The more humane, chivalrous, and sympathetic traits of the Lombard character doubtless rendered possible that amalgamation with the conquered Italian race which was found to be impossible in the case of the Goths.12 The gradual fusion of the Lombard with the Italian race was very probably that from which originated in course of time the new Italian art which showed itself first in Lombard-Romanesque architecture and later in Tuscan sculpture and painting—although externally all three may have been modified by other influences. On the other hand, as been already remarked, the Lombards by their partial conquest and by their want of organized government undoubtedly aggravated the disintegration of Italian nationality. Whether such disintegration was favourable to art is a question that is easier to ask than to answer, but that it deferred Italy's risorgimento for many centuries is incontestable.

It will be remembered that Alaric's successor, the Visigoth Athaulf, renounced his design of founding a Gothic Empire because he had become convinced that the Goths were incapable of self-government and that the only possibility of securing order lay in their respect for the ancient Roman constitution. Also Theoderic and his daughter Amalasuntha, in spite of their intense desire to found an United Italy, had to convince themselves that Gothic influences were too strong for them. The Lombards also failed, but for other reasons. They had not invaded Italy, as Theoderic had done, in the name of the Empire, nor had they his reverence for the Empire. How far they abolished Roman law and the Roman magistracies it is not easy to prove; but it is certain that they introduced to a large extent their own system of government. Now this government depended solely on laws handed down by oral tradition and far more suited to the conditions of their former wild nomad life than to the circumstances in which they now found themselves as a dominant race of comparatively small numbers in a land that for many centuries had been the center of European civilization. Moreover the controlling influence that the Lombard king exercised over his warriors was much weakened by the dispersion of his subjects over almost all Italy and by the creation of a large number of duchies, some of which, being at a great distance, soon became practically independent under the rule of princes who founded hereditary dynasties. Also, the king, though supreme in case of war, had no hereditary rights—a fact that caused much bloodshed and disturbance—and although his authority was represented at the ducal courts by officers (gastaldi) who were intended to control finances, exact war tribute, and supervise military matters, these were more and more thwarted by the dukes' private counselors and provincial governors (gasiadi and sculdasci). Thus decentralization and disorganization prevented the Lombard kingdom from becoming one firmly consolidated, dominant state. But this very failure to impose domination led in time to fusion with the various Italian peoples, and, although it deferred the formation of an Italian nation, it doubtless was a blessing in disguise.

On the death of Autharis in 590 Theodelinda,13 whose character and intellect had impressed the Lombard nobles, was requested by them to select one of the dukes as her royal consort. After taking consilium cum prudentibus (says Paul the Deacon) she chose Agilulf, a relation of Autharis and duke of Turin, who was crowned at Milan, in the church of S. Ambrogio. He and she reigned together for twenty-five years. This reign is interesting for several reasons. Agilulf is regarded by some writers, among whom is Ranke, as the first Lombard king who tried, doubtless with the advice of his wise queen, to introduce a more stable and centralized form of government. Again, for the student of the origins of Italian art, especially of Romanesque architecture, this period offers some seductive and not fully explored vistas. Then Gregory the Great is an impressive personality, and his relations to the Lombard king and queen and to other notabilities, as well as his connexion with England, make the subject still more interesting. I shall therefore leave it to be treated more fully in a later chapter, and shall go rapidly onwards with the narrative of events.

Agilulf found himself faced by three formidable enemies—the Franks, the Byzantines, and the Romans—who, had they acted in concert, might have easily overpowered him. Fortunately for the Lombards, the Franks were still occupied by intestine discords, for their kingdom, which consisted of two antagonistic realms (Neustria and Austrasia) inhabited by the very diverse races of the Salic and the Ripuarian Franks, had been subdivided between several rival heirs at the death of Clothar (558) and again at the death of Childebert in 596. The second opponent of Agilulf, the Byzantine power, was hampered by the hate of the Italian people, and was also at this time, as so often before, occupied by troubles in the far East, where the powerful dynasty of the Persian Sassanidae had for nearly four centuries defied the Empire—and continued to do so until Persia was conquered by the Mohammedans in 651. The third adversary was the 'duchy' of Rome, still nominally under a Byzantine governor, but really to a great extent independent of the Ravenna Exarch14 and in voluntary submission to the authority of the Pope, whose authority, both civil and spiritual, was exerted strongly against the Lombards as aliens and as Arians. But Agilulf, again doubtless guided by the counsels of his wife, found means to appease the Franks—who gave no more trouble for some time—and to hold his own against the Byzantines, while Theodelinda herself, as we shall see, at last succeeded in gaining the affectionate friendship of her husband's most strenuous adversary, Pope Gregory, who was charmed by the prospect of converting the heretical Lombards to Catholicism through her influence.

