Éloge de Pie VI
A large-margin copy, bearing the cipher of Empress Marie-Louise of Austria, second wife of Napoleon I.
This edition recounts the history of Pope Pius VI (1775–1799), a martyr of the French Revolution, the Directory and the Consulate. Having witnessed, powerless, Berthier’s troops entering Rome in February 1798 and the proclamation of the Roman Republic, the pontiff was forced to renounce his temporal power and leave the eternal city. Having taken refuge in Tuscany, he was captured by the French army and deported to the prison at Valence, where, after an interminable journey, he died of exhaustion.
A revealing work on the confrontation waged by the French Republic and then Napoleon, beyond the person of Pius VI, against the papacy itself.
In 1816, Marie-Louise of Austria obtained sovereignty over Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla. She spent the rest of her life in Parma, where she assembled an important library, in which French works figured prominently. Rediscovered in a Viennese palace by the bookseller Martin Breslauer, this collection was exhibited by him at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin in 1931, before he dispersed it.
“Bindings bearing this monogram come from the important library assembled in Parma after the fall of the Empire. It consisted chiefly of French literature” (Lamort, Reliures impériales, p. 64). The gilt cipher is stamped at the center of the covers (OHR 2654).