Written by Filippo Natali
Translated by Nicolas S. Straehl
The Free State of Cospaia
In the Upper Tiber Valley
(1440-1826)
Filippo Natali
To those who read
On the border between Umbria and the province of Arezzo, on a slight rise that acts as a buttress to the Apennines, stands the village of Cospaia, formerly the capital of the republic or rather of the Free State of this name, which from 1440 to 1826 retained its autonomy and independence, although it was governed without written laws, without leaders, without militias, without taxes.
A practical case of anarchy in the midst of a society based on the most absolute authoritarian principle, in a society that, although inexorably following its evolutionary movement towards a new and reforming civilization, nevertheless shunned everything that had the semblance of freedom – it is a phenomenon that deserves to be known and studied. I wanted to take care of it and thanks to the help that came to me from esteemed local people, and through research carried out in some private and public archives, I was able to complete a monograph of Cospaia, which I now offer to the public.
Perhaps my book will give birth to a better one, since it would require the time that I don’t have to arrange in a more orderly manner the ideas that I have developed in the book, and which to me seem not unworthy of public curiosity.
Umbertide, March 1890.
Filippo Natali
Chapter 1: Libertas
How a pigtail defined the republic — How the small State was born and how it died — Cospaia less than a village — The Country — Lawless construction — The church — A pretentious motto — The bells in the Middle Ages and the Municipalities — The rectory — The legend of St. Lawrence Protomartyr — Terrible sarcasm of the Levite — Tocqueville’s opinion on religion.
I read in a book, no need to say which one, this absurd anatomical description of the republic: “A government whose fundamental maxims are aimed only at completely overthrowing the order of the common regulation, at overwhelming the world (!), at establishing a system without God, without law and without reason and to establish in the end a way of living according to the animal part.”
Whoever wrote like this had certainly received from nature a special organization that showed them things through a kaleidoscope and that altered their sensitive perception. Unfortunately the case is not unique and, if not many, some think this way even now. For some people the word republic is in itself criminal, if not downright apocalyptic.
Yet there were republics, and history is there to demonstrate it, which lived long lives and did not upset the social order at all: on the contrary, they consolidated it and regulated it. These are forms of government, within which highly admired examples of virtue were preserved; others passed peacefully across the face of the earth without disturbance, without even most people realizing their existence. If that writer had lived outside of a politically absurd environment, artificially created by his legitimist imagination; if he had measured – in their final results – the foreshadowing signs of the revolutions that usually precede democratic governments, he would not have expressed such a concept, false in every respect.
He would have understood that within the republic man, having become free in his conscience, in speech and in action, becomes obedient to the laws that he himself has recognized, and submits to the authority that he himself has established, as a philosopher lucidly said in an almost forgotten book, which certainly did not deserve such a short life.
The republic which I am about to discuss would not have aroused the proud indignation and unjustified envy of the anonymous writer, because – while it may have not had its own laws and a political and administrative organization – it certainly had its foundation in the family and in religion, protecting in its own heart the blessed life that was the prerogative of the patriarchal era, through which the people of the small State lived in love and agreement as in a family.
This republic was an almost imperceptible dot, and it certainly did not dare to take a place among the States, even among the ones of the lowest denominator, although this microscopic Statelet lived autonomously for almost four centuries.
Having arisen without a preconceived plan, in an extremely peculiar case, it ended up anaemic, dying out like a flame that lacks nourishment, or rather like a dim meteor.
The freedom enjoyed for so long perhaps tired the men of the small republic and encouraged them to submit to a master, or was it necessity that pushed them to cede their liberties, squeezed as they were between two important States? Was it freedom that killed freedom, or was it despotism that extended its leveling gills even over that strip of free land? Perhaps both reasons influenced the destruction of the small republic of Cospaia.
Few are those who have heard the name of the republic of Cospaia, and very rare are those who even today know where the territory that once formed the State in itself is located. Apart from the few words that I read in a newspaper article and in the historical series of Borgo S. Sepolcro by Sacchetti, as far as I know, no one else mentioned the republic of Cospaia, no one even observed a historical summary related to it. Perhaps its smallness, and the little importance it had, made sure nobody found out about it; and if only oblivion had covered it for a longer time, saving it from the greedy gaze of the Pope and the Grand Duke of Tuscany! They split the Statelet in half and stole it for themselves…
The smallness that saved San Marino and Andorra was not enough to save Cospaia from its sad fate, and in 1825 Leone XII and Leopold I annexed it to their respective States.
But I will not anticipate the events that concern the end of the small republic, having rather in mind to make a monograph of its existence, reviewing every interesting thing that took place there during the course of four centuries, noting all the historical vicissitudes to which it was subjected in this period of time and especially in the last half century; but with this I do not mean to claim that my work is complete and flawless. It will indeed remain as raw material, so that others can derive from it a refined and elegant work, in the way that – from a shapeless mass of marble –
an accomplished craftsman can draw the most beautiful ornament, the most beautiful work of art.
