VERECONDO. – Bishop of Junca in the African province of Byzacena, flourishing in the 6th century, died at Chalcedon in the hospice of St Euphemia in 552.
Sparse are the biographical details about him, though he was one of the most prominent figures in the Rome of Pius VI. In his youth he devoted himself to legal studies, revealing himself as an admirer and follower of Beccaria in his pamphlets On the Death Penalty; On Criminal Justice; and On the Enormity of Duelling. Pope Braschi summoned him to Rome and appointed him general assessor of Finance and Trade, secretary of the Economic Congregation, and inspector of Agriculture and the Arts. Faithful to the economic doctrines of Verri, V. was a convinced protectionist and drew up and implemented the customs reform of Pius VI in 1786, in defence of which he later wrote (1795) a substantial volume (On the Importance and Merits of the New System of the Finances of the Papal State). He maintained that imports impoverish national finances and opposed the so-called objection that the State should recognise its wealth solely in agriculture. According to the judgement of Ricca-Salerno (Storia delle dottrine economiche in Italia, Rome 1880, p. 170), V.’s work is ‘not only a splendid illustration of the laws and ordinances issued by Pius VI, but the most complete and sagacious interpretation of the principles governing the customs system then in force in the practice of the most civilised States, for breadth of vision, abundance of particular and technical observations, full knowledge of the subject, and clarity of expression’.
We know nothing further of V. until 1811, when he is found in Paris, forced to give lessons in Italian to earn his bread and working on the work La législation de Napoléon le Grand considérée dans ses rapports avec l’agriculture (1812), in which he shows himself to have abandoned the concepts of an economy based predominantly on industry for new views more open to the advantages of agriculture. Indeed, with the fall of the Napoleonic empire, Monsignor V. urged Pius VII to promote the repopulation and intensive cultivation of the Roman countryside. In 1814 he dictated an Essai historique sur la dernière pensée du 18e siècle, which is a violent condemnation of Napoleonic policy towards the papacy.