CHAPTER II

LOMBARD INVASION TO LIUTPRAND’S DEATH

[568-744 A.D.]

EARLY HISTORY OF THE LOMBARDS

The four invading nations, whose history has been already related, left no enduring memorial of their presence in Italy. The Visigoth, the Hun, the Vandal, the Ostrogoth, failed to connect their names with even a single province or a single city of the Imperial land. What these mighty nations had failed to effect, an obscure and savage horde from Pannonia successfully accomplished. Coming last of all across the ridge of the Alps, the Lombards found the venerable Mother of empires exhausted by all her previous conflicts, and unable to offer any longer even the passive resistance of despair. Hence it came to pass that where others had but come in like a devouring flood and then vanished away, the Lombard remained. Hence it has arisen that he has written his name for ever on that marvel of the munificence of nature “the waveless plain of Lombardy.”[b]

[Sidenote: [5-400 A.D.]]

Probably the most ancient mention of the Lombards (Langobardi) is to be found in Velleius Paterculus,[c] who speaks of them as dwelling west of the Elbe and only in the lower portion, where they were subdued by Tiberius with much difficulty in the year 5 A.D.; for it is with the conquest of the Chauci--that is to say, the Chauci Majores and Minores who lived on both sides of the lower Visurgis (Weser)--that he connects the expedition of Tiberius on the Albis (Elbe) and the union of the army with the Roman fleet which had entered that river. Probably in order to avoid the Roman army, individual bands of Lombards (and Hermunduri) had settled on the right bank of the Elbe, and were followed by others on the occasion of a later expedition of the Romans; this seems to have given rise to Strabo’s[d] erroneous remark, according to which the Hermunduri and Lombards both lived to the north of the Elbe and in the narrator’s time had all retreated to the right bank; for we have no other definite information concerning the former residence of the Lombards and Hermunduri on the right bank of the Elbe, whilst we find traces of the Lombards south of the river in far later times. The _Widsidh-song_ (in verse 49) mentions a people, the Headhobeardan, who, as their name proves, were identical with the Langobardi, and who, as they fought the Danes for the possession of Zealand, must have occupied a portion of the coast of the Baltic; and in v. 42 a tribe of the Myrginge, who according to Müller[e] might probably be considered as a section of those same Headhobeardan settled in Holstein on the Eider. Shortly after this the Lombards must have been subjected by Marboduus; for according to a mention by Tacitus,[f] in the year 17 A.D., when war broke out between the Marcomannian king and Arminius, “from the realm of Marboduus, both Semnones and Lombards” went over to the side of the Cherusci in the hope of regaining their old independence. The fall of Marboduus secured them the liberty for which they were striving and a few decades later they had attained to considerable power. When in the year 47 Arminius’ nephew Italicus, whom the Cherusci had begged of the Romans as king, was banished after a short reign, the Lombards forcibly reinstated him in his rights.

The next intelligence concerning our Lombards[114] was drawn by Petrus Patricius[h]. from Dion Cassius[i]; from this we see that in the year 165, at the beginning of the great Marcomannian War, a host of six thousand German warriors--amongst whom, besides Marcomannians (probably the organisers of the expedition), there were also Lombards--undertook a predatory excursion into Pannonia, where the cavalry suffered a complete defeat under Vindex and the infantry under Candidus, so that the conquered had promptly to sue for peace and then quietly to return to their homes.

THEIR WANDERINGS FROM THE ELBE TO THE DANUBE

Our authorities afford us scarcely any positive information concerning the departure of the Lombards from their possessions on the Lower Elbe; we are obliged to rely entirely on reasoning and conjecture. But the account in the _Origin_[j] that hunger compelled the Lombards to leave Scoringa, may have been based on truth, as its pressure seems to have played no unimportant part at the time of the national migrations, especially in view of the rapid increase of the German races. Nevertheless, it was only a small portion of the people who then left their homes; this may be assumed from the appearance of power maintained by those who remained in their mother-country (the Bardi on the left bank of the Elbe and in Holstein) as well as from the histories in which the extraordinarily small number of roving Lombards is often commented on. We have then no further positive knowledge of the Lombards till they appear in Rugia, that is to say, north of the Danube, opposite to the Roman province of Noricum, in which region they must have arrived about the year 490. The fifth king of the Lombards, Gudeoc, was reigning at this period. The first, Agelmund, who was the first to be raised on a shield, must, as the people had already been wandering for some time, be placed somewhere in the middle of the fourth century, if we count four rulers to a century. As the Lombards were still regarded as dwelling on the lower Elbe in the year 165 A.D., the migration probably took place in the course of the third century. It is probable that the Semnones and the Burgundiones immediately bordering on them had just gone to the southwest, incited by the migrations of the Goths in the middle of the second century A.D., and the Lombards invaded the district to the right of the Elbe which had been deserted; that the Lombards proceeded west of the Elbe, as F. Bluhme[k] & and Förstemann[l] have asserted, resting their theory on quite uncertain and in part very arbitrary etymology, is improbable, as land for colonisation could scarcely have been won there without fighting powerful tribes.

The tradition of the Lombard folk-lore seems to point to the country east of the Elbe, but the story is very doubtful. Bluhme transfers the home of the Lombards to Moringen in Northeim, and connects it with a settlement of the Lombards in Westphalia.

In proof Bluhme brings forward the fact that Ptolemæus[o] knew the Lombards as neighbours of the Sugambri; but he overlooks the circumstance that these Lombards lived to the south of the Sugambri on the Rhine, and consequently not in Westphalia. Bluhme and after him Platner then alleges that the populations of Westphalia present coincidences in the names of families, the administration of the land and the later development of the law, with the Lüneburg district of the Elbe and Lübeck as likewise the ancient Soest-Lübeck law on many points recalls the _Edictum Langobardorum_. But it must be considered as a mistake to let the coincidence of individual principles of law and administration serve as arguments in ethnographical researches. For it is a known fact that for example the law and administration of the Anglo-Saxons and Lombards on many points, apart from the cases when a direct transmission may be supposed, show a similar development; whilst on the other hand, the language proves that the former belonged to the Low Germans and the latter to the High Germans, and therefore were not closely related peoples. In all these questions it is quite impossible for us to make a certain decision; Bluhme worked almost without the necessary materials to go upon, and the Saxon element which later invaded Westphalia and the lower Elbe had first to be identified and allowed for.

[Sidenote: [400-491 A.D.]]

It may be asserted with a degree of certainty that the migrating Lombards first spread themselves over the present mark of Brandenburg, and were then forced to go southwest by the Slavs who were advancing from the east, and to seek refuge in Bohemia, a land well protected on all sides by natural boundaries. It was here, perhaps, that the first king Agelmund, as the legend says, was raised on a shield. Now that an historically authenticated succession of kings begins, tradition also commences to assume a firmer character, and to approach more and more closely to real history. On the whole the story of Agelmund and his successor Lamissio is as yet completely wrapped in obscurity, for that which is related concerning the two kings is not a popular legend based on history, but nothing more than a fictitious development of the primitive myth of Skeaf which Leo has described in a very detailed and thorough manner. The gist of this widespread and variously localised myth is that a hero of unknown descent, arising from the water, comes to the assistance of a country in a time of great distress; and the story was transferred to Lombard history because in northern Italy the common Latin word _lama_ (for _piscina_) was etymologically associated by the people with the name of Lamissio. These tales cannot be historically interpreted, and, for example, it would also be wrong to consider the battle with the Bulgarians recounted by Paulus[p] as an historical fact; but it is evident from this that the name of Bulgaria had not appeared before the end of the fifth century. We likewise learn nothing concerning the history of the Lombards under the next kings, Lethu and Hildeoc; under King Gudeoc, the fifth in succession, we find them again in the territory of the Rugii, where they had gone when the latter had been conquered and expelled by Odoacer in the years 487 and 488. This land of the Rugii extended, so far as we can gather from our scanty sources of information, somewhere between the modern Linz and Vienna, on the left bank of the Danube; the right bank of the river does not seem to have been included. Opposite lay Noricum, which at the same time was partly abandoned by Odoacer as untenable, and now, probably, immediately after the evacuation was occupied by the Boii established in Bohemia. The Lombards then had to content themselves with the far less inviting and more barren land of the Rugii--in all probability because they had formerly been established to the rear of Marcomannians, that is to say, in North Bohemia, and had proceeded southwards in their train.

THE LOMBARDS IN THE REGIONS OF THE DANUBE

[Sidenote: [491-508 A.D.]]

Unfortunately the history of the Lombard kingdom in Rugia is also shrouded in obscurity, inasmuch as our sources afford no positive information concerning it; for the story derived from the boastful Herulian account in Procopius,[m] according to which in the year 491 the Lombards had been tributary to the Heruli--which would have been during the sojourn in Rugia, as the Lombards first went there in 490 and are said to have lived there many years--must, according to Pallmann’s[n] convincing arguments, be regarded as a fiction. It may possibly be with truth that Procopius describes the Lombards as being already Arian Christians at this time, although the corrupted passages of the _Gothic War_ can scarcely be considered as confirmation. According to the _Origin_,[j] the Lombards under King Tato wandered from Rugia to the distant plain called “Feld” by the barbarians, by which is probably meant the plains between the Theiss and Danube, as is shown by the remarkable passage in the _Annales Einhardi_[q] of the year 796. Here the Lombards remained for a period of about three years until war broke out between them and the Herulians, with whom they had formerly been on peaceful and friendly terms. We are well informed as to this war, through the Herulian account in Procopius[m] and the Lombard account in the _Origin_; it is only to be regretted that legendary stories have intruded into both narratives. According to the former, the Herulians had only declared war out of sheer lust of doing and fighting; according to the _Origin_ the strife was kindled because the daughter of King Tato had murdered a Herulian ambassador. It is remarkable that neither of the two nations attributed it to the enemy, but considered themselves as the originators; we must therefore assume that both reports have some truth in them, that both nations, Herulians as well as Lombards, were responsible for the outbreak of war. Further particulars are obscured by legend, and can no longer be ascertained. Both statements agree in the statement that the Herulians were completely defeated, and for the greater part destroyed; and we are further informed that their king, Rodulf, lost his life in the battle.

