ZACCARIA, FRANCESCO ANTONIO. - Originally, according to some, Zaccheria, a distinguished scholar and historian, b. in Venice on 27 March 1714, d. in Rome on 10 Oct. 1795.
His father Tancredi, an esteemed jurist, a native of Poppi in Casentino, and his mother, Teresa Ferretti, a gentlewoman and more Venetian, gave to this their only son an educa-
(by A. Hamy, Galerie illustrée de la Compagnie de Jésus, VIII, Paris 1893)
Christian education, from which, perfected in the schools of the Jesuits, his vocation to the Society of Jesus blossomed. Barely more than seventeen years old, on 18 Oct. 1731 he was admitted in Vienna into the Society — the reasons are unknown — into the novitiate of the province of Upper Austria rather than into that of Novellara of the Venetian province. Having completed the trials of his novitiate at nineteen, he was so advanced in Latin and Greek that he was assigned to teach grammar, humanities and rhetoric in the college of 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 genius; it suffices to recall Boscovich, Benvenuti, Lazzari, Mazzolari, Cunich, Zamagna, Faure, De Azevedo. To this distinguished band Z. was added in the aforesaid year. A priest on 30 Oct. 1740 (then on 15 Aug. 1747 admitted to solemn profession) at the age of twenty-six, in 1742 he was corresponding by letter with several accomplished men of letters and modestly proposed to the learned Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini certain critical observations on the Life of Paul II written by the prelate.
Having completed in Florence in 1742 the so-called third probation, or the last trial of the Jesuits, he was appointed prefect of the Library of the Roman College, which had been added to the famous Casanatense and Angelica. He did not, however, begin to exercise the office, since the confrere Pietro Lazzari had been substituted for him, and the latter held it for thirty years. As his rare oratorical qualities were well known, he was assigned to preaching. This displeased Cardinal Querini not a little, who considered him lost to the lofty historical studies for which he judged him born; but Z. reassured him, telling him that the new assignment offered him the opportunity to visit libraries and archives, and therefore to bring to light so many unexplored treasures.
In 1742 he began preaching in the diocese of Fermo and continued it for three decades, until 1773, in upper and central Italy. His eloquence may be called Segnerian in the robustness of its persuasion, but it is inferior to his in the elegance of the language and of the whole elocution.
In the first six lustra after his priesthood, the most fruitful of his life, transferred in 1751 from the Austrian province of his Order to that of Rome, Francis III Duke of Modena called him in 1754 to succeed Muratori.
who had died four years earlier, as conservator of the Estense. This appointment delighted Italian and foreign scholars, but it poisoned the Febronians and the Jansenists. Despite their calumnies, the Duke, aware of the great improvements made by Z. to the Library, which through his care had become one of the most notable in Europe, held firm for several years, until in 1768 the insistence of the courtiers and the warnings received from the court of Vienna induced him to ask the general of the Society, Lorenzo Ricci, to recall him on the pretext of entrusting him with the reorganization of the library of the Gesù in Rome and the continuation of the Biblioteca degli Scrittori of his Order.
Among the works written in the thirty years from 1742 to 1773 are to be remembered the Bibliotheca Pistoriensis 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 Iter litterarium per Italiam ab a. 1753 ad a. 1757 (ibid. 1762); the Collectio anecdotorum medii aevi (1755). Besides the Bibliotheca Pistoriensis and the Collectio of anecdotes, there appeared in Antwerp in 1755 the Acta Sanctorum Bollandiana ...vindicata, which were preceded by a novelty for Italians, that is, by the 14 volumes of the Storia letteraria d'Italia (ibid. 1750-59). In these volumes Z. undertook to review the books published in Italy from Sept. 1748 to 1749, also informing of what was happening in the field of letters in his day. He then continued the work with the Annali letterari from 1762 to 1764, giving a fine example of the manner to be kept in reviews, abstaining from insults and abuse, as the Florentine Giovanni Lami used toward him, although even Z. did not at times shrink from treating his adversaries with a touch of courteous humor.
To the same period of time belong also the Istituzioni di antiquaria-lapidaria e numismatica, the Tesaurus theologicus (1762-63), the Antifebronia, that is, the polemical apology of the primacy of the Pope, an irrefutable confutation of Giovanni Nicolò Hontheim, a work published at Pesaro in 1767, and then, with the Antifebronius vindicatus, at Cesena in 1771-72.
A deadly blow pierced Z. on 21 July 1773 at the suppression of the Society of Jesus; but it did not avail to extinguish his prodigious industry.
Indeed, to the following twenty years belong the Storia polemica del celibato sacro (Rome 1774), the Bibliotheca selecta historiae ecclesiasticae (ibid. 1776), the Storia polemica della proibizione dei libri (ibid. 1777), the Bibliotheca ritualis (ibid. 1776-81). Add the De rebus ad historiam atque antiquitates Ecclesiae pertinentibus (Foligno 1781) and a whole infinity of minor writings, or dissertations, in Latin and in the vernacular which illuminated obscure points in the annals of the Church and inexorably unmasked Jansenists and regalists. Pius VI sustained him in his extreme labors, who, like Benedict XIV, always held him in the highest esteem and defended him amid the contradictions and calumnies of the envious. Indeed Pius VI in 1775 freed him from the prohibition of leaving Rome, appointed him professor of eloquence at the Sapienza, and director of studies of sacred history in the Accademia dei nobili Ecclesiastici; he assigned him a generous pension that would enable him to live without hardship and to relieve the indigence of his former confreres.
Bibliography8 works
Pietro Tacchi-Venturi