Enrico Bignami was an Italian merchant, and the editor of La Plebe, a socialist newspaper. Enrico Bignami was born in Lodi, Lombardy, on 3 December 1844. He came from a poor family. In 1866 and 1867 he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi. He founded ''La Plebe'' in Lodi in 1868 to promote

Giuseppe Mazzini Giuseppe Mazzini (, , ; 22 June 1805 – 10 March 1872) was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy (Risorgimento) and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the in ...

's ideas, financing the paper from his import business. The first issue appeared on 4 July 1868. At first it was published bi-weekly, although during the following years it appeared more or less frequently. The paper would last until 1883, despite seizures of issues and several arrests of the editor. It gave continuity from the left wing of the ''

Risorgimento The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

'' to the post-unification labor movement and the later elaboration of socialist ideology in northern Italy. Until the early 1870s ''La Plebe'' took a mainstream democratic position. However ''La Plebe'' was critical of the institutions ruling the new state of Italy, which it saw as opposed to the ideals of the ''Risorgimento''. Bignami became enthusiastic about the 1871

Paris Commune The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended ...

, and from then the paper took a socialist line. Bignami moved to Milan in 1875, taking the paper with him. He helped to found a number of worker's leagues in the years that followed, and in 1876 was one of the founders of the North Italy Federation of the International. He became a close friend of Osvaldo Gnocchi-Viani. At several times, particularly in 1879-80, he tried to organize a congress at which all left-wing democratic and socialist movements would be united, but he did not succeed. ''La Plebe'' played a central role in the formation of the Italian Workers Party (POI) in Milan in 1882. ''La Plebe'' stopped publication in 1883. In the late 1880s Bignami was a promoter of establishing the Milan Chamber of Labor. He founded the socialist publishing house ''Biblioteca socialista'' in 1895. In 1898 he moved to

Lugano Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...

in Switzerland to avoid being arrested. From 1906 to 1918 he edited ''Coenobium'' (Common Life). Bignami died in

on 13 October 1921. He was Grand Master of the regular

Scottish Rite The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction in the United States often omits the ''and'', while the English Constitution in the United Kingdom omits the ''Scottish''), commonly known as simply the S ...

Masonic Lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

"Lincoln" of Lodi, affiliated to the Grand Orient of Italy.

References

Citations Sources * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bignami, Enrico 1844 births 1921 deaths Italian newspaper editors Italian male journalists People from Lugano