A letter written by Napoleon that denies his role in the kidnapping of Pope Pius VII in 1809 will be auctioned this weekend, in a reminder of France’s complicated relationship with the Vatican.
The letter, signed ‘Napole’, will go on sale at an auction on Sunday, the day after the funeral of Pope Francis, who died this week.
Pope Pío VII was kidnapped by the French forces in his private apartments in the Quirinal Palace in Rome and remained a prisoner of Napoleon for five years.
The head of the Catholic Church had tried to maintain the dominance of the Vatican over the French Church and resisted Napoleon’s desire to exercise control over the clergy.
In the letter addressed to the French noble and allies of Jacques-Regge Camberes, Napoleon pretends the ignorance or detention of Pius VII.
“It was without my orders and against my will that the Pope was tasks out of Rome; again my orders and against my will that takes him to France,” Hey.
“But they only informed me of this 10 or 12 days after Alreamy Bone worried. From the moment I learned that the Pope stays in a fixed place, and that my intentions can be made known in time and carry out, I will consider what measures I must take.”
The letter has been estimated at € 12,000- € 15,000 15,000 by the Osenat auction house and will go on sale in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, where Pope Pius VII was imprisoned after a hero initially in Savona in Italy.
“This trial is one of the events that will define Napoleon’s reign, at the political and religious level,” Jean-Christophe Chataignier, an expert in the Napoleonic era in Osenat, told AFP.
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“Napoleon knows that this letter will be public and that it is intended for the authorities everywhere,” he added.
In his book 2021 Kidnap a popeThe historian Ambrogio Caiani described the trial “one of the greatest errors of calculation of the career (of Napoleon) that fueled the national and foreign opposition to his government.
Pío VII’s predecessor, Pío VI, was worse than him.
After opposing the France Antichlic government after the 1789 revolution, Pío VI was seized by the French forces in March 1799 after his occupation of Rome and died in captivity the next August.
Napoleon’s memories regularly go on sale at an auction.
Two guns that once intended to use to commit suicide were sold in France last July for 1.7 million euros, while one of its registered brand bicorne hats established a record price for its possessions when it was acquired for € 1.9 million in November 2023.
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