Captains Regent in San Marino. From six months to six months

1 October 2026 – April 1, 2027

Six months in six months: 2027 to 1243

Today the bells once again call the people of San Marino to participate in the installation ceremony of the new Captains Regent, Gerardo Giovagnoli And William Casali. The new Captains receive full powers from their two predecessors, Alice Mina And Vladimiro Selvawho had received them in turn on 1 April 2026 from their two predecessors, Matteo Rossi And Lorenzo Bugliand these in turn on 1 October 2025 from Denise Bronzetti and Italo Righi and so backwards six months after six months from 1243, when we know it to be consultants Filippo da Sterpeto and Oddone Scarito.

Faced with the singular ceremonial of this day, the jurist Pietro Ellero, in the second half of the nineteenth century, did not hesitate to affirm that in San Marino the authority regency enjoys prestige of a cult. The outgoing Regents, according to a report from 1643, handed over to the new ones: Banner, and Seals of the Republic together with the keys of the one and the other Fortress, of the one and the other door, and before anything else the Keys of the Ark, where the Bones of our Most Glorious Protector Saint Marino rest, and finally the Republic all in the same state and form, which was delivered to Them.

At least since 1243, the ceremony of handing over full powers has been repeated twice a year on Titan (with very few exceptions due to force majeure), identical in substance to this one today. Thousands of different people have taken turns on the throne of power semester after semester. Two by two. It has never happened that one attempted to eliminate the other to take all the power and make Guaita its private castle. Here on Titan no captain was ever a traitor, nor any captain or private who ever attempted to become a tyrant.

History specialists have so far not attempted an explanation. The San Marino case is outside the box. It is difficult to understand even relatively recent events such as the Arengo of 1906, in which it was decided to introduce representative democracy as a return to municipal democracies rather than by referring to the principles of bourgeois revolutions. It was enough to modify a passage of the ancient Statute. Yes, because the Republic – another singularity – does not have a written constitution.

In ancient Rome the fundamental rules of the community were cast in bronze. In modern states the custom of fixing them with the ink of the special texts of the constitutional documents has become widespread. Paper or metal are merely a material support from which they must then be transfused into the minds of individuals.

Here, on this mountain, individuals, generation after generation, have behaved as if the fundamental rules were part of their DNA, were absorbed with their mother’s milk, entered directly into their minds through osmosis from the community.

How did the fundamental rules originate in the Titan community?

Matteo Valli writes that Santo Marino when he was alive he held the Titan’s inhabitants as brothers, not as subjects. In short, he became equal among equals. Precisely to instill the principles of equality in the community. To educate about equality. And, on his deathbed, to crown his teaching and example, in leaving a legacy to the habitatori of the Titan the Libertas from every external authority, imposed a constraint on them: that they should take advantage of it and enjoy its fruits commonly. All together.

The habitatori of the Titan – continues Valli – they executed the will of the Saint by establishing the community in the State of the Republicto make the inheritance is public and common to all received from the Saint.

In the San Marino community both civilized men and rustics without any distinction or difference, they have a part in the government and administration of public things, because of all the heads of the Houses, both of one and of the othera single Assembly is formed, Arengo, of which the government is the emanation.

The Arengo, which is the first expression of Libertas internally, starting from the second half of the sixteenth century, when the entire world of politics underwent an involution in an absolutist sense, it would be replaced entirely by the Council which would begin to renew itself through co-optation. Through osmosis of the surrounding world, nobility will also make its appearance in the San Marino community. However, neither the suspension of the Arengo meetings nor the presence of the nobility upset the original structural system of the community.

The power of government in San Marino never ends up in the hands of a single person nor in those of a group of nobles concerned only with perpetuating themselves, as happens everywhere else, even in places that are administered as a republic (Lucca, Genoa, Venice). The San Marino nobles, unlike elsewhere, are dedicated as well as the government of the State, also the exercise of the intellectual professions necessary for the community. In essence it is culture is the element that legitimizes the power of the San Marino nobility compared to the rest of the population. Nothing else. For the rest, even the nobles behave like the others, also under the severe supervision of the Saint.

The Saint prevents individual San Marino people – including nobles – of any time not only from carrying out any ‘lordship’ project, but even from even conceiving it, keeping their consciences under control. Is there a more effective and safer way to make an individual respect a rule than to have him impose it from his own conscience?

Every San Marino person knows that even the mere thought of appropriating all the power is equivalent to a challenge, a challenge directly thrown at the Saint. Too dangerous. According to a Feretran scholar, Orazio Olivieri, it is well known that when a member of the community on Titan lets himself be overcome by greed for power, he has no escape. Sooner or later he will pay the consequences. On this the Saint does not forgive, according to Olivieri.

One fact is certain: the advantages that the community derives from being free from external authorities have never ended up in the hands of just one. Since historical memory has existed, that is, since 1243, power in the Titan community has always been in the hands of two people who after six months passed it to two other people and so on until today. Today at the end of this chain that has spanned the centuries, we greet and celebrate the LL. AND AND. Gerardo Giovagnoli And William Casali.

Go to Captains Regent of the Republic of San Marino.

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