Napoleon of Alexandria

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stained glass window in a church depicting Napoleon as a saint
St. Napoleon, stained glass window of Vichy church

Napoleon or Napoleo of Alexandria is a fictional Christian martyr said to have died in Alexandria in the time of Emperors Diocletian and Maximian (i.e. after 303). He was for a time venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church . The cult of the martyr Napoleon(n) is an invented tradition .

Origin and development of the Napoleon Festival

Napoleon Bonaparte was given his first name after a deceased relative. This first name, whose origin and meaning are unknown, came in different spellings.

In clear distancing from the anti-church policy of the French Revolution , Napoleon presented himself as a Christian ruler from 1804 onwards. He allowed himself to be described as a "saviour" and given positive attributes. So "he offered himself to the post-revolutionary French society as a figure of integration in a deeply paternalistic sense." In connection with the reintroduction of the Gregorian calendar (22 Fructidor XIII / 9 September 1805), the first efforts in the French clergy began, a holy Napoleon to worship. In October 1805, the canons of Sainte-Croix in Nice requested that an altar be consecrated in honor of Napoleon.

The Feast of the Assumption (August 15) was Napoleon's birthday and was (incorrectly) called the day of the 1801 Concordat . On February 19, 1806, Napoleon issued a decree that in future a feast of Saint Napoleon would be celebrated on August 15, which would also commemorate the restoration of the Catholic religion. In Catholic parishes this was to be celebrated with a procession and Te Deum , in Protestant-Reformed parishes with a Te Deum . The celebration of the emperor's birthday was an element of the Napoleonic state cult, with which the ruler distanced himself both from the time of the republic with its festivals and from the festival culture of the Ancien Régime and created new, integrating rituals. Participation and appropriate celebration were obligatory for the entire population. The amalgamation of a state holiday with a high church festival resulted from the date August 15 and "ensured the presence and accessibility of the emperor even of those who were more distant from him." Michael Broers even thinks that Napoleon's birthday was on this date was of secondary importance in the considerations for the creation of Napoleon's day and one simply needed a high church holiday in the summer. Festivities in public spaces were considered essential for influencing the population in favor of the government, and Corpus Christi Day was strongly associated with the Ancien Régime. Accessing Easter seemed too risky.

On the part of the Roman Catholic Church, the Napoleon Festival was introduced by the decree of Cardinal Legate Giovanni Battista Caprara Eximium catholicae religionis on March 1, 1806. Now it was a matter of finding the right ecclesiastical saint, whose name the emperor supposedly bore. This initially proved difficult. On April 21, Cardinal Caprara wrote to the Minister of Culture Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis that many bishops had asked him for information about Saint Napoleon. He'll take care of that now. The Bishop of Nancy reported on April 26 that, despite all efforts, nothing could be found about a Saint Napoleon in his diocese; the Bollandists were silent. The bishop of Tournai suggested that there might have been a holy bishop Napoleon. Finally , in the Martyrology , there was a group of holy martyrs under May 2: Saturninus, Neopolus, Germanus and Celestinus. Cardinal Caprara was convinced that Neopolus was the saint he was looking for and had research carried out in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, where he was archbishop himself.

In the same year, the day of Saint Napoleon appeared in the official state calendar ( Almanach Impérial ). Napoleon meant by this saint scarcely veiled himself; however, the curia developed the legend of a late antique martyr after whom the emperor was named. Cardinal Legate Caprara gave some information about the vita of this saint. An ancient martyr Neopolis, Neopolus (or similar) was revered as Napoleo in Italy in the Middle Ages, later the spelling Napoleon became common. Caprara's instruction, dated May 21, 1806, provided for an oration to Saint Napoleon to follow the Mass on the occasion of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

The sources do not reveal what response the Napoleon Festival found among the population. Stephan Laux suspects that this festival was only particularly appreciated by groups and individuals, including clergymen who wanted to present themselves as particularly loyal to the emperor. The effort that was put into this festival remained modest during Napoleon's lifetime. It is known that the Saint-Napoléon festival was important to him and that he attended it incognito in Vienne in 1809 . Especially in Napoleonic Italy, the emperor was celebrated in speeches by local dignitaries as an angel in human form sent from heaven. In the Italian city of Marino , on the other hand, on August 15, 1812, the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was celebrated in style and Napoleon's Day was ignored. The city council and clergy paid a high price: everyone was arrested and all churches were closed for weeks.

