Aurelio Saffi

Roman Republic (1849) Russian revolutionary democrats 1819–1890 ○ Natural causes

Republican from Forlì, triumvir of the Roman Republic in 1849 and regarded as Mazzini's political heir

Born in 1819 into an aristocratic family at Forlì, then in the Papal States, he studied law at Ferrara and began his political activity at home protesting against the bad administration of the papal legates. He soon became a fervent supporter of Mazzini. In 1849 he served the Roman Republic as a deputy to the Constituent Assembly and minister of the interior, and then as a member of the triumvirate with Carlo Armellini and Mazzini. After the republic fell he joined Mazzini in Switzerland and London; when the Milan rising he had helped plan failed in 1853, he was condemned in absentia to twenty years in prison. In 1856 he became the first teacher of Italian at the Taylor Institution in Oxford. In 1861 he was elected a deputy in the parliament of the new Kingdom of Italy, and in his last years he taught public law at the University of Bologna and edited Mazzini's writings. He died in 1890.

Also known as: Marco Aurelio Saffi