San Marino

SAN MARINO. - One of the smallest (60.57 sq km) and the oldest (at least since the 9th century) independent states in Europe.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Its territory, enclosed between the provinces of Forlì and Pesaro-Urbino, consists of a series of hills dominated by the sharp ridge of Mount Titano (749 m.), on which are found the crops (cereals, vines, olives) that form, together with livestock raising (cattle and pigs) and craft activity (ceramics), the basis of the local economy. The population amounts to 12,300 inhabitants, of whom 1,850 are in the capital, S. M., which stands at an altitude of 643 m.

The Republic, which is linked to Italy by treaties of friendship and by economic conventions, is governed by two Captains Regent, elected every six months, who govern with the assistance of certain Councils and Congresses, also elective and frequently renewed. The territory is administratively divided into 10 castles.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

The legend of the 9th-10th century traces the origins of the Republic of the Titano back to St. Marinus (v.), a stonecutter from the island of Arbe, who, together with his companion Leo, is said to have landed, around the middle of the 4th century, on the shore of Rimini to work on restoring the port and the walls devastated by the Liburnians; but later, on account of the hard labor and to escape, being a Christian, the persecution of Diocletian, he withdrew with Leo into a cave on the mountain, where other companions in work and faith were not slow to follow him. A noblewoman of Rimini, Felicita, donated the mountain to Marinus for having converted her to the faith of Christ.

St. Gaudentius, bishop of Rimini, is said to have conferred the diaconate on Marinus. The hermitage was transformed into a small independent religious community, and before long a chapel in honor of St. Peter and a monastery were erected on the summit of the mountain, around which dwellings multiplied, the first nucleus of the future city of S. M.

The barbarian invasions, which desolated Italy, spared S. M., which, by its inaccessible position and its squalid poverty, offered nothing to plunderers. But the subsequent incursions of the Saracens, the Magyars and the Normans forced the Sammarinese to strengthen their natural defenses by building the three towers, the Rocca or Guaita, the Cesta or Fratta and the Montale, which, joined by solid walls, made the nascent bulwark of liberty impregnable. They also extended their original domain at the expense of the counts of Carpegna and the monks of S. Gregorio in Conca.

Meanwhile the Arengo, or assembly of heads of families, was constituted, and the Statutes were written, of which the oldest that has been preserved dates back to 1295; the last is from 1599 and, in its fundamental lines, is still in force.

The first dangers that S. M. had to overcome came from the feudal bishops of the neighboring sees of Rimini and Montefeltro, who advanced claims of lordship over the Titano, whose independence was recognized by the Holy See in 1291. Even the bishop-count of Feretrano, who had long insisted on his territorial claims, renounced them definitively in 1368. Toward the middle of the 15th century it had to defend itself against Sigismondo Malatesta, who had attempted to scale the Rocca. It then allied itself with Pius II, with Federico duke of Urbino and with Alfonso of Aragon, king of Naples. At the end of the victorious war it received as a prize Fiorentino, Montegiardino, Serravalle and Faetano.

The Arengo of the heads of families was replaced in the middle of the 15th century by the closed Grand Council, composed of sixty citizens. Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna, held the Republic of the Titano in 1503 for about six months. After some forty years Pope Paul III sent five hundred soldiers to take possession of S. M., but Sammarinese independence emerged unscathed and overcame every later threat.

The Grand Council reduced the number of its members to 45 and the nobles obtained various privileges therein; from this arose an aristocratic-oligarchic regime, the administration of justice was entrusted to a foreign judge, the commissioner of the laws; the right of asylum was restricted; an Edict was issued (1707), which punished the idle with perpetual exile.

When Urban VIII annexed the Duchy of Urbino to the Papal State (1631), he reconfirmed the independence of S. M., to which he granted protection and customs privileges. In the 18th century Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, papal legate for Romagna, suddenly (1739) occupied the Republic of the Titano, which caused him so much annoyance as a "stain" in the middle of the Papal State, in order to annex it to the Papal State. The proud resistance of the inhabitants, combined with their prudent diplomatic skill, forced the papal troops to withdraw on 5 February 1740, a day still solemnly celebrated: Clement XII ordered that the traditional franchises be restored to S. M., and stipulated a treaty of perpetual friendship. When Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, legate in Romagna, again besieged S. M. (1786), he met with the disapproval of Pius VI and the liberty of the Republic was saved: its memory is commemorated on the day of the patron saint (fifth Sunday after Easter).

Napoleon, having conquered Lombardy, asked S. M. for permission to pass through its territory and offered cannons, wheat and part of the territories conquered in the neighboring states. On the suggestion of the citizen Antonio Onofri, the Council accepted, paying for them, a thousand quintals of grain, on account of the famine that was raging, but refused the territories offered. Metternich too had the legitimate existence of S. M. recognized at the Congress of Vienna.

During the Risorgimento of Italy the State of the Titano offered ample hospitality to Italian exiles. Garibaldi too experienced the hospitality of S. M. when, pursued by the French and the Austrians, he crossed into its territory (31 July 1849), where he disbanded his legion. Two years later (June 1851), for having prolonged asylum to some deputies of the Roman Constituent Assembly, S. M. was occupied by Austro-Papal forces: its territory was evacuated only following the surrender of the political refugees.

