FRANCESCO ANTONIO ZACCARIA. — Originally, according to some, Zaccheria, a distinguished scholar and historian, born in Venice on 27 March 1714, died in Rome on 10 October 1795.
His father Tancredi, a respected jurist originally from Poppi in Casentino, and his mother, Teresa Ferretti, a noble and pious Venetian lady, provided their only son with a thoroughly Christian education, which, refined in the schools of the Jesuits, gave rise to his vocation to the Society of Jesus. Barely seventeen years old, on 18 October 1731 he was admitted in Vienna to the Society—reasons for this are unknown—to the novitiate of the Upper Austria Province rather than that of Novellara in the Venetian Province. Having completed his probation at nineteen, he was so advanced in Latin and Greek that he was assigned to teach grammar, humanities, and rhetoric at the college in Gorizia, where he remained until the end of 1738, when he was sent to Rome for theology.
The Roman College then had a gathering of students of the Society endowed with the highest intellect; suffice it to recall Boscovich, Benvenuti, Lazzari, Lazzari, Mazzolari, Cunich, Zamagna, Faure, and De Azevedo. To this group was added, in the aforementioned year, Z. He was ordained priest on 30 October 1740 (then admitted to solemn profession on 15 August 1747) at the age of twenty-six. In 1742 he corresponded with several learned men and modestly submitted to the learned Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini some critical observations on the Life of Paul II written by the cardinal.
After completing the so-called third probation, or the final test of the Jesuits, in Florence in 1742, he was appointed prefect of the Library of the Roman College, in addition to the celebrated Casanatense and Angelica libraries. He did not, however, begin to exercise the office, as his confrere Pietro Lazzari was appointed in his place and held it for thirty years. Given his well-known rare oratorical qualities, he was assigned to preaching. This displeased Cardinal Querini greatly, who considered him lost to the high historical studies for which he deemed him born; however, Z. reassured him, telling him that his new assignment offered him the opportunity to visit libraries and archives and thus to illuminate so many unexplored treasures.
In 1742 he began preaching in the diocese of Fermo and continued for three decades, until 1773, in northern and central Italy. His eloquence may be called Segnerian in the strength of its persuasion, but it is inferior in the elegance of language and overall delivery.
In the first six lustrums after his ordination, the most fruitful of his life, transferred in 1751 from the Austrian province of his Order to that of Rome, Francesco III, Duke of Modena, called him in 1754 to succeed the deceased Muratori as curator of the Estense Library. This appointment delighted Italian and foreign scholars but enraged the Febronians and Jansenists. Despite their calumnies, the Duke, aware of the great improvements Z. had made to the Library—through his care it became one of the most distinguished in Europe—held firm for several years, until in 1768 the insistence of courtiers and admonitions received from the court of Vienna induced him to ask the General of the Society, Lorenzo Ricci, to recall him under the pretext of entrusting him with the reorganization of the library of the Gesù in Rome and the continuation of the Library of the Writers of his Order.
Among the works written in the thirty-year span from 1742 to 1773 are to be noted the *Biblioteca Pistoriensi descripta* (Turin 1742), followed by the illustration of the manuscripts of the same Library (Milan 1749); the *Excursus litterarii per Italiam ab a. 1742 ad a. 1752* (Venice 1754), the *Itinerarium per Italiam ab a. 1753 ad a. 1757* (ibid. 1762); the *Collectio anecdotorum medii aevi* (1755). In addition to the *Biblioteca Pistoriensi* and the *Collectio* of the anecdotes, the *Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana ...vindicta* were published in Antwerp in 1755, preceded by a novelty for Italians, namely the fourteen volumes of the *Storia letteraria d'Italia* (ibid. 1750-59). In these volumes Z. began to review books published in Italy from September 1748 to 1749, also informing his readers of what was happening in the field of letters in his own day. He then continued the work with the *Annali letterari* from 1762 to 1764, setting a fine example of how reviews should be conducted, avoiding insults and rudeness, as was the custom of the Florentine Giovanni Lami, although Z. himself did not refrain from sometimes treating his adversaries with a touch of witty humor.
To the same period also belong the *Istituzioni di antiquaria-lapidaria e numismatica*, the *Tesauro theologicus* (1762-63), the *Antifebronio*, or the polemical apology of the primacy of the Pope, an unanswerable refutation of Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, published in Pesaro in 1767, and then, with the *Antifebronius vindicatus*, in Cesena in 1771-72.
A fatal blow struck Z. on 21 July 1773 with the suppression of the Society of Jesus; but it did not succeed in extinguishing his prodigious industry.
Indeed, the following two decades saw the publication of the *Storia polemica del celibato sacro* (Rome 1774), the *Biblioteca selecta historiae ecclesiasticae* (ibid. 1776), the *Storia polemica della proibizione dei libri* (ibid. 1777), the *Biblioteca ritualis* (ibid. 1776-81). Add to these the *De rebus ad historiam atque antiquitates Ecclesiae pertinentibus* (Foligno 1781) and a vast number of minor writings or dissertations, in Latin and the vernacular, which illuminated obscure points in the annals of the Church and relentlessly exposed Jansenists and regalists. He was sustained in his final labors by Pius VI, who, like Benedict XIV, always held him in the highest esteem and defended him against the contradictions and calumnies of the envious. Indeed, in 1775 Pius VI freed him from the prohibition against leaving Rome, appointed him professor of eloquence at the Sapienza, and director of studies in sacred history at the Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles; he granted him a generous pension that enabled him to live without hardship and to alleviate the indigence of his former confrères.