MERODE, FRÉDÉRIC-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER de. Prelate and statesman, b. Brussels 20 March 1820, d. Rome 10 July 1874. Of a most noble family, after completing classical studies at the Jesuit college in Namur and at Juilly near Paris, on the advice of the nuncio Pecci (later Leo XIII) he attended (1839) the military school in Brussels, from which he graduated as a second lieutenant of infantry in 1841 and took part in the operations in Algeria (1844–45).
On his return home a burning priestly vocation led him, encouraged by Montalembert, Abbé Gerbet and Father Ventura, to set out for Rome in October 1847 and he received minor orders on 23 December 1848. During the revolutionary and republican disturbances he had fresh occasion to display intrepid courage, for which he suffered harassment and imprisonment. When the French entered the city (5 July 1849) he took part in the restoration of the papal government and, having celebrated his first Mass in St Peter’s (23 September 1849), served as military chaplain.
Pius IX, on receiving him after his return from Gaeta, at once appointed him his Secret Chamberlain Participant (14 April 1850) and kept him constantly at his side, soon employing him in confidential negotiations with France and in the study and preparation of the important institutional and administrative reforms which he revived and carried out between 1850 and 1870. But the grave political situation surrounding the Holy See between 1859 and 1870 is linked to the greater part of Mgr de M.’s activity. The spring of 1860 found him diligent Minister of Arms in close collaboration with General La Moricière (q.v.), and he strove with self-denial and skill to provide for everything. From the campaign of Castelfidardo (q.v.) and Ancona (q.v.) to the victory at Mentana (q.v.) and the final resistance along the walls of Rome, this new and good army, besides prolonging by a decade the millennial function of a State so venerable, sufficed, as Cochin wrote, to prevent it from collapsing silently and without a resounding echo in history. Lack of political adaptability and clashes with Cardinal Antonelli, who resented de M.’s activity and strict influence in the government of the State, forced him to leave the ministry on 6 October 1865, to take up instead the office of papal almoner with the appointment as titular Archbishop of Melitene (22 June 1866). It was indeed the Pope’s intention to keep him near himself so as to continue to make use of him as before.
De M. immediately turned to the reform of elementary schools and of many charitable and welfare institutions in the city, while, following the example of the Middle Ages, he gave an initial direction to the reclamation of the countryside by means of colonies of agricultural monks, such as that of the Trappists at Tre Fontane on the Via Laurentina. Rome also owes him the first city plan and the first imposing works of expansion and architectural renewal. With far-sighted foresight he set aside areas then deserted to create the Piazza di Termini and Piazza di S. Maria degli Angeli, to open the future Via Nazionale and its side streets, to begin in Prati the Via Vittoria Colonna and its branches, to delimit the present-day Piazza Cavour, and to trace on paper the line of what later became the great Via dei Fori Imperiali from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum. After taking a large part in the work of the Vatican Council, he cast a dissenting vote on the opportuneness of proclaiming the dogma of papal infallibility, but on the same evening (18 July 1870) submitted to the Holy Father. In his last years he safeguarded so many of his own works and so many interests of the Holy See threatened by changing times. Thus he even took a lease on the Palazzo Altemps to house a pontifical university in place of the Sapienza, which had become a royal institution. He also intervened to secure for his friend G. B. De’ Rossi and for the new science of Christian archaeology the means and sites for further research (1873); it was during these excavations that the illness struck him down. He was buried in the Teutonic Cemetery.
A romantic and chivalrous blend of soldier and monk, Mgr de M. united the habits of a pious cenobite with the solicitude of charity and the intransigence of justice. Of him, misunderstood by so many, Veuillot well said: “No one knew him better than Pius IX, and perhaps no one loved him more.”