August 15, 1867 in the Place du Trocadéro (Paris)

On February 19, 1852, Napoleon III. a decree according to which August 15 should be a national holiday with a dual religious and political character. In all French communes, this day began with the ringing of bells, and in garrison towns with cannon shots. The poor received food rations. A festive Te Deum in honor of the ruler and a Domine Salvum were sung in the church during morning mass. A military parade followed the service. Then, throughout the day, entertainment was offered to the entire population, which ended in the evening with a fireworks display or a bonfire, depending on the municipality's financial resources. The dignitaries continued with a reception, banquet and music. The Te Deum was particularly associated with the festivals of the Ancien Régime. Not all administrators, and especially not all clergy, agreed that it should be sung at the Napoleon Festival. Omitting the Te Deum at Mass (by the priests) or absenteeism from the service (by the officials) was closely monitored and sanctioned. Anti-clerical mayors arranged to arrive at the church with their attendants just as the Te Deum was intonated, naturally disrupting the worshiping congregation. How the Assumption of the Virgin Mary should be connected with the Napoleon Festival was negotiated locally. In the still predominantly rural French society, Napoleon's Day was a lavish extravaganza that people traveled to see and which led to conflicts between clerics and Bonapartists at the local level.

Historicity of the Martyr Napoleon

The 18th-century lexicon of saints by Johann Jakob Schmauß does not mention a Napoleo(n), but only a Napolus, who belonged to a group of martyrs from Tarsus (memorial day: May 10).

The Martyrologium Romanum of 1584 names the 2nd of May: Saturninus, Neopolus, Germanus and Caelestinus. This offered the starting point for the research commissioned by Cardinal Caprara. The Martyrology of Adon (9th century), reissued by Domenico Georgi in 1745, mentions a Neopolis and, as a later addition, a Neapolus. Other medieval martyrologies offer the name forms Neapolis and Neapolim. Although the Martyrologium Romanum goes back to a fourth-century tradition ( in Alexandria Saturnini cum Neopoli socio suo ), the name is also given as Eopolis, Epolitis (Hippolytus) instead of Neopolus. But since the Syrian Martyrology only lists Saturninus as an Alexandrian martyr, the Bollandists were skeptical about the existence of Neopolus. Hippolyte Delehaye surmised that the oldest tradition only knew Saturninus as the Alexandrian martyr and that the name Neapolus entered the text through a copyist's error. A misinterpretation of Nea Polis (Greek: "New Town"), a district of ancient Alexandria, seemed possible to him as a personal name.

Recent research decisively denies the historicity of the martyr Neopolus/Napoleo(n).

Legend

St. Napoleon, Patron of Warriors. Colored lithograph

The legend of Saint Napoleon circulated in very different versions. Sudhir Hazareesingh sees this as typical of an invented tradition. Napoleon was often interpreted as the patron saint of soldiers. A version from the 1820s/1830s made him a crusader who was betrayed and forced to end his life as a prisoner on a desert island - "any resemblance to Napoleon's fate was, of course, pure coincidence." As a crusader in full armor with sword and shield he is shown in an 1843 lithograph, behind him a captured fortress and two enemies killed.

In the 1846 version of the Légende Céleste , the legend reads as follows:

St. Néopol or Néopolus, a name pronounced Napoléon in Italy since the Middle Ages, was distinguished by its noble origins and its degree of virtue. That is why he is one of the great saints. During the persecution of Christians at the time of the Emperors Domitian and Maximian, which exceeded everything that had gone before in its cruelty, St. Napoleon in Alexandria bravely withstood the most extreme tortures that had been devised in the Orient. With his skin hanging in tatters and covered in blood (but having endured it all bravely, thanks to heavenly strengthening), he was finally taken away and thrown into a hideous prison. There he succumbed to his numerous wounds and passed away in peace believing in Jesus Christ. "Saint Napoleon is commemorated with great honor by ancient historians and in the martyrologies."

Napoleon Patronage

The Lower Rhine town of Neersen belonged ecclesiastically to the parish of Anrath ; In 1798 the Neersen population supported the abortion , which, however, was difficult to justify due to the proximity of the two villages and their size. A special regulation was required if one wanted to permanently break away from the rival neighboring village. On January 25, 1803, the Neersen parish asked Bishop Marc-Antoine Berdolet of Aachen to be placed under the patron saint of Saint Napoleon. Berdolet took a positive view of this wish and announced that he would soon inform the ruler of this honor from the Neersen population. The Neerseners came three years before the official introduction of the Napoléon cult. The Patronage lasted in Neersen until 1856; since then the Neersen parish church has been under the patronage of Maria Immaculata .

