MICHELE C. DEL RE

Il caso Passanante: il delitto e la protesta

N. 155

Summary — The news of the attempt by the anarchic Passanante on the life of Umberto I, King of Italy, spread far and wide, brought about the fall of the government, gave rise to consents and to violent condemnations. Condemned to death, then reprieved, Passanante went mad in prison and died in a criminal lunatic asylum.

It was difficult to classify the act: "A sharp protest against the unjust order of things, but also a foolish act ", Costa defined this attempt. The anarchists justified their attempts with, the aim of making disadvantageous as dangerous the status of the powerful and of the wealthy. The progressive criminology of the time, led by Cesare Lombroso, saw in Passanante a criminal with regressive characteristics, a homicide-suicide madcap, although Lombroso had worked out a category of pseudo-criminals in which to place political criminals. The traditionalist conservatives instead condemned together with Passanante judged as mentally normal, the whole social vision of anarchists. Today Passanante appears both an innovator who had very appreciable altruistic aims, and a rebel, who used unacceptable criminal means.