Fernando Ruggi d’Aragona and Abbot Conforti

In Salerno, too, the time of the Republic came in 1799. After the arrival of the French in Naples and the flight of the Bourbons to Palermo, protected by the British, the Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed, that of Mario Pagano, Eleonora Fonseca de Pimentel, and Francesco Caracciolo.
In Salerno, Enlightenment impulses had had influences, after the studies of Antonio Genovesi, the encyclopedic Magazzino, a journal of cultural and literary debate, had been born in the fateful year of 1789. With the birth of the Republic, some Salernitans also organized in Salerno the ground for a revival of freedoms. Abbot Gian Francesco Conforti went to the capital to be part of the government, becoming Minister of the Interior. His mission was to reconcile the Christian ideal with the republican ideal.
Meanwhile, in Salerno, Marquis Ferdinando Ruggi d’Aragon heads the municipal government, along with his brother Antonio, who writes in the Monitore Napoletano, the newspaper edited by Eleonora Fonseca de Pimentel, the organ of the republic.
But before he sees the effects of the envisioned reforms, the’Army of the Holy Faith led by Cardinal Ruffo overthrows the Republic and restores the Bourbons, who unleash a terrible repression. Both Abbot Conforti and Marquis Ruggi d’Aragon were taken to Naples and beheaded, in the Market Square, on Dec. 7, 1799, and the same fate had befallen his brother Antonio a few days earlier.