SEVEROLI, ANTONIO GABRIELE. — Cardinal. Born 28 Feb. 1757 at Faenza, died 8 Sept. 1824 at Rome. He studied in Rome at the Ecclesiastical Academy, and on returning to Faenza in 1779 was ordained priest and became vicar general to Bishop De Buoi.
He was preconized on 23 Apr. 1787 by Pius VI as bishop of Fano. Pius VII, after his election during the journey from Venice to Rome, on stopping at Fano personally met S. and decided in 1801 to appoint him nuncio at Vienna with the title of archbishop of Petra.
S. left Fano with regret in Jan. 1802. In Vienna he soon found himself facing particularly delicate issues. The court environment, and above all the minister Count Cobenzl, held Josephinist views 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 which deplored the secularization of ecclesiastical states in Germany, he found himself in a sharp dispute with Cobenzl, who declared that the Emperor cared nothing for the Pope’s approval or disapproval in this matter, which in his view did not in the least affect spiritual power. At this S., stung to the quick, abandoned diplomatic reserve and replied that the Pope was in no way exceeding his proper limits in disapproving the spoliations committed against the Church. Further disagreements arose over S.’s intervention in matters relating to the jurisdiction over the clergy of the monarchy, leading Cobenzl to request S.’s recall. S., however, remained at Vienna because the Holy See did not recognize the validity of the objection. His difficult position improved noticeably after the Austrian defeat of 1805 and the fall of Cobenzl, and was definitively strengthened in 1809 with the rise to power of Metternich. Remaining in the Austrian capital during the period of Pius VII’s deportation, S. then became a shrewd executor of Consalvi’s directives after Napoleon’s downfall. He was, however, unable to free himself from the influence of certain court circles which, under the pretext of a closer union between throne and altar, pursued purely political ends and aimed at a subordination of ecclesiastical power to the state and at a concrete and effective reassertion of Austrian predominance over the Peninsula. Even at the time of the publication of the motu proprio of 1816, S. in his dispatches to Consalvi gave voice to 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 Mar. 1816, S. left Vienna the following year and took possession of the united dioceses of Viterbo and Toscanella, whose administration had been conferred on him since Jan. 1808.
In the Conclave of 1823 S. was the candidate of the Zelanti, gathering twenty-seven votes in his favor, only six short of the required two-thirds majority. Preparations for his election were already under way when Cardinal Albani communicated to the Sacred College the imperial veto against him, arising certainly from his earlier opposition to Josephinist laws but also from the fear that S. intended to destroy root and branch the entire work of Consalvi and thus stir up a particular ferment in the State of the Church, with unforeseeable repercussions on other regions of the Peninsula and embarrassing Austrian policy.