H I S T O R Y APRIL, 1922

DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO.1

FEW people were aware in October 1920 that the oldest elective institution in the world was on its trial. For the first time since 1787 the two half-yearly Presidents of the ancient Republic of San Marino remained in office after their six months’ legal tenure had expired ; for the first time since 1740 their successors were elected at an irregular date and for an unusual period, thus infringing the time-honoured constitutional practice, by which the two chief magistrates of San Marino are always elected on March 15 and September 15, and come into office on April 1 and October 1-a practice to which there had previously been only three exceptions in the many centuries of San Marino’s history : during the two occupations of the Republic by Cesare Borgia in 1503 and by Cardinal Alberoni in 1740, and during the diffi- culties with the Papal Legates of the Romagna in 1787.a This unusual event and the reforms introduced into the Republic sixteen years ago invite a fresh sketch of its history and institu- tions, about which little has been written in English since fib.

1 L’Archivio Governativo della Repubblica di San Marino riordinato L deecritlo per cura di Carlo Malagola. Bologna : Fava e Garagnani. 1891. Memorie sloriche della Elepubblica di S. Marino raccolte dal C&v. Melchiorre Delfico. Quarta Edizione. Nepoli : Nobile, 1865. Ricordi etorici delh Repubblica di S. Marino. Di Marino Fattori. Sosta Edieione [edited by Onofrio Fattori]. Folimo : Campitelli, 1912. La Rkpublique de Sun Marino. Par Henry Hauttecaeur. Bruxelles : Havermans, 1894. A Freak of Freedom, or the Republic of San Marino. London : Longmans, Green & Go., 1879. Ceaare Borgia e la Repubblica di S. Bam’no (1500-1504). DE Amy A. Bernardy. I1 Cardinale Alberoni e la Reptbblica di San Marino. Studi e ricerehe. Di Carlo Malagola. Bologna : Zanichelli, 1886. Verbale dell’ Arringo aenerale dei Capi-Famiglia tenutoai il giomo d i Dofnenica 25 Marzo, 1906. Verbale del Conaiglio arande P Lfenerale della Sedula 18 Settembre, 1920. San Marino : Tipografia Sociale Sammarinese, 1920.

a Malagola, L’Archivio Govemalivo delh Repubblica di San Marino, p1’. 9097.

By J. Theodore Bent.

Firenze : Lumachi, 1905.

Rep. S. Marino : Angeli, 1906.

NO. 25.-VOL. VII. B

2 HISTORY [APRIL

Bent’s entertaining little book, but to which the late Carlo Malagola’s work upon its archives and his admirable monograph upon Cardinal Alberoni’s occupation have added copious materials.

The founder and eponymous hero of San Marino was a pious stone-cutter named Marinus, a native of the Dalmatian island of Arbe, which has latterly loomed considerably in the public eye, having been assigned by the treaty of Rapallo to Jugoslavia, but, in defiance of that treaty, occupied for a time by D’Annunzio’s “ legionaries.” Conferences of diplomatists have been asked t:, assign territories to this or that State, because some famous per- sonage connected with it had been born there ; but the Republic of San Marino, never desirous of extending its boundaries, but the least imperialistic of countries, laid no claim at Paris or Rapallo to the birthplace of its founder. The “ Fabulous Life ” of the saint, published and criticised in the Acta Sanctorum,1 describes how, with his friend Leo, he was summoned t o work on the walls of Rimini in the joint reign of Diocletian and Maxi- mian, how he went to quarry stones on Monte Titano, upon which the Republic now stands, how he returned to work on an aqueduct at Rimini, and remained there for twelve years, preaching the gospel. A woman, calling herself his wife, then turned up from Dalmatia, and applied to the magistrate for restitution of con- jugal rights, whereupon the pious mason fled to Monte Titano. His hiding-place was, however, discovered by some swineherds and revealed to his alleged wife, who followed him thither, only to fall dead at his feet, after confessing her fraud. Remaining on his mountain, he built a chapel upon the property of a widow of Rimini, a certain Felicissima, whose son, endeavouring to attack the trespasser, was suddenly paralysed. At the mother’s prayers, Marinus restored to him the use of his limbs; and Felicissima, converted to Christianity, gave the mountain and its spurs and confines to him and his successors for ever. The legendary account concludes, that he was ordained a deacon by Gaudentius, Bishop of Rimini, who occupied that see from 346 to 360, and whose statue adorns the church of Serravalle, and that he was alive a t the time of the heresy of Martianus, which is placed in 359. This anonymous biography commits serious errors of chronology, for it makes Marinus come to Rimini under Diocletian and Maximian in 257, or nearly thirty years before their joint reign. But the mention of the episcopate of Gau- dehtius has led most historians to place tho foundation of San

1 Septe’mbris, bol. il. pp. 308-220 (Venico, 17%).

19221 DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO 3

Marino after the middle of the fourth century. The Saint’s bones, which the Lombard King Aistulph pretended to have carried off to his church of San Marino at Pavia, were found when his tomb in the old church was opened in 1586, and his bed, hewn in the rock, is still shown to the visitor.