It is difficult to determine at what time this event took place; it will not be possible to arrive at a definite conclusion in the matter. According to Procopius, the defeat took place three years after the accession of the emperor Anastasius; but from the _Origin_ we see that the sojourn in Rugia must have been far longer than it would be in this case; for in this period is included the entire reign of a king Claffo, and part of those of two kings, Gudeoc and Tato.

Therefore the time given by Procopius, “three years after,” must be regarded as an empty phrase; this also applies to the notice in the _Origin_, according to which the war with the Herulians began three years after the occupation of the plains of Feld, and which must be judged in the same manner, especially as no importance can be attached to the chronological tables in the first part of the _Origin_. On the other hand, it is certain that after their defeat the Herulians left their old seats, and before passing into Roman territory settled first in Rugia and then amongst the Gepids; as Procopius asserts that these wanderings occupied only a short time, we shall not be wrong in placing them within three to four years at the most, and thus referring the battle to about the year 508.[115] A letter of the king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, has been used as a point of reckoning: it was sent to the kings of the Heruli, Warni, and Thuringii, when Clovis was threatening the Visigoths with war, and probably belonged to about the year 501; from this it may be concluded that the kingdom of the Herulians on the Danube was at this time still existing in its full integrity, and that the memorable battle can only have taken place some time afterwards.

It is noteworthy that the principal means Theodoric uses to incite these kings to support the Visigoths is the endeavour to increase their fear of the Franks, of whom the kingdom of the Visigoths was in dread, nor could they see the development of the power of Clovis without some anxiety. This points to the more or less close neighbourhood of the Franks; otherwise the danger would not have been so great or so imminent. Lippert[r] has shown that the Thuringii and Warni must have been established directly on the frontiers of the Frank Empire towards central Germany; the Heruli to whose princes this letter was sent, must have been settled near the Frankish borders.

Without doubt they are to be identified with the Heruli, who undertook numerous expeditions to the Rhine, to Gaul, and even to Spain, and are to be distinguished from the Heruli of the Danube; their seats are also to be placed on various points of the German and Dutch north coast, as well as in the Cimbric Chersonesus. In this respect it is well to notice that Sidonius Apollinaris[s] mentions an embassy of these Heruli to the Visigothic king Euric, and Cassiodorus[t] mentions a letter reminding the Herulian king of the favours received by Euric; through this embassy friendly relations were established between the two peoples.

WARS WITH THE GEPIDS

[Sidenote: [508-548 A.D.]]

With that victory begins the most brilliant epoch of the history of the Lombards. It was followed by the invasion of the Lombards from the southeast into the territory of the Herulians, and they compelled the latter to seek refuge in Rugia. As Procopius[m] states, hunger, and probably the advance of the Lombards in these regions, obliged the vanquished to migrate again, until they at last found protection with the powerful Gepids, who were of kindred race. On the occasion of this advance of the Lombards, the subjection of the Suavi also took place, which the _Origin_[j] fixes under King Wacho the successor of Tato.

The name of Wacho became famous, and the Lombards very desirable confederates; thus in the spring of 539 the Ostrogoth king Witiges sought to obtain their help against the Byzantines, but was refused as the Lombards had already formed an alliance with the Byzantines. An alliance seems also to have existed with the Thuringii, for the first wife of Wacho, Radegund, was the daughter of the Thuringian king Bisinus. Then Wacho married Ostrogotha, the daughter of the Gepidean king, which makes it very probable that the Lombard kingdom bordered on the Gepidean, as our statement concerning the position of the plain “Feld” confirms. The two daughters he had by her were again married to Frankish kings, namely Wisigarda to King Theudebert (534-548), Walderada to Theudebald (548-555), then also to Clotaire I (561, who, compelled by the clergy, resigned her to the Bavarian duke Garibald). In connection with this and also later alliances, is the plan of Theudebert to overthrow the Byzantine Empire by the help of the Lombards and Gepids during the war in Italy, against Totila.

A third wife of Wacho was Salinga, who bore him a son, Waltari. The latter reigned after his father’s death, according to the _Origin_ for seven years, but as he was a minor he was under the guardianship of a Lombard of noble birth named Audoin, who afterwards succeeded him as king. Shortly after the accession of Audoin, the Lombards passed over into Pannonia, which had been given to them by the emperor Justinian, who had first taken it from the Goths, as Procopius states. It cannot have been a voluntary cession. Justinian had to evacuate the country because he was no longer in a position to protect it against the Lombard invasion. By the sums of money he gave to the Lombards he doubtless hoped to buy peace for the sorely tried provinces, just as the Gepids and others had been restrained from devastating the Roman province by gifts of gold.

[Sidenote: [548-555 A.D.]]

Not long after the occupation of Pannonia--according to Procopius apparently in 548--war broke out between the Gepids and Lombards. The incitements of the emperor Justinian may be considered as the chief motive; it was in his interest to destroy the friendship of the two peoples who threatened to become dangerous to the empire. The ever increasing desire of the Lombards to gain possession of the important town of Sirmium in lower Pannonia which was occupied by the Gepids, and above all, the hostile feelings which had been raised between the two peoples by disputes at the Lombard court concerning the succession (disputes which began in Wacho’s time) came to his assistance.

We are informed as to these interesting proceedings by Procopius and the _Origin_. Procopius[m] relates as follows: “King Wacho had a cousin who by law ought to have succeeded him on his death; but in order to procure the crown for his son he had Risiulf banished from the land under a false accusation.”

Risiulf with his two sons, one named Hildichis, and a small number of his adherents fled to the Warni, and at the instigation of Wacho was murdered by them; Hildichis’ brother succumbed to an illness, whilst he himself fled and took up his residence with a Slavonian tribe, and then in the time of King Audoin, when war broke out between the Lombards and Gepids, he gave himself up to the latter who also promised to procure for him the royal crown of the Lombards. According to the _Origin_[j] Wacho, son of Winigis and nephew of King Tato, expelled him from the throne. Tato’s son, the rightful heir to the throne, named Hildichis, who sought to assert his rights, was suppressed and obliged to take refuge with the Gepids who from the time of his arrival showed great hatred for the Lombards. Both reports are incomplete but supplement one another well. The event was doubtless this, that Wacho overthrew his uncle Tato, then, when he had become king, banished Tato’s son Risiulf (his cousin) and the latter’s son (Hildichis) from the country, as he wished to insure the crown for his own son Waltari, whilst, not the law, as Procopius erroneously says, but his descent and the love of the people would have won the government for the heirs of the deposed king Tato.

Risiulf was murdered in his flight. Hildichis fled to the Gepids at a time when the discord between them and the Lombards had already reached a high point, and, it seems, by his presence precipitated the outbreak of war. His hope that the Gepids would help him to regain his rights was not fulfilled.

As the Lombards did not feel themselves a match for the Gepids, they had sent ambassadors to Justinian to beg for help which was granted, not in consideration of former agreements which the emperor seldom observed, but because the Byzantine principle was to stand by the weaker side that the stronger might be the more completely destroyed. The Gepids who demanded support or, at least, neutrality, on the grounds of a former treaty promising them Roman help in case of war, were refused, and a Roman army consisting of some ten thousand horsemen and fifteen hundred Herulian warriors advanced against them. Before they met, the imperial troops destroyed a division of three thousand Herulians, who were allies of the Gepids, and compelled them to conclude a separate peace with the Lombards. As a security for the newly formed friendly relations Audoin summoned the king of the Gepids, Thorisind, to surrender Hildichis; meanwhile the latter had escaped and for a long time wandered as an adventurer through various lands.

The first war of the Lombards and Gepids was soon followed by another (549), which also found a speedy ending without any decision being arrived at.

According to Procopius a panic seems to have seized both armies before the battle and put them to disorderly flight. The kings, therefore, again met and concluded a two years’ armistice; at the close of that time hostilities began again. This time also Justinian placed himself on the side of the Lombards--he broke the treaty formed shortly before with the Gepids and sent troops to the field, a division of which was under the command of Amalafrid; only the latter and his soldiers reached the Lombards; the other troops remained in Ulpiana at the imperial command, evidently for the purpose of quelling disturbances there. Nevertheless the Lombards succeeded in invading the Gepidean territory and in completely beating their adversaries; the seat of war was probably Sirmium. Procopius places this battle in the seventeenth year of the war, probably July, 551. It is very probably the same which Paulus[p] describes and during which Alboin, Audoin’s son, unhorsed the son of the Gepidean king, Torismond, in single combat. The terrible defeat compelled the Gepids to seek peace, which was granted them through the mediation of Justinian.

As conditions the Lombards and the emperor demanded the surrender of Hildichis; for after his flight from the Gepids in 548,--after he had first wandered about Italy with Byzantine troops, had then lived amongst a Slav people, and as leader of a troop had served in the imperial palace guard in Constantinople,--he had lately returned to them that he might again assert his claims to the Lombard throne. But as the Gepids were determined not to violate the laws of hospitality and for the same reason the Lombards would not surrender Ostrogothus who had sought refuge with them, after Thorisind had expelled him from his rightful throne, and whose surrender was now demanded in return, Hildichis was not given up; soon after the two princes, not without the connivance of the king, were assassinated (552), that there might be no more occasion for the rupture of the peace just concluded.

