SAFFI, Aurelio. — Born in Forlì on 13 Oct. 1819, died in S. Verano on 10 Apr. 1890.
He was one of the three Triumvirs of the Roman Republic of 1849, together with Mazzini and Armellini; he was chiefly occupied with administration and legislation, continuing the work he had carried out as Minister of the Interior before rising to the supreme magistracy, an activity directed in particular, though not very successfully, toward maintaining public order.
Exiled for many years in Switzerland and England, he was one of Mazzini’s most active collaborators in spreading the republican idea and stirring up political agitation in Italy, especially in the Papal States; at the same time he taught Italian literature at the University of Oxford and contributed to the leading British journals of liberal persuasion.
He returned to Italy in 1860, joined Garibaldi in Sicily, and opposed the offer of French military aid made to the general in exchange for arms and raw materials. In 1861, after Aspromonte, he resigned and returned to London for four years. In 1867 he settled in Rome, engaged in local administration, social policy, and historical and juridical studies, which earned him the chair of public law at the University of Bologna. Arrested in 1874 because of the disturbances of that year, he suffered a brief imprisonment that aroused some public sympathy.