TORALDO, GIUSEPPE. - Man of letters, b. of a marquisal family at Tropea, in Calabria, on 17 March 1809, d. there on 14 April 1899.
He entered the Congregation of the Redemptorists in 1824 and, having become a priest, left it in 1844 for reasons of health. Having returned to his diocese, he was assigned to teaching in the Seminary, where for 50 years he gave lessons in Latin and Greek letters, and also in dogmatic and moral theology. His gifts of intellect and culture excelled in the field of classical Latinity. He undertook the Latin translation of the Divina Commedia, and the few cantos of it that were published in Alma Roma can stand honorably alongside the not few versions of other humanists, for their form, always noble and worthy, and for their interpretation of the original text, accurate and ingenious. Of excellent workmanship too are the three hymns he composed in honor of the Most Holy Virgin of Romania, who is venerated in his diocese, and the version of A. Manzoni's Cinque maggio. His masterpiece is the Hierosolyma liberata e versibus italicis in latinos conversa, to which he devoted himself with love and with an artist's enjoyment throughout his long life: in those his polished hexameters there is, more than a literary translation, a paraphrase, almost a new creation. By this ingenious freedom of his, as also by the classical perfection of the form, his version surpasses those of Piacentini, Frambaglia and Parente. Antonio Bacci