SALVADORI, GIULIO. - Writer, poet and critic, b. at Monte S. Savino in Val di Chiana (Arezzo) on 14 Sept. 1862, d. at Rome on 7 Oct. 1928.

He collaborated very early in Rome with prose and verse in literary periodicals; and from 1881, especially, with the Cronaca bizantina and the Domenica letteraria. In his university years, from 1880 to 1884, is placed the religious deviation that led him to an open profession of naturalism, finally inducing him to proclaim a palingenesis originating from the new science. An intellectual crisis, matured through the overcoming of a love passion, brought him back, in the spring of 1885, during a stay in Ascoli Piceno, to religious practice and Christian thought. Withdrawing into a life of retirement and meditation, he devoted himself to the education of the young in school (Albano Laziale and Rome). In 1923 he was called to the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan for Italian and Dantean literature. He carried on an unceasing, fruitful apostolate among the young and in cultivated society.

In the years immediately after his conversion he composed the Canzoniere civile (1889), made up of poems and prose pieces exalting the renewing social and civil action of Christianity, in the highest and most significant moments of its history; a later canzoniere, the Ricordi dell'umile Italia (1918), reproduced compositions from the former, reworked, and others written occasionally. The poetic work of S., though uneven, almost always contains an original lyrical nucleus, which holds up especially in the shorter compositions, inspired by nature and by the author's intimate and religious life. Of his historical-literary and critical work, conspicuous fruits are the essay Sulla vita giovanile di Dante (1901 and 1907) and also studies on Guinzelli and on Cavalcanti. Long and faithful was his devotion to the Dantean poem, illustrated with various readings; much material also remains of a commentary, founded on original research. His predilection for the nineteenth century is summed up in Enrichetta Manzoni Blondel e il Natale del '33 (posthumous, 1929) and in the commentary on Le memorie poetiche di Niccolò Tommaso (1916), where one notes a strongly and sometimes excessively psychological criticism, with brilliant and exquisite intuitions but also at times with personal interpretations not sufficiently grounded. He long investigated the life and action of St. Francis of Assisi and the manifold links of thirteenth-century Italian civilization with Franciscan spirituality. His remains rest in the Basilica of Aracoeli. He was a Franciscan tertiary and a man of profound spirituality: the process for his beatification has been initiated.

Bibliography14 works

BIBL.: works; collection of poems, including the Canzoniere civile, and of critical and biographical writings of S., edited by C. Calcaterra, Liriche e saggi, 3 vols., Milan 1933; Lettere aperte, 2nd ed., Rome (1939) and Lezioni dal Vangelo, 3rd ed., ibid. (1948) edited by M. Cordovani; Vita breve di s. Fr. d'Ass., Milan 1941; Libertà e servitò nel pensiero giamensis e in A. Manzoni, Brescia 1942; Lettere scelte, edited by P. P. Trompeo and N. Vian, Florence 1945. Studies: P. Crispolti, Politici, guerrieri, poeti, Milan 1929; A. Giacomelli, Ricordanda G. S., ibid. 1929; P. Bondioli, Ritratto religioso di G. S., ibid. 1929; T. Gallarati Scotti, Il rinnovamento di G. S., Rome 1932; E. Mascherpa, G. S., la vita e l'opera, Milan 1938 (with bibl.); G. Carcani, Ricordo di G. S. [Ascoli Piceno 1942]; P. P. Trompeo, Carducci e D'Annunzio [Rome 1943]; P. Bargellini, Pena dell'Ottocento, 2nd ed., Brescia 1945; S. Monticone, G. S. il poeta dell'umile It., Alba 1947; N. Vian, Fantasia e realtà storica nel rinnovamento di G. S., in Studium, 47 (1951).

Nello Vian

One of some 20,000 entries brought back from the twelve printed volumes (1948–54). Spotted something? Help us improve it.

Salvadori, Giulio

About this entry