Educational Reforms and Sacralisation of Power in the First Empire (1804-1815). The Case of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy

Abstract

Abstract: This work aims to highlight how, even in this particular territory closely linked to Paris and of which Napoleon was the sovereign, education became the object of significant reforms promoted by the political authorities. On one hand, these reforms intended to ensure a radical acceleration of the secularisation process of school education begun in Lombardy in the second half of the XVIIIth century, in turn fuel to the objectives that intended to add the basis of the principles of welfare also in this political domain. On the other hand, they aspired to root in the students adhesion to Bonaparte. As will be discussed later, this objective was pursued by encouraging students and teachers to engage themselves in writing encomiastic, flattering literary compositions, sometimes inspired by the most renowned literary works, which had to contribute to building the glorification of the monarch in the new political framework and which found a particular manifestation on the occasion of the birth of his male heir, the King of Rome, in 1811.