San Marino was thus, in its origin, a religious community, “ the world forgetting, by the world forgot,” which, as its numbers grew, developed a rudimentary government, consisting of the heads of families, who collectively formed the Arengo (a name revived by D’Annunzio in his constitution of the “ Regency of the Carnaro ”) under the leadership of the religious chief, according to the usual custom of primitive peoples, of which Melchizedek was the earliest, and Montenegro under its bishops down to 1852 was the best modern example. Similarly, the General Council of the Republic of Andorra was originally composed of the heads of families. The dying founder had left San Marino free ab utroque homine-from Emperor or Pope ; but in 1834 the Papal antiquary, Carlo Fea, claimed for the Holy See “ sovereign rights over the Republic of San Marino ” on the ground that the Liber Pontificalis 1 mentions the castellurn Sancti Marini among the places restored by Aistulph in 755 to Pepin the Short, and given by the latter ‘‘to the Pope and to all his successors for their perpetual possession and disposal.” The historians of San Marino point, however, to a document of 885, tho oldest in the rich Republican archives, which describes how a lawsuit between Stephen, Abbot of San Marino, and Deltone, Bishop of Rimini, was conducted by experts in Lombard, as well as Roman, law, as a proof that it was not under Papal rule.a

There are few allusions to San Marino before the middle of the thirteenth century. A document of 951 was signed by the Lombard king, Berenger, “ in the parish church of San Marino,” 3

whither he had fled before the army of the Emperor Otho I. In 1100, 1170 and 1253, the little community was enlarged by the purchase of the neighbouring castles of Penna Rossa and Casole. By this time the population had become sufficiently numerous to render the Arengo too large a body for the transaction of public business, which, as we see from a document of 1253, had then been transferred to the Council-& body which under various names and with various numbers has existed ever since. This Consiglio

* Ed. Duchesne, i. 464. * Dellico, Memorie atoriche, i. 17; ii. Appendice, p. i ; Malagola, L’Archivio.

8 Chlmnicon Visl&nrnenae, apud Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, i. pt. 18, n. 1.

ii. $25 . B 3

4 HISTORY [APRIL

Generale, or Consiglio Principe e Sovrano della Repisbblica, as i t was finally called in 1862, has at times numbered as many as 85, and at the date of Alberoni’s occupation as few a8 27, but since then has uniformly consisted of 60. Before 1873 only the inhabi- tants of the capital, the Borgo beneath the mountain, the villages and those of the outlying communes who had houses in either of those two places, were eligible as Councillors, 40 from the capital and the Borgo, 20 from the villages: these, since 1756, formed three classes, 20 nobles, 20 townsmen and 20 country-folk. Originally, and, indeed, as late as 1500, elected by the Arengo, when, after 1560, that institution fell into disuse, for nearly four centuries the Council formed a close corporation, co-opting new members whenever vacancies occurred by death or resignation.1 On March 25, 1906-a famous date at San Marino, commemor- ated by the name of a street and an inscriptioil outside the parish church-a peaceful and conservative revolution, which was really only a return to the original constitution, restored the system of election by the Arengo, one-third of the Council becoming renewable every three years.2 But in September 1920 the Council resigned in a body and adopted the system of enlarging the primitive Arengo into a single electoral constituency, embracing the whole Republic and electing the GO Councillors under practic- ally universal suffrage and proportional representation, illiterates not being disqualified. As the population at the last census of 1908 was only 11,002, the total number of votes polled at the General Election of November 14, 1020-2352-represented a considerable proportion of the adult male population of this tiny State of thirty-two square miles. Seeing that at the historic Arengo of 1006 only 802 heads of families voted, San Marino has made a considerable advance since then in the direction of democracy.

It is significant of the origin and tendencies of this ancient community, that the victors at this democratic election were the Catholic Popular Party, who secured 29 seats, as against 18 carried by the Socialists and 13 by the Democrats; 8 for San Marino’s political parties bear a family likeness to those of Italy, and this Conservative Republic, which has for the last twenty years had a Socialist agitation, imported from abroad, and the

1 llalagola, L’Archivio, pp. 42-52, 68; I t Cardinale Alberoni, p. 13. 2 Battori (6th edn.), pp. 129-41 ; particularly valuable, because Sig. Onofrio

Fattori, the editor, was one of the two Captains who presided OVQC this historio meeting of tho Arengo.

