Alberoni, Giulio

ALBERONI, GIULIO. - Cardinal and statesman, b. at Piacenza on 31 (?) May 1664, d. there on 27 June 1752. At the age of twenty he entered the good graces of Msgr. Giorgio Barni, pontifical vice-legate at Ravenna and later (1688) bishop of Piacenza, and became a priest and the tutor of the latter's nephew, Giovanni Battista, later a cardinal. He was dear to Marshal Vendôme, the French commander in Italy during the War of the Spanish Succession; upon the latter's death he succeeded in winning the affection of Philip V, undertaking with great advantage to his master the representation of Parma at Madrid. In that office he brought to a successful conclusion in 1714 the negotiations for the marriage of the king, widower of Maria Luisa of Savoy, to Elizabeth Farnese, niece of Francesco. A consummate and ready diplomat, a lover of his native land and most devoted to the Farnese, a bitter enemy of Austria and the Empire, he easily rose to his zenith with the star of the new queen (who ever more unchallenged dominated the weak and irresolute monarch), until he became first minister of the kingdom in place of Cardinal Francesco del Giudice (1716).

Only then did he clearly manifest his vast and well-contrived plans, which consisted substantially in fully satisfying the longings of Philip, eager to rebuild Spanish predominance in Italy and at the same time to safeguard the rights of succession to the throne of France, and in meeting the ambitions of Elizabeth, anxious to make possible for her own sons the successions of the Farnese of Parma and of the Medici. In practice this meant proceeding by force against the continental power of France and the peninsular power of Charles VI of Austria, freeing Italy and its princes from French and imperial dominion through the rapid and bold assertion of a preponderant return of Iberian influence; that is, fighting all together and without quarter the greatest powers, France, Austria and, especially, England, the inflexible guarantor of that Treaty of Utrecht which had definitively sanctioned, with the dismemberment of the Spanish constellation, the decline of its preponderance even in the Mediterranean. Having removed and repressed abuses of every kind, reformed the organs of control and government, replenished the treasury with opportune fiscal measures, often also availing himself of the enlightened and devoted collaboration of Italians, he revived agriculture, gave new life to trade and to the currents of production and exchange, caused the merchant marine and the war fleet to rise again, and laid the foundations of a solid army well supplied with artillery.

This work of reform was interrupted by the deliberate and imprudent anti-Austrian machinations of the duke of Parma, which led the unwary sovereigns of Spain to impose on A. the opening of the struggle before its time. Thus the squadrons that A., in agreement with Clement XI, had assembled for an action against the Turks, passed instead to attacking the Austrians in Sardinia, which was very soon reconquered (1717), and, again through the oblique promptings of the Farnese, another expedition disembarklanded in Sicily (1718), while a threatening Quadruple Alliance was being formed, in which France, England and Holland came down alongside the Empire. Once the intrigues had failed that aimed to throw Charles XII of Sweden and Russia against Great Britain, to overthrow the Duke of Orléans with the famous conspiracy of Prince Antonio di Cellamare, and to bring the exiled James Stuart to England from Cadiz, the maritime power of the English soon got the better of the Spanish fleet in Sicilian waters; the island was an easy prey for the imperial forces, and the French attacked successfully, beyond the Pyrenees, in Navarre (1719). It was a catastrophe: the allies, desiring only the maintenance of the previous frontiers and taught by experience, imposed on Philip V the removal of the adventurous and unfortunate minister, whom he himself, in July 1717, had helped to make a cardinal of the title of St. Chrysogonus.

The unmerited disgrace of Alberoni greatly troubled Farnese, who had turned from friend into enemy, because he greatly feared that his own undeniable responsibilities in the outbreak of the conflict might come to light, and that consequently the absolute and complete innocence of the cardinal might shine forth clearly. The latter, moreover, driven out of Spain on 5 December 1719, pursued by agents who had orders to kill him, surprised and searched, was barely able to save himself and to save the documentary evidence in his favour at the republic of Genoa, which, though it did not yield to the violent insistences of Philip V and of the Pontiff, who demanded his immediate surrender, nevertheless found itself compelled to order him to leave its territory, also because the king was breaking off diplomatic relations and the Pope was preparing to deprive him of the purple. But, despite relentless searches of every kind, at the beginning of 1720 Alberoni managed to make himself untraceable, hiding for months among the mountains of the Apennines. Clement XI, meanwhile, entrusted to a congregation of fifteen cardinals the arduous task of judging him, and investigating commissions set about, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, gathering the data necessary for a procedure for high treason in Spain, at Parma and at Rome. The accusations not only bore upon the private and priestly life of the man, but also concerned the alleged deception practised on the Pope by failing to keep the promise of the aid of the Spanish fleet in the war in the Levant, the rupture of the monarchy's relations with Rome because Alberoni had been refused the archiepiscopal see of Seville, the interception of pontifical briefs to the bishops of Spain for the crusade and for other matters, the unlawful use of the royal seal during an illness of the sovereign, as well as supposed embezzlements and irreverent remarks regarding the Pontiff and certain cardinals. But the groundlessness of many elements, and the various obstacles placed in the way of establishing others, dragged matters out so long that the voluminous proceedings reached Rome only when the Pope was already at the point of death (March 1719).

