In 1931, Martinetti was the only philosopher who did not swear allegiance to fascism. One of his works prohibited by the Holy Office in 1938
CASTELLAMONTE. Born in Pont Canavese in 1872 from a family of notarial traditions, Piero Martinetti began his studies early under the guidance of his mother and grandmother, a fervent Mazzinian.
At the age of seven he was sent to the Civic College of Ivrea, where he subsequently attended the Regio Ginnasio-Liceo. In 1893 he graduated in philosophy at the University of Turin, with a thesis that was published and awarded by the Royal Academy of Sciences, while at the University of Leipzig he studied German philosophy until 1895.
Having won the national competition for teaching in high schools (he will teach in Avellino, Correggio, Vigevano, Ivrea, Turin) he begins work on his Introduction to metaphysics, a milestone of Italian philosophy that will win him the chair at the University of Milan in 1905. As Norberto Bobbio writes, his fame “in the citadel of philosophy” soon became “very high”. Devoted to a non-denominational religious research, he turns towards a neo-Kantian critical idealism, with a clearer inclination towards the metaphysical motif of transcendence.
He affirms that “clarity is the virtue of the philosopher” and it is precisely the clarity of his lessons that soon made him popular: the presence of an audience, not only students, testifies to a commitment to teaching that goes beyond the university sphere, of which works such as the Spiritual Breviary will later be expressed.
Meanwhile, his relations with the academic authorities became tense due to his position towards fascism, whose demagogic and totalitarian component he immediately denounced. In 1926 the National Philosophy Congress he chaired was dissolved “for reasons of public order”: Martinetti did not give in to pressure to exclude some anti-fascist philosophers from the Congress and faced the squadrists openly.
The definitive break took place in 1931, with the refusal to take an oath of fidelity to the regime: «I have always taught that the only light, the only direction and also the only comfort that man can have in life, is his own conscience; and that subordinating it to any other consideration, however high it may be, is a sacrilege. Now with the oath that is required of me, I would come to deny these beliefs of mine and to deny with them my whole life ». Only 12 university professors out of 1,225 do not swear.
Having lost his professorship, he retired to his Spineto devoting himself completely to his studies. The monumental work Jesus Christ and Christianity was born – with the harsh condemnation of the ecclesiastical dimension of the Christian religion – immediately seized by the Prefecture and placed in the Index of Prohibited Books by the Holy Office in 1938. Martinetti died on 22 March 1943. Few people dare to attend his funeral, held in civil form. As Bobbio writes: «The slimy stream of the times in which he lived could not move him by an inch and whoever tries to go towards him will find him still firm and upright in his place».
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