Before the outbreak of the war, Audoin at the request of Justinian sent twenty-five hundred picked Lombard warriors as well as three thousand troops to Italy to the army of Narses; with them they went through the famous campaign against Totila, but, owing to their licentiousness after the decisive battle at Taginæ (autumn, 552), they were richly rewarded and sent home under an escort.

The peace concluded with the Gepids lasted as long as Audoin and Thorisind lived; but when they both died and Alboin was ruler of the Lombards (555), while Cunimund had become king of the Gepids, the enmity restrained with difficulty burst out again with redoubled violence.

ALBOIN ANNIHILATES THE GEPID POWER

[Sidenote: [555-567 A.D.]]

According to the tradition, the _Origin_ relates that after the battle in which he had become so famous, Alboin went directly into the hostile country to King Thorisind, to fetch the arms according to ancient custom; on this visit he for the first time saw the lovely Rosamund, the youngest daughter of the late king Cunimund, with whom he fell passionately in love (551).

But political considerations now obliged him to take Clotosuinda, daughter of the Frank king Clotaire I, to wife; when she died his thoughts turned once more to the love of his youth, and as she would not follow him voluntarily he had her brought to his kingdom by force.

Cunimund demanded his daughter back as he did not approve of the union with the hated Lombard: finally war broke out. At first the Lombards had the advantage, but were defeated in the end, when the Gepids succeeded in winning over the emperor Justinus II (Nov. 14, 565); the result was the release of Rosamund. To avenge the defeat and to free himself from oppression, Alboin now sought allies on all sides; he found them at last in the powerful and universally dreaded Avars (settled east of the Pruth on the Black Sea), who only consented to help after long pleading and on very heavy conditions; the Lombards were to give the tenth part of their cattle, and to promise after the victory was obtained to give up half the booty and renounce the whole district of the Gepids. That these demands were granted shows better than any direct proofs in what need the Lombards then were. When Cunimund heard of this formidable alliance, he turned to the emperor Justinus to ask the latter to send him auxiliary troops in accordance with the treaty; he also promised to yield Sirmium, and the land this side of the Drave to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinus did not at once directly refuse the request, but he wilfully made every kind of delay in sending the troops and finally kept them back, not only for the reason given by Menander, but probably because he did not wish to compromise himself and allow the formidable power of the Avars and Lombards, which was superior to that of the Byzantines and Gepids together, to rule his empire. Therefore, he remained a neutral and idle spectator of the unequal strife; he seems to have taken advantage of a favourable opportunity to win possession of the town of Sirmium, as at the fall of the kingdom of the Gepids it appears as already among the Byzantine possessions. The war was opened by the simultaneous invasion of the kingdom of the Gepids by the allies from two sides.

Cunimund first marched against the Lombards to prevent their union with the Avars; but he was beaten by his adversaries in a bloody battle and his army almost completely destroyed. He himself fell in the battle by Alboin’s hand, as his brother Torismond had done many years before; his daughter Rosamund with many others fell as prisoners into the power of the Lombards, and their king now made her his wife without any fear of the paternal opposition.

The booty was immeasurable; nevertheless, the bishop Trasaric and the grandson of the fallen king Reptila succeeded in bringing the royal treasure to Constantinople in safety.

But by this defeat the kingdom of the Gepids was completely destroyed; for what the Lombards did not bring under their sway, fell beneath the harsh yoke of the Avars; and in presumptuous tones the Byzantines rejoiced over the quick destruction of their dangerous foes.[u]

ALBOIN PLANS TO INVADE ITALY

[Sidenote: [565-569 A.D.]]

The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of Alboin. In the days of Charlemagne, the Bavarians, the Saxons, and the other tribes of the Teutonic language, still repeated the songs which described the heroic virtues, the valour, liberality, and fortune of the king of the Lombards. But his ambition was yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror of the Gepids turned his eyes from the Danube to the richer banks of the Po and the Tiber. Fifteen years had not elapsed since his subjects, the confederates of Narses, had visited the pleasant climate of Italy; the mountains, the rivers, the highways, were familiar to their memory; the report of their success, perhaps the view of their spoils, had kindled in the rising generation the flame of emulation and enterprise. Their hopes were encouraged by the spirit and eloquence of Alboin; and it is affirmed that he spoke to their senses, by producing at the royal feast the fairest and most exquisite fruits that grew spontaneously in the garden of the world.

No sooner had he erected his standard, than the native strength of the Lombards was multiplied by the adventurous youth of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of barbarians; and the names of the Gepids, Bulgarians, Sarmatians (or Slavs), and Bavarians, may be distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. Of the Saxons, the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with their wives and children, accepted the invitation of Alboin. Their bravery contributed to his success; but the accession or the absence of their numbers was not sensibly felt in the magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion was freely practised by its respective votaries. The king of the Lombards had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion; while the more stubborn barbarians sacrificed a she-goat, or perhaps a captive, to the gods of their fathers. The Lombards and their confederates were united by their common attachment to a chief, who excelled in all the virtues and vices of a savage hero; and the vigilance of Alboin provided an ample magazine of offensive and defensive arms for the use of the expedition. The portable wealth of the Lombards attended the march (April 2nd, 568); their lands they cheerfully relinquished to the Avars, on the solemn promise, which was made and accepted without a smile, that if they failed in the conquest of Italy, these voluntary exiles should be reinstated in their former possessions.

THE END OF NARSES

They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom they dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine court was subservient to the barbarian cause; and it was for the ruin of Italy that the emperor once listened to the complaints of his subjects. The virtues of Narses were stained with avarice; and in his provincial reign of fifteen years he accumulated a treasure of gold and silver which surpassed the modesty of a private fortune. His government was oppressive or unpopular, and the general discontent was expressed with freedom by the deputies of Rome. Before the throne of Justin they boldly declared, that their Gothic servitude had been more tolerable than the despotism of a Greek eunuch; and that, unless their tyrant were instantly removed, they would consult their own happiness in the choice of a master. The apprehension of a revolt was urged by the voice of envy and detraction, which had so recently triumphed over the merit of Belisarius.

A new exarch, Longinus, was appointed (565) to supersede the conqueror of Italy; and the base motives of his recall were revealed in the insulting mandate of the empress Sophia, “that he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch.”

“I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!” is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards to chastise the ingratitude of the prince and people.[116] But the passions of the people are furious and changeable; and the Romans soon recollected the merits, or dreaded the resentment, of their victorious general. By the mediation of the pope, who undertook a special pilgrimage to Naples, their repentance was accepted; and Narses, assuming a milder aspect and a more dutiful language, consented to fix his residence in the Capitol. His death (572 or 573), though in the extreme period of old age, was unseasonable and premature, since his genius alone could have repaired the last and fatal error of his life. The reality, or the suspicion, of a conspiracy disarmed and disunited the Italians. The soldiers resented the disgrace, and bewailed the loss of their general. They were ignorant of their new exarch; and Longinus was himself ignorant of the state of the army and the province. In the preceding years Italy had been desolated by pestilence and famine; and a disaffected people ascribed the calamities of nature to the guilt or folly of their rulers.

THE LOMBARDS ENTER ITALY

[Sidenote: [569-573 A.D.]]

Whatever might be the grounds of his security, Alboin neither expected nor encountered a Roman army in the field. He ascended the Julian Alps and looked down with contempt and desire on the fruitful plains to which his victory communicated the perpetual appellation of Lombardy. A faithful chieftain and a select band were stationed at Forum Julii, the modern Friuli, to guard the passes of the mountains. The Lombards respected the strength of Pavia, and listened to the prayers of the Trevisans: their slow and heavy multitudes proceeded to occupy the palace and city of Verona; and Milan, now rising from her ashes, was invested by the powers of Alboin (September 3, 569).

Terror preceded his march; he found everywhere, or he left, a dreary solitude;[117] and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without a trial, that the stranger was invincible. Escaping to lakes, or rocks, or morasses, the affrighted crowds concealed some fragments of their wealth, and delayed the moment of their servitude. Paulinus, the patriarch of Aquileia, removed his treasures, sacred and profane, to the isle of Grado, and his successors were adopted by the infant republic of Venice, which was continually enriched by the public calamities. Honoratus, who filled the chair of St. Ambrose, had credulously accepted the faithless offers of a capitulation; and the archbishop, with the clergy and nobles of Milan, were driven by the perfidy of Alboin to seek a refuge in the less accessible ramparts of Genoa. Along the maritime coast, the courage of the inhabitants was supported by the facility of supply, the hopes of relief, and the power of escape; but from the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome, the inland regions of Italy became, without a battle or a siege, the lasting patrimony of the Lombards. The submission of the people invited the barbarian to assume the character of a lawful sovereign, and the helpless exarch was confined to the office of announcing to the emperor Justin, the rapid and irretrievable loss of his provinces and cities.

One city which had been diligently fortified by the Goths, resisted the arms of a new invader; and while Italy was subdued by the flying detachments of the Lombards, the royal camp was fixed above three years before the western gate of Ticinum, or Pavia. The same courage which obtains the esteem of a civilised enemy, provokes the fury of a savage, and the impatient besieger had bound himself by a tremendous oath, that age, and sex, and dignity, should be confounded in a general massacre. The aid of famine at length enabled him to execute his bloody vow; but as Alboin entered the gate, his horse stumbled, fell, and could not be raised from the ground. One of his attendants was prompted by compassion, or piety, to interpret this miraculous sign as the wrath of heaven: the conqueror paused and relented; he sheathed his sword, and, peacefully reposing himself in the palace of Theodoric, proclaimed to the trembling multitude, that they should live and obey. Delighted with the situation of a city, which was endeared to his pride by the difficulty of the purchase, the prince of the Lombards disdained the ancient glories of Milan; and Pavia, during some ages, was respected as the capital of the kingdom of Italy.

THE END OF ALBOIN (573 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [573 A.D.]]

