Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca

Poet, journalist, intellectual, scientist and revolutionary: Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca was one of the most important figures in the Neapolitan Republic of 1799. He was born in Rome on 13 January 1752 into a Portuguese noble family. His father, Don Clemente Henriquez de Fonseca Pimentel Chavez de Beja, had moved to Italy to marry Caterina Lopez de Leon, of Lisbon origins. At eight years old Eleonora moved with her family to Naples following tensions between Portugal and the Papal State. Here she received an extraordinary education for the time, especially for a woman: she studied the Latin and Greek classics, various modern languages and the sciences, under the guidance of tutors such as De Filippis, Spallanzani and Caravelli. At a very young age, she frequented Neapolitan cultural salons, where she stood out for her poetic and intellectual talent. At sixteen, he entered the Accademia dei Filaleti under the pseudonym Epolnifenora Alcesamante; in 1768 he published the eulogy poem The Temple of Glory on the occasion of the wedding of Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina of Austria. Later she was admitted to Neapolitan Arcadia with the name of Altidora Esperetusa. In 1778, after a failed engagement with her cousin Michele, she was forced to marry Pasquale Tria de Solis, a conservative and violent Bourbon officer. The marriage soon proved to be a nightmare for her. In addition to the profound intellectual and moral incompatibility, Eleonora suffered physical and psychological abuse. She had three pregnancies, all tragically interrupted: the first ended with the death of her son Francesco at eight months; the other two were marked by marital violence, so much so that he risked his life. The legal separation, achieved in 1785 after a long trial, marked the end of that painful union. In the same year she lost her father and, left in financial straits, lived in a modest house in Santa Anna di Palazzo, which became the fulcrum of her cultural and political activities. He translated and annotated anticlerical political works and composed texts in Neapolitan such as the satirical sonnet on the “Chinea” to criticize the submission of the Kingdom of Naples to the Pope. Slowly he approached Jacobin ideals. The French Revolution and the beheading of Marie Antoinette (sister of Queen Maria Carolina) led the Neapolitan monarchy into a repressive crackdown on intellectuals. In 1798, Eleanor was arrested on charges of conspiracy and possession of prohibited texts. Freed with the arrival of French troops from Championnet, she actively participated in the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic (22 January 1799). In that climate of revolutionary fervor she became director of the Monitore Napoletano, newspaper and press organ of the revolutionary government, signing herself as “Fonseca citizen”. The newspaper, published from 2 February to ’8 June 1799, promoted the principles of freedom, equality and popular education. Eleonora even proposed a gazette in Neapolitan dialect to educate the “small people” in democratic values, believing it was essential that even the humblest strata were enabled to understand and judge political facts. But this idyll was short. Starting from February, Cardinal Ruffo's troops reconquered the Kingdom. Naples again fell under Bourbon control in mid-June. Betrayed by the promises of salvation contained in the surrender pacts, Eleanor was arrested while trying to escape by ship to France. Tried and sentenced to death, she asked in vain to be beheaded, a privilege reserved for nobles. On 20 August 1799 she was hanged in Market Square, after witnessing the execution of the other patriots. She climbed the scaffold last and, before dying, uttered the famous Virgilian phrase: «Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit» (Perhaps one day it will be useful to remember these things too). He died amid the ridicule of a disillusioned and manipulated people, the same people he had tried to educate and liberate. His body, exposed to the jokes of the lazarus, became a symbol of the tragic end of a revolutionary dream.