By Tomaso Montanari
The beginning of the celebrations for the 70° anniversary of the Italian Constitution coincide with the Italian Parliament’s inability to approve a harmless little law – the jus soli – that would bestow Italian citizenship upon our children’s schoolmates whose parents are not Italian.
In Article 9 of the Italian Constitution (Italy shall take it upon itself to “protect the historic and artistic heritage of the nation”) the Republic of Italy – from its very beginnings and before projecting itself towards the future – assumes the nation’s history and commits itself to its very protection. This was a concept that seemed even more explicit in the text that had been approved by the assembly on the 30th April 1947. “The artistic and historic of the nation is to be protected by the Republic”. This was a declaration made with a considerable degree of historic and cultural depth and awareness and it amounted to a genuine recognition of Italy’s cultural wealth.
In Article 9 it is recognised that it is not merely the Republic that creates the Italian nation. Indeed, it is the Republic itself that explicitly and solemnly proclaims the chronological precedence of the Italian nation by laying down among its fundamental tenets the history of pre-Unification Italy and its mission to protect this supreme yet undefended history – a history that Raphael had expected the Popes to protect since they were the most obvious protectors of the Classical heritage that had befallen them. It is too of the utmost interest the fact that this Constitutional recognition on behalf of the Nation occurs in relation to culture, to research, to the landscape and to artistic heritage and not, for example, in relation to blood or ancestry or religious faith (such Christian roots would be drawn into considerable debate much later when discussing the setting up of a European Constitution). Therefore, the Italian Republic acknowledges the founding role that cultural traditions and their systematic connection to the country have had in the very definition of the Italian nation, both in the eyes of Italians themselves as well as in the eyes of those from other countries. In a few short words: Article 9 of the Italian Constitution proudly proclaims that Italy has been constituted upon a foundation of culture.
This overriding importance of culture is a topic that is imbued with the future and heavy with highly contemporary implications Just think of the jus soli, a prospect that entails that Italian citizenship is not connected to blood, to being part of a family, but instead it is connected to a progressive cultural bond with the nation. The fact that in Italy the very idea of “nation” is indissoluble from the actual nation renders all of this quite natural, even obvious. We have never been an “ethnic” country, in terms of “blood”, and there is no other country more happily “impure” than Italy, a country that is the result of varied and countless races. Our history is something quite different.
In the Verses of the 11th Canto of the Purgatory in which Dante clearly states that Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti and, above all, he himself, have founded – in all its glory – Vernacular Italian; both Cimabue and Giotto, fathers of that other Italian language – the language of art and figures and monuments – are also highly praised. The Letter by Raphael and Baldassarre Castiglione to Pope Leo X defined the Urbe – Rome – as the “mother of Italian glory and renown”. The use of the adjective “Italian” is of extraordinary significance at such a moment in which the very idea of the “nation” was still very much the vaguest of projects. It was however already evident that the idea of the country itself would have had such a decisive role to play and also, equally evident of course, was what we would have been able to build upon that very land. Three centuries previously, Cimabue had already understood this and had thus represented his “Ytalia” upon the facade of the Basilica Superiore in Assisi with his Roman monuments. It has therefore been this monumental language of art that, throughout the centuries, has turned all of us into “Italians” in the purest form – with these “rights of soil” – jus soli – or “birthright citizenship”.
This is a fine thread that may even be followed right up to the Twentieth century. This was the case with Piero Calamandrei’s extraordinary series of Sunday “outings” that were undertaken with his illustrious set of friends who would set out in search of the “country’s true face” in the landscape and monuments surrounding them. Calamandrei thus wrote: “This was the love that led us and moved us as we went on our long walks. It was also our indignation at witnessing the beast-like insolence of those who had contaminated the object of this love with their presence and who were preparing for a catastrophe (that we all felt was near) to befall upon this country, a country that was deserving of so much love”. Whilst Fascism perverted the very concept of “nation”, it was felt that it was from the actual “land” – the country itself, its nature and its history – that an idea of nation and homeland might be reborn.
This was no abstract idea. Anyone who today has a child who attends a public State school will see with his or her own eyes how much children from all over the world become more Italian as every day passes. They absorb the language of words and make it their very own. They also, and above all perhaps, become a part of that age-old two-way relationship inside which we belong to our homelands that, in turn, belong to us. We have always become “Italian” on account of the land upon which we live and its culture. We have always been an “open” country: this is our strength.