Republic of San Marino • Church of S. Quirino

Built in 1549, the church of S. Quirino in the capital city of S. Marino is maybe more commonly known as the chiesa dei Cappuccini for the order whose property it is. It's a very average late-Renaissance edifice, with its typical arcaded loggia; stone and brick and, like everything else in the Republic of San Marino, very well taken care of: spotless and heavily restored.

Its main brush with fame, as far as I can tell, is not as part of Sammarinese history but as part of the history of modern Italy. When the 1849 uprising in Rome had failed, Garibaldi came to this independent country and, from this very loggia, issued to his last fighters in Rome his order to disband. The 1849 revolt would turn out to be the dress rehearsal for the successful one in 1870 that established the modern republic of Italy by toppling the Pope as temporal ruler of Rome and the center of the country.

This church is said to house a Deposition of Christ attributed to the Zuccari brothers (Federico and Taddeo, 16c painters who regularly worked as a team: for a sample of their work see this view of a Roman amphitheatre in Umbria), but I didn't see it: it is neither of the two small paintings you see on either side of the altar, for example.

In my quick visit to the church, what caught my eye instead was this inscription:

and more specifically, what it does not say, or at least not any more. Intrigued by the 2 very neatly obliterated lines, and suspecting what is called damnatio memoriae when found in an inscription from Antiquity, I asked the Capuchin friar at the desk of the attached museum. After a bit of rummaging, he found the missing lines in "a book", of which as usual I forgot to get the details; and yes, the Captains-Regent, for their sympathies during World War II, had been found not to the liking of a succeeding generation: both were members of the PSF, the Partito Fascista Sammarinese. Here is the full inscription:

IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF MAY 30, 1547 IT WAS RESOLVED TO KEEP IN PERPETUITY THE FEAST OF SAINT QUIRINUS TO REMEMBER THAT IN THE NIGHT OF JUNE 4, 1543 FABIANO OF MONTE SAN SAVINO, IN THE PAY OF DANGEROUS USURPERS, UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS, PERFIDIOUSLY SOUGHT TO SCALE THE WALLS OF THE CASTLE BY SURPRISE.

HERE WHERE THE ORIGINAL PROPITIATORY SHRINE WAS LOCATED, DEDICATED TO THE DIVINE QUIRINUS, ON JUNE 4, 1943/1642 AFTER THE FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLIC, THE FOUR-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE THWARTED ATTEMPT, MARINO MICHELOTTI AND BARTOLOMEO MANZONI BORGHESI, CAPTAINS-REGENT APRIL-OCTOBER 1943, DEDICATE THIS MEMORIAL.

History Between the Lines