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 Monsignor Giorgio Barni, papal vice-legate at Ravenna and later (1688) bishop of Piacenza, and became a priest and tutor to Barni’s nephew, Giovanni Battista, who later became a cardinal. He was favored by Marshal Vendôme, the French commander in Italy during the War of the Spanish Succession; after Vendôme’s death, Alberoni ingratiated himself with Philip V, taking on the advantageous role of Parma’s representative at Madrid. In this capacity, he successfully concluded in 1714 the negotiations for the king’s marriage to Elisabeth Farnese, the niece of Francesco Farnese, after the king had been widowed by Maria Luisa of Savoy. A consummate and quick-witted diplomat, deeply attached to his native land and the Farnese family, and a bitter enemy of Austria and the Empire, he rose to the height of power under the influence of the new queen (who increasingly dominated the weak and indecisive monarch), becoming prime minister of the kingdom in place of Cardinal Francesco del Giudice (1716).
It was only then that he openly revealed his vast and well-conceived plans, which essentially aimed to satisfy Philip’s desires to restore Spanish predominance in Italy and to safeguard, at the same time, his rights to the French throne, while also meeting Elisabeth’s ambitions to secure the succession for her sons to the Farnese dominions of Parma and the Medici territories. In practical terms, 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 domination through a swift and bold assertion of renewed Iberian influence; in other words, confronting without hesitation the leading powers—France, Austria, and especially England, the unyielding guarantor of the Treaty of Utrecht, which had definitively sanctioned, by the dismemberment of the Spanish constellation, the decline of Spain’s preponderance even in the Mediterranean. After removing and suppressing abuses of every kind, reforming organs of control and governance, replenishing the treasury through appropriate fiscal measures (often with the enlightened and devoted collaboration of Italians), he revitalized agriculture, breathed new life into trade and production, revived the merchant and war navies, and laid the foundations for a strong army well supplied with artillery.
This reforming work was interrupted by the deliberate and imprudent anti-Austrian intrigues of the Duke of Parma, which led the incautious Spanish sovereigns to order Alberoni to open hostilities prematurely. Thus, the squadrons that Alberoni, in agreement with Clement XI, had assembled for action against the Turks were instead directed to attack the Austrians in Sardinia, which was soon recaptured (1717), and, again due to the oblique pressures of the Farnese, another expedition landed in Sicily (1718), while a near-quadruple alliance was formed, in which, alongside the Empire, France, England, and Holland joined forces. Failed intrigues to incite Charles XII of Sweden and Russia against Great Britain, to overthrow the Duke of Orléans through the famous Cellamare conspiracy, and to bring the exiled James Stuart from Cádiz to England soon led to the maritime power of the English overcoming the Spanish fleet in Sicilian waters; the island fell easily into imperial hands, and the French successfully invaded Navarre across the Pyrenees (1719). It was catastrophe: the allies, intent only on maintaining the status quo ante and informed by experience, forced Philip V to dismiss the adventurous and unfortunate minister, whom Philip himself had helped elevate to the cardinalate with the title of S. Crisogono in July 1717.
Alberoni’s undeserved disgrace was not a little aided by the Farnese, who had turned from friend to foe, fearing that his indisputable responsibilities in sparking the conflict might come to light, and consequently that the cardinal’s absolute and complete innocence would shine clearly. Alberoni, expelled from Spain on 5 December 1719, pursued by agents ordered to kill him, surprised and searched, barely managed to save himself and the documentary evidence favorable to him by taking refuge in the Republic of Genoa. Though Genoa did not yield to the violent demands of Philip V and the Pope, who immediately sought his surrender, it was compelled to order him to leave its territory, especially since the Roman king, for diplomatic relations, and the Pope were preparing to strip him of his cardinal’s hat. Despite relentless searches of every kind, by early 1720 Alberoni managed to disappear, hiding for months among the Apennine mountains. Meanwhile, Clement XI entrusted a congregation of fifteen cardinals with the difficult task of judging him, and investigative commissions zealously—though not for a worthy cause—gathered the necessary evidence for a charge of high treason in Spain, Parma, and Rome. The accusations not only touched on Alberoni’s private and priestly life but also alleged that he had deceived the Pope by failing to provide the promised Spanish fleet in the Levantine war, that he had broken off relations between the monarchy and Rome by refusing the archiepiscopal see of Seville, that he had intercepted papal briefs to Spanish bishops regarding the crusade and other matters, that he had illicitly used the royal seal during a morning of the king’s indisposition, as well as alleged embezzlement and minor slights against the Pope and certain cardinals. However, the flimsiness of many elements and the various obstacles placed in the way of substantiating others dragged the matter on so long that the voluminous documents only reached Rome when the Pope was already on his deathbed (March 1719).
