parla. E ridice le parole sante, strozzategli nella gola, che furono da uno dei sicari tramandate alle genti, che son Sue quand’anche non le avesse pronunciate, che son vere se anche non fossero realtà, perché sono l’anima Sua; le parole che si incideranno nel bronzo sulla targa che mureremo qui o sul monumento che rizzeremo sulla piazza a monito dei futuri.³⁶

Matteotti’s final declaration became a foundational element of the rhetoric that framed his death as martyrdom – incontrovertible proof of his anti-Fascist commitment in the face of suffering. In their embodied theory of martyrdom, De Soucey and others focus on the role of the martyr’s body in the creation of meaning, suggesting that the body ‘aids those who seek to shape memory by providing a material form in which to embed moral authority’.³⁷ In the long absence of his body, Matteotti’s final words encapsulated his moral authority in the collective imaginary, a powerful component of the martyr narrative that would be celebrated around the world and a story of commitment and sacrifice that became a foundational story of the new Republic two decades later. For the duration of the ventennio, his martyrdom was upheld by anti-Fascists in the Italian diaspora and exiled anti-Fascists as far away as Australia, the United States and Venezuela, and in European cities including Vienna, Paris, and London.³⁸ A letter from Matteotti’s widow to the New York-based anti-Fascist writer Girolamo Valenti reveals that organisation of these international commemoration ceremonies was seen as an anti-Fascist duty given the restrictions imposed on memory in Italy.³⁹ International anti-Fascists acted as custodians of Matteotti’s memory, organising ceremonies, raising funds for monuments, producing commemorative postcards (see Figure 2 for an example produced in Paris and sent to New York) and representing Matteotti in art.⁴⁰ This international memory work turned Matteotti into a globally recognised martyr for anti-Fascism, so when the regime fell, anti-Fascists could draw on this powerful and recognisable symbol to unify national and international forces fighting for Italy’s freedom.

Figure 2. Matteotti postcard sent from Paris to New York in 1924. Image reproduced with thanks to the Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota.

‘Morte Mussolini, Viva Matteotti!’

On 25 July 1943, radio speaker Giovanni Battista Arista announced Mussolini’s resignation and the appointment of marshal Pietro Badoglio as head of state and Prime Minister. The announcement followed several defeats at the hands of the Allies who, on 10 July, had landed on the Sicilian coast with 150,000 soldiers, beginning their invasion of Axis-controlled Italy – the start of what Battaglia terms ‘il formidabile sforzo bellico alleato’.⁴¹ Pietro Nenni, who had been secretary of the socialist party during the dictatorship and spent much of the ventennio in exile in Spain and France, described the atmosphere in his diaries: ‘Sui muri non sono che scritte di esecrazione contro Mussolini e di evviva a Matteotti. I simboli del fascismo sono già stati scalpellati dai pubblici edifici e si direbbe che non abbiano mai avuto la minima presa nei cuori’.⁴² Pamphlets were immediately distributed declaring ‘M Mussolini, W Matteotti’⁴³ – a diametric opposition that positioned Mussolini as Italy’s betrayer and Matteotti as its redeemer. In Milan that day, the plaque identifying Corso del Littorio was removed and Corso Matteotti written in its place.⁴⁴ These symbolic topographical changes occurred in the years 1943 to 1945 as individual cities were liberated. For example, five days after Rome’s liberation in 1944, Ponte Littorio, the bridge nearest to the site of Matteotti’s kidnapping, became Ponte Matteotti at the commemoration ceremony held on the twentieth anniversary of his murder.⁴⁵ The overwriting of Fascist heroes with anti-Fascist figures in Italy’s topography became official policy in the new Republic. Today, more than 3,200 sites bear Matteotti’s name in Italy.⁴⁶

This immediate incorporation of Matteotti’s name into public space hinted at what was to come: the foundation of the new Republic on the principles of democratic (not insurrectionary) anti-Fascism with Matteotti as its figurehead. It also underlines the powerful propagandistic role Matteotti’s memory played in the period between Mussolini’s resignation and the armistice. Dock workers in Genova chose the nineteenth anniversary of the discovery of Matteotti’s body to stage a walk-out in the name of peace in August 1943, underlining Matteotti’s position as an evergreen symbol of Fascist brutality.⁴⁷ Shortly after Badoglio declared the armistice on 8 September, 45 days after taking power, Matteotti’s name was formally incorporated into the fight for Italy’s liberation when the Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria (PSIUP) established its underground military wing, the Brigate Matteotti, on 11 September – one of two Resistance formations to use ‘political names inspired by unity between the parties of the left’, alongside the Gramsci division of the Brigate Garibaldi.⁴⁸ The Brigate Matteotti were strongest in Lazio, but also operated in regions including the Veneto and Emilia Romagna.⁴⁹ The diaries of the three Bologna divisions show the use of Matteotti’s memory as a guiding figure in the anti-Fascist fight – a powerful propagandistic symbol even for those too young to have known Matteotti alive. The PSIUP produced a pamphlet for these younger members of the Brigate Matteotti, reminding the newest recruits of their duty to honour the sacrifice made by the murdered socialist, ‘che a voi attribuiva un’alta missione nella rinascita dell’Italia’,⁵⁰ and celebrating Matteotti’s courage as captured in his dying words:

Ma anche in questo supremo momento, in cui il martire lasciava la vita per il proprio ideale, Giacomo Matteotti seppe mostrare sangue freddo e coraggio indomito, e mentre i suoi carnefici lo assassinavano, egli, con la calma e la forza che è il privilegio solo dei giusti, proclamò, a monito degli avversari e delle future generazioni: ‘Uccidete me, ma l’idea che è in me non la ucciderete mai … la mia idea non muore … i miei bambini si glorieranno del loro padre … I lavoratori benediranno il mio cadavere … Viva il socialismo’.⁵¹

