SAFFI, AURELIO. - Born at Forlì on 13 Oct. 1819, died at S. Verano on 10 Apr. 1890.
He was one of the triumvirs of the Roman Republic of 1849, together with Mazzini and Armellini; he was chiefly concerned with administration and legislation, continuing the activity he had explicitly carried out as Minister of the Interior before rising to the supreme magistracy. This activity was directed particularly, though not with great success, toward the maintenance of public order.
An exile for many years in Switzerland and England, he was one of Mazzini’s most active collaborators in spreading the republican idea and fomenting 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 principal British journals of the liberal party.
Having returned to Italy in 1860, he joined Garibaldi in Sicily, opposing the annexation of the southern provinces. Elected deputy for Accerenza in 1861, he resigned after Aspromonte and returned to London for four years. In 1867, having settled permanently in Romagna, he devoted himself to local administration, social policy, and historical and juridical studies, which gained him the chair of public law at the University of Bologna. Arrested because of the disturbances of 1874, he endured a brief imprisonment, which aroused some public feeling.