Lives in translation: Cesare Paribelli

In 1781 as a Swiss subject, Paribelli decided to enlist in the Swiss corps at the service of the King of Naples. Later he was transferred to Sicily where he became an active member of the Freemason lodge under the lead of the reformer prince Caramanico. In 1793 Paribelli was arrested under the accusation of being an active member of the plot against the Bourbon crown, a plot started in the Neapolitan lodges under the lead of Carlo Lauberg. While Lauberg successfully left Naples before being arrested, Paribelli remained in the prisons of Messina and Naples from 1793 until the arrival of the French army led by General Championnet in January 1799.

The long captivity did not weaken the democratic endeavours of Paribelli: he translated the sixteenth-century work by Étienne de la Boétie, close friend of Montaigne, Discours sur la servitude volontaire. Paribelli produced the first Italian translation with the clear aim of showing the need for popular activism to overthrow tyranny. It is not by chance that this translation was proposed in the period of the creation of several Italian democratic republics following the arrival of the French troops in the Italian peninsula. Paribelli hoped that La Boétie’s argument against the sleepiness of people under despotic regimes would stir the Neapolitan public to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy. The translation was published in the first months of 1799 when Paribelli was already a member of the Provisionary government Council under the lead of Lauberg. The intensive political agenda of the Neapolitan republic prevented Paribelli from adding his personal notes to the translation as he had promised.

In April 1799 Paribelli left Naples for Paris to plead for the diplomatic acknowledgement of the Neapolitan Republic by the French Directory. While travelling to France he stopped in Genoa where he composed in French the Adresse des patriotes italiens aux législateurs et aux Directeurs de la République Française. This text was composed with the former secretary of the Neapolitan republic Marc-Antoine Jullien and constituted one of the first expressions of a call for a formation of a unified, independent and democratic Italian republic. Once in Paris, Paribelli continued his work of lobbying for the Italian cause and hoped that General Bonaparte would support it.

Paribelli maintained his active defence of Italian interests, working in the French commission to help political refugees from the former Italian republics. After the French victory at Marengo, Paribelli failed to gain the support of the First Consul who did not trust him due to his attachment to the idea of a united and independent Italian republic. Under the Restoration, Paribelli remained active in the Carbonari society and maintained his numerous contacts in the ranks of the former officers of the Napoleonic army. Paribelli held his democratic and radical beliefs until his death: in his will he refused to leave anything to one of his nephews unless he decided to leave the Jesuit order.