This devotion to the free towns strengthened by a religious feeling which prompted each town to seek for itself a patron saint produced in Italy a galaxy of republics all flourishing in commerce industry and the arts at a time when the rest of Europe was still in the grip of feudalism However formation of one strong and unified Italian state was impossible for no Italian prince could obtain the slightest support for it from the people who were more concerned with the liberty and sovereignty of their own town than with any notion of national greatness
Dante saw the danger and the pity of this division into jealous and antagonistic city states. In his poem attacking parties he says in an immortal line that Italy no longer the mistress of provinces has become the slave of cruel and pitiless sects26