SICCARDI, GIUSEPPE. — Statesman, born at Verzuolo (Cuneo) on 13 October 1802, died at Turin on 29 October 1857. A jurist of distinguished renown and university lecturer, he entered the judiciary in 1829, rapidly attaining the high office of first official in the Ministry of Grace and Justice (1840). Invested with comital dignity in 1846, the following year he became a councillor of the Court of Cassation, then attorney general and regent of the State Attorney General’s Office.
The year 1849 brought him to the forefront of politics, when he was charged with going to Portici to obtain from Pius IX his consent to the removal of the archbishop of Turin, Lud. Fransoni, and the bishop of Asti, Filippo Artico, who were unwelcome to the Government, as well as to the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum in the Sardinian States. Nor did S. succeed where others before him had failed in this objective, since the Holy See—which would not have opposed the suppression of special legislation for the clergy if the measure, rather than being promoted unilaterally by the civil authority, had been included among the articles of a Concordat—refused to accommodate the wishes of the Turin ministry. The unhappy outcome of the negotiations induced the Minister of Justice De Margherita to submit his resignation, whereupon d’Azeglio replaced him with S., who was created senator for the occasion. On 25 February 1850 S. thus presented to the Subalpine Chamber, anticipating the parliamentary initiative of the left, a legislative bill—the so-called Leggi S.—providing for the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum, the suppression of numerous obligatory feast days, and the prohibition of religious corporations from increasing their property in any way without sovereign authorization. The last of the nine articles also foreshadowed provisions concerning civil marriage. Amidst the lively reaction of Catholic circles, the Chamber discussed the five articles on the ecclesiastical forum separately from the rest and approved them by 130 votes to 26, as the Senate subsequently did by 51 votes to 29. The law was promulgated on 9 April, provoking immediate protests from the Holy See, which had been officially kept informed of the beginning of the parliamentary discussion. Various incidents followed, culminating in the arrest of Msgr. Fransoni, who had circulated among his clergy a letter against the law approved by the Chambers. Hence another source of disagreement between the Sardinian Government and the Holy See: a disagreement that could not fail to trouble S.’s conscience, since he considered himself a devoted son of the Church and indignantly refused to ascertain the proceeds of a subscription opened in his honor by the liberal press. The sum collected was subsequently used to erect in Turin (1853) a commemorative monument to the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum. S.’s action—which bore no responsibility whatsoever for the approval, in 1855, of the antiecclesiastical laws that also go under his name, but should instead be named after De Foresta—cost him the popularity he had acquired, and d’Azeglio consequently decided to remove him. A favorable opportunity to do so presented itself a few months later, when S. vigorously opposed the demand of the left-wing parties, supported by the majority of the ministers, that magistrates who failed to apply the legal sanctions against clergy opposed to the provisions of 9 April be placed on retirement.
Having found himself in conflict with his colleagues, S. had to invoke reasons of health in order to withdraw temporarily from the government, only to submit his definitive resignation shortly thereafter. Placed on inactive service with the rank of first president of the Court of Cassation, he died suddenly six years later, after having served as vice president of the Senate from 7 January to 16 July 1857.