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Italy at the Polls 2022
The Right Strikes Back
Fabio Bordignon
Luigi Ceccarini
James L. Newell
Fabio Bordignon · Luigi Ceccarini ·
James L. Newell
Editors

The Right Strikes Back
Editors
Fabio Bordignon Luigi Ceccarini
Department of Economics, Society Department of Economics, Society
and Politics and Politics
University of Urbino Carlo Bo University of Urbino Carlo Bo
Urbino, Italy Urbino, Italy
James L. Newell
Department of Economics, Society
and Politics
University of Urbino Carlo Bo
Urbino, Italy
ISBN 978-3-031-29297-2 ISBN 978-3-031-29298-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9
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Foreword
The Normality of Cleavages: When

Citizens Vote Against Rather Than For
The outcome of the election of 25 September 2022, with the success of
the coalition of the centre right and especially of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli
d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), reflected the latest cleavage (to cite the
model advanced by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan in 1967),
or the latest fracture to emerge in Italy’s post-war electoral history.
During the First Republic, the cleavage that had been most apparent
at Italian elections until the 1980s was the one symbolised by the Berlin
Wall—one reflecting the geopolitical division between the West and the
countries of the Soviet Block. ‘Anti-communism’ had ‘condemned’ the
DC to a permanent role in government because it had been impossible
to contemplate alternation in office with political parties that looked
upon the Soviet Union, if not with favour, at least without explicit
hostility. Consequently, for many years, the Italian political system had
had what Giorgio Galli (1966) called an ‘imperfect two-party system’
in order to emphasise that the two largest parties had pre-defined and
obligatory political roles to play. The Democrazia Cristiana (Christian
Democrats, DC) and their allies constituted the parties of government,
with the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party, PCI) and
its successors being confined permanently to the opposition.
v
vi FOREWORD
In the 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the
First Republic, Silvio Berlusconi built a new but similar ‘wall’—the so-
called ‘muro di Arcore’ after the name of the small town in Lombardy
where he has his sumptuous residence—thereby becoming the main
representative of anti-communist voters. Meanwhile, on the initiative of
Romano Prodi and Arturo Parisi among others, the DC’s successors,
together with the left, came together beneath the branches of the Olive
Tree—the symbol adopted by the coalition of the centre-left from 1995 to
2004—subsequently giving birth to the Partito Democratico (Democratic
Party, PD).
But despite these dramatic changes, political traditions persisted.
Indeed, in 2008, electoral behaviour in almost three quarters of Italian
provinces was analogous to, if not identical with, the behaviour found
there in 1953 (Diamanti, 2009), oriented by the same anti-communist
fracture, because the party choices facing voters were inspired by deeply
rooted traditions and identities, by consolidated cleavages. In partic-
ular, the cleavages separating Church and state, centre and periphery,
employers and workers, still counted for much.
The PCI had been the party of manual workers and non-Church goers,
the DC the representative of Catholics, especially in those parts of the
country where the Church gave rise to social communities through its
networks of flanking organisations and the provision of services. This was
a role that was played by the parties of the left and especially by the PCI
in those parts of the country where they were most deeply rooted; for
both they and the DC were ‘mass parties’ with an organised presence,
on the ground, in the localities. It was no accident, therefore, that the
cleavages they sustained lasted for so long.
It was no accident either that the advent of Berlusconi coincided with
the emergence of a new ‘party model’, one whose raison d’être lay not in
ideological and historical traditions but in the requirements of its leader.
This was because Berlusconi helped to consolidate a new phenomenon:
the ‘personalisation of politics’. He himself was the founder of Forza
Italia (FI), a ‘personal party’ as Mauro Calise (2010) called it. This was
a party type that was imitated by other—indeed by all—parties, including
the most traditional ones, like the PD, which in 2013 was in its turn
‘personalised’ by Matteo Renzi. The party was profoundly changed as a
result, and at the time I re-defined it as the PDR: the Partito di Renzi
(or ‘Renzi’s Party’). Renzi was the main protagonist of another elec-
tion marking a turning point—the European election of 2014 when the
FOREWORD vii
PD took 40%, Berlusconi having resigned in 2011 brought down by the

Eurozone crisis—and the emergence of another cleavage.
However, ‘personalisation’ undermined the parties’ distinct identities
because the political life-spans of individuals are briefer and more uncer-
tain than the life-spans of parties typically are. Consequently, they became
more fragile, and increasingly unstable, entities. Hence, from 2013, every
election had the potential to mark the emergence of a new ‘fracture’:
a potential nourished by the fact that the dominant political sentiment
among voters was anti-political: no longer a sense of belonging, of attach-
ment to a political creed, but one of mistrust. This explains the support
for ‘anti-party parties’: parties that exploit and foment feelings of resent-
ment. Two, in particular, were significant. One was the Movimento
Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s) inspired and led by the come-
dian, Beppe Grillo, who conceived of his creation as a ‘non-party’ as
it called itself when it made its parliamentary debut in 2013. Led by
Luigi Di Maio, it won the (watershed) election of 2018 taking more than
32% of the vote and formed the new government together with Matteo
Salvini’s Lega (League), which in its turn had also become a (national)
anti-party party. Much less associated with regional divisions and with the
North than it had originally been, Salvini’s League—the Ligue Nationale
as I called it in order to emphasise his affinities with Marine Le Pen
in France—followed the same anti-political trajectory enabling it to win
34.3% at the European election the following year. Together, the League
and the M5s gave birth to the so-called ‘yellow-green’ government, which
survived in office for little more than a year, until the summer of 2019.
The distribution of the vote became less geographically distinct, the
colours of the political map progressively fading. The ‘white’ areas had
already become ‘green’ and subsequently ‘green-blue’ following the disin-
tegration of the DC and its replacement as dominant party in these areas
by the League with the support of FI. The ‘red belt’, on the other hand,
retained its distinctiveness but grew smaller as Umbria and Marche lost
their traditional colour while elections in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany
became increasingly competitive. Overall, Italy became ‘colourless’ and
lost its distinct geopolitical traditions.
Moreover, driven by the anti-political sentiments of the post-
Berlusconi era, recent years have been marked by a succession of crises
both within and between parties: crises provoked by growing economic
and budgetary problems that have made Italy increasingly reliant on
Europe’s monetary authorities.
viii FOREWORD
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, finally, profoundly altered the

climate of public opinion. Mistrust gave way to fear as the predominant
sentiment, increasing the significance of leaders and undermining the role
of parties, with the high point represented by Mario Draghi’s assump-
tion of office as Prime Minister. That he came to office partly as the
result of pressure exerted by Europe’s political and monetary authorities
is not surprising. He had, after all, been an Italian and then EU public
official, heading first the Bank of Italy and then the European Central
Bank. However, he was not an ‘elected’ leader and the arrival in office of
his government confirmed that Italy’s system of representative democracy
was in crisis.
Giuseppe Conte, too, had been an ‘unelected’ Prime Minister,
governing mainly by decree, by-passing Parliament. Mario Draghi, in his
turn, heightened the sense that Italy had acquired a de facto presidential
(and technocratic) form of government—precisely because, as mentioned,
he too was unelected. Moreover, he had been drawn from the world
of economics and finance and was sustained by a majority consisting of
almost all the parties represented in Parliament. In opposition, and not by
chance, there remained just one party: Meloni’s FdI—which—again not
by chance—won the election of September 2022 becoming the largest
party at the head of the coalition of the centre right. This represented the
emergence of a new cleavage because, for the first time, the election had
been won by the successors to the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian
Social Movement, MSI) and Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance, AN),
and because for the first time the role of Prime Minister was assumed by
a woman.
The distinctiveness of the election was reinforced by a number of other
factors, especially the geography of voting. In relation to the coalitions,
the electoral map of Italy has assumed a predominantly blue colour,
accentuated on the right by FdI. It includes patches of other colours,
pale reflections of the past, including the light red of the centre-left in
four provinces of the centre-north and the yellow of the M5s in three
provinces of the South. The colouring of this map changes significantly
if we consider not the coalitions but the individual parties. In that case,
the areas coloured yellow expand considerably in the South: the area with
the largest number of claimants of the citizenship income, promoted and
defended by the M5s. Meanwhile, the areas coloured red—or rather light
red—remain confined to the centre of the country: the area that was once
FOREWORD ix
called the ‘red belt’ because it had, historically, been distinguished by the
deeply rooted presence of the parties of the left.
It is difficult not to notice the profound changes, not only in electoral
behaviour but in its social and geographical foundations, reflected in the
results and in the personalities and the roles of the political leaders. These
are the roles that have become increasingly personal and presidential. In
the Italian Republic, the political personalities voters today consider most
credible and in whom they most believe are both presidents: the president
of the Republic and the president of the Council of Ministers (to use the
Prime Minister’s official title). Italy has become a ‘personalised democ-
racy’, one in which political participation is limited, or rather limited to
the media. It has above all become a digital, ‘immediate’, democracy, one
lacking both mediators and mediation (Diamanti, 2014).
Thus, it is that the country’s cleavages have been normalised. For the
book containing our analyses of the results of the 2013 election—analyses
based on the data provided by LaPolis (Università di Urbino Carlo Bo)
and the research institute, Demos—we had chosen the title, Un salto nel
voto (2013),1 to emphasise that citizens’ voting choices are no longer
structured or predictable in advance. The subsequent elections, held in
2018 and 2019, confirmed this idea, and in the light of the elections of
September 2022, we can once more reaffirm it—though with even greater
emphasis, for the emergence of new cleavages has become ‘normal’.
A final remark needs to be made about those who failed to vote,
because FdI’s victory was made possible, or rather accentuated, by
the very low turnout, which reached a historic low. The election of
September 2022 attracted the participation of less than two thirds of the
electorate—63.8%: the lowest proportion since 1948. In 1976, 93% of
the electorate had voted. More recently, in 2018, 73% had done so. This
means that in reality, FdI won the election with the support of 16% of
those with the right to vote. While this does nothing to undermine either
the party’s success or the legitimacy of the outcome, it does reinforce that
idea that recent years have seen a growing detachment of citizens from the
democratic institutions: a detachment that is expressed by ‘voting against’
or not voting at all.
1 Translator’s note: The title (meaning literally, ‘A leap into the vote’) is a play on the
similarity between the word ‘voto’ and the word ‘vuoto’ (meaning ‘void’).
x FOREWORD
And in the country where citizens vote to oppose parties rather than
to support them, the only genuine cleavage could ultimately turn out to
be one reflecting continuity, or otherwise, of electoral choices.
Urbino, Italy Ilvo Diamanti
Bibliography
Calise, M. (2010). Il partito personale. I due corpi del leader. Laterza editori.
Diamanti, I. (2009). Mappe dell’Italia politica. Bianco, rosso, verde, azzurro… e
tricolore. Il Mulino.
Diamanti, I. (2014). Democrazia ibrida. Il Mulino.
Diamanti, I., Bordignon, F., & Ceccarini, L. (Eds.). (2013). Un salto nel voto.
Ritratto politico dell’Italia di oggi. Laterza editori.
Galli, G. (1966). Il bipartitismo imperfetto: comunisti e democristiani in Italia.
Il Mulino.
Lipset, S.M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems and voter
alignments: An introduction. In S. M. Lipset & S. Rokkan (Eds.), Party
systems and voter alignments: Cross-national perspectives (pp. 1–64). Free Press.
Ilvo Diamanti is professor emeritus at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo

and former professor at the Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas. He is the founder and
Director of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—and of the
polling organisation, Demos&Pi. He is a political columnist for the newspaper
la Repubblica.
Contents
1 Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They Have Come

From and Where They Are Going 1
Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarini, and James L. Newell
2 The Outcome: Electoral Trends and the Geopolitics
of Voting 23
Elisa Lello, James L. Newell, and Fabio Turato
3 Grappling with a Difficult Decision: How Voters Made
Their Choices 51
Luigi Ceccarini, James L. Newell, and Fabio Turato
4 Citizens’ Engagement with the ‘Seaside Campaign’
on Instagram and Facebook 79
Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Fabio Giglietto, and Anna Stanziano
5 New and Old (Global) Cleavages, Crises and Wars 105
Fabio Bordignon and Luigi Ceccarini
6 Outside the Ballot Box: Who Is the Italian Abstainer? 131
Fabio Bordignon and Giacomo Salvarani
Methodological Note 155

Index 159
xi
Notes on Contributors
Giovanni Boccia Artieri teaches Sociology of Communication and

Digital Media at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He serves as scien-
tific coordinator of LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced
Communication, and of the Ph.D. programme in Humanities: Commu-
nication and digital cultures sciences.
Fabio Bordignon teaches Political Science at the University of Urbino
Carlo Bo. He serves as scientific coordinator of the Electoral Observa-
tory of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—and is a
senior researcher and methodological advisor to the polling organisation,
Demos&Pi.
Luigi Ceccarini teaches Public Opinion Analysis at the University of
Urbino Carlo Bo. He serves as the scientific coordinator of LaPolis—the
Laboratory of Political and Social Studies. He is a senior researcher for
the polling organisation, Demos&Pi, and President of the Italian Society
of Electoral Studies.
Fabio Giglietto teaches Internet Studies at the University of Urbino
Carlo Bo, where he also serves as the lead researcher for the ‘Mapping
Italian News’ programme, developed as part of the scientific activities of
LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication.
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Elisa Lello teaches Political Sociology at the University of Urbino Carlo

Bo. She is a member of the research group of LaPolis, the Laboratory of
Political and Social Studies.
James L. Newell is a former professor at the University of Salford (UK)
and teaches Contemporary Politics at the University of Urbino Carlo
Bo. He is a member of the research group of LaPolis, the Laboratory
of Political and Social Studies. He serves as co-editor of the journal,
Contemporary Italian Politics.
Giacomo Salvarani is a research fellow in the Department of Economics,
Society and Politics at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He contributes
to the research activities of LaPolis, the Laboratory of Political and Social
Studies.
Anna Stanziano is a research fellow in Digital Political Communication
at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. She is a member of the research
group of LaRiCA, the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communica-
tion, where she contributes to the research programme, ‘Mapping Italian
News’.
Fabio Turato teaches International Relations at the University of Urbino
Carlo Bo. He is a member of the research group of LaPolis—the Labora-
tory of Political and Social Studies—and works as a senior researcher for
the polling organisation, Demos&Pi.
Abbreviations
+EU More Europe (+Europa)

