Carlo De Franceschi

He is in his own parish register. The Gologorica books, read from microfilm held by the Pazin Records Office, give him as *Carolus Josephus Defranceschi, born 17 October 1809 — the second of ten children of Dominus Josephus de Franceschi and Lambertina née Peschle, in house 17, recorded under the class Civilis*. His parents had married on 3 February 1807. Every printed account says his mother came from Volosca; the census row beside her name says the same word.

The entry that fixes the generation above him is his elder brother's. Josephus Lambertus was baptised on 17 March 1808, and the register calls their father “Dnus Josephus de Franceschi defuncti Josephi filius” — son of the late Josephus. That joins the household to *Dominus Josephus Defranceschi and his wife Helena*, who appear through the 1760s and 1770s as godparents, and whose title marks what the family was in that village.

His biographer records him as born da modesti possidenti — of modest landowners. Not gentry, not armigerous, not the family a heraldry catalogue would sell you. That single phrase is worth more than any crest.

Back from Graz he joined a circle of young liberal intellectuals publishing the Giornale critico politico in secret, strongly anti-Austrian, while simultaneously serving in the Imperial-Royal magistrature — Italian being the official language of the courts in the Austro-Italian provinces. He was under police surveillance for years.

In 1848 he took part in the popular movement for a constitution and was elected deputy for Pisino, sitting with Michele Fachinetti, Antonio Madonizza, Francesco Vidulich and Giuseppe Vlach. Together they defeated the proposal to attach Istria to the German Confederation. His article Per l'italianità dell'Istria, published first in Vienna and then Trieste, became the manifesto of Istrian autonomism.

In 1854 the Austrian government threw him out of the judiciary, calling him a known apostle of Mazzini, an Istrian separatist and a provocateur. He moved to Fiume, and returned in 1861 for the Dieta del Nessuno at Parenzo — the session where Istrian deputies answered the roll call for Vienna with 'nobody'.

He then did the work he is remembered for: the province studied in its monuments, traditions, names, archaeology, ethnography and economy. He fed material to Pietro Kandler, wrote the Statistica Agraria dell'Istria, published through the appendices of the Osservatore Triestino, the weekly Istria and La Provincia dell'Istria, and in 1879 brought out L'Istria: note storiche at Parenzo.