However, before all this took place Agilulf had some years of hard fighting. First he was obliged to chastise the insubordinate dukes of Orta, Treviso, and Bergamo. The last of these, Gaidulf, (Susan note -commas) had fortified himself in the Isola Comacina, the stronghold in the Lake of Como which, as we have seen, had been taken a few years before by Autharis from the Byzantines. Agilulf, having captured the island, where he is said to have found a considerable treasure, chased Gaidulf to Bergamo and made him prisoner, but wisely spared his life, thus gaining his friendship. He then began to think of subduing the too independent duchy of Benevento. Now the southern Lombard duchies of Benevento and Spoleto had proved not only rebels against their king, but also so threatening to Rome that Gregory, who (to use his own words) 'scarcely knew any longer whether he was a pastor or a temporal prince,' after many vain appeals to Ravenna, signed a treaty with the gens nefandissima Longobardorum, as he used to call them.

Hereupon Agilulf, in the spring of 593, marched south, determined to attack Rome. Here there was such consternation that Gregory broke off his public homilies on Ezekiel and girded on his sword. However, whether the Romans, inspired by the martial ardour of their Pope, offered too vigorous a resistance, or whether the malarial fever of the Campagna proved too deadly, Agilulf, after devastating the country, retired northwards, and for the next few years Italy had peace from Lombards and also from Byzantines, for in the East serious disorders were being caused by the threatening attitude of the Avars and by the murder of the Emperor Maurice by the usurper Phocas, of whom we shall hear more ere long.

During the later years of Pope Gregory's life a very friendly feeling grew up between him and the Lombard king, mainly by means of Theodelinda, who as a Bavarian princess had been brought up in Catholicism, and who, like our Queen Bertha, exercised a strong religious influence on her husband. Whether Agilulf actually renounced Arianism is uncertain, but he allowed his infant son Adelwald to be baptized (603) as Catholic, as we learn from Gregory's correspondence with the queen on the subject of his little godson. This doubtless favoured strongly the popularity of Catholicism among the Lombards. It was however some time before they renounced entirely their heretical form of Christianity.

Since 600 Gregory had been much tormented by gout, and in 604 the disease put an end to his life.

It seems that the popularity won by Agilulf and Theodelinda through their strong and wise government, and their encouragement of civilized arts and manners, allowed them to assume the privilege of hereditary sovereignty, for in this same year (604) their son, scarce two years old, was proclaimed heir to the throne. This took place at Milan, in the presence of the envoy of Theudebert II, the king of the Franks, whose infant daughter was at the same time formally betrothed to the little Adelwald. After this event we hear but little of Agilulf's reign, and, except that the north-eastern Lombard territory, especially the duchy of Fruili (Cividale), for a time was invaded by great hordes of the Avars, the Tartar race of whom we have already heard several times,15 the last ten years of his life seem to have passed quietly, formal peace existing between the Lombards and the Exarchate; and during this period, and still more during the next ten years, Theodelinda was doubtless occupied in building some of her many churches and towers, in decorating her palace, in entertaining artists and Catholic prelates and missionaries and other men of note.16

On Agilulf's death his son Agelwald, now a boy of twelve, an ardent Catholic, succeeded him under the regency of his mother. Of the events of his reign (615‑25) we know very little. Finally Arian nobles fomented a rebellion which compelled him to flee for refuge to Ravenna, and Ariwald, an Arian, was set on the throne. Theodelinda possibly joined her son for a time, but she seems to have returned and to have lived as a guest at the Lombard court, where she was held in honour; for the new king married her daughter Gundeberga. She died in 628, at Perledo. Ariwald died in 636 and Gundeberga was requested, as her mother had been, to choose another husband as her royal consort. She chose Rotharis (Rotheric, Roderic, or Rotari), duke of Brescia—a choice that for the general weal seems to have proved more successful than for her personal happiness, seeing that, like her late husband, her new lord was Arian, and was so much less tolerant of her Catholic propensities that he imprisoned her closely, its is said, for five years in his palace at Pavia, whence she was released on the intercession of Clovis (Chlodwig II), the Frank king. She gave up the rest of her life to good works, and followed Theodelinda's example by rebuilding the basilica of S. Giovanni17 in Pavia, in which she buried her two husbands.

Rotharis reigned sixteen years (636‑52). He is specially celebrated as the great Lombard legislator, but in the first half-dozen years of his reign he also distinguished himself by extending the Lombard dominion from the region of Luna (Spezia and La Lunigiana) over Liguria and up to the Frank frontier near Marseille, capturing Genoa from the Byzantines as well as smaller maritime towns such as Levanto and Sestri. In 642 he also, says Paul the Deacon, inflicted a great defeat near the river Panaro. Doubtless his boldness and his success were both considerably due to the following events, which prevented the Eastern Emperor, Heraclius, from paying much attention to Italy.

