TORALDO, GIUSEPPE. - Man of letters, born into a marquisial family at Tropea, in Calabria, on 17 March 1809; died there on 14 April 1899.
He entered the Congregation of the Redemptorists in 1824 and, having become a priest, left it for reasons of health in 1844. Having returned to his diocese, he was assigned to teach at the Seminary, where for 50 years he taught Latin and Greek literature, as well as dogmatic and moral theology. His intellectual and scholarly gifts excelled in the field of classical Latin. He undertook a Latin translation of the Divina Commedia, and the few cantos published in Alma Roma may honourably stand beside the numerous versions by other humanists, on account of their ever noble and worthy form and their accurate and ingenious interpretation of the original text. Also of excellent workmanship are the three hymns he composed in honour of the Most Holy Virgin of Romania, venerated in his diocese, and his version of A. Manzoni’s Cinque maggio. His masterpiece is the Hierosolyma liberata e versibus italicis in latinos conversa, on which he laboured with love and with an artist’s delight throughout his long life: in those polished hexameters, rather than a literal translation, one finds a paraphrase, almost a new creation. Owing to this ingenious freedom, as well as to the classical perfection of its form, his version surpasses those of Piacentini, Frambaglia, and Parente. Antonio Bacci