SPINA, GIUSEPPE. - Cardinal, b. 11 March 1756 at Sarzana, d. 13 Nov. 1828 at Rome. He studied law at Pisa and Rome, where he entered the papal court and was appointed by Pius VI a referendary of the Segnatura. Ordained priest in 1796, he accompanied the Pope into exile, was his chief support, and administered the last Sacraments to him at Valence in 1799 at the point of death.
During the journey from Rome to France he had been consecrated on 30 Sept. 1798 titular archbishop of Corinth. After the death of Pius VI he returned to Italy and brought to the cardinals assembled in conclave at Venice the Fisherman’s ring of the deceased Pontiff. In 1800, at the request of Napoleon, who had met him the previous year at Valence on his return from the Egyptian expedition, he went to Paris with the task of conducting negotiations for the conclusion of a concordat. The negotiations, begun with Bernier in November, dragged on for several months in vain, because the French government, when an agreement seemed reached, would reopen everything with the intention of securing by this dilatory tactic the greatest possible advantages at the expense of the Holy See and the Catholic Church. S. safeguarded with prudence and tenacity the interests of the Holy See, but at the moment when everything seemed concluded, Bonaparte proposed a new text unacceptable to S., bound as he was by precise instructions. Only the arrival in Paris of Card. Consalvi brought the negotiations to a successful conclusion. On his return S. accompanied to Rome the remains of Pius VI. Created cardinal on 29 March 1802, he was in the following May appointed archbishop of Genoa, where he showed constant concern for the welfare of his flock, though sometimes making concessions to the Emperor with a view to avoiding a breach with the constituted authorities and the consequent worsening of religious conditions in the diocese. For this reason, probably, in 1810 he attended the religious marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise of Austria, standing among the cardinals in scarlet. In 1811 he also took part in the National Council of Paris, where he supported the proposal to demand the liberation of the regal Pope at Savona, advising that this demand should not be explicitly stated, though inserting it in the minutes.
After the restoration of the Papal States S. resigned the archbishopric, becoming in 1816 legate at Forlì, then in 1818 at Bologna until 1824. During his legation at Bologna as papal plenipotentiary he took part in the Congresses of Laybach and Verona. At Laybach he reaffirmed the neutrality of the Holy See in the Neapolitan question and substantially refused to approve the invasion of the Kingdom by Austria; at Verona, on the other hand, he opposed, together with the representatives of other States of the peninsula, the hegemonic pretensions of Metternich over Italy, helped to wreck the project for a central police commission, and temporarily averted the concentration of the peninsula’s postal service in Austrian hands.