SEVEROLI, ANTONIO GABRIELE. — Cardinal, born on 28 February 1757 at Faenza, died on 8 September 1824 at Rome. He studied in Rome at the Ecclesiastical Academy, and, having returned to Faenza in 1779, was ordained a priest and became vicar general of Bishop De Buoi.
He was preconized on 23 April 1787 by Pius VI as bishop of Fano. Pius VII, after his election, met S. personally during the journey from Venice to Rome, on the occasion of his stop at Fano, and decided in 1801 to appoint him nuncio in Vienna with the title of archbishop of Petra. S.
left Fano regretfully in January 1802. In Vienna he soon found himself confronted with particularly delicate questions. The court milieu, and above all the minister Count Cobenzl, was Josephinist in outlook and would not tolerate the slightest interference by the Holy See in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Empire. Thus, when S. was charged with making known to the Emperor the papal brief deploring the secularization of the ecclesiastical states of Germany, he became involved in a heated dispute with Cobenzl, who declared that he cared nothing for the Pope’s approval or disapproval in a matter which, in his view, touched spiritual power in no way. At this, S., stung to the quick, abandoned the diplomat’s reserve and replied that the Pope was in no way exceeding his proper limits in disapproving the robberies committed to the detriment of the Church. Further disagreements, arising from S.’s intervention in questions concerning jurisdiction over the clergy of the monarchy, led Cobenzl to request S.’s recall; S., however, remained in Vienna, since the Holy See did not recognize the stated grounds of his being persona non grata. S.’s difficult position improved markedly after the Austrian defeat of 1805 and the fall of Cobenzl, and was definitively strengthened in 1809 with Metternich’s accession to power. Having remained in the Austrian capital during the period of Pius VII’s deportation, S. subsequently proved an able executor of Consalvi’s directives after the fall of Napoleon. Nevertheless, he was unable to free himself from the influence of certain court circles which, under the pretext of a closer union between throne and altar, were in reality pursuing purely political aims and tending toward the subordination of ecclesiastical power to state power, as well as toward a concrete and effective reaffirmation of Austrian predominance over the Peninsula. On the occasion of the publication of the motu proprio of 1816, too, S., in his dispatches to Consalvi, voiced various criticisms from the Imperial Chancellery, and these contributed to a cooling of relations with the Secretary of State. Created cardinal in the Consistory of 8 March 1816, S. left Vienna the following year and took up pos-
(from Cardinalium S.R.E. imagines, tau, 31)
SEVEROLI, ANTONIO GABRIELE – Portrait. Contemporary engraving.
possession of the united bishoprics of Viterbo and Toscanella, whose administration had been conferred upon him as early as January 1808. In the Conclave of 1823 S. was the candidate of the zelanti, until he received twenty-seven votes, lacking only six to reach the prescribed two-thirds majority. All the preparations for his election were already under way when Cardinal Albani communicated to the Sacred College the imperial exclusion against him, certainly arising from his former opposition to the Josephine laws, but also from the fear that S. might wish to destroy ab imis the entire work of Consalvi and thus bring the Papal States to a state of particular agitation and ferment, with unforeseeable repercussions in the other regions of the Peninsula, thereby placing Austrian policy in difficulty.