ACCIA, BARTOLOMEO. — Cardinal, born at Benevento on 25 Dec. 1756, died at Rome on 19 Apr. 1844.
Of an ancient patrician family (his father, Orazio, was Marquis of Matrice and his mother, Cristina Malaspina, descended from the Marquises of Lunigiana), he was educated at the Jesuit College in Naples and at the Collegio Clementino in Rome. His passion for letters and history earned him, while still very young, admission to the Accademia dell’Arcadia. In 1788 he entered the Accademia dei Nobili Ecclesiastici, recently founded, and devoted himself to the study of law. Having entered the career of the prelature, he won the trust of Pius VI, who in 1785 appointed him nuncio to Cologne. Ordained priest and consecrated bishop of Damiana in partibus, he reached his post while the ecclesiastical electors were still resisting the Holy See, occasioned by the establishment of the nunciature at Munich (v. EMESA, PUNTUAZIONE di). His mission therefore unfolded amid notable difficulties and opposition, which he met with firmness and skill, and which abated only after the outbreak of the French Revolution. The failure of the flight to Varennes prevented him from carrying out the office of extraordinary nuncio to Louis XVI, which Pius VI had entrusted to him in the hope of success in that attempt. Nuncio to Lisbon from 1795, he received the red hat as cardinal in 1801, with the title of S. Silvestro in Capite.
When the French entered Rome in 1808, and the forced resignation of Consalvi persisted, he was called to replace Cardinal Gabrielli, expelled by the occupiers, in the office of pro-Secretary of State. As the conflict intensified, despite the efforts of Pacca to bring about pacification, the French, who accused him of inspiring the resistance of Pius VII, vainly attempted to remove him from Rome. Arrested together with the Pope after the assault on the Quirinal on 6 July 1809, he suffered harsh imprisonment in the fortress of Fenestrelle (Pinerolo). In February 1813 he was able to rejoin the Pope and, together with Consalvi and other cardinals, induce Pius VII to retract the so-called “Concordat of Fontainebleau.” Deported again to Uzès, in southern France, he was able to return to Italy after the entry of the Allies into Paris; Pius VII wished him at his side on the day of his triumphal return to Rome (24 May 1814). Pacca, having temporarily resumed his office of pro-Secretary, devoted himself to the work of restoring the State with great zeal and energy, but with a political vision that brought him into conflict with the more open ideas of Consalvi, who wrote to him from Vienna that while it had been difficult to recover the territories of the Holy See, it would be even more difficult to maintain them, if one wished to restore the old order in all respects and neglected those views which wisdom, prudence, experience, and the nature of the times and circumstances counselled.
The return of Napoleon to France and the invasion of the Papal States by Murat (March 1815) led Pius VII to leave Rome; Pacca accompanied him into a new exile in Genoa. Once the storm had passed, Pius VII, who had already named him Camerlengo (26 Sept. 1814), subsequently proposed him for the sees of Frascati (1818) and Porto and Santa Rufina (1821). Under the pontificates of Leo XII, Pius VIII, and Gregory XVI he held the office of pro-Datary; he was a member of the principal congregations of cardinals; secretary of the Holy Office and prefect of the Congregation of Ceremonial. He was also president of the Supreme Council of the Apostolic Chamber. From 1829, having become dean of the Sacred College, he governed the dio
