On Sunday 11 May 2025 in Catania, on the initiative of the Eastern Sicily Delegation of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and the Circolo Unione Catania 1884, the historian Prof. Aurelio Musi, former full professor of Modern History at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Salerno, held a conference on the theme “Maria Sofia of Bourbon – Last Queen of Naples and Sicily.” This took place at the seventeenth-century Palazzo Biscari in the halls of the Circolo Unione Catania 1884. The meeting – attended by Constantinian knights and dames with their representatives for the provinces of Messina, Catania, Enna, Ragusa and Syracuse – taking place on the centenary of her death had as its focus the life and work of Maria Sofia, born a Duchess in Bavaria, queen consort of the last King of the Two Sicilies, H.M. King Francis II of Bourbon. She has remained a symbol and an icon in the history of the Italian Risorgimento. The meeting was enriched by the interventions of an attentive and interested audience, in reference to the life of Queen Maria Sofia and the various aspects of her keen intelligence and strong personality.
The meeting began with greetings from the President of the Circolo Unione, Nob. Antonio Pennisi dei Baroni di Floristella (of the Barons di Floristella), Knight of Justice of the Constantinian Order; from the Constantinian Order’s Delegate for Eastern Sicily, Nob. Ferdinando Testoni Blasco, Knight Grand Cross of Justice; and from the President of the Constantinian Order’s Royal Commission for Italy, H.E. Prince Flavio Borghese of the Princes of Sulmona and Montecompatri, Bailiff Grand Cross of Justice.
Prof. Aurelio Musi, author of the monograph Maria Sofia. The last Queen of the South (Neri Pozza 2022, 240 pages), retraced the life of Queen Maria Sofia, in conversation with Prof. Giacomo dei Baroni Pace Gravina (of the Barons Pace Gravina), Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, full professor of Medieval and Modern Legal History at the University of Messina, and with Nob. Ferdinando Testoni Blasco.
As the last queen of the Two Sicilies, reigning for just over a year, Maria Sofia is the heroine who, from the battlements of Gaeta, instilled courage in what remained of the Bourbon army annihilated by the Piedmontese invasion. Tall, slender, elegant in her noble and graceful bearing, with magnificent brown hair, beautiful dark blue eyes, Maria Sofia spent her childhood and adolescence in the castle of Possenhofen, where the young Bavarian royals practiced long gallops hunting wild animals. In addition to horseback riding, she practiced fencing, swimming, gymnastics, and dance, and she received a solid musical education and training in aesthetic taste according to the models followed by the European courts of the ancien régime. She was very fascinated by photography: a passion that would remain with her throughout her life. Like her sister Elisabeth (Sissi), the future Empress of Austria, she was used to walking alone around the city and smoking small cigars in public. She did not respect court etiquette and cultivated normal friendships, which she maintained even with humble people. Since her childhood she was exuberant, independent, and nonconformist, despite the attempts of her mother Ludovica to curb her excesses. In extremis she became Queen of the Two Sicilies. She was considered a fearsome enemy by the Italian unitary liberals. A violent defamatory campaign was also mounted against her.
The book “Maria Sofia – The Last Queen of the South” by Prof. Aurelio Musi goes well beyond the brief period when she was queen. In connection with the anarchists, she fueled the destabilization of the Kingdom of Italy. She swore revenge on the House of Savoy, which took away her kingdom and her riches. After ten years of exile in Rome, as a guest of Pope Pius IX, the last queen of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies lived between Austria, Hungary, France and Germany. She died in Monaco in 1925. In her long life Maria Sofia inspired writers and artists. The one who made a monument of her, in which she recognizes herself, is Marcel Proust in the Recherche. For a long time Luchino Visconti toyed with the idea, of making a film about her life entrusting Greta Garbo with the part of the protagonist.
The author, Prof. Aurelio Musi, taught Modern History at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Salerno and in American universities. He is a member of the Real Academia de la Historia of Madrid and an Officer of Merit of the Italian Republic. Editorialist of the Neapolitan pages of la Repubblica, he collaborates with various newspapers and periodicals. Among his recent volumes: The Empire of the Viceroys (2013), Masaniello. Masaniellismo and the degradation of a myth (2018), A nursery of history. Europe in the modern world (2020), Philip IV (2021), Unity, disunity, malaunità (2021), and History of solitude (2021).
During the meeting, various topics were explored: on the actual composition of the army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and on the causes that determined the definitive fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
