CALABIANA, NAZARI LUIGI, count of. — Bishop, born on 27 July 1808 at Savigliano, died on 23 October 1893 at Milan. Elected bishop of Casale on 12 April 1847, he was almoner to King Carlo Alberto. To the high episcopal dignity, “as the president of the senate Farini said in the commemoration delivered at Palazzo Madama on 23 November 1893—
exemplary life, learning, piety had recommended him; evangelical meekness and apostolic zeal raised him ever higher.”
On 3 May 1848 he was appointed senator. Of patriotic sentiments and ready to welcome new ideas within the limits permitted by the Catholic faith and the liberty of the Church, he was soon compelled to make his voice heard in defence of the rights of the Church during the discussion of the Siccardi bill for the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. “Illegal,” he said in the sitting of 8 April 1850, “I call that reform which is carried out by a civil government independently of the Roman See with regard to matters which, besides being ecclesiastical by nature and governed by special canonical laws, have been defined by mutual agreement between the two powers”; the consequences of this unilateral act of the Sardinian Government would be grave; a conflict between Church and State would arise, “a conflict all the more painful since the need for a good accord between priesthood and empire is now greater; a conflict that will place the episcopate in distress and apprehension,” because “on the one hand it would desire to obey the Government, and on the other it must revere and observe the canonical laws.” The deplored rupture was not avoided: the bill was approved by Parliament and sanctioned by the sovereign, and further, harsher battles awaited the bishop of Casale, senator of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1852 the Keeper of the Seals Boncompagni presented a bill on civil marriage, a bill that was not approved by the Senate and that the government was forced to withdraw. On this occasion too, C. delivered a learned speech, demonstrating that so-called civil marriage, since it lacked the sacramental chrism, was to be regarded, according to the Tridentine canons, as outright concubinage. Particularly noteworthy was the action undertaken by Senator C. against the suppression of religious communities and ecclesiastical establishments proposed by Cavour and Rattazzi in the Chamber in 1854. At the suggestion of King Vittorio Emanuele II and of various senators opposed to the suppression of convents, the bishop of Casale declared in the Senate, on 26 April 1855, that the episcopate of the kingdom was prepared to assume the burden of the annual sum entered in the State budget for the clergy and worship, pending the conclusion, by common agreement with the Holy See, of a new concordat to resolve the dispute. The offer was not, however, welcomed by Cavour, who submitted the ministry’s resignation to the king.
Once the crisis had arisen, and the question had been placed on an exclusively political rather than financial footing—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 Cavour’s favour, and shortly thereafter this “unjust, illegal, antireligious, inhuman” law was approved. From then on, 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, once again opposing 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 C. found himself confronted with a difficult and delicate situation. In practice, the see of St Ambrose had been vacant since the death of Ronulli, because Ballerini, proposed in the Consistory of 20 June 1859 to assume the high dignity, had been unable to exercise it because of his reputation as an Austrian sympathizer. Clergy and faithful were divided into two groups: on one side, the intransigents, who in no way accepted the new state of affairs that had arisen in Lombardy with the end of Habsburg rule; on the other, the liberals, who were well disposed towards 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 for the intransigents was a combative and violent newspaper, l’Osservatore cattolico of don Albertario, which did not spare in its attacks even prelates worthy of every respect, such as Bonomelli and Scalabrini, merely because they had the fault of adopting a more measured and conciliatory manner. C.’s work was farsighted: by means of everything, but also firmly wherever necessary, he gradually succeeded in bringing about a relaxation of tempers, contributing effectively through his action to the return of a more serene climate, which later facilitated the integration of Catholic forces into the political life of the nation.