AIRE Register of Italian Residents Abroad (Anagrafe degli Italiani Resi-
denti all’Estero)
AN National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale)
Az Action (Azione)
DC Christian Democrats (Democrazia Cristiana)
DS Left Democrats (Democratici di Sinistra)
EU European Union
FdI Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia)
FI (Forza Italia)
IC Civic Commitment (Impegno Civico)
IE Italexit for Italy (Italexit per l’Italia)
ILGA International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association
ISP Sovereign and Popular Italy (Italia Sovrana e Popolare)
IV Italy Alive (Italia Viva)
LaPolis Laboratory of Political and Social Studies (Laboratorio di Studi
Politici e Sociali)
LaRiCA Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication (Laboratorio
di Ricerca sulla Comunicazione Avanzata
LDA Latent Dirichlet Allocation
LeU Free and Equal (Liberi e Uguali)
LGBTQI+ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex
LN Northern League (Lega Nord)
LSQ Least Squares Quadratic
M5s Five-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle)
xv
xvi ABBREVIATIONS
MAIE Associative Movement of Italians Abroad (Movimento Associativo

Italiani all’Estero)
MEP Member of the European Parliament
MSI Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NM Noi Moderati (We Moderates)
NRRP National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa
e Resilienza)
PATT Trentino Tyrolean Autonomist Party (Partito Autonomista
Trentino Tirolese)
PCI Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano)
PD Democratic Party (Partito Democratico)
PdCI Party of Italian Communists (Partito dei Comunisti Italiani)
Pdl People of Freedom (Popolo della libertà)
PDS Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra)
PRC Party of Communist Refoundation (Partito della Rifondazione
Comunista)
PRI Italian Republican Party (Partito Repubblicano Italiano)
SCN South Calls North (Sud Chiama Nord)
SEL The Left, Ecology, Freedom (Sinistra, Ecologia, Libertà)
SI Italian Left (Sinistra Italiana)
SMSP Single-member simple plurality system
SVP South Tyrolean People’s Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei)
UP Popular Union (Unione Popolare)
USEI South American Union of Italian Emigrants (Unione Sudamericana
Emigrati Italiani)
VS Green-Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra)
ZTL Restricted Traffic Area (Zona a traffico limitato)
List of Figures
Chapter 2
Fig. 1 Results of the Italian general election of 2022: differences
as compared to the election of 2018—Chamber of Deputies
(% variations; absolute variations in parentheses) (Source
LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo
Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior) 26
Fig. 2 First coalition in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The
analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano,
due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis
Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based
on data from the Ministry of the Interior) 39
Fig. 3 First party in the Italian provinces* 2018–2022 (*The
analyses do not include the provinces of Aosta and Bolzano,
due to their political-electoral peculiarities. Source LaPolis
Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, based
on data from the Ministry of the Interior) 40
Chapter 3
Fig. 1 When did you decide which party to vote for in the general
election? (%; 2006–2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis
Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo,
October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) 55
xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 2 Portion of voters of each political party who reported never

having had any doubts about their decision to vote for it
(%; 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral
Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022
[base: 1,315 cases]) 58
Fig. 3 During the election campaign, how frequently did
you discuss politics with family or friends? (% ‘often’
or ‘sometimes’, 2008–2022) (Source Post-election poll,
LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo
Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) 62
Fig. 4 In the month before polling day, how often did you
receive information about the general election campaign
from the following sources? (%, 2008–2022) (Source
Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University
of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) 66
Fig. 5 Typology of information consumers during the campaign
(%, 2022) (Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral
[base: 1,315 cases]) 68
Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Political posts published on Facebook and Instagram
from 21 July to 25 September 2022 84
Fig. 2 Engagement related to political posts published on Facebook
and Instagram from 21 July to 25 September 2022 85
Fig. 3 Main topics and issues on Facebook in the 12 analysed peaks 90
Fig. 4 Main topics and issues on Instagram in the 14 analysed peaks 98
Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Left, Right, and Outside: the main parties in the ideological
space (2018–2022).* Source Post-election poll, LaPolis
Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo,
October 2022 (base: 1,315 cases) 113
Fig. 2 Political space as defined by indicators of crisis (2018–2022).
Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral Observatory,
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 (base: 1,315
cases) 115
Fig. 3 Political space and the special measures related to the ‘two
wars’ (2022). Source Post-election poll, LaPolis Electoral
(base: 1,315 cases) 123
LIST OF FIGURES xix
Chapter 6
Fig. 1 Electoral abstention: the trend (%; 1948–2022) (Source
Lapolis Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior
data) 137
Fig. 2 The geography of electoral abstention 2022 (% in 107 Italian
Provinces; ten groups based on deciles) (Source Lapolis
Electoral Observatory on Ministry of the Interior data) 139
Fig. 3 Non-voters by social group (%) (Source Lapolis Electoral
Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, estimates based
on a pooled file of three surveys September–October 2022
[base: 3,320 cases]) 141
Fig. 4 Self-reported reasons for non-voting (%, figures for 2018
in brackets) (Source Lapolis Electoral Observatory, University
of Urbino Carlo Bo, October 2022 [base: 1,315 cases]) 143
Fig. 5 The determinants of abstention (only significant effects)
(Note Predicted probabilities based on a series of logit
models presented in the online Appendix [see Table A6.1].
Only significant effects are displayed, based on the following
models: 2 Model 2; 3 Model 3; 4 Model 4; 5 Model 5; 6 Model
6 [levels: L = Low; H = High; N = No; Y = Yes; P
= placed; NP = not placed]. Source Lapolis Electoral
[base: 1,315 cases]) 147
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 1 2022 Italian general election results: votes and seats
in the Chamber of Deputies 30
Table 2 Party support by gender, age, education and occupation,
2022 42
Chapter 3
Table 1 Are the people with whom you talked about politics …
(2008–2022) 63
Table 2 Sources of information during the campaign by typology
of information consumers (column % replying ‘often’, 2022) 71
Chapter 4
Table 1 Top ten relevant topics on Facebook and Instagram
in the analysed period 88
xxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They

Have Come From and Where They Are
Going
Fabio Bordignon , Luigi Ceccarini , and James L. Newell
Abstract This chapter frames the 2022 election and its outcome within
the debate on the evolution of the Italian political system and its ‘n
Republics’. It first discusses the meaning of these (controversial) labels
using them to illustrate why, starting from the early 1990s, it is possible
to talk about a political transition towards a Second Republic and why
that political system was (at least partly) superseded in 2011. In doing
so, it considers what were the main unifying elements brought about by
the electoral events of this new, turbulent phase of Italian politics as they
F. Bordignon · L. Ceccarini · J. L. Newell (B)

Department of Economics, Society, Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo,
Urbino, Italy
e-mail: james.newell@uniurb.it
F. Bordignon
e-mail: fabio.bordignon@uniurb.it
L. Ceccarini
e-mail: Luigi.Ceccarini@uniurb.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_1
2 F. BORDIGNON ET AL.
existed until the eve of the 2022 elections. The chapter then attempts to
use this interpretive framework to understand the most recent Italian elec-
tion, trying to highlight its elements of continuity and change. By doing
this, it illustrates the layout of the book, the leading questions addressed
by its different chapters and the main findings of the research.
Keywords Electoral behaviour · Electoral volatility · Italian general

elections · Italian political transition · Italian Second Republic · Populism
1 Introduction
Since the end of 2011, Italy has entered a new phase of its political devel-
opment, one that has been grafted onto the never-completed transition to
the so-called Second Republic. This phase conventionally began in 1994
when Silvio Berlusconi, along with his ‘own’ party, Forza Italia (FI), made
their political debut. This epoch-making event took place in the context of
the collapse of the First Republic due to the ‘mani pulite’ (‘clean hands’)
judicial investigations into political corruption, also known as Tangen-
topoli (bribe city) (Newell, 2021). Even before the contours of so-called
Second Republic became clear, its demise was often predicted by pundits
and politicians. Such predictions did not, generally, include suggestions
about what any ‘new’ Republic might look like. But the resignation of
Silvio Berlusconi on 12 November 2011 and the advent of Mario Monti’s
technocratic government marked the end of an era in the history of the
Italian party system.
The broad centre-right and centre-left coalitions broke up, paving
the way for a grand coalition to take office. Berlusconi’s personal party,
and his personal reputation, became progressively weaker. Meanwhile,
the pro/anti-Berlusconi cleavage lost some of its strength. The distance
between voters and parties grew wider, marking the revival of widespread
anti-political sentiments in Italian society, which were then expressed,
at the general election of 2013, by the extraordinary success of the
Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star Movement, M5s).
Many of the distinctive features of the Italian political system as these
had existed for nearly two decades, vanished and gave way to an uncer-
tain and fluid landscape, one that was marked by widespread protest and
system instability (Newell & Ceccarini, 2019). In this new political era,
1 INTRODUCTION: ITALIAN VOTERS—WHERE THEY HAVE … 3
which has now lasted for more than a decade, each general election has
been described as a turning point, albeit one pointing in different direc-
tions each time. ‘Political seismographs’ registered the 2013 and 2018
elections as ‘earthquakes’. Change and instability could be identified as
the hallmarks of the new Italian political context.
Against this background, the general election of 2022 represented yet
another turning point, with the undisputed success of the new right-
wing alliance led by Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI) and its leader,
Giorgia Meloni. This election suggested the existence of some elements
in common with what had emerged at the two previous elections in 2013
and 2018. At the same time, it marked a further break, one that seemed
to point to the recreation of some important features of the phase before,
the so-called Second Republic.
This book, published a few months after the Italian general election
held on 25 September, aims to offer a preliminary but accurate reading
of this important political event in the light of the changes that preceded
it. The analyses and explanations are based on the work conducted by
two research centres of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo: The Electoral
Observatory of LaPolis—the Laboratory of Political and Social Studies—
and LaRiCA—the Laboratory of Research in Advanced Communication.
In particular, this introductory chapter aims to frame the 2022 general
election within the debate on the evolution of the Italian political system
and its ‘n Republics’. In the following sections, the meaning of these
(controversial) labels will be discussed. They will be used to illustrate
why, starting from the early 1990s, it is possible to talk about a polit-
ical transition towards a Second Republic and why that political system,
centred on the ‘Berlusconi model’, has been (at least partly) overcome
since 2011. In doing so, these sections will consider primarily what were
the main unifying elements brought about by the electoral events of this
new, turbulent phase of Italian politics as they existed until the eve of the
2022 elections.
The second part of this chapter will attempt to use this interpre-
tive framework to understand the most recent Italian election, trying to
highlight its elements of continuity and change. By doing this, it will
also illustrate the leading questions addressed by the book and the main
findings presented in its chapters.
2 The Never-Ending Italian Political Transition

The changes that affected electoral behaviour and citizens’ orientations
to politics must be considered against the background of the troubled
transition from the First to the Second Republic, and of the new phase of
Italian political history initiated at the end of 2011.
The so-called First Republic—covering the period from the end of
the War to the political upheavals of the early 1990s—was characterised
by a symbiotic relationship between society and politics. It was a party
democracy, according to the definitions of various distinguished scholars
(Mair, 2013; Manin, 1997). Italian voters had a marked sense of political
and social identification embedded in traditional ideological and cultural
narratives. At the same time, the traditional socio-political cleavages were
deeply rooted geographically and strongly felt by citizens in their everyday
lives.
This gave rise to the structuring of two enduring geopolitical zones,
the so-called zona bianca (‘white area’) and zona rossa (‘red belt’). The
former was rooted in the North-Eastern regions, where the Democrazia
Cristiana (Christian Democrats, DC) had their strongholds thanks to their
links with the Catholic Church and with grassroots religious associations
and organisations. The latter, the red belt, was rooted in the central
regions of the peninsula, where the presence of the Partito Comunista
Italiano (Italian Communist party, PCI) and its flanking organisations—
trade unions, civic and leisure associations, and governing majorities in a
large number of municipal administrations—shaped society at local level.
As a result, the so-called vote of belonging kept the party system ‘frozen’
for several decades. Referred to by Giorgio Galli (1966) as an ‘imperfect
two-party system’, to refer to the absence of alternation in government
between the two main parties, it was one that enabled the DC to rule for
more than 40 years while the PCI was continuously confined to the status
of opposition party (at least at the national level).
After nearly fifty years, the party system underwent a profound trans-
formation. With the end of international bipolarity, after the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989, Italy was able to ‘go beyond’ its ‘blocked’ polit-
ical system. Political change was favoured by the progressive erosion
of the links between parties (and their leaders) and society. Mean-
while, the ‘clean hands’ judicial investigations into corruption and illicit
party funding finally brought about the disintegration of the traditional
governing parties. Judicial investigations triggered the end of a ‘degener-

ate’ system, and an entire political class was forced to vacate the political
stage.
Silvio Berlusconi and his personal party, FI, joined the political fray and
significantly influenced the development of the so-called Second Republic.
Several interconnected developments explained the transformation of
politics and the party system in the Second Republic—a term origi-
nally coined by journalists to refer to the sense that a regime transition
had been initiated, even though the essentials of the 1948 Constitu-
tion remained in place. Even without a redefinition of the country’s
institutional arrangements, a ‘new’ Republic was born.
Two of the aforementioned developments involved the functioning of
parties and government institutions: the personalisation and mediatisation
of politics. These elements, common to Western democracies in general,
marked the advent in Italy of ‘audience democracy’ (Manin, 1997).
A third development concerned the relationship between parties and
thus the party system as a whole. This was affected by the very different
electoral laws of 1993 and 2005, the so-called Mattarellum and Porcellum
(see below). The above dynamics generated a majoritarian bipolar system
strongly influenced by the presidentialisation of politics (Poguntke &
Webb, 2007).
However, this period also came to an end. 2011 was the year of the
crisis of Berlusconi’s government and leadership. His approach to politics
had enabled him to rise to prominence in the Second Republic and he
had been four times prime minister. However, he and his party gradually
lost electoral support after their last victory at the 2008 election, and he
resigned as head of government in the autumn of 2011.
Financial developments were largely responsible for this outcome: the
rise in the spread with German bonds reached 575 basis points on 9
November, and shares on the Milan Stock Exchange continued to fall
in value. Berlusconi’s slow decline as a political actor and the (supposed)
crisis of ‘Berlusconism’ were echoed by developments not just in his party
but also in the institutions of government. In other words, 2011 was the
end of an era, one representing the crumbling of a system (Ceccarini et al.,
2012).
In this context, the weakness of the other major actor in the Italian
political arena—the PD—also became apparent. The two main parties of
the two political blocs of the Second Republic together had won more
than 70% of the vote at the 2008 general election. Their support fell
dramatically in 2013 (see Chapter 2).
In addition to the problems attributable to the instability of the centre-
left and centre-right coalitions, these two parties also had to deal with the
growth of anti-political sentiments on the part of citizens who had begun
to contemplate these political actors with growing detachment. The
digital revolution and the development of the platform society created
opportunities for a new form of populism. Indeed, the general election
of 2013 brought the digital populism of the M5s to the centre of Italian
politics (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2013).
This party won 25.6% of the vote at its first national electoral outing. In
2018, its support again rose, reaching 33%. Something similar happened
to Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League), which grew from 4% in 2013 to 17%
in 2018.
3 From ‘Devout’ to ‘Liquid’ Voters