Neersen is alone in the German-speaking world with the Napoléon patronage, but there are a few French churches with this patronage, for example in Mâcon and La Roche-Chalais . The basilica of San Francesco in Piacenza, which had since been profaned and used as a theater, was used again in 1806 for worship and placed under the patronage of Saint Napoleon. The same happened to San Martino in Lucca. French emigrants built a Napoleonic church in Louisiana.

The example of Cardinal Giuseppe Spina shows how ecclesiastical authorities handled Napoleon's patron saint . As archbishop of Genoa , he managed to avert the conversion of the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta into a Napoleonic church, arguing that the church had been a Marian church since its construction and was valued as such by the populace. He offered to consecrate an altar in the church "at which both the Blessed Virgin and St. Napoleon could be invoked together, as is customary." Alternatively, a profaned church could also be placed under Napoleon's patron saint.

Artistic representations of Saint Napoleon

St. Napoleon, stained glass window of the church of Le Chesnay

Statues of Saint Napoleon can be found in the Saint-André church in Argent-sur-Sauldre (Cher) and in Bernay (Eure); the latter was reworked into a statue of Saint Louis after 1815 .

On the south facade of Milan Cathedral is a marble statue of Napoleon of Alexandria as a young man in antique clothing, a chain at his foot indicating that he suffered martyrdom in captivity. The statue is the work of Abbondio Sangiorgio and was erected in 1860. The facial features are strongly reminiscent of a portrait of the young Bonaparte. A plaster model of the statue is in the Cathedral Museum.

In the church of Saint-Leu-la-Forêt , consecrated in 1851, a fresco depicts Saint Napoleon enthroned, with Saint Louis and Charles Borromeo seated at his sides.

A stained glass window in the Saint-Louis de Vichy church, consecrated in 1865, depicts St. Napoleon as a late antique or medieval warrior with the features of Bonaparte. The Saint-Germain Chapel in Chesnay near Versailles was devastated during the Revolution and rebuilt in 1805. During a renovation in 1865 it received a stained glass window (photo) showing Napoleon as a soldier saint in a kind of ancient Greek armour.

literature

  • Stephan Laux : The patron saint of Saint Napoléon in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland . In: Jörg Engelbrecht, Stephan Laux (eds.): National and Imperial History . FS Hansgeorg Molitor (= studies on regional history . Volume 18). Bielefeld 2004, pp. 351–381.
  • Sudhir Hazareesingh: Bonapartist memory and republican nation-building: revisiting the civic festivities of the Second Empire . In: Modern & Contemporary France 11/3 (2003), pp. 349-364.
  • Sudhir Hazareesingh: Religion and Politics in the Saint-Napoleon Festivity 1852-70: Anti-Clericalism, Local Patriotism and Modernity . In: The English Historical Review 119 (2004), pp. 614–649.
  • Vincent Petit: Saint Napoleon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français . In: Napoleonica. La Revue 23/2 (2015), pp. 59–127.
  • Vincent Petit: Religion du sovereign, sovereign de la religion: l'invention de saint Napoléon . In: Revue historique 663 (2012/2013), pp. 643–658.