Maurice Fagence, war reporter for the Daily Herald, was struck by the pervasiveness of Matteotti’s memory. In his article ‘Matteotti Left an Army’, the journalist described his advance into Italy’s north, where he met ‘Matteotti’s followers in scores of thousands’.⁵² He entered a house that had been occupied by German troops and met forty men ‘with membership cards inscribed “Matteotti” […] The spirit of Matteotti which lived throughout Italy’s years of shame still lives in Northern Italy. The dead Matteotti is an army on his own. He lives. He fights’.⁵³ Allied soldiers, too, reflected on Matteotti’s memory as a guiding symbol in the fight for Italy’s liberation. A collection of seventy-two poems written by soldiers in the Eighth Army, an Allied field army formation of the British Army involved in the Sicilian invasion in 1943, includes a call for soldiers to ‘hitch their anger to a star, And Matteotti rise to show the way!’⁵⁴

Thanks to sustained commemoration around the world, Matteotti’s name was easily recognisable shorthand for anti-Fascism and, as such, proved a useful symbol able to transcend language barriers. New Zealanders Roy Johnstone and Jim Locke were on the run in the Veneto region in September 1943, having escaped from a prisoner of war camp in San Dona di Piave, where they had been sent after having been captured in North Africa.⁵⁵ Cold and tired after two nights in a maize field, the soldiers spotted an elderly man working his land. They hesitated. Just a few days earlier, they had been fighting against the Italians before Italy’s surrender. Knowing little Italian, Johnstone considered how to make his anti-Fascist commitment clear. He approached the man, and asked: ‘Conoscere Matteotti?’ [sic]. The elderly man called to his wife, who entered their home and returned with a portrait they had kept hidden for decades, perhaps within a shrine: that of the murdered socialist.

These day-to-day propagandistic uses of Matteotti’s memory during the period 1943 to 1945 are also evident in data produced by Google’s Ngram – a platform that searches a user-defined corpus of books printed between 1500 and 2008 and scanned by Google Books. A search for the frequency of Matteotti’s name in printed material in Italian from 1924 to 2019 shows a sharp increase between 1943 and 1945 – the latter marking the highest point recorded. During Italy’s fight for liberation from Fascism and Nazi occupation, Matteotti’s famous speech denouncing Fascism in parliament on 30 May 1924 was reprinted,⁵⁶ international socialist parties published accounts of his assassination,⁵⁷ and the corrupt trial for his murder in 1926 was the subject of renewed analysis.⁵⁸ Once Italy’s freedom was secure, his name found its first permanent concrete expression in the Italian landscape.

A Unifying Martyr for Democratic Antifascism

By the summer of 1944, there were more than 82,000 people in the Resistance, primarily in Piedmont, Liguria, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, and Lombardy (though this figure does not reflect all forms of resistance, it does give some idea of scale).⁵⁹ In December that year, Resistance fighters secured 160 million lire a month in assistance from Italy’s allied government. In concession, the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), the political organisation representing the Resistance after Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September 1943, promised to obey the Allies upon Italy’s eventual liberation and hand over all local governments currently under Resistance control.⁶⁰ The Protocols of Rome also included an agreement to disband partisan units and hand over arms to the Allies. This was a major political defeat for the Resistance and weakened their negotiating position when Italy’s liberation finally occurred.⁶¹ Despite a harsh winter and high levels of malnutrition, the partisan movement survived and its numbers had risen to 100,000 by April 1945 when the Allies launched their final assault to liberate Italy.⁶² Genova, Turin, and Milan declared a popular insurrection against the Nazis and Fascists between 24–26 April, with Genova’s uprising against the Nazis described by Battaglia as ‘l’insurrezione modello’ in Europe, both militarily and politically.⁶³ On 25 April Mussolini fled to the Swiss border. He was arrested on 27 April and shot by partisans. His body and that of his mistress were strung up in Piazza Loreto, Milan, for all to see.

Forty-six days later, 16,000 people gathered in Pescia, a city in the province of Pistoia, Tuscany, to participate in the unveiling ceremony for the first monument to Matteotti on Italian soil – an event that brought together anti-Fascists from across the political spectrum.⁶⁴ Matteotti had a connection to the city. In October 1920, the PSI had won a majority in the Pescia council and Alberto Sainati, a carpenter, became the town’s mayor, with Arduino Borelli, a barber and member of the PSI, appointed assessor. The new socialist council proposed an income tax to fund community projects – a move the Lucca prefecture rejected. The council thus sought support from the league of Socialist councils and from Matteotti. After Italy’s liberation, Borelli, who had been a partisan during the Resistance, was asked to oversee organisation of the 10 June 1945 commemoration and he made a monument in his hometown a priority. It was designed by Alfredo Angeloni, a sculptor known for his funerary monuments who was nominated to the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1921. The monument to Matteotti included a bronze bust and beneath it the words ‘il più forte, il più degno, il più atrocemente colpito’ – the superlatives making clear his position in the pantheon of anti-Fascist martyrs. Above Matteotti’s head were his mythologised words ‘Uccidete me, ma l’idea che è in me, non la ucciderete mai’, a permanent memorial to anti-Fascist sacrifice for the first time on Italian soil.

