San Marino

“ A small district in the Marches, joined to the coast by a single road, has maintained its independence through ages. Monte Titano, which rises in one of the most beautiful parts of the Apennines, and the base of which has been used as a quarry since time immemorial, bears upon its summit the old and famous city of San Marino. From its turreted walls the citizens can see the sun rise above the Illyrian Alps. San Marino, with some neighbouring hamlets, constitutes a “most illustrious” republic, and is now the only independent municipality of Italy. ”

“ The marvel of San Marino, retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of the last seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of wonder. We turn instinctively in thought to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war with unknown nature-forces and malignant rulers of the universe. ”

“ A heavy bank of cloud veiled the ragged crest of Monte Titano, that giant outpost of the Eastern Appennines, towering nearly 3000 feet above sea level, to which Marinus, the saintly stonemason of Dalmatia, fled from the persecutions of Diocletian. It was a day of storms. The sullen indigo-coloured mountains were lost in drifting clouds. Sometimes when the grey pall was rent by the wind, we glimpsed the fantastic towers of San Marino, high in the heavens on their mighty cliff; but while we pointed to them they were gone, like the city of a magician conjured out of mists. ”

“ And beyond it rose the crested waves of the Appennines with the torn garments of [240] the storm shredded upon their cruel rocks. Here and there a stray beam slanting athwart their slopes illumined the towers of some little far-off town. For a few minutes the valleys were bathed in golden light, then the sun went down, and the world grew indigo with night and storms.
San Marino itself has not much to offer to the stranger within its gates. Its houses are commonplace: its cathedral and its Gothic Palazzo del Governo are modern, and its palaces contain few traces of antiquity. ”

“ The republic of San Marino, next to that of Millingen in Switzerland, is the smallest republic in Europe. The limits of it extend no farther than the base of the mountain on which it is seated. Its insignificance is its security. ”

“ The queer little Italian republic of San Marino, with its 33 square miles of territory and its population of 6000, lies up in the eastern spurs of the Apennine Mountains. It is governed by a Grand Council of 60, who are elected for life, and two Presidents, one of whom is appointed by the Council, the other elected by the people. The little republic has an army of 950 men, who are employed only as policemen. San Marino is the only country in the world that prohibits the introduction of the printing-press. ”

“ But if, in scantiness of territory and a corresponding scantiness of means, this state is ordained by nature to be the San Marino of America, yet it is purely her own fault if, by the precarious tenure of her judicial offices, she reduces one of the most important departments of mind to the same diminutive scale, and goes far to make herself morally and intellectually also, the insignificant miniature of a commonwealth. ”

“ The third smallest state in Europe (after the Holy See and Monaco) also claims to be the world's oldest republic. According to tradition, it was founded by a Christian stonemason named Marino in 301 A.D. San Marino's foreign policy is aligned with that of Italy. Social and political trends in the republic also track closely with those of its larger neighbor. ”

“ The determining reason for the freedom of San Marino since 1300 has been the friendship of potentates, first of the neighboring Dukes of Urbino, then of the Popes, then of Napoleon, then of Italy. ... When the kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860, no one cared to erase from the map a state which even the Pope had spared, and in which Europe was interested. Hence the San Marinese retained a situation comparable with that of the native states in India. A 'consolato' of the Italian Government resides in the town; the schools are assimilated to the Italian system ”

“ We climbed up to San Marino's second tower through a half-deserted quarry where pink cyclamens, brambles and wild flowers had woven a tangled web about the rocks. In the west the ragged [242] hills rolled on like waves towards the gaunt peaks of the Appennines, and the highest of them all had its great solemn crest hidden in a low-hanging cloud which held it in the old embrace of sky and earth, regarded by the Greeks and Egyptians alike as a mythological sacrament. To the east the rock fell sheer to the vine-clad plain of Rimini, and far away we saw the Adriatic in a silver haze. ”

“ The available armed forces of the republic form a total of about 1200 men, all citizens able to bear arms being technically obliged to do so from the age of 16 to 60 years. San Marino issues its own postage-stamps, and makes thereby a considerable income. It also issues its own copper coinage, which circulates in Italy also; but Italian money is current for the higher values. Most of the republic falls within the diocese of Montefeltro, a small portion within that of Rimini. ”

“ This curious little state is in its own way perfectly unique, and its existence is the more singular from its being situated in Italy, though for centuries in the Middle Ages that country was the scene of an uninterrupted succession of wars. The hand of every country was against its neighbours. Towns changed owners every few years; states were swallowed up, conquered, reconquered, but San Marino has remained. ”

“ Yet enough appears to show incontestably that San Marino is by no means a perfect democracy. It is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as really as Sparta and Rome were, and as the Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland now are, in which the powers of the governor, senate, and assembly are more exactly ascertained and nicely balanced; but they are not more distinct than those of the capitaneos, council of forty, and the arengo are in San Marino.
Should it be argued, that a government like this, where the sovereignty resides in the whole body of the people, is a democracy ”

“ Trent, Aquileia, Trieste, Istria, are still parts, not of an Italian kingdom, not of a German kingdom, confederation, or empire, but of an Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Otherwise the Italian kingdom has formed itself, and it has taken its place among the great powers of Europe. Yet the whole peninsula does not form part of the Italian kingdom. ♦San Marino remains free.♦ Surrounded on every side by that kingdom, the commonwealth of San Marino, like Rhodes or Byzantium under the early Cæsars, still keeps its ancient freedom. ”

