‘Lord Make Our Emperor Napoleon Safe’
[FRANCISCANS.]
Orationes dicendae in expositione SS. Sacramenti altaris pro conventu S. Mariae Angelorum Eugeniae. [Northern Italy, 1787 and later].
Manuscript on paper, in Latin, with some later additions in Italian, 4to (245 x 185 mm), pp. [18]; title in red and black, coloured armorial below with monogram, coronet, and two birds as supporters, rubbed inscription to bottom corner ‘Fr Petrus Maria a Nolis scripsit pinxitque … anno … 1787’; coloured full-page drawing to title verso of a monstrance amid clouds within frame decorated with shells and vines; the first 14 pp. neatly written in a single hand in red and black, with initials in blue and red, each page within decorative border, thereafter written in several later hands; small chip to fore-edge of first leaf, some finger soiling and staining to corners and edges, some wear to lower outer corners; overall good in late eighteenth-century calf; somewhat rubbed and worn.
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Orationes dicendae in expositione SS. Sacramenti altaris pro conventu S. Mariae Angelorum Eugeniae.
An intriguing devotional manuscript compiled for a northern Italian Franciscan convent dedicated to Santa Maria degli Angeli, with a full-page image of a monstrance, and with evidence of the tumultuous impact of the Napoleonic era.
A rubbed note to the title-page states that the manuscript was ‘written and painted’ by the friar ‘Petrus Maria a Nolis’, his name suggesting that he was from Noli on the Ligurian coast, to the west of Genoa. Following prayers for the Eucharist and the Immaculate Conception comes a prayer for ‘S. Theonesto’, undoubtedly the early Christian martyr Theonestus of Vercelli in Piedmont, located between Turin and Milan.
In the subsequent prayers we find numerous members of the Order of Friars Minor: the Spanish Franciscans St Peter of Alcántara, St Didacus of Alcalá, and St Paschal Baylón; and (added in a later hand) the Italian Franciscans the Blessed Leonard of Port Maurice, beatified in 1796, and Andrea Caccioli of Spello.
A prayer ‘pro rege’ has a later note written beside it reading ‘carolus emanuel’, surely a reference to Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, King of Sardinia-Piedmont from 1796 until 1802; in 1798 he was forced to cede his northern Italian territories to the French, retiring to Sardinia. A boldly written prayer for Napoleon (‘Lord make our emperor Napoleon safe’) praying for his ‘triumph’ on p. [16] has been very deliberately struck through. Further evidence of the unrest of the period can be found on the final page, with prayers for times of war, disease, and civil unrest. There is also a prayer for electing a pope; this likely relates to the extended period of sede vacante between the death of Pius VI in 1799 and the election of Pius VII in 1800. Further prayers at the end are dated 1950, and a list of invocations facing the title has an entry dated to 1964.