Organised on the twenty-first anniversary of Matteotti’s assassination, this event marked the start of bipartisan institutional engagement with Matteotti’s memory in Italian public space. It was significant for the breadth of participation, including representatives of the Communist, Socialist, and Christian Democrat parties, and members of the CLN, many of whom stood on stage alongside the relatives of victims of Mussolini’s Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic, RSI). Attilio Mariotti, socialist and member of the regional CLN, declared: ‘Oggi, dopo ventun’anni di silenzio e di apparente oblio, intorno al nome e al ricordo, Giacomo Matteotti risorge ingigantito nei secoli e grandeggia idealizzato nel suo alone di martirio e di gloria’.⁶⁵

As those in Pescia admired the first monument to Matteotti in Italy, the first free commemoration ceremonies for the murdered deputy were held across the country, honouring Matteotti in the martyrological terms that had immediately been established in 1924 and had been sustained throughout the dictatorship by anti-Fascists abroad. In Rome’s Montecitorio, busts were unveiled of three prominent victims of Fascism – Matteotti, Gramsci, and Amendola – in the presence of many surviving parliamentarians from Matteotti’s party, anti-Fascist groups, and government members.⁶⁶ In Florence, Nenni led a ceremony, in Turin, large crowds listened to Innocenzo Porrone, a lawyer and prominent anti-Fascist,⁶⁷ while in Milan, mayor Greppi led the event which he described as ‘un rito, meglio ancora; un rito religioso’,⁶⁸ highlighting the fusion of secular and religious discourses that characterised Matteotti’s memory (and repeating a phrase first spoken by Turati at his 1924 commemoration for Matteotti). Astonishingly, one of Matteotti’s assassins, Dùmini, accompanied the Allied commanders for whom he worked undercover as a driver to the commemoration ceremony in Piacenza (he operated under a false name while trying to organise his escape from Italy).⁶⁹ Matteotti’s memory was quickly becoming a foundation of Italy’s new democratic institutions, part of the broader canonisation of anti-Fascist martyrs in the Republic.

The largest ceremony took place in Matteotti’s hometown of Fratta Polesine. People came from Polesine, Emilia Romagna, Veneto, Piemonte, and Lombardy by bicycle, foot, coach, and car.⁷⁰ In reverence of democracy itself, some carried Matteotti’s parliamentary portrait (perhaps long hidden inside their homes). The commemorative march began at Matteotti’s family home, which German soldiers had used as an infirmary during the occupation (locals had saved his possessions, which were returned as soon as the Nazi forces had left).⁷¹ Ovidio Rigolin, who had organised Matteotti’s funeral, led the procession, and many participants walked the same route through Fratta to the cemetery that they had in 1924. Each tree along the route bore a banner featuring his name or image; mourners were thus guided through space by markers of Matteotti’s sacrifice along a secular via crucis. When attendees reached the tomb, they saw a group of police officials giving an honour salute, signalling the custody of memory by civic institutions. Among the crowd were members of the Allied forces, including British soldiers who formally saluted Matteotti’s tomb.⁷²

Crowds then moved to the central piazza to hear speeches. These public declarations afforded the Allies a chance to celebrate collaboration between partisans and Allied soldiers, and offered members of the Resistance a public opportunity to pay tribute to the Allies for the role they had played in Italy’s liberation while asserting their role as temporary. In its coverage of the event, The Manchester Guardian described cries of ‘Long live the Allies!’ as General Dunlop, regional commissioner for the Allied Military Government in the Veneto, appeared on a balcony overlooking the piazza alongside Matteotti’s son, Matteo.⁷³ Dunlop gave a short speech in Italian expressing his pleasure at having participated in Italy’s liberation alongside Italian partisans who, he said, would protect Italy’s freedom with dignity. ‘Nuove acclamazioni al nome di Matteotti ed agli alleati’, he said, closing his speech.⁷⁴ Dunlop’s speech thus acknowledged the involvement of partisans and Allies in Italy’s liberation, with Matteotti as a bridge between the two. Moreover, Matteotti’s memory underlined Fascism as the original instigator of violence, and thus clearly differentiated the violence of Fascists and partisans along the lines of morality.⁷⁵

Dunlop’s words were followed by contributions from the local CLN, who recalled Matteotti’s life and work, before paying tribute to the Allies for the role they had played in Italy’s liberation.⁷⁶ At this point, the Allies were actively involved in rebuilding Italian democracy, and representatives took part in commemoration ceremonies across Italy. Matteotti’s memory was expedient because it celebrated the values of democratic anti-Fascism, and not the insurrectionary, revolutionary and armed anti-Fascism of the Resistance. However, for Italian anti-Fascists, these ceremonies were spaces to reassert Italian anti-Fascism through the symbol of Matteotti’s sacrifice and opportunities to negotiate control of Italy’s self-governed future. Speaking in Florence, Nenni implored the Allies to trust in Italy’s latent anti-Fascism, asking that they ‘credano in noi, abbiano fiducia in questa nuova Italia, rallentino i loro controlli, in modo che gli italiani possano fare di questa Italia risorta una grande democrazia’.⁷⁷

The following day, the Corriere d’Informazione documented the ceremony in a description that represented Italians as stoic, silent (and silenced) custodians of Matteotti’s memory during Mussolini’s decades in power:

Ma ben altra luce era quella che ne emanava e guidava le colonne del popolo in una marcia grave e silenziosa. Rimase, non mai spenta, ma velata, nel chiuso degli animi e dei cuori. Adesso finalmente può ardere. Gli italiani traggono alla tomba di Matteotti non più furtivamente, spiati da poliziotti, come accadeva agli stessi famigliari se osavano accostarvisi, ma in folla, in un grande convegno di spiriti memori e grati intorno al grande spirito che per tanto, per troppo tempo, fu simbolo del martirio e della fede.⁷⁸

