We recently reported the release of the book (in Italian) Il Gran Maestro – Il Sacro Militare Ordine Costantiniano di San Giorgio e Ferdinando IV di Borbone tra rivoluzione e restaurazione (“The Grand Master – The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and Ferdinand IV of Bourbon between Revolution and Restoration”) by Father Maurizio Modugno, Constantinian Chaplain of Merit, with the Preface written by the present Grand Master, HRH Prince Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duke of Calabria, Count of Caserta, Head of the Royal House of the Two Sicilies. There was a presentation of the book on Wednesday 22 May 2024 by the Order’s Delegation of Rome and Vatican City at the Magistral Basilica of Santa Croce al Flaminio in Rome
Below is the text of what we originally reported on May 7, 2024.
Book review of “Il Gran Maestro” (“The Grand Master”) by Father Maurizio Modugno
For our previous notice about this book, see: https://constantinianorder.us/the-grand-master-by-father-maurizio-modugno-is-published-in-italy-a-focus-of-the-book-is-the-constantinian-order-in-the-reign-of-king-ferdinand-iv-the-preface-is-by-the-current-g/
In our presentation of the book Il Gran Maestro (Arachne 2024, 192 pages, which has as its theme the complex and concentric events of the Kingdom of Naples and the Constantinian Order, we reported the Summary, the Preface, the Introduction, the Index and the text from the back cover. Today we bring further attention to this important work by Father Maurizio Modugno with the book review by Max Ferrario, published by Il Sussidiario, whom we thank for the courtesy of being allowed to reproduce it here.
Ferdinand IV and the Constantinian Order – or the “defeat” of Napoleon in Italy
The history of the Kingdom of Naples from the end of the eighteenth century onwards has always been framed from the point of view of the victors and temporary rulers. This is how it is for the Jacobean Triennium; for the French Decade; and then for the definitive fall of the Bourbons after the expedition of the Thousand and the laborious Italian unification. Looking at the story from different and perhaps unusual points of observation compared to the usual ones is a necessary homage to completeness and truth. The new book by Maurizio Modugno, Il Gran Maestro (“The Grand Master – The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George and Ferdinand IV of Bourbon between Revolution and Restoration” (Aracne, 2024)) is oriented in this sense. It has a preface by HRH Prince Pedro of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, today’s heir of the dynasty that occupied the throne of Naples for almost a century and a half.
The book opens with two chapters dedicated to what at the time was called “the most magnificent court in Europe” and to the administrative structure of the Kingdom of Naples, described in the yearbooks variously called Newsletters, Calendars, Almanacs and partly reported here. From these and then from the chapters more strictly dedicated to the events from 1799 to 1815, emerges first of all an “authentic portrait” of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples and Sicily (later King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies). A portrait which from first-hand sources (diaries, correspondence, newspapers, documents) appears essential to an impartial history of the reign of the greatest Italian Bourbon. As Eugenio Di Rienzo wrote, “Ferdinand IV [was] a monarch whose personality was systematically distorted and debased in the judgments of his contemporaries and subsequent historiography up to the present day.” The King was different from who is depicted in such books, the man was different. It is essential “to review thoroughly the stereotype according to which the fate of the Neapolitan Kingdom was entrusted in the hands of the strong-willed queen consort, the Austrian Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine and the pro-English Secretary of State, John Francis Edward Acton. Under the myth […] of the lazy King that has been handed down to us, the sovereign hid an iron decision-making and centralizing will, careful to defend his prerogatives in order exclusively to hold the helm of the politics of his State.” Passionate about both the sea and the land (hunting was his only pastime), a strenuous worker (between four and five in the morning he was already at his desk), deeply religious and not for appearances, indefatigable reader, amateur musician of excellent taste, he never bowed to anyone other than the preponderant force of enemy and friendly arms.
A special part of Maurizio Modugno’s book is the section dedicated to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. Between truth and legend, the history of this Order starts from the knights who made up the personal guard of Constantine the Great, continues through the dynasties that rose to the imperial throne of Byzantium, carries on as the personal possession of Prince Angelus Flavius Comnenus, passes for a short time to the Farnese dynasty and then, from the extinction of the House of Farnese (the last heir, Elizabeth Farnese, was the wife of Philip V of Spain) to the Bourbons of Naples.
The history of chivalric orders – and in particular those that do not have a monastic-military origin and structure – is a fundamentally meritocratic history. Titles, decorations, and registrations in a prestigious noble register were in reality forms of recognition of value, dedication and extraordinary quality. In particular, the Constantinian Order, which at the time of Ferdinand IV was rich and powerful as never before in its history and widely expanded well beyond the central Deputation of Sant’Antonio Abate in Naples, gave its Grand Master the power not only to reward the great men of the Kingdom like the small local nobility, such as jurists, men of letters, artists, but to implement a true administrative-honorific decentralization that seems shrewdly modern.
The complex and concentric events of the Kingdom of Naples and the Constantinian Order are the heart of the book reviewed here. The Jacobin Triennium and the French Decade in southern Italy would lead to the double entrenchment or relocation of King Ferdinand IV and his Court in Palermo, under the protection of England. Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed the end of the House of Bourbon of Naples and its replacement with a “prince de ma Maison” (a “prince of my House”) (first his brother Joseph Bonaparte, then his brother-in-law Joachim Murat), which gave rise to the explicit suppression and subversion of the chivalric orders belonging to the ousted Ferdinand’s Crown and the creation of new, quite ephemeral orders.
As is known, Bonaparte’s spes finis towards the Bourbons will not have the desired results. Ferdinand IV will resume the throne on 7 June 1815, as monarch of a Crown uniting the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily into one entity and taking the regnal name Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies. And the Constantinian Order will survive, in Dante’s style “tetragon to the blows of fortune.”
The institutional, historical and chivalric analyses of the Kingdom in this troubled historical period was carried out by Modugno through mostly unpublished documents and with space and attention to the context offered by the state and society of the time. Just as the reconstruction of events was based on absolutely objective sources. All this has led to a complete demythologization, both of the boasted libertarian purity of our own and others (the Triennium and Decade had innumerable examples of ruthlessness and arrogance), and of a hypothetical “civilization” brought by the French to the Kingdom of Naples (then a model of industrial social welfare, organisational modernity), and finally of a popular hatred towards the Bourbons, which never existed. The Restoration and the explicit desire of the Congress of Vienna to bring Ferdinand IV back to the throne of Naples will show – upon his return to Parthenope – how much the King was in turn loved by those people whose feelings towards the Crown changed only well after his death. In this way, this work by Modugno, “The Grand Master”, is placed – albeit with personal standards – in that increasingly vast literature which nowadays marks a revision of the history of the South and the pre-Risorgimento period with criteria of long overdue lucidity, perspective and documentary rigor.
The strenuous attention to the ceremonials of the time, to music and theater as stages of the powers in vogue, the human traits of the characters often in full light, an always flowing and elegant style, complete a book certainly worth reading and over time comparing and consulting as an objective reference.
Max Ferrario
