SEVEROLI, ANTONIO GABRIELE. - Cardinal, b. 28 Feb. 1757 at Faenza, d. 8 Sept. 1824 at Rome. He studied at Rome, at the Accademia ecclesiastica, and having returned to Faenza in 1779, he was ordained a priest and became vicar general of Bishop De Buoi.
He was preconized on 23 Apr. 1787 by Pius VI as bishop of Fano. Pius VII, after his election, on the journey from Venice to Rome, on the occasion of the stop at Fano, came to know S. personally and decided to appoint him in 1801 as nuncio at Vienna with the title of archbishop of Petra. S. left Fano with regret in Jan. 1802. At Vienna he soon found himself faced with particularly delicate questions. The court circle, and above all the minister Count Cobenzl, was of a Josephinist outlook and did not tolerate the slightest interference of the Holy See in the ecclesiastical affairs of the Empire. Thus when S. was charged with making known to the Emperor the pontifical brief that deplored the secularization of the ecclesiastical states of Germany, he found himself in a lively altercation with Cobenzl, who went so far as to declare that the Pope's approval or disapproval in such an affair mattered not at all, since in his view it did not touch the spiritual power in the least. To this S., stung to the quick, abandoning the reserve of the diplomat, replied that the Pope did not in the least overstep his limits in disapproving the robberies committed to the detriment of the Church. Further disagreements, over S.'s intervention in questions relating to the jurisdiction over the clergy of the monarchy, moved Cobenzl to request S.'s recall, but he instead remained at Vienna, because the Holy See did not recognize the motivation of the displeasure as valid. S.'s difficult position improved noticeably after the Austrian defeat of 1805 and the fall of Cobenzl, and was definitively strengthened in 1809 with the coming to power of Metternich. Having remained in the Austrian capital during the period of Pius VII's deportation, S. was afterwards a prudent executor of Consalvi's directives after the fall of Napoleon. He was unable, however, to free himself from the influences of certain court circles, which under the pretext of a closer union between throne and altar in reality pursued merely political aims and tended toward a subordination of the ecclesiastical power to the state power and toward a concrete and effective reaffirmation of Austrian predominance over the Peninsula. Also on the occasion of the publication of the motu proprio of 1816, S., in his dispatches to Consalvi, made himself the spokesman for various criticisms of the Imperial Chancellery, and these contributed to a cooling with the secretary of state. Created cardinal in the Consistory of 8 March 1816, S. left Vienna the following year and took pos-
(from Cardinalium S.R.E. imagines, tau, 31)
SEVEROLI, ANTONIO GABRIELE - Portrait. Contemporary engraving.
of the united bishoprics of Viterbo and Toscanella, of which he had been given the administration since Jan. 1808. In the Conclave of 1823 S. was the candidate of the zelanti, to the point of gathering twenty-seven votes for his name, only six short of 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 originating from his old opposition to the Josephine laws, but also from the fear that S. wished to destroy ab imis the entire work of Consalvi and thereby to bring the Papal State to a degree of particular agitation and ferment, with unforeseeable repercussions on the other regions of the Peninsula, placing Austrian policy in difficulty.