[2] Partly under the influence of Giuseppe Mazzini, the freedom of Italy became his ruling motive in life, its emancipation, not only from foreign masters, but from modes of thought alien to its genius, and detrimental to its European authority.

This leitmotif informs nearly all his writings, and also his political position with respect to the ruling clerical party—the Jesuits—and the court of Piedmont after the accession of Charles Albert in 1831.

His fame in Italy dates from 1843 when he published his "Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani", which he dedicated to Silvio Pellico.

Starting with the greatness of ancient Rome he traced history down through the splendours of the papacy, and recounting all that science and art owed to the genius of Italy, he declared that the Italian people were a model for all nations, and that their then insignificance was the result of their weakness politically, to remedy which he proposed a confederation of all the states of Italy with the pope as their head.

He refused the dignity of senator offered him by Charles Albert, preferring to represent his native town in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he was soon elected president.

There, refusing the pension which had been offered him and all ecclesiastical preferment, he lived frugally, and spent his days and nights as at Brussels in literary labour.

It shows a harmony with the Roman Catholic faith which caused Cousin to declare that Italian philosophy was still in the bonds of theology, and that Gioberti was no philosopher.

In it, he affirms the idea of the supremacy of Italy, brought about by the restoration of the papacy as a moral dominion, founded on religion and public opinion.

A young fellow-exile and friend, Paolo Pallia, having many doubts and misgivings as to the reality of revelation and future life, Gioberti at once set to work with La Teorica del sovrannaturale, which was his first publication (1838).

Civilization is a conditioned mediate tendency to perfection, to which religion is the final completion if carried out; it is the end of the second cycle expressed by the second formula, the Ens redeems existences.

It was the popularity of these semi-political works, increased by other occasional political articles, that caused Gioberti to be welcomed with such enthusiasm on his return to his native country.

All these works were perfectly orthodox and aided in drawing the liberal clergy into the movement which has resulted since his time in the unification of Italy.