SARDI, FILIPPO. — Archbishop, born in Lucca on 18 October 1736, died there on 8 March 1826. His life was closely bound up with the political affairs of the State of Lucca, in which he played a very prominent part.
Elected archbishop of his native city on 3 August 1789, he found himself exercising his long ministry amid the political changes through which the small aristocratic republic passed in order to become a principality under the rule of Elisa, Napoleon’s sister, and her husband Felice Baciocchi (1805–14). As a result, he had to submit to the new order of affairs created by French legislation, which overturned all the former relationships. S. did not fail to oppose vigorously the attempt (1806) to extend to Lucca the Concordat of 1803 between the Holy See and the Italian Republic; in defending episcopal and ecclesiastical rights he was encouraged by the approval of Pius VII, with whom S. maintained a substantial correspondence. After the fall of the Baciocchi principality, Msgr. S. was the principal inspiration behind the political action of the provisional regency, preventing, among other things, any reprisals against the Bonapartists. Once the Bourbons of Parma had been installed in Lucca, pursuant to the well-known clause of the Congress of Vienna, he became the most influential adviser of Maria Luisa di Borbone, who governed the duchy on behalf of her minor son and immediately entered into relations with Pius VII in order to re-establish relations between Church and State and restore the ecclesiastical institutions disrupted under the previous government. This was in fact accomplished by the papal brief of 8 April 1820 and by the special provisions subsequently adopted in agreement with the Holy See. During this period of restoration S. continued indefatigably to care for the spiritual needs of his clergy and people, and a few months before his death he made his fourth pastoral visitation of the mountain parishes of the Garfagnana.