This image of collective suffering caused by the suppression of Matteotti’s memory in public (though it remained in Italians’ hearts and souls) transposed ideas of suffering and sacrifice onto the Italian people – a narrative furthered by representatives of Italy’s new civic institutions during the construction of the Republic. The image of private reverence celebrated Italians’ daily acts of symbolic resistance to Fascism despite little formal opposition for more than twenty years. For Italian anti-Fascists in attendance, Matteotti’s memory re-nationalised Italy’s liberation story and dated collective suffering (and sacrifice) back to 1924, suggesting Italy’s potential to secure its own freedom had been there all along and that the Italian people had been victims of an oppressive dictatorship. Matteotti’s memory played a significant symbolic role in the shared narrative of international cooperation presented by the two major groups involved in Italy’s post-war reconstruction, symbolising Italians’ suffering at the hands of the regime.

A Nation Built on Sacrifice

On 2 June 1946, Italy held its first free election since the advent of the Fascist regime, asking the electorate to vote for a monarchy or a republic, and to elect deputies to form an Assemblea Costituente (AC) to govern the country and draw up its constitution. Results in favour of the Republic were proclaimed in Italy’s Court of Cassation on the afternoon of 10 June – the anniversary of Matteotti’s kidnapping – tying Italy’s democratic rebirth to his sacrifice. The same connection was drawn that evening when Ferruccio Parri and Pietro Nenni commented on the referendum results at a ceremony marking the twenty-second anniversary of Matteotti’s death: ‘This afternoon’s High Court ceremony was like a funeral. We here are really celebrating our victory’.⁷⁹ On 18 June, the results were validated, and Italy was officially declared a Republic.

On 27 June, in an edition of the weekly newsreel La Settimana Incom, Nenni outlined his vision for Italy, suggesting the proclamation of the new Republic ‘placa finalmente la memoria di Giacomo Matteotti e dei morti sacrificati nella criminale guerra fascista’.⁸⁰ This framing of the new Republic as a means to avenge anti-Fascists’ deaths continued the following year when Piero Calamandrei, who sat on the committee for the new constitution, gave a progress update on the project to the AC on the 4 March 1947. He reminded deputies that the constitution was not the epilogue to a revolution but its prelude, and a way to honour anti-Fascist sacrifice:

Essi sono morti senza retorica, senza grandi frasi, con semplicità, come se si trattasse di un lavoro quotidiano da compiere: il grande lavoro che occorreva per restituire all’Italia libertà e di dignità. Di questo lavoro si sono riservata la parte più dura e più difficile; quella di morire, di testimoniare con la resistenza e la morte la fede nella giustizia. A noi è rimasto un compito cento volte più agevole; quello di tradurre in leggi chiare, stabili e oneste il loro sogno: di una società più giusta e più umana, di una solidarietà di tutti gli uomini, alleati a debellare il dolore.

Assai poco, in verità, chiedono a noi i nostri morti.

Non dobbiamo tradirli.⁸¹

Calamandrei’s words were evidence of the transposition of the religious concepts like sacrifice and renewal at the heart of martyrdom onto the project of the new Republic. Through references to sacrifice, and a commitment to building and protecting a more just society after Fascist violence, he showed that honouring Matteotti’s memory had become a question of democratic duty.⁸²

This was made explicit on the twenty-third anniversary of Matteotti’s murder when the new AC held an official commemoration ceremony in Montecitorio. Standing in the hall where Matteotti had once denounced Mussolini, deputies from various parties in the AC repeatedly linked Matteotti’s memory to Italy’s reconstruction. Christian Democrat Umberto Merlin said Matteotti’s sacrifice was ‘il cemento più solido con il quale il popolo italiano sta ricostruendo […] le fortune immancabili della Patria immortale’.⁸³ Repeating the trope of sacrificial blood and subsequent renewal common to the Catholic martyr paradigm, he twice referred to Matteotti’s ‘sangue generoso’ in his interjection, Giuseppe Canepa of the PSI reflected on the role of blood and pain in ‘la riconquista della libertà e da che nobile sangue è sorta la Repubblica’ the regaining of freedom and from what noble blood the Republic has risen’,⁸⁴ and Rubilli reminded deputies ‘dal sangue di Matteotti […] stava per derivare la salvezza della Patria nostra’.⁸⁵

This link between bloodshed and the patria was reminiscent of Risorgimento-era rhetoric.⁸⁶ Further building on Risorgimento imagery during this period of reconstruction, Matteotti was frequently described as a ‘martyr for liberty’ – a term with significant historical, political, and patriotic meaning. Balzani has shown that the term ‘martyr for liberty’ emerged in Italy as a successor to the honorific ‘fallen for the patria’ used during the wars of the 1820s as individuals gave their lives for the future nation (or at least were commemorated as having done so).⁸⁷ With the Wars of Independence in 1848 and the subsequent introduction of recognition systems for the dead including medals and military honours, the fallen were officially contextualised within a broader tradition of patriotic sacrifice, and the label ‘martyr for liberty’ was retrospectively applied.⁸⁸ After the Second World War, this term reappeared when the vocabulary of hagiography was employed to commemorate fallen partisans, victims of Nazi occupation, or, as in the case of Matteotti, prominent anti-Fascists. The label was also applied to collective deaths like those of the fifteen Resistance fighters whose corpses were displayed in Piazzale Loreto in 1944 or on the memorial to the Fosse Ardeatine victims built in 1949.⁸⁹

