California Italian Studies

In October 1867, Giuseppe Garibaldi and his revolutionary forces attacked the city of Rome. As Garibaldi advanced on the city, a small group of Romans organized a simultaneous uprising in Trastevere but were brutally crushed by the Papal Zouaves. One of the most remembered casualties of this day was Giuditta Tavani Arquati (1830–67), who was killed fighting alongside her husband and child. For many left-wing Italians, Tavani Arquati served as a powerful model of female emancipation and anti-Catholic patriotism in the new nation. Following a brief overview of the connections between nationalism, anti-Catholicism, and women’s emancipation in mid-nineteenth-century Italy, this article examines the various novels, histories, memorials, and processions that drew upon Tavani Arquati’s legacy from the moment of her death until the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the conquest of Rome in 1895. In doing so, it highlights an often-understudied figure and offers a gendered analysis of anti-Catholic rhetoric. In opposition to the widespread belief that women supported the Catholic Church while men fought for a secular public sphere, Tavani Arquati is a notable example of a woman who fiercely combatted the church and its control over Italian society. The celebrations of Tavani Arquati thus challenge this binary of male secularism and female religiosity and demonstrate how many Italians believed that women, and mothers in particular, could be allies in the battle against the Catholic Church. They also illustrate the intersections of the feminist and anti-Catholic movements, revealing how each group wielded an ideology of motherhood to promote political agendas.