Carlo Francovich (16 June 1910 - 25 December 1990) was an Italian politician, partisan and literary historian.

Life

He was born in

Fiume Rijeka (; Fiume ( �fjuːme in Italian and in Fiuman Venetian) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and in 2021 had a po ...

Gorizia Gorizia (; ; , ; ; ) is a town and (municipality) in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, Region ...

, though after the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

his family moved to

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, where he attended secondary school. He graduated in literature from the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The f ...

in 1934 alongside Guido Mazzoni and the following year began teaching in state schools. In the meantime he joined the liberal-socialist movement and was one of the founder members of the

Partito d'Azione The Action Party (, PdA) was a liberal-socialist political party in Italy. The party was anti-fascist and republican. Its prominent leaders were Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Emilio Lussu and Ugo La Malfa. Other prominent members included L ...

(PdA). In February 1942 he, Tristano Codignola,

Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (18 March 1910 – 3 August 1987) was an Italian art critic, historian, philosopher of art and politician. Life Born in Lucca, Ragghianti studied in Pisa, where he was a pupil of Matteo Marangoni. His education was inf ...

and Raffaello Ramat were arrested in Florence, but then took an active part in the

Italian Resistance The Italian Resistance ( ), or simply ''La'' , consisted of all the Italy, Italian Resistance during World War II, resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social Republic ...

in the PdA's 'brigate Giustizia e Libertà' until Florence's liberation in August 1944. He left the PdA in 1947 but maintained his liberal-socialist position and joined the 'Unità popolare' movement which eventually merged with the

Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a Social democracy, social democratic and Democratic socialism, democratic socialist political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parti ...

in 1956. After obtaining a free teaching post in

Risorgimento The unification of Italy ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (; ), was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of ...

history, from 1954 to 1965 he was head of the "history of Afro-Asiatic countries" at the

University of Siena The University of Siena (, abbreviation: UNISI), located in Siena, Tuscany, holds the distinction of being Italy's first publicly funded university as well as one of the oldest, originally established as ''Studium Senese'' in 1240. As of 2022, it ...

, then of Risorgimento history at the Faculty of Education of the University of Florence from 1965 until retirement. In 1953 he also became the director of the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana, then its president from 1975 to 1990, the year of his death, an institute modelled on the Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, created in

Ferruccio Parri Ferruccio Parri (; 19 January 1890 – 8 December 1981) was an Italian partisan and anti-fascist politician who served as the 29th Prime Minister of Italy, and the first to be appointed after the end of World War II. During the war, he was also ...

by 1949 and based in Milan, with Francovich as its vice-president. He died in Florence. His son was the noted medieval archaeologist

Riccardo Francovich Riccardo Francovich (Florence, Italy, 10 June 1946 – Fiesole, Italy, 30 March 2007) was a pioneering Italian archaeologist and expert on medieval Italy. The son of Carlo Francovich, Francovich was a professor of medieval archaeology first ...

, who also taught in Florence and Siena, whilst Carlo's wife Nicoletta Francovich Onesti (1943–2014) taught German

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

at Siena.

Personal library and archive

The Biblioteca di Scienze sociali at the University of Florence has a ''Fondo Carlo Francovich'', made up of a collection of books, reviews, comprendente una raccolta di libri, riviste, pamphlets and other material on the Napoleonic era, secret societies and the Risorgimento. Random discoveries among the Fondo's books and later systematic examination as the discovered pages and books were catalogued, led to the formation of a collection, containing (for example) Francovich's private correspondence with scholars on issues and topics centred around Freemasonry and secret societies in the 18th and 19th centuries, various notes, editorial publicity material, invitations and letters of thanks from publishers. He also donated another archive on the Italian Resistance and his studies of that period to the Istituto Storico Toscano della Resistenza e dell'Età contemporanea.

