Reading both here and elsewhere, i was generally taught that medieval people were extremely fragmented, and lacked the sense of ethnic/national. But, today while reading Machiavelli's ''The Prince'', i've seen too many sentences where he clearly mentions Italy as sort of a country which is unfortunately disunited. Sentences like (paraphrasing and translating since my copy isn't in English):
''Before the French King entered Italy, she was ruled by the Pope, the Venetians, Naples King, Milanese lord and Fiorentenes. They had two main goals: Protect Italy from the FOREIGNER, and prevent each other from gaining too much strength within her ''
''...Italy's current downfall can be explained by her reliance on mercenary armies...(few sentences beetween)...that's why the King of France conquered Italy so easily''
''Pope Julius wanted to conquer Bologna and banish the French from Italy''
So, any clarification on those views, and general existence of national/ethnic identity in those times? Seems to me Machiavelli treats Italy sort of how we would treat Syria today - a clearly existing country which is unfortunately disunited and ruled by different factions of warlords and presence of foreign armies. He doesn't treat it as something that really wasn't a country within his lifetime or in centuries upon centuries before him.
Are you specifically asking about Italy or the Middle Ages more generally? (Note that Machiavelli is usually put more in the Renaissance/Early Modern category than Medieval)
At the Council of Constance 1414-1418 in order to weaken the popes influence, it had the delegates famously grouped up according to their nations. These were sorted after some kind of unity which was measured in multiple ways ex. lingustics. Despite being a part of the mainly german-speaking HRE, delegates from Savoy, Provence and much of the region of Lorraine was sorted into the French nation.
Perhaps because of political reasons, low numbers or low influence it had the Scandinavians and various catholic eastern european peoples grouped in together with the German nation. The powerful Emperor Sigismund hoped a Hungarian nation would be allowed, most likely in order to get more influence (he was also king of Hungary), however this was denied.
Thrupp, Sylvia (1988). Change in Medieval Society: Europe North of the Alps, 1050-1500. University of Toronto Press, (page 283).
Just adding here, regarding German sense of nationality: The treaty of Chambord (1552, admittedly not medieval any more) was an alliance between protestant German princes and the French king Henry II. against the Habsburg emperor Charles V. I'll quote and try to translate part of that treaty here:
"[...] die chur- und fursten,[...] auch die graven, hern, vom adel, [...] und gemeine underthanen unsers hochgelibten vatterlands, der Teutschen nation, von iren alten liberteten und freiheiten, zu einem solchen viehischen, untreglichen und ewigen servitut, wie in Hispania und sonsset gesehen wirdet, dringen möchten [...]"
meaning roughly:
"[the emperor] wants to press the electors, princes, counts, barons, nobles, [...] and common subjects of our highly beloved fatherland, the German nation, from their old liberties and freedoms, to such a terrible servitude, as it is seen in Spain and elsewhere [...]".
So by the middle of the 16th century, there definitely was a sense of nationality among protestant princes.
edit: link to the German text of the treaty http://archive.org/stream/briefeundaktenz02kommgoog#page/n366/mode/2up
In England and France, the development of a national identity occurred gradually over generations during the late medieval period. This was linked with the beginning of centralisation of government in both countries during the 14/15 centuries. The Hundred Years War played no small role in this development, since the cycles of conflict helped foster, in simplistic terms, a kind of ‘us (France) and them (England)’ attitude and vica versa. This process continued into the 16th century and beyond as both ‘kingdoms’ transitioned into ‘states’ in the sense that we understand it today. In Italy and Germany the concept of a national identity is a comparatively recent phenomena, developing in the last few centuries. Having said that, there was an element of regional identity. During the medieval period ‘Italy’ and ‘Germany’ referred to the region rather than anything like an actual unified country. So the Florentines, Venetians and Milanese were all Italians, linked by such things as a common language, but their sense of national identity, if you want to call it that, lay squarely with the city-state from which they hailed. The same could be said of people from Saxony, Swabia and Thuringia; they were all German individuals who spoke German, but they had no concept of being ‘German’ in a national sense because no such nation existed. Indeed, Prussia, the German state that would drive towards and achieve unification, only began to be forcibly converted to Christianity in the 12th century.