An Egg Yolk Chronicle

 An Egg Yolk Chronicle

The Encircled Egg Yolk

    Has the thought ever occurred to you that there might be countries that lie within other countries?  With so many other thoughts to occupy us, likely not.  But think about it for a moment. Imagine this situation ― a contiguous border that wraps around the interloper to meet itself and in the process entirely surrounds it like the white of a fried egg encircles the yolk.  You would think that national sovereignty, the authority of a state to govern itself, would prohibit this.  Just imagine the unanticipated consequences.  Take, for example, going to war with some entity other than the country that surrounds it.  Most likely, there are many such complications.  Why would some foreign self-governing body be permitted to exist within another sovereign entity?  Admittedly, it is a crazy world, yes, and although not an exact paradigm, it hasn’t been very long, for instance, since free Berlin was encircled inside East Germany and later cut off further by a wall.  Fortunately, since then, is seems that scrambled eggs have been the order of the day.

    However, such a state of affairs does exist, and you can probably guess where.  If you thought of Italy, you were correct.  The Vatican, an independent sovereignty inside Italy, is a perfect example. Its current status was brought about by the 1929 Lateran Treaty.^[a]  Earlier in 1791, France had taken over papal lands in France and by 1861 all the pope's Italian

The Vatican

territories had fallen to the forces of Garibaldi and Italian King Victor Emmanuel II.  With French help, the pope held Rome but with the withdrawal of French troops in 1870, Italian forces marched into Rome and parliament proclaimed the city Italy's capital.  The pope, who refused to recognize the Italian state, would essentially remain a virtual prisoner confined to the Vatican.  It was not until after WWI in 1919 that Pope Benedick XV gave his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the green light to formally propose independence for the Vatican.  It was not until seven years after Benedick’s death, however, that Pope Pius XI saw its realization.  For the betterment of his flock, the pope had essentially reverted from politician to full-time spiritual head of the Catholic Church.  It had been a long time coming but with the stroke of a pen, secret negotiations between Prime Minister Benito Mussolini for the Kingdom of Italy and the Vatican finalized the deal.  It was signed by Mussolini for the Italian government and by Cardinal Gasparri, still the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Later in 1948, it was confirmed in Article 7 of the Italian Constitution.^[b]  On its ratification, the papacy finally recognized the Italian State with Rome as its capital.  Italy in return recognized the sovereign power of the popes as rulers of Vatican City, a territory of 109 acres, thus securing its full independence from Italy.  The pope had been lucky.  The loss of distant lands had been balanced by freeing the papacy from the costly burden of providing for the city of Rome.  It had been more than a wash, however, since the Vatican was now, even as small as it was, a sovereign entity.

    So, I guess that about does it when it comes to those unique, surrounded, ‘yellow yolk’ situations.  But that’s not exactly true.  Trusting that Lady Luck is on my side, I’m betting that even fewer know of a place called San Marino.  No, San Marino is not an Italian city like San Gimignano or one of the thousands of other “Sans” across Italy.  Long before we visited San Marino in 2016, I recall their

The Formidable Mountain Citidel
of San Marino

colorful postage stamps in my collection as a child.  This particular San is an independent country with diplomatic relations with most of the world.  Though not a member of the European Union, it is a member of the United Nations.  Much bigger than the Vatican, this particular “yolk” remains one of the smallest countries in the world with an area of about 24 square miles and a population of about 33,000 people.  Like Venice, its official title contains the assertion “Most Serene Republic.”  Welcome to the Most Serene (Serene meaning Sovereign) Republic of San Marino.^[c]  Legend has it that in the late days of the Roman Empire, a hermit priest started a monastery clinging to Mount Titano, in Italy's rugged Apennine Mountains sandwiched between today’s Emilia-Romagna and Le Marche regions of Italy.  It was remote, desolate, hard to attack making it easier to defend, and for the most part an undesirable place of little interest to others.  From this simple, isolated beginning the Republic of San Marino (named for the hermit) gradually emerged, to the justifiable claim of being the world's oldest surviving republic.

