NICHOLAS ALBERGATI, Blessed. — Cardinal, born in Bologna in 1375 to Pier Nicola, of a noble local family, died in Siena on 9 May 1443. In 1395, after enrolling at the Studium, he embraced the Carthusian religious life at S. Girolamo di Casara, where in June 1404 he was ordained a priest. Elected prior of the same Carthusian monastery in his city in 1407, he served in 1412 as visitor of the monasteries of Italy, and worked for the reunion of the Order under a single obedience. On 4 January 1417, by acclamation of the Council of Six Hundred and subsequent confirmation by the chapter, he was chosen bishop of Bologna. Ratified by the metropolitan of Ravenna, the election was confirmed the following year by the new pope Martin V.
In the diocese he vigorously undertook the reform of the clergy and people, and induced the Commune to restore the episcopal lands of Cento and La Pieve. Charged by his fellow citizens with negotiating with the Pope regarding Bologna’s political status vis-à-vis the Holy See, he obtained agreed-upon chapters by which the rights and privileges of the Commune were defined in exchange for recognition of papal sovereignty (January–February 1419). When the city rebelled in 1420, the bishop intervened again to restore obedience, which was not, however, re-established except by force of arms (July 1420). In 1422, as legate “a latere,” he was sent by Martin V to France to conduct peace negotiations between that nation and England, which had been at war for many years; in this mission he labored until February 1423. In May 1426 he was named cardinal with the title of S. Croce in Gerusalemme. In September of the same year he was entrusted with another political legation, aimed at procuring peace in Italy by settling the discord between the Milanese, Venetians, and Florentines; and he succeeded in this, through numerous journeys and negotiations, persuading the belligerents to a settlement (May 1428). Returning to Bologna, he vainly attempted to avert a new revolutionary outbreak that indeed erupted on 10 August 1428; when Cardinal Aleman, the papal governor, was imprisoned, he himself was forced to leave the city, where he re-entered in September 1429, only to depart again shortly thereafter. He was then named papal legate (January 1431) to negotiate an agreement between Bologna and the Church and to settle new disputes between the Venetians on one side and the Visconti on the other. Eugene IV, who succeeded Martin V in March 1431, confirmed him in that mission; but it was interrupted by another. In July 1431, in fact, he was sent again to France, to resume negotiations between the French and the English. He had repeated meetings with Charles VII of France and Henry VI of England and their ambassadors, and arranged subsequent peace congresses at Auxerre, Seine-Port, and Corbeil; but his efforts, which lasted two years, were not crowned with success. Ordered by the Pope, he then left France and went to the Council of Basel, to assume the presidency in the name of the Apostolic See (September 1433): before that turbulent assembly, A. vigorously upheld the rights of the Roman Pontiff. Having joined Eugene IV in Florence, where the Pope had withdrawn because of the Roman rebellion, he received from him a few months later another legatine mission to France, for the Congress of Arras (August 1435), in which the reconciliation between the two Western Christian nations was again unsuccessfully sought. Instead, the reconciliation between the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France was achieved, largely through the merits of A. Returning to Florence, he was shortly thereafter invested with a new legation for the Council of Basel; but despite the efforts he made there (April–May 1436), he could not overcome the obduracy of the conciliar fathers, who persisted in their anti-Roman resistance.
In this harsh doctrinal struggle, he continued to assist Eugene IV, who in January 1438 named him president of the Council transferred to Ferrara; and to his labors is largely attributed the victory that there crowned the doctrine of the primacy. After a final mission beyond the Alps, to preside over the diet of the German princes at Nuremberg (October 1438), he returned to Florence, the new seat of the council. From there, in March 1443, he set out for Rome in the retinue of Eugene IV on his return journey; but upon arriving in Siena, he was struck by the final crisis of the kidney stone from which he suffered; shortly thereafter he died there, closing in holiness his evening and laborious life, entirely spent in apostolic ministry and faithful service to the Holy See. The Supreme Pontiff himself wished to attend the solemn funeral. The body was taken to Florence and buried in the Carthusian monastery of Monte Acuto. A. enjoyed a wide reputation for holiness among his contemporaries; but the processes, constructed in 1651–52, did not, for extraneous reasons, reach a conclusion. Summarized through the diligence of the Bolognese Benedict XIV, the cause culminated on 25 September 1744 in his beatification.