Other writings

* ''Fonte lucente. Antologia italiana per la scuola media'' (with W. Ramat Pieroni), F. Perrella, Roma, 1949. * ''

Filippo Buonarroti Filippo Buonarroti (18 November 1661 in Florence – 10 December 1733 in Florence), the great-grandnephew of Michelangelo Buonarroti, was an Italian official at the court of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany and an antiquarian, whose Etruscan ...

e la società dei "Veri Italiani"'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1951. * ''La "marsigliese" degli italiani'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1952. * ''La rivoluzione americana e il progetto di costituzione del granduca

Pietro Leopoldo Leopold II (Peter Leopold Josef Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard; 5 May 1747 – 1 March 1792) was the penultimate Holy Roman Emperor, as well as King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria from 1790 to 1792, and Grand Duke of Tusca ...

'', Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Roma, 1954. * ''La stampa a Firenze dall'armistizio alla liberazione'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1956. * ''Funzioni e scopi dell'Istituto storico della Resistenza'', ISR, Firenze, 1958. * ''La Resistenza a Firenze'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1961. * ''Un caso ancora controverso: chi uccise

Giovanni Gentile Giovanni Gentile ( , ; 30 May 1875 – 15 April 1944) was an Italian pedagogue, philosopher, and politician. He, alongside Benedetto Croce, was one of the major exponents of Italian idealism in Italian philosophy, and also devised his own sys ...

?'', ISR, Firenze, 1961. * ''Dalla marcia su Roma alle leggi eccezionali: corso di 6 lezioni sulla storia italiana degli ultimi 30 anni'', Cooptip, Modena, 1961. * ''L'azione rivoluzionaria risorgimentale e i movimenti delle nazionalità in Europa prima del 1848'', Marzorati, Milano, 1962. * ''Albori socialisti nel Risorgimento. Contributo allo studio delle società segrete (1776-1835)'', Le Monnier, Firenze, 1962. * ''La Resistenza in Toscana'', Unione Regionale delle Provincie Toscane, Firenze, 1962. * ''Le società segrete in Toscana dalla Massoneria alla

Giovane Italia Young Italy (, ) was an Italian political movement founded in 1831 by Giuseppe Mazzini. A few months after leaving Italy, in June 1831, Mazzini wrote a letter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, in which he asked him to unite Italy and lead the ...

'', Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 1964. * ''La resistenza e il console tedesco: Firenze 1943-1944'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1967. * ''I giorni della libertà: l'aprile del '45'' (with L. Di Benedetto), La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1969. * ''La Lombardia nel 1848'' (with A. Piccioni), La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1970. * ''L'insorgenza nazionale nell'Impero napoleonico'', Giardini, Pisa, 1981. * ''L' illuminismo lombardo e la massoneria'', Il Mulino, Bologna, 1982. * ''

Garibaldi Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as (). In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as () or (). 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, revolutionary and republican. H ...

in Toscana tra il 1847 ed il 1949'', Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 1984. * ''Il movimento filoellenico in Italia e in Europa'', Leo S. Olschki, Firenze, 1987. * ''Storia della Massoneria in Italia, dalle origini alla Rivoluzione francese'', La Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1989, Nuova ed.: Milano, Ghibli, 2013 ISBN 9788868010744. * ''Istituzioni e ideologia in Italia e in Germania tra le rivoluzioni'', Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997.

Note

Bibliography

Zeffiro Ciuffoletti Zefiro or Zeffiro may refer to: *Zefiro (rocket stage), a solid-fuel motor for the European Space Agency Vega rocket *Zefiro (train), a family of high-speed passenger trains designed by Bombardier Transportation *Carlos Zéfiro (1921–1992), Braz ...

, "Carlo Francovich e la storia come impegno civile e come passione di ricerca", ''Archivio Storico Italiano'', Vol. 149, No. 4 (550) (October–December 1991) pp. 971–975. * Giorgio Vaccarino, "Carlo Francovich 1910-1990", ''Italia Contemporanea'', 182 (1991) pp. 177–179.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Francovich, Carlo Book and manuscript collectors 1910 births 1990 deaths Italian literary historians University of Florence alumni Academic staff of the University of Florence Academic staff of the University of Siena Italian anti-fascists Italian partisans Members of Giustizia e Libertà Freemasonry in Italy People from Rijeka People from Gorizia