BRESCIANI (BORSA), ANTONIO. - Jesuit, writer, b. at Ala in the Trentino on 24 July 1798, d. at Rome on 14 March 1862. Of a noble family, he studied with the abbot Monterossi. Ordained a priest, he taught rhetoric at the lyceum of Verona, and by a deep-rooted vocation he wished to belong to the Society of which he soon became an eminent figure, proving himself a good educator and pedagogue. He was above all a man of letters, a follower of the purists under the guidance of Cesari. His work is vast and remarkable, distinguished by a choice abundance of vocabulary, fine periodic structure, and original gifts of exposition and description, though somewhat weighed down by a certain archaic prolixity. At first he published mostly versions, biographical sketches, and critical, descriptive and moral pieces. With his polished chapters on Romanticism he placed himself among the classicists; he showed himself a good philologist in the Saggio di alcune voci toscane, and a good archaeologist and ethnographer in delineating I costumi dell'isola di Sardegna.
Known among men of letters and legitimists, he entered, by the will of Pius IX, the editorial staff of La Civiltà Cattolica, with the task of upholding, through the mirage of stories woven upon the warp of the century's events, traditional principles and institutions. He succeeded in this by placing himself strenuously at the head of the reactionary writers, arousing wide echo with a series of tales that surprised by their boldness, by their ease in confronting themes sometimes delicate, and that constitute a too-neglected historical source of symptomatic substance. Manzoni called him the foremost pen of Italy. Pius IX corrected with his own hand, on the proofs, passages concerning his pontificate.
He had made his debut in the new genre as early as 1846, on the occasion of the famous amnesty, with Il trionfo della clemenza; he continued, among other things, with Ubaldo ed Irene, which has the revolution and the empire as its background; with Don Giovanni ossia il Benefattore occulto, in which there are also interesting things on the end of Ciro Menotti and of the Barnabite Ugo Bassi; with the trilogy comprising l'Ebreo di Verona, the best of all, La Repubblica Romana and Lionello, centered on the conflicts of 1846-49. The Austro-French-Sardinian conflict of 1859 inspired Giulio o il Cacciatore delle Alpi, and in 1860 the rushing and the magnanimous falling of volunteers from every country in defense of the rights of the Holy See inspired Olderico ovvero il Zuovo pontificio. Death overtook him while he was beginning the Assedio di Ancona.
He also left a rich and polished epistolary collection. Among his compositions of various kinds are to be counted: Edmondo o dei costumi del popolo Romano, which is a precious folkloristic repertory; La Contessa Matilde di Canossa e Iolanda di Groninga, a brilliant glorification of Gregory VII; La Casa di ghiaccio, containing attractive glimpses of the missions in the northern lands; Lorenzo o il Cascritto, a delicate and gentle idyll of love and faith. To him is owed, moreover, a keen examination of L'Armeria antica del Re Carlo Alberto, the funeral eulogy of the Archduchess Maria Beatrice of Savoy-Este, and a first account of the virtues of the venerable Queen Maria Cristina of Savoy-Bourbon.