CRISPOLTI, FILIPPO

Journalist and senator; b. Rieti, Italy, May 25, 1857;d. Rome, March 2, 1942. Crispolti was copy editor of the Corriere nazionale of Turin as a young man, and subsequently (1886) of the osservatore romano, edited by his uncle Cesare Crispolti, for whom he sometimes substituted. In 1887 he began to contribute to the Cittadino of Genoa under the pseudonym "Fuscolino"; in 1896 he left the Osservatore Romano, and at Bologna founded Avvenire, later Avvenire d'Italia. In 1919 he returned to Cittadino as political editor and remained there until 1924. From 1927 to 1930 he was co-editor of Momento at Turin and continued to contribute to Corriere d'Italia and to the weekly Pro familia, for which he wrote for 40 years. Crispolti wrote numerous articles for other Catholic dailies and magazines and published books of poetry, novels, lives of saints, literary studies (especially on Manzoni), polemics, and memoirs.

Crispolti was among the earliest members of the Italian Catholic movement, participating in all the congresses and serving as chairman for several of them. He was communal counselor at Rome and Turin, and in 1919 was elected deputy by the Italian Popular Party (the first political party of Italian Catholics). He was elected senator in 1922. He was extremely loyal to the Holy See and was a member of the Noble Pontifical Guard. Crispolti directed all his public activity so as to provide liaison between the papal aristocracy and the middle class of the risorgimento, keeping a certain aloofness toward the more popular elements in the Catholic movement, both social and political. In 1924, during the most severe clash between popularism and fascism, when many thought the Holy See wished to see the end of the Catholic political movement, Crispolti promulgated a manifesto against the Popularists that they considered a betrayal. Among his published works—besides the Manzoni studies—the following deserve to be remembered: Il laicato cattolico italiano (Rome 1890), Questioni vitali (Rome 1908), Il rinnovamento dell'educazione (Rome 1919), Ricordi personali: Pio IX, Leone XIII, Pio X, Benedetto XV (Milan, Rome 1932), and Corone e porpore (Milan 1936).

Bibliography: e. a. martire, Filippo Crispolti: Note biografiche (Milan 1943). a. giannini, Tre cattolici (Milan 1943).

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