CHAPTER XI THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY, AND THE RISE OF THE PAPACY 568-653 The Wanderings of the Lombards-Alboin conquers Northern Italy-His tragic end-Anarchy among the Lombard dukes-Reign of Authari, and Frankish wars-Conquest and conversion of Agilulf-Rothari the Lawgiver-State of Rome and Italy-Career of St. Gregory-He founds the temporal power of the Papacy. IN the third year of Justin 11., and only fifteen years after Narses had swept the Goth and Frank out of Italy, a new horde of barbarians came pouring down on that unhappy land. The ravages of eighteen years of war, and a terrible pestilence which supervened, had left all the northern parts of the peninsula desolate, and well-nigh uninhabited, — 'the land seemed to have sunk back into primeval silence and solitude.'1 The imperial troops held a few strong places beyond the Po, such as Verona and Pavia, but had made no effort to restore the military frontier along the Alps, and the land lay open to the spoiler. Southern Italy had suffered less, and Ravenna was still strong and well guarded, but the Transpadane lowlands-destined ere long to change their name to the 'Lombard plain'-were as destitute of civil population as they were of military resources. The new invaders of Italy were the Lombards (Langobardi), a Teutonic people, who, according to their ancient tribal 1 Paulus Diaconus, ii. 5. legends, had once dwelt in Scandinavia, but had descended ten generations before into northern Germany, and from thence had slowly worked their way down to the Danube. They had only come into touch with the frontier of the empire when Odoacer smote the Rugii, in 487. After that tribe had been scattered, they moved into its abiding place on the mid-Danube, and became the neighbours of the Ostrogoths and the Gepidae. The Lombards. The Lombards were the least tinctured with civilisation of all the Teutonic tribes, even more barbarous, it would seem, than our own Saxon forefathers. Living far back in the darkness of the North, they had been kept from any knowledge of Roman culture, and did not even approach the boundaries of the empire till it had already been broken up and laid desolate. They were still heathen, and still living in the stage of primitive tribal life which Tacitus painted in the Germania. They were divided into many tribal families, or clans, which they called 'faras,' and their subdivisions were ruled by elective aldermen1 or dukes, but the whole nation chose its king from among the royal houses of the Lethings and Gungings, who claimed to descend from Gambara, the wise queen who had led the race across the Baltic from Scandinavia ten generations back. During the times of Justinian's Ostrogothic war the Lombards were under the rule of Audoin, whom Narses bribed with great gifts to aid him against Baduila. Five thousand warriors, under the command of their king himself, joined Narses in the invasion of Italy in 552, and took a distinguished part in the victory of Taginae. It must have been in this campaign that the Lombards learnt of the fertility and the weakness of Italy; but they were still engaged in wars with their neighbours on the Danube, and their king was an old man, wherefore we need not think it strange that they waited fifteen years before they turned their knowledge to account. 1 The Lombards seem to have called them 'Aldones'-cf. Ealderman in English antiquity. The Lombards were the close neighbours and the bitter foes of the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who had remained behind in the Hungarian plains when the other sections of the Goths moved westward to Spain and Italy. The long struggle between Lombard and Gepid only came to an end in 567, when the Lombards called in to their aid Wars of the Tartar race of the Avars, and by their assist- Alboin. ance almost entirely exterminated the Gepidae, whose scattered remnant only survived as slaves of the conquering horde. By this time Alb oin, the son of Audoin, was reigning over the Lombards. He it was who slew with his own hand Cunimund, the king of the Gepidae. The barbarous victor struck off the head of his enemy, and had the skull mounted in gold, and fashioned into a drinking-cup, as the supreme token of his triumph. Yet, but a short time before, ere the last struggle had begun between the Lombards and the Gepidae, he had taken to wife Rosamund, the daughter of the man whom he now slew and beheaded. THE LOMBARD KINGS IN ITALY. 10. GODEBERT 662. 