1. Ercole Consalvi was a deacon and cardinal of the Catholic Church, who served twice as Cardinal Secretary of State for the Papal States and who played a crucial role in the post-Napoleonic reassertion of the legitimist principle of the divine right of kings, of which he was a constant supporter.
At the death of his father in 1763, Ercole Consalvi was entrusted to the care of Cardinal Andrea Negroni.
Ercole Consalvi was educated at the college of the Piarists from 1771 to 1776.
Ercole Consalvi then entered the seminary founded in Frascati by the English Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart, who was called Duke of York by Jacobites, thus often referred to as "Cardinal York", and who was the Stuart pretender to the throne of Great Britain.
Ercole Consalvi became a favorite of the Cardinal's and was helped by him to obtain high office in the Roman Curia while still a young man.
At the completion of his seminary studies in 1776, Ercole Consalvi took minor orders, and was named a member of a congregation charged with the direction of municipal affairs.
Ercole Consalvi then began studies in both civil and canon law at La Sapienza University, from which he received doctorates in both fields in 1789.
Ercole Consalvi had become an official of the Papal Court in 1784, serving in various administrative offices for the next 14 years in Rome, where he was known as Monsignore Ubique on account of his taste for travelling and cultivating interesting people.
Ercole Consalvi was created Cardinal-Deacon and named Cardinal Secretary of State by the new pope in the secret consistory of 11 August 1800, receiving the red hat from him in a public consistory on 14 August 1800.
Ercole Consalvi introduced free trade, withdrew from circulation all depreciated money, and admitted a large number of laymen to Government offices.
Ercole Consalvi was highly cultivated and a lifelong devotee of poetry, the arts and sciences, archaeology, and, in particular, music.
Ercole Consalvi did much to embellish Rome and to make it an art-centre by designing public promenades along the Tiber, restoring the ancient monuments, and filling the museums with statues unearthed by excavations made under his direction.
Ercole Consalvi was ordained to the subdiaconate and then to the diaconate on 20 and 21 December 1801, respectively.
Ercole Consalvi was never elevated to the sacramental offices of priest or bishop.
When France annexed the Papal States in 1809 and took the pope into exile in Savona, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi was forcibly taken to Paris.
Ercole Consalvi was then able to rejoin the Pope in Italy, at which time he was reappointed to the office of Secretary of State.
Ercole Consalvi's memoirs, written originally in Italian, have been translated into English and describe the ups and down of their exile and the triumphant return to Rome in 1814.
Pius VII and Ercole Consalvi realized that in the face of Metternich's new international system, a neutral position for the pope might be a way for the increasingly marginalized Papal States to "find relevance in a new system of bloc state power relationships".
Ercole Consalvi went on to reform the administration of Rome and to some extent modernized the city.
Ercole Consalvi was said to be so much in control of the pope that Pius would have to wait at the gates of paradise until the cardinal came from purgatory with the keys.
Ercole Consalvi concluded another Concordat with France in 1817 and in 1818 was instrumental in the re-establishment of the English College.
Ercole Consalvi secured the Protestant artist Thorvaldsen's right to create the burial monument for Pope Pius VII in St Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Ercole Consalvi died in 1824 and is buried in the Church of San Marcello al Corso.