The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession that Shaped an Empire by Jaques Susan

Author:Jaques, Susan [Jaques, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Epub3
ISBN: 9781681779409
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

In addition to gathering the world’s finest art, Napoleon planned to place all European learning in a world library in Paris. His unrealized plan was to move the Bibliothèque Impériale to the Musée Napoléon, bringing added prestige to both.18 Toward this end, Napoleon sent his chief archivist Daunou to Rome.

In 1804, Napoleon had created a new home for the National Archives in the Marais district. The building was the Louis XIV–era Palace of the Dukes of Guise and Soubise, known as the Hôtel de Soubise. Six years later, Berthier received a letter from the emperor about “collecting in Paris a single body the archives of the German Empire, those of the Vatican, of France, and of the United Provinces, it may be interesting to search what has become of the archives of Charles V and of Philip II, which would so nicely complete this vast European collection.”19

That year, much of the Vatican archives, the Sacred College, was shipped to Paris in hundreds of wagonloads. Fearing the P. M. Vitali collection would also be taken, Pius had entrusted Antonio Canova to safeguard it in his home before his abduction.20 Marino Marini, nephew of Gaetano Marini, secret chamberlain of the prefect of the archives, was sent to Paris with the Vatican archives, over three thousand cases of material, to assist in their arrangement. Unofficially, he was there to keep an eye on them.21 French officials also traveled to Simanca, Spain, Piedmont, and Holland to select and remove valuable archives.

Two years earlier, in 1808, Napoleon requested that a librarian and geographer collect “memoirs about the campaigns which have taken place on the Euphrates and against the Parthians, beginning with that of Crassus up to the 8th century and including those of Antonius, Trajan, Julian, etc.; he is to mark upon maps of suitable size the route which each army followed, together with the ancient and modern names of the countries and principal towns, and add notes on the geographical features and historical descriptions of each enterprise, taking these from the original authors.”

With his library of the world, Napoleon may have been inspired by the great libraries of antiquity. It’s thought that around 295 B.C.E., scholar and orator Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled governor of Athens, persuaded Ptolemy I to form a library in Alexandria, Egypt, to house a copy of every book in the world. It was under Ptolemy II that the idea of a universal library arose. Part of a complex that included a cult center called the Temple of the Muses or musaeum, the library may have housed as many as half a million papyrus scrolls. Strabo, Euclid, and Archimedes were among the brain trust of some one hundred resident scholars.

The destruction of Alexandria’s famous library remains a mystery. Julius Caesar is among the prime suspects. In 48 B.C.E., Caesar found himself in the city’s Royal Palace with the Egyptian fleet threatening in the harbor. He reportedly ordered his soldiers to set the ships on fire, which spread out of control.22

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