The Italian Vidocq at the service of the Pope King

The Frenchman Eugène-François Vidocq also became popular thanks to cinema and television, while the Italian Filippo Nardoni only had a role in fiction in 1969 in Luigi Magni’s film “In the Year of the Lord”, masterfully played by Enrico Maria Salerno. Both started from criminal experiences and landed in investigations, but while one is considered one of the fathers of criminology and the first private detective in history, the other is remembered as a symbol of anti-liberal police repression. Vidocq was born in Arras in 1775, Nardoni was born on 9 November 1791 in Ascoli Piceno, while the transalpine was fighting for the draft and not by choice in the revolutionary army, after a probable murder. At thirteen the Italian fell into the trap of justice, receiving a five-year sentence of forced labor for burglary, when the Frenchman was already making ends meet as a thief and swindler, having left behind his baptism of fire in the victorious battle of Valmy on 20 September 1792 against the Prussians and having thrown away his uniform by deserting.

A brilliant career progression starting from a simple carabiniere

The sixteen-year-old Nardoni instead manages to be enlisted in the papal army as an artilleryman and a few days later he joins the carabinieri, where he immediately takes the ranks of brigadier and with the same speed loses them, also being transferred to another regiment in the autumn of 1817. Vidocq at the time, after adventures and misadventures with failed and successful escapes, and also as a police informant, had already received the task of the underworld infiltrator on behalf of an experimental unit transformed in 1812 into a security unit under the prefect of Anglès, of which he was then appointed head. The following year, Emperor Napoleon transformed that small department into a state police force by creating the Sûreté Nationale (the current Police Nationale) with the pardoned ex-convict at the top. When Nardoni, climbing the hierarchy of the Carabinieri, managed to have his officer’s insignia sewn on, Napoleon had been dead in exile on Saint Helena for four years. Precisely on the day of the death of the French emperor, 5 May 1821, Nardoni had his first-born son Vincenzo from his wife Maria, who was on his way to a military career in the papal carabinieri, but who died at the age of twenty-three in Rome when he was already a lieutenant. In the meantime, he distinguished himself in public order against brigands, was decorated and promoted to lieutenant, and added medals to his chest in the service of Cardinal Filippo Invernizzi. He combines an undoubted ability as an investigator with a lack of scruples in using any means to achieve the objectives he has set for himself in his police actions. In 1837 he was finally promoted to captain and the following year he was awarded the honor of Knight of the Golden Spur, then again the Order of St. George and then received the provisional ranks of lieutenant colonel.

Pasquino’s mocking verses and the attack in via della Missione

Nardoni is good at spreading his network of informants and spies, particularly when it comes to keeping under control those suspected of plotting against the government of the Pope-King. His star that shines in the darkness of the Roman neighborhoods seems to fade when the conservative Gregory XVI is succeeded by Pius IX, who in the first part of the pontificate appears as a champion of liberalism. He and those like him who had kept the bodies of police repression of political dissent functioning and oiled feel the disfavor surrounding them, and then Nardoni will decide to change the scene for a while and will leave Rome for Naples together with his family. In Via della Missione they try to kill him and he manages to escape. It had been described in verse by Pasquino: “And yet from the chest of the traitor spy / Hangs a cross, exposed to the mockery of others / Cross of Christ? Ah no! Of the thief rio / Worthy of the cross for his merits / It was Nardoni, but he had to hang / He on the cross, not the cross on him”.

After the escape to Naples and Malta, the return to Rome with the restoration

1847 was the eve of the year of revolutions, his name ended up on a list of conservatives accused of plotting against the Pope, perhaps to get rid of him and replace him, but the trial ended with his acquittal due to insufficient evidence. The revolution against the Bourbons breaks out in Naples and he changes scenery again, this time alone, taking refuge in Malta under a false name. With the restoration he became useful to Pius IX who reinstated him in 1849 thanks to the interest of Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli who wanted him as head of the secret police.

In 1850 he was the head of the entire police force in Rome, two years later secretary of the higher command of the gendarmerie. In 1860 he was promoted to colonel, and it was rumored that he had become enormously rich and was ready to leave Rome to return to Malta to enjoy his assets, but in reality he remained in Rome. An unedifying reputation has settled around him for his inquisitorial methods and his ease in acting as a guardian of the law beyond any principle of legality. According to what has been received, Colonel Cavaliere Filippo Nardoni died in Rome on 26 August 1864.

Jean Valjean’s inspiration and the prototype of the “cop” in film and TV

Vidocq had passed away in Paris on 11 May 1857. But the Frenchman had already resigned from the Sûreté thirty years ago in which he had often enlisted people who had had problems with the law, passing the command baton to another redeemed former criminal, Coco Latour (whom he considered an “incorrigible thief”), and founding the first private detective agency for traders. He had entered the popular imagination, had written his memoirs with great public success, attracted the attention of writers such as Honoré de Balzac and Herman Melville and inspired Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” and Edgar Allan Poe’s detective Auguste Dupin. He will be celebrated on the screen since his cinema appearance and then in two successful television series, up to the 2018 film with Vincent Cassel. The cinematographic Nardoni of the first film of Magni’s trilogy on the relationship between the people and the papal aristocracy instead follows the figure described and accentuated by the liberals, that is, an instrument of police oppression and reaction in the Rome of temporal power which would disappear with the breach of Porta Pia six years after his death.