PARCIA (de Purileis, di PORCIGLIA). - A feudal family of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, held its possessions between the Tagliamento and Livenza rivers and held the advocacy of the Church of Concordia; a branch that crossed the Alps attained princely rank with the county of Ortenburg in Carinthia.
A FEDERICO served as vice-dominus of the patriarchate (1381) and later became bishop of Comacchio; GIROLAMO was bishop of Torcello (1514–26), while in this period a GIACOMO was a notable promoter of humanist studies. Another GIROLAMO, son of VENCESLAO, was papal nuncio to the court of Graz in 1570 and 1573; in 1595 he was extraordinary nuncio to Switzerland, and died in 1601. More renowned is BARTOLOMEO, protonotary, born in 1540, a friend of St Charles Borromeo who ceded him the Abbey of Maggio in 1567. In 1570 he served as apostolic visitor in the lower Friuli, Aquileia, and Gorizia; on 3 June 1573 he was sent as nuncio ad partes Germaniae, specifically to south-eastern Germany. In this office he undertook long journeys to regulate the affairs of the Church in these lands, until he died in Prague on 12 August 1578. His dispatches are found in Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, III, P., pp. 1572–85; some of his letters are among those of St Peter Canisius (v. P. Paschini, Un diplomatico friulano della Controriforma: B di P., in Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, 30 [1934], pp. 27–74). GIROLAMO di Alfonso, born around 1559, was referendary of the Signatura under Gregory XIV; in April 1592 he was sent as nuncio to the court of Graz and collaborated in the restoration of Catholicism in the region; he took part in the Diet of Regensburg in 1594. He was appointed bishop of Adria on 7 August 1598 but did not leave the nunciature until the end of 1606. He died at Porcia on 23 August 1612, renowned as an excellent prelate. LEANDRO (baptismal name Egidio) di Fulvio, whose mother was a niece of Cardinal Leandro di Colloredo, was born on 24 December 1673, a Benedictine monk at S. Giustina in Padua, where he taught theology following modern methods; he later taught in the same discipline at S. Callisto in Rome. Abbot of S. Paolo in 1722 and consultor in the most important Roman congregations, he was elected bishop of Bergamo on 12 April 1728 and created cardinal on the 20th. He resigned the see on 22 November 1730. In the conclave of 1740 he was on the verge of being elected pope; he died on 10 June, before the new Pontiff was chosen.