8 La Libertcl of San Marino, Nov. 20, 1020.

19221 DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO 5

doubtful blessing of a party press, had previously borne a resem- blance to the Whig government of England in the eighteenth century in the name of liberty by a close corporation of a few leading families. Indeed, there is a parallel between the unre- formed Council of San Marino and the famous Peerage Bill of Stanhope in 1719, which sought to make the House of Lords a close corporation by prohibiting the sovereign from creating more than six new peers. Thus from being a close oligarchy San Marino has become in twenty .years an open demo- cracy, but, like Great Britain, by gradual stages. And, like the British in 1689, the Sammarinesi in 1906, when they made a revolu- tion, went back centuries in their long history to find a precedent, instead of indulging in rhetorical prolusions on the rights of man.

These democratic reforms only temporarily affected the highest office in the State. San Marino still continues to have as Chief Magistrates of the Republic two Presidents, holding office for six months and called Capitani Reggenti, who are not re-eligible for three years after the end of their former term. We find the Capitani Reggenti, under the name of Consules, for the f i s t time in a document of 1244, and from 1390 down to the present day a complete list of their names has been preserved, with the solitary exception of those for April 1435-a record unique in the history of elective institutions. Even during Cesare Borgia’s usurpation of the Republic they continued to be elected, but only for three months ; and, though Cardinal Alberoni temporarily converted the Chief Magistracy into a triumvirate, composed of a Gon- faloniere and two Conseruatmi, the Capitani Reggenti were elected the moment that his arbitrary occupation ended,l on February 6, 1740. But, though their office has lasted for nearly seven cen- turies, i t has not always borne the same title. In the extant statutes of the years 1295 to 1302 they are styled Capitaneus et Defensm, the former, who was of higher rank, being the equivalent of the Podestd of an Italian Commune, the latter representing the contemporary Capitano dd Popolo. The distinction in status between the two Captains was preserved down to the reforms of 1906 by selecting the former from the class of nobles, the latter from the country-folk ; since then the former is chosen from the townsmen, and, as the more instructed, presides. The separate title of Defensor disappeared, however, after 1331, and both officials were indiscriminately called Capitanei, to which the alternative seu Rectores had already been added. From

pp. 123, 291. 1 Bernardy, Cesare Borgia, pp. 48-49 ; Malagola, I2 Cardinale Alberoni,

6 R IS T 0 R Y [APRIL

this Latin alternative title springs the Italian modern term, Capitani Reggenti.

The revolution of 1906 left unchanged the method of their election. On March 15 and September 16 tho Council selects from its members twelve persons (of whom six are townsmen and six countrymen), and then elects three of each category cut of these twelve. The six elected then go into the parish church, where they are grouped in three pairs, each consisting of a towns- man and a countryman. The names of these three couples are placed in three balls, and these balls put into a ballot-box, which is deposited upon the altar. A child then takes one ball out of the box, and the two names which it contains are those of the Capitani Reggenti for the next six months. A newly elected Captain must accept office, or pay a fine, and a statute of 1561 declared any citizen who made this gran rifiuto to be " perpetually infamous," and any Councillor who had spoken in his excuse liable to expulsion from the Council and payment of a like sum. The reason of this severe enactment is the difficulty, as one of the Captains explained to me, of finding suitable persons for the Presidency of so small a Republic. A similar enactment exists at Andorra, where no one under sixty may refuse an office.

This difficulty is much enhanced by the so-called divido, or exclusion of Captain from office for the next three years-a provision due to the fear of personal ascendancy in a tiny com- munity, for small States are always peculiarly jealous of big men, and we have seen a, little country reject a great statesman, whom many a large one would have been thankful to possess. At times, however, such has been the lack of available candidates for the Presidency, that this prohibition, first introduced in the six- teenth century, was infringed : the most notable cases being that of the great patriot, Alfonso Giangi, re-elected immediately after Alberoni's occupation to the Chief Magistracy which he had held the year before, and, still more remarkable, those of the two Captains Gozi and Faetani, re-elected in 1787 in direct continuance of their previous term of office, in order that they might conclude the dispute between the Republic and the Holy See.1

This last case was successfully quoted during the debate of September 1920 as a precedent for the prolongation of the actual Regents until after the General Election. Thus it was that no new Capitani Reggenti were elected on September 15 of that year, but the existing Regents remained in office till December 5, when their successors, two members of the Catholic party, who held

Malagola, L'Archiwio, pp. DO-102.

