Brignole Sale, Antonio

BRIGNOLE SALE, ANTONIO. - Marquis of Groppoli. Diplomat and politician, b. 22 May 1786 in Genoa, and d. there 14 Oct. 1863. After the annexation of the Ligurian Republic to France, he was appointed in 1807 auditor at the Council of State. Prefect of Montenotte, in 1813 he was head of the department comprising Savona, where Pius VII was being held prisoner. Full of reverence for the Pontiff, B. treated him with every consideration and affection, so that the Pope, speaking of him, called him "my good jailer." In Aug. 1814 he was appointed representative of Genoa at the Congress of Vienna to plead the cause of the Republic's independence. Having failed in that mission before the intransigence of the great powers, and with Genoa annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, B. entered the Sardinian diplomatic corps. He represented the court of Turin at the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1816 to 1819, then passing as ambassador to Madrid, where he remained until 1821. On his return from the Spanish capital he was mayor of Genoa, and embellished his native city with various public works. There he also founded the ecclesiastical college for foreign missions. In the years when he was mayor he was entrusted with an extraordinary embassy to St. Petersburg, where he went in 1826 on the occasion of the accession to the throne of Tsar Nicholas I. Ambassador to Paris from 1836 to 1848, he left the diplomatic career a few years later because he did not share the ecclesiastical policy of the Piedmontese government. A senator, he opposed, in the debate on the bill for the suppression of religious communities and establishments, on the grounds that it was a measure "hostile to the Church, contrary to justice, disastrous to society." In 1860 he proposed reconciliation with the Holy See, the restoration of the princes of central Italy and the preservation of the temporal power for the Pope, and after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy he resigned as senator.