Papal Blessing

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 5

Papal Blessing

(Specially written jor "The Press" by KENNETH ANTHONY) A CURIOUS survival from the Middle Ages was the temporal rule of the Pope over a substantial part of central Italy, including Rome itself, that continued until 1870. Thus it came about that the area around Rome was the last to become part of a united and independent Italy. Nowadays it seems almost unthinkable that any city but Rome could be the Italian capital, yet it was little more

than a century ago, as the movement towards independence gathered strength, that the capital was moved from Turin to Florence.

In its last years the Papal regime was preserved only by the presence in Rome of French troops. Strangely enough the first stamps ever used in Italy were not Italian at all but French—used by members of the French expeditionary force from 1849 onwards.

These troops were finally withdrawn on the defeat of France in the FrancoPrussian war of 1870, an event which led to the final reunification of all Italy. Meanwhile the region under the Pope’s authority—known to collectors as the Roman States—issued its own stamps from 1852 until they were superseded by Italian issues in 1870. All of them, as shown in the example illustrated, featured the cross keys sym-

bol of St. Peter. The stamps were not perforated until 1868.

Perhaps the strangest story of all about stamps of the Roman States concerns the black cross which can sometimes be found overprinted on the first issue. This indicates that they were used in Rome during the great cholera epidemic that swept the city. It was feared that letters despatched from Rome might spread the outbreak, so the Pope had sheets of stamps brought to him for blessing before being distributed to the public. And all the stamps thus treated received the cross.

Modern successor of the Roman States is the Vatican City, the world's tiniest sovereign state, which has had its own stamps since 1929.