GIORDANI, PIETRO. - Writer, b. at Piacenza on 10 Jan. 1774, d. at Parma on 14 Sept. 1848. Having completed his studies in philosophy and law at Parma, he joined his brother
in the Benedictine monastery of S. Sisto at Piacenza. Already a subdeacon, in June 1800 he left the Order and took up a position as secretary to the provisional government of the Alpi Apuane; three years later he requested and obtained dispensation from his vows.
He held various offices; in 1808 he was pro-secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, but in 1815, on account of his liberal ideas, he was expelled; in Piacenza, where he settled, supported by a substantial paternal inheritance, he was exiled by Duchess Maria Luisa for an untimely writing; in 1830 he was driven from Florence by the Grand Duke along with Poerio; in 1834 he was imprisoned in Parma. Despite these adventures, G. lived out his ideal of the perfect writer, faithful to the tradition of the “good and sufficient” language of the golden age of the Trecento, in his highly elaborate and often overripe prose of his panegyrics (To Emperor Napoleon; To Antonio Canova), in his discourses (For the Three Legations Recovered by the Pope; On Religion in Italy, an unfinished work against the papacy; On Improvisers and the Duty to Study History; and on the Torture of Galileo), in his philological works (Instructions to a Young Italian on the Art of Writing; On the Three-Hundreds Translators; On Italian Studies in the 18th Century), in his polemics (The Impossible Sin) against theologians, in his translations and in his deservedly famous epigraphs. Hostile to the Church, he nevertheless praised the religious value of Manzoni’s work and fittingly reappraised the great Jesuit writers of the 17th century: Bartoli, Segneri, Pallavicino. His so-called religion was rather the myth of the word, the cult of formal beauty and of a sober and harmonious eloquence, which still today stands above and defines his vast fragmentary œuvre, which, among other things, enjoyed the greatest admiration of Leopardi (of whom G. was a close friend and confidant) and of Carducci. His Works (decr. 5 Sept. 1825) and his Epistolary, edited by A. Gussalli (decr. 7 Apr. 1856), are placed on the Index of prohibited books.