Adriano Lemmi

Adriano Lemmi (30 April 1822 – 23 May 1906) was an Italian revolutionary and financier, known as "the banker of the revolution" because of his connections with Mazzini, Garibaldi and the Hungarian Kossuth. Active in anti-clerical and Masonic circles in Europe and the United States, Lemmi was Grand Master of the GOI.

Biography

Adriano Lemmi was born in Livorno, the son of Fortunato Lemmi and Teresa Merlini. He was an Italian revolutionist and politician, a close friend of Giuseppe Mazzini, whom he had met in 1847 in London, where Lemmi was living in voluntary exile, devoting himself to trade. In 1849 he was in Rome to help defend the Roman Republic. On Mazzini's behalf, he then maintained contact with Lajos Kossuth, one of the leaders of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, whom he accompanied to London and the United States of America. Lemmi was involved in Mazzini's failed revolt on 6 February 1853. In order to escape the consequences, he fled to Switzerland and later to Constantinople. He remained in contact with Mazzini and financed Carlo Pisacane's expedition in 1857.

In 1860, together with and brother-in-law, the banker Pietro Augusto Adami, also from Livorno, he founded the Adami & Lemmi company to which Garibaldi later granted the concession of the railway network in Southern Italy as well as the tobacco monopoly.

After many disputes, the concessions were confirmed by the Kingdom of Italy. Shortly afterwards, the newly formed Savoy government revoked the convention and transferred the concession deed to the Victor Emmanuel Society (with predominantly French capital); but subsequent events saw the intertwining of initiatives by French bankers and finally a company set up by Count Bastogi, who had founded the Company for the Southern Railways. Adami & Lemmi were cashiers of Mazzini's Action Party to which Garibaldi had opened the doors of the South.

A Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry, promoted in 1892 by deputies Imbriani and Achille Plebano, accused Lemmi of having illegally concluded a contract in his name, to the detriment of the state treasury, since it had been concluded three years earlier at the beginning of a bearish price cycle on the New York Stock Exchange and against a deposit reduced from 20 to 5 per cent. Francesco Crispi rejected the enquiry and forbade the exhibition of the documents, while the parliamentary acts had by then been leaked to the Catholic and other oposition press. The tobacco scandal and the Marseilles trial severely damaged the public image and moral credibility of the Italian Masonic body, prompting Lemmi to engage in a programme of speeches and rallies throughout Italy to regain lost political ground.

Lemmi, a Freemason since 1875, was elected to the highest office of Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy on 17 January 1885 and was Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite until his death. He succeeded where his predecessors had failed, that is to reunite, under the banner of the Grand Orient of Italy, all the Italian Masonic obediences that, for various vicissitudes, had remained autonomous until then. The Grand Master also reorganised the finances of the G.O.I. He realised the importance of having a "covered" lodge at his disposal, into which the most influential Freemasons in finance and publishing could converge. Lemmi's line of action, which was very focused on the conquest of power, has often been compared to the methods that inspired Licio Gelli a century later.

Strongly secularist and anti-Catholic, Lemmi's statement remains famous: 'The disappearance of the temporal power of the popes is the most memorable event in the world'. Lemmi's tenure at the top of Freemasonry coincided with Francesco Crispi's leadership of the Italian government. Lemmi and Crispi were bound by close friendship and commonality in domestic and international political choices. Within Freemasonry, after 1896, the year of the fall of his friend Crispi, he was only left with the position of Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, which he held until his death in 1906.

His son Silvano (1857–1901) joined his father in trade and was briefly a member of parliament.

References

Biasuz, Giuseppe (1949). Gli ultimi anni di Filippo De Boni: con lettere inedite ad Adriano Lemmi. Feltre: Tip. Panfilo Castaldi.

Conti, Fulvio (1999). "Fra patriottismo democratico e nazionalismo: La massoneria nell'Italia liberale," Contemporanea, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 221–48.

Conti, Fulvio (2005). "Lemmi, Adriano." In: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 64. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

Conti, Fulvio (2008). Massoneria e religioni civili. Cultura laica e liturgie politiche fra XVIII e XX secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Conti, Fulvio (2008). "Il Garibaldi dei massoni: La libera muratoria e il mito dell'eroe (1860-1926)," Contemporanea, Vol. XI, No. 3, pp. 359–95.

Coromaldi, Adriana (1937). "Adriano Lemmi attraverso il suo carteggio con Kossuth," Annuario 1937 della r. accademia d'Ungheria di Roma, pp. 169–76.

De' Neri, Giovanni (1946). Giosué Carducci e l'apostolato massonico di Adriano Lemmi. Roma: G. Bardi.

Esposito, R. F. (1979). S. S. P. Pio IX. La Chiesa in conflitto col mondo. La S. Sede, la Massoneria e il radicalismo settario. Roma: Ed. Paoline.

Giorgi, P. A. (1895). Il trionfo del Grande Oriente d'Italia: Adriano Lemmi. Roma: Tip. Di Romeo Della Casa.

Grew, Raymond (1963). A Sterner Plan for Italian Unity: The Italian National Society in the Risorgimento. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.

Halperin, S. William (1947). "Italian Anticlericalism, 1871-1914," The Journal of Modern History, Vol. XIX, No. 1, pp. 18–34.

Jones, W. R. (1970). "Palladism and the Papacy: An Episode of French Anticlericalism in the Nineteenth Century," Journal of Church and State, Vol. XII, No. 3, pp. 453–73.

Margiotta, Domenico (1894). Souvenirs d'un trente-troisième, Adriano Lemmi, chef suprême des francs-maçons. Paris/Lyon: Delhomme et Briguet.

Menghini, Mario (1933). "Lemmi, Adriano." In: Enciclopedia Italiana. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

Miccoli, Giovanni (2006). "Leone XIII e la massoneria," Studi Storici, Anno 47, No. 1, pp. 5–64.

Michel, Ersilio (1927). "Adriano Lemmi esule a Malta (1852)," Malta letteraria, Anno II, No. 9, pp. 260–66.

Mola, Aldo Alessandro (2016). Adriano Lemmi : il Gran Maestro della Terza Italia (1877-1896). Acireale/Roma: Tipheret.

Morelli, Emilia (1938). L'archivio di Adriano Lemmi. Roma: La libreria dello Stato.

Mureddu, Giuseppe (2017). Vita di Adriano Lemmi: gli anni dell'esilio. Roma: Bagatto libri.

Pásztor, Lajos (1947). Lajos Kossuth nel suo carteggio con Adriano Lemmi: 1851-1852. Roma: Tip. Della Bussola.

Pescetti, Luigi (1940). "Adriano Lemmi e Niccolò Tommaseo," Bollettino storico livornese, Anno IV, No. 2, pp. 131–35.

Pipino, Cristina (2006). Un'amicizia massonica: carteggio Lemmi-Carducci: con documenti inediti. Foggia: Bastogi.

Spantigati, Federico (1866). Per la ditta bancaria Bolmida di Torino contro Adriano Lemmi: memoria con appendice di documenti e sentenze. Torino: Tip. G. Favale.

External links

• Lemmi, Adriano

Preceded by Giuseppe Petroni

Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy 1885–1896

Succeeded by Ernesto Nathan