5. ADALOALD Gundiberga = 6. ARIOALD 9. ARIBERT 615-25. Reginbert, duke of 15. ARIBERT II. 625-36. 653-62. Kings not connected with this House were (7) Rothari, 636-52; (8) Rodoald, 652-53; (16) Ansprand, 712; (17) Liutprand, 712-43; (18) Hildebrand, 743-44; (19) Ratchis, 744-49; (20) Aistulf, 749-56; (21) Desiderius, 756-74. Having ended this great national feud by the extermination of the Gepidae, Alboin determined to put into effect a scheme which must have been long maturing in his brain, the conquest of Italy. The Lombard historian of a later day asserted that he had been tempted to the invasion by the treachery of Narses, who, in discontent with Justin II., had urged Alboin to invade the peninsula, and sent him as gifts samples of all the generous fruits and wines that Italy produces. But this is the mere echo of a Lombard saga. Narses, now over eighty years of age and on his death-bed, had other matters to think about than the spiting of his new master. Nor did the Lombards, who had ridden all over Italy in 552, need to be reminded of its existence or its fertility. Before leaving Pannonia, Alboin made over his old kingdom to his allies the Avars, only stipulating that it should be restored to him if ever he returned from Italy; a rather futile compact to make with such a faithless race as this Tartar horde. Crossing the Carinthian Alps, in the summer of 568, the whole Lombard nation-men, women, and children, with their cattle and slaves-descended into the Venetian plains, and spread themselves over the deserted lands. There was hardly any opposition. In cities that had once been great, like Aquileia and Milan, the scanty population did not even close the gates, but awaited the invader with apathy. Only the places where there was an Imperial garrison offered resistance. Verona, protected by the rushing Adige, Padua in its marshes, and Pavia, the ancient royal city of the Goths, were among the few towns that refused to admit the Lombards. The newcomers spread themselves over the whole valley of the Po, as far as the Tuscan Apennines and the gates of Ravenna, and begun to settle down on the fairest spots among the ruined Roman villages. They divided themselves, like the Franks in Gaul or the East-Angles in Britain, into two folks, the Neustrian, or Western, and the Austrian, or Eastern, Lombards. The former stretched from the Cottian Alps to the Adda, the latter from the Adda to the Alboin conquers Northern Italy. Julian Alps. Piedmont formed the bulk of Neustria; Venetia the bulk of Austria. Many scattered portions of tribes came to join Alboin in his new conquest. Not only did he grant lands to broken bands of Saxons and Suabians, but even foreigners, such as Bulgarians and Slavs, found shelter with him. While Alboin was founding the new kingdom of Lombardy, the cities which at first resisted began to drop into his hands. Verona fell early, but Pavia made a long defence. So desperately did it hold out against the host left to blockade it that the king swore, in his wrath, to slay every living thing within its walls. But when, after three years, the starving citizens threw open their gates, he relented of his hard vow, 'because there was much Christian folk in that city,' and made Pavia his capital and royal stronghold. In the next year, however, he came to his end. The Lombard chronicler, Paul the Deacon, repeating some familiar Lombard saga, tells the grim tale of his death thus :-'King Alboin sat over long at the wine in his city of Verona, so that he grew boisterous, and he sent for the cup which he had made from the skull of king Cunimund, his father-in-law, and forced his queen, Rosamund, to drink from it, bidding her drink joyfully with her father. Then the queen conceived a deep grief and anger in her heart, and questioned with herself how she might avenge her father by slaying her husband. So she strove to persuade Helmichis, the king's armour-bearer, who was also his foster-brother, to slay his lord. And Helmichis would not, but counselled her to win Peredeo, the strongest champion of the Lombards, to do the deed. Then Rosamund sold her honour to Peredeo, and became his mistress, and said to him, "Now hast thou done a thing for which either thou must kill Alboin, or he thee." So he unwillingly consented to the deed, and at mid-day, when all the palace lay asleep, Rosamund bound the king's sword so tightly to the bed-head that it could not be drawn, and then bid Peredeo go in and slay her husband. When Alboin heard |