A highly fluid and volatile electoral landscape has characterised Italy since
2011. The sequence of legislative (2013 and 2018) and European elec-
tions (2014 and 2019) has seen major changes in the electoral strength
of the parties. Some of them have experienced great surges in popular
support, as in the case of Matteo Renzi’s PD in the 2014 European elec-
tions, of Beppe Grillo and Luigi Di Maio’s M5s in the 2013 and 2018
general elections, and of Salvini’s League in 2018 and 2019 (leading
to the resounding 34% in the most recent European elections). All
these extraordinary, and partly unforeseen, performances were, however,
followed by phases of rapid downturn, often connected to the lead-
ers’ ruinous decline. To be understood, these dynamics need to be seen
against the background of the evolution of the political system presented
in the previous section, linking it to the social transformations that have
characterised the country in recent decades, within the broader global
transformations.
During the so-called First Republic, parties had been mass membership
organisations capable of instilling an enduring sense of loyalty among their
supporters, also because they reflected deep-seated social cleavages of reli-
gion and class. During this era, when church-going was the norm among
vast swathes of the population and the Catholic Church was therefore
influential in Italian politics, the practising Catholic voted for the DC as
a matter of course, without thinking about it, as that was simply what the
faithful Catholic did.
On the other side of the ideological divide, the same was true of the
PCI and the working-class voter, employed in one of the large indus-
trial establishments, like FIAT, for example. Voting orientations were also
sharply distinguished geographically. North-Eastern regions were oriented
towards the DC and the central ones towards PCI.
Indeed, the DC and PCI in particular, having led the Resistance Move-
ment and thereby established themselves as the only stable points of
reference for ordinary Italians in the period of chaos and uncertainty that
followed the fall of Benito Mussolini in 1943, were, in the North-Eastern
and Central regions, able to acquire positions of complete hegemony.
Dominating local government and interest groups, such as those for
small farmers (like Coldiretti), the CISL trade union confederation and
Catholic associations (the DC) and the CGIL trade union confederation
(the PCI), and with a solid presence in the localities, they were able to
secure the unswerving loyalty of voters and activists by taking care of their
needs ‘from the cradle to the grave’. In both cases, the vote was a matter
of ‘faith’.
All this began to unravel in the wake of the ‘economic miracle’ of the
1950s and the 1960s, with its new possibilities and altered horizons for
voters. Thus, by the 1990s, which had since seen the growth of celebrity
culture and the beginnings of the mediatisation and personalisation of
politics, voters had already become detached and critical in their relations
with parties. For the era was one in which political leaders, no longer
needing well-oiled party machines for the dissemination of their messages,
could appeal to voters, through television. Voting was to a decreasing
extent influenced by traditional socioeconomic or ideological cleavages.
Stances embraced by politicians, mainly thanks to the work of polit-
ical consultants, were those that were most effective and advantageous
in the electoral context of a given political moment. Selected issues and
specific values rather than universal narratives dominated communication
strategies.
Voters, being freed from the ties typical of party democracy, appeared
more autonomous (and more undecided) in their voting choices. Intense
electoral volatility reflected low degrees of party loyalty.
Early twenty-first-century Italy is therefore characterised by a polit-
ical landscape in which old social cleavages have declined in significance
and new ones have emerged. Arising from the so-called silent revolution
(Inglehart, 1977, 1990), the growth of post-material value priorities and

the emergence of so-called identity politics, the new cleavages are ones
that reflect voters’ tendency to identify themselves, less in terms of class
or religion, and increasingly in terms of things like gender, sexual orien-
tation, ethnicity and so on. It is a world that has seen an acceleration in
the pace of globalisation since the 1970s.
This has undermined the capacity of the government, along with
national governments everywhere, to deliver public goods in defiance of
international political and economic trends, to which they are obliged to
adapt, while leading to the emergence of the new division between the
so-called winners and losers of globalisation (Kriesi et al., 2008). Govern-
ments’ reduced capacities have made it increasingly difficult for main-
stream parties of the left to distinguish themselves from their competitors
on the right, accelerating their long-term decline.
Meanwhile, the rise of post-Fordist regimes of capital accumulation,
the growth of computer technology and the emergence of global supply
chains have led, on the one hand, to the emergence of new industries
employing highly educated, geographically mobile workers, cosmopolitan
in outlook and sensitive to the new claims of identity politics. On the
other hand, they have led to a growing sense, among those in declining
sectors that they have been ‘left behind’. Less well educated than globali-
sation’s winners, more conservative in outlook, with national rather than
cosmopolitan horizons and fearful of globalisation’s implications for their
security of employment, they have been attracted by populist and xeno-
phobic parties. Using migrants as a focus for these voters’ resentments,
the parties have increasingly won the support of people who would once
have naturally voted for the left but who are now unable to perceive its
relevance to them.
Thus, it is that Italy’s electoral politics has come increasingly to
resemble those of other democracies, with the division between ‘winners’
and ‘losers’ explaining much of what drives voters’ choices (Ceccarini,
2018: 156–182). In the Italian case, this was already clear at the time
of the 2018 election when it was apparent that ‘winners’, attracted to
the PD’s cosmopolitanism and commitment to anti-discrimination, had
abandoned it to a lesser extent than other groups, and when the election
had given rise to the curiosity of what was referred to as class voting ‘in
reverse’ (De Sio, 2018). Thus, while the party won 13.1% among the
self-perceived working class, it took 18.3% in the self-perceived middle
class and 31.2% among the self-perceived upper-middle class, with the
differences in voting propensities remaining even when controlling for

related variables (ibidem). The voting habits of globalisation’s ‘losers’ on
the other hand diverged sharply from—indeed were the mirror image
of—those of ‘winners’.
Traditional cleavages have gradually lost meaning and value from
voters’ perspectives. Voting appears to be less and less a means of
expressing an ideological sense of belonging and more and more an indi-
vidualised decision, to be made afresh at each election, and involving,
first and foremost, a decision about whether or not to go to the polls
at all (see Chapter 6). This is a metamorphosis that originates from the
shift in Italians’ socio-cultural perspectives—citizens’ political cultures—
and reverberates at a systemic level, through the diverse modes of political
participation, primarily the act of voting.
It was against this background that the populist M5s and the League
achieved their electoral successes of 2018, followed by their arrival in
office with the so-called yellow-green Conte I government (2018–2019).
These results seemed to take Italy into uncharted territory (Ceccarini &
Newell, 2019).
4 The Electoral Law(s)

and the Constitutional Referendum
The 2018 elections also marked another important institutional change,
one concerning the Rosato electoral law. This had been passed in 2017, as
the latest in a series of no fewer than five systems to be adopted since the
political upheavals of the early 1990s. This places Italy alongside Japan
and New Zealand as one of the three democracies that changed their
electoral systems in the 1990s—but makes it a dramatic outlier given
the number of times it has changed its system since then. The perma-
nence of electoral-system reform, and of institutional reform generally,
on the agenda of Italian politics since the early 1990s, is revealing of the
extent of the delegitimation of the country’s political institutions. The
five electoral systems in question have—curiously—come to be referred
to in journalistic parlance using Latin-sounding portmanteaux. This is
a habit initiated by the political scientist, Giovanni Sartori who, critical
of the first, 1993, reform, referred to it as the Mattarellum—after its
principal parliamentary sponsor, Sergio Mattarella—to indicate that he
thought the reform ‘slightly mad’ (‘matto’ meaning ‘mad’ in Italian).
Hence, the Mattarellum has since been followed by the Porcellum (from
the Italian, ‘porcata’, meaning—roughly—‘a pig’s breakfast’) (2005), the

Consultellum (2013), the (never used) Italicum (2015) and finally, the
system introduced in 2017, the Rosatellum, after the name of its prin-
cipal parliamentary sponsor, the then PD deputy, Ettore Rosato. The new
system marked a further departure from the majority drive of the early
1990s, although this latter feature survived in it.
As we have written elsewhere, the Rosatellum is a hybrid system.
It provides for 37% of the seats in both chambers to be distributed
through the single-member simple plurality system (SMSP), 61% through
a proportional system with closed lists presented in multi-member
constituencies (while the remaining 2% is allocated to the constituency for
Italians resident abroad). Each multi-member constituency is thus associ-
ated with two or more single-member constituencies. The voter is given
a ballot paper bearing the names of the candidates in the single-member
constituency in which he/she resides, beneath which appear the symbols
of the party or parties supporting them, together with the names of their
candidates in the relevant multi-member constituency.
The voter may vote both for a candidate in the single-member
constituency and for one or the other of the supporting lists in the rele-
vant multi-member constituency, but may not cast a split vote. If he/
she votes only for one of the party lists, the vote is attributed, automat-
ically, to the single-member candidate supported by that list. Votes cast
in favour of the candidate in the single-member constituency alone, on
the other hand, are distributed among the parties supporting him/her,
in proportion to the votes obtained in the same constituency. To obtain
seats, the lists, both in the Chamber and in the Senate, must pass a 3%
national-level threshold1 and coalitions a 10% threshold at national level.2
It must be emphasised that when the largest parties in the individual
constituencies are also the largest parties at the national level, one of
the effects of SMSP electoral systems is to lead to a (greater or lesser)
1 In the Senate, lists that exceed 20% in a single region also obtain seats. In the
Chamber, the 20% regional threshold only applies to lists representing linguistic minorities.
In both chambers, lists representing linguistic minorities that have elected at least two
candidates in single-member constituencies participate in the distribution of seats.
2 Provided that at least one list belonging to the coalition has reached 3%.
disproportion between the votes received and the seats allocated in Parlia-
ment.3 In the specific case of the 2022 elections, it was anticipated that
this disproportion would be greater rather than lesser, thanks to the 2020
constitutional reform, which reduced the number of MPs (see Chapter 2).
The reform had been a flagship measure of the M5s, central to its
claim to be the authentic representative of ordinary Italians against what
it called the casta (or ‘caste’): the representatives, in public institutions,
of the mainstream political parties, whose only interest, the M5s argued,
was to retain their seats and feather their own nests, often by recourse to
corruption.
The measure thus drew on, and nourished, widespread popular
resentments and anti-political sentiments and gained additional traction
through the claim that it would ‘reduce the costs of politics’, even though
objective analyses of the likely cost savings of the measure revealed that
the benefits to the public purse would be small, to say the least.
Others pointed out that, by increasing the workloads of the parliamen-
tarians that remained once their number had been cut, the reform would
make it more difficult for the legislature to perform its crucial function of
executive scrutiny and holding governments to account. Be that as it may,
no one was especially surprised when the measure, having been put to a
popular vote in September 2020, was passed by 70% to 30% on a turnout
of 51.1%—with the result of reducing the number of Deputies from 630
to 400 and the number of Senators from 315 to 200. What is crucial for
present purposes is that a further effect of the measure was to reduce the
number of constituencies while increasing their size.
5 General Election 2022: In What Republic?

The result achieved by the centre-right coalition and, within it, the success
of FdI, at the expense of its allies, were the most important, and expected,
results of the Italian general election of 2022. Giorgia Meloni had a
3 So much so that, depending on the relative size of the constituencies and the
geographical distribution of the vote, it is even possible for this system to result in fewer
seats being allocated to the largest party than to the second largest party at national level,
as happened in the United Kingdom in the February 1974 general election, when Labour
won four more seats than the Conservatives, even though the latter obtained 226,000
more votes.
prominent role in her party’s vigorous growth over the course of the
eighteenth legislature, during which it rose from around 4 to 26%.
Expected also was the significant downsizing of the main winner of the
2018 general election, the M5s. Although its vote was more than halved
(it lost more than 6.4 million votes), its share declining from 33 to 15%,
Giuseppe Conte, former prime minister and new M5s leader, was able to
breathe a sigh of relief (see Chapter 2).
Despite the outcome, the M5s leader was able to present his party as a
quasi-winner, capitalising on the gap between the results and pre-election
expectations. A worse result for the M5s and a better outcome for the
PD were in fact expected in the pre-election public debates. The reduced
distance between the two main protagonists of the failed alliance in the
new centre-left camp, the M5s and the PD, also contributed to the public
image of Conte’s party as a ‘winner’ of sorts.
The largest party of the left, its leader, Enrico Letta, and the ‘narrow
coalition’ that was fielded following unsuccessful attempts to create a
‘campo largo’ (‘broad field’) by involving other parties seemed to be
the losers. Although the PD grew very slightly in percentage terms as
compared to the disappointing result of 2018, it lost 800,000 votes.
This additional decline further compounded the party’s long-term crisis
and multiple defeats. Moreover, Letta’s party was challenged by the new
centrist electoral cartel bringing together Azione (Action) and Italia Viva
(Italy Alive) (Az-IV), and led by two prominent figures previously of
the centre-left: the former Minister of Economic Development, Carlo
Calenda, and ex-general secretary of the PD and former Prime Minister,
Matteo Renzi. The union of these two small personal parties won almost
8% of the vote at its election debut.
The election was marked by an increase in the rate of abstention,
which reached the unprecedented figure of 36%. The steady decline in
turnout that had begun several decades earlier continued at the 2022
election, which registered the sharpest fall in Italy’s post-war history (see
Chapter 6).
The 2022 election thus adds important pieces to the post-2011 polit-
ical jigsaw puzzle. Its results offer new elements with which to answer
the question posed in this chapter, and in general, in this book: in ‘what
republic’ does Italy find itself today? Is the Italian political system still
embedded in the long phase of transition to a Second Republic—which
began in the early 1990s and has perhaps never come to an end? Or is the
new phase that began in 2011 leading Italian politics in a new direction?
Certainly, the protagonists of the Second Republic no longer have the

strength they once had. Bipolarity has given way to a much more complex
and fluid context. New political actors invoke populist-type formulas
different from those of the TV-centred party and communication that
was the hallmark of ‘Berlusconism’. The outcomes of the general elec-
tions of 2013 and 2018 suggested the beginning of a new phase in the
development of the Italian political system, with new actors and dissimilar
political dynamics (Bordignon et al., 2018; Ceccarini & Newell, 2019).
What does the Italian general election of 2022 add to this picture? The
following sections will try to identify the main elements of continuity and
change as they emerge from the results of the analyses presented in the
chapters to come, focusing on four different dimensions.
– The climate of voting indecision and electoral volatility;

– The tripolar characteristics of the party system;
– The role of protest, populism and anti-political actors;
– The links between the election outcome, the process of government
formation and political (in)stability.
6 Still Uncertainty and Electoral Volatility?

