Vizzardelli, Carlo

VIZZARDELLI, CARLO. - Cardinal, b. at Monte S. Giovanni Campano (Frosinone) on 2 July 1791, d. at Rome on 24 May 1851.

Ordained a priest in Veroli and having completed his higher studies in Rome, he soon obtained the chair of ecclesiastical law at the University of Bologna, whence he moved to teach the same discipline at the Roman Athenaeum. Having entered the prelature, in 1832 he was appointed secretary of the Brevi ai Principi, and in 1843 he took over the secretariat of the Sacred Congregation for Ecclesiastical Affairs. On 17 Jan. 1848 Pius IX created him cardinal priest of the title of S. Pancrazio and entrusted him with the prefecture of the Sacred Congregation of Studies. He was also a member of the cardinalitial commission charged with drafting the Constitution granted by the Pontiff on 14 March of that year. A few weeks later the Pope entrusted him with the direction of the negotiations with the Tuscan government for the stipulation of the Concordat, which was signed on 30 May by V. and by the grand-ducal plenipotentiary, Msgr. Giulio Boninsegni, provveditore of the University of Pisa. The document, regarded as excessively favourable to the Holy See, was not submitted for ratification to the Parliament of Florence, whereupon V. and Boninsegni drafted a second text, slightly different from the previous one, which was likewise declared unacceptable by the Tuscan ministry. Meanwhile the revolutions of Florence and Rome followed. V. followed the Pontiff to Gaeta and to Portici, where - Leopold II having been restored - he resumed the concordat negotiations, which finally reached completion on 28 Apr. 1851, with the signature appended by V. and by minister Baldasseroni to an instrument that entered into force, with the sanctions of the Pontiff and of the Grand Duke, in the following June. V. was unable to see the two sovereign ratifications, because - consumed by tuberculosis - he had piously passed away on 24 May, at the age of barely sixty.

Renzo U. Montini