19221 DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO 7

their posts till April 1, 1921, came into power. But even without infringement of the divieto, the same man becomes Captain many times. Looking through the Fasti Consulares of San Marino, one is struck by tho many consulships held by members of the three ancient families of Belluzzi, Bonelli and Gozi; indeed, some of the oldest families in Italy may be found among the peasant-statesmen of San Marino, whose names (a Simone di Belluzzo was Captain as far back as 1378) appear in the Republic's archives centuries ago. Although no Sammazinese statute draws any distinction between a noble caste and the rest of the citizons, tho then prevalent love of titles introduced their customary use in the seventeenth century, and the nobles came to form a section of the Council. When the French Revolution began to influence Italy, a decree was passed inviting " the so-called nobles volun- tarily to renounce their pretended aristocraoy "-and this, though revoked in 1807, was renewed at the " revolution" of 1906. Conscious, however, of the importance of snobbery as a political and economic factor, the Republicans of San Marino have bestowed the title of " Patrician" and since 1861 those of Duke, Marquess, Count, Baron and Viscount upon foreigners, while the Equestrian Order of San Marino decorates the Regents a t public functions and some foreign citizens at private parties. Many years ago, having occasion to write to a certain F'rench- man, who had compiled a bibliography of San Marino, and had been created a baron by the grateful and sagacious Republicans, I received an irate postcard, drawing my attention to the fact that I had addressed him as " Baron," whereas he had recently been raised several steps in the Apennine peerage and had become a duke. The fino statue of the Republic, which adorns the Yiandlo, was the gift of a lady named Wagener, widow of the Sammarinese Minister to Paris and London, who became Duchess of Acquaviva-not a strong water, but a hamlet of the grateful Republic.

The Captains still wear on groat occasions their traditional costume-a black velvet coat, a black tunic, black silk stockings, whit,e gloves, black velvet shoes, a white-pleated jabot, a sword and a black velvet cap, trimmed with ermine. Thus I saw them inaugurated some years ago, while the band struck up the National Anthem, Salram fac, Marine, Rernpublicam tuam, and the white and blue banner with the three crests of Monte Titano waved irom the handsome new Government House, built by the Italian architect Francesco Azzurri, and inaugurated with a poetic address by Carducci in 1894. Accompanying the two Captains

8 HISTORY [APRIL

in that picturesque ceremony, nowadays a solitary survival of medizeval Republican pageantry, was the ‘‘ Legal Commissioner,” an Italian official, who acts as judge, and, like the four doctors and the eight Carabinieri, must always be a foreigner, for it would be unwise in so small and intimately related a community for a native to decide legal cases or arrest criminals.

San Marino, indeed, possesses her own “ noble guard,” her “ militia ” and her “ guardians ” of the fortress, numbering at the time of my visit 97 all told, and all gaily clad. Into the exact numbers of this landlocked Republic’s “ military and naval forces,” the Council of the League of Nations in Rome in the spring of 1920 ordered its permanent military Commission to inquire !

Thus, about the middle of the thirteenth century San Marino, from a community under a religious chief, had developed into a fully fledged Republic with a Council and two elected half-yearly Presidents, and with the title first of Libertas (preserved on its present coat of arms), changed in the fifteenth century to that of Repu bb1ica.l

It now remains to describe how, amid the turmoils of the Middle Ages and the convulsions of modern times, this small Apennine community has, alone of the Italian medisval Republics, sur- vived, and that despite the intrigues of powerful neighbours, such as the Bishops of Montefeltro, in whose diocese it lay, and the Malatesta of Rimini.

San Marino did not escape from being compromised in the duel between Guelphs and Ghibellines. Attracted to the latter party by Ugolino, Bishop of Montefeltro, the Republic was punished by R Papal which lasted from 1247 to 1249. Its parish church was the scene of a peace congress between the rival parties in 1252, and in the largest of its three castles the famous Guido da Monte€eltro, with whom Dante conversed in the Inferno, received his defeated and fugitive Ghibelline ally, Parcitadi of Rimini, with the bitter pun : “ Welcome, Nasser Perdecittadi.”

Two attempts were made by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of Montefeltro to levy taxes upon San Marino. On the former occasion, in 1291, a judge of Rimini, a certain Palamede, appointed arbitrator, decided that the Sammarinesi wcre “ free and exempt from any external superior and domination what- soever ” ; on the latter, in 1296, the Republicans, engaged in a metaphysical discussion on the nature of liberty by the learned

The term occurs in EL letter-of 1448. * Zbid. i. 33; ii. App. p.-v.

