Bonaparte

BONAPARTE. - Italian family, descended, according to some, from the Lombard Cadolingi, mentioned in the 11th and 12th centuries; according to others, from a notary B. of Sarzana. In the 16th century a member of this family moved to Corsica. At Ajaccio, from Carlo (1746-85) Buonaparte (this is the original spelling, changed by Napoleon in 1796 to that of B.) and from Maria Letizia Ramolino (1750-1836) was born Napoleon (1769-1821), who had four brothers: Joseph (1768-1844), king of Naples first and then of Spain; Lucien (1775-1840), who settled in Rome in 1804 and obtained in 1814 from Pius VII the title of prince of Canino; Louis (1778-1846), king of Holland and father of Napoleon III (1808-73); Jerome (1784-1860), king of Westphalia; and three sisters: Maria Anna Elisa (1777-

1820), grand duchess of Tuscany and wife of Felice Baciocchi; Maria Paolina (1780-1825), who married in first marriage General Leclerc, and having been left a widow by him remarried Prince Camillo Borghese, and held the title of duchess of Guastalla; Maria Annunziata Carolina (1782-1839), wife of Joachim Murat and queen of Naples. After the fall of Napoleon, Pius VII warmly welcomed several members of the B. family to Rome, a hospitality that was regarded with suspicion by the other European powers.

Among the Napoleonids, the following had particular contacts with the Church and Italy:

I. CHARLES-LUCIEN BONAPARTE

Prince of Canino, b. May 24, 1803 in Paris, d. there July 29, 1857. Son of Lucien B. and of Alexandrine Laurence Bleschamp, he was taken a few months after his birth to Rome, where his father, having fallen out with his brother the emperor, had moved. From childhood he showed a marked inclination for the study of botany and zoology. After his marriage to Zenaide B., he made a journey to the United States of America, and his frequent scientific excursions provided him with the material for a work on American ornithology, published in 1832, a work that earned him a reputation as a scientist. Having published an Iconografia della fauna italica, he took a preponderant part in the meetings of Italian scientists (the circular for the first Congress, at Pisa, in 1839, bore his signature at the head of those of the other promoters) and participated in all the congresses, up to the eighth at Genoa in 1846. After the accession to the tiara of Pius IX, the prince of Canino was among the most heated revolutionaries and, if nothing else, morally responsible for the climate of cynical violence that led to the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi. Once the republic was proclaimed, he was elected deputy. After the Pope's return from Gaeta, he left Rome.

Silvio Furlani

II. LUCIANO, LUIGI, GIUSEPPE, NAPOLEONE BONAPARTE

Cardinal, son of the learned and turbulent Charles Lucien, prince of Canino, and of Zenaide, only daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, born in Rome on 15 Nov. 1828 and died there in 1895. In features most resembling Napoleon I, but of a gentle and charitable character, in 1848 he accompanied his father in the uniform of a volunteer to the Piedmontese camp, but the unexpected death of his close friend Gustavo Spada, fallen on 27 June 1849 on the Janiculum fighting against the French, made him renounce the title of prince of Canino and the palace in Piazza Venezia in favor of his brother Louis Napoleon, in order to devote himself to practices of exemplary piety and to a most retired life. In 1853 he took Holy Orders. He became, against his will, Private Chamberlain to Pius IX, but he resolutely refused the office of Grand Almoner offered to him by his cousin and godfather Napoleon III, in homage to whom, nevertheless, the Pope in 1868 named him cardinal priest of St. Pudenziana, where he was buried.

He was most devoted to Pius IX. He lavished all his means upon his relatives and the poor; he was a constant friend of Gioacchino Belli, who with a significant letter excused himself from the invitation extended to him by the same prelate to translate the Gospel of St. Matthew into Roman dialect.

Paolo Dalla Torre

III. NAPOLEON JOSEPH-CHARLES-PAUL BONAPARTE

Born on Sept. 9, 1822 in Trieste, died on March 17, 1891 in Rome. Third-born son of Jerome B., king of Westphalia, and of Catherine of Württemberg. Having in 1823 obtained for his father permission to reside in Rome, he moved there, but after the uprisings of '31 he went to Florence, and then to Switzerland. His tutor was Henry Mayer, with whom he formed a friendship that lasted his whole life. In 1837, after the death of his mother and through the intercession of his uncle William, sovereign of Württemberg, he was admitted to attend the military school of Ludwigsburg. Having resigned from the Württemberg army, which he had entered as a staff officer, he was elected in 1848, after the February revolution, deputy to the French Parliament. A republican, he had words of censure for the coup d'état of Dec. 2, 1851 by his cousin and, although he had been designated by the senatus-consultum of Nov. 7, 1852 as heir to the throne, he often professed opinions contrary to those of the emperor. He took part in the Crimean War and in 1859 married the venerable Maria Clotilde, first-born daughter of Victor Emmanuel II. A senator from 1852. A sectarian anticlerical, on March 1, 1861 he delivered a very violent speech against the temporal power of the popes, affirming that there were only «two possible solutions: the unity of Italy with Rome as capital or the intervention of reaction». After the fall of the empire, he became in 1879 head of the Bonapartist party. A few years later, he was exiled from France. He died in Rome attended by his pious consort and reconciled with the Church, and was buried in the basilica of Superga, beside the princes of the house of Savoy.

IV. NAPOLÉON-LOUIS BONAPARTE

Born October 11, 1804 in Paris, died March 17, 1831 in Forlì. He was baptized at St-Cloud by Pope Pius VII. The second son of Louis B. and Hortense Beauharnais, he succeeded his father, who had abdicated, on the throne of Holland in 1810. But a few days later Napoleon united that kingdom with the French empire. After 1815 he settled, together with his father, first in Rome, then in Florence. In 1827 he married Charlotte, daughter of Joseph B. In 1831, during the revolutionary uprisings in the Papal States, he hurried from Tuscany together with his brother Charles Louis, the future Napoleon III, with the intention of reaching the army of General Serognani and serving the Italian cause; he died a few days later in a skirmish fought in the surroundings of Spoleto.