Uncertainty about the voting decision and the propensity to change one’s
choice compared to previous elections were significant features of the
2022 general election. They reflected a trend already apparent at the elec-
tions of 2013 and 2018 when voting indecision considerably increased
compared to the elections of 2006 and 2008. This feature of voting has
become entrenched over time (see Chapter 3). Of course, voters’ indeci-
sion is explained, in part, by the peculiarity of this election. The ‘seaside’
election campaign itself was not particularly engaging either offline or
online (see Chapters 3 and 4).
Unlike in 2018, the electoral formula, the exclusion thresholds, the
ballot and the procedure for casting a vote remained unchanged. They
remained those established by the Rosatellum. An additional element of
uncertainty, however, concerned the reduction in the number of MPs,
which led to a redrawing of the constituencies, and thus of both the
single-member and multi-member seats to be distributed. These changes
also affected the decisions of voters, who in single-member constituen-
cies had to choose among candidates competing within larger territorial
contexts in comparison with the previous election. This led to further

distance and greater detachment between the voter and candidate.
A further factor affecting the uncertainty of voting choice has to do
with the peculiarities of an unprecedented ‘seaside’ campaign: one that
was unusually short and played out in the summer months. The elements
mentioned above have to be considered against the background of a long-
term trend towards a growth in the proportions of ‘late-deciders’ and
‘last-minute voters’. The dynamics of voting choice show that phenomena
such as the erosion of the ‘hard core’ of parties’ support, which appears
increasingly ‘soft’, have become established over time, making elections
ever more ‘fluid’.
Information consumption during the weeks leading up to the election
shows that trends observed at previous elections have been crystallised
without interruption. Hybrid information consumption practices have
now become established. Individual and cultural resources are, as ever,
closely linked to voters’ ‘media diets’. At the same time, in the age
of digital and hyper-communication, the role of interpersonal, face-
to-face communication concerning political issues remains important.
Such a complex communications context necessarily draws attention to
the effects of the so-called algocracy, and thus, the consequences of
phenomena such as echo-chambers and filter bubbles for public debate
(see Chapter 3).
During the election campaign, digital communication—whose content
reverberated around social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, the
legacy media and political discussion in social circles—was poorly organ-
ised. There was, unlike in 2018, no concentration of online discussion
on specific political issues proposed by competing leaders and parties
(Chapter 4).
Of course, not all of voters’ uncertainty gave rise to last-minute
changes in voting intentions. In fact, the election outcome largely
confirmed forecasts based on pre-election polls—which in Italy cannot be
published over the fifteen days before election day—and on trends that
had already emerged during the legislature.
At the same time, electoral volatility is another element of continuity
with the two previous elections. The results at the aggregate level high-
light the further considerable shift in the distribution of power within
the party system as compared to the previous election (see Chapter 2).
The total volatility index computed by CISE increased compared to the
previous election of 2018. The figure of 31.8 makes the 2022 election
the third most volatile in Italy’s post-war history, after 1994 (39.3) and
2013 (36.7) (Emanuele & Marino, 2022).
The fourth highest value is that of 2018 (26.7), confirming that elec-
toral volatility has become a structural feature of the period since 2011,
and thus, that voting fluidity is an increasingly natural choice for many
voters, reflecting a widespread degree of electoral ‘disloyalty’.
7 Still a Tripolar System?

The 2022 election can be described as a missed opportunity to return to
a bipolar system. For months before the vote, there was a lively discus-
sion about the possible formation of a new centre-left coalition: a ‘campo
largo’ (‘broad field’) as it had been described by the PD leader, Enrico
Letta, who had promoted it. This process appeared to be favoured by
the progressive rapprochement between the PD and the M5s, thanks to
the progressive turn of the new M5s leader, Giuseppe Conte, and to
the parties’ joint participation in the so-called yellow-red or Conte II
government (from 2019 to 2021) and subsequently in the Draghi-led
government (in 2021 and 2022).
The political agenda of the latter government, supported by a very
large coalition including the parties of the right (the League and FI),
became a point of contention between the PD and the M5s in the run-
up to the election. The controversial role of the latter in the political
events leading to Draghi’s resignation and early elections led to the final
rift between Letta and Conte. Moreover, the expectations of victory of
the right led to a fragmentation of their centre-left competitors, limiting
their ability to stem the right’s success.
The PD also suffered from Calenda’s decision of to break his partner-
ship with Letta in favour of an attempt, along with Renzi, to give birth
to a centrist electoral cartel inspired by the so-called Draghi agenda. The
centre-left coalition, which was no longer ‘broad’ but quite ‘narrow’, was
thus formed by the PD together with +Europa (literally, ‘More Europe’;
+EU); a joint list fielded by Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left, SI) and the
Verdi (Greens), and other minor parties. Calenda and Renzi’s self-styled
‘Third Pole’ achieved a significant result, but not such as to undermine
the role of the M5s as the main ‘third’ political bloc. Ultimately, there
were four blocs rather than three.
Conte’s party retained a dominant role in many areas of southern Italy.
The electoral map of the country (Fig. 2, in Chapter 2) is coloured almost
entirely blue, that is the colour of the right, which managed to win in
almost all of the single-member constituencies. Yet, the colour of the M5s
(yellow) prevailed in many areas of the South (Fig. 3, in Chapter 2). Thus,
there was a sort of continuity with the electoral geography of 2018, yellow
and blue being the two colours that also dominated in that election.
However, it must also be said that, in 2018, competition between the
coalitions had been much more uncertain. The M5s had been in a posi-
tion to win many constituencies not just in the southern regions. It had
been able to extend its dominant role in many areas of the centre and
north of the country, as well.
Four and half years later, the geographical distribution of the parties’
support was eloquent about the plural character of the Italian electoral
landscape. What was striking was the gradual fading of what had been the
most politically stable and distinctive area: the so-called red belt. This was
the area of central Italy, which centre-left parties had dominated both in
the First Republic and in the Second Republic. However, it now appeared
decreasingly distinct from the electoral point of view, confirming a trend
that had been most acutely apparent at the 2018 election.
Moreover, the ‘ideological’ maps displayed in Chapter 5 show that the
centre-right actually emerged as a (quite) homogeneous bloc in 2022.
This was not the case for the members of the unsuccessful centre-left
alliance. Although the main protagonist of Italian ‘tripolarity’ after 2011
(Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2018: 8–11; Diamanti, 2013: IX–XXVII), the
M5s, had converged somewhat with the centre-left during the eighteenth
legislature, it maintained a specific position on relevant issues that struc-
tured the political space in the general election (see the next section).
Meanwhile, a new would-be (third) pole emerged in the area, but with
the aim of occupying the centre of the political space: Calenda and Renzi’s
Az-IV cartel. A process of re-bipolarisation of the party system through
the formation of a new centre-left had indeed appeared to be at least
plausible during the legislature, thanks to the convergence of the PD and
M5s. However, in the aftermath of the 2022 general election, this process
appeared to be largely incomplete and uncertain in terms of its future
developments.
8 Protest, Populism and New Political Actors

The 2022 general election took place in the aftermath of an unprece-
dented and meaningful populist experiment, which followed the elec-
toral success of the League and the M5s in 2018. With that election
outcome, convergence between the two parties led to the formation of
the self-styled ‘government of change’ (Pasquino, 2019). As mentioned
above, these two formations had given political expression to the various
resentments—economic, cultural and political—felt by citizens. Votes for
them were understood as votes cast by the so-called losers of glob-
alisation: those most affected by globalisation’s economic and cultural
consequences. They were both ‘challenger parties’ rewarded by the elec-
tion results because they opposed the various broad or grand coalition
governments that had held office since 2011.
The M5s, in particular, had in the past always rejected the idea of being
part of a coalition with other political forces. During the eighteenth legis-
lature (2018–2022), however, it had ended-up at one time or another
allying itself with almost all of the actors represented in Parliament and
notably, first, with the League and then with the PD. Finally, it was part of
the very broad coalition that supported the Draghi government, opposed
only by Giorgia Meloni’s party and a handful of parliamentarians on the
left. The legislature was marked by two crises, different from each other
but both traceable to global developments: the COVID pandemic, which
saw Italy among the countries most affected by the global contagion,
and the war on the EU’s eastern borders following Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine.
Consistent with the well-known ‘rally round the flag’ effect, the emer-
gencies arising from these crises and the ensuing sentiment of social
anxiety they generated led Italian citizens to draw close around the
major national public institutions: in particular, the Conte II government
(2019–2021) and, subsequently, the Draghi government (2021–2022).
However, those in precarious economic circumstances suffered most from
the crises’ consequences, namely: the economic slowdown induced by the
pandemic and the impact on the social and productive fabric of the poli-
cies aimed at limiting the spread of COVID; the energy price hikes; and
the rise in inflation resulting from the war in Ukraine. The latter broke
out at the very moment Italy was anticipating possible recovery and the
potentially positive effects of the resources delivered by the EU as part of
the Next Generation EU plan.
As was the case in 2018, the vote was largely influenced by fears and
anxieties related to global crises. The analyses presented in Chapter 5
confirm that the widespread economic, cultural and political malaise still
influenced people’s electoral choices and shaped the space of political
competition in 2022. The centre-right and its largest party was able to
attract the votes of the ‘losers of globalisation’, especially those who
considered themselves to be losers in a cultural sense. Insecurity arising
from immigration and Euroscepticism were characterising (and unifying)
features of the vote for Giorgia Meloni’s coalition and party. The M5s, on
the other hand, attracted significant support from those who most keenly
felt the economic malaise and the democratic malaise. Dissatisfaction with
the way democracy works in Italy remained a distinctive trait of the M5s
electorate. Italian voters were further divided by the controversial choices
related to the two new crises which emerged during the legislature: the
pandemic and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Both on the
restrictions defined by the vaccine passport and on the issue of military
aid to Kyiv, M5s and centre-right voters expressed the main reservations,
while the PD and Az-IV were on the opposite side. The effects of these
new issues, however, seemed not to reflect new cleavages, as they largely
aligned with the pre-existing divisions related to global crises (see, again,
Chapter 5).
Certainly, the 2022 vote once again rewarded the only party that could
claim to have always remained in opposition since 2011, namely FdI: the
only party, if minor formations are excluded, to have placed itself in oppo-
sition to the Draghi government. This explains FdI’s ability to drain the
electoral constituencies of the other centre-right parties, in particular the
League, but also the M5s (Bordignon & Ceccarini, 2021). At the same
time, it should be pointed out that, unlike her allies, Giorgia Meloni
distinguished herself by taking an explicitly Atlanticist position from the
beginning of the Ukrainian emergency.
It is also important to stress that the M5s, in the run-up to the
election, adopted a more critical stance towards the Draghi government—
marking a revival of its attempts to spearhead protest and to defend the
economic policies—especially the anti-poverty ‘citizenship income’—of
the governments led by its leader, Giuseppe Conte.
Thus, the case of M5s confirms that giving voice to protest remains
electorally fruitful. It is also worth mentioning that an unusually large
number of voters, in 2022, chose the path of abstention, an outcome
that has several explanations (Chapter 6), some structural, others linked to
contingent and unforeseen circumstances. However, a significant number

of voters saw this option as a natural ‘choice’, one having to do with
democracy itself and a ‘representation gap’ that prevents these voters from
finding a party or leader to represent them: a party or a leader with whom
they can identify (see Chapter 6).
9 From Voting to Government:

A Return to the Second Republic?
The factor that marked the most significant element of discontinuity with
respect to the 2013–2018 period was, without doubt, the connection
between the election outcome and the process of formation of the 68th
government in the history of the Italian republic.
Only 27 days elapsed between the 25 September vote and the
swearing-in of the Meloni cabinet (on 22 October): a period of time
whose brevity was explained, at least in part, by the circumstances of emer-
gency. With the deadlines fast approaching for parliamentary approval of
the 2023 finance law and for achievement of the goals associated with
Next Generation EU financial support, speed was of the essence. The
winning coalition itself wanted, from the outset, to convey an impression
of efficient political management.
To this should be added the fact that the election outcome essentially
confirmed what had been analysts’ and pundits’ forecasts (and therefore
public expectations) for several months before the vote. The pre-election
polls themselves turned out to be particularly accurate. Above all, there
was a clear affirmation of the coalition of the right and, within it, of FdI
and its leader.
All this stood in marked contrast with the nearly 90 days required to
give birth to the Conte I government (2018), or the more than 60 days
needed to form the Letta government (2013). In the history of the Italian
republic, the Meloni executive occupies second place in terms of the
speed of its formation. Only the Berlusconi IV government (2008–2011)
was formed more quickly. The timing seemed to suggest a return to the
political patterns of the Second Republic, after the deviations of the two
previous elections. It seemed to revive the narrative of the early 1990s
according to which elections should produce a clear outcome: a winning
coalition and a leader who becomes the head of government.
The Berlusconi-Meloni-Salvini coalition, moreover, coincided with one
of the traditional blocs of the Second Republic—one that, beyond the
partial renaming of its actors and the new internal balance of power,
was not so different from that of 1994. The well-known dynamics of
personalisation and mediatisation, that had been established since then,
allowed the right repeatedly to win Second Republic electoral compe-
titions. Giorgia Meloni, with her popular and media-friendly personal
profile, was the leader who most succeeded in turning these tendencies
to her advantage.
However, the very success of the FdI leader demonstrated that the
2022 elections could not be described as a simple return to the political
dynamics preceding 2011. The so-called Second Republic coincided, to a
large extent, with Berlusconi’s Italy. Meloni was, first and foremost, the
first woman to lead an Italian government: this was a sign of a momentous
change. But Meloni was also the first right-wing Prime Minister who was
not Berlusconi. Since an alternative and younger leader could not take
Berlusconi’s place in a personal party like FI, leadership of the coalition
had to be captured from the outside. It was won by a young woman with
a very different profile compared to Berlusconi.
Meloni represented a ‘new’ personality, at the head of a new party,
albeit one with a long and controversial past given its post-fascist ideo-
logical and organisational roots. The new (centre)right was therefore in
many respects a different political animal to the (centre)right Italy has
known since 1994. Nevertheless, the enduring presence of Berlusconi,
combined with the long drawn-out race for his succession, meant that
the government coalition was potentially unstable.
An additional reason for the complex relationships within the new
majority lay in the fact that Giorgia Meloni had drained many votes
from her allies. This situation has driven Salvini and a number of FI
spokespersons, since the election campaign, to emphasise their centrality,
concentrating primarily on their personal and party visibility rather than
on the coalition they belong to.
Moreover, it should be stressed that partial return to the dynamics of
the Second Republic could be largely considered an ‘incidental’ fact, one
deriving from the strength obtained by one political party over the others,
in the specific political circumstances of 2022.
All this confirmed, once again, that evolution of the Italian political
system proceeds uncertainly and incrementally, without a shared project
in the field of institutional reform. Since 2011, the evolution of the polit-
ical system seems to have been the result, not of a shared project for
reform, but rather of leaders’ and parties’ evaluations of what, in the
circumstances, will be to their partisan advantage, without any broader