Delfico, i. 140, n.

19221 DEMOORACY AT SAN MARINO 9

Papal commissioner, proved that they and their forefathers had enjoyed it from the time of the pious founder.1 Throughout the fourteenth century, however, the Bishops of Montefeltro continued to harass the Republic ; but their attempts to take or sell it to the Malatesta of Rimini failed in face of the armed opposition of the mountaineers, who put to death one of the few traitors in its long history, guilty of conspiring to betray the Republic to the authorities of Montefeltro.

About this time, a report of 1371, drawn up by Anglicus, Bishop of Albano, describes San Marino with its two hamlets as comprising 240 hearths and defended by three very strong fortresses. He added in a letter, that the Sammarinesi “ do not admit the power of thc Church nor anyone exercising jurisdiction in her name : they govern themselves.”

The Republic fortunately found powerful protectors during these critical centuries in the lords of Urbino. One of them, writing to the Sammarinesi in 1440, assured them that, if he had only a single loaf, he would share it with them, and that their good or evil fortunes he regarded as his own. The Malatesta of Rimini, on the other hand, were the enemies of the Republic, and i t was against them that San Marino waged her only two wars at the invitation of the King of Naples and Pope Pius I1 in 1458 and 1462. The cautious Republicans stipulated beforehand the territorial compensations for their interventions, receiving in 1463 as the reward of their contribution towards the defeat of Sigismondo Malatesta the castles of Serravalle, Montegiardino and Fiorentino, besides the Papal recognition of the voluntary surrender to them of that of Faetano. These communes still form part of the Republic, but from 1463 onwards her peasant- statesmen have wisely abstained from increasing their territory, remembering that alliances and politics change, but geography remains.

The latter half of the fifteenth century was the Golden Age of the Republic. She was on good terms with her neighbours, and, having nothing more to fear from the Malatesta, was able to live in peace. Two Sammarinesi commented on Dante and a third on Aristotle, and the statutes, the earliest of which dates from 1295, were revised. Then suddenly San Marino ran the risk of losing her independence altogether and suffered the Iormer of her two foreign occupations.

Cesare Borgia, after having swept away the petty tyrants of the Romagna and seized the Duchy of Urbino, which had been

Ibid. ii. App. pp. xi-xxv.

10 HISTORY [APRIL

San Marino’s protection, made himself master of the Republic 1 in June 1502. But the Sammarinesi rose against his rule and offered their little country to the ‘‘ sister ” Republic of Venice- an episode which has furnished the background of Monteverde’s historical romance, Adelinda o la Repubblica d i Sun Barino.* With their usual caution the Venetians declined the offer, and San Marino before the middle of 1503 had fallen again under the Borgian yoke. Serravalle, the Republic’s recent acquisition, had never been welded with the rest of the State ; that frontier fortress gladly took the opportunity of embracing the cause of the invader, whom it welcomed as a liberator, and was rewarded with complete separation from Sen Marino and dependence upon Ri~nini .~ For a few months the Republic had to submit to a Borgian podestci, one Ercole Spavaldo, and his deputy, but continued, albeit for terms of only three months, to elect the Capitani Reggenti.4 Then came the news of Pope Alexander VI’s death, followed by the fall of his bastard son ; San Marino once more became independent under the protection of the Dukes of Urbino ; Serravalle returned to its allegiance ; and an inscrip- tion cut on the wall of Government House proudly sums up this incident in the words : Republica a clominatione tua liberata nobis &to fuisti nihil.

An attempt made by Fabian0 da Monte, nephew of the sub- sequent Pope Julius 111, to seize San Marino in 1643, failed and obtained for the Republic the powerful support of the Emperor Charles V. But their deliverance from this night attack made such an impression upon the Sammarinesi, that its anniversary, June 4, has ever since been kept as a national festival. And upon the succession of his uncle to the Papacy they employed the famous military engineer, Giambattista Belluzzi, a member of the great local family, to erect the fortifications which still adorn their capital. But still more than upon these fortifications the little Commonwealth depended for its independence upon the protection of the Dukes of Urbino, under which, as Ranke wrote, it “ preserved its inoffensive freedom ” ; and when the last of them died in 1631, and the Duchy was merged in the Papal States, Urban VIII took their place, ratified the preliminary arrangement already made by the Holy See in 1612, and expressly confirmed the ancient liberties of San Marino, which, in the phrase

1 Malagola, L’Arclh~io, 98, la. a Docree of June 30, 1503. 4 Bernardy, Ceame Borgia, pp. 48-50, who dates tho two Borgian occu-

2 Milano, 1802. Delfico, ii. App. p. xcii.

pations June-October 1502, and December 1602-August 1503.

