ORIANI, ALFREDO. - Writer and historian, b. 22 Aug. 1852 at Faenza, d. 18 Oct. 1909 at Casola Valsenio. From birth the family environment, not lavish with affection, helped to shape his taciturn character and instilled in him an acrid pessimism toward life. At the Collegio di S. Luigi in Bologna, where he spent his childhood years, religious practices were a torment to him; they were mere overlays that had no hold upon his skeptical and distrustful soul.
Deprived of the capacity to receive or give affection, he withdrew into himself and sought refuge in literature. His earliest works reveal a profound spiritual emptiness. According to O., no genuine sentiments exist, and conventionalism and conformism underlie every human act. This cynicism toward life is evident in his novels and tales from 1876 (Memorie intitoli) to 1883 (Quartetto), through Al di là, Monotonie, Gramigne, No. In opposition to the reality of life, O. set the past, with polemical intent. In his own time, religious thought had evolved into a moral and spiritual outlook.
His first historical work, Matrimonio e divorzio (1886), is a refutation of divorce theories, grounded in the persistence of monogamy through the ages. The voluminous text, La solita politica in Italia (Turin 1892), is a history from the fall of the Roman Empire to 1887, tracing the fortunes of the Italian nation over the centuries and identifying the factors that obstructed its unitary development, chief among which, in O.’s view, was the Catholic Church. Among his other works—historical essays, dramas, short stories, novels (Gelosia; Vortice; Olocausto; Oro, incenso e mira)—noteworthy is La rivolta ideale (1908), which portrays Italy’s social and political conditions and detects symptoms of an impending deep crisis, to which he opposes the need for a strong state, the principle of authority, and the morality of Christ.
Near the end of his life he sought reconciliation with the Catholic Church: “he died well, like an ancient Christian who passes on his faith to his son, and, fortified by the Sacraments, enters into the reality of his hopes” (A. Leanza, in Circa. Catt., 1909, IV, p. 371). All his works were placed on the Index (decree of 24 Apr. 1940) for violent attacks on religion and its divine laws and for his provocative style, which he himself admitted (cf. M. Cordovani, in L’Osserv. rom., 28 Apr. 1940).