Clearly, the name Rome still meant something, since you had Germans calling themselves "Roman Emperor" right up until 1806, and Russians claiming the title into the 1900s. Yet the people living in and around the traditional heartland of Rome never seemed to take that banner up. Why did they prefer to stress the Italian identity over an arguably much more prestigious Roman one? And why didn't recent Italian nationalism adopt a more than passingly Roman flavor?
Actually, there was an Italian identity even when Rome ruled the whole Peninsula. There was a Social War between the Romans and their erstwhile allies, led by the Marsi and the Samnites, who called themselves Italians. Rome won, obviously, but not all people in Italy ever saw themselves primarily as Roman.
I know none of this, but maybe I can help guide you? From /u/st_sebastian 's post from 3 days ago:
From previousous threads, found with a cursory subreddit search:
A large part of the issue lies in the fact that national identities and peoples are a new concept, with the concept of a concrete national identity like "Italian" coming about in the last 300 years. You have to understand that the people of Italy never really were a single nation, even under the Romans many cities kept their culture and based their identities on the cities they were from. This trait is seen even in the naming of the empire of Rome, see how its the named after the city? Sure you were Roman if you were part of the empire,but you also had a primary identity based on where you were born. Rome and its empire was less straight forward then it might seem, with protectorates and allies. Much like how the United States is a compel entity beyond the fifty states. So a person from Venice was Venetian, and then Roman. After the Romans fell, Italy split into a multitude of city states and principalities. They based their identities around the cities they where from, and the cultures they had.Those from Rome where Roman, and those from Venice were Venetian. This fracturization was less of an issue for the otehr regions over time since they were able to establish etheir harmony between their principalities like Germany, or form a singluar kingdom like Spain, France, Britain, and Russia. Then the concept of irredentism came about, nomily in Italy, and the idea of a nation state came about. A single country for a single people. So what were the principalities in Italy to do, they could not all identify with a city that they were not, or an empire based out of that city that was long dead. So the idea of "Italians" came about, a singular national identity or national undercurrent for the various cities of Italy. The once fractured people now had a single identity, these idea would spread to other countries and would be seen in the french revolution intertwined with the ideas of "Liberté,égalité,fraternité" or "Liberty, equality, and fraternity" The fraternity being a common idea of "France" as a nation of "French"
Let me dispel some myths here.
First, it's not like the "states" of Italy rejected any "Romanness." Many of the cities of northern Italy (my particular specialty) cultivated myths of Roman origins. I think one of the main issues that medieval Italian city-states would have had with calling themselves Roman is that by the time you have self-ruling communes in the peninsula, the German emperors had established themselves as the rightful heirs of Rome through Carolingian succession. The Italian states accepted that at least through the mid to late thirteenth century and looked to the emperoras as the ultimate secular legal authority. So while the Italian communes understood themselves to be descended from the original Romans, they understood that title of Roman Emperor rested in the hands of a German or the emperor in Constantinople (depending on who and when you asked).
Second, we should not assume that medieval Italians (much of the period you're asking about lies between 500 and 1500) did not so much see themselves primarily as Italian. They saw themselves as Venetian, Genoese, Milanese, etc. This is an important distinction to make. I don't think any one of these would have been able to present themselves as more Roman than any of the others without a rejection from the rest.
I think I should also clarify some points in the posts from /u/Skullgrimson as they are the top comment in this thread.
Actually, there was an Italian identity even when Rome ruled the whole Peninsula. There was a Social War between the Romans and their erstwhile allies, led by the Marsi and the Samnites, who called themselves Italians. Rome won, obviously, but not all people in Italy ever saw themselves primarily as Roman.
Yes, but that was a good 500 years before the abdication of the last Roman emperor in the west and I don't think it's a stretch to assume that Roman citizens living in the Italian peninsula began to see themselves as primarily Roman. Besides, by the end of the Republic, all of Italy was exempt from taxation, something that stopped (a historian of late antiquity can help me with this), giving Italian Romans special status among Roman citizens. To assume "Italianness" remained a separate primary overriding identity among Roman citizens living in the Italian peninsula is problematic, nevermind the influx of a new German ruling class that gradually became enmeshed among the existing senatorial (yes, the aristocracy of late antique Italy were of Roman senatorial class).
I have been thinking about this. Another issue that I think is important is that when the central governance of the Roman Empire ended, it made the villages, towns and farms dependent on the major cities of the area, i.e. Florence, Pisa, Milan, etc.
Well, when the Roman Empire completely fell in Italy, the peninsula was ruled for at least a little while by Odoacer, who ruled from Ravenna, by that point the seat of power in Italy. Subsequent Lombard and Frankish kings ruled from site in northern Italy before places like Milan, Florence, and Pisa became self-ruling entities.
The city of Rome was a political rival against the other cities, and by adopting the term Roman, it would give Rome a privileged position in terms of their relations.
Not really, certainly not in the early Middle Ages. As I stated above, the emperors had been ruling from Ravenna for some time by 476. Rome itself had been largely abandoned and during the Papacy of Gregory the Great there really wasn't anyone available to actually administer the city and Gregory essentially took it upon itself to deal with that issue. The commune of Rome was oftentimes subsumed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages (this isn't wholly true) and the commune as a distinct entity was at no point any sort of peninsular rival to any of the major communes. The papacy could be, certainly, but that is a much more complex issue.
An extension of this, the Byzantine Empire still had a heavy presence in Italy and they still claimed the banner of Rome, so using the term Roman would give them a claim to Italy as well.
Quite an an oversimplification. Venice serves as an example of a major Italian city who continued to recognize Constantinople as the true center of Rome but had an arrangement with the Empire from quite early on that established the Italian city as self-governing. You even see Italian cities addressing the Byzantine Emperor as Emperor of the Romans throughout the Middle Ages. Most Italian cities recognized the Emperor in Constantinople to be some sort of Roman emperor, but I don't want to get into this, but I can if there are followups.
According to the author of the article I'm linking, it really came down to Roman citizenship.
The entity of "Italy" was recognized from the beginning of the Republic/Empire. It's boundaries, generally, were the tip to Calabria to the Alps in the north.
Italians were preferred citizens in the Empire and were given automatic, full citizenship. This preferred status lasted for quite sometime.
So, a Roman could be anyone from any corner or the Empire - but a full fledged citizen came from Italy.
It would make sense for local Italians to recognize this and champion the fact that they weren't just Roman, they were Italian.
Link: Are Italians Romans?
Article seems extremely reliable and heavily cites other academic sources.
Other posters have provided great information about this, but in addition to that I'd like to remind you that you're comparing empires with people and small states. When Mussolini sought to create an Italian Empire, he did include Roman symbolism in propaganda. Likewise, you can't take the claims of a "Third Rome" as assuming a Roman identity.