The reign of the founder was splendid and transient; and before he could regulate his new conquests, Alboin fell a sacrifice to domestic treason and female revenge. In a palace near Verona, which had not been erected for the barbarians, he feasted the companions of his arms; intoxication was the reward of valour, and the king himself was tempted by appetite, or vanity, to exceed the ordinary measure of his intemperance. After draining many capacious bowls of Rætian or Falernian wine, he called for the skull of Cunimund [the late Gepid king, his wife’s father], the noblest and most precious ornament of his sideboard. This cup of victory[118] was accepted with horrid applause by the circle of the Lombard chiefs.

“Fill it again with wine,” exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, “fill it to the brim; carry this goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would rejoice with her father.” In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamund had strength to utter, “Let the will of my lord be obeyed,” and, touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin.

Some indulgence might be due to the resentment of a daughter, if she had not already violated the duties of a wife. Implacable in her enmity, or inconstant in her love, the queen of Italy had stooped from the throne to the arms of a subject; and Helmichis, the king’s armour-bearer, was the secret minister of her pleasure and revenge. Against the proposal of the murder he could no longer urge the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis trembled when he revolved the danger, as well as the guilt, when he recollected the matchless strength and intrepidity of a warrior whom he had so often attended in the field of battle. He pressed and obtained that one of the bravest champions of the Lombards should be associated to the enterprise; but no more than a promise of secrecy could be drawn from the gallant Peredeo; and the mode of seduction employed by Rosamund betrays her shameless insensibility both to honour and love. She supplied the place of one of her female attendants, who was beloved by Peredeo, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence, till she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen of the Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin, must be the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this alternative, he chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim of Rosamund, whose undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or remorse. She expected, and soon found, a favourable moment, when the king, oppressed with wine, had retired from the table to his afternoon slumbers. His faithless spouse was anxious for his health and repose; the gates of the palace were shut, the arms removed, the attendants dismissed, and Rosamund, after lulling him to rest by her tender caresses, unbolted the chamber door and urged the reluctant conspirators to the deed.

On the first alarm the warrior started from his couch. His sword, which he attempted to draw, had been fastened to the scabbard by the hand of Rosamund; and a small stool, his only weapon, could not long protect him from the spears of the assassins. The daughter of Cunimund smiled in his fall; his body was buried under the staircase of the palace, and the grateful posterity of the Lombards revered the tomb and the memory of their victorious leader.

The ambitious Rosamund aspired to reign in the name of her lover. The city and palace of Verona were awed by her power, and a faithful band of her native Gepids was prepared to applaud the revenge and to second the wishes of their sovereign. But the Lombard chiefs, who fled in the first moments of consternation and disorder, had resumed their courage and collected their powers; and the nation, instead of submitting to her reign, demanded, with unanimous cries, that justice should be executed on the guilty spouse and the murderers of their king. She sought a refuge among the enemies of her country, and a criminal who deserved the abhorrence of mankind was protected by the selfish policy of the exarch. With her daughter, the heiress of the Lombard throne, her two lovers, her trusty Gepids, and the spoils of the palace of Verona, Rosamund descended the Adige and the Po, and was transported by a Greek vessel to the safe harbour of Ravenna. Longinus beheld with delight the charms and the treasures of the widow of Alboin: her situation and her past conduct might justify the most licentious proposals; and she readily listened to the passion of a minister who, even in the decline of the empire, was respected as the equal of kings. The death of a jealous lover was an easy and grateful sacrifice; and as Helmichis issued from the bath, he received the deadly potion from the hand of his mistress. The taste of the liquor, its speedy operation, and his experience of the character of Rosamund convinced him that he was poisoned. He pointed his dagger to her breast, compelled her to drain the remainder of the cup, and expired in a few minutes, with the consolation that she could not survive to enjoy the fruits of her wickedness. The daughter of Alboin and Rosamund, with the richest spoils of the Lombards, was embarked for Constantinople. The surprising strength of Peredeo amused and terrified the imperial court; his blindness and revenge exhibited an imperfect copy of the adventures of Samson. By the free suffrage of the nation, in the assembly of Pavia, Cleph, one of their noblest chiefs, was elected as the successor of Alboin. Before the end of eighteen months the throne was polluted by a second murder,--Cleph was stabbed by the hand of a domestic. The regal office was suspended above ten years, during the minority of his son Authari, and Italy was divided and oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty tyrants.[w]

[Sidenote: [573-590 A.D.]]

Hard as was the rule of these “guests,” they took only a third of the produce of the country, while the Visigoths had taken two-thirds, and the Burgundians nearly as much. Then the 26,000 Saxons, weary of the presumption of their Lombard allies, decided to evacuate Italy for Gaul. On their first visit to Dauphiné, the Roman general Mummolus drove them back with slaughter. About a year later the Saxons tried again at harvest time. Mummolus allowed them to pass through only on payment of a heavy toll. The Saxons went back to their old home; but the Swabians had moved in, and being driven to bay, slew almost all the host.

The Lombards had soon drifted round Rome; and in 574, under Cleph, had the city besieged. The emperor Justin sent a corn fleet to save the city from starvation; and in 575 sent an army under his son-in-law Braduarius, who lost both the battle and his life.

Still in 579 the popes are crying eastward for help. In 578 the new emperor, Tiberius II, sent money to buy a little respite. Meanwhile, between 568 and 575, the Lombards had five times gone raiding into Gaul. Twice the brave Mummolus threw them back. In 584 the Austrasians, bribed by the emperor Maurice, invaded Italy under their young leader Childebert, and the Lombards were forced to pay them to leave the country. This convinced the Lombards that their ducal oligarchy was a failure; and they made a king of Cleph’s son Authari, giving him the prenomen of Flavius, which thereafter all the Lombard kings retained.[a]

Under the standard of their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood three successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself, the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The first expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the Franks and Alamanni. In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with more loss and dishonour than they had sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and Authari yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly of their twenty commanders; and the hot vapours of an Italian sun infected with disease those tramontane bodies which had already suffered the vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers that were inadequate to the conquest were more than sufficient for the desolation of the country; nor could the trembling natives distinguish between their enemies and their deliverers. If the junction of the Merovingian and imperial forces had been effected in the neighbourhood of Milan, perhaps they might have subverted the throne of the Lombards; but the Franks awaited six days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the Greeks were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which were torn from them after the retreat of their transalpine allies. The victorious Authari asserted his claim to the dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rætian Alps, he subdued the resistance, and rifled the hidden treasures, of a sequestered island in the lake of Comum. At the extreme point of Calabria he touched with his spear a column on the seashore of Rhegium, proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand the immovable boundary of his kingdom.

EXTENT OF LOMBARD SWAY

[Sidenote: [568-774 A.D.]]

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine had separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the empire, with the full remains of civil, of military, and even of ecclesiastical power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of St. Peter, extended over the modern Romagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and Commachio; five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome, of Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latian conquests of the first four hundred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast from Civita Vecchia, to Tarracina, and with the course of the Tiber from Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Chiozza, composed the infant dominion of Venice; but the more accessible towns on the continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony of Amalfi, whose industrious citizens, by the invention of the mariner’s compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to the empire; and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed the landmark of Authari from the shore of Rhegium to the isthmus of Consentia. In Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the liberty and religion of their ancestors; but the husbandmen of Sicily were chained to their rich and cultivated soil. Rome was oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek, perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her own dukes; the independence of Amalfi was the fruit of commerce; and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally ennobled by an equal alliance with the Eastern Empire. On the map of Italy, the measure of the exarchate occupies a very inadequate space, but it included an ample proportion of wealth, industry, and population.

The most faithful and valuable subjects escaped from the barbarian yoke; and the banners of Pavia and Verona, of Milan and Padua, were displayed in their respective quarters by the new inhabitants of Ravenna. The remainder of Italy was possessed by the Lombards; and from Pavia, the royal seat, their kingdom was extended to the east, the north, and the west, as far as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy. In the language of modern geography, it is now represented by the Terra Firma of the Venetian republic, Tyrol, the Milanese, Piedmont, the coast of Genoa, Mantua, Parma, and Modena, the grand duchy of Tuscany, and a large portion of the ecclesiastical state from Perugia to the Adriatic. The dukes, and at length the princes, of Benevento survived the monarchy, and propagated the name of the Lombards. From Capua to Tarentum they reigned near five hundred years.

In comparing the proportion of the victorious and the vanquished people, the change of language will afford the most probable inference. According to this standard it will appear, that the Lombards of Italy, and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous than the Franks or Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must yield, in their turn, to the multitude of Saxons and Angles who almost eradicated the idioms of Britain. The modern Italian has been insensibly formed by the mixture of nations: the awkwardness of the barbarians in the nice management of declensions and conjugations, reduced them to the use of articles and auxiliary verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar words is found to be of Latin derivation; and if we were sufficiently conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might, perhaps, be rejected by the classic purity of Rome.

A numerous army constitutes but a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished by the retreat of the twenty thousand Saxons. When Alboin descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke of Friuli, with the command of the province and the people; but the prudent Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office, unless he had been permitted to choose, among the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient number of families to form a perpetual colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest, the same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo, of Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Benevento; but each of these, and each of their colleagues, settled in his appointed district with a band of followers who resorted to his standard in war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was free and honourable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion.

The posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the soil, which, by every motive of interest and honour, they were bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soldier of his king and his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation displayed the banners, and assumed the appellation of a regular army. Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine.

Many of the most wealthy Italians were slain or banished; the remainder were divided among the strangers; and a tributary obligation was imposed (under the name of hospitality), of paying to the Lombards a third part of the fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure. Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong and insolent guest; or the annual payment, a third of the produce, was exchanged by a more equitable transaction for an adequate proportion of landed property. Under these foreign masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and industry by the labour of the slaves and natives. But the occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness of the barbarians. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored and improved the breed of horses for which that province had once been illustrious.

