BASSI, UGO. - Barnabite, b. at Cento on 12 Aug. 1801, d. at Bologna on 8 Aug. 1849. After completing his early studies at Bologna, he entered the Barnabites in 1819. Ordained a priest in Rome, he was sent to teach at Naples, but his fervent and passionate spirit and his natural eloquence caused him to be assigned to preaching (1828). Warm with sincere religious feeling, cultured, of handsome presence, he immediately imposed himself upon his hearers. In 1835, having changed his name from Giuseppe to Ugo, he preached the Lenten sermons at Bologna, arousing public enthusiasm, but also the first alarms of the ecclesiastical authorities because of the manifest liberalism of his thought. Ardent and generous, during the cholera of 1837 the sacred orator was transformed at Palermo into a wonderful assistant of the sick and the dying. Again at Bologna, he was suspended from preaching (1840) and forced into temporary confinement. He then lived in obscurity for some years at Naples, composing religious and poetic works of little value. At the accession of Pius IX he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Pontiff's work and, when war against Austria broke out, he joined the papal troops as a chaplain. Disillusioned by the allocation of 29 Apr. 1848, but always faithful to his ideal of religion and fatherland (the B. never denied, as others did, his own faith and his own priestly ministry, nor was he ever enrolled, as it was asserted, in Freemasonry), he contributed with his words to calming the Bolognese. Wounded on 12 May at Treviso, as soon as he recovered he devoted himself, among hospitals and ambulances, at Venice and took part in the sortie of Mestre. Without his knowledge, meanwhile, he was being secularized (29 July). A few months later in Rome, as chaplain and aide to Garibaldi, he took part in the defense against the French (of whom he was a temporary prisoner on 30 Apr.) and delivered the funeral oration for Manara. After the fall of the republic, he followed Garibaldi, but at Comacchio on 4 Aug. 1849 he was captured by the Austrians together with Captain Livraghi. Four days later, at Bologna, having retracted whatever he might have said or done against religion, he was shot, without the knowledge of the higher ecclesiastical authorities and of the pontifical civil authorities themselves.
Bibliography
Alberto M. Ghisalberti