“ That success caused the Marquis to set great store by San Marino, and, perceiving that he should have much need of his judgment and ability in the field, during the war with Siena that is to say, he so laboured with the Duke, that his Excellency at length despatched San Marino to the General, according to his desire, and with a commission as captain of a large company of infantry; wherefore the master served ever after as a valiant soldier, no less than as an ingenious architect and engineer. ”

“ Unlike the cities of Italy, San Marino is early to bed: at half-past eight the streets are silent and deserted. But she is an early riser. The only public conveyance to Rimini, which also purposes to serve the Ancona-Rome express, is timed to depart from the city gates at 4 a.m. The gaoler and the police are foreigners, i.e. Italians, because, as the prison-keeper remarked, 'otherwise no [241] one would ever be arrested, because the Sammarinesi would all be relations of the police.' But the army, forty strong, is recruited from the Sammarinesi themselves. ”

“ The sovereignty of San Marino is therefore almost as complete a puzzle as that of the mysterious Royaume d' Yvetot. ... The Malatestas, originally lords of the neighboring upland fortress of Verrucchio would willingly have made the whole ridge the backbone of their State of Rimini. But this very fact secured for the Sammarinesi the constant friendship of the lords of Urbino. ... Neither power could allow the other to appropriate so invaluable a strategic position. ... The existing constitution is a living lesson on medieval history. ”

“ The town is small and dirty, and the Leon Bianco is a wretched inn.
12th. Leaving Rimini we drove along the [Pg 181] coast of the Adriatic, close to the sea shore. We saw the distant Appenines on our right, as yet only low hills covered with vineyards and towns, one of which, San Marino, situated on the top of a hill, is a small independent republic of about five thousand souls. ”

“ Francis II, Emperor of Austria, seized Venice and Lombardy, while a Bourbon, in the person of Ferdinand I, received Naples and Sicily, a much disputed heritage. Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia, received also the Duchies of Savoy and Piedmont. San Marino was a republic still, standing solitary and mournful upon the waters of the Adriatic. Italy was divided state from state, as in the medieval times, but now, alas! each state could not boast free government. ”

“ To-day when the cycle of history has brought us round again to the period of Ezzelino, when the intellectual or religious concepts, which anciently veiled usurpations, are contemptuously thrown aside, and the iron hand crushes in mockery of the combined Jurists of Europe, what stands between San Marino and extinction? ”

“ Named after a Dalmatian mason who lived as a hermit on Monte Titano, San Marino has existed as a sovereign state from the fourth century, its citizens having at all times known how to turn to advantage the jealousies of their neighbours. The constitution of this republic, however, is anything but democratic. The citizens, even though they be landed proprietors, have no votes, and are at most permitted to remonstrate. The supreme power is vested in a Council of sixty members, composed of nobles, citizens, and landowners. ”

“ Citizen Monge, the chief of the committee of collecting artists, was sent deputy to San Marino to knit the bands of amity between the two republics,—which might well resemble a union between Lilliput and Brobdingnag. There were no pictures in the little republic, or they might have been a temptation to the citizen collector. The people of San Marino conducted themselves with much sagacity; and although more complimentary to Buonaparte than Diogenes to Alexander the Great, when he came to visit the philosopher in his tub, they showed the same judgment in eschewing too much courtesy. ”

“ But the deeper cause of this sympathy is that San Marino is Italian through and through, and its hoary independence, real enough in the days of the city states, is become a farce solemnly played with separate postage stamps and currency, Regents, Councils, militia, peers, commons, Home and Foreign Secretaries, ribbons, orders, treaties, extradition treaties and a diplomatic corps in England, Austria-Hungary, Spain, France and Italy, all to cover its budget of £11,000 and its population of 10,422 souls, enumerated from week to week in the toy press and decreasing by dozens. ”

“ Away on a rugged mountain-top in Italy, is the only Republic that has maintained popular government among 3198the States of Europe. For more than fourteen hundred years a handful of isolated people, the followers of a Dalmatian hermit priest, have given the world an example of unsullied freedom. Through all the mutations, and revolutions, and relinings of the maps of Europe, the little territory of San Marino has been sacredly respected. Her less than ten thousand people have prospered without interruption ”

“ The same Giovan Battista made many designs and ground-plans of various fortifications for places in the states of his Excellency, and also various rough models in clay, which are in the possession of the Lord Duke. And since San Marino was a man of fine genius and very studious, he wrote a little book on the methods of fortifications; which work, a beautiful and useful one, is now in the possession of Messer Bernardo Puccini, a gentleman of Florence, who learned many things with regard to the matters of architecture and fortification from San Marino, who was much his friend. ”

“ Every male in San Marino is, it is true, a soldier, but soldiering involves no fighting or absence from home. Although all are liable to be called upon to serve in case of necessity, only those under a certain age are on ordinary occasions called out. The strength of this regular army of the republic is eight hundred men. ”

“ THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO.
(Vol. iii., pp. 321. 376.)
Though your correspondent MR. SYDNEY SMIRKE has brought to our notice the existence of the republic of San Marino, and informed us of many facts in connexion therewith, and though F. C. B. has enlightened us on several points of interest in the history of this state, still I do not find in either of these communications the following particulars of its foundation, which are in Addison's Remarks on Italy, pp. 62, 63. (ed. Talboys, 1830) , and which may interest some of your readers. ”

“ There is a national post-office; there is an army of nine hundred and fifty men and eight officers; there are diplomatic agents in Paris and Montevideo, and consuls in various European cities. Services rendered to the State or to science may be rewarded by knighthood, and so late as 1876 San Marino expressed its gratitude to an English lady for her gift of a statue of liberty, by making her Duchess of Acquaviva. Titles are by no means the most undemocratic part of the republic. On examination it is seen to be in fact an oligarchy. ”