Barbarigo, Gregorio

Barbarigo, Gregorio an Italian prelate, was born at Venice, Sept. 25, 1625. Destined at first for a public administration, he afterwards embraced an ecclesiastical course, having studied at Padua both law and theology. He became canon and domestic prelate, and received from pope Alexander VII the care of the infected districts lying beyond the Tiber, a mission which he performed with zeal. In 1657 he was made archbishop of Bergamo, where his charity gained for him the surname of "the new Charles Borromeo." In 1660 he was made cardinal. From the bishopric of Bergamo he passed to that of Padua in 1663. He established in this last-mentioned place a seminary which he endowed, and where he introduced professors of Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, and at the same time attached to the establishment a printing-house provided with the type for all these languages. He died at Padua, June 18, 1697. Miracles are said to have been worked at his tomb, and Clement XIII declared his beatification, July 16, 1761. We have from this prelate, among several regulations for his Church, twenty-five letters, written in Italian at Magliabecchi, in the Epistoloe Clarorum Venetorum ad Antonium Magliucbecchum. See Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, s.v.