Many portraits and biographies have tried to define Cardinal Ruffo’s complex personality. The bicentenary of the Neapolitan Republic took place in 1999. Many conventions, debates, historical essays and newspaper articles tackled that difficult time in history. The central figure of attention was Cardinal Ruffo and his enterprise. Historians have always been divided in their judgement. Those who exhalt him in his patriotic heroic deeds and those who condemn him branding him as an expression of obscurantism. Critics of the Sanfedismo phenomenon and of the controversial figure of Ruffo have always been torn between history and ideology.