In the earlier years of his reign Heraclius had been so alarmed by the audacity of the Persians, who in 615 had captured Jerusalem (whence they carried off the Cross—what was left of it!) and had even made alliance with the Avars of Hungary and threatened Constantinople itself, that, it is said, he thought of removing the capital of the Empire to Carthage. But he seems to have suddenly developed courage and vigour, and finally succeeded in crushing both the Avars and also the Persians and recovering from them all the captives as well as the captured Cross, which he carried in triumph to Constantinople and then took back to Jerusalem.

This happened in 628‑29, exactly at the same time that a new and formidable power first began to arise in the East; for in 629, seven years after the Hegira (Flight), Mecca was taken and the Holy War was declared by the great Arab prophet. Mohammed himself headed his armies in this Holy War for only four years. He died in 632; but his Caliphs extended their conquests so rapidly that between 634 and 640 Damascus, Antioch, Jerusalem, Mesopotamia, and Egypt had fallen, and the Saracens,18 as the Moslems were called by the Greeks and Latins, were soon afterwards threatening Europe.

This new danger that had so suddenly gathered not only in the east but in the south compelled Heraclius to think of some means of defence — for it was no longer possible to escape by transferring the seat of Empire to Africa. Closer political union of all parts of the Empire seemed his one hope, and he felt, as other Emperors had already felt, that the only chance of attaining political unity was through religious uniformity; and possibly the successful hierarchy of the Moslem caliphs may have confirmed his belief in the {GREEK SPAN} (king and priest) doctrine of the Eastern Emperors.19 He attempted therefore to conciliate the Catholics and the heretical sects in the East (who were more inclined to make common cause with Islam than to accept the Trinity and the 'double nature' of Christ), but his 'Exposition of Faith' (Ecthesis) was repudiated with scorn in Italy, and like Zeno and Justinian and many others, he found that any endeavour to reconcile sects and

and bring about doctrinal uniformity was likely to make things worse instead of better. Hereupon he seems to have fallen into a state of nervous despondency, and in 641 he died. Meantime in Italy the Lombard king had been extending and consolidating his power, and had drawn up his celebrated Code of laws.

Rotharis' Code, or Edict, was sanctioned in a great assembly held at Pavia in 643. Autharis had governed by means of oral Lombard laws, but this is a written barbarian code — the first that was published in Italy. It is in a kind of barbarous Latin and consists of 388 chapters, or paragraphs.20 In the Prologue, which is most valuable historically, as it gives the names and relations of the Lombard kings up to about 640, Rotharis tells us that his purpose was to collect and emend all the ancient laws of his race, and to erase the superfluous (d'entro delle leggi trasse il troppo e vano, as Dante's Justinian says of himself). Although in parts evidently inspired by Roman law, it is on the whole Lombardic in spirit and in form; but it gives some very striking proofs of recent enlightenment. Thus, the old faida, or vendetta, and the duel (as test of guilt) are abolished, as also is the burning of witches. Capital punishment is rarely imposed, and legal fines take the place of private vengeance — a civilized ordinance even beyond the cognition of Roman law. The general tenor of the laws if directed against the great landowners (as was also the case under the Gothic domination) and is in favour of the poor and of the working man. In this respect Rotharis' legislation compares very favourable with that of the contemporary Byzantine Code, which connived at, when it did not openly abet, latifundia and official extortion.

After the death of Rotharis in 652 followed an obscure and externally uninteresting period of sixty years, which may be dismissed briefly. His son and successor Rodwald is killed after a short reign. Then Aribert, a nephew of Theodelinda, is king for eight years and leaves the kingdom divided between his two sons, Bertharis and Godebert, whose capitals are respectively Milan and Pavia. The brothers quarrel and the younger appeals for help to the powerful duke of Benevento, Grimwald, who comes to Pavia, but, instead of aiding Godebert, kills him. Bertharis hereupon flees for refuge to the Avars, and Grimwald is crowned in Pavia (662), thus for the first and last time uniting under a Lombard king the northern dominions with the hitherto almost independent duchy in the far south.21

But this southern duchy of Benevento, which he had left in charge of his son Romwald, was just at this moment dangerously threatened by the Byzantines; and to understand how this came about we must turn for a moment from Lombard Italy to Rome.22 Here the everlasting squabbles over doctrinal subtleties had reached such a climax that the Eastern Emperor, Constans II (642‑68), at last ordered the Exarch to send Pope Martin to Constantinople, as he had refused to acquiesce in an imperial edict commanding the cessation of all discussion about the 'double nature' of Christ and had even summoned a Council which denounced the edict as sceleratissimum. Pope Martin was shamefully treated by Constans and finally deported to the Crimea, where he died, it is said, of hunger. His successors, however, seem to have come to an understanding with the Emperor, who was beginning to be much alarmed by the Saracens. The infidels had routed his fleet off the coast of Asia Minor and were now devastating Sicily. An army was therefore raised for the defence of that island, and in 662 — the year in which Grimwald left Benevento for Pavia — Constans set out from Constantinople at the head of his forces, and, probably thinking that it was a good opportunity for surprising the Lombards of South Italy, landed at Otranto and besieged Grimwald's son in Benevento [.Susan note] But Grimwald marched rapidly to his relief and routed the 20,000 Byzantines and Romans. He thus saved his southern dominions; and had he made a determined effort he might perhaps have seized Naples, and even Rome, and thus changed the whole course of Italian history.23

