Scipione Piattoli

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Scipione Piattoli bigraphy, stories - Italian Catholic priest

Scipione Piattoli : biography

10 November 1739 – 12 April 1809

Scipione Piattoli (November 10, 1739 – April 12, 1809) was an Italian Catholic priest—a Piarist—an educator, writer and political activist, and a major figure of the Enlightenment in Poland. After ten years as a professor at the University of Modena in Italy, he migrated to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where he became associated with several magnate families—the Potockis, Lubomirskis and Czartoryskis. He was a member of the Duchess Dorothea von Medem’s court in Courland (Lithuania) and of King Stanisław August Poniatowski’s court in the Commonwealth.

Piattoli was politically active in Warsaw during and after the Four-Year Sejm (1788–92). He served as intermediary between the reformist Patriotic Party and King Stanisław August Poniatowski, and as an aide to the King (1789–93). He is best remembered for his participation in drafting the Constitution of May 3, 1791, a milestone act in the history of Polish political legislation. He was one of the organizers of the Kościuszko Insurrection against Russian influence in 1794, which was the last armed struggle to be held under the banners of the Commonwealth. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, Piattoli was interned by the Austrians for several years, together with another Polish activist of the Constitution movement, Hugo Kołłątaj. Freed in 1800, he worked several years with Polish and Russian statesman Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski in the service of Russia, before retiring to Courland.

Piattoli was an inspiration to Leo Tolstoy, who based the figure of the Abbé Morio in War and Peace (1869) on him. He is also one of the figures immortalized in Jan Matejko’s 1891 painting, Constitution of May 3, 1791. In his 1980 ten-page entry on Piattoli in the Polish Biographical Dictionary, historian Emanuel Rostworowski notes that, “despite two Italian monographs (by A.D. Ancon and G. Bozzolato)”, Piattoli still awaits a definitive biography.

Reformer and constitution drafter

Piattoli developed contacts with notable figures on the Polish political scene, initially from the group opposed to the royal faction. By the end of his stay in Paris, he likely became a supporter of reforms in France and Poland, and begun taking his first serious steps in political activism, through the involvement in the Quattuowirat, a group of magnates planning a (never realized) confederacy. He became a foreign member of the Société des Amis des Noirs.

Through his freemason contacts with Pierre Maurice Glayre, Piattoli won the confidence of Poland’s King Stanisław August Poniatowski, becoming his agent in Paris and, by the end of 1789, his private secretary and librarian, although without any official title. Acting as a sort of cultural aide, Piattoli, who had strong ties to the reformist and often anti-royal opposition, became an important link between the reformers—Ignacy Potocki in particular—and the king. In the words of a Swedish diplomat, L. Engstrom, he was “like a tireless spring”, constantly mediating between the two factions.

Due to his association with the reformers, in conservative Rome he became infamous as a staunch supporter of revolutionary ideals and was accused of "democratism". Vatican diplomats criticized the king for hiring such a "revolutionary", but the king defended Piattoli quite vividly. In any case, many such claims were exaggerations or rumours spread by his political enemies: according to one such rumour, Piattoli was alleged to incite crowds in France to kill the king. In reality, Piattoli supported the Monarchiens of the French Revolution’s early stages, but more in the direction of peaceful transformation into a constitutional republic than the regicidal excesses.

Between 1790 and 1792, Piattoli was sent on several sensitive diplomatic missions for the king to Berlin and other places. He was involved in the negotiations of the Polish-Prussian alliance. He collaborated with Ignacy Potocki, helping draft many texts connected with Potocki’s work in the Sejm, the legislature of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was also an active supporter of Poniatowski’s plan for a hereditary succession. Piattoli, as Poniatowski’s secretary and a resident of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, has been credited with winning the King over to the idea of social reforms and with playing a part in the drafting of the Constitution of May 3, 1791. The exact nature of Piattoli’s role in regard to the Constitution remains uncertain; modern historians disagree to what degree he was an executor, a mediator, or an initiator. He played a role in convincing the King to collaborate with the leaders of the Patriotic Party on drafting a constitution. He might have prepared or expanded drafts of the document, based on discussions among the principal authors, including the King, Hugo Kołłątaj (another politically active Roman Catholic priest) and Ignacy Potocki. At a minimum, he seems to have helped catalyze the process. Historian Emanuel Rostworowski describes him as a vital secretary-editor, who certainly participated in related discussions and influenced both Potocki and the king, and calls Piattoli’s quarters in the Royal Palace a “creche” of the constitution. Piattoli was, finally, involved in the final preparations for the vote that took place during the Sejm session on May 3.