Andrea Costa (29 November 1851 – 19 January 1910)[1] was an Italian politician[2] who was initiated on September 25, 1883 to the
Masonic Lodge "
Rienzi" in
Rome and progressively become 32nd-degree
Mason[3] and adjunctive Great Master of the
Grande Oriente of Italy.[4][5]
Costa was arrested in the failed
Bakuninist1874 Bologna insurrection as its main Italian organizer.[6] Costa left the country and was arrested in
France. He continued to agitate in
Romagna.[7] In a letter, "To My Friends and to My Adversaries", he defended himself against charges of reformism or anti-revolutionarism but effectively broke from his
anarchist past.[8] The
Russian socialist
Anna Kulischov, who had met Costa in Paris in 1876 and was another former Bakuninist, is believed to have spurred his transition from anarchism to
socialism.[9]
Costa founded the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Romagna in 1881 with a small regional following.[10] Costa became the first Italian socialists elected to the
Italian Parliament the next year. In 1892, he called the Genoa Congress, which established the Italian Workers' Party, which was later renamed as the
Italian Socialist Party.[9]
He was later a politician and mayor of
Imola and died there in 1910.[11]
^G. Gamberini (Great Master of GOI) (1975). Mille volti di massoni. Rome: Erasmo. p. 175.
LCCN75535930.
OCLC3028931. Collana del Grande Oriente d'Italia, op. 3
^V. Gnocchini (Sep 1, 2005). L'Italia dei Liberi Muratori. Milan, Rome: Mimesis-Erasmo. pp. 85–86.
ISBN9788884833624.
^Drake, Richard (2009). "Carlo Cafiero". Apostles and Agitators: Italy's Marxist Revolutionary Tradition. Harvard University Press. p. 36.
ISBN978-0-674-03432-7.