Girolamo De Rada was born in Macchia Albanese (a small suburb of San Demetrio Corone, then in the Kingdom of Naples) on 29 November 1814. At the age of 8, he was enrolled by his father, a Greek-Catholic priest, into the Italo-Albanian College of Sant Adriano in San Demetrio Corone, where De Rada senior taught Latin and Greek. Girolamo initially had learning difficulties because of the language barrier; since he spoke almost exclusively Arbëresh with his family, his first exposure to Italian was at the college. It was only through hard work and constant reading that he managed to bridge this gap. He completed his studies in 1833 and, at his father’s insistence, took a gap year during which he was contacted by the lawyer Raffaele Valentini and invited to work on a collection of Arbëresh popular songs.
Inspired by this experience, De Rada attempted his first pieces in his native language, seeking to reproduce its oral-performative style. During his law studies in Naples, where he moved in 1834, he pursued his literary inclinations. In 1836 his Poesie albanesi del XV secolo: Canti di Milosao, figlio del despota di Scutari appeared, in Albanian and Italian, in the literary journal Omnibus. This success, together with the moral support of his elocution teacher, the Sicilian Arbëresh Emanuele Bidera, encouraged him to continue. Between 1836 and 1838 a cholera epidemic forced him to leave Naples and return to Macchia, where he joined a group of Calabrian revolutionaries but managed to avoid prosecution. On his return to Naples he allied himself with the risorgimento nationalism of Giuseppe Mazzini, while dedicating himself almost entirely to poetry. He published the Canti storici albanesi di Serafina Thopia, moglie del principe Nicola Ducagino, which were immediately censored because of his revolutionary activities but reprinted as early as 1843; in 1847 he brought out the second edition of his Canti di Milosao.
In 1848 De Rada took up a moderate political position and founded the newspaper L’Albanese d’Italia, whose editorial policy was to juxtapose the turbulence of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Albanian question. Only twelve issues appeared; in addition to lengthy articles on the contemporary political situation it also included texts in Albanian such as Inno per la Costituzione, written by the Arbëresh Francesco Santorini. In 1849 De Rada was appointed first teacher of Albanian at the San Adriano College of San Demetrio Corone, a position which he held until the end of his life – save for a long hiatus (1851-59) when he was dismissed under the accusation of spreading Liberal ideas. In 1850 he married an Arbëresh noblewoman, Maddalena Melicchi, with whom he had four children.
After a few years, De Rada devoted himself more intensely to the Albanian question. Using the scattered historical and linguistic notions of his times (which led some Italian-Maltese intellectuals to derive their language from Carthaginian Punic), he endeavoured to demonstrate the antiquity of the Albanian people as descendants of the Pelasgians: Antichità della nazione albanese e sua affinità con gli Elleni ed i Latini (Naples 1864); Grammatica albanese (Naples 1870, published under the name of his son, Giuseppe, but drafted largely by him). He also continued with his poetry, placing the Albanian hero Scanderbeg at the heart of his production: Rapsodie di un poema albanese raccolte nelle colonie del napoletano (Florence 1866); Scanderbeccu i pafaan (“The unfortunate Scanderbeg”, Corigliano Calabro, 1872). A third edition of Canti di Milosao apeared in 1873.
De Rada also contributed actively to forming an international network of Albanians and Albanologists in order to create an Albanian national project focused on both culture and politics. Indeed, De Rada was one of the leading figures of the Rilindja (the Albanian national revival), together with Thimi Mitko, Sami Frashëri and Dora d’Istria, with all of whom he corresponded extensively. Also thanks to Dora d’Istria’s mediation, De Rada’s works were widely circulated; according to this Romanian princess, the Arbëreshë were path-breakers for an Albanian national awakening since, in her opinion, they were the only people to have preserved the national traditions and language of the time of Scanderbeg.
Fiamuri Arbërit (1883-87) was established in the wake of this project. A newspaper promoted by Dora d’Istria, it was founded and directed by De Rada, and distributed in Italy, Albania, Greece and Egypt. In a two-column format – Italian on the left and Arbëresh on the right – Fiamuri published literature, traditions, studies and everything relating to the history of Albania. The political position expressed concerning the Albanian question was not outright separatist, but rather an advocacy of continuing Ottoman suzerainty as guarantor of a subsidiary Albanian identity against the expansionism of countries such as Serbia, Montenegro and Greece (an idea also expressed by Sami Frashëri in his 1899 pamphlet on Albanian identity and aspirations).
De Rada’s later years remained intensely active. The year 1891 saw the printing of his historical drama Sofonisba, whose plot was supposed to be allegorical for contemporary political events in Albania. In 1895 he organized the first Albanological Congress in Corigliano Calabro, soon followed by a second one in Lungro (1897). On the strength of these congresses, a chair of Albanian language was established at the Reale Istituto orientale (forerunner of the University “L’Orientale” of Naples) in 1900.
De Rada died in San Demetrio Corone in 1903, leaving behind him a literary-historicist body of work that inspired subsequent Albanian political ambitions and literary production. His Opera omnia were published in 12 volumes in 2005.
