Dante
and Petrarch, in their day, proclaimed loudly a common Italy, the
object of the highest efforts of all her children. It may be objected
that this was only the enthusiasm of a few highly instructed men, in
which the mass of the people had no share; but it can hardly have been
otherwise even in Germany, although in name at least that country was
united, and recognized in the Emperor one supreme head. The first
patriotic utterances of German literature, if we except some verses of
the 'Minnesanger,' belong to the humanists of the time of Maximilian I
and after, and read like an echo of Italian declamations. And yet, as a
matter of fact, Germany had been long a nation in a truer sense than
Italy ever was since the Roman days. France owes the consciousness of
its national unity mainly to its conflicts with the English, and Spain
has never permanently succeeded in absorbing Portugal, closely related
as the two countries are. For Italy, the existence of the
ecclesiastical State, and the conditions under which alone it could
continue, were a permanent obstacle to national unity, an obstacle
whose removal seemed hopeless. When, therefore, in the political
intercourse of the fifteenth century, the common fatherland is
sometimes emphatically named, it is done in most cases to annoy some
other Italian State.
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