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''Imprimatur'' is the title of an Italian historical novel, written by Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti. It was originally published in Italy in 2002; since when it has been translated into twenty languages, and sold a million copies worldwide.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Imprimatur )〕 It is the first in a series of books based around the principal character of the 17th century diplomat and spy, Atto Melani. ==Plot Summary== The story is set in a Roman inn in the year 1683. Ten guests of varying origin are resident, including a French guitar player, a Tuscan doctor, a Venetian glass artisan, an English refugee, a Neapolitan astrologer posing as an artist, and an enigmatic Jansenist. Everyone is hiding their own secret. When the French nobleman De Mourai dies suddenly, the inn is placed under quarantine because the authorities believe the plague has broken out. One guest, the mysterious abbot Atto Melani, suspects instead that the Frenchman has been poisoned. Together with a young servant (as narrator), he starts to investigate. Together Melani and the servant discover a network of ancient tunnels, once used by early Christians to avoid persecution. They also discover that the other guests of the inn are using the tunnels for their own mysterious reasons. While the scenario unfolds, outside the whole Christian world anxiously awaits the outcome of the Turkish siege at the Battle of Vienna. The Christian military coalition has been assembled under the direction of Pope Innocent XI. If the Christian reinforcements arrive too late, Vienna will fall and Europe will be at the mercy of the Ottomans. ===William III and Innocent XI=== The central theme of the plot has caused controversy. Monaldi and Sorti claimed they had found convincing documentary evidence that Pope Innocent XI had effectively financed the overthrow of the Catholic king James II by the Protestant claimant William III in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This was because Innocent's family, the Odescalchi (based in Como), were an important banking dynasty that had lent money to William and sought a financial return. Furthermore, Innocent was keen politically to prevent Great Britain and France from establishing an alliance that could threaten the influence of the papacy in European affairs. William's accession to the throne entrenched Protestantism as the official religion of the English sovereign as part of the new constitutional settlement. The two Italian authors argue that the Dutch entourage of William of Orange was secretly funded by the Odescalchi family, a dynasty of bankers, before William was old enough to conceive and undertake an autonomous political strategy. However, once they were there, the loans had to be paid back. This goal could be achieved only with William (who in his youth had never been financially secure) becoming king of England and thus achieving personal power and financial resources. This covert political game influenced surreptitiously the attitude of both the protagonists. In particular, the pope helped indirectly William by displaying strong opposition against the Catholic French King, Louis XIV, the principal enemy of William, and omitted to help efficiently the English Catholics before and during the Glorious Revolution. Shortly after the coup of 1688, however, the pope died, and the loan could be repaid by William only to the pontiff´s nephew. In the ledgers of Carlo Odescalchi, brother of the Pope and administrator of the family´s vast patrimony till his death in 1673, the authors claim to have found the testimonies of relevant loans of the Odescalchi to the entourage of William of Orange: Dutch merchants, members of the Admiralty and William´s counsellors. These kind of loans were not unusual for the Odescalchi, who were active in banking since the early 17th century. The loans were sent to Amsterdam through a company based in Venice and officially run by two merchants, Pietro Martire Cernezzi and Aurelio Rezzonico, but secretly belonging to the Odescalchi. The company Cernezzi & Rezzonico was already known to historians since the 19th century, but Monaldi & Sorti were the first ones to establish that the company was owned by the Odescalchi.〔Monaldi and Sorti, ''Imprimatur'', 2001〕 Carlo Odescalchi, brother of Innocent XI and mastermind of the papal family, shared with his brother a “proprietà commune et indivisa” (“a common and undivided patrimony”). This meant that all financial operations made by Carlo were automatically done in the name of, and in the interest of, Cardinal and later pope Benedetto Odescalchi. Within the space of nine years, between 1660 and 1669, the Odescalchi sent a good 22,000 scudi to the financier Jan Deutz, founder and proprietor of one of the principal Dutch banks.〔Monaldi and Sorti, ''Imprimatur'', 2001〕 The loan, according to the authors, might have been paid back through a deal of art objects that took place in Rome in 1689, a few months after the death of Innocent XI. The huge art collection of Queen Christina of Sweden (who lived in Rome and in turn had died a few months before Pope Odescalchi) was offered for sale by Christina´s heir - the Roman aristocrat and cardinal, Decio Azzolino. The buyer of the expensive collection, whose price was affordable for very few individuals, was William of Orange. Suddenly however Livio Odescalchi, nephew and heir of Pope Innocent XI, “snatched the lot from under William’s nose” and bought it for a sum (123,000 scudi) close to the amount of William´s debt to the Odescalchi”. Given the long series of anomalous circumstances (immediately after the dramatic events of 1688, with no financial security and sitting on a still shaky throne, William negotiates the purchase of an immensely expensive art collection in the remote and hostile capital of Catholicism), Monaldi & Sorti suspect that Christina´s famous collection comes into possession of Livio Odescalchi but is in fact paid by William “through some discreet intermediary”, in order to repay the old loan of the Odescalchi family.〔http://www.attomelani.net/index.php/tag/imprimatur/〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Imprimatur (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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