I mazziniani nel primo Risorgimento varesino(1833-1848)

The first ones to support Mazzini's ideas in Varese were some noblemen, learned and well-off, but dissatisfied with their living conditions, such as Cesare Parravicini, the Mozzoni brothers or others who were in downright financial straits, like Giulio Bossi from Azzate, for whom the Mazzinian creed was prescribed by the impossibility of finding a satisfactory social and economical position. But some young graduates and professionals, at times penalized in their ambitions to social promotion, also favoured the Giovine Italia: mostly physicians, lawyers, engineers having a past as university students in Pavia behind them, like Luigi Grossi, the brothers Luigi and Giuseppe Borghi, Luigi Tinelli, Francesco Daverio. In Varese too the Mazzinians managed to make proselytes among the clergy, as in the case of canon Ambrogio Mera, while the active middle class of craftsmen and tradesmen didn't usually feel hostile towards the Habsburgs. An exception was Domenico Adamoli, whom at the beginning of the 1830's, was in contact with the Mazzinian cell in Milan led by the Ciani and there he met his bride-to-be Lucia Prinetti, a fervent patriot.. Sharing Mazzini's idea of a united, independent and republican Italy meant, for many of these people, mostly reading his writings passionately, rather than overt subversive activism. Besides the Adamoli salon, the Mazzinians of Varese used to meet in a famous coffee house, seat of the Society of the Casino, which received the newspapers from the near Switzerland and in private houses where still in the 1840's they talked about homeland, interlacing the reading of Mazzini's writings with the soft singing of patriotic hymns.