Aguzzoni (Uguccioni), Francesco

AGUZZONI (UGUCCIONI), FRANCESCO. - Cardinal, born at Urbino, doctor of canon and civil law. He was made bishop of Faenza in 1378 by Urban VI, who in 1380 sent him as nuncio to Castile and Aragon (Reg. Vatic., vol. 310, ff. 223, 279, 283). There survives from him a report to the commissioners of the king of Aragon, in which A. indicates the true causes of the great Western Schism, which had broken out two years earlier, in the opposition of the cardinals to the reforms of Urban VI and in their nationalistic blindness (Bibl. Vatic., cod. 4927, ed. L. Pastor, in Ungedruckte Akten zur Geschichte der Päpste, I: 1376-1464, Freiburg im Breisgau 1904, pp. 10-15). Perhaps to reward him for the activity he had carried out in his favor and against the Avignon antipope as nuncio, Urban VI in 1383 transferred him to the see of Benevento and shortly afterwards (28 Aug. 1384) to that of Bordeaux. Innocent VII, on 12 July 1405, created him cardinal of the title of Sts. Quattro Coronati. Three years later, however (1408), A. broke away from Gregory XII, the successor of Innocent VII, in order to join the group of cardinals who wanted the resignation of the two popes, the Roman and the Avignon one. Gregory XII, on 28 Sept. of that year, deposed him together with the other rebellious cardinals. A. took part in the Council of Pisa, where the schism was not removed but widened by the election of Alexander V (1409). He died on 14 July or Aug. 1412.

Ireneo Daniele