    While over the centuries other Italian city-states gradually disappeared, San Marino managed to keep to itself and maintain a low profile.  In 1631, however, a treaty of protection negotiated years earlier with Pope Clement VIII came into effect.^[d]  Although it did not integrate San Marino as a Papal State, it did extend it papal protection while confirming its independence.  Things remained quiet until Napoleon invaded Italy and in 1797 demanded that San Marino turn over a bishop they sought who had taken refuge there.  Stuck between a pope and emperor or a rock, many rocks, and a hard decision, they placated both sides in a clever move designed not to antagonize either side.  Appearing to fully support the French and doing all they could to cooperate, San Marino let the bishop quietly slip away thus pleasing the pope.  It was such a good ruse that Napoleon went so far as to embrace the Republic.^[d]  In fact, the emperor liked the regent of San Marino so much that he made the citizens of rocky San Marino exempt from all taxes.  Basically, by carefully threading a needle between powerful interests, San Marino had escaped any backlash from the pope and earned the goodwill of Napoleon.  They would continue to do so in the years ahead.  Shortly afterward, San Marino was recognized as independent by Napoleon in the Treaty of Tolentino, and by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.^[d]  Then Giuseppe Garibaldi honored San Marino’s desire to be left out of the Italian unification movement then underway.  It is believed that Garibaldi did this out of appreciation for San Marino had taken in war refugees in prior years including Giuseppe himself and 250 of his Red Shirt followers.^[d]  Remaining neutral in both World Wars also helped to further insure its 1,700-year history of sovereignty and independence.  In retrospect, had it simply been chance?  Unlike other Italian territories, had they simply been fortunate to have befriended Napoleon and then to have earned Garibaldi’s gratitude thus insuring their sovereignty? 

    Some actions aren’t nearly as lucky.  In fact, some acts are thought utterly ill-fated and ominous.  Take for instance a cat crossing your path.  Not any cat of course, it must be black.  If a cat takes such a course, it is thought to presage misfortune, even death.  A variant of this theme, serving as an emergency exit, makes an important distinction.  It seems to depend on the direction the cat is moving relative to you.  Crossing your path from right to left is the bad omen but when traveling in the other direction, it portends favorable times ahead.  As for eggs, 

Choose Your Superstition, the Obvious
to Egg Yolks and Centipedes 

there is about a one in one thousand chance that the next egg you crack open will be double-yolked.  And depending on those odds and your cultural perspective, a double-yolked egg can mean a blessing or a curse.  And of course, there is that taboo about walking under a ladder.  To compensate for this blunder, remedies include spitting on your shoe, walking backward through the ladder again, or as Michelangelo did in painting some of his caricatures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, placing your thumb between your index and middle fingers (the ‘fig sign’) as you pass through.  Ladders not being very wide, you’d need to be quick about it though, to get it done before emerging on the other side.  Then again if you don’t buy into the superstition just keep walking.

    And then there are the triskaidekaphobics.  I can’t even pronounce it, but its ‘phobic’ ending tells me something bothers them.  Yes indeed.  These folks fear the number thirteen, thought unlucky.^[e]  This phobia derives from the Greek word for thirteen, treiskaideka.  You may have noticed that some buildings lack a 13th floor.  Calendar dates, like Friday the Thirteenth, follow suit.  In fact, we just had one, Friday, 13 May.  Lady Luck appears to have been providential for here I am writing this and there you are reading it.  When you think about it, we are all lucky because we’re all here.  The dice were rolled on us thousands of years ago on our individual lines of ancestors, possibly numbering in the thousands, and at this moment we are the result.  Our distant ancestors themselves had been lucky to have survived.  It wasn’t looks, or connections, or wealth but ability that made the difference.  If not another trifecta of all three, they had to run very, very fast, or been really smart, or possessed an incredible immune system.  But I see I’ve digressed.

    There is historical precedence behind the abhorrence of Fridays numbered 13.  It all has to do with the massacre of the Knights Templar on Friday, 13 October 1307 (even that fateful year began with a 13).  The Templars were a wealthy military order during the Crusades, formed to protect pilgrims visiting the Holy Land while also carrying out military operations, and later expanding into banking.  Though powerful and influential, they nevertheless were not thought “too big to fail.”  The intrigue of a king and pope made sure of it.  Fortunately, there was another organization, even older than the Templars, with a major advantage the Templars lacked which brings me to the Knights Hospitaller.  Here was a more humanitarian, holy order with a primary focus on charitable efforts also on-site in Jerusalem.^[f]  It began as a volunteer group running a single hospice to care for pilgrims, the sick, and the homeless founded by Italian merchants from the maritime republic of Amalfi then trading in Palestine.  They obtained authorization from the Caliph of Egypt to build a church, a convent, and a hospital in Jerusalem.^[g]  Had their military activities failed, they could still present themselves as

'Maltese Falcon' Movie

servicing an important civic role.  That distinction made all the difference.

