The Roman Republic was a state declared on February 9, 1849, when the government of Papal States was temporarily replaced by a republican government due to Pope Pius IX's flight to Gaeta. The republic was led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi. Together they formed a triumvirate, a reflection of a form of government seen in the ancient Roman Republic.
One of the major innovations the Republic hoped to achieve was enshrined in its constitution: all religions could be practiced freely and the pope was guaranteed the right to govern the Catholic Church. These religious freedoms were quite different from the situation under the preceding government, which allowed only Catholicism and Judaism to be practiced by citizens. The Constitution of the Roman Republic was the first in the world to abolish capital punishment in its constitutional law.
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“Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,—at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.”
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