THE REIGN AND WOOING OF AUTHARI

So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the Lombards of the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and affright the portraits of their savage forefathers. Their heads were shaven behind, but the shaggy locks hung over their eyes and mouths, and a long beard represented the name and character of the nation. Their dress consisted of loose linen garments, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons, which were decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes of variegated colours. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open sandals; and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was constantly girt to their side. Yet this strange apparel, and horrid aspect, often concealed a gentle and generous disposition: and as soon as the rage of battle had subsided, the captives and subjects were sometimes surprised by the humanity of the victor. The vices of the Lombards were the effect of passion, of ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the more laudable, as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners, nor imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. The adventurous gallantry of Authari breathes the true spirit of chivalry and romance. After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of the king of Bavaria; and Garibald accepted the alliance of the Italian monarch. Impatient of the slow progress of negotiation, the ardent lover escaped from his palace and visited the court of Bavaria in the train of his own embassy. At the public audience, the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and informed Garibald that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state, but that he alone was the friend of Authari, who had trusted him with the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the charms of his spouse.

Theudelinda was summoned to undergo this important examination; and after a pause of silent rapture, he hailed her as the queen of Italy, and humbly requested that, according to the custom of the nation, she would present a cup of wine to the first of her new subjects. By the command of her father she obeyed: Authari received the cup in his turn, and, in restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and drew his own finger over his face and lips. In the evening, Theudelinda imparted to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of the stranger, and was comforted by the assurance that such boldness could proceed only from the king, her husband, who, by his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of her love. The ambassadors were dismissed; no sooner did they reach the confines of Italy than Authari, raising himself on his horse, darted his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity. “Such,” said he to the astonished Bavarians, “such are the strokes of the king of the Lombards.” On the approach of a French army, Garibald and his daughter took refuge in the dominions of their ally; and the marriage was consummated in the palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was dissolved by the death of Authari (Sept. 5th, 590), but the virtues of Theudelinda had endeared her to the nation, and she was permitted to bestow, with her hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.

LOMBARD GOVERNMENT AND LAW

From this fact, as well as from similar events, it is certain that the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and sense to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege. The public revenue arose from the produce of land, and the profits of justice. When the independent dukes agreed that Authari should ascend the throne of his father, they endowed the regal office with a fair moiety of their respective domains. The proudest nobles aspired to the honours of servitude near the person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity of his vassals by the precarious gift of pensions and “benefices”; and atoned for the injuries of war by the rich foundation of monasteries and churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy convened the national assemblies in the palace, or more probably in the fields of Pavia: his great council was composed of the persons most eminent by their birth and dignities; but the validity, as well as the execution, of their decrees, depended on the approbation of the “faithful” people, the “fortunate” army of the Lombards.

About fourscore years after the conquest of Italy, their traditional customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin, and ratified by the consent of the prince and people: some new regulations were introduced, more suitable to their present condition; the example of Rothari was imitated by the wisest of his successors, and the laws of the Lombards have been esteemed the least imperfect of the barbaric codes. Secure by their courage in the possession of liberty, these rude and hasty legislators were incapable of balancing the powers of the constitution, or of discussing the nice theory of political government.

Such crimes as threatened the life of the sovereign, or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of death; but their attention was principally confined to the defence of the person and property of the subject. According to the strange jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed by a fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold declares a just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less atrocious injuries, a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word, were measured with scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the prudence of the legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honour and revenge for a pecuniary compensation.

The ignorance of the Lombards, in the state of paganism or Christianity, gave implicit credit to the malice and mischief of witchcraft; but the judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rothari, who derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty. The same spirit of a legislator, superior to his age and country, may be ascribed to Liutprand, who condemns, while he tolerates, the impious and inveterate abuse of duels, observing from his own experience, that the juster cause had often been oppressed by successful violence.

Whatever merit may be discovered in the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of the barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is marked with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their annals is adorned with fair intervals of peace, order, and domestic happiness; and the Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government than any of the other kingdoms which had been founded on the ruins of the Western Empire.

THE DECAY OF ROME

[Sidenote: [590-671 A.D.]]

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt, and continually feared. The inhabitants shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the flames of their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea and the mountains. The Campagna of Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land is barren, the waters are impure, and the air is infectious.

Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of the world: but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city, and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tiber swelled above its banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the Seven Hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that fourscore persons expired in an hour, in the midst of a solemn procession which implored the mercy of Heaven.

A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails, soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war; but as the far greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human race. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and decay; the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations, tempests, and earthquakes; and the monks, who had occupied the most advantageous stations, exulted in their base triumph over the ruins of antiquity.

It is commonly believed, that Pope Gregory I attacked the temples, and mutilated the statues, of the city; that by the command of the barbarian, the Palatine library was reduced to ashes; and that the history of Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous fanaticism. The writings of Gregory himself reveal his implacable aversion to the monuments of classic genius: and he points his severest censure against the profane learning of a bishop, who taught the art of grammar, studied the Latin poets, and pronounced with the same voice the praises of Jupiter and those of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful and recent; the temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus, have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy in the countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical dictator.

Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome might have been erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital principle, which again restored her to honour and dominion.[w]

THE LOMBARD KINGS (636-712 A.D.)

Theudelinda had chosen for her husband and co-ruler, the Thuringian duke Agilulf who reigned from 590 to 615. Under these two the Arian Lombards kept peace with the Catholic church, and Pope Gregory the Great, who is more fully treated under the history of the papacy, deserves honour for arranging the peace and preventing a conspiracy to massacre the Lombards as the French were butchered on the day of the Sicilian Vespers.

Agilulf was followed by Adalwald (Adeloald), 615-624, and he by Ariwald (Arioald), 624-636, who was followed by Rothari (636-652).[a]

From the time when Rothari established the Lombard monarchy by his strong hand, to the reign of Liutprand, the first king who deliberately conceived the design of uniting the whole of Italy under his sceptre, the throne of Pavia passed through many vicissitudes, and the monarchy could only maintain its authority with difficulty against the power of the aspiring nobles, and of the dukes in particular. Rodwald, the son of Rothari, having been assassinated, after a reign of barely six months (652), by a Lombard whom he had grievously insulted, loyalty to the memory of Queen Theudelinda led the nation to set her nephew Aribert, the son of Gundwald of Asti, on the throne. The reign of this monarch (653-661), the first Catholic king of the Lombards, is shrouded in obscurity. According to the dispositions made by him on his death-bed, his two youthful sons, Godebert and Perctarit, were to divide his dominions, one fixing his capital at Pavia and the other at Milan. The consequence of this ill-judged arrangement was a fratricidal civil war. Both belligerents appealed for aid to Grimwald, duke of Benevento, and thus gave this powerful and ambitious ruler the opportunity of placing the crown on his own head (662-671). He entered Pavia as the ally of Godebert; but seized the first favourable moment to murder the young king. Thereupon Perctarit of Milan, the other brother, dreading a like fate for himself, fled to the Avars, leaving his wife Rodelinda and his infant son Cunincbert behind him.

Grimwald, who had married the daughter of Aribert, then ruled the Lombard kingdom for ten years with vigour and prudence, and successfully repelled the attacks of the Franks on the west and of the Greeks on the east. When a Lombard duke, Lupus of Friuli by name, refused to swear allegiance to him, he instigated the chagan of the Avars to make war on the recalcitrant noble. The disloyal governor and the majority of his comrades in arms fell in a four days’ battle against the barbarians (663). The Avars, however, obstinately refused to evacuate the territory which they had purchased with their blood. Grimwald was forced to muster an army to coerce them, but he avoided giving battle and ultimately succeeded by artifice in inducing his savage visitors to withdraw. In order to secure himself against revolt and disloyalty for the future, he conferred the most important dukedoms on his own adherents and friends, taking care to bestow the municipal territories (_civitates_) upon persons who were not native to the respective cities and so had no ties to the soil. Accordingly Benevento fell to the share of his son Romwald; Spoleto to his faithful comrade Transamund, on whom he also bestowed his daughter in marriage; and the duchy of Friuli to Wechtari of Vicenza.

[Sidenote: [671-712 A.D.]]

Grimwald was nevertheless unable to secure the crown for his own line. Death had barely closed the formidable monarch’s eyes before Perctarit was conducted from the frontier to Pavia and proclaimed king amidst loud rejoicings, while Garibald, Grimwald’s son, disappeared from the scene. Of Perctarit’s subsequent reign (671-686), in which he associated his son Cunincbert (686-700) with him in the government, we know nothing except that he waged a protracted war with Alahis, duke of Trient, who had rebelled against him. After the death of Perctarit the struggle took a turn so unfavourable to the royal cause that Alahis, who in the meantime had added the duchy of Brescia to that of Trient, marched into Pavia, forced the king to take refuge on an island in Lake Como, and proclaimed himself king. His reign was brief. Desertion and treachery weakened his cause, and he fell in a decisive battle against Cunincbert not far from Como. Cunincbert then took up his residence once more in the royal palace at Pavia.

DECLINE OF THE LOMBARD KINGDOM

Under Cunincbert’s son Liutbert, who succeeded as a minor under the guardianship of Duke Ansprand, the kingdom of Lombardy fell on evil days. Raginbert, the son of Godebert, a scion of the royal house, who had risen in the reign of Cunincbert to the rank of Duke of Turin, now advanced pretensions to the throne. Ansprand and his ally, Rothari of Bergamo, were defeated on the field of Novara, where the fortunes of Italy have so often been decided. Raginbert did not long survive his victory; but his son Aribert maintained his claims and won a second victory over the opposite party at Pavia. Ansprand escaped to the island in Lake Como where Cunincbert had formerly found refuge; the young king fell into the hands of the victors. Rothari withdrew to his own duchy of Bergamo, but expiated his short-lived dream of sovereignty (for he had aspired to the throne himself) by an untimely death in prison at Turin. The ill-starred Liutbert was murdered in his bath about the same time, and Ansprand was forced to leave his last refuge on Italian soil and flee across the Alps.