Soon afterwards Grimwald dies and the fugitive Bertharis returns and is acclaimed as king. Of his reign of seventeen years (671‑88) we know very little. His son Cunibert is excluded from the throne for a time by an usurper, but defeats and slays him in a great battle on the Adda, and reigns for twelve years (688‑700). When Cunibert dies his son succeeds, for hereditary rights seem now to be recognized — but, being a minor, he is placed under the regency of a noble named Ansprand. Soon another claimant arises, Ragimbert by name, who sets his own son, Aribert II, on the throne.

Now Ansprand had fled to Bavaria — the home of Theodelinda. Hearing that he is plotting to return, the usurper Aribert seizes his wife and children (all but one, Liutprand, who escapes and joins his father) and mutilates them with the most inhuman cruelty, tearing out their eyes and tongues. But the day of vengeance at last arrived. Ansprand, descending from the Alps with an army of Bavarians, was joined by many who hated the bloodthirsty and pious tyrant.24 Aribert endeavoured to flee from Pavia, but was drowned, it is said, while attempting to swim across the Ticino with a heavy bag of money. Hereupon Ansprand is proclaimed king; but he dies in the same year (712), leaving as heir his son Liutprand, who as a boy had escaped to Bavaria some ten years before. The long reign of Liutprand (712‑44) was perhaps more notable than that of any other Lombard king — partly on account of incidents which were not directly connected with the Lombard court, but which were momentous for Italy.

These incidents, which deeply affected the relations of the Eastern Empire with what we may perhaps call Byzantine Italy, were, as might be expected, intimately connected with religious, or rather with ecclesiastical, questions. They must claim our attention for a few moments.

We have already seen one Emperor after another setting himself up as a king of Antipope, convening Councils, promulgating not only conciliatory Henotika and Ectheses, but even inflammatory definitions of the Trinity and the Nature of Christ; we have seem (Susan note) them deposing, imprisoning, and otherwise treating with contumely and cruelty the supreme Roman pontiffs. We

now come to a hostility so violent that it necessarily ended in total rupture between the East and West. The Popes, zealously supported by the Italians, became more and more able to defy the pretensions of the Emperors, and their defiance embittered the relations between the Byzantine court and its Italian provinces. In 691 the Emperor Justinian II ordered a Church council to meet in his palace. Pope Sergius refused to subscribe to the decisions of this Council. The Emperor thereupon sent Zacharias, his Protospathar (captain of the imperial swordsmen), to Rome to imprison the Pope; but the Ravenna troops revolted and marched to Rome, and the Romans rose in their Pope's defence, and the Protospathar had to save his life by hiding, it is said, in the Pope's bedchamber, and even under the papal bedstead, until the popular fury had so far abated as to allow him to leave the city. Justinian some years later revenged himself for this insult by a savage assault on Ravenna. The city was sacked, and the archbishop blinded25 and exiled to the Crimea. But indignation and rebellion spread, and in spite of a temporary reconciliation between the Emperor and the Pope (now Constantine I) and a festal meeting of the two in Asia Minor, serious tumults occurred at Rome, where the Exarch himself was killed; and most of the cities of the Exarchate made common cause with Ravenna26 in a revolt against the Eastern Empire — the first confederation of cities in the history of medieval Italy. Justinian had already been driven from his throne for several years (695‑705), and his cruelties now caused another revolution to break out. He was killed (711) by the usurper Bardanes, or Philippicus, who endeavoured to conciliate Ravenna and the Romans by sending back the blinded archbishop, and also by sending over to Italy Justinian's head, which, we are told, 'all flocked with avidity to gaze upon.' But the favour courted by these methods was short-lived, Heretical tendencies and the assumption of pontifical functions once more roused the most violent hostility at Rome. The portrait of Philippicus was banned from St. Peter's and other churches; his name was no longer to be heard in the Mass; money with his image and superscription was refused. So intense became the excitement that within the space of a few years Philippicus was deposed and blinded, and his tow successors were deposed and forced to receive the tonsure. Then (in 717) the throne was ascended by Leo III, a valiant soldier of Eastern birth, well known on account of his origin as Leo the Isaurian, and known still better as Leo the Iconoclast.