Forlenza and Thomassen have demonstrated the ways Risorgimento-era notions of suffering and regeneration were resurrected after the Resistance and ‘provided the triumphant anti-fascist with the lexicon and symbology for the task at hand’ by representing Resistance as a ‘second Risorgimento’ that could provide the ‘ideological foundation of post-fascist democracy’.⁹⁰ A means to underline the patriotic aspects of the partisan fight, Cooke has termed the post-war framing of the Resistance as a second Risorgimento a ‘never-ending rhetorical topos’.⁹¹ Crucially, this rhetoric was also a means of ‘rekindling the Risorgimento’s anti-Germanic tradition’,⁹² and it positioned Nazi occupiers rather than Italian Fascists as the common enemy through the image of a fight against a foreign oppressor. Matteotti’s description as a ‘martyr for liberty’ was therefore part of a broader narrative of regeneration that underlined the process of rebirth after sacrifice that lies at the heart of the martyrological narrative. His bloodshed was framed as an act of patriotic sacrifice that Italians were to honour through the construction of the new Republic, as those who died during the Risorgimento wars were honoured through the new nation.

Despite the framing of Matteotti as a patriotic martyr for liberty by representatives of Italy’s new civic institutions, the emerging Cold War context saw some socialists attempt to reclaim Matteotti’s memory as a symbol of their socialist tradition, foregrounding his ideological commitment. Following the split in the PSIUP at the twenty-fifth congress of the socialist party, the so-called Scissione di Palazzo Barberini, in January 1947, Saragat, who had been president of the AC, resigned, as did Nenni, who had been minister for foreign affairs since October 1946.⁹³ Concerned that some members of the PSIUP were too close to communism, the split saw Saragat create the Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (PSLI), and the PSIUP return to its original name (PSI). This split in the left led to competing claims to Matteotti’s memory as parties sought to demonstrate their socialist heritage, prompting Alfonso Rubilli of the Partito Liberale Italiano to remind deputies on the twenty-third anniversary of Matteotti’s kidnapping that his memory ‘non appartiene ad un partito soltanto; appartiene a tutti i partiti, appartiene alla storia, appartiene all’umanità’.⁹⁴ Speaking in Montecitorio on the anniversary, Gaetano Sardiello of the Partito Repubblicano Italiano stated ‘non è più vostro soltanto, o amici socialisti, non è nostro e non è di quella parte o di un’altra: e dell’Italia, è della conquista della civiltà e della libertà del mondo’.⁹⁵ Despite these reminders of Matteotti’s universalism, election posters produced by Saragat’s PSLI for the Roman administrative elections of October 1947 centred Matteotti’s parliamentary portrait and invited the electorate to cast their votes for Matteotti by voting for the PSLI, underlining the new party’s socialist and reformist heritage.⁹⁶

Conclusion

The 1950s consolidated Matteotti’s position as the martyr for institutional anti-Fascism. Memorials were unveiled throughout this decade, some of which were incorporated into civic buildings, cementing the link between Matteotti’s memory and the new democratic institutions of government. The plaque on the exterior of Palazzo Pretorio, a civic office building in Pietrasanta, Lucca, unveiled in Piazza Matteotti in 1955 is one such example. The decade also saw renewed interest in those who had been involved in the crime or the trial. This included the lead assassin, Amerigo Dùmini, who published the first edition of his memoirs in 1951, Cesare Rossi’s 1952 account of the crime, and in 1954, Mauro Del Giudice, who had led the initial investigation of the murder, released his account of the trial.⁹⁷ By the thirtieth anniversary of Matteotti’s murder in 1954, Matteotti’s final declaration – that mythologised statement of anti-Fascist commitment – was so pervasive that in the French edition of his memoirs published in 1973, Dùmini, reflected on the place of Matteotti’s words in the collective imaginary. Describing their inclusion in the hundreds of thousands of posters that adorned the walls of Italian cities in June 1954 on the thirtieth anniversary of Matteotti’s death, he stated that these words were the fruit of journalistic speculation and not a reflection of reality. ‘Heureusement on s’est borné à cette phrase, parce qu’on aurait pu aussi lui faire crier: “Vive le socialisme !” et chanter l’hymne des travailleurs’, [‘Fortunately it was merely this phrase, because we could also have made him shout: “Long live socialism” and sing the hymn of the workers’] Dùmini quipped.⁹⁸

Matteotti’s memory remained a symbol of the democratic foundations upon which the new Republic had been built, and, against a backdrop of emerging Cold War tensions, government institutions celebrated him as a defender of parliamentary, reformist socialism. In 1964, commemorative events were held across the country to mark the fortieth anniversary of his death. In Matteotti’s hometown of Fratta Polesine, Mauro Ferri, a member of the PSI, addressed mourners by Matteotti’s tomb and reminded them that he had been a symbol of anti-Fascist resistance across Europe throughout the ventennio, underlining the importance of international unity in the anti-Fascist fight.⁹⁹ In Montecitorio in Rome, acting president Cesare Merzagora said it was important to remember the ethical and civic meaning of Matteotti’s death in the name of democracy.¹⁰⁰ Speaking at a ceremony at the site of Matteotti’s kidnap, Saragat welcomed this celebration of Matteotti’s identity as a reformist socialist, which he said was a sign of the evolving perception of socialism as distinct from Communism.¹⁰¹ However, the changing relationship between the Italian state and memory of the Resistance, which gained increasing traction in narratives of national identity during the 1960s, affected institutional engagement with Matteotti’s memory. The 1960s saw insurrectionary anti-Fascism incorporated into national memory through monument-building, national celebrations, and commemorations of popular insurrection.¹⁰² This decrease in state sponsorship of Matteotti’s memory paved the way for the subsequent reclaiming of memory by socialist groups in the 1970s at a time when political assassination again became a feature of Italian public life, as it had been at the time of Matteotti’s death.