web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Cf. Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 78: […] l'inscription de cette fête dans le calendrier religieux et la creation ex nihilo de l'office liturgique idoine est un élément du dispositif concordataire, mais aussi une mark du caractère sacral du nouveau régime fondé le 2 décembre 1804. See Sudhir Hazareesingh: Saint-Napoleon - Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France . Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 2004, p. 4: [...] this "patron saint of warriors", as Saint-Napoleon became known, was almost certainly invented for this cause .
  2. ↑ Stephan Laux: The Patron Saint Napoléon in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 368. For the spread of this first name in various regions of Italy during the Middle Ages, see Paul Aebischer : Les origines du nom de "Napoléon" . In: Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia Serie II, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1934), pp. 259-270.
  3. ↑ Stephan Laux: The Patron Saint Napoléon in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 366.
  4. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 68.
  5. ↑ Volker Sellin : The Napoleonic state cult . In: Guido Braun, Gabriele B. Clemens, Lutz Klinkhammer and Alexander Koller (eds.): Napoleonic expansion policy: occupation or integration? De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2013, pp. 138–159, here p. 149.
  6. ↑ Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War Against God, 1801-1814 . Routledge, London 2002, p. 82.
  7. ↑ Que le 15 août de chaque année, jour consacré à la solennité de l'Assomption de la Très Sainte Vierge et époque du Concordat, soit aussi à perpétuité, dans l'Empire français, la fête de saint Napoléon dont Sa Majesté porte le nom , et l'anniversaire du rétablissement du culte catholique en France , quoted here from: Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 71.
  8. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 75 f.
  9. ↑ Cf. Stephan Laux: The patron saint "Saint Napoléon" in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 368 f: Napoleon himself did not seriously strive for this historicization, but rather propagated his own holiness instead of some martyr ... The Curia, on the other hand, knitted the legend of a late antique saint, probably knowing that this was invented and that the actual cult was not for a "Napoleo", but for the Emperor of the French ....
  10. ↑ Cf. the supplement to the Instructio Capraras in the Archbishop's Diocesan Archives in Cologne (HAEK, Diocese of Aachen, 4): Ex his, quibus carcer pro statio fuit, Martyrologia, et veteres Scriptores commendant Neopolim, seu Neopolum, qui, ex more profendi nomina, medio ævo , in Italiâ invalescente, et ex recepto loquendi usu, NAPOLEO dictus fuit, atque italicè NAPOLEONE communiter nuncupatur . Here quoted from: Stephan Laux: The Patronage «Saint Napoléon» in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 368 f., note 93.
  11. ↑ PRÆSTA, quæsumus, omnipotens Deus, ut, intercedente S. Napoleone Martyre tuo, et à cuncti adversitatibus liberemur in corpore, et à pravis cogitationibus mundemur in mente. Per Dominum, etc. See Stephan Laux: The patron saint «Saint Napoléon» in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 369, note 94.
  12. ↑ Stephan Laux: The Patron Saint Napoléon in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 370.
  13. ↑ Sudhir Hazareesingh: Saint-Napoleon - Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France . Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 2004, p. 4, with reference to Michael Broers: The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War Against God, 1801-1814 . Routledge, London 2002.
  14. ↑ Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War Against God, 1801-1814 . Routledge, London 2002, p. 83.
  15. ↑ Sudhir Hazareesingh: Bonapartist memory and republican nation-building: revisiting the civic festivities of the Second Empire , 2003, pp. 350 f.
  16. ↑ Volker Sellin: The Napoleonic state cult . In: Guido Braun, Gabriele B. Clemens, Lutz Klinkhammer and Alexander Koller (eds.): Napoleonic expansion policy: occupation or integration? De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2013, pp. 138–159, here pp. 151–153.
  17. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, pp. 79–83.
  18. ↑ Sudhir Hazareesingh: Bonapartist memory and republican nation-building: revisiting the civic festivities of the Second Empire , 2003, p. 363 note 10, with reference to: Adolphe Aynaud: Saint-Napoléon . In: Le Vieux Papier , July 1964, and Henri George: Saint-Napoléon at-il existé? In: Le Vieux Paper , January 1990.
  19. ↑ Sudhir Hazareesingh: Saint-Napoleon - Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France . Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 2004, p. 9.
  20. ↑ Wellcome Collection: Saint Napoleon. Colored lithograph (?), 1843.
  21. ↑ Saint Napoléon, martyr . In: Légende Céleste: nouvelle histoire de la vie des saints . Volume 3, Paris 1846, p. 244 f. ( Online )
  22. ↑ Stephan Laux: The Patron Saint Napoléon in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, pp. 371-374.
  23. ↑ The document on the cancellation of Napoleon's patronage in Neersen is a war loss. Only the regest has been preserved , which does not explain how this was argued. See Stephan Laux: The patron saint “Saint Napoléon” in Neersen. A contribution to the reception of Napoleonic propaganda in the Rhineland , Bielefeld 2004, p. 378 note 141.
  24. ↑ Here quoted from: Michael Broers: The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War Against God, 1801-1814 . Routledge, London 2002, p. 83.
  25. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 90 f.
  26. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 109.
  27. ↑ Duomo di Milano: Monsieur "N": Saint Napoleon among the spires. A unique sculpture, between history and hagiography
  28. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 120.
  29. ↑ Vincent Petit: Saint Napoléon, un saint pour la nation. Contribution à l'imaginaire politique français , 2015, p. 121.