ANTHONY MARY ZACCARIA, Saint. - Founder of the Barnabites and of the Angelics, he died on 5 July 1539 at Cremona, where he had been born toward the end of 1502 to Lazzaro, a Cremonese patrician of Genoese origin, and to Antonietta Pescaroli who, left a widow at eighteen, before the Saint saw the light renounced a second marriage in order to devote herself to the child.
Having made a vow of virginity to the Most Holy Virgin, A. M. renounced his paternal property by a notarial act and, after completing the course of philosophy 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, obtained his doctorate. Returning to Cremona, he practiced his profession among the poor, also devoting himself to catechizing the little ones in the church of S. Vitale.
He became a priest in 1528, in obedience to his spiritual directors Father Marcello and Father Battista da Crema, Dominicans; toward the end of 1530, invited by the countess of Guastalla, Ludovica Torelli, he moved to Milan. Having enrolled in the oratory of the Eternal Wisdom and joined the nobles Bartolomeo Ferrari and Giacomo Morigia, he instituted, with Fra Battista da Crema as inspirer, the Barnabites (v.), with a severe regular discipline for the reform of the regular and secular clergy and of the laity; aided by the countess of Guastalla he instituted the Angelics for the reform of women's monasteries. His also is the Congregation of the Married for the reform of families. An ardent and austere soul, open to delicacies of feeling, he had, like St. Paul, whom he chose as patron of his institute, the vocation of leading souls "to the true and despised Crucified One." Of his institution is the commemoration of the Crucifix with the ringing of bells at three in the afternoon on Fridays; of his inspiration, in Milan, are the Forty Hours in their form of solemn and continuous exposition in turn in the various churches (A. De Santi, L'orazione delle Quarantore, Rome 1922), whence he is called the "saint of the Eucharist." Eucharist, Crucifix and St. Paul are the three motifs that habitually recur in the iconography of the Saint; he is also readily depicted with the lily, symbol of his preserved virginity and reminder of the coat of arms of the Zaccaria family. His apostolate was carried on at Cremona, Milan, Guastalla, Verona. His relics, rediscovered in 1891, rest in the crypt of S. Barnaba in Milan.
He was canonized by Leo XIII in 1897, after in 1890 the cult paid to him as blessed had been reinstated, until the well-known decree of 1634 of Urban VIII.
Of A. few writings 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; the draft of the constitutions (published as an appendix to the first volume of O. Premoli's Storia dei Barnabiti, Rome 1913). Still debated is the attribution to him of the Detti notabili (first edition, Venice 1583; latest, Florence 1936, edited by G. Boffito), attributed by others to Fra' Battista da Crema (cf. Eco dei Barnabiti: Studi, Rome, May 1938, pp. 47-55).