CALANDRELLI, ALESSANDRO. - Scholar of military science, b. in Rome on 8 Oct. 1805, d. at Albano Laziale in 1888. An artillery officer, he reorganized the pontifical artillery school; of moderate political ideas and conduct during the reform period of Pius IX, after the Pontiff's departure for Gaeta following the mournful events of 15 and 16 Nov. 1848, C. remained in service, accepted the rank of major of artillery, and entered as deputy into the dicastery of Arms (17 Feb. 1849), administered it ad interim, sat as deputy for Rome in the Constituent Assembly, and prepared with technical expertise the resistance against the French. After having participated in the operations from the siege onward, he was excluded from the army by the Pontifical Government as a corps commander who had remained in the service of the revolutionary regime. Having incurred grave political suspicions upon his person, C. was therefore arrested on 3 Oct. 1849, and on account of the documents seized from him and of his joint responsibility in violent searches to the detriment of religious institutions and private individuals, on 23 May 1851 he was condemned by the Sacra Consulta to twenty years of public labor, and, because he was a soldier, to death for high treason. These sentences were commuted by Pius IX on 19 Aug. into twenty years of imprisonment to be served in the prison of Ancona; a further commutation occurring in 1853 allowed C. to depart into perpetual exile. From then on he lived, working and studying a great deal, in Berlin. He returned to Rome only after 1870.
Bibliography2 works
Paolo Dalla Torre