19231 DEMOCRACY AT S.4N AIARINO 11

of a report to that Pope, (‘has a fancy for being a Republic.” Under Papal protection, San Marino was able to import corn and provisions from the States of the Church.l

But the decline of Republican manners had begun, and San Marino was not that ‘r happy city ” depicted by Lodovico Zuccolo 2

in one of his (‘ Dialogues ” in 1625, in which a Belluzzi describes his fellow-Republicans as men of Spartan virtues without Spartan asperities. Justice was badly administered, education neglected (although to this period we owe the earliest history of the Republic, from the pen of Matteo Valli, its Secretary, published a t Padua in 1633), and the right of asylum abused (as in modern times) by foreign criminals, who corrupted the morals of the natives. Poverty was the cause of the first two abuses, for there was no money to pay a foreign judge and found native schools, More- over, the cleverest Sammarinesi sought a career abroad, thus still further narrowing the area of choice for the Government posts, and necessitating the reduction of the Council in 1652 to 45. A t last, one of the Belluzzi, in 1691, left sufficient to found the college which, refounded in 1883, still bears his name. Yet, when Addison visited San Marino a t the beginning of tho eighteenth century, ho ‘( scarce met with any in the place that had not some tincture of learning,” and found that the schoolmastcr (‘ makes no ordinary figure in the Republic.” At that time there were both a foreign judge and a foreign doctor (the latter elected for three years and at least thirty-five years old). Like the good Whig that he was, the English essayist, whose account of San Marino is one of the earliest that we possess by a foreign man of letters, and has been perpetuated in Macaulay’s essay upon him, was enthusiastic about the Commonwealth of the Apennines. He declared that it “ may boast at least of a nobler original than that of Rome, the one having been at first an asylum for robbers and murderers, and the other a resort of persons eminent for their piety and devotion.” (‘ The people,” he wrote, “ are happier among their rocks and snows than the other Italians in their pleasant vallies,” and he ended by contrasting this “savage mountain covered with people ”-its population was then about 8000, and there were three convents and five churches-“ and the Canipagna of Rome . . . almost destitute of inhabitants,” adducing this as a proof of mankind’s natural love of liberty and ‘( aversion to an arbitrary Government.” 3 A generation later

1 Ranlre, The HQtory of the Pope8 (ed. 1913), ii. 320; iii. 212. * I1 Belluzzi, overa della Ciltd Felice. In Dialoghi (Venezia, 1625), pp. 160-73. 8 Reinarka on Several Park of Italy (London, IiOj), pp. 129-40.

12 HISTORY [APRIL

that “aversion” was markedly displayed a t the most critical moment of the Republic’s history.

In 1739 the famous Minister of the Spanish monarchy, Cardinal Alberoni, then Legate of the Romagna, conceived the idea of occupying San Marino. A pretext was afforded by the appeal made to him to intervene on behalf of two Sammarinesi of more than doubtful antecedents, who had threatened to upset the oligarchical form of Government and restore the ancient Arengo of heads of families. Arrested by the Republican authorities, they appealed to the Legate on the ground that one had been dragged from the sanctuary of a church and the other enjoyed from the Holy House of Loreto the privilege of being tried by that institution. The Cardinal intervened : the Republican Government rejected his intervention ; whereupon he arrested as hostages two distinguished Sammarinesi then near Ravenna, and established a blockade of the Republic, which was then entirely surrounded by the Papal territory. At the same time he suggested to Rome that the Republic, unless annexed to the States of the Church, might fall into the possession of some foreign Power, while a pamphlet, written by his orders, depicted San Marino as “ a nest of forgers, cut-throats and convicts,” a Republic only in name, a tyranny in fact, a “ Geneva in the bosom of Holy Church.” 1 Having thus vilified the Republic (although there was some basis, as we saw, for his charges), he proceeded to destroy it. He suddenly arrived at Serravalle, accompanied by a dismissed judge of the Republic, on October 17, and continued his progress to the capital, whither 500 soldiers and the execu- tioner from Ravenna speedily followed him. The Republican authorities yielded to this demonstration of superior force, and one of the two Regents, Angeli, handed to the Cardinal the keys of the city and the fortress. One of his first acts was to carry off thirteen documents of the year 1300 and onwards regarding the relations between San Marino, the Bishops of Montefeltro and the Holy See ; these were restored to the Republic after his death. Meanwhile poets sang in indifferent verses the new Csesar who had “ crossed the Rubicon” to conquer San Marino.