The next scene of our drama is filled mainly by Liutprand, the Emperor Leo, and (down to the year 731) Pope Gregory the Second, the vigorous opponent of the iconoclastic Emperor. The chief events are the political and ecclesiastical rupture between East and West and the consequent increase of Lombard power, which induces the Popes to call in the Franks.27

First, then, a few words about the long and bitter strife concerning what we will call the use of icons — that is, of religious images, whether pictures or statues; for how far one should speak here of the abuse of such things, and whether in this case one would be justified in using the word idolatry as it was used by iconoclasts, need not now be discussed. Suffice it to say that many in the Eastern Church, doubtless influenced by the very strong feeling among Eastern monotheists, such as the Jews and the Moslems, concerning the dangerous proclivity of human nature towards idolatry, without being actuated by ultra-puritanical motives, were unable to understand the attitude of the Roman Church (an attitude mainly due to the hereditary influences of classical paganism) in regards to the use of images for religious purposes.

The Emperor Leo felt strongly on the subject,28 and in 628, after having spent the first nine years of his reign in valorously repelling Saracens who threatened Constantinople and in successful campaigns against them in Sicily, he took — for good or for evil — the momentous decision to adventure the Herculean labour of cleansing the house of God from 'idolatry' — for it was against the fetish-worship of pictures and statues, not against such things regarded as works of art, that he was determined to declare war. He began by publishing his celebrated Edict, ordering all religious images to be destroyed or removed from churches.29 The Edict was all the more intensely obnoxious to the Catholic ecclesiastics because behind this denunciation of images was known to exist an abhorrence of Mariolatry (Susan note) and of the gross and useful superstitions connected with relics — to say nothing of monasticism and enforced celibacy.

In Constantinople itself and other parts of the Empire great opposition was excited by the Edict; but here it was suppressed by force, whereas in Italy the result was a sudden and violent explosion that shattered the Byzantine power. Ravenna, Venice, and other cities of the northern Exarchate, as well as Rome and Naples, rose against their foreign governors and elected their own duces; and thenceforward only in the extreme south of the peninsula a few towns and regions continued to acknowledge the Eastern Emperor and the Eastern Patriarch — a state of things that lasted till the coming of the Normans.

The further fortunes of this controversy about images have an ecclesiastical rather than a historical interest and we may dismiss them with a few remarks. After the death of Pope Gregory II in 731 his successor, Gregory III, was at first in favour of Leo; but his Council took a very different view and declared excommunicated all who were not in favour of images. In 754 a Council of 338 bishops met at Constantinople and declared unanimously against images. This war to the knife continued for many years. The pious Irene, who deposed and blinded her own son, has the glory of having reintroduced the use of images in the Eastern Church, for a Council30 summoned by her at Nicaea in 787 unanimously decreed that 'the cult of images is agreeable to the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the Councils of the Church,' and that 'prayer should be offered to the images of the Saints as to the Cross' (Villari).

We will now return to Liutprand. His reign of thirty-two years, notable as the period of final revolt against imperial rule in Italy, was also notable because, while Popes and Emperors, Romans and Byzantines, were exhausting themselves in religious and political strife, the Lombard king was quickly extending and consolidating his dominions by conquest and by wise legislation and was favouring the development of a new and beautiful architecture by patronizing the guilds of the 'Comacine' master-builders, who erected for him many churches — such as the exquisite basilica of S. Pietro at Tuscania (Toscanella), near Viterbo, the Duomo and Baptistery of Novara, possibly S. Salvatore at Brescia, and several churches at Genoa and at Pavia, especially the celebrated Ciel d'oro, where he deposited the bones of St. Augustine, which he had ransomed from the Saracens of Sardinia.

The legislation of Liutprand added 153 laws to the Code of Rotharis. These laws are remarkable for their qualities of mercy and Christian charity. They show a deep aversion for old barbaric customs of appeal to duel or the 'judgment of God'; they give legal rights to women and defend the poor against oppression.

Liutprand's earlier conquests had extended the Lombard kingdom southwards31 and also over most of Emilia and Pentapolis, and about 730 he seems to have succeeded in capturing Ravenna; for in 734 we find Pope Gregory III writing to Orso, third Doge of Venice, begging him to recover Ravenna 'for the Empire'; and this was done — a fact that proves how powerful and independent Venice had already become. It also shows how anxious Pope Gregory was becoming about the rapid increase of the Lombard power. So anxious indeed he became that a few years later (739) he tried to foment, or aid, a rebellion of the southern Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. hereupon King Liutprand marched southwards once more, and, after defeating Thrasamund, the rebel duke of Spoleto, who fled for refuge to the Pope, he advanced against Rome.

