archaic workmanship, a marvellous example of the earliest art of a Teutonic people just emerging from barbarism. With it is preserved the crown of Agilulf, which he dedicated to St. John, and which bears the inscription: AGILULF GRATIA DEI

VIR GLORIOSUS REX TOTIUS ITALIAE OFFERT SANCTO IOHANNI BAPTISTAE IN ECCLESIA MODICIAE.

Conquests of Agilulf.

The first three kings of the Lombards had been short-lived, but Agilulf survived for the respectable term of twenty-five years (591-616), and reigned long enough to see his son grow up and become his colleague on the throne. More fortunate than his predecessor Authari, he was delivered from the danger of Frankish invasions by the series of wars between the sons of Brunhildis and Fredegundis, which broke out in 593, and afterwards by the home troubles of Austrasia and Burgundy, caused by the strife between Brunhildis and the great nobles. Agilulf was, therefore, enabled to lop away from the empire several of the detached districts which had hitherto adhered to it. For the greater part of his reign he was in constant war with the Romans, and stripped the exarchs of Sutrium, Orte, Tuder, Perugia, and other south-Tuscan and Umbrian towns (598). By the mediation of Pope Gregory the Great a treaty was, for the first time, concluded between the Lombards and the empire in 599, but the exarch Gallicinus broke the peace, by seizing the person of Agilulf's daughter as she chanced to be passing through imperial territory. This second Lombard war, which fell into the reign of Phocas, proved most disastrous for the Romans. Agilulf began by capturing Padua, the great fortress of the Venetian marshes (602). The fall of Padua cut off Mantua from succour, and that city, the last stronghold of the empire in the interior of Lombardy, also fell in 602. The ministers of Phocas only obtained a final pacification in 605 by promising to pay an annual tribute of 1200 gold solidi, and ceding the south-Tuscan strongholds of Orvieto and Bagnarea.

There was no more fight left in emperor or exarch for

many a year; in the throes of the disastrous Persian war, Phocas and Heraclius were unable to send aid to Rome or Ravenna. The opportunity afforded to Agilulf of completing the conquest of Italy was such as never occurred again. But contented with his annual tribute, and perhaps tamed down by approaching old age, the Lombard king remained quiescent. Apparently he preferred to give his realm peace, and to occupy himself in keeping down his unruly dukes. In the course of his reign there were three or four dangerous rebellions of these chiefs, but Agilulf put them all down, apparently without much difficulty. There was also trouble on the north-eastern frontier from the Avars and Slavs, the same foes who were so grievously afflicting the Roman empire at this time. The Slavs made their way into Istria and Cilly, and became troublesome neighbours to Italy, though some of their nearest tribes were reduced to pay tribute by the dukes of Friuli. The Avars were more active and more dangerous; in spite of repeated treaties with Agilulf, their Chagan burst into north Italy in 610, slew Gisulf, duke of Friuli, in battle, ravaged all Venetia, and carried off many captives. Fortunately for the Lombards these invasions were not continued, as the Avars found better prey and less fighting in the Balkan peninsula.

In spite of such troubles, the reign of Agilulf was a time of growth, expansion, and ripening civilisation for the Lombards. They had all, by the end of his reign, received Christianity, had settled down in their new home, and were beginning to build churches and palaces, instead of confining their attention to destroying them. Agilulf had found a modus vivendi with Gregory the Great and the Papacy, and taught his subjects to live in some sort of peace with their neighbours, instead of persisting in the unending war which had filled the first thirty years of Lombard dominion in Italy.

Agilulf was succeeded by his only son, Adaloald, a boy of fourteen, whom he had induced the Lombard witan to salute as his colleague, and raise on the shield some years before. The

regency was held by queen Theodelinda, who was both pious and popular, till the young king came of age; but soon after he had attained his majority, Adaloald was stricken with madness, and the nation chose in his stead Arioald, duke of Turin, who appears to have been no kinsman of the royal house, but had married the young king's sister, Gundiberga (626). Little is known of this king's reign of twelve years; we hear neither of wars with the Franks, nor of conquests from the Roman; we only read that he was, unlike his predecessor, an Arian. When he died, however, he was succeeded by a ruler of far greater mark, 'Duke Rothari of Brescia, of the race of Arod, a strong man, and one who walked in the paths of justice, though he was not an orthodox Christian, but followed the deceitful heresy of the Arians.'

