Filippo Mordani (8 September 1797,

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the cap ...

– 20 September 1886,

Forlì Forlì ( , ; rgn, Furlè ; la, Forum Livii) is a ''comune'' (municipality) and city in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. It is the central city of Romagna. The city is situated along the Via E ...

) was an Italian writer and nationalist. The state primary school in the centre of Ravenna is named after him – it houses a 2009 inscription and a 2014 bust of him.Il busto del patriota Filippo Mordani inaugurato all'Istituto Mordani

Life

The third son of Antonio Mordani and Annunziata Mazzotti, from 1815 to 1820 he attended college in Ravenna, studying

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

, literature and philosophy under the

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

Pellegrino Farini. His family wished him to become a

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

, but he refused and instead concentrated on studying Italian and Latin literature. During this period he translated several works, including Girolamo Rossi's ''Historiarum Ravennatum libri decem'' and several classical works by

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...

Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...

and

Theocritus Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from hi ...

. In May 1827 he became a grammar teacher in Ravenna's gymnasium. In 1841 he was granted an honorary diploma by the Accademia Ravegnana di Belle Arti thanks to his earlier writings. In October 1842 he won the competition to be chair of eloquence at the college on the retirement of Dionigi Strocchi from the post. This faced some opposition due to his involvement in the 1831 risings and so he only began teaching in January 1843. He was elected a member of the Roman Constituent Assembly of 1849 to represent Ravenna but following for his vote against the maintenance of the church's temporal power he was excluded from teaching and later jailed and exiled from the

Papal States The Papal States ( ; it, Stato Pontificio, ), officially the State of the Church ( it, Stato della Chiesa, ; la, Status Ecclesiasticus;), were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope fro ...

. He moved to live in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, where he spent five years before returning to Ravenna in 1855 thanks to the mediation of Giuseppe Pasolini. In 1859 he took part in the Romagna Assembly as deputy for Ravenna in the first college.

Works

* ''Raccolta delle composizioni poetiche'' 1820 * ''Composizioni poetiche'' 1825 * ''Vite di Cristoforo Rossi e di monsignor Giuseppe Mazzotti ravegnati'' 1826 * ''Biografie e ritratti di uomini illustri romagnoli'' 1834 * ''Tre novelle storiche'' 1839 * ''Elogio storico di Salomone Gessner'' 1840 * ''Elogio storico di Giorgio Lord Byron'' 1841 * ''Prose varie'' 1842 * ''Prose'' 1847 * ''Appendice prima delle Prose'' 1863 * ''Iscrizioni'' 1865 * ''Vita di

Luigi Rossini Luigi Rossini (1790–1857) was an Italian artist, best known for his etchings of ancient Roman architecture. Early life Rossini was born in Ravenna,Luigi Rossini, ''Le città del Lazio'', 1826, edizione di Vincenzo Pacifici, Tivoli, 1943, pp. 7� ...

architetto e incisore'' 1865 * ''Commentario degli studi e de' costumi di Luigi Bufalini cesenate'' 1866 * ''Vita di Jacopo Landoni'' 1868 * ''Vita di Alessandro Cappi'' 1868 * ''Vita di Gaetano Monti'' 1869 * ''Nuove iscrizioni'' 1869 * ''Alcune lettere inedite'' 1870 * ''Della vita privata di Giovacchino Rossini. Memorie inedite'' 1871 * ''Operette'' 1874 * ''Lettera inedita di Gasparo Garatoni ravennate'' 1878 * ''Lettere famigliari inedite'' 1880

Note

Bibliography

*
Biographical dictionary entry
* Gianfranco Stella, 'Filippo Mordani', in ''Quaderni ravennati, Illustri Ravennati del secolo scorso'', 1987, p. 157. *
''Rassegna storica del Risorgimento''
1936, p. 622. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mordani, Filippo 1797 births 1886 deaths 19th-century Italian historians Italian art historians Italian music historians Italian biographers Writers from Ravenna Italian people of the Italian unification Latin–Italian translators Greek–Italian translators Italian classical scholars 19th-century translators