It was at this crisis, when Liutprand was capturing the strongholds and devastating the country of the Roman duchy right up to the basilica of St. Peter (then outside the walls), that Gregory wrote the famous letter with which the still more famous Vienna manuscript, the Codex Carolinus,32 begins — the first extant letter addressed by him to 'Dom[no Susan note] excellentissimo filio Carolo subregulo,' namely to Charles Martel, the conqueror of the Saxons, Frisian, and Bavarians — the saviour of Christian Europe by his ever-memorable victory over the Moors and Arabs at Poitiers — the monarch of all the Franks, though still nominally only Duke of Austrasia and 'Master of the Palace' in Neustria.

This letter of Gregory III was inopportune, for Charles had just applied to Liutprand for assistance against the Arabs, and Liutprand had actually gone north to help him; but, finding that the war against the infidels was finished, he returned and again began devastating the possessions of the Church in the Roman duchy. Gregory then wrote another and still more urgent letter to Charles, begging his aid contra nefandissimos Longobardos, and reminding him that he had sent him, among other splendid gifts, golden keys of the tomb of St. Peter cum vinculis (i.e. containing filings from the chains of the Apostle.). These keys were doubtless meant to indicate to Charles that he was expected to come forward as the defender of St. Peter's tomb; and one chronicler — a somewhat untrustworthy one — asserts that Gregory made a distinct promise 'to withdraw from the side of the Emperor' (a partibus Imperatoris recedere) and recognize Charles as Roman Consul. It appears somewhat strange that the Pope should admit as still existing even the shadow of an alliance with the Byzantine court, for there seems to have existed at Rome no longer any official recognition of Byzantine sovranty. But the narrative may contain some truth; Gregory may have forestalled to some extent the invitation sent by Pope Leo III to Charles the Great.

Gregory received no answer to his appeal, for in November of this year (741) he suddenly died, and Charles had already died, a month earlier. The Emperor Leo also died in the same year. Liutprand was thus the only one left of the four conspicuous characters of this period, and he survived them only three years. But these three years added not a little to his power and renown. The new Pope, Zacharias — whose consecration, without imperial sanction, is a striking evidence of newly acquired independence — adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the Lombard king, and a solemn meeting took place in the basilica of St. Peter33 at Viterbo, near the frontier between Lombard Tuscany and the Roman duchy. Here a truce of twenty years was signed. Liutprand also made a treaty with Stephanus, the Duke, or Patrician, of Rome, who was now practically the president of the Roman Commune. He also confirmed his sovran rights over the hitherto insubordinate southern duchies by deposing Thrasamund (who had to receive the tonsure — the not unmerciful lot of many a fallen potentate in those ages) and by placing new rulers on the ducal thrones of Spoleto and Benevento. Perhaps it is, as it seems to some writers, a pity that Liutprand did not now take advantage of his position and attempt to found his kingdom on the basis of an united Italy — even if the union of its rather heterogeneous elements had to be effected in the first instance by external force. However that may be, the attempt was not made — possibly because the genius for empire-building was wanting in the Lombard character; possibly also Liutprand's reverence, as loyal Catholic, for the spiritual authority and the temporal possessions of the Church made him hesitate. How strongly he was influenced by such reverence is proved by the fact that after the treaty of Viterbo he restored many of the towns and strongholds claimed by the Pope, as heir to the Byzantine possessions, both in the northern Exarchate and in the Roman duchy, and that two years before his death he abandoned — at the entreaty of the Pope — his design of seizing Ravenna.

In 744 Liutprand died, leaving his throne to his son, or nephew, Hildebrand, who was soon deposed by Ratchis. Of Ratchis' reign we know scarcely anything, except that it ended by his retiring to Monte Cassino. His brother and successor Astulf (749‑56), by his ferociously aggressive anti-papal policy, brought about the first serious invasion of the Franks. In 752 he took Ravenna — an act that is regarded as finally extinguishing the Byzantine Exarchate — and, in spite of a forty years' peace that he had signed, he obstinately refused to give up Roman and papal towns and territories34

that he had seized, and fremens ut leo, as the old chronicler says, he so terrified the Romans with his threats that Pope Stephen, barefoot and bestrewn with ashes, led suppliant processions to the three great churches of Rome, bearing aloft on a cross the violated treaty of peace. At last, in despair the Pope paid a visit (in 573) to the Lombard king at Pavia. But all was in vain; so he continued his journey and crossed the Alps in order to appeal in person to Pipin, king of the Franks,

Pipin the Short (Pépin le Bref) and his brother Carlmann had for a time held the supreme power after the death of their father, Charles Martel, but were nominally only maires du palais of the last puppet-king of the Merovingian dynasty, the roi fainéant Childeric III. Carlmann, tired of a worldly life, had in 746 retired to a monastery founded by himself on Mount Soracte, near Rome, and thence to the Benedictine convent of Monte Cassino. Left as sole ruler of the Franks, Pipin had appealed to the Pope (then Zacharias) to decide whether a roi fainéant or he who really held and exercised the kingly authority ought to bear the regal title. To this Zacharias gave the answer desired, and delegated Boniface, the English Apostle of Germany and at this time Archbishop of Mainz, to crown Pipin at the solemn conclave of Soissons in 751.