understanding or reflection.
This approach generated chaos in 2013 and 2018—chaos that was
reflected in the difficulty in forming executives; the need to seek a fresh
political formula each time a new government had to be formed; and,
ultimately, persistent political instability, as demonstrated by the calling
of early elections. In contrast, the 2022 general election has produced a
government with a solid majority and a clear leadership that might allow
the legislature, at least potentially, to last for five years.
However, only the future will tell us whether what has emerged from
the 2022 vote is an arrangement that is destined to be consolidated in the
near future, or whether it represents just another stage in the development
of a political system in which instability and uncertainty have become the
norm.
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CHAPTER 2
The Outcome: Electoral Trends

and the Geopolitics of Voting
Elisa Lello , James L. Newell , and Fabio Turato
Abstract This chapter explains the outcome of the 2022 Italian general
election. The analysis considers the various parties that took part in the
competition, briefly describing their electoral performances at the elec-
tions of the recent past. The votes won by the coalitions and the principal
parties are compared with their performances at the earlier elections with
the objective of describing the changes in their support. In particular, the
outstanding success of one of the right-wing parties, Fratelli d’Italia, is
highlighted, together with the fact that its leader became the first female
head of government in Italy’s history. The election result is also analysed
in terms of volatility and the disproportionality resulting from the election
E. Lello · J. L. Newell (B) · F. Turato

Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo,
Urbino PU, Italy
e-mail: james.newell@uniurb.it
E. Lello
e-mail: elisa.lello@uniurb.it
F. Turato
e-mail: fabio.turato@uniurb.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2023
F. Bordignon et al. (eds.), Italy at the Polls 2022,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29298-9_2
24 E. LELLO ET AL.
law currently in force: the so-called Rosatellum. The discussion of voters’

choices is then extended to include a discussion of the geographical distri-
bution of the vote and the distribution of the vote by a number of
socio-demographic characteristics. The analysis shows important elements
of difference and others of continuity with regard to both the geography
and sociology of the vote compared to elections in the recent past.
Keywords Geopolitics · Territory · Mainstream/anti-establishment

cleavage · Left/right cleavage · Electoral geography · Socio-demographic
profile of electors
1 Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with an understanding
of the 2022 election outcome. Elections represent crucial moments in
the political and social life of a country. Changes in voting behaviour,
both in terms of the factors determining choices and in terms of voting
distributions, speak to the transformations affecting not only the polit-
ical and party systems, but also the society and the political culture of a
community.
From this point of view, Italy represents an interesting case when
it comes to studying the relationship between society and politics
(Bellucci & Segatti, 2010; Diamanti, 2003). Indeed, the relationship
between the two was for long reflected in the country’s political geog-
raphy and in the long-standing presence in specific regions of territorially-
based political subcultures, shoring up support for the parties representing
the two main political traditions of Italy’s republican history. One of
these was the Catholic tradition, represented by the Democrazia Cris-
tiana (Christian Democrats, DC) and the other the left-wing tradition
whose principal representative was the Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian
Communist Party, PCI).
However, the progressive weakening of this connection revealed
profound social changes in terms of citizens’ political outlooks, of the
role of class differences and of the significance of the Catholic identity in
citizens’ voting choices.
2 THE OUTCOME: ELECTORAL TRENDS … 25
The processes of globalisation and their consequences, the crisis of

representative democracy and of its main protagonists, above all the polit-
ical parties, have increasingly affected the most recent trends in voting
behaviour. Moreover, domestic events marking republican Italy’s recent
history, such as Tangentopoli (‘Bribe City’), have redefined the signifi-
cance of voting itself, rendering it decreasingly the expression of a sense
of belonging and increasingly a rational choice.
The consequence has been the emergence of an increasingly dynamic
and competitive electoral market. Mistrust of politics, social anxiety
induced by the fears aroused by global society and the way it has
been interpreted by populist politicians have helped to increase electoral
volatility and protest voting leading to the emergence of new parties
and electoral coalitions at each election. The distribution of support has
therefore changed massively from one election to the next.
If these have been features of Italy’s electoral history for the last thirty
years, then they were also apparent at the election of 2022. In order to
consider this election from the perspective outlined above, the first section
discusses the competing coalitions and parties from the point of view of
their history, ideological orientations and electoral performances. Then,
it focuses on the election outcome, comparing it with the outcomes of
previous elections and tracing the rises and falls in support for the various
competing formations.
Subsequently, in the second section, the result of the elections is anal-
ysed in terms of volatility and the disproportionality produced by the
electoral system currently in force: the so-called Rosatellum.
In addition, we extend the discussion of the decisions of voters by
paying some attention to the geography of the outcome and to the role of
voters’ socio-demographic characteristics in producing it. Thus, in Sect. 3,
we describe, against the background of recent and not-so-recent changes
in the territorial distribution of party support, what the electoral map
looked like in 2022. Then, in Sect. 4, we describe the distribution of
party support by gender, age, education and occupation. The final section
concludes.
26 E. LELLO ET AL.
2 The Parties, Electoral

Coalitions and Outcomes
In the first place, voters were faced with a choice of essentially four
line-ups, which between them took 93.1% of the vote (Fig. 1). These
were, first, a coalition of the right, consisting of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli
d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI), Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) and
Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League), plus a minor formation, Noi Moderati
(‘We Moderates’), which together took 43.8% of the vote (44.0% in the
Senate contest) to win overall seat majorities in both branches of the legis-
lature (that is, 237 of 400 in the case of the Chamber; 115 of 200 in the
case of the Senate).
Opposing them were, first, the coalition of the centre-left which took
26.1%, representing 7.3 million votes. The largest component of this
coalition by far was the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party, PD),
which won around 5.3 million votes: 19.1% of the valid votes cast. This
party contested the election in alliance with three very minor formations:
an alliance of the Verdi (Greens) and the Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left,
SI) which took 3.6%; +Europa (‘More Europe’, +EU) with 2.8% and
Impegno Civico (‘Civic Commitment’, IC): 0.6%.
Also opposed to the right was the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five-star
Movement, M5s) which won 15.4% of the valid votes cast, representing
FdI FdI 21,6 (+5.872.967)
(-2.318.739) -5,9 FI
(-3.234.682) -8,6 Lega
Centre-Right coalition CR coalition 6,8 (+147.899)
(-805.716) PD
PD 0,9
(-168.748) CL coalition
Centre-Left coalition 3,2
(-6.398.094) -17,3 M5S
Fig. 1 Results of the Italian general election of 2022: differences as compared

