Calabiana, Nazari Luigi, Count of

CALABIANA, Nazari Luigi, Count of. - Bishop, b. 27 July 1808 at Savigliano, d. 23 Oct. 1893 at Milan. Elected on 12 Apr. 1847 bishop of Casale, he was almoner of King Charles Albert. To the high episcopal dignity "he had been led - as the president of the senate Farini said in the commemoration delivered at Palazzo Madama on 23 Nov. 1893 -

by an exemplary life, learning, piety; and ever more did evangelical gentleness and apostolic zeal exalt him."

On 3 May 1848 he was appointed senator. Of patriotic sentiments and ready to welcome the new ideas within the limits that the Catholic faith and the freedom of the Church allowed, he soon found himself compelled to raise his voice in defense of the rights of the Church, during the discussion of the Siccardi bill for the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum. "Illegal - he said in the sitting of 8 Apr. 1850 - I call that reform which is carried out by the civil government independently of the Roman See upon those matters which, besides being ecclesiastical by nature and regulated by special canonical laws, have been defined by the mutual agreement of the two powers"; grave would be the consequences of this unilateral act of the Sardinian Government; from it a conflict would arise between Church and State, "a conflict all the more painful in that the need is now greater for a good accord between the priesthood and the empire; a conflict that will place the episcopate in straits and fears," because "on the one hand it would wish to obey the Government, and on the other it must venerate and observe the canonical laws." The deplored rupture was not avoided, the bill was approved by Parliament and sanctioned by the sovereign, and other and harsher battles awaited the bishop of Casale, senator of the kingdom of Sardinia. In 1852 the minister of justice Boncompagni presented a bill on civil marriage, a bill that was not approved by the Senate and that the government had to withdraw. On that occasion too the C. delivered a learned speech, demonstrating that so-called civil marriage, being devoid of the sacramental chrism, had to be considered, according to the Tridentine canons, a veritable concubinage. Worthy of particular note is the action carried out by senator C. against the suppression of religious communities and ecclesiastical establishments proposed by Cavour and Rattazzi in the Chamber in 1854. On the suggestion of King Victor Emmanuel II and of various senators opposed to the suppression of the convents, the bishop of Casale declared in the senate, on 26 Apr. 1855, that the episcopate of the kingdom was prepared to assume the burden of the annual sum entered in the State budget in favor of the clergy and of worship, while awaiting that, by common accord with the Holy See, a new concordat should be concluded to settle the controversy. The offer, however, was not welcome to Cavour, who submitted the resignation of the ministry to the king.

Once the crisis had opened, and the question had been placed on an exclusively political and not financial ground, which was that of granting the State the power to proceed by authority in ecclesiastical matters, independently of agreements with the Church, the crisis itself ended in favor of Cavour, and shortly thereafter this law "unjust, illegal, antireligious, inhuman" was approved. From then on the C. no longer took part in the sittings of the Senate. He made only a brief appearance in 1865, during the discussion of the bill for legislative unification, again combating civil marriage, as he had done fifteen years earlier. On 27 March 1867 he was transferred from Casale to the archiepiscopal see of Milan.

Here the C. found himself faced with a difficult and delicate situation. Practically the chair of St. Ambrose had been vacant since the death of Ronulli, because Ballerini, proposed in the Consistory of 20 June 1859 to fill the high dignity, had been unable to exercise it owing to his reputation as an Austrian sympathizer. Clergy and faithful were divided into two parties: on the one side, the intransigents, who did not in any way admit the new state of affairs that had come about in Lombardy with the cessation of Habsburg rule; on the other, the liberals, who were well disposed toward the House of Savoy, and believed in an equitable and not distant regulation of relations between the kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, between Church and State. The spokesman of the intransigents was a combative and violent newspaper, the Osservatore cattolico of don Albertario, which in its attacks spared not even figures of prelates worthy of every respect such as Bonomelli and Scalabrini, merely because they had the fault of using a more measured and conciliatory manner. The work of the C. was far-sighted: with everything, but also with firmness where necessary, he succeeded little by little in obtaining a relaxation of spirits, contributing effectively through his action to the return of a more serene climate that later facilitated the entry of Catholic forces into the political life of the nation.

Silvio Furlani