Now when two years later the successor of Pope Zacharias, Stephen II, crossed the Alps, as I have said, to appeal to King Pipin, he was met on his journey by the young prince Charles (afterwards Charles the Great), who accompanied him till the king himself came forth on horseback to receive his guest. Straightway, it is said, even before they had reached the palace, Pipin gave his promise on oath that he would 'restore the Exarchate and all other places and rights belonging to the Republic of Rome' — or, in other words, to the Papal State. He then insists that Stephen shall pass the winter months at the Abbey of St. Dionysius (St.-Denis); he writes urgent and threatening letters, all in vain, to the Lombard Astulf; he renews his promise to the Pope in solemn assemblies; and Pope Stephen, in return, crowns in the church of St.-Denis not only Pipin himself, but his consort Bertharid (Berthe au grand pied) and their two sons, Charles and Carlmann — an act that is regarded as the papal and Roman sanction of Pipin's dynasty, seeing that he himself had already been crowned king of the Franks by St. Boniface. Indeed, it nearly amounted to a revival of the Roman Empire — a feat reserved for Pope Leo — for at the coronation Stephen, as the representative of Rome, and as himself vested with almost imperial authority, conferred on the Frankish monarch the supreme title of Patrician, which had been bestowed by Emperors only on eminent members of the imperial house, or had been borne by such rulers as Odovacar and Theoderic.

Pipin fulfilled his promise. Soon after his second coronation, at the head of a large army and accompanied by the Pope and a great cavalcade of prelates, he marched over Mont Cenis, drove Astulf back into Pavia, and forced him to promise the restitution of Ravenna and other cities of the former Exarchate, expressly stipulating that they should be restored, not to the Eastern Emperor, but to St. Peter — that is, to the Pope. But no sooner had Pipin withdrawn from Italy that Astulf, as was his custom, refused to keep his word. He marched south, devastated the Roman and papal territories, and threatened to sack Rome if the Pope were not surrendered to him. Pope Stephen, in his dire distress, sends Pipin a letter, not from himself, but from no one less than St. Peter, who stated that the Virgin Mother of God and the Thrones and Dominations and all the host of heaven and all the company of saints and martyrs join him in his appeal, and that if Pipin gives no attention to it he, Peter, by the authority of the Trinity and of his Holy Office, excludes him, Pipin, form the kingdom of God and from the life eternal. So once more King Pipin crosses Mont Cenis, once more captures Pavia (756), and forces Astulf, who had hastily abandoned his siege of Rome, to renounce his conquests in the Exarchate and the Pentapolis; and he then sends the keys of all these cities to the Pope.35

In this same year Astulf died. His brother Ratchis, who, it will be remembered, had abdicated and retired to Monte Cassino, now came forward, hoping to be re‑elected king; but the Pope persuaded him to return to his monastery and favoured the election of Desiderius, Duke of Tuscany, who was lavish in his promises to support the Papacy in its demand for all the original territory of the Exarchate and Pentapolis — promises which, as usual, remained unfulfilled; for the new Lombard king renounced nothing except Faenza and Ferrara.

But the land-hunger of the Holy See was not to be sated by such a sop. Stephen's brother, Paul, had succeeded him as Pope, and the ever-increasing papal claims to vast territories (for the claims of 'St. Peter' had now totally eclipsed those of the 'Holy Roman Republic') were beginning to excite much hostility among the Roman nobility — a fact to be noted, seeing that, far more than any squabble between Pope and Eastern Emperor, this was the real beginning of the Guelf and Ghibelline feud.36

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1 He had been, says Gibbon, engaged to the granddaughter of the Frankish king Clovis (Chlodwig). Villari says he actually married her (the daughter of Clothar) and that she had lately died.

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2 The Saxons alone numbered 20,000. They went home later. The whole number of Alboin's fighters must have been considerable, but it seems not to have exceeded about 70,000.

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3 Alboin seems to have resided mostly at Verona, in Theoderic's palace.

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4 The Greek title "Exarch" was given to the Byzantine military governors in Africa and later to those in Italy. The first who officially held this title at Ravenna was probably Decius, c. 584. All the Byzantine domains in Italy were nominally subject to him and formed the 'Exarchate,' but many of them were practically independent of authority.

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5 Venice, however, becomes independent in early days. See ch. iii of this Part.

