Italy (Fidem Pacis)

The Republic of Italy is a sovereign state located in southern Europe. It has long been at the heart of European civilization, having formed the core of the Roman state for a thousand years, but was later fragmented and only reunited in the 19th century. Today it is considered a developed country, having the fifth largest economy in Europe and the tenth in the world.

History
Roman Italy suffered from several barbarian invasions throughout the 5th century, before being conquered by the Herulian general Odoacer in 476. It later formed part of the Ostrogothic kingdom before being reconquered under the emperor Justinian, but then seceded once again from the Eastern Empire in 637 after successfully defeating the Lombards. In 674 the Visigothic king Wamba was invited to take up the imperial dignity, and he and his successors ruled the West for the next two hundred years.

Two generations after Wamba's death the Western Empire was divided among several heirs. Italy was split between three sub-kingdoms based at Ravenna, Marseilles and Carthage respectively, the former of which later became a posession of the Papacy as a result of a genealogical quirk. In the late 8th century Pope-King Leo III supported Charlemagne in his conquest of Burgundy, and later crowned the latter Holy Roman Emperor using the imperial regalia captured from Barcelona.

The Papal Kingdom as part of the HRE supposedly included all of northern Italy, but over centuries, as the rivalry between Popes and Emperors developed, Papal influence gradually receded south. Several powerful city-states arose in the power vacuum, including Milan, Genoa, Venice and Pisa, owing allegiance to Emperor and Pope but in practice acting effectively independent of both...