Is Cospaia a city, a hamlet, or a village? Hardly can it deserve to be described as the last one; nor does it seem that in ancient times it was in better conditions than it appears today.
Here no walls crowned with rectangular or bipartite battlements, to indicate the Guelph or Ghibelline factions, inappropriately obstruct the view of the countryside, no towers, no defensive fortresses to face the partisan populace or the assaults of the tyrants. The houses, separated from each other, are built halfway up the hill in the middle of a countryside where everything is cheerful and gay. In spring the almond and peach trees dress their branches up in pink and white flowers; the hedges and shrubs of the late vegetation embody that mysterious gradation of colors – both fused and mixed –, which, from the brown of the trunks, to grey, yellow, pink, reach the dazzling green of the emerald. The trimmed and nourished grass of the slopes, of the spaces, and of the streets too, pearled by the morning dew, sparkle in the first rays of the sun, which is certainly more than those fences where the buildings are closed, and where foul air emanates from a hundred impure sources, brings infection to those who dwell therein. There, we have pale faces that wear out life between strong emotions always fighting with human necessity and scarcity; here, instead, is the health and parsimony of the desires that arouse that satisfaction which makes one equal to the rich and powerful. Instead of participating in the strong reality of the urban life, we wander into the blue of the placid golden age, when under the peaceful scepter of Saturn, the family sat gathered in the shade of the sweet fig tree.
The houses in Cospaia are certainly not intended to provide that which is philosophically contingent, necessary for the resolution of the most lively scientific and social questions, and whoever thinks that the idea of habitability requires – apart from opportunity – beauty too, and harmony in all its parts, will not find here where to apply those principles. Instead there are houses from the good old days, with their small gardens, with their respective farmyards. It is in this kind of house that families receive their friends, and it is here where all the joys and sorrows of each and every one of its members are concentrated. Mystery is banished and the actions of individuals take place almost in public.
Passing by, you can see through the open door the whole family gathered around the table, or busy chatting in front of the fireplace. Life thus passes by entirely condensed in a very short space; in every piece of furniture, in every utensil there is a
memory. Arcadia, the mythical world that the poets of the past century fantasized about, lives on in this strip of land. High up, or rather on the top of the hill, where the village ends, among the trees whose color range goes from dark to light green, among the boulders flecked by the shade and the sun, against the backdrop of the happy landscape, stands the simple and restricted temple. Situated as the bastion of the village, from a point where it dominates it entirely, it demonstrates how the good people of Cospaia wanted to marry freedom to the purest faith. And that this religious faith was free from prejudice and bigotry, either weak or fanatical, it appears clearly when reading the motto inscribed on the architrave of the church door: “Casparice perpetua et firma libertas”. I translate it to “Durable and safe freedom of Cospaia,” because – whether it refers to the temple as an expression of religion, or to the constitution of the small republic in relation to faith and worship – perpetuity arises with a certain pride, unfortunately not justified by the events that followed.
Believers, who begin to consider those words by crossing the threshold of the modest temple, may start realizing that religion and freedom thrive when they are not forced onto others, and so when they are left to their own strengths, and that it is vain to want
to constrain the free mind of man with iron chains. You cannot convince anyone by using force, nor should you violate consciousness anywhere.
Even the bell that hangs from the small tower bears the same inscription; but here, in addition to the task of calling the faithful to prayer or greeting the twilight of the day, it also gets the inhabitants in motion to deal with public affairs, taking on the importance that bells had in Italy, cradle of Catholicism and municipal freedoms.
The upper church and the annexed rectory are dedicated to St. Lawrence, the protomartyr, the young Levite with the burning desire to give his own life for the faith. It can be seen depicted in the painting of the main altar.
It was during the middle of the third century, precisely when the persecutions against the followers of Christ were raging, under St. Sixtus, head of the nascent church, that the Emperor Hadrian issued an edict, with which all bishops, priests, the deacons were sentenced to death. He wanted to extinguish the incandescent name of the Christians in their own blood. Lawrence is among those affected by the edict: the endurance of the Levite during the long and cruel martyrdom was equal to his faith, since it was in the Middle Ages that Christianity, blackened by barbarism, became immaterial, as Bianchi-Giovini says. The sacred pages pass on to us the sublime and well-known sarcasm he uttered before the tyrant when he felt burnt on one side. In the painting, which is indeed of no artistic value, the Saint is portrayed with the instrument of martyrdom (the gridiron) as can be seen in all paintings of the same subject.
The Cosparians did well to choose the glorious Levite as their protector. That martyr, who challenges the tyrant and laughs while being tortured, who founded his religion on an ideal, divine, ethereal system, is a symbol of strength and sincere faith that does not fall apart under the blows of time and ideas, as happened when faith got attached to earthly things, because, says Tocqueville, «when religion relies on fleeting interests, it becomes fragile like them; when it unites itself with ephemeral powers, it suffers their strength and often falls with the passions of the day that sustain it».