Aribert now reigned at Pavia without a rival (701-712). But strenuously as he strove to curb the power of the dukes and to win popularity by the justice of his administration, he was unable to maintain his sovereignty. For eight years Ansprand had waited in vain at the court of the duke of Bavaria for the aid he desired. In the ninth it was granted. He entered upper Italy at the head of an imposing force “to set upon his own head the crown he had not been able to keep for his ward.” Aribert, though not defeated in the field, lost heart and absconded to Pavia. A mutiny arose in the army in consequence, the king’s life seemed to be in danger, and he resolved upon flight. He tried to swim the Ticino, but the weight of the gold he had taken with him dragged him down and he was drowned. The reins of government were then assumed (712) by Ansprand, “a man of conspicuous valour and rare wisdom.” He had only three months to enjoy the good fortune for which he had striven so long; but on his death-bed he had the joy of seeing his son Liutprand raised to the throne and acknowledged king in a solemn assembly of the people.[x]

REIGN OF LIUTPRAND (712-744 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [712-724 A.D.]]

Between the 6th and 13th of June, 712, which is the date, as nearly as we can fix it, when Flavius Liutprand came to the throne, he was, according to all records, in the prime of his manhood. He took to wife a Bavarian princess, Guntrud, the child of Theudibert, who bore him a daughter, their only offspring. The exact time of his marriage is not known. It took place not long after Aribert of the Cottian Alps made his donation to the Roman church; the year in which Gregory II became pope. If this circumstance is taken in connection with the fact that between 715-716 the Bavarian duke, Theodo I (Theudibert’s father), undertook a journey to Rome, highly important to the clerical interests of Bavaria, it cannot be doubted that this duke, whose house had so long been allied in friendship with Liutprand, must have tarried in Pavia to see the king, and that at this interview the further tie of a marriage alliance was first discussed.

The intimate relations between the Bavarians and Lombards lasted up to a late period; they were at one time neighbours in Pannonia, and earlier still there are authenticated accounts of their being related as is shown by the close resemblance in their customs and speech. Most of our information drawn from the earliest Bavarian chronicles, we owe to Paulus,[p] the historian of the Lombards. Even before these latter wandered into Italy the marriage of Walderada, widow of Theudebald of Austrasia and daughter of the Lombard Wacho, had taken place with Garibald, the first duke of Bavaria, under whose reign that country became in fact a dependency of France.

The earlier theory that the Bavarians were once among the Alboin peoples has, it is true, been energetically opposed, but, as the author of this history believes, without grounds. Even as far back as the three kings in Italy, Authari took to wife a Bavarian princess, the much-chronicled Theudelinda, who gave to the kingdom a new dynasty,--if such a word can be used in speaking of the Lombard--and to a certain extent, a new faith.

Many traces are to be found of the subsequent intercourse between the two races, but a close and really important connection did not, so far as can be discovered from the scanty sources of information at our disposal, occur until the time of King Ansprand.

Theodo I had divided his country into five parts, of which he kept one for himself, assigning the remaining four divisions to his four sons--Theudibert, Grimwald, Tassilo II, and Theodobald. Rudhart’s supposition was that Theudibert, with whom the Lombards came almost exclusively into touch, kept the south division, adjoining Liutprand’s kingdom, together with the see of Salzburg.

After Theodobald’s early death his inheritance fell to his surviving brothers; and the same was the case with Theodo’s land after his death in 717 or in 722.

In the year 724 Theudibert also died. He seems to have exercised a kind of supremacy over his brother. He left behind him a son, Hucpert, brother-in-law to Liutprand; when, as presently happened, Grimwald wished to make himself supreme ruler in Bavaria, and to overthrow Hucpert, he turned to his neighbours over the border for help. He received it, and it was on this occasion that Liutprand built some forts on the Etsch (Adige).

LIUTPRAND AND MARTEL

[Sidenote: [534-725 A.D.]]

The wanderings of the Bavarian dukes had given another powerful neighbour, Charles Martel, the ruler of the Franks, the opportunity of interfering with them. There are proofs that friendly intercourse existed between the Franks and the Lombards, even before the latter migrated to Italy. Theudebert I, one of the few descendants of Clovis who has left an honourable name in history, was wedded to Wisigarda, a daughter of King Wacho, whose second daughter, Walderada, was the first wife of Theudebald, the illegitimate son of the successor of Theudebert. All friendly relations between these two peoples ceased with Alboin, who, before he married the notorious Rosamund, took to wife a daughter of Clotair I, named either Clotosuinda or Flutswinda, and after his time we find them opposed and hostile to one another. At first during the years 568, 571, 572, 574, and 575, there were only insignificant battles, brought about by the incursions of the Lombard tribes who were not yet settled in the Frankish territory. More serious, and not exactly conducive to fame or success for the Franks, were the wars which Childebert II, in pursuance of an agreement made by him with the East Roman emperor, himself conducted against Authari down to the year 590. It was only under Agilulf that peace was actually secured in 591.

In 605, in connection with the marriage of King Adalwald with a daughter of Theudebert II, a bond of “everlasting peace between the Franks and Lombards” was sworn to. We are also told by Paulus that King Grimwald almost completely annihilated a Frankish host, which had passed from Provence into upper Italy, but no exact date is furnished. It was only when under the strong rule of the first Carlovingians on the one hand and of Liutprand on the other, when order was to some extent restored in both kingdoms, that the two rulers once more approached one another with a view to the discussion of a foreign policy. In 725 Charles Martel undertook his first campaign, in order to put the Bavarians in mind of their long-forgotten dependence on the Franks. There are no chronicles which tell us whether or not Liutprand then came into communication with his great contemporary. But it is certain that a good understanding existed between them in the years which followed, a friendship which only grew closer with time. This is proved chiefly by the fact that Charles Martel, in his thirties, sent his youthful son Pepin (born 714 or 715) to the Lombard king that the king might cut off his hair “according to the custom.” This Liutprand did, assuming by this act the place of second father to the young man, afterwards sending him home, enriched by many presents. According to two later chroniclers Charles had then already concluded an alliance with Liutprand, an assertion which the historian has rather deduced from later occurrences, than based upon any exact knowledge of the actual facts.

When the Saracens again invaded Gaul, and had pushed on into Provence, Charles sent envoys bearing presents to Liutprand, and asked him for assistance, which was granted. The report of a Lombard army in the neighbourhood was sufficient to induce the “unbelievers,” who had reached the valley of Susa, to retreat, and to the abandonment of Arles (Arelate).

LIUTPRAND AND THE ITALIAN POWERS

[Sidenote: [731-744 A.D.]]

The expeditions to Bavaria and France are the only ones Liutprand undertook outside of Italy. Even within the peninsula his predecessors had not left him very much to do. The change of rulers repeatedly enforced in the second half of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century was, of course, anything but advantageous to the aggrandisement of the Lombard royal house. The leading forces in the country, the dukes, whose power dated from the earliest monarchical times in Italy, made what use they could of the internecine discord to assert their own authority.

At the extreme point of independence of the crown stood the Beneventine dukes, who from time immemorial had maintained a unique position in the south, being indeed recognised by constitutional law as almost independent of the kingly power. They traced back their origin to royal blood, to Duke Gisulf of Friuli, a brother of Alboin.

In 731 Liutprand found an opportunity to interfere in Beneventine affairs. He came in person to Benevento, and took away with him his grand-nephew who was not of age, whilst in his place he installed his nephew Gregory, leaving him peacefully established before he returned.

Gregory, after a reign of about seven years, met his death by violence in 738. By this time the opponents in south Lombardy had chosen a duke for themselves in the person of the otherwise unknown Gottschalk. Whether he had any connection and if so, of what kind, with the native princely house is not to be learned from any of the records. According to Paulus[p] he ruled for three years, 738 or 739 to 742. In the last year, as Liutprand having completely subjugated Spoleto betook himself to an expedition against Benevento, Gottschalk was attacked by the Beneventines, who were hostile to him, and killed. Thus Liutprand on his arrival found his way clear, and placed his great-nephew, now grown to man’s estate, upon the ducal throne as Gisulf II. He then returned to Pavia, and from that time had no occasion to interfere further in Benevento. In Spoleto a similar state of things was the consequence of similar circumstances.

[Sidenote: [719-744 A.D.]]

The Friulian princes owe their distinguished position to the province which Alboin “lent to his cousin Gisulf, his _marpahis_,” and which was occupied by the flower of the Lombard warriors, and more particularly owing to the circumstance that it formed the frontier which was so much exposed to the attacks of the Avars. After the frightful defeat, which Gisulf had once sustained from the Avars, the Lombards bore themselves manfully under constantly recurring attacks; the sons and successors of the first dukes, Taso and Cacco, succeeding in extending their territory as far as what was afterwards called the Windisch boundary-land, the Slav inhabitants of which paid tribute to Friuli up to the time of the duke Ratchis. A second great defeat which Duke Ferdulf suffered at the turn of the seventh century seemed to have no further consequences.