to the election of 2018—Chamber of Deputies (% variations; absolute variations
in parentheses) (Source LaPolis Electoral Observatory, University of Urbino Carlo
Bo, based on data from the Ministry of the Interior)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
[286] Du moins je crois pouvoir interpréter de la sorte le passage suivant du
testament (d'ailleurs apocryphe) de saint Remi: Aliud argenteum vas, quod mihi
domnus illustris memoriæ Hlodowicus rex, quem de sacro baptismatis fonte
suscepi, donare dignatus est, ut de eo facerem quod ipse voluissem, tibi hæredi
meæ ecclesiæ supra memoratæ jubeo thuribulum et imaginatum calicem fabricari:
quod faciam per me si habuero spatium vitæ. Acta Sanctorum des Bollandistes,
1er octobre, t. I, p. 167 F.
La tradition a conservé, sous une forme poétique où se trahit avec
éclat l'action de l'imagination populaire, le souvenir des acquisitions
faites alors par l'église de Reims. Elle a supposé, en présence d'un
domaine d'une certaine étendue, qu'il avait été donné tout entier par
un seul donateur, et qu'il marquait le territoire dont le donataire avait
pu faire le circuit en un temps déterminé. Nous rencontrons plusieurs
fois dans l'histoire de Clovis cette curieuse transformation des vieux
souvenirs, où le lecteur retrouvera, à défaut d'authenticité, la
fraîcheur et la naïveté de la poésie primitive:
«Clovis, dit la légende, avait alors sa résidence à Soissons, d'où il
avait expulsé Syagrius, et il se délectait dans la société et dans
l'entretien de saint Remi. Or saint Remi avait cédé à l'évêché de
Laon et à d'autres établissements religieux les terres qu'il tenait de la
libéralité du roi des Francs dans le Soissonnais et le Laonnais, et il
ne possédait aux environs de Soissons qu'une petite ferme, donnée
autrefois à son prédécesseur saint Nicaise. Les habitants, qui étaient
accablés de redevances, demandèrent de pouvoir payer désormais
à l'église de Reims ce qu'ils devaient au roi, et la pieuse reine
appuya leur requête. En conséquence, le roi promit à saint Remi de
lui donner tout le territoire dont le saint pourrait faire le circuit
pendant le temps que lui-même ferait sa méridienne.
«Le saint se mit donc en marche, jalonnant sa route par des points
de repère, et délimitant ainsi le territoire dont on voit encore
aujourd'hui les bornes. Sur son chemin, un homme propriétaire d'un
moulin le repoussa, de peur qu'il n'englobât le moulin dans ses
limites.
«—Ami, lui dit l'évêque avec douceur, qu'il ne te déplaise pas que
nous possédions ce moulin à deux.»
«Mais l'autre le chassa, et aussitôt voilà la roue du moulin qui se met
à tourner à rebours. Alors l'homme rappela à grands cris le saint et
lui dit:
«—Serviteur de Dieu, viens, et nous serons ensemble les
propriétaires de ce moulin.
«—Non, répondit saint Remi, il ne sera ni à toi ni à moi.»
«Et à l'instant il se creusa en cet endroit une fosse d'une telle
profondeur, que depuis lors il n'est plus possible d'y construire.
«Plus loin, d'autres individus chassèrent également le saint, ne
voulant pas lui laisser faire le circuit d'un petit bois.
«—Eh bien, dit saint Remi, que jamais de ce bois il ne vole une
feuille ni ne tombe une branche sur mon bien.
«Et, quoique ces deux domaines soient contigus, le vœu du saint a
été accompli tant que la forêt est restée debout.
«Partant de là, le saint arriva dans un endroit nommé Chavigny, qu'il
voulut également englober. Mais là aussi, il fut repoussé par les
habitants. Et lui, le visage joyeux, tantôt s'éloignant, tantôt se
rapprochant, il continuait de planter ses points de repère; aujourd'hui
encore, en parcourant les lieux, on peut voir où il s'est rapproché, où
il a dû s'écarter. Repoussé une dernière fois, il dit:
«—Peinez toujours et supportez l'indigence.»
«Et cette sentence persiste toujours et prouve la puissance
surnaturelle de ses paroles.
«Cependant le roi s'était réveillé. Par un précepte de son autorité, il
confirma saint Remi dans la possession de toutes les terres dont il
avait fait le circuit. Ce domaine, dont Luilly et Cocy sont les noyaux,
est encore aujourd'hui la paisible possession de l'église de
Reims[287].»
[287] Hincmar, Vita sancti Remigii, 80-82, dans les Acta Sanctorum p. 152. Il n'y a
pas lieu de discuter avec les érudits qui, comme M. Krusch (Neues Archiv., t. XX,
p. 523), veulent se persuader que ces légendes sont autant de faux fabriqués par
Hincmar. Les savants au courant des traditions populaires seront d'un autre avis,
et ils rapprocheront de cet épisode le passage du diplôme apocryphe de Clovis
pour saint Jean de Réomé, où on lit: Ut quantumcumque suo asino sedens una
die circa locum suum nobis traditum et commendatum de nostris fiscis circuisset,
perpetuo per nostram regalem munificentiam habeat. Bréquigny et Pardessus,
Diplomata, I, p. 32; Pertz, Diplomata, p. 11.—Voir encore la Vie de saint Léonard,
c. 12-25, et l'Histoire de saint Germier ci-dessus, p. 163.
Écoutons maintenant le récit des libéralités faites par le roi des
Francs à l'église de Senlis. Ce n'est pas, cette fois, une tradition
populaire que nous allons entendre, c'est une légende née à l'ombre
d'un cloître, et qui a gardé la saveur propre au milieu ecclésiastique
dont elle est sortie. Clovis, dit-elle, après son baptême, visita
successivement tous les sanctuaires de son royaume. Le renom de
saint Rieul le conduisit aussi à Senlis, où il arriva escorté de
plusieurs évêques de la deuxième Belgique. Après s'être fait
raconter l'histoire et les miracles du saint, il voulut qu'on ouvrît son
tombeau et qu'on lui donnât de ses reliques. L'évêque de la ville,—
c'était probablement Livianus, qui assista au concile d'Orléans en
511,—s'opposa avec énergie à la demande du roi, disant qu'on ne
pouvait souscrire à une pareille profanation des choses saintes.
Mais, bien que les autres évêques appuyassent cette manière de
voir, le roi insista tellement, qu'il fallut bien se rendre à son désir. La
tombe est ouverte, un parfum céleste s'en échappe, et tous les
assistants, le roi, les évêques, les grands, tombent à genoux en
remerciant Dieu. Puis l'évêque se mit en devoir d'enlever, avec des
tenailles, une des dents du saint, et, ô prodige! de cette bouche dont
le temps a rongé les chairs s'échappe un flot de sang rouge et
chaud. Le roi prend la relique; mais, frappé par le miracle, il sort tout
bouleversé et sans penser à honorer le précieux dépôt qu'il a entre
les mains. Aussi, lorsqu'il voulut rentrer en ville (la basilique du saint
se dressait sur son tombeau en dehors de l'enceinte), c'est en vain
qu'il essaya de retrouver la porte par laquelle il était sorti. Il tourna
plusieurs fois autour des murailles sans voir aucune ouverture. Enfin
les évêques lui firent comprendre que, pour faire cesser
l'hallucination, il devait restituer la précieuse relique au tombeau du
saint, et faire à la basilique des dons qui permettraient de la
reconstruire dans des conditions plus dignes de son patron. Le roi se
conforma à ces conseils; il décida de reconstruire l'église à ses frais,
à partir des fondements; il fit édifier un édicule en or forgé sur le
tombeau du saint, il donna à l'église le bourg de Bucianum sur la
Marne avec toutes ses dépendances; il restitua la dent après l'avoir
fait enchâsser dans l'or et sertir de pierres précieuses; enfin, il fit
encore cadeau de quantité de vases d'or et d'argent, et de
vêtements sacerdotaux avec broderies en or. A peine avait-il promis
tout cela, qu'il retrouva les portes de la ville toutes grandes ouvertes,
et qu'il y put passer sans obstacle[288].
[288] Ex Vita sancti Reguli episcopi (dom Bouquet, III, p. 391).
Mais de tous les aspects sous lesquels se présente à nous le règne
de Clovis, aucun n'a le charme pénétrant et le parfum de poésie des
légendes qui racontent la part qu'il a prise à la fondation des
monastères.
Tous les âges, depuis les plus rapprochés du règne de Clovis, en ont
gardé le vivant souvenir. Grégoire de Tours en parle comme d'une
chose universellement connue, et les hagiographes des premiers
siècles se font manifestement l'écho de la tradition publique en
rappelant, sans prendre la peine d'insister, les nombreux
monastères qu'il a bâtis ou aidé à fonder[289].
[289] Voir ci-dessus le passage de Grégoire de Tours, iv, 48.—Clodoveo
Francorum regi fit cognitus (Melanius) et ejus strenuus efficitur consiliarius. Ejus
quippe consilio multas a fundamentis construxit ecclesias desertasque reparavit,
et monasteria quædam decentissime fabricavit. Vita Melanii, dans les Acta
Sanctorum des Bollandistes, 6 janvier, t. I, et Desmedt, Catalogus hagiographicus
Parisiensis, t. I, p. 71 où il y a une autre recension de cette vie. La troisième
recension, qui est publiée au t. II, p. 531 du même ouvrage, ne contient pas de
mention des monastères.—Reversusque rex cum victoria adepta, regnum
Francorum strenue rexit, monasteria plurima sanctorum edificavit, etc. Vita sanctæ
Chlothildis, dans M. G. H., Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, t. II, p. 345.—Quot
monasteria construxit, quot prædia ornamenta eisdem monasteriis distribuit, nemo
potest recordari. Note du treizième siècle dans un manuscrit du Liber historiæ, c.
19 (M. G. H., p. 273).
On ne connaîtrait pas bien ce règne aussi obscur que glorieux, si
l'on ne s'arrêtait un instant pour essayer de soulever, après quatorze
siècles révolus, le voile d'oubli qui s'est appesanti sur l'une de ses
pages les plus dignes d'intérêt. Que ne donnerait-on pas pour
retrouver l'histoire authentique d'une de ces colonies sacrées, qui
s'en allèrent dans les solitudes incultes, munies du diplôme royal,
planter l'étendard de la croix et jeter les semences d'un avenir
meilleur! Mais, hélas! plus que jamais nous nous acheminons à
travers les ténèbres, et c'est à peine si nous retrouvons par-ci par-là,
comme une étincelle qui brille sous la cendre d'un foyer dévasté, un
souvenir expirant, qui n'a plus même assez de vie pour charmer un
instant le regard ému du poète.
Implantée à Trèves par saint Athanase, à Tours par saint Martin, et
dans les Pays-Bas par saint Victrice de Rouen, la vie monastique
avait commencé à fleurir dans ces régions, comme une vigoureuse
plante du sud qui ne pâtit point d'être transportée sous des cieux
plus froids, mais qui s'accommode de tous les climats et qui fructifie
partout. Les terribles bouleversements qui se produisirent dès le
commencement du cinquième siècle, et qui se prolongèrent
jusqu'après le baptême de Clovis, avaient interrompu cette heureuse
floraison; mais voici qu'au lendemain de la conversion des Francs,
les monastères se remettent à surgir du sol comme les fleurs au
printemps.
De tous ceux qui s'enorgueillirent d'avoir eu Clovis pour fondateur ou
pour bienfaiteur insigne, je ne sais s'il en est aucun dont les titres
méritent plus de confiance que ceux de l'abbaye de Baralle, dans le
village de ce nom, sur la route de Cambrai à Arras. Baralle est une
maison qui a disparu dès le neuvième siècle, qui n'a jamais eu
d'historien, et dont personne n'avait intérêt à embellir ou à exagérer
les souvenirs. Si, malgré cela, ils ont été mis par écrit à une époque
déjà ancienne, il y a lieu de croire qu'ils remontent à un passé
lointain, et qu'ils plongent en pleine antiquité mérovingienne.
L'absence de tout élément légendaire dans la sobre notice
consacrée à ce monastère confirme leur authenticité.
«A Baralle, dit le chroniqueur, il y avait un monastère de
congrégation canonique, fondé, selon la tradition, par le roi Clovis, et
consacré par saint Vaast en l'honneur de saint Georges. On y
vénérait le bras de ce martyr. Des colonnes de marbre et des ruines
de beaux édifices anciens qu'on y trouve encore attestent que cette
maison était opulente et riche. Aux jours de l'évêque Dodilon de
Cambrai, les chanoines, voyant que les Normands ravageaient toute
la province, brûlaient et profanaient les lieux saints, se réfugièrent à
Cambrai avec les reliques et le trésor de leur église. L'évêque les
reçut avec la plus généreuse hospitalité, et ils y restèrent quelque
temps. Lorsqu'ils crurent l'ennemi parti, ils voulurent prendre congé
de l'évêque et retourner chez eux. Mais le prélat les supplia de n'en
rien faire, et de se défier des ruses d'un perfide ennemi qui pouvait
fort bien être caché encore dans les environs. Par déférence pour
ces conseils, ils restèrent quelques jours encore; puis ils déclarèrent
que cette fois, tout danger étant disparu, rien ne s'opposait plus à
leur départ. En vain l'évêque, mieux avisé, fit de nouvelles instances;
ils refusèrent de l'écouter, et force lui fut de les laisser partir.
«Il en sera comme vous voudrez, leur dit-il; mais, ajouta-t-il, comme
s'il avait eu le pressentiment de ce qui allait arriver, je retiendrai ici
cette précieuse relique, le bras de saint Georges.»
«Les moines consentirent à lui laisser en gage la relique, mais
tinrent bon pour le reste, et, dans leur aveugle obstination,
méprisèrent les sages conseils et les offres généreuses du prélat. Ils
partirent donc; mais à peine étaient-ils éloignés de trois milles, qu'ils
furent surpris par l'ennemi et massacrés. Leur monastère fut réduit
en cendres, et tous les environs livrés au pillage; seuls les endroits
fortifiés purent résister. Plus tard, on rebâtit une modeste petite
église sur les ruines, et un seul prêtre la desservit; quant à la relique
de saint Georges, elle resta désormais à Cambrai[290].»
[290] Gesta Episcop. Camerac., ii, 11, dans M. G. H., Scriptores, vii, pp. 458-459.
Voir sur Baralle la notice de M. Godin dans le Dictionnaire historique et
archéologique du département du Pas-de-Calais, arrondissement d'Arras, t. II, p.
136. Une fontaine y porte encore le nom de Saint-Georges, et l'on y a trouvé des
tombeaux maçonnés dont la chronique fait un ermitage sous le vocable du même
saint. Il est à remarquer qu'on a exhumé à Baralle beaucoup d'objets romains, ce
qui atteste l'antiquité du lieu. Mabillon ne parle pas de Baralle dans ses Annales.
Voilà la tradition qui se conservait, au onzième siècle, dans le clergé
de l'église de Cambrai. Tout, nous l'avons déjà dit, y porte un cachet
d'authenticité qu'il serait difficile de méconnaître. Le vocable de saint
Georges, qui était le patron vénéré de tous les hommes de guerre,
semble insinuer que le monastère est une création spontanée de
Clovis lui-même. Enfin, la mention des chanoines réguliers indique
que la tradition remonte à une époque où la règle bénédictine ne
s'était pas encore introduite en Gaule. A voir cette antique maison
surgir si près du berceau de la monarchie salienne, n'est-on pas
autorisé à croire que Clovis aura voulu consacrer à la patrie de ses
pères la première de ses fondations monastiques, et que ce cloître
dédié à saint Georges aura dû le jour à un vœu du roi très chrétien?
Pour trouver un souvenir rattaché à l'histoire de Clovis par une
tradition aussi ancienne et aussi oubliée que celle de Baralle, il faut
gagner l'extrémité méridionale du royaume, où Junant, dans le
Quercy, se réclamait, dès le neuvième siècle, du puissant
conquérant de l'Aquitaine. Située dans la vallée du Lot, à une lieue
environ de Figeac, l'abbaye était une de ces maisons modestes et
obscures comme il en a surgi beaucoup pendant les premiers âges
de la vie monastique en Gaule. Ses courtes annales ne contiennent
rien, si ce n'est l'histoire de sa naissance et celle de sa mort, toutes
deux racontées avec cette simplicité absolue qui exclut toute idée de
fiction. Saint-Martin de Junant, dit un écrivain du douzième siècle, fut
fondé par Clovis en l'honneur du saint évêque de Tours, et doté
d'honneurs et de richesses[291]. L'endroit de la vallée où s'élevait
l'abbaye était fort resserré et exposé aux fréquentes inondations du
Lot, ce qui empêchait la maison de se développer, et la maintenait
en permanence dans un état de ruine et de délabrement. Au
neuvième siècle, le roi Pépin d'Aquitaine, fils de Louis le
Débonnaire, imagina de la rattacher à l'abbaye Sainte Foi de
Conques, fondation de l'époque de Charlemagne. Seulement, quand
il s'agit de recueillir à Conques la population de Junant, les
bâtiments se trouvèrent trop petits, et alors on résolut de construire
une succursale de Conques à Figeac, sur la Selle. Junant fut
complètement abandonné; ses édifices tombèrent en ruines, la trace
même en disparut bientôt, et, sans le nom glorieux du conquérant de
la Gaule associé au souvenir de ses premiers jours, l'histoire aurait
oublié jusqu'à son existence. Combien ce souvenir doit avoir été
vivace il y a mille ans, puisque depuis lors il a pu arriver intact
jusqu'à nous, à travers des siècles d'indifférence pendant lesquels il
n'y avait plus personne pour s'y intéresser! Rien ne plaide mieux en
faveur de sa vénérable antiquité que ce rare phénomène de
conservation. Comme Baralle, Junant nous offre une tradition
constituée dès le neuvième siècle, et à laquelle les générations n'ont
plus rien ajouté. Il serait difficile de ne pas attribuer à ces deux
maisons le premier rang parmi toutes celles qui mettent leurs
origines sous le patronage de Clovis[292].
[291] Circuiensque vicina loca, in Caturcinio in loco qui Junantus (Vinantus dans
Chavanon, Adhémar de Chabannes, p. 21.) dicitur monasterium in honore beati
Martini construxit et ob amorem ipsius confessoris maximis honoribus ac diversis
thesauris abundantissime ditavit. D'après le manuscrit d'Adhémar de Chabannes,
dans Scriptores Rerum Meroving., t. II, p. 270, note.
[292] Voir le manuscrit 2 d'Adhémar de Chabannes (douzième siècle), ad ann. 754
(M. G. H., Scriptores, IV, p. 114). Les faux titres de Figeac ont fort embrouillé toute
cette question d'origines monastiques; on la trouve tirée au clair dans G.
Desjardins, Essai sur le cartulaire de l'abbaye de Sainte-Foi de Conques en
Rouergue (Bibl. de l'école des Chartes, t. XXXIII, 1872).
Junant n'est pas d'ailleurs le seul monastère d'Aquitaine qui ait de si
grands souvenirs. La ville d'Auch, qui nous a déjà raconté une si
curieuse tradition sur l'entrée de Clovis dans son enceinte, se
souvenait également que l'abbaye de Saint-Martin, bâtie à ses
portes, avait été fondée par lui à la prière de la reine Clotilde. Elle
voulait aussi qu'il eût ensuite fait don de ce monastère à l'église
Notre-Dame d'Auch, et il n'y a rien que de vraisemblable dans cette
version, bien que sous sa forme actuelle on y trouve des détails qu'il
serait difficile de concilier avec les données de l'histoire[293].
[293] Voir les auteurs cités ci-dessus et Lecoy de la Marche, Saint Martin, p. 515.
On ne peut pas admettre avec nos vieux auteurs que Clovis, entrant pour la
première fois à Auch, après la défaite d'Alaric, ait fait don à l'église Notre-Dame du
monastère de Saint-Martin, récemment construit par lui. Cette donation, si nous
admettons que Saint-Martin ait été fondé par Clovis, doit se rapporter à une date
postérieure.
Il est plus malaisé de se prononcer sur les titres de l'abbaye de
Simorre, située sur la Gimonne, à quelques lieues au sud-est
d'Auch. Elle aussi, elle avait confié à son cartulaire de vieux
souvenirs qui attribuaient sa fondation à Clovis. Elle croyait même
savoir que le nombre des religieux établis par lui dans le monastère
primitif était de dix-huit, mais que ce nombre fut augmenté dans la
suite par les libéralités de divers seigneurs. En attendant que les
prétentions de Simorre fassent l'objet d'un sérieux examen, nous
croyons pouvoir accueillir ici, au moins à titre provisoire, une tradition
respectable déjà par sa simplicité même, et qui a été conservée
jusqu'à la fin de l'ancien régime sans que personne l'ait rendue
suspecte en l'amplifiant[294].
[294] De Brugeles, Chroniques ecclésiastiques du diocèse d'Auch, pp. 180, 185 et
187, d'après un cartulaire de Simorre. «Il est fait mention de cette fondation dans
des lettres de la chancellerie de l'an 1511, dans des statuts faits au chapitre l'an
1512, dans un arrêt du conseil d'État de l'an 1522, et dans un inventaire de
production devant l'official d'Auch en 1558.» Idem, p. 180. Cf. Gallia christiana, I,
p. 1013.
Combien, en regard de ces humbles notices, que leur modestie
même recommande à l'attention, les légendes mérovingiennes de
l'abbaye de Moissac, bien moins garanties cependant[295],
apparaîtront supérieures en intérêt pour le lecteur amoureux du
pittoresque! Située sur le Tarn, à peu de distance du confluent de
cette rivière avec la Garonne, l'abbaye de Moissac a trouvé en son
abbé Aymeri de Peyrac (1377-1402) un historien érudit et zélé, qui
n'a laissé dans l'oubli aucune de ses légendes, et qui en a peut-être
embelli quelques-unes. Sous sa plume, l'histoire de la fondation de
Moissac semble prendre la couleur d'un conte des Mille et une nuits.
Écoutons l'intéressant narrateur.
[295] Un diplôme de Pépin Ier d'Aquitaine pour Moissac, en 818, attribue la
fondation de cette abbaye à saint Amand: Monasterio quod dicitur Moissiacum in
pago Caturcino super fluvium qui dicitur Tarnus, quod olim sanctus Amandus
abbas in honore sancti Petri apostolorum principis construxit (Dom Bouquet, VI, p.
663.) Cf. Mabillon, Annales O. S. B., t. I, p. 358, et Lagrèze-Fossat, Études
historiques sur Moissac, Paris, 1870-1874, t. III, p. 8. Cet auteur ne connaît que le
diplôme de Pépin, en 845, qui est apocryphe, et qui reproduit textuellement
l'authentique cité ici. Cf. dom Bouquet, t. VIII, p. 356. L'abbé Foulhiac, Mélanges
sur le Quercy, cité par Lagrèze-Fossat, III, p. 9, croit que saint Amand aura fondé
Moissac sous Clovis II, et qu'on aura confondu ce prince avec Clovis Ier.
C'était en 507. Clovis avait vaincu Alaric, et il s'avançait à marches
forcées sur Toulouse pour s'emparer de la capitale des Visigoths. La
nuit qui précéda son arrivée à Moissac, il eut sous la tente, pendant
son sommeil, une vision bizarre, dans laquelle il voyait des griffons
ayant des pierres dans leur bec, et les portant dans une vallée où ils
commençaient la construction d'une église. Or, le lendemain, en
longeant les rives du Tarn à la tête de son armée, voilà qu'il aperçut
soudain les oiseaux de son rêve. Ils étaient de grandeur
gigantesque, et de proportions que n'avait aucun autre oiseau.
Aussitôt Clovis descendit de cheval, raconta sa vision à son armée,
et lui proposa de commencer la construction d'un édifice qu'on
mettrait sous le patronage de saint Pierre. L'armée acclama ces
paroles, et sans tarder elle se mit à jeter les fondements d'une église
qui fut achevée plus tard, après la soumission totale de l'Aquitaine.
En souvenir de cet événement, on voyait encore, à la fin du
quatorzième siècle, dans le pavement en mosaïque de l'église de
Moissac, en avant du chœur, deux oiseaux de grande taille, qui
passaient pour représenter les oiseaux de Clovis. Le lecteur
familiarisé avec l'étude de la poésie populaire n'aura pas de peine à
reconnaître dans cette mosaïque l'origine de la tradition elle-même,
ou du moins celle des formes fantastiques sous lesquelles elle a été
conservée. Mais, à quelque date que soit née la légende des
griffons, le souvenir de Clovis était ancien à Moissac. Déjà, en 1212,
dans une lettre de doléances adressée à Philippe-Auguste, l'abbé de
ce monastère rappelait qu'une tradition immémoriale en attribuait la
fondation à Clovis, et citait, à titre de preuve, l'inscription suivante,
qui se lisait au-dessus de la porte de l'abbaye de Moissac:
HOC TIBI CHRISTE DEUS REX INSTITUIT CLODOVEUS
AUXIT MUNIFICUS POST HUNC DOMINUS LUDOVICUS
A cette date, l'abbaye célébrait plusieurs services annuels pour le
repos de l'âme des rois de France qui l'avaient fondée et dotée, et,
dans la pensée des moines, Clovis était du nombre. Plusieurs
siècles après, cette pieuse coutume était encore en vigueur. On se
souvenait du conquérant de l'Aquitaine dans la solitude du
monastère, et la prière catholique allait chercher sa mémoire dans
l'oubli profond du passé[296].
[296] Voir la chronique d'Aymeri de Peyrac, manuscrit 4991 A du fonds latin de la
Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, fos 102 v., 105 et 165 v. Cf. Lagrèze-Fossat,
Études historiques sur Moissac, Paris, 1870-74, t. III, p. 495, et t. I, p. 373. La
légende de Moissac fut plus tard remaniée, comme celle de la sainte Ampoule,
des anges y furent substitués aux oiseaux. «Les habitants illettrés croient et
affirment encore que la statue colossale du Christ qui décore le tympan du grand
portail de l'Église est celle de Clovis. Ils lui donnent le nom de Reclobis, mot patois
formé par contraction des mots latins rex et Clovis. Il est très probable que cette
croyance est très ancienne.» (Lagrèze-Fossat, III, pp. 496 et 497.) Il est toutefois
bien loin d'être prouvé que Moissac ait été fondé par Clovis; selon Lagrèze-Fossat
lui-même, III, p. 8, il devrait sa fondation à saint Amand.
Nous avons énuméré toutes les fondations monastiques attribuées à
Clovis dans le pays de la Garonne et de ses affluents. Mais le reste
de la France en possède plusieurs également, qu'il convient de
passer en revue, et dont il faut examiner les titres.
Le Limousin ne s'est pas contenté de mettre Clovis en relations avec
Léonard, le saint ermite de la forêt de Panvain[297]. Selon une
attestation de la fin du quinzième siècle, ce roi devrait être considéré
comme le fondateur de l'abbaye du Dorat, car, en revenant de la
bataille de Vouillé, il y aurait fondé le modeste oratoire qui fut le
berceau de cette maison. Les clercs qu'il y plaça, au dire de la
tradition, reçurent de lui une dotation territoriale, à laquelle il ajouta
le précieux privilège de l'immunité[298].
[297] Sur saint Léonard, voir ci-dessus p. 167.
[298] Le texte du prétendu diplôme de Clovis pour le Dorat est publié par
Aubugeois de la Ville du Bort, Histoire du Dorat, Paris 1880 (d'après Leymarie
Histoire de la bourgeoisie, t. II, p. 345); il est contenu dans un vidimus du 5 février
1495, délivré par le gardien du sceau du bailliage de Limousin au chantre de
l'église du Dorat, syndic du chapitre. D'après ce vidimus, le document était
transcrit dans un vieux livre écrit sur parchemin, richement relié et renfermant les
évangiles. M. Alfred Leroux, Additions et rectifications à l'Histoire du Dorat de M.
Aubugeois de la Ville de Bort (Bulletin de la Société archéologique et historique du
Limousin, t. 29, 1881, p. 139), ne voit dans ce texte qu'un fragment de chronique,
postérieur peut-être de six siècles (de l'avis même de M. l'abbé Rougerie) au fait
dont il s'agit. M. l'abbé Rougerie, Vies de saint Israël et de saint Théobald, Le
Dorat, 1871, se donne des peines stériles pour défendre la tradition locale étayée
de si faibles appuis.
Saint-Mesmin de Mici invoque à la fois un diplôme de Clovis et une
Vie de ses saints fondateurs. Il est vrai que le diplôme n'est pas
authentique, et que la Vie ne paraît pas contemporaine; mais toutes
les objections qu'on peut soulever contre certaines de leurs parties
laissent debout la tradition ancienne qu'ils ont mise par écrit. Clovis,
nous dit-elle, désirait faire quelque chose pour le saint prêtre
Euspice, qui avait refusé l'évêché de Verdun. L'ayant emmené sur
les bords de la Loire avec son neveu saint Mesmin, et connaissant
son goût pour la vie monastique, il lui proposa de chercher dans ce
pays un endroit qui serait à sa convenance, et lui promit de lui en
faire donation. Aidé de Mesmin, Euspice se mit en quête, et arrêta
finalement son choix sur une presqu'île formée par le confluent de la
Loire et du Loiret, en aval d'Orléans. La biographie des deux saints
vante le charme de ces lieux, où la beauté du site, la fertilité du sol
et la profondeur de la solitude se réunissaient pour en faire le séjour
idéal d'une congrégation monastique. La presqu'île n'était pas
grande, mais elle produisait en abondance le blé et le vin; des
bosquets pleins d'oiseaux diversifiaient le paysage, fermé d'un côté
par la majesté sévère des grands bois, largement ouvert de l'autre
par la Loire, sur laquelle apparaissaient fréquemment des vaisseaux
marins qui, remontant le fleuve, apportaient dans l'intérieur de la
Gaule les marchandises les plus variées de l'étranger.
C'est là qu'Euspice, avec l'assentiment du roi et grâce à ses
libéralités, inaugura la florissante abbaye de Saint-Mesmin. Sentant
sa fin approcher, le vieillard voulut que l'acte de donation fût passé
au nom de son neveu comme au sien, ce qui fut fait. Dans sa
rédaction la plus concise, et qui a été admise comme authentique
par la plupart des historiens, l'acte comprenait la concession du fisc
royal de Mici, plus une chênaie, une saussaie et deux moulins. En
outre, le roi recommandait les deux solitaires à la bienveillance de
l'évêque d'Orléans Eusebius, et mettait leur monastère sous sa
protection. Telle fut, au dire de la tradition, l'origine de l'abbaye de
Saint-Mesmin de Mici[299].
[299] Voir les deux vies de saint Mesmin de Mici, dont la première, selon Mabillon,
serait du septième siècle, et dont la seconde est dédiée à Jonas d'Orléans, qui
vécut au neuvième (Mabillon, Acta Sanct. O. S. B., I, pp. 562 et suivantes).—Pour
le diplôme, outre les auteurs cités par Pardessus (Diplomata, I, pp. 57 et 58), et
par Pertz (Diplomata, pp. 3 et 120), il faut lire Vergnaud-Romagnesi, Mémoire sur
l'ancienne abbaye de Saint-Mesmin-de-Mici, Orléans, 1842, et surtout un mémoire
qui se trouve dans les Factums de la Bibliothèque nationale (Recueil Thoisy, 384),
et qui est intitulé: Factum pour maître Lie Chassinat contre les religieux Feuillants
de l'abbaye de Saint-Mesmin, appelans d'une sentence du 8 juillet 1659, rendue
par le bailli d'Orléans, avec un appendice portant en tête: Advertissement servant
à l'examen des titres et chartulaires de l'abbaye de Saint-Mesmin, et pour en
justifier les faussetés. Cf. Mabillon, Annales O. S. B., t. I, p. 33.
Les autres monastères qui revendiquent Clovis pour fondateur sont
loin d'exhiber des titres aussi sérieux que ceux de Mici. Ceux de
Saint-Michel de Tonnerre[300] et de Molosme[301], dans le voisinage
de cette ville, ainsi que ceux de Saint-Pierre de Flavigny[302] sont
inconnus, et pour cette raison ils échappent également à la
controverse et à l'attention de l'historien. Ceux de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif
de Sens doivent être résolument écartés, malgré les déclarations
explicites des deux diplômes de fondation de cette abbaye. A en
croire l'une de ces pièces apocryphes, attribuée à Clovis, ce roi
aurait fait don à sa fille Théodechilde, qui avait consacré sa virginité
au Christ, d'un domaine considérable situé en Bourgogne, et
provenant, au dire du diplôme, de la dot de Clotilde. Mais
Théodechilde était la fille de Thierry Ier et non de Clovis, et toutes les
assertions du diplôme croulent par la base devant cette simple
rectification, unanimement admise aujourd'hui[303].
[300] Mabillon, Annales O. S. B., t. I, p. 50.
[301] Idem, ibid., I, p. 49.
[302] Le P. Grignard, qui s'en est occupé en dernier lieu, écrit: «Quad multa?
Opinio quæ tenet Flaviniacensem abbatiam regnante Clodoveo primo fuisse
fundatam, dubia ne dicam commenticia videtur.» Wissenschaftliche Studien und
Mittheilungen aus dem Benediktinerorden, 2e année, t. I, (1881), p. 253.
[303] La confusion est ancienne; on la trouve déjà au onzième siècle dans
Odorannus de Sens, et au douzième siècle dans Clarius. A. de Valois, t. I. p. 326,
et Mabillon Annales, O. S. B., t. I, pp. 47-48, en ont fait justice, mais cela n'a pas
empêché l'abbé Chabeau, Sainte Théodechilde vierge, Aurillac, 1883, et l'abbé
Bouvier, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif (Bulletin de la Société des
sciences historiques et naturelles de l'Yonne, t. XLV, 1891), de soutenir le point de
vue d'Odorannus. Récemment, M. Maurice Prou a repris l'examen de la question
dans un travail qu'on peut considérer comme définitif, et qui est intitulé: Études sur
les chartes de fondation de l'abbaye de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif. Le diplôme de Clovis et
la charte de Théodechilde, Sens, 1894.
Les titres de Sainte-Marie de Bethléem, qui a été dans les derniers