This article has demonstrated that the uses of Matteotti’s memory have evolved in the almost 100 years since his death. State representatives and institutions have upheld Matteotti as a national martyr by organising official commemorative initiatives and constructing physical monuments. Such national martyrs are typically constructed after a period of social or political upheaval not only because social or political upheaval often leads to death, but because national martyrs like Matteotti uphold the state by celebrating the values of liberty and democracy that underpin it. This function is particularly important after conflict within the nation, which destabilises unity, and during the nation’s subsequent reconstruction. If nations are to be thought of as ‘social fictions’, as John Dickie asserts, building on Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities,¹⁰³ a nation’s martyr stories are among the narratives that help to build unity after division.

Matteotti’s memory was politically expedient as Italy reconstructed its democratic foundations. It appealed to Italian anti-Fascists, who sought to emphasise the role of the Resistance in Italy’s liberation, and to the Allies, who supported the celebration of a democratic reformist (rather than revolutionary) figure, opening up a shared symbolic space. During the construction of the Republic, representatives of the new anti-Fascist state presented the Republic as a means to honour anti-Fascist sacrifice through this democratic rebirth, and underlined Italians’ private reverence of Matteotti’s memory in the face of the regime’s repressive measures to ban commemoration. This recurring narrative and imagery positioned Italians as silenced custodians of Matteotti’s memory unable to publicly express their anti-Fascism for fear of violent reprisal and transposed the martyr’s experience of suffering and sacrifice onto the collective, suggesting the Italian nation had retained the moral courage to honour its anti-Fascist commitment in these daily acts of private resistance against a repressive regime.

Acknowledgments

This article is based on my doctoral research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the South, West and Wales Doctoral Partnership. I am grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of this article for the depth and generosity of their feedback, which has helped me to improve this work. Thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues, Darius Wainwright and Lorenzo Costaguta, for commenting on a draft.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ ‘Nessuno dei figli di Matteotti ha partecipato all’esecuzione di Mussolini’, Corriere della Sera, 13 September 1945, p. 1.

² Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 169.

³ Claudio Pavone, A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance, trans. by Peter Levy (London: Verso, 2013), p. 11.

⁴ Lucy Riall, ‘Martyr Cults in Nineteenth-Century Italy’, Journal of Modern History, 82.2 (2010), 255–87; Roberto Mancini, Il martire necessario: guerra e sacrificio nell’Italia contemporanea (Ospedaletto, Pisa: Pacini editore, 2015).

⁵ Oliver Janz, ‘Lutto, famiglia e nazione nel culto dei caduti della prima guerra mondiale in Italia’, in La morte per la patria: la celebrazione dei caduti dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica, ed. by Lutz Klinkhammer, Roberto Balzani, and Oliver Janz (Rome: Donzelli, 2008), pp. 65–99.

⁶ Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, ‘Of Storytellers and Master Narratives: Modernity, Memory, and History in Fascist Italy’, Social Science History, 22.4 (1998), 415–44; Amy King, ‘The Battle for Influence: Commemoration of Transnational Martyrs in the Italian Diaspora of the U.S. under Fascism’, Memory Studies, 2021 <https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020988774>; Hannah Malone, ‘The Fallen Soldier as Fascist Exemplar: Military Cemeteries and Dead Heroes in Mussolini’s Italy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64.1 (2022), 34–62; Alessandra Staderini, ‘La “Marcia Dei Martiri”: la traslazione nella cripta di Santa Croce dei caduti fascisti’, Annali Di Storia Di Firenze, 3 (2008), 195–214; Roberta Suzzi Valli, ‘Il culto dei martiri fascisti’, in La morte per la patria, pp. 101–07.

⁷ Gian Enrico Rusconi, Patria e repubblica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).

⁸ Guido Bartolini, The Italian Literature of the Axis War: Memories of Self-Absolution and the Quest for Responsibility (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

⁹ Stephen Gundle, ‘The “Civic Religion” of the Resistance in Post-War Italy’, Modern Italy, 5.2 (2000), 113–32; Guri Schwarz, Tu mi devi seppellir: riti funebri e culto nazionale alle origini della Repubblica (Turin: UTET libreria, 2010).

¹⁰ Mauro Canali, ‘The Matteotti Murder and the Origins of Mussolini’s Totalitarian Fascist Regime in Italy’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 14.2 (2009), 143–67 (p. 148).

¹¹ Alexander J. De Grand, The Italian Left in the Twentieth Century: A History of the Socialist and Communist Parties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 51.

¹² Shortly after his assassination, the Partito Socialista Unitario published a collection of Matteotti’s journalism. The book sold 25,000 copies in a few days. See: Giacomo Matteotti, Il fascismo della prima ora (Rome: Tipografica Italiana, 1924).

¹³ Giacomo Matteotti, Un anno di dominazione fascista (Rome: Ufficio stampa del Partito Socialista Unitario, 1924).

¹⁴ Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), p. 76.

¹⁵ On the murder, investigation, and trial, see Claudio Fracassi, Matteotti e Mussolini: 1924: Il delitto del Lungotevere (Milan: Mursia, 2004); Giuseppe Rossini, Il delitto Matteotti tra il Viminale e l’Aventino (Bologna: Il mulino, 1966). For the motive behind Matteotti’s murder, see: Mauro Canali, Il delitto Matteotti: affarismo e politica nel primo governo Mussolini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).