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6 As evidence for the truth of this story Paul the Deacon affirms that when he, as a young man (i.e. c. 745), was at the court of Ratchis at Pavia the king 'brought forth to show to his guests after a banquet the famous cup which Alboin had caused to be made from the skull of Cunimund, king of the Gepidae' (Cronache ital., by Count Balzani).

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7 The dukes of Benevento and Spoleto, already mentioned, were evidently the most powerful and most independent. The names of about twenty-five are mentioned by chroniclers.

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8 One evidence of this is the fact that in 579 the duke of Spoleto captured Classe, the port of Ravenna, which he held for nine years. About 589, it will be remembered, Monte Cassino was sacked by the Lombards of Benevento.

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9 Rather too enterprising. For imprisoning recalcitrant bishops he was recalled by Maurice, but was re‑installed by the blood-stained usurper Phocas, to whom he erected the 'nameless column,' of which we shall hear when we come to Gregory. A score or so of Exarchs ruled at Ravenna between Decius, the first of them (c. 580)—for neither Narses nor Longinus was Exarch—and the surcease of the Exarchate as a Byzantine province in 752.

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10 Ch. I of this Part. It should be mentioned here that during this short interval of comparative peace Autharis, according to some chroniclers, made a royal progress through his kingdom, and even reached Rhegium (Reggio), in Calabria, where, on the shore of the Mediterranean, he is said to have touched with his spear the famous Rhegian column and to have exclaimed: 'This is the boundary of the realms of Autharis.' But there is possibly confusion between the Calabrian and the Emilian Reggio.

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11 Per hospites divisi . . . . tributarii efficiuntur (ii, 32). Populi aggravati per langobardos hospites partiunter (iii, 16).

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12 The contrast with our English ancestors is not flattering. The Lombard and Frank, like the Achaean and the Norman did not exterminate, but assimilated, the native language and art and religion; the English conquerors of Britain exterminated, as far as they could. The Franks and Lombards were Christians; the Angles were pagans and detested Christianity. 'The rage of the conquerors,' says Green, 'burnt fiercest against the clergy. Rivers and homesteads, the very days of the week, bore the names of the new gods who displaced Christ.' (But how about the Frankish Mardi, Mercredi, etc.?)

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13 Her Bavarian name was probably Theudelinde. Cf. Theuderic, etc., p. 159 n. The English form should perhaps be Theudelind, like Rosalind. Theodelinda, or Theodolinda, is the Roman (Latin) form, Teodolinda the Italian.

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14 Rome had still a Byzantine Governor and Commandant (Dux and Magister militum) who were nominally under the Ravenna Exarch, but during the seventh century assumed more and more independence, till Rome became the first Italian republic, except Venice.

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15 See p. 103 n. They were vanquished by Heraclius, who was Eastern Emperor (610‑41) after Phocas. The remnants of the race settled in the Salzburg country and were annexed to the Frank Empire by Charles the Great in 791.

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16 See ch. ii of this Part. Her cathedral at Monza was probably begun soon after her marriage with Agilulf (590), and her Monza palace about 595‑600.

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17 Built first probably when Theoderic had his palace there (c. 500); demolished in 1811. A few relics exist in Milan and elsewhere. The sculptured marbles were used for building the canal between Pavia and Milan!

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18 Said to be the Arabic Sharki-zzzn, i.e. 'Orientals' — or, according to others, 'Thieves.' The word was, however, probably not Arabic, but a name given to Arabs by foreigners.

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19 Compare Louis XIV's L'état et l'église, c'ést moi.

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20 Others were added by Grimwald and 153 more by Liutprand. Astulf also made a few laws.

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21 The fact that he married the sister of the murdered Godebert is so often paralleled in these ages that it scarcely causes wonder.

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22 The history of Italy both in this age and in other ages is often viewed too much from the standpoint of a dominant power — barbarian, Byzantine, Papal, Norman, German, French, Spanish, etc. This is due to the fact that we have very few records of anything but such dominant powers until the rise of the Republics. The story of Rome in the Middle Ages is told attractively by Gregorovius, but at times it is a rather wearisome account of endless Popes and endless local squabbles, political and religious, relieved only by interesting antiquarian details.

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23 Constans retired to Rome, where he, a fratricide and Pope-murderer, combined piety with robbery by bestowing large donatives on churches and carrying off the gilded covering of the dome of the Pantheon — which building, by the way, had been given by the monster Phocas to Gregory the Great to be converted into a church. Constans then went to Sicily, and during five years emulated Verres (Susan note), till a slave smote him on the head with a pot of hot water and drowned him in his bath.

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24 Writers such as Villari and Cappelletti dwell on the great advance in civilization observable in connection with the conversion of the Lombards to Catholicism at this period. Doubtless many churches were built. This monster, Aribert II, was (says Villari) a great favourite of the Catholic clergy and of several Popes, and this may have favoured the fusion of Lombards