Giulio Alberoni

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Cardinal Alberoni

Giulio Alberoni (21 May 1664 OS – 26 June NS 1752) was an Italian

cardinal and statesman in the service of Philip V of Spain.[1]

Early years

He was born near

Duchy of Parma
.

His father was a gardener,

bishop of Piacenza
in 1688 and appointed Alberoni chamberlain of his household. Alberoni took priest's orders, and afterwards accompanied the son of his patron to Rome.

During the

Louis XIV.[5]

Middle years

Anti-Alberoni fresco, from the Palace San Marino

Alberoni accompanied Vendôme to Spain as his secretary and became very active in promoting the cause of the French candidate Philip V. Following Vendôme's death, in 1713 he was made a Count and appointed Consular agent for Parma at Philip's court where he was a Royal favourite.

Under the terms of the 1713

Treaty of Utrecht, Philip became King of Spain but the Spanish Empire was effectively partitioned. The Southern Netherlands and their Italian possessions were ceded to the Austrian Habsburgs and Savoy, Menorca and Gibraltar
went to Britain while British merchants gained trading rights in the previously closed market of the Spanish Americas.

At this time, the key powerbroker at the Spanish court was

Elisabetta Farnese
, daughter of the Duke of Parma.

Elisabetta was a strong personality herself and formed an alliance with Alberoni, their first action being to banish the Princesse des Ursins.

Bishop of Málaga and Chief Minister of the Hispanic Monarchy. In July 1717, Pope Clement XI appointed him Cardinal, allegedly because of his assistance in resolving several ecclesiastical disputes between Rome and Madrid in favour of Rome.[7]

One outcome of the war was to reduce the powers of Castile and Aragon and create a Spanish state similar to the centralised French system. This allowed Alberoni to copy the economic reforms of Colbert and he passed a series of decrees aimed at restoring the Spanish economy. These abolished internal custom-houses, promoted trade with the Americas, instituted a regular mail service to the colonies and reorganised state finances along lines established by the French economist Jean Orry. Some attempts were made to satisfy Spanish conservatives e.g. a new School of Navigation was reserved for the sons of the nobility.

Battle of Cape Passaro, 11 August 1718; the destruction of the Spanish fleet off Sicily

These reforms made Spain confident enough to attempt the recovery of territories in Italy ceded to

Quadruple Alliance and on 11 August the Royal Navy destroyed a Spanish fleet off Sicily at the Battle of Cape Passaro
.

Alberoni now attempted to offset British in the Mediterranean by sponsoring a Jacobite landing to divert their naval resources; he also sought to end the 1716 Anglo-French Alliance by using the Cellamare conspiracy to replace the current French Regent the Duke of Orleans with Phillip of Spain. However, he failed to appreciate that Britain was now powerful enough to maintain naval superiority in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic while France declared war on Spain in December 1718 on the discovery of the Conspiracy.

France invaded eastern Spain and in October 1719 a British naval expedition captured the Spanish port of

Vigo; they landed 6,000 troops, held Vigo for ten days, destroyed vast quantities of stores and equipment and then re-embarked unopposed. The nearby city of Santiago de Compostela even paid £40,000 in return for being left alone.[9] As intended, this was a crushing demonstration of British naval power and showed the Spanish Britain could land anywhere along their coastline and leave when they wanted to.[10] The failure of his policy meant Alberoni was dismissed on 5 December 1719 and ordered to leave Spain, with the Treaty of The Hague
in 1720 confirming the outcome of Utrecht.

Later years

Cardinal Giulio Alberoni
Engraving of Cardinal Alberoni

He went to Italy, escaped from arrest at Genoa, and had to take refuge among the

pederast).[11] He was ultimately cleared by a commission of his fellow Cardinals. At the next election (1724) he was himself proposed for the papal chair, and secured ten votes at the conclave that elected Benedict XIII.[5]

Benedict's successor, Clement XII (elected 1730), named him legate of Ravenna, where he erected the Porta Alberoni (1739), a magnificent gateway that formerly provided access to the city's dockyards, and has since been moved to the entrance of the Teatro Rasi.[12] That same year, the strong and unwarrantable measures he adopted to subject the grand republic of San Marino to the papal states incurred the pope's displeasure and left a historical scar in that place's memory.[13] He was soon replaced by another legate in 1740, and he retired to Piacenza, where in 1730 Clement XII appointed him administrator of the hospital of San Lazzaro, an institute founded in the medieval era for the benefit of lepers. Since leprosy had nearly disappeared in Italy, Alberoni obtained the consent of the pope to suppress the hospital, which had fallen into great disorder, and replaced it with a seminary for the priestly education of seventy poor boys, under the name of the Collegio Alberoni, which it still bears.[5] The Cardinal's collections of art gathered in Rome and Piacenza, housed in his richly appointed private apartments, have been augmented by the Collegio. There are remarkable suites of Flemish tapestries, and paintings, among which the most famous is the Ecce Homo by Antonello da Messina (1473), but which also include panels by Jan Provoost and other Flemish artists, oil paintings by Domenico Maria Viani and Francesco Solimena.

Alberoni was a

salame, robiola cheeses, and agnolini (kind of pasta).[14] The pork dish "Coppa del Cardinale", a specialty of Piacenza, is named for him. A "timballo
Alberoni" combines maccaroni, shrimp sauce, mushrooms, butter and cheese.

Death and legacy

He died leaving a sum of 600,000

endow the seminary he had founded. He left the rest of the immense wealth he had acquired in Spain to his nephew. Alberoni produced many manuscripts. The genuineness of the Political Testament, published in his name at Lausanne in 1753, has been questioned.[5]

References and sources

References
  1. ^ The standard life is P. Castagnoli, Il Cardinale Giulio Alberoni, 3 vols., 1929–32.
  2. ISSN 0002-9300
    .
  3. ^ "Giulio Alberoni | Italian Statesman, Cardinal, Diplomat | Britannica". www.britannica.com. 12 February 2024.
  4. Chambers's Encyclopædia. London: George Newnes
    , 1961, Vol. 1, p. 223.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Chisholm 1911.
  6. ^ E Armstrong, "The Influence of Alberoni in the Disgrace of the Princess des Ursins" English Historical Review, 1890.
  7. OCLC 22667803
    .
  8. ^ Harcourt-Smith, Simon (1944). Cardinal of Spain: The Life and Strange Career of Alberoni. Knopf. p. 3 passim.
  9. ISBN 9780141026909
    .
  10. ISBN 9780140289848
    .
  11. ^ Eugene Marie, "L'amore omosessuale", 1983
  12. ^ http://www.racine.ra.it/ravenna/english/keys/historical/porta_alberoni_uk.htm Archived 12 November 2004 at the Wayback Machine; G. Cattanei, Il cardinale Giulio Alberoni e la sua esperienza di legato a Ravenna, 2008.
  13. ^ San Marino subjugation
  14. ^ "Local cuisine". www.comune.piacenza.it. Archived from the original on 22 June 2007.
Sources
  • Harcourt-Smith, Simon (1955). Cardinal of Spain: the Life and Strange Career of Giulio Alberoni. New York: Knopf.
  • Kuethe, Allan J. "Cardinal Alberoni and Reform in the American Empire." in Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso y Ainara Vázquez Varela, eds. Early Bourbon Spanish America. Politics and Society in a forgotten Era (1700–1759) (Brill, 2013): 23–38.
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 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Alberoni, Giulio". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 493.

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