temps un prieuré de l'abbaye de Ferrière en Gâtinais, sont
également fort sujets à caution. Si l'histoire qu'ils nous racontent
avait le moindre degré de vraisemblance, elle contiendrait un
épisode bien curieux de la biographie de Clovis. «J'ai appris, lui fait
dire le diplôme, de la bouche de Remi de Reims, mon ami très cher,
qui m'en a certifié le récit, que Bethléem en Gâtinais a été fondé par
saint Sabinien, par saint Potentien, par saint Coffin et par plusieurs
autres disciples de saint Pierre envoyés en Gaule. Or, pendant que
ces saints personnages étaient en prière la nuit, une éblouissante
lumière se répandit soudain, et ils virent apparaître dans les airs la
scène de la naissance de Notre-Seigneur. L'enfant Jésus, la Vierge,
saint Joseph, le bœuf et l'âne de la crèche, tout, jusqu'aux anges
chantant le Gloria in excelsis, se révéla aux yeux de ces saints
solitaires. Appelé par le bruit de cette merveille, et par celui des
miracles qui se font tous les jours dans ce saint lieu, j'y suis venu
humblement prier la Mère de Dieu, et, par piété envers elle, voyant
que l'étroitesse de ce sanctuaire ne suffisait pas à l'affluence des
fidèles, j'ai décidé d'y bâtir une église plus vaste et plus belle en
l'honneur des saints apôtres Pierre et Paul. Avant de quitter cette
retraite, j'ai jeté les fondements de ce temple, que j'achèverai par la
suite avec la grâce de Dieu.» Telle est la légende de Bethléem;
malgré son caractère peu digne de foi, elle devait trouver une place
dans ce récit, parce qu'elle contient peut-être une parcelle de vérité
qu'il y aurait intérêt à mettre en lumière[304].
[304] Dom G. Morin, Histoire générale des pays de Gastinois, Senonois et
Hurepois, Paris, 1630, p. 764.
Arrêtons-nous encore un instant, avant de terminer cette revue,
devant le diplôme de fondation de l'abbaye de Saint-Jean de
Réomé, aujourd'hui Moutiers-Saint-Jean (Côte-d'Or). Ce document,
attribué à Clovis, nous offre une nouvelle version de la légende
populaire que nous avons déjà rencontrée dans la vie de saint Remi.
On y lit que Clovis donna à l'abbé Jean, qu'il vénérait comme son
patron spécial, autant de terres fiscales qu'il pouvait en parcourir en
un jour, monté sur un âne. Hâtons-nous de dire que le diplôme n'est
pas authentique, et ajoutons que la vie de saint Jean de Réomé, qui
est du septième siècle au plus tard, ne sait rien des relations du
saint avec le roi Clovis. Cette dernière circonstance est bien faite
pour rendre suspecte la tradition elle-même, et cependant il y a dans
le diplôme des passages qui ont un tel accent d'antiquité, qu'on est
tenté d'y voir, avec des critiques distingués, une pièce authentique
défigurée par des interpolations ou par des remaniements[305].
[305] Il n'y a rien à tirer de Roverius, Reomaus seu historia Monasterii sancti
Joannis Reomaensis in castro Lingonensi, Paris, 1637, et rien de neuf à
apprendre dans l'étude de M. de Lanneau (Bulletin de la Société des sciences
historiques et naturelles de Semur, 6e et 7e année, 1869-1870).
On connaît maintenant Clovis fondateur de monastères[306]. Les