Rothari finally completed the conquest of northern Italy, by taking the two districts which had still remained in the hands of the Imperialists down to his day. He subdued the whole Ligurian coast from Nice to Luna, with the great city of Genoa its capital (641). He also took the city of Oderzo, the last mainland possession of the Romans Conquests of Rothari, in Venetia. After this time the lagoon islands 636-52. alone acknowledged the eastern Caesar as their suzerain, and their homage was formal rather than real. Rothari's conquests were not won without severe fighting. His greatest victory was won on the Scultenna, not far from Modena, over the exarch Plato, who had invaded Lombard territory, but was defeated with a loss of 8000 men, and driven back into Ravenna. The new activity of the Romans, to which this battle bears witness, may be attributed to the fact that the Persian and Saracen wars of Heraclius were at last ended, and under his grandson, Constans II., the Eastern empire was beginning to recover some measure of strength (642).

But Rothari is better remembered as the framer of the Lombard Code of Laws than as the conqueror of Liguria. In 643 he published the compilation of the traditional usages

of the nation, which had hitherto never been committed to writing. It is noticeable that the code is promul- Laws of gated, not on the king's personal authority, but, Rothari. like the English laws of Ine, 'Pro communi gentis nostrae utilitate, pari consilio parique consensu cum primatis judicibus nostris cunctoque felicissimo exercitu nostro'—that is to say, by the king, with the counsel of his witan, and the assent of the armed folk-moot of the Lombard nation. The Edictum Rotharis is a very primitive body of legislation, such as might have been promulgated in the depths of the German forests, instead of in the heart of Italy. It is mainly composed of elaborate lists of weregelds, of laws against armed violence, of rules of inheritance, of statements concerning the obligation of the follower towards his lord, of provisions for judicial duels, per campionem. There is hardly any mention either of things ecclesiastical or of city life, merely a provision against breach of peace in a church, and some rules about magistri comacenses, or skilled Roman artisans. We have from the laws a picture of a people dwelling apart by families, or faras, each in its own farm-clearing, surrounded by woods or open pasture land. Some are free Lombards,' called even thus early 'barones,' others the 'men' of a duke or of the king. Below them are aldii, who correspond to medieval villeins, the half-free occupiers of the land of the Lombard master. These, no doubt, are the remains of the old Roman populalation, coloni who had once cultivated the massa of a Roman curialis. The royal authority is found relegated to the local dukes in all military matters, while civil affairs are dealt with by the king's schulthais, or reeve (as the old English would have called him), or to the castaldus, who seems to have been the king's representative in the city, as opposed to the countryside. It is noticeable, as showing the extremely un-Roman character of the Lombard laws, that they are drawn up by a German official, the notary Ansoald, not by a Roman bishop or lawyer, as would certainly have been the case in Gaul or Spain. Their execrable Latin, which makes light of all

concords, or rules of government of prepositions, could not have been the work of any educated Italian.

With the death of Rothari in 652, began a time of trouble and confusion for the Lombards, in which they ceased to win ground from the Romans, and fell into civil strife and anarchy. It commenced by the murder of Rothari's son, Rodoald, after he had reigned less than six months. He was a prince of licentious manners, and fell a victim to the dagger of an outraged husband (653).

The eighty years of Italian history during which the Lombards were settling down in the valley of the Po, and along the Umbrian and Samnite slopes of the Apennines, have won their chief importance in the story of the world, not from the doings of Agilulf or Rothari, but from the events that were taking place in Rome. To these years we may ascribe the foundation of the temporal power of the Papacy, and the development of the œcumenical position of the bishop of Rome to an extent which had hitherto been uncontemplated. These movements owe most of their strength to a single man, Pope Gregory the Great.

Rise of the

After the first shock of the Lombard invasion had rent Italy in twain, the Imperial governors resolved to take up their residence in Ravenna, not in Rome-in the capital of the Italy of Theodoric, not that of the Italy of Augustus. They chose the strong marsh-fortress close to the Lombard border, not the decayed city of the Tiber, still scarred by the traces of Baduila's harrying. The exarch stationed himself Papacy. at Ravenna, and delegated his civil and military authority in the scattered portions of Imperial Italy to minor officials, of whom the duces of Rome and Naples were the chief. This removal of the seat of the viceroy from the ancient metropolis was destined to have the most far-reaching results. Its first was that the chief lay official in Rome was an individual of far less authority and prestige than the chief ecclesiastical personage there resident, The bishops of Rome had always been men of importance; their claim to a