Political Activities and Honours
Panizzi was a personal friend of British Prime ministers Lord Palmerston and William Ewart Gladstone, conducted an active correspondence with Sardinian, and later Italian Prime Minister Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, and through French archaeologist and writer Prosper Merimée, was well acquainted with French Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. In 1844, Panizzi also assisted Giuseppe Mazzini, then in exile in London, by publishing an influential article denouncing the practice ordered by the Home Secretary of ordering Mazzini's private letters opened by the Post Office and giving copies of their contents to the Austrian Embassy. He also orchestrated a visit of Giuseppe Garibaldi to England, and convinced Gladstone to travel to Naples to view personally the inhumane conditions in which political prisoners were kept. When his efforts to have these prisoners released failed, he raised money to buy a ship and mounted an expedition to rescue the prisoner from the island fortress of Santo Stefano in the Gulf of Gaeta. Unfortunately, the ship sank in a storm shortly after leaving England. In 1859, the prisoners were released by Neapolitan King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies and put on a ship bound for New York. Panizzi then mounted a new expedition led by his son, who commandeered the ship and made port in England, where the former prisoners received asylum and were assured support.
In addition to his English knighthood, Panizzi was given an honorary degree by Oxford University, the Légion d'Honneur from France, various chivalric honors from the Italian Government and Crown, and in 1868 was appointed as a senator in the Italian Parliament. He never took his seat there.
Panizzi died in London on April 8, 1879 and was buried in the Kensal Green Catholic Cemetery, not far from the resting places of William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope.
Panizzi also prepared and published editions of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
The Panizzi lectures are an annual series of bibliography lectures, hosted by the British Library since 1985. There is also a staff meeting room at the British Library called the Panizzi Room in his honour.
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