Jacobin Women and Political Speech in the Gran Circolo Costituzionale of Bologna. On the Patriot Banquet on 28 May 1798

Abstract

This chapter aims to study the voice of the women in the Gran Circolo Costituzionale of Bologna, namely the two speeches delivered by the Jacobins Claudia Stella and Teresa Negri Rasinelli on the occasion of the celebration of the women’s patriot banquet on 28 May 1798. Firstly, the Jacobin women from the Gran Circolo Costituzionale are introduced, alongside the most important aspects of the patriot banquet which they organised and celebrated despite the opposition they faced towards both their political ideas and the fact that they were women. Next, the motivations for such banquet are analysed regarding the need, on the one hand, to attract the people to the revolutionary cause and, on the other hand, to solve a pressing problem in the Italy of the end of the eighteenth century: the poverty, sometimes extreme, of the popular masses. The patriot banquet is seen as a celebration, an act of charity and philanthropy, which also serves to implement such abstract concepts as are those of equality and fraternity. Both speeches are studied within the broader framework of the revolutionary triennium, in which are included those speeches given by men, along with the different initiatives they conducted, especially in Bologna.