ANTONIO MARIA ZACCARIA, saint. — Founder of the Barnabites and the Angelics, he died on 5 July 1539 at Cremona, where he had been born at the end of 1502 to Lazzaro, a Cremonese patrician of Genoese origin, and Antonietta Pescaroli, who, widowed at the age of eighteen before the Saint was born, renounced a second marriage in order to devote herself to the child.
Having taken a vow of virginity to the Blessed Virgin, A. M. renounced his paternal possessions by notarial deed and, after completing his philosophical studies at Pavia, studied medicine at the University of Padua, where he formed a friendship with the Lateran canon Serafino Aceti da Fermo and, in 1524, received his doctorate. Returning to Cremona, he practised his profession among the poor, and also devoted himself to catechizing children in the church of S. Vitale.
He became a priest in 1528, in obedience to his spiritual directors, Fr Marcello and Fr Battista da Crema, Dominicans; at the end of 1530, invited by the countess of Guastalla, Ludovica Torelli, he went to Milan. Having enrolled in the oratory of Eternal Wisdom and joined the nobles Bartolomeo Ferrari and Giacomo Morigia, he founded, inspired by fra Battista da Crema, Barnabites (v.), whose strict regular discipline was directed toward the reform of the regular and secular clergy and of the laity; with the assistance of the countess of Guastalla, he founded the Angelics for the reform of women’s monasteries. The Congregation of Married Couples for the reform of families was also his institution. An ardent and austere soul, open to delicate sentiments, he had, like s. Paul, whom he chose as patron of his institute, the vocation of leading souls «to the true and despised Crucified One». He instituted the commemoration of the Crucified One with the ringing of bells at three in the afternoon on Fridays; in Milan, the Forty Hours’ devotion in its form of solemn and continuous exposition in rotation among the various churches was also inspired by him (A. De Santi, L'orazione delle Quarantore, Rome 1922), whence he is called the «Eucharistic saint». The Eucharist, the Crucified One, and s. Paul are the three motifs that habitually recur in the iconography of the Saint; he is also often depicted with the lily, symbol of inward virginity and a reminder of the noble coat of arms of the Zaccaria family. His apostolate unfolded in Cremona, Milan, Guastalla, and Verona. His relics, discovered in 1891, rest in the crypt of S. Barnaba in Milan.
He was canonized by Leo XIII in 1897, after the cult rendered to him as a blessed had been restored in 1890, following the well-known decree of Urban VIII of 1634.
Few writings by A. remain: six youthful discourses on the Decalogue (first published by S. De Ruggero as an appendix to his translation of the Vita written by G. Chastel) and eleven letters (O. Premoli, Le lettere e lo spirito di s. A. M. Zaccaria, Rome 1909), in an almost dialectal Italian; and the draft of the constitutions (published as an appendix to the first volume of O. Premoli’s Storia dei Barnabiti, Rome 1913). The attribution to him of the Detti notabili (first edition, Venice 1583; latest edition, Florence 1936, edited by G. Boffito) is still disputed, as these are attributed by others to
fra' Battista da Crema (cf. Eco dei Barnabiti: Studi, Rome, May 1938, pp. 47–55).