Called, as was his right, to the conclave, he appeared without hesitation, traveling from Bologna to Rome in April. Having secured from Innocent XIII the continuation of the proceedings, Alberoni remained serenely in Rome, residing in a palace and vineyard outside Porta Pia, while the congregation, failing to substantiate anything beyond secondary matters, such as the collection of revenues from the see of Seville, and declaring the Spanish issues unfounded, sentenced him to four years of imprisonment. At this point, however, Innocent XIII personally intervened in the affair, declaring Alberoni absolved and cleared of all infamy in a consistory; he also remitted a brief of pardon for the sentence and incurred censures, and the following year finally imposed the cardinal’s hat upon him.
Turning to private life and devoting himself to agriculture on the estate of Castelromano, he was consecrated bishop of Málaga by Benedict XIII in 1725 and reconciled with Philip V, even securing a pension from the see, though he had renounced that office. Nor were curial affairs foreign to him, and in 1732, upon receiving the commendatory position of the Piacenza hospital of S. Lazzaro, he benefited his homeland by suppressing the old and dilapidated lazar house and laying the foundations of the celebrated ecclesiastical college that bears his name, intended to house and support sixty young men of the Piacenza bourgeoisie aspiring to the priesthood. The institution, troubled from its inception by wartime events, was completed in 1751 through his efforts and personal intervention and entrusted to the Lazarists.
Starting in 1735 the prelate, despite the burden of age, was compelled to yield to the will of Clement XII, who summoned him to govern the legation of Ravenna. There he undertook monumental building and hydraulic works, including the regulation of the course of the Montone. In 1739, with an act whose political significance was later deliberately exaggerated—especially in relation to his actual responsibilities—he occupied the territory of the free and peaceful Republic of San Marino, in order to promote currents of union with the Papal States, which the Pope himself soon repudiated, not without controversy. Transferred, for a three-year term, by the cordial friendship of Benedict XIV, to the legation of Bologna, he finally retired to Piacenza, where he spent another ten years in literary work and acts of charity. On his death he left all his possessions to the college in whose church he was buried.
Sources: The most important and richest collections for the study of the prelate’s work are those held in the archives of the A. College in Piacenza, the State archives in Naples, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris; nor could the work of critical revision neglect the Vatican Secret Archives, the general Spanish archives of Simancas and Alcalá, the State archives of Florence, Turin, Venice, etc., while the most recent and acute Alberoni scholar, Pietro Castagnoli, does not fail to draw researchers’ attention to the Austrian, German, and Swedish senatorial archives. Two compilations, partly documentary, published precisely during the most fervent and salient years of the prelate’s life, are respectively the *Istoria del Cardinale A.* from the day of his birth until the beginning of 1719, Amsterdam 1720, and J. R., *La Storia del card. A.* from his birth until the beginning of the year 1719, 2 vols., The Hague 1719–21.
The present secure and objective focus on the much-debated ecclesiastical and political personality of the prelate is owed 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 1861; 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 1862; 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.*, 3 vols., Piacenza–Rome 1929. — Pseudo-historical and romantic is instead the volume by G. Bianchi, *G. A. e il suo secolo*, Piacenza 1901; generally noteworthy, although here and there not entirely reliable in its judgments, are the studies by A. Professione, which span the long years between his diplomatic-military initiation and his ministry in Spain. One may 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. Regarding the sensational trial, the exhaustive inquiry conducted on the Vatican documents by A. Arata, *Il processo del card. A.*, Piacenza 1923. Finally, concerning the San Marino controversy, C. Malagola, *Il card. A. e la repubblica di San Marino*, Bologna 1886. Paolo Dalla Torre.