    After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291, the Hospitallers moved offshore to the Greek island of Rhodes (1309).  In 1530 they relocated to the island of Malta when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V bestowed Malta to them in return for a yearly gift payable to the Viceroy of Sicily.  The stipulated annual gift was a single Maltese falcon.^[h]  Even then, it was a pittance of a price to pay.  The real money materialized years later.  Well, sort of in the 1941 film noir, The Maltese Falcon, where the falcon was supposedly filled with treasure.  This prop was auctioned in 2013 and realized a real treasure of $4M paid by Las Vegas casino billionaire Steve Wynn.^[I]

    The Hospitallers survive to this day.  Its 970-year history is preserved in the present-day organization, The Knights of Malta.  Their official name is the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, commonly known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M.).  Even after seeing reference to them in Quebec at

1647 Order of Malta Symbol 
Hotel Frontenac, Quebec City ^[n]

the Chateau Frontenac years ago, I’d no idea who or what they were. 

    According to international law, S.M.O.M is a sovereign entity but with a catch.  It represents a rare example of a sovereign entity (like a country) while it is not a country.  I had to scratch my head at that.  If instead, I’d been a lawyer with a specialty in international law, I likely might have had some idea.  Different references on international law offer different explanations.  Apparently, since it does not have territory, it does not live up to the requirements of being recognized as a country.  Come to find out, all that is needed is that it be considered a country by other sovereign entities.^[m]  It is a mishmash of understanding and not being a member of the bar, lies beyond my wherewithal.  In a corkscrew of logic, some countries consider it a sovereign organization, others consider it a country without territory, and still others consider it the world's smallest country.  Whether a country or not appears to rest on how you split the fine hairs of interpretation concerning their headquarters.  This headquarters consists

S.M.O.M. Hq on Via dei Condetti, Rome

of a single “capital” building, the Magistral Palace located at 68 Via dei Condotti, paces away from downtown Rome’s Spanish Steps.  The Order’s situation is different from that of the Vatican and San Marino. Instead, here we have a state the size of a few buildings and although their vehicles have official plates, they have no roads.

    Number 68 Via dei Condotti has been the seat of the Sovereign Order of Malta’s government since 1834.  Here we also find the residence of the Grand Master and where the Order’s governmental bodies meet.  The Magistral Mint is also found here where they produce Maltese scudo, the coin of the Order, pegged to the Euro.  While the Order relies on it, likely on the basis of tradition, the Maltese have gone to the Euro.  The Post Office is also there where correspondence bearing Order of Malta stamps can be sent to any of 57 countries with which it has postal arrangements.  

A One Scudo S.M.O.M. Stamp

The government offices of Internal Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Hospitaller, Finance, and Communications of the Order also occupy the Palace.^[o]  

    If appearances matter, and they do, although the order may be absent land, it certainly appears to function as a country, enhanced further by the inclusion of special privileges.  If you watch enough TV or follow the news, you eventually become acquainted with the term diplomatic immunity.  A more lawyerly term for it is ‘extraterritoriality’.  This is a privilege usually granted to diplomats that frees them from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are present.  Extraterritorial status has been conferred on the Order’s headquarters by the Italian Government, but it is not clear whether

Villa dei Priorato Gardens on
Rome's Aventine Hill

the headquarters is the ‘territory’ of the S.M.O.M. or simply its embassy in Italy.  Other advantages include permanent observer status at the UN.  And though not a member of the European Union, it enjoys diplomatic relations with 112 countries and is a member of numerous international organizations.^[g]  It even issues passports, a privilege only countries, the Red Cross, and the UN can perform. 

    Another Rome property in the possession of the Order since the 14th century is Villa del Priorato di Malta on the Aventine Hill in southwestern Rome.  The Villa hosts the headquarters of the Grand Priory of Rome as well as the Sovereign Order’s Embassy to the Holy See and the Embassy of the Order to Italy.  Its one other territory is in Fort Saint Angelo located in the Grand Harbor in the Maltese capital city of Valletta.  A portion of this medieval bastion was given to the Order for a duration of 99 years by the Republic of Malta.  This agreement grants the Order use of the upper portion of Fort St. Angelo including limited extraterritoriality. 