The conqueror next proceeded to restore the ancient number of 60 Councillors, 20 from the capital, 20 from the Borgo, and 20 from the countryside, substituting for the Capitani Reggenti a Gonfaloniere (chosen from the first class) and two Comercatmi,

1 Malagola, I1 Cardinale Alberoni, pp. 24-29. 2 lbid. pp. 210, 828-29, 730.

19221 DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO 13

to be chosen from the second and third respectively by lot every two months. He then summoned the new officials to take the oath of allegiance to the Pope in the parish church. The former Regent, Angeli, who had been appointed Go!? fnloniere, touched the book ; but his late colleague in the Regency, Giangi, chosen one of the Conservatori, exclaimed : “ On the first of this month of October I swore fealty to my lawful Prince, the Republic of Ban Marino ; the same oath I confirm and thus I swear.” And, amidst cries of I‘ Long live the Republic,” a bold Councillor, Giuseppe Onofri, declared that, if the Holy Father obliged him to swear, he would do so ; but if he were left to his own free will, he would swear to be ever faithful to his beloved Republic of San Marino. The sack of their houses was the punishment of these patriots. Having appointed a Governor, henceforth to be nominated by the Legate of the Romagna, Alberoni, on October 29, left San Marino.

The Sammarinesi, however, had influential friends in Rome, and their appeals and the sudden occupation of the neighbouring district of Carpegna by Tuscan troops led the Vatican to disavow Alberoni. Clement XI1 sent Mgr. Enriquez, Governor of Perugia, as Apostolic Delegate to inquire into the state of affairs at Sail Marino. Having heard the opinions of all the Councillors and other persons of importance in the Republic, the Papal Com- missioner reported that only nine of them wanted annexation to the Holy See.* His operations were hastened by the bitter January climate, which made him pray for his “ liberation from this mountain, where even the air is frozen and all is horror.” Accordingly, on February 5, St. Agatha’s day-ever since kept as a solemn festival at San Marino-he restored the Republic, preserving the number of GO Councillors, who promised to be under the protection of the Papacy, in accordance with the conventions made with Clement VIII and Urban VIII. On the same day, instead of on April 1, the C‘apitani Reggenti came into office, one being the patriot, Giangi. Four years later Alberoni published a Manifesto, defending his usurpation, to which Cardinal Corsini replied. In 1786 Alberoni found a suc- cessor in Cardinal Valenti, likewise Legate of the Romagna, who blockaded the Republic for six months, in consequence of the arrest of its foreign judge, a certain Blasi, who claimed to be tried by the ecclesiastical courts.2 Between these two crises the quiet of the Republic was only disturbed by the ridicule cast upon it

Ibid. pp. 278-81. 2 Fettori (6th edn.), p. 81, n.

14 HISTORY [APRIL

in the Berlin press, about which there is extant a correspondenco with Frederick the Great.1

San Marino was now exposed to the greatest temptation in its history. In 1797 Bonaparte appeared on its horizon, marching through the Romagna. The great destroyer of ancient empires, who had just dethroned the proud ‘ I Queen of the Adriatic,” spared this little Republic, and even sent the scientist, Monge, to offer it an increase of territory. But Antonio Onofri, a de- scendant of the bold Councillor of Alberoni’s time, then Regent, the greatest of its statesmen, wisely refused territorial aggrandise- ment, thereby preventing reprisals when the Napoleonic rdggime fell. Bonaparte himself wrote a letter ordering that the Sammari- nesi should be exempt from all contributions, and promised them four cannon and a thousand measures of corn. They paid for the latt,er; the former never arrived! And at the coronation of Napolcon as King of Italy at Milan, the arbiter of Italian destinies is said to have replied to his Minister, who asked him what was his decision about San Marino, “ Preserve it as a pattern of a Republic.” When the Restoration came the Sammarinesi reccivcd the reward of the moderation of Onofri-justly proclaimed “ Father of his Country.” So legitimist a monarch as Charles X of France wrotc to assure them of his good-will ; so convinced a conservative as Chateaubriand proclaimed himself “ a Monarchist in France, a Republican at San Marino.” Queen Caroline visited it ; Delfico, its historian, sought refuge there ; Borghesi, the numismatist, lived there for forty years, for twenty-one of which he held the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. For 8 moment Leo XII and Car- dinal della Somaglia, his Secretary of State, showed sigiis of reviving the policy of Alberoni, the latter’s godfather ; but Onofri rendered his last service to his country by reconciling the Pope with the Republic.

