ABSTRACT
Vincenzo Gioberti reconciled Italy's political independence with its spiritual mission by envisioning a loose confederation of existing states under the pope's presidency. His unification model consisted of an economic union with consultative institutions open to moderate reform. Gioberti studied theology at the University of Turin and earned a doctorate there on January 9, 1823. Gioberti's youthful flirtation with Mazzini's ideas ended with the taming of the Mazzinian mission for Italy. Italians indeed had a special "mission" Gioberti argued in his extremely influential On the Civil and Moral Primacy of the Italians—the spiritual leadership of the Catholic world. Gioberti became less moderate as he got older. Already in the mid-1840s he had bitterly attacked the Jesuits, who opposed his neo-Guelphism, in several tracts. Although welcoming Gioberti's role in gaining respectability for the independence movement, Piedmontese moderates had no faith in the papacy's ability to reform itself or to lead the independence movement.