Not long after Ferdulf’s death, which was followed by a short interregnum, Pemmo, father of two kings of widely different characters, King Ratchis and Aistulf, received the dukedom from Aribert II. His reign seems to have been a long one, extending over forty years--that is, far into the time of Liutprand. His first endeavour was to heal the wounds which Ferdulf’s rashness had inflicted upon his country. By a victory in the neighbourhood of Villach he succeeded in sending home a newly arrived tribe of Slavs (Avars) after they had been severely punished. He concluded a peace with his enemy, who from that time forward cherished a salutary respect for the Friulian arms. In later years, however, by his conflict with Callistus, patriarch of Aquileia, he drew on himself the serious displeasure of the king which eventually led to the loss of his dukedom. Till then, the patriarchs, not being secure in their own dominions from the enmity of the East Romans, had always resided at Cormona, but Callistus, who was a “very elegant nobleman” and moreover a particular favourite of Liutprand, who had assisted him to the attainment of his dignity, found the residence of his predecessors in authority too undistinguished, and decided to remove to Friuli, which appeared to him far more suitable. Unfortunately, there already resided here, with the consent of the dukes, the bishop of the neighbouring Tulia Carnica, whose see was at that time held by Amator. The ambitious, high-spirited patriarch drove him, without ceremony, from his own house, and coolly took possession of it. Pemmo, who witnessed this proceeding, but with great disfavour, was not prepared to allow such a thing to happen in his own town. He arrested Callistus, whose life was for some time in danger, kept him in prison, and “let him eat the bread of sorrow.” When Liutprand was informed of the oppression of one of his protégés he took energetic measures, deposed the reigning duke and installed in his stead, Ratchis, the duke’s elder son.

Soon after his appointment, he undertook a successful expedition to devastate the Slav population in Carinthia, with the intention of giving them a warning against any invasion of his territory. With this our information concerning the history of Friuli during the reign of Liutprand comes to an end.

LIUTPRAND, THE POPE, AND CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [712-728 A.D.]]

When Liutprand came to the throne, Peter Constantine was pope at Rome (708-715) and appeared to have no relations with the Lombard king. The first hint of any communication between the two powers relates to a donation of ecclesiastical properties from the Cottian Alps, which King Aribert II had once made to Pope John VII (705-707) and which Liutprand, on his accession, now confirmed to Constantine I, after whose death the gift was revoked, but finally, on the request of Gregory II, again renewed.

Somewhere about this year (717-718) may be dated the first split between the East Romans and the Lombards, and indeed it was the Beneventines who were responsible for the first hostilities. It appears that Constantinople possessed a not inconsiderable district in the heart of the Benevento territory, a duchy which comprised among other towns Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento, Misenum, Puteoli, and Cumæ. In a time of peace, Romwald II seized upon the last-named town which was fortified and therefore of some importance. Gregory II, who at this time, previous to the dispute about iconoclasm, was well disposed towards the Byzantines, interposed with argument, threats of displeasure, and demands for restitution, but in vain. Finally he induced the Greek duke, John of Naples, to intervene, which was from the first his obvious duty. John marched into Cumæ in the dead of night and took possession of the place; three hundred Lombards, among them one Gastald, met their death, and five hundred were led captive to Naples. As a reward Gregory gave John of Naples 70 pounds in gold, which he had promised him if he would undertake the business.

Liutprand was not personally affected by this proceeding, as Benevento had at that time nothing to do with the Lombard kingdom and existed as an independent duchy.

Since the open outbreak of the quarrel about the images, (as described previously under the history of Leo the Isaurian and more fully under the papacy), however, he showed himself inimical first to the extension of the emperor’s possessions in Italy, and in pursuance of the same policy, to Rome as well, which nominally at least was still under imperial rule.

The sides taken in the conflicts which followed, although varying from time to time, may be given briefly as follows: On one side Liutprand against East Rome--the lawful emperor and he never being on friendly terms; on the other the pope--an unequivocal enemy to the emperor ever since the image quarrel, but none the less no sincere ally of the Lombard king, whose ever-extending power he worked in every way to counteract, whilst keeping on the alert lest his machinations to this end should advance the Byzantine interests. He also, when occasion offered, called in the aid of the Beneventine and Spoletine dukes.

The conflict was initiated by Liutprand at a time highly favourable to his main desire which, there can be no doubt, was that all Italy should be united into one kingdom under a Lombard king,--namely in the year 726, when by his energetic attack upon the iconodules in his own territory, the emperor had raised about him an atmosphere of bitterness and insurrection, had especially made a lasting enemy of the bishop in Rome who was regarded by western Europe as the head of the Christian church and was by no means in a position to combat the rebellions in his Italian provinces, or to keep his unwilling vassals under his empire. All these circumstances combined to help Liutprand in his enterprise--the extension of his own power at the cost of that of the empire. No one could have understood better how to turn the mistakes made in Rome and Constantinople to account.

About 726 the Lombards possessed themselves of the fortified town of Narnia (Narni), which at that time belonged to Eastern Rome. After that Liutprand himself marched at the head of the united forces of his kingdom (_generali motione facta_) upon Ravenna, the centre of the Byzantine power in Italy. After a siege lasting many days he succeeded at least in taking Classis, the port of Ravenna, which he destroyed, after sacking it with great profit to himself.

[Sidenote: [728-741 A.D.]]

The emperor, instead of yielding to Gregory II, at least in appearance, and so securing his assistance in resisting the encroachments made by Liutprand, still further widened the gulf between the pope and himself by his stubborn and ungracious demeanour. The consequences were not slow to follow. Even if the many attempts against his life and position described in the biography of the pope are rather imaginary (and due to the dread felt in Rome of Leo III) than attacks which actually occurred, they nevertheless give us the right idea of the temper in Rome at that time; there is no doubt that the appointment of a new pope favoured by the emperor and who might be removed to Constantinople, was contemplated in Italy. The fact of a later successful understanding between the two, such as Gregorovius[aa] and Schlosser[bb] would have us accept, has no authenticated probability. In 728-729 Liutprand and Eutychius were still acting in concert against the pope and his friends; and the imperial edict of 728, wherein “all images of angels, saints, and martyrs were proscribed under penalties” shows no inclination towards reconciliation. Whether the Lombards, who defended the pope at the Ponte Salario against the forces of Eutychius and the exarch Paulus, which were approaching to depose him from the papal chair, acted under instructions from Liutprand, or from Transamund II, duke of Spoleto, or on their own initiative, we cannot discover from the _Vita Gregorii_,[z] which contains the record.

Accordingly whilst a state of great confusion and warfare prevailed both in the east and west of Italy, as well as in the district surrounding Naples, Liutprand continued his victorious career.

To favour the Greeks was not his idea, so long as the pope gave him no offence; moreover he had a certain awe of the church, and of its head, which he never uprooted from his inner nature. Besides, his situation, independent of both sides and therefore alternately feared and courted by both, was the best possible for facilitating the execution of his ambitious and far-reaching projects.

In September of the year 727 till September 728 he addressed himself to a neighbourhood quite dangerously in the vicinity of Rome, seizing the town of Sutrium (Sutri), which, like the strip of country between the dukedoms of Spoleto and Tuscany was not yet incorporated with the Lombard kingdom. By dint of much persuasion and still more gold, he consented 140 days later to return this piece of territory, and leave the pope in possession, “the first presentation of a town to the church”--“the first germ of the pontifical state outside the walls of Rome.”

The following year after the subjection already mentioned, of Spoleto and Benevento, he followed Eutychius against Rome, and encamped on the Neronian meadows to the great dismay of the inhabitants. Nevertheless the matter was conducted to a peaceable issue. After a touching conference with Gregory II the Lombard king not only commenced no hostilities, but showed all possible respect to the papal throne, at the same time cautioning the pope to place himself on a better footing with Eutychius, and his (Liutprand’s) other allies. For this reason the idea of a serious alliance having existed between Liutprand and the emperor cannot be entertained.

Not long after, on the 11th of February, 731, Gregory II died. Under the rule of his successor, Gregory III, an enthusiastic image-worshipper, whose life in the _Liber Pontificalis_[z] is very scantily and unsatisfactorily told, “the Roman district was brought under the control of the accursed Lombards, under the king Liutprand himself,” a sentence which must not, of course, be taken literally, and which unfortunately stands without further explanation.

Probably the decade in which Gregory III sat on the stool of St. Peter, was the period during which these events took place which are only related by Paulus Diaconus.[p] To give an even moderately correct chronology of the sequence of events would be a hopeless endeavour. The battles against the East Romans which are here mentioned, are confined to those in the exarchate of Ravenna. Wherever the king himself led the fight, he always came off victor (according to Paulus), whilst in his absence the Lombards sustained many rebuffs. In the last year of Gregory III the complications between Rome and Liutprand assumed a very serious aspect, the intervention of the pope in Lombard affairs, which were purely secular, costing him dear.

It now appears to have been only by lavish expenditure that he was able to establish a friendly understanding. The fortress Gallese, north of Nepi on the Tiber, till now the object of so much desire, was resigned by Spoleto to the Ducatus Romanus, _i.e._, nominally to the East Roman kingdom, but in reality to the Patrimonium Petri. We have definite information that a formal treaty followed between the pope on the one side and the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento on the other, with the express purpose of restoring and protecting the autonomous rights of the dukes and safe-guarding both the eastern and western possessions of the pope from the clutches of Liutprand.

When, therefore, in 738, the king commenced a campaign in the Roman district in which the neighbourhood, particularly the church property in it, was not spared, the two dukes refused to answer the summons of Liutprand to follow and take part in the spoliation. Thereupon Liutprand abandoned the idea of Rome, and marched next against the insurrectionary duke of Spoleto through the devastated territory of Campania. Transamund did not venture to make any stand against him, but fled in the direction of Rome to Gregory III. Hilderic was promoted by the king to be duke in his stead, and assumed control, probably during June, 739. Liutprand next appealed urgently to the pope for the surrender of the insurrectionary vassals, but, as might have been expected, without success, Patricius the East Roman, and Duke Stephanus the commander of the troops in the Roman duchy both setting themselves in keen opposition to Liutprand’s desires. The latter avenged himself by seizing four towns. After accomplishing this as well as a siege of the Holy City, he returned in August, 739, to Pavia. A letter, the second written by Gregory III in 739 to Charles Martel, which has been preserved, gives a description of the poverty and anxiety in the Papal dominions, and is a veritable masterpiece of the meanest perfidy, in which he adjures Charles Martel by the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, which he had presented to him, to lend his help and strength against the dreaded Liutprand.