pages que nous lui avons consacrées ne sont peut-être pas
complètes, et les traditions qu'elles racontent n'ont pu être toujours
contrôlées et vérifiées. Le lecteur nous pardonnera de les avoir
rapportées néanmoins, telles que nous les avons trouvées dans les
diplômes et dans les chroniques. En une matière si obscure et si peu
explorée, n'y avait-il pas lieu de tout recueillir, et de ne rien omettre
de ce qui peut devenir un indice? Nous l'avons pensé, et, ne
pouvant pas toujours faire le départ de nos matériaux, nous avons
voulu les reproduire indistinctement, croyant qu'il y avait quelque
profit à se souvenir ici de la parole évangélique: Collige fragmenta
ne pereant.
[306] Nous ne parlons pas ici de Nesle-la-Reposte, qui ne peut invoquer que deux
statues du portail de son église, prises arbitrairement pour Clovis et pour Clotilde
(Mabillon, Annales, I, p. 50), ni de Romainmotier, au canton de Vaud, dont les
prétentions reposent sur une confusion manifeste avec Clovis II (Voir F. de
Chavannes, Recherches sur le couvent de Romainmotier, dans Mémoires et
documents publiés par la Société d'histoire de la Suisse romande, t. III, Lausanne,
1842).
Toutefois, on se ferait une idée fausse des relations de Clovis avec
l'Église, si on voulait ne les apercevoir que dans la lumière adoucie
et sous les couleurs harmonieuses de la légende. En réalité, ce
règne si rempli de péripéties militaires, et pendant lequel les armées
franques ne cessèrent de sillonner la Gaule, n'a pas seulement
assisté à des fondations d'églises et de monastères, et les
institutions religieuses y ont plus d'une fois pâti des violences que
déchaînait ou autorisait la guerre. Deux générations après la mort du
roi, on se souvenait encore des déprédations que les grands
s'étaient permises du temps de Clovis à l'endroit des biens
ecclésiastiques, et le concile de Paris, réuni vers 570, mettait les
héritiers des spoliateurs en demeure de restituer des biens
injustement acquis. «Il est arrivé, dit le premier canon de ce concile,
qu'au temps des discordes, et par la permission du roi Clovis, de
bonne mémoire, certains se sont emparés des biens de l'Église et
en mourant les ont légués à leurs successeurs. Nous voulons que
ceux-là aussi, si, avertis par leurs évêques et reconnaissant leurs
fautes, ils ne font restitution, soient temporairement exclus de la
communion. Ces biens enlevés à Dieu même et qui, il faut le croire,
ont causé la mort prématurée des ravisseurs, leurs fils ne doivent
pas les garder plus longtemps[307].»
[307] Sirmond, Concilia antiqua Galliæ, t. I, p. 314; Maassen, Concilia ævi
Merovingici, p. 143: Accidit etiam ut temporibus discordiæ sub permissione bonæ
memoriæ domini Clodovei regis res ecclesiarum aliqui competissent, ipsasque res,
in fata conlapsi, propriis heredibus reliquissent. Ce texte n'est pas sûr: au lieu de
sub permissione les manuscrits lisent supra promissionem, ce qui n'a pas de sens;
je me suis rallié avec Thomassin et Hefelé à la correction de Sirmond. Cf.
Thomassin, Vetus disciplina, pars. II, lib. II, c. 12, nº 13, p. 588; Lœning,
Geschichte des Deutschen Kirchenrechts, t. II, p. 689; Hefelé,
Conciliengeschichte, t. III. p. 12.
Ces paroles sont graves, et ce serait les mal comprendre que d'en
conclure qu'elles visent exclusivement les détenteurs des biens
ravis. En prononçant ici le nom de Clovis, le concile a manifestement
voulu indiquer, d'une manière discrète, la part de responsabilité qu'il
entendait lui laisser dans l'œuvre de spoliation. Il n'en faudrait
pourtant pas conclure, avec certains historiens, qu'au jugement du
concile, c'est Clovis qui a dépouillé des églises pour enrichir ses
fidèles[308]. L'allusion faite aux troubles pendant lesquels ont eu lieu
les déprédations montre qu'il s'agit de violences illégales, et non de
mesures prises en vertu d'une décision du souverain[309]. Au
surplus, c'est un évêque encore, et un contemporain du concile de
Paris, qui formule dans les termes suivants le jugement de l'Église
sur le fondateur de la monarchie mérovingienne.
[308] C'est ainsi que l'entend notamment Lœning, l. c.: «Schon unter Chlodovech
kam es vor, dass der Kœnig, den Bitten seiner Grossen nachgebend, Kirchengut
einzog und zu ihren Gunsten darüber verfügte.» Il se peut que ce cas se soit
produit, mais le concile ne le dit pas.
[309] Grégoire de Tours, H. F. iv. 28.
«Faut-il s'étonner, écrit Grégoire de Tours en parlant des princes de

son temps, qu'ils soient accablés de tant de plaies? Mais rappelons-
nous ce que faisaient leurs pères, et voyons ce qu'ils font eux-
mêmes. Ceux-là, après avoir entendu les prédications des évêques,
abandonnaient les temples païens pour les sanctuaires du vrai Dieu;
ceux-ci, tous les jours, pillent les églises. Ceux-là enrichissaient les
monastères et les lieux saints; ceux-ci les détruisent et les
renversent. Ceux-là vénéraient et écoutaient de tout cœur les
prêtres de Dieu; ceux-ci, non-seulement ne leur prêtent plus l'oreille,
mais vont jusqu'à les persécuter[310].»
[310] Lire sur toute cette question Bondroit, Des capacitate possidendi ecclesiæ
aetate merovingicâ, Louvain 1900, pp. 105 et suivantes, où toutes les difficultés
relatives au texte dont il s'agit sont exposées et judicieusement discutées.
VIII
DERNIERS JOURS ET MORT DE
CLOVIS
Les dernières années de Clovis s'écoulèrent à Paris, où, selon
l'expression de son historien, il avait fixé le siège de son
royaume[311]. C'est là que nous le trouvons au retour de la guerre
d'Aquitaine, et que son fils, Thierry, vint le rejoindre après son
infructueuse campagne de Provence[312].
[311] Egressus autem a Turonus Parisius venit ibique cathedram regni sui
constituit. Grégoire de Tours, ii, 38.
[312] Id., Ibid.
Séduit, comme l'avait été avant lui Julien l'Apostat, par les charmes
de ce séjour, Clovis légua à ses enfants sa prédilection pour Lutèce.
Avec son beau fleuve, son air salubre, son ciel d'une rare douceur,
son sol fécond, ses collines aux flancs couverts de vignobles et au
sommet ombragé de forêts, sa population industrieuse et dès lors
enrichie par le trafic, son île qui s'épanouissait au milieu de la Seine
comme un superbe joyau, Paris était le séjour le plus délicieux de la
Gaule[313]. Ses environs, où la Seine se déroule avec des courbes
harmonieuses au milieu d'un paysage riche et pittoresque, n'avaient
pas une moindre attraction pour un barbare passionné, comme tous
les Mérovingiens, pour la la vie des champs. Plus d'une des
nombreuses résidences royales que les rois Francs possédèrent
dans cette région, telles que Clichy, Épineuil, Chelles, Rueil,
Bonneuil et d'autres encore furent peut-être inaugurées par le
vainqueur d'Alaric lui-même[314].
[313] C'était l'impression des contemporains. Qu'on lise ce dithyrambe qu'un
auteur méridional, un Toulousain selon M. J. Havet (Œuvres t. I, p. 223-225),
écrivant vers 800 la Passio sanctorum martyrum Dionisii etc., Quia esset salubris
aere, jocunda flumine, fecunda terris, arboribus nemorosa et venetis uberrima,
constipata populis, refecta commerciis, etc. (M. G. H., Auctores Antiquissimi, t. IV,
pp. 101-105.)
[314] A. de Valois, t. I, p. 299.
Selon toute probabilité, Clovis demeurait à Paris dans le palais de

Constance Chlore, situé sur la rive gauche de la Seine, en face de
l'île de la Cité, et le long de la chaussée romaine de Paris à
Orléans[315]. Ce grandiose édifice, dont les ruines massives et
sombres évoquent si puissamment les austères souvenirs du passé
au milieu du jeune et bruyant quartier Saint-Michel, avait échappé
aux destructions des Huns, et le roi barbare s'y trouvait de plein droit
le successeur des empereurs. Les jardins du palais, bornés des
deux côtés longs par l'emplacement des rues Bonaparte et Saint-
Jacques, s'étendaient vers le nord jusqu'au fleuve, pleins de vieux
arbres contemporains de Camulogène. C'est sur leur immense
superficie que Childebert put découper plus tard, à l'ouest, le
domaine qu'il assigna à sa nouvelle église Saint-Vincent, mieux
connue de la postérité sous le nom de Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Installé au large dans la superbe résidence impériale, toujours
somptueuse bien qu'un peu délabrée, le roi des Francs y coulait,
pendant les rares intervalles de ses guerres, des heures d'un rapide
repos au milieu de la jeune famille qui croissait à ses côtés.
[315] Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, éd. de 1852, t. I, p. 168. Cf. Paris à travers les
âges, t. I, p. 17.
Des fenêtres du palais royal, qui regardait le soleil levant, un calme

et doux spectacle s'offrait aux yeux. L'opulente vallée s'y étalait avec
délices dans la fraîcheur de sa verdure et sous la sérénité de son
ciel, qui permettait, au dire d'un de ses plus fervents admirateurs, d'y
élever des figuiers en plein air[316]. Coupant à angle presque droit la
route d'Orléans vis-à-vis du palais, mais tournant ensuite
brusquement au sud-est, la chaussée de Sens gravissait à travers
des vignobles et des jardins les pentes adoucies des riantes collines
qui ferment au midi le bassin de la Seine, et venait atteindre au
sommet un large plateau qui dominait toute la vallée. Ce plateau
portait le même nom que la ville, peut-être parce qu'il lui avait donné
le sien: c'était le mons Lucotecius, ou, comme nous dirions, le mont
Lutèce. Là se trouvait le plus grand et le plus ancien cimetière de

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Italy at the Polls 2022: The Right Strikes

Back Fabio Bordignon

Italy at the Polls 2022

ISBN 978-3-031-29297-2 ISBN 978-3-031-29298-9 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

The Normality of Cleavages: When

PD took 40%, Berlusconi having resigned in 2011 brought down by the

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, finally, profoundly altered the

Urbino, Italy Ilvo Diamanti

Ilvo Diamanti is professor emeritus at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo

1 Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They Have Come

Methodological Note 155

Giovanni Boccia Artieri teaches Sociology of Communication and

Elisa Lello teaches Political Sociology at the University of Urbino Carlo

+EU More Europe (+Europa)

MAIE Associative Movement of Italians Abroad (Movimento Associativo

Fig. 2 Portion of voters of each political party who reported never

Introduction: Italian Voters—Where They

Fabio Bordignon , Luigi Ceccarini , and James L. Newell

F. Bordignon · L. Ceccarini · J. L. Newell (B)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Keywords Electoral behaviour · Electoral volatility · Italian general

2 The Never-Ending Italian Political Transition

governing parties. Judicial investigations triggered the end of a ‘degener-

3 From ‘Devout’ to ‘Liquid’ Voters

(Inglehart, 1977, 1990), the growth of post-material value priorities and

differences in voting propensities remaining even when controlling for

4 The Electoral Law(s)

the Italian, ‘porcata’, meaning—roughly—‘a pig’s breakfast’) (2005), the

5 General Election 2022: In What Republic?

Certainly, the protagonists of the Second Republic no longer have the

– The climate of voting indecision and electoral volatility;

6 Still Uncertainty and Electoral Volatility?

contexts in comparison with the previous election. This led to further

7 Still a Tripolar System?

8 Protest, Populism and New Political Actors

contingent and unforeseen circumstances. However, a significant number

9 From Voting to Government:

circumstances, will be to their partisan advantage, without any broader

The Outcome: Electoral Trends

Elisa Lello , James L. Newell , and Fabio Turato

E. Lello · J. L. Newell (B) · F. Turato

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

law currently in force: the so-called Rosatellum. The discussion of voters’

Keywords Geopolitics · Territory · Mainstream/anti-establishment

The processes of globalisation and their consequences, the crisis of

2 The Parties, Electoral

FdI FdI 21,6 (+5.872.967)

(-3.234.682) -8,6 Lega

Centre-Right coalition CR coalition 6,8 (+147.899)

(-6.398.094) -17,3 M5S

Fig. 1 Results of the Italian general election of 2022: differences as compared

Les titres de Sainte-Marie de Bethléem, qui a été dans les derniers

On connaît maintenant Clovis fondateur de monastères[306]. Les

«Faut-il s'étonner, écrit Grégoire de Tours en parlant des princes de

Selon toute probabilité, Clovis demeurait à Paris dans le palais de

Des fenêtres du palais royal, qui regardait le soleil levant, un calme

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