Fort Saint Angelo, Malta

Its stated purpose is "to give the Order the opportunity to be better enabled to carry out its humanitarian activities as Knights Hospitallers from Saint Angelo, as well as to better define the legal status of Saint Angelo subject to the sovereignty of Malta over it".^[k]  Today, a single knight resides in the upper section of the fort.  While the Knights Templar had been almost “too big to fail,” today’s Hospitallers Knights just may be “too small to survive.”

    One last twist concerns its citizenry.  Today, the Order has some 100 knights and female members in Malta.  Worldwide, there are about 13,500 Knights, Dames, and Chaplains in the Order.  Next to

Possibly the Rarest of
Them All

them are 80,000 volunteers and 42,000 employees, mostly medical personnel active in the Order’s tradition of caregiving and participation in humanitarian projects.^[j]  Being a country, you would expect to find citizens.  By agreement with the Italian government, citizenship is limited to a total of only three citizens.  Only three!  Those three citizens who are granted passports (making them dual citizens) are the Grand Master, the Deputy Grand Master, and the Order’s Chancellor.  The other members of the order remain citizens of their respective countries.  This situation is similar to that of the Vatican.  The Vatican also has citizens (approx. 1500), and like S.M.O.M. there is no one with only Vatican citizenship, not even the pope.  I’d heard of men or women without countries but never a country (should I call it a country?) without territory and let’s say normal citizenry.  

    Depending on interpretation, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta just might be the smallest non-island, sovereign country in the world, taking the lead in the current ranking of smallness by area: The Vatican, followed by Monaco, and then San Marino.^[p]  I think it safe to say that this ‘trifecta trinity,’ unique in the world to Italy — the unyielding Vatican, remote San Marino, and the charitable Military Order of Malta — are all winning historic survivors in a turbulent world.  Yes, as I said, we do live in a crazy world where it seems consensus can anoint sovereignty absent even a shovelful of dirt.  And while our world is neither true Heaven nor Hell, in my analogy the world is

That Neapolitan Dish
"Eggs in Purgatory"

a mélange, more in keeping with that neither here nor there halfway house known as Purgatory.  Yes, it borders on a worldly purgatory reminding me of that Italian dish, ‘Eggs in Purgatory,’ where a distinct mosaic of ‘outlier yolks’ stand out in the mix mindful of safe places in a turbulent world of hot spiciness.  

From That Rogue Tourist
Paolo

[a] Lateran Treaty, https://www.britannica.com/event/Lateran-Treaty

[b] The Irish Times, May 4, 2022, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/vatican-city-looks-back-on-75-years-as-a-sovereign-state-1.1133452

[c] San Marino, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino

[d] History of San Marino, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_San_Marino

[e] Triskaidekaphobia, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/triskaidekaphobia

[f] Who were the Knights Hospitaller? LiveScience, Martyn Conterio, https://www.livescience.com/knights-hospitaller.html

[g] Knights Hospitaller, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller

[h] SMOM: Small ‘Country,’ Long Name, https://www.intltravelnews.com/2019/smom-small-country-long-name

[i] The Mystery of the Maltese Falcon, One of the Most Valuable Movie Props in History, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/02/mystery-of-the-maltese-falcon

[j] Order of Malta, https://www.orderofmalta.int/humanitarian-medical-works/hospitaller-mission/

[k] Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John - Fort St Angelo Agreement, - 5 Dec 1998, https://foreign.gov.mt/en/treaties%20series/documents/sovreign%20military%20hospitalier%20order%20of%20st.%20john%20-%20fort%20st%20angelo%20agreement%20-%205%20december%201998.pdf

[m] R.M.M. Wallace: "International Law", Sweet & Maxwell, 2nd edition, London 1992, pg 76. Elias Granqvist, 14 March 2001

[n] Priory of the Knights of Malta stone, Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada | Manuel Cohen, https://www.manuelcohen.com/image/I0000UFKl5i2S7bA

[o] Order of Malta, https://www.orderofmalta.int/government/magistral-palace/

[p] Smallest Countries in the World by Area, https://www.infoplease.com/world/population/smallest-countries-world