Scarcely had the king withdrawn when Transamund II, aided by the troops of the Roman duchy which were left with him in the confidence that he would regain the towns lost to the Romans, applied himself to re-assuming the sovereign power. The entire Roman military force invaded the dukedom of Spoleto in two columns, one town after another surrendered after a short resistance, and in December, 739, Transamund entered his capital in state; Hilderic being removed by murder. “And at this time there was a great disquietude among the Lombardians, as the Beneventines and Spoletines allied themselves with the Romans.”

Now that Transamund again felt himself in some measure secure in his duchy it was in vain that the pope and Patricius admonished him to fulfil his promise, and wrest from the king the four towns which had been lost through his means. The endeavour was next made to gain possession of them by friendly means, through the mediation of the Lombardian bishop, to whom on the 15th of October, 740, Gregory III despatched a pressing letter. All was in vain. Already there were new portents of evil, already Liutprand was arming himself for a new campaign against Rome, when, before the storm broke, came the death of Gregory III on the 29th of November, 741, five weeks after Charles Martel, five months after the emperor Leo III, the Isaurian, his implacable foe; Zacharias, his successor, consecrated on December 3rd, being left behind to quench the fire want of foresight had allowed to break out.

[Sidenote: [741-743 A.D.]]

Zacharias, a Greek, and, as his chronicler[z] tells us, an unusually mild and virtuous ruler, was wise enough to see that, with a man of Liutprand’s character, the sensible and most advantageous course was to get upon good terms.

The new pope, not long after his consecration, sent a legation to Pavia, whose special mission was to negotiate the restitution of the four towns which two years previously had been wrung from the Roman duchy. Liutprand put no great difficulties in the way, and promised the desired concession. In exchange he demanded that the pope should place the Roman troops at his disposal for the campaign he was planning to subdue the faithless Transamund. By this combination Transamund was bereft of all hope that he might be able to maintain his position. He saw himself that there was nothing more to be done, and, renouncing all thought of resistance marched to meet Liutprand to whom he yielded himself captive. It is probable that he intended by this voluntary submission to appeal once more to the king’s gentle disposition. But Liutprand dared make no second attempt to rely upon the faith of his vanquished enemy, and Transamund found himself consigned to a cloister. Liutprand’s nephew took, probably some few years later, the place thus left vacant. Gottschalk’s exit from Benevento, which according to Paulus followed close upon Transamund’s, has been already related. All this occurred between February and September, 742. Thus the unity of the kingdom of Lombardy was at length restored, and an end put to the arrogant insubordination of the crown vassals.

PEACE WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [743-744 A.D.]]

No haste was evinced in Pavia to carry out the promised restitution of the four towns, this tardiness causing the pope great concern. In order to put an end to this uncertainty, and find out whether there really was any chance of the matter being amicably arranged, Zacharias, “like a true shepherd of the flock entrusted to him by God,” set out from the Holy City at the head of his spiritual cortège and marched “full of confidence and brave in heart” to the charmingly situated Interamna (Terni), at that time the headquarters of the Lombards, in order to try what his personal influence would do towards effecting the desired arrangement. Liutprand showed him all honour. “Moved by the pious speech, and full of admiration for the firm courage and admonitions of the holy man,” Liutprand conceded everything he asked, “thanks to the influence of the Holy Spirit,” and gave the four disputed towns, which he had taken on account of the Transamund quarrel, together with their inhabitants, as a present to the church of Holy Peter.

It is noticeable that, as Gregorovius[aa] points out, this restitution did not at all affect the Byzantine emperor, but only the successor of Peter. And in order that the pope might enjoy complete ease of mind, he was further guaranteed a twenty years’ peace. To gratify him Liutprand even set free all the Greek and Roman prisoners of war he had taken in Tuscany and in the territory north of the river Po, amongst whom were men of high rank, such as the consuls Sergius, Leo, Victor, and Agnellus. Thus a final reconciliation was effected, the conditions of which were all Rome could possibly desire.

On the same day the Sunday, after the solemn celebration of the mass, the pope invited his royal friend to his table in order that he, the pope, might impart the apostolic blessing. Liutprand ate on this occasion with such a hearty appetite as to call forth the jovial remark from him that he had never before eaten so well at a midday meal. The next day, Monday, they bade each other farewell.

Liutprand now turned his attention in another direction. The quarrels about the throne, in which the successor to Leo III, Emperor Constantine V (Copronymus), was embroiled with his brother-in-law Artavasdes, incited him to a renewed attack upon the East Roman possession in Italy. The Ravenna district felt the weight of his displeasure, and he found all preparations made for laying siege a second time to the principal town, when Patricius, the exarch Eutychius, and the archbishop John of Ravenna with the people of that city, sought the mediation of the pope, first by letter and then through envoys.

On the 28th of June, 743, the pope reached the river Po. Here he was met by the high vassals of the Lombard crown and conducted to their capital.

The pope disburdened his mind of his desire that the king would not further oppress the province of Ravenna by devastation and yet further that he would restore the towns taken from the Ravenna including the fortress of Cesena. The naïveté of such demands is certainly astonishing, but still more amazing are the unknown circumstances which induced Liutprand to concede so much. At first, it is true, he met them with a stout refusal. But what remained for him, if he would avoid the open conflict he dreaded with the church and its consequences, except submission, unless he sacrificed the security and peace of his realm, the result of years of activity in extending his foreign dominion? In spite of his promise given to the pope, Liutprand appears to have continued harassing the exarchate.

In January, 744, after a reign of thirty-one years and seven months, Liutprand concluded his eventful life. He was buried in the church of St. Adrian, where his father too had found his last resting-place. In the year 1173 his bones were removed to the church of St. Peter’s monastery, so often referred to as “Ecclesia di Ciel d’Oro,” a monastery which owed its existence to him.[y]

HODGKIN’S ESTIMATE OF LIUTPRAND

[Sidenote: [712-744 A.D.]]

In some respects the statesmanship of Liutprand seems to me to have been too highly praised. The one aim which he seems to have consistently and successfully pursued was the consolidation of the Lombard monarchy and the reduction of the great dukes into a condition of real subjection to his crown. He availed himself (and what Lombard king would not have done so?) of any opportunity which offered itself for cutting yet shorter the reduced and fragmentary territories which still called themselves parts of “the Roman Republic.” But both from policy and from his own devout temperament he was disinclined to do anything which might cause a rupture with the see of Rome, and the popes perceiving this, often induced him to abandon hardly earned conquests by appealing to “his devotion to St. Peter.”

I cannot better close this chapter than by quoting the character of Liutprand given us by the loving yet faithful hand of Paulus Diaconus[p] in the concluding words of that history, which has been our chief guide through two dark and troubled centuries:

“He was a man of great wisdom, prudent in counsel and a lover of peace, mighty in war, clement towards offenders, chaste, modest, one who prayed through the night-watches, generous in his almsgiving, ignorant it is true of literature, but a man who might be compared to the philosophers, a fosterer of his people, an augmenter of their laws.”[b]

For the present we must leave the fortunes of the Lombards to trace the origins and the rise of the Frankish people who now loom large across the horizons of Italy and to whom the papacy appeals for help against the powers that threaten its enormous and greedy ambition.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[114] [We may say here with Hodgkin[b] in using the word Lombards before its strict time, “it seems not worth while to encumber the text by the constant repetition of a long and somewhat uncouth race-name, but the reader is asked to remember that in strictness the form Langobardi should be preserved.” It is the 12th century before the words “Lombard” and “Lombardy” come into general use and then largely with a geographical reference to Northern Italy, rather than an historical reference to the Langobard conquerors of far more than Lombardy. The origin of the name “Langobard” has been discussed under the “Eastern Empire,” Chapter IV.]

[115] [Hodgkin,[b] however, says,“The war between King Tato and King Rodulph is narrated by Procopius as well as by Paulus and can be assigned without much risk of error to a definite date, 511 or 512.”]

[116] [The distaff story is told by Paulus[p] Diaconus, who wrote two centuries later and quoted a work a century earlier. Isidore of Seville,[v] however, who wrote only half a century after Narses’ recall, accuses him of calling in the Lombards. The story is none the less somewhat dubious.]

[117] [Hodgkin[b] says of the Lombards: “They are the anarchists of the Völkerwanderung, whose delight is only in destruction, and who seem incapable of culture. Yet this is the race from which, in the fullness of time, under the transmuting power of the old Italian civilisation, were to spring Anselm and Lanfranc, Hildebrand and Dante Alighieri.”]

[118] [This custom of making a drinking cup of an enemy’s skull originally came from Asiatic Scythia, and was widely diffused in northern Europe: nowhere was it more religiously observed than in Scandinavia, the cradle of the Lombards. Their historian avers that he had seen the cup with his own eyes: _Hoc ne cui videretur impossibile,--veritatem in Christo loquor--ego hoc poculum vidi in quodam die festo_, etc. _Paulus Diaconus_,[p] lib. ii. cap. 28.

A modern Italian historian (Botta), totally unacquainted with the manners of the north, expresses great surprise at this act of Alboin: _La naturale ferocia pel vino e per la vittoria a oltraggio fatta insolente, lo menava a tal atto di cui non è memoria nelle storie delle piu barbare nazioni_, etc. The thing was common enough, as abundantly appears from the Scandinavian records.]