Summoned, as was his right, to the Conclave, he appeared there without hesitation, setting out from Bologna towards Rome in April. Having asked and obtained from Innocent XIII the continuation of the case, Alberoni remained untroubled in Rome, buying a palace and a vineyard outside Porta Pia, while the congregation, establishing nothing but wholly secondary matters, such as the receipt of the revenues of the see of Seville, and declaring itself incompetent in the Spanish questions, condemned him to four years' imprisonment. At this point, however, Innocent XIII, having intervened personally in the affair, declared Alberoni in consistory completely absolved and free from every infamy; he further remitted to him a brief of pardon for the penalty and the censures incurred, and, the following year, finally imposed on him the cardinal's hat.

Having turned to private life and devoted himself to agriculture on the estate of Castelromano, he was consecrated bishop of Malaga by Benedict XIII in 1725 and was reconciled with Philip V, to the point of being able to enjoy a pension on the mensa, although he had renounced that see. Nor did the affairs of the curia remain foreign to him, and, in 1732, invested with the commendam of the Piacenza hospital of St. Lazarus, he benefited his native city by suppressing the old and dilapidated lazzaretto, and beginning from the foundations the construction of the famous ecclesiastical college to which his name was linked, with the intention of housing and maintaining there sixty young men of the bourgeoisie of Piacenza aspiring to the priesthood. The institution, disturbed at its birth by the vicissitudes of war, was, through his impulse and with his personal intervention, brought to completion in 1751 and entrusted to the Lazarists.

From 1735 onwards Alberoni, despite the weight of age, forcibly yielded to the will of Clement XII, who summoned him to head the legation of Ravenna. There he undertook monumental building and hydraulic works, among them the regulation of the course of the Montone. In 1739, with a gesture whose political significance was later intentionally exaggerated, especially in relation to his true responsibilities, he occupied the territory of the free and peaceful republic of San Marino, in order to encourage there currents in favour of union with the Papal States, which the Pontiff himself soon disavowed, not without controversy. Transferred, for three years, through the cordial friendship of Benedict XIV, to the legation of Bologna, he finally retired to Piacenza, spending there another ten years in literary work and good works. At his death he left all his possessions to the college, in whose church he was buried.

The present-day reliable and objective focusing of Alberoni's much-debated ecclesiastical and political personality is due almost exclusively to the following authors: S. Bersani, La Storia del card. G. A., Piacenza 1861; id., Osservazioni critiche sul profilo del card. G. A. delineato da Giuseppe Torelli e da altri autori, Piacenza 1862; E. Bourgeois, A., Madame des Ursins et la Reine Elisabeth Farnèse d'après des documents inédits, Paris 1891; id., Lettres intimes de J. M. A. adressées au comte Rocca de Parme et publiées d'après le manuscrit du Collège de S. Lazzaro A., Paris 1892; id., La jeunesse d'A. - A. et Vendôme, in Annales des Sciences Politiques, 15 (1900), pp. 145-82, 341-69; id., Le secret des Farnèse, Philippe V et la politique d'A., Paris 1903; P. Castagnoli, Il card. G. A., 2 vols., Piacenza-Rome 1929. - The volume by G. Bianchi, G. A. e il suo secolo, Piacenza 1901, is instead pseudo-historical and novelistic; generally noteworthy, although here and there not entirely reliable in its judgments, are the studies of A. Professione, which embrace the long years between his diplomatic-military initiation and his ministry in Spain. One should also consult: V. Papa, L'A. e la sua dipartita dalla Spagna, Turin 1877; R. Quazza, La cattura del card. G. A. e la repubblica di Genova, Genoa 1913. On the sensational trial, the exhaustive investigation conducted on the Vatican documents by A. Arata, Il processo del card. A., Piacenza 1923. And finally, on the subject of the San Marino controversy, C. Malagola, Il card. A. e la repubblica di San Marino, Bologna 1886.

Paolo Dalla Torre