Sardi, Filippo

SARDI, FILIPPO. - Archbishop, b. in Lucca on 18 Oct. 1736, d. there on 8 March 1826. His life is closely bound up with the political vicissitudes of the State of Lucca, in which he played a very great part.

Elected archbishop of his native city on 3 Aug. 1789, he found himself exercising his long ministry amid the political changes through which the small aristocratic republic passed in becoming a principality under the rule of Elisa, sister of Napoleon, and of her husband Felice Baciocchi (1805-14), with the consequence of having to submit to the new order of things created by French legislation, which overturned all the old relationships. S. did not fail to oppose himself energetically when (1806) it was sought to extend to Lucca as well the Concordat of 1803 between the Holy See and the Italian Republic, in which defense of episcopal and ecclesiastical rights he was comforted by the approval of Pius VII, with whom S. maintained a copious correspondence. After the fall of the principality of the Baciocchi, Msgr. S. was the chief inspirer of the political action of the provisional regency, preventing, among other things, any reprisals against the Bonapartists. Once the Bourbons of Parma were installed in Lucca, by the well-known clause of the Congress of Vienna, he was the most listened-to adviser of Maria Luisa of Bourbon, who governed the duchy for her minor son, and who immediately entered into relations with Pius VII in order to re-establish relations between Church and State and restore the ecclesiastical arrangements upset under the previous government. This was in fact accomplished with the papal brief of 8 Apr. 1820 and with the special provisions taken thereafter in agreement with the Holy See. During this period of restoration S. continued untiring in the spiritual care of his clergy and his people, and a few months before his death he completed for the fourth time the pastoral visitation of the mountain parishes of the Garfagnana.

Renzo U. Montini