About: Michele Rosi

Michele Rosi (29 September 1864 – 23 January 1934) was an Italian historian and teacher, initially at school level and later, between 1897 and 1933, at the Sapienza University in Rome. His earlier publications covered the late medieval and early modern periods: he became better known for his contributions on the nineteenth century history of Italian unification. There was no place for hagiography in Rosi's historical approach. His insistence on methodical source-based research, and on excluding from serious historical scholarship the mythologising of contemporary romanticists and politicians, led to him being characterised as a prominent representative of the first generation of Risorgimento revisionist historians. In Mussolini's Italy, the revisionists' approach did not go unchallenged.