Life and

38 The origin of life
In 1864, the debate about the origin of life was in full swing in various parts of
Europe. 118 In Italy, a controversy had been simmering since the times of
Francesco Redi (1626-1698) and Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799). At the time of
the French Revolution and its aftermath, the question became highly politically
charged, spontaneous generation being associated with Jacobin materialism and
even atheism. Thus, during the revolutionary first decade of the nineteenth
century, the physician-writer Giovanni Rasori (1766-1837) was able to publish an
Italian translation of Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia (Milan 1803-5) and discussed the
Englishman’s theory of spontaneous generation positively. With the political
restoration of Habsburg control over Lombardy, Rasori was incarcerated for his
role in a suspected military conspiracy and never to return on any teaching
position. Although his translation of E. Darwin’s work remained in print even
after being banned under Pope Pius VII in 1817, 119 the author’s presumed
materialism was repeatedly criticised in Italian reviews, and French ideas of
transmutation fared no better: the period of post-Napoleonic restoration
benefited the “conservative” Cuvierian camp at the expense of the Lamarckists.
Italian students of Lamarck’s, among whom there was a fair number of
subsequently influential individuals, had to operate “underground”, with limited
abilities to go to press, past generally rigid censorship. 120 In the late 1820s, the
influential spiritualist philosopher Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855) rejected
Lamarck’s ideas of spontaneous generation and opposed the ‘reduction of vital
phenomena to physico-chemical phenomena’ (Landucci 1996:959-61). Rosminian
ideas held a strong influence over philosophical concepts of life in the Italian
debate well beyond the author’s lifetime. And yet, Lamarckian ideas continued to
be discussed in Italy, especially in the more liberal period from the end of the
1830s, which saw the organisation of annual “Congresses of Italian Scientists”,
aimed at bridging the communication gaps between the numerous States and
territories whose borders criss-crossed the peninsula. 121 Together with Lamarck’s
theories, E. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire’s philosophy of the “unity of plan”, against
Cuvier’s insistence on the irreducible difference between four “embranchments”
of animal organisms (Appel 1987), was gaining influence in the middle decades of
the century, notably in Pavia, with the teaching of anatomist Bartolomeo Panizza,
naturalist Giuseppe Balsamo Crivelli, and their students, among whom we find
118 The literature on the so-called “spontaneous generation controversy” is vast. For a broad
overview see Farley (1977); from the perspective of a practising biologist: Harris (2002). Some
important terminological clarifications are made by McLaughlin (2006).
119 Gregory XVI (1852): 146. A further edition of Rasori’s translation appeared in Naples 1820, a
second Milanese edition (1834-36) during the last years of Rasori’s life as a practising physician
in Milan.
120 On the role of Lamarckism in early-nineteenth-century Italy, see Camerano (1910), Omodeo
(1949), Benasso (1976), Pancaldi (1983), Corsi (1983), Omodeo (2001).
121 Bartoccini & Verdini (1952); Pancaldi (ed. 1983).