MATTEI, ALESSANDRO. – Cardinal, born in Rome on 20 Feb. 1744. He was elected Archbishop of Ferrara by Pius VI (1777) and created cardinal in 1782. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, he sheltered many fugitive priests. As papal plenipotentiary, he signed the Treaty of Tolentino (15 Feb. 1797).
In the conclave that elected Pius VII, he was among the leading candidates, supported by Cardinal Herzan, who saw in him the chief representative of anti-revolutionary legitimism. He became Bishop of Palestrina in 1804. Having refused to attend Napoleon’s marriage to Maria Luisa of Austria, he was confined by the Emperor to Rethel in the Ardennes, where he wrote an ascetical treatise on spiritual exercises according to the method of St Ignatius. In 1814, after Napoleon’s fall, he returned to Rome and became Dean of the Sacred College. He died in Rome on 20 Apr. 1820.
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