PORCIA (de Purlileis, di PORCIGLIA). — A feudal family of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, it possessed its estates between the Tagliamento and the Livenza and held the advocacy of the Church of Concordia; a branch that crossed the Alps acquired princely rank with the County of Ortenburg in Carinthia.
A FEDERICO was vicedomino of the patriarchate (1381) and subsequently became bishop of Comacchio; GIROLAMO was bishop of Torcello (1514–26), while in this period a GIACOMO was a zealous cultivator of humanistic studies. Another GIROLAMO, son of VENCESLAO, was papal nuncio at the court of Graz in 1570 and 1573; in 1595 he was extraordinary nuncio in Switzerland, and died in 1601. Better known is BARTOLOMEO, a protonotary, born in 1540, a friend of St. Carlo Borromeo, who ceded to him the abbey of Maggio in 1567. In 1570 he was apostolic visitor in lower Friuli, Aquileia, and Gorizia; on 3 June 1573 he was sent as nuncio ad partes Germaniae, specifically to southeastern Germany. In this office he undertook long journeys to regulate the affairs of the Church in these countries, until he died in Prague on 12 August 1578. His dispatches are found in Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, III, P., pp. 1572–85; his letters among those of St. Pietro Canisio (v. P. Paschini, Un diplomatico friulano della Controriforma: B di P., in Memorie stor. forogiul., 30 [1934], pp. 27–74). GIROLAMO, son of Alfonso, born around 1559, was a referendary of the Signatura under Gregory XIV; in April 1592 he was sent as nuncio to the court of Graz and contributed to the restoration of Catholicism in the country; 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 (at baptism Egidio), son of Fulvio and on his mother’s side nephew of Cardinal Leandro of Colloredo, born on 24 December 1673, was a Benedictine monk at S. Giustina in Padua, where he taught theology according to the new methods; he subsequently taught the same subject 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 bishopric on 22 November 1730. At the Conclave of 1740 he came close to being elected pope; he died on 10 June, before the election of the new Pontiff.