¹⁶ ‘Matteotti Crime’, The Times, 18 June 1924, p. 16.

¹⁷ ‘The Saviour of Italy’, Daily Mail, 20 June 1924, p. 8.

¹⁸ For more on the regime’s response, see Giovanni Borgognone, Come nasce una dittatura: l’Italia del delitto Matteotti (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2013).

¹⁹ Stefano Caretti, Matteotti. Il mito (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editori, 1994), pp. 161–62.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ ‘Garofani rossi al Martire’, Avanti!, 17 June 1924, p. 1.

²² Caretti, pp. 43–44.

²³ London, The Women’s Library, London School of Economics and Political Science, Richard Pankhurst, ‘An Early Anti-Fascist Organisation: The Women’s International Matteotti Committee’ (c.2000) (Unpublished typescript), p. 45.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Caretti, p. 163; Valentino Zaghi, Giacomo Matteotti (Sommacampagna: Cierre, 2001).

²⁶ ‘Unwanted Wreath’, Edinburgh Evening News, 13 December 1924, p. 11.

²⁷ Caretti, p. 226.

²⁸ Giuseppe Scalarini, ‘I nostri martiri’, Avanti!, 6 July 1924, p. 3.

²⁹ For more on the charismatic power of his body, see Sergio Luzzatto, The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini’s Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy, trans. by Frederika Randall (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), p. 7.

³⁰ ‘Le giornate di passione del giugno-agosto 1924’, Almanacco Socialista Italo-Americano 1925, 1925, pp. 22–25 (p. 24).

³¹ ‘Filippo Turati: la commemorazione di Giacomo Matteotti del 27 giugno 1924’, Tempo Presente, April 2014, pp. 31–36 (p. 32).

³² Filippo Turati and Anna Kuliscioff, La tragedia di Giacomo Matteotti nelle lettere scambiatesi fra l’11 e il 27 giugno 1924 (Forlì: Editrice Socialista Romagnola, 1945), p. 22.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ ‘L’eroismo di Matteotti nella confessione del Volpi’, L’Unità, 16 June 1924, p. 1.

³⁵ ‘L’eroica resistenza di Matteotti’, Il Mondo, 17 June 1924, p. 1.

³⁶ Parla l’opposizione: la battaglia parlamentare dell’opposizione (Bologna: A. Forni, 1976), p. 61.

³⁷ Michaela DeSoucey and others, ‘Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom’, Cultural Sociology, 2.1 (2008), 99–121 (p. 102).

³⁸ Amy King, ‘Italy’s Secular Martyrs: The Construction, Role and Maintenance of Secular Martyrdom in Italy from the Twentieth Century to the Present Day’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Bristol, 2019), pp. 154–81 <https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/6c811f79-7e86-46c8-827a-ae388d63d772> [accessed 31 March 2023].

³⁹ New York University, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labour Archives, Girolamo Valenti Papers, Velia Matteotti, ‘Letter to Girolamo Valenti’, 23 June 1925.

⁴⁰ University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center Archives, Fred Celli Papers, Box 1, Matteotti postcard sent from Paris to New York in 1924.

⁴¹ Roberto Battaglia, Storia della Resistenza italiana: 8 settembre 1943–25 aprile 1945 (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1964), pp. 59–60.

⁴² ‘Giornata di entusiasmo patriottico’, Corriere Della Sera, 27 July 1943, p. 2.

⁴³ Caretti, p. 72.

⁴⁴ ‘Giornata di entusiasmo patriottico’.

⁴⁵ ‘Avvenimenti della settimana’, L’Osservatore Romano, 18 June 1944, p. 3.

⁴⁶ John Foot, Italy’s Divided Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 63.

⁴⁷ ‘Strikers Call for Peace’, Daily Mail, 19 August 1943, p. 4.

⁴⁸ Pavone, A Civil War, p. 223.

⁴⁹ Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia, ‘Matteotti’, ANPI <https://www.anpi.it/libri/matteotti> [accessed 20 February 2023].

⁵⁰ Documenti dei socialisti bolognesi sulla Resistenza: i diari delle 3 Brigate Matteotti, ed. by Nazario Sauro Onofri, La Resistenza in Emilia-Romagna, 3 (Bologna: La squilla, 1975), p. 230.

⁵¹ Onofri, p. 223.

⁵² ‘Matteotti Left an Army’, Daily Herald, 17 July 1944, p. 4.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Charles Morgan, ‘Soldiers’ Verses’, The Sunday Times, 9 December 1945, p. 3.

⁵⁵ Diana McCurdy, ‘The Italian Files’, Dominion Post, 13 September 2003, p. 17.

⁵⁶ Giacomo Matteotti, Ultimo discorso di G. Matteotti (tenuto alla Camera dei deputati nella seduta del 30 maggio 1924) (Padua: Guerrini, 1943).

⁵⁷ Uno di allora, L’assassinio di Giacomo Matteotti (Zurich: Partito socialista svizzero, 1943).

⁵⁸ Michele Parise, Il processo Matteotti (Naples: Masula, 1943).

⁵⁹ Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 48.

⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 57.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 55.

⁶² Ibid., p. 65.

⁶³ Battaglia, Storia della Resistenza italiana, pp. 539–40.

⁶⁴ Quelli con Pescia nel Cuore, ‘Presentazione del restauro del monumento a Giacomo Matteotti’ (2012) <https://www.quelliconpescianelcuore.it/2012/12/22/restauro-del-monumento-a-giacomo-matteotti/> [accessed 22 February 2023].

