A very unusual case happened in this thin
strip of ground at few more than two kilometres from San Giustino. In
the year 1440, because of a banal error in the calculation of the territorial
confinements, pope Eugenio IV sold Borgo San Sepolcro to the Florentine
Republic for 14.000 ducats, Cospaia found itself again earth without master
as no more subject to the dominion of the State of the Church, but even
not involved in the Florentine Republic. The Cospaia population took advantage
declaring them independent. The even more unbelievable is that such situation
remained not solved up to 1826, when the two states intervened to cure the
situation. However, in the meantime, at Cospaia was experimented a type of
civil cohabitation that could live without city heads, laws, manage, with a
population devoted to the commerce, to the smuggling and the cultivation of the
tobacco. Just at Cospaia, in the second halves the XVI century, the abbot Nicolò
Tornabuoni returned from Spain with some seeds, of tobacco of
course, which for the first time in Italy was cultivated. Unfortunately the
euphoria of the liberty degenerated and, besides the agricultural and
commercial activities, it became flourishing above all the art of the
smuggling. Such situation became soon intolerable and the two states put end to
the eccentric experiment.
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