Brignole Sale, Antonio - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 82

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BRIGNOLE SALE, ANTONIO. – Marquis of Groppoli. Diplomat and politician, born on 22 May 1786 in Genoa, and died there on 14 October 1863. After the annexation of the Ligurian Republic to France, he was appointed auditor to the Council of State in 1807. Prefect of Montenotte, in 1813 he became head of the department comprising Savona, where Pius VII was being held prisoner. Filled with 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 August 1814 he was appointed representative of Genoa at the Congress of Vienna to plead the cause of the Republic’s independence. When this mission failed in the face of the intransigence of the great powers and Genoa was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, B. entered the Sardinian diplomatic corps. He represented the court of Turin at the court of the grand duke of Tuscany from 1816 to 1819, then serving as ambassador in Madrid, where he remained until 1821. On his return from the Spanish capital he became mayor of Genoa, and embellished his native city with various public works. He also founded there the ecclesiastical college for foreign missions. During the years in which 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 in 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. As a senator, he opposed, during the discussion of the bill for the suppression of religious communities and establishments, a measure that was «hostile to the Church, contrary to justice, and 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 Pope’s temporal power; and after the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy he resigned as senator.

BIBL.: Obituary by A. Cochin, in Le Correspondant, 3 (1863), pp. 665 ff.; F. Poggi, s. V. in Diz. Risorg., II, pp. 408–10. – On B. in Vienna during the congress, cf. G. Martini, Storia della restaurazione della repubblica di Genova l'anno 1814 etc., Asti 1858, and M. Spinola, La restaurazione della repubblica ligure nel 1814, Genoa 1863. – For B.’s opposition to the suppression of the religious Orders and to the appropriation of their property, see the speech delivered in the Senate on 25 April 1855. In 1860 B. published a pamphlet entitled Considérations sur la question romaine, Genoa 1860.