The feast of March 17th commemorates the date in which the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed under Vittorio Emanuele II in 1861. It is sometimes said that this was the beginning of Italy itself because, according to some people, the Italian nation did not exist at all prior to this date, or at least an Italian State supposedly did not exist. Such claims, which are particularly dear to the secessionists and to those who contest the national state by preaching its dissolution and disappearance, have no historical foundation whatsoever.
It is hardly necessary to state that 'nation' and 'state' are not synonymous and that the fatherland or ethnic group continues to exist regardless of the political form in which it is found. Italy has a more than two thousand-year-old existence that is expressed on the level of language, onomastics, toponymy, literature, architecture, urban planning, music, juridical structures, collective consciousness, etc. It was therefore not born in 1861, but fully existed at least since the first century BC.
Nor is it true that Italy had never been united before the Risorgimento. March 17, 1861 is the moment in which the Kingdom of Italy came to be officially and juridically reconstituted – not constituted, but reconstituted – since it had already existed previously and for many centuries. Even before the medieval kingdom of Italy, this region and its Italian nation had both been unified by ancient Rome for a period of several centuries.
Italy was unified on a legal level already under the Roman emperor Octavianus Augustus, who, by doing so, did nothing but recognize the now-achieved cultural and ethnic unity in the peninsula. This legislative and administrative unity persisted for all subsequent centuries, even after 476, the year that some people place as the end of the Western Roman Empire.
The very famous deposition of Romulus Augustulus was not at all the end of the empire, neither formally nor in the intentions of Odoacer, but rather its reconstitution. However, it coincided with the establishment of a "Regnum Italiae" (Kingdom of Italy), whose sovereign was Odoacer, corresponding to the ancient Ager Romanus, ie the Prefecture of Italy or the Diocesis Italiciana.
The Regnum Italiae continued to exist also under the Goths. The Gothic sovereign was both rex Gothorum (according to Germanic law, which was not territorial) and rex Italiae (according to Roman law), in other words, sovereign of the Goths and sovereign of Italy.
This distinction reappears also under the Longobards. The latter belonged to the Eastern Germanic group of tribes and were, among all the Germanic peoples, the least assimilated to Roman civilization at the time of their invasion (as well as the least Germanic of all the Germanic peoples, as they had been largely imbued with Turko-Mongol culture and shamanism). The irruption of the Longobards in Italy marked a real break in the history of the peninsula, both because it put an end to the political unity of Italy (which had been maintained uninterrupted since the second century BC) and because it upset the political, economic, social and cultural structures still deeply preserved during Late Antiquity.
The Longobards, however, were numerically very few and bore a culture much inferior to that of the natives, so that within a few generations they underwent a rapid process of Latinization together with Catholicization (practically synonymous concepts in Italy at the time). Their first sovereigns defined themselves as rex Langobardorum (meaning King of the Longobards, in the Germanic manner), but it should be noted that the Romans living in Longobard-ruled territory, provided they had a free status, administered themselves according to Roman law.
Soon, however, came an early Romanization: Agilulf (who was not even of Longobard lineage, but Thuringian; his wife Teodolinda was a Longobard, but had converted to Catholicism) proclaimed himself "gratia Dei rex totius Italiae" – by the grace of God, King of All Italy. It was 604 AD, therefore less than forty years since the Longobard invasion of Italy (which occurred in 568). The proclamation had also introduced court practices inspired by those used in the Eastern Roman Empire, at the request of Latin advisers. Agilulf remained rex Langobardorum (in the Germanic manner), but he also proclaimed himself rex Italiae (this time according to Roman law). In fact, in the Roman legal system, since the days of Augustus, Italy had always remained a separate region distinct from the other regions of the empire. Although it had lost all privileges during the 3rd century AD, it had always remained administratively and juridically separated from the other "prefectures" (Gallia, Hispania, Graecia, etc.). By proclaiming himself rex Italiae, Agilulf was referring to this historical and juridical tradition.
The Longobards, by now almost completely Italianized and Romanized, proposed the reunification of Italy, that is of the Regnum Italiae, as the fundamental objective of their political action: the "Longobard" monarch began to define himself as "rex totius Italiae", King of all Italy. This concept and the institute of the Kingdom of Italy persists also under Frankish rule. Charlemagne conquered Pavia, proclaimed himself "Gratia Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum", but is also rex Italiae (781). Precisely with Charlemagne there is a fundamental juridical step in the history of this "kingdom", since the sovereign of the Franks and the Longobards, having been proclaimed (Roman) emperor, claims for himself the title of universal sovereign (and not king of a given people: the distinction is fundamental). He also does this because as rex Italiae, i.e. as the sovereign of Italy, the homeland of Rome and cradle of the ancient empire, he has the right to the imperial title.
The Regnum Italiae preserved its political, administrative and juridical institutions even under Carolingian domination, but, like all the other western political bodies during the crisis of the 9th century, it ends up suffering from a progressive fragmentation and disarticulation of its structures to the benefit of local powers. But the idea of an Italy distinct from the transalpine territories continue to exist:
"Regarding the Kingdom of Italy, the notion of a border that distinguished it from the kingdoms of Germany and Burgundy remained, despite the dynastic union under a single king."
[Source: Giovanni Tabacco, Giovanni Grado Merlo, “Medioevo”, Bologna 1989, p. 202]In the late stages of the Early Middle Ages there was still an important political attempt to reunite Italy by Arduino of Ivrea, who proclaimed himself rex Italiae in the year 1000, was crowned in Pavia in 1002 and continued with alternate vicissitudes to pursue his plan until 1014, failing only due to opposition from some nobles and high-ranking bishops and the pope, who allied themselves with Germanic princes.
The title of rex Italiae and the correlating Regnum Italiae, however, continued to exist even in the following centuries. For the men of the Middle Ages, the Roman empire had not disappeared, but continued to exist, only in a changed form. Simplifying the maximum degree for reasons of synthesis, the imperium was considered to have been ordained by God Himself for the whole of humanity and it was believed that this imperium would continue to exist until the end of time. Therefore the emperor was not sovereign only of some territories, but of the whole earth. De facto, however, it was evident that the authority of the emperor was recognized only in some regions and, mind you, not as emperor, but as prince, duke, etc. of certain territories.
The imperial title, however, was always and necessarily linked to that of rex Italiae (King of Italy), since Italy was the center of the empire with Rome. It is no coincidence that another attempt to restore the political unity of the Italian nation occurred with Frederick II of Swabia who, according to Ernst Kantorowicz, his greatest biographer, thought of himself as a "Roman" and who was both a patron of the rediscovery of antiquity and among the promoters of Italian literature. This sovereign planned the "unio regni et imperi", that is to say, the union of the Regnum Italiae in the strict sense (which historical vicissitudes had led to its being confined only to the greater part of the central-northern Italy) and the younger Regnum Siciliae, which was born only in the eleventh century.
Although only on a symbolic and formal level, the Regnum Italiae preserved its existence even into the modern period, so much so that the famous Iron Crown was used from the 6th century until the 19th century for the coronation of the kings of Italy.
Despite the claims of separatists and those who deny the existence of the Italian nation, the Italian nation has existed for over 2000 years and the awareness of this fact has never been lost, not even during the period of political fragmentation.
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