In the events of 1859-60, S. M. remained neutral; once Italian unity was formed, it enjoyed an uncontested peace, attending to giving itself laws and institutions conforming to the new needs of its citizens.

Foreign speculators attempted to set up a gambling house there, a new Montecarlo (1868), accompanying their request with generous offers, among them the construction of a railway to Rimini, but the Captains Regent replied that in the Republic that honesty of which it was so proud would cease. The attempt was repeated in vain in 1879. Only in 1949 did the government of S. M., though reluctantly, have to resort to the financial expedient of the gambling house, which was however definitively closed two years later.

A treaty of friendship and good neighborliness exists between the Republic and Italy: stipulated on 22 March 1862, it was renewed in 1877, in 1897, in 1914 and in 1948. The peaceful democratic revolution of 25 March 1906 restored the original system of election to the General Grand Council, without distinction of categories between nobles and commoners, renewable by one third every three years. In September 1920 universal suffrage with proportional representation was adopted.

The events of the peninsula often have repercussions in the small Republic. In 1915 it interrupted diplomatic relations with the two Central Empires, and a band of its volunteers fought alongside the Italian army. Fascism also established itself on the Titano, and there too it fell as elsewhere on 25 July 1943; the traditional liberties were restored. In the Second World War as well, numerous were the refugees (about 100,000) who took refuge there. After the Germans, the Allies encamped there.

Angelo Ferrari

III. LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHURCH

Although it has its own diplomatic representative to the Holy See, with the rank of Minister, the Republic of S. M. has not accredited a diplomatic representative of the Holy See to its own government and ecclesiastically it is subject to the jurisdiction of two Italian dioceses, Rimini and Montefeltro.

The territory in fact lies on the border between the Romagna and the Marche conciliar regions. The greater part, however, is included in the latter conciliar region, forming part of the territory of the diocese of Montefeltro with its own forane vicariate (S. M.) comprising the parishes of S. Marino, of Acquaviva, dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle, of S. Giovanni sotto le Penne, of Borgomaggiore, dedicated to Sts. Antimo and Marino, of Chiesanuova, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, of Domagnano, dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, of Ferentino, dedicated to St. Bartholomew the Apostle, and of Montegiardino, dedicated to St. Lawrence the Martyr. Only two parishes are part of the diocese of Rimini and therefore of the Romagnol conciliar region, and they are included in the forane vicariate of Verucchio: Falciano, dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle, and Serravalle, dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle.

As is well known, the Republic does not possess a civil code of its own (there is only the Penal Code promulgated in 1878); in matters of civil law and public law the fundamental laws are contained in books II and IV of the Statutes of the 16th century, based on Roman law and canon law. The latter therefore governs almost everything concerning relations between the civil and religious authorities and everything concerning matrimonial law. Subsequent legislation, however, while not substantially changing these relations, has been influenced by new political or jurisprudential orientations, not always favorable to the Church. In recent times, among other things, mention should be made of the favor granted by the San Marino courts to Italian divorce-seekers, who, on the basis of the Treaty of friendship and good neighborliness between the Republic and the Kingdom of Italy, 31 March 1939 (art. 5, nos. 1 and 7, § 11), applied there to obtain matrimonial annulments to be given effect in Italy. The social-communist government, which prevailed in the political elections of 5 Sept. 1943, 11 March 1945, 27 Feb. 1949, has then drawn up plans for the introduction of civil marriage, which have so far not been turned into law.

IV. ART

The city is surrounded by the ancient walls - begun in the 13th century, subsequently enlarged and recently restored - which end at the three towers or "pennes" of the Guaita, the Fratta and the Montale, beyond which the sheer drop of the mountain made any fortification superfluous; placed on three crests along the ridge, the three towers give a characteristic appearance to the mountain's profile; they are the emblem of the Republic, which has depicted them in its coat of arms.

The city has narrow, steep streets and - apart from a few small palaces of the 16th and 17th centuries - simple houses in which every ancient element has been carefully enhanced. The only surviving medieval monument is the church of St. Francis, from the 14th century, remodeled in various periods and transformed internally in the 18th century, in which remain an interesting fragment of the ancient fresco decoration (of the Rimini school of the late 14th century) and a few altarpieces (of the Umbrian school of the 15th century, by Girolamo da Cotignola, by Guercino). The ancient parish church dedicated to the founding saint, located at the highest point of the city, probably preserved a Romanesque character; it was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century for the construction of a larger basilica, completed in 1838 by the architect Serra of Bologna in neoclassical forms; next to it, entirely transformed, is the ancient chapel of St. Peter, whose foundation tradition attributes to St. Marinus himself. In 1884 the construction of the new Town Hall was completed, on a design by the Roman architect F. Azzurri, inspired by medieval models, a reflection of the historicist tendencies of the time. The city also possesses a small museum, consisting of material of various kinds, but with some notable pieces; and the Library, important for local history and for the history of the Italian Risorgimento. - See plate CXV.