CALANDRELLI, ALESSANDRO. - Scholar of military science, b. in Roma on 8 Oct. 1805, d. at Albano Laziale in 1888. An artillery officer, he reorganized the pontifical artillery school; moderate in political views and conduct during the reform period of Pio IX, when the Pontiff left for Gaeta following the tragic events of 15 and 16 Nov. 1848, C. remained in service, accepted the rank of artillery major, and entered as deputy into the Ministry of Arms (17 Feb. 1849), which he directed ad interim; he sat as deputy for Roma in the Constituent Assembly, and with technical skill prepared the resistance against the French. After taking part in the operations of the siege, he was excluded from the army by the Pontifical Government as a corps commander who had remained in the service of the revolutionary regime. Falling under grave political suspicion, C. was therefore arrested on 3 Oct. 1849, and, on account of documents seized from him and of complicity in violent searches to the detriment of religious institutions and private individuals, on 23 May 1851 he was sentenced by the Sacra Consulta to twenty years of forced labour, and, as a military man, to death for high treason. These sentences were commuted by Pio IX on 19 Aug. to twenty years’ imprisonment to be served in the penal establishment at Ancona; a further commutation in 1853 allowed C. to go into perpetual exile. Thereafter he lived in Berlin, working and studying extensively. He returned to Roma only after 1870.
strativa di Gregorio XVI, in Gregorio XVI: miscellanea commemorativa, II, Roma 1948. Paolo Dalla Torre