⁶⁵ Quelli con Pescia nel Cuore, p. 3.

⁶⁶ ‘Lo scoprimento dei busti di Matteotti, Gramsci e Amendola’, Corriere d’Informazione, 12 June 1945, p. 1.

⁶⁷ ‘Le celebrazioni nelle varie città’, Corriere d’Informazione, 11 June 1945, p. 1.

⁶⁸ ‘Matteotti commemorato dal sindaco Greppi’, Corriere d’Informazione, 11 June 1945, p. 2.

⁶⁹ Amerigo Dùmini, Diciassette colpi (Milan: Longanesi, 1951), p. 249.

⁷⁰ ‘Commosso pellegrinaggio alla tomba di Giacomo Matteotti’, Corriere d’Informazione, 11 June 1945, p. 1.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 2.

⁷² ‘21st Anniversary of Murder of Matteotti: Celebrations in His Own Village’, The Manchester Guardian, 13 June 1945, p. 8.

⁷³ ‘21st Anniversary of Murder of Matteotti’, p. 8.

⁷⁴ ‘Commosso pellegrinaggio alla tomba di Giacomo Matteotti’, p. 2.

⁷⁵ For more on conceptions of violence, see Claudio Pavone, ‘Violence’, in A Civil War, pp. 495–613.

⁷⁶ ‘21st Anniversary of Murder of Matteotti’.

⁷⁷ ‘Il discorso di Nenni a Firenze’, Avanti!, 11 June 1945, p. 1.

⁷⁸ ‘Commosso pellegrinaggio alla tomba di Giacomo Matteotti’, p.2.

⁷⁹ ‘The Birth of the Republic’, The Manchester Guardian, 11 June 1946, p. 5.

⁸⁰ Archivio Storico Luce, La repubblica nelle dichiarazioni di De Gasperi, Sforza, Nenni, Giannini e Orlando, La Settimana Incom, vol. 2554, XVI (Cinecittà, 1946), <http://camera.archivioluce.com/camera-storico/scheda/video/i_tempi_della_politica/00044/IL5000008859/2/La-repubblica-nelle-dichiarazioni-di-De-Gasperi-Sforza-Nenni-Giannini-e-Orlando-27-06-1946.html> [accessed 23 February 2023].

⁸¹ Assemblea Costituente, Seduta di martedì 4 marzo 1947 (Montecitorio, Rome, 1947), 1723–55 (p. 1755) <http://www.camera.it/_dati/Costituente/Lavori/Assemblea/sed049/sed049.pdf> [accessed 23 February 2023].

⁸² This elaborate oratorical style was typical of speeches relating to the Republic. Cooke has identified the ‘common language, a kind of Resistance koiné’ in the years after Italy’s liberation, of which ‘Calamandrei was […] the master practitioner’. See Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 42.

⁸³ Assemblea Costituente, Seduta pomeridiana di martedì 10 giungo 1947 (Montecitorio, Rome, 1947), 4599–40 (p. 4603) <http://www.camera.it/_dati/Costituente/Lavori/Assemblea/sed056/sed056.pdf> [accessed 23 February 2023].

⁸⁴ Ibid., p. 4601.

⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 4604.

⁸⁶ Riall, p. 255.

⁸⁷ Roberto Balzani, ‘Alla ricerca della morte “utile”. Il sacrificio patriottico nel Risorgimento’, in La morte per la patria, pp. 3–21 (p. 9).

⁸⁸ Ibid., p. 18.

⁸⁹ ‘10 agosto 1944, Una data segnata col sangue di quindici martiri per la libertà’, Corriere della Sera, 11 August 1946, p. 2.

⁹⁰ Rosario Forlenza and Bjørn Thomassen, Italian Modernities: Competing Narratives of Nationhood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 180.

⁹¹ Philip Cooke, ‘La resistenza come secondo risorgimento – un topos retorico senza fine?’ Passato e presente: rivista di storia contemporanea, 86 (2012), 62–81.

⁹² Rosario Forlenza, ‘Democracy and the Power of Memory’, in On the Edge of Democracy: Italy, 1943–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 139–77 (p. 144).

⁹³ Francesca Biondi, ‘Pietro Nenni e la nascita della repubblica italiana’, Revista Europea de Historia de Las Ideas Políticas y de las Instituciones Públicas, 6 (2013), 79–84.

⁹⁴ Seduta pomeridiana di martedì 10 giungo 1947, p. 4603.

⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 4607.

⁹⁶ Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labour Archives, Radicalism Photograph Collection, Box 6, Folder 296, Vota Matteotti, 1947.

⁹⁷ Dùmini, Diciassette Colpi; Cesare Rossi, Il tribunale speciale: storia documentata (Milan: Ceschina, 1952); Mauro del Giudice, Cronistoria del processo Matteotti (Paris: Lo Monaco, 1954).

⁹⁸ Amerigo Dùmini, Matteotti: ‘coups et blessures ayant entraîné la mort’ (Paris: Julliard, 1973), p. 121.

⁹⁹ ‘Giornata socialista in tutta Italia’, Avanti!, 9 June 1964, p. 1.

¹⁰⁰ ‘Matteotti ricordato al Parlamento per la cui libertà diede la vita’, La Stampa, 11 June 1964, p. 1.

¹⁰¹ Vittorio Statera, ‘Il sacrificio di Matteotti ricordato ieri da Saragat a Roma’, La Stampa, 15 June 1964, p. 7.

¹⁰² Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance, p. 94.

¹⁰³ John Dickie, ‘Imagined Italies’, in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, ed. by David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 19–33; Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso, 2006).