I n 1849, after the fall of the Roman Republic, Garibaldi and Ugo Bassi, with some 2000 Garibaldians, sought refuge at San Marino. It was an embarrassing honour for the Republic, for the Austrians were close upon Garibaldi’s heels; and, though the Regent, Belzoppi, bade him welcome, the Government negotiated terms of capitulation with the Austrian commander. The latter consented to allow the Garibaldians to consign their arms to the Sammarinesi, and to give Garibddi and his wife a passport for America, but these terms were conditional on their acceptance by the Commander-in-Chief at Bologna. Garibaldi declared these conditions unacceptable, and guided by n devoted

Francioai in La Nuovu Antologia for Sept. 16, 1900.

19221 DEMOCRACY AT SAN MARINO 15

Sammarinesc, Zani, with his wife, Bassi, and his most trusted comrades, evacuated the Republican territory by night and safely traversed the Austrian lines. But the danger to the Republic was not over, for in the morning the remaining Garibaldians, finding their captain gone, threatened to hold the walls of San 31 arino against the Austrians. Mingled firmness and diplomacy induced them to lay down their arms’, and with two paoli each they, too, left the Republic. Six years ago, the banner of this ‘‘ Italic legion ” was presented to the Republican museum.1

But this was not the end of San Marino’s diflicultiee arising out of the fall of the sister Republic. Several members of the Roman Constituent Assembly having fled thither, the Papal Government demanded their surrender. As the Republican Government refused, an Austrian force surrounded San Marino and was admitted to search for the refugees. Two years later, the murder of a distinguished native official nearly led to an occupation by Papal and Tuscan troops, “ to restore order ”- averted, however, by Napoleon 111, following in the footsteps of Napoleon I.

The Unification of Italy left San Marino an enclave in its great neighbour, with whom, except on rare occasions, its relations have been cxcellent. A treaty concluded in 1862 by the efforts of the Italian statesman, Cibrario, assuring to the Republic the ‘‘ protecting friendship ” of Italy, was followed by postal, tele- graphic and telephonic conventions. The one serious question between the Italian kingdom and the Republic arose in 1874 out of the demand for the extradition of an Italian criminal and one or two deserters, when the Republic was surrounded by a military cordon. Similarly, in 1921, the flight of Bolsheviks to San Marino, and the “ punitive expedition” of the Fascisti in search of them, led the Republic to invoke the aid of a body of Italian Carabinieri, placed under the Rcpublican authorities. An additional convention of 1907 concedes the extradition of all except political offenders. With Great Britain San Marino signed an extradition treaty in 1899 ; a Sammarinese envoy was sent to Edward VII’s coronation; King George V wrote to the Regents announcing his father’s death (Mr. Douglas Sladen, who saw a copy of the reply, found that the Foreign Secretary had addressed it to George I) ; and on January 18, 1919, a cele- bration in honour of “ Our Smallest Ally ” was held in London. The peasant-statesmen prudently declined to allow their mountain to become n second Monte Carlo, and of late years, although their

ffioinale d’ltatid, Aug. 10, 1816.

16 HISTORY [APRIL, 1922

finances have not been flourishing, and they have had to resort to a loan, they have ceased to confer titles for a consideration. Since 1877 the Republic, in this respect now imitated by Andorra and Liechtenstein, has found the frequent issue of postage stamps a fruitful source of revenue. Before that date, the Sammarinesi used the Sardinian and Italian stamps surcharged with the name of the Republic. In 1899 this tiny State found i t necessary to have two series of stamps-one for foreign and the other for internal postage-and when I first visited it, its only journal was one exclusively devoted to its principal export-postage stamps. We are all familiar with its copper coins, but its five- lire pieces are rare. Since the “ revolution ” of 1906 the chief political event has been the peasant rising of 1910 against tho new taxes, imposed to provide higher salaries for tho officials. San Marino had a separate pavilion at the Rome Exhibition of 1911, which was not the least interesting of that Jubilee.

When the European war broke out, the Germans accused the Republic of espionage through the wireless station on Monte Titano, which stands 2437 feet above the sea. The Republicans refused, however, to receive the threatened Commission of Inquiry. And, when Italy went to war, they made no secret of their sympathies: the Council voted 21500 for the Italian sufferers, and one of the Regents publicly expressed his hope for an Italian vict0ry.l The ancient Commonwealth has settled down again after the election of 1920; let us hope that in its more democratic form of government, its Councillors will bear in mind the twin maxims within their Parliament House :

Animus in consulendo Eiber : in votis dirirnendiu quanimitm,-

’ freedom in counsel, calm in voting.” WILLIAM MILLER.

The .Morning Post, Feb. 20, 1910; Jan. 9, Julie 26, 1915; Jan. 20, 1919.