Napoleon's secret Catholic marriage certificate to go under hammer

The certificate from Napoleon Bonaparte’s secret religious wedding to Josephine in 1804, eight years after their civil marriage, will go under the hammer in March, the French auction house Osenat said Monday.

The document is signed and sealed by Cardinal Joseph Fesch, who presided over the clandestine wedding that took place at the behest of Pope Pius VII as a condition for his presence at Napoleon’s coronation.

It is part of a collection being auctioned off by US billionaire and francophile Christopher Forbes that mainly comprises artefacts from the reign of Napoleon’s nephew and heir, Napoleon III.

Cardinal Fesch, as France’s ambassador to Rome, negotiated the pope’s participation in Napoleon’s grandiose coronation in Notre Dame Cathedral when he famously crowned himself on December 2, 1804.

The pope had refused to officiate at the coronation unless Napoleon and Josephine underwent the Catholic wedding rite, and the emperor-to-be agreed to it in order to avoid a scandal.

Cardinal Fesch secretly performed the ceremony at the Tuileries palace chapel on December 1, 1804.