Autograph letter signed and addressed to Francis V, Duke of Modena. From the Vatican, on 16 August 1868

Bifolium (261x197 mm.). Written on the first leaf recto only. Some insignificant foxing, traces of folding, paper perfectly preserved.

Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, the future Pius IX, was born in Senigallia, in the Marche region, in 1792. He became a priest in 1819 and a cardinal in 1840. Six years later, in 1846, when Gregory XVI died, he was elected pope with the name of Pius IX.

In the three decades of Pius IX's papacy, many epoch-making facts happened, above all the end of the Church's state and the birth of the new Italian state in 1861, with Rome as its capital since 1871. The crucial role of the pope in those events, at first supporting and then fighting the creation of the new unitary state, cannot be underestimated.

The present autograph letter is a reply to Francis V of Austria-Este (1819-1875), Duke of Modena, Reggio, Mirandola, Guastalla, Massa and Carrara from 1846 to 1859. The letter was apparently sent off with a now lost enclosed paper containing the pope's thoughts about the duchy of Modena, that at the time the letter was written did not exist anymore. Moreover, the letter mentions Don Carlos de Borbón y Austria-Este (1848-1909), who together with his younger brother Alfonso had grown up in Modena under the supervision of his uncle Francis V. The pope makes clear that he is aware that Don Carlos is in London and “from there, plans have been made related to the [Iberian] Peninsula that I could not approve” (“Di là sono stati fatti progetti relativi alla Penisola [Iberica] ch'io non potrei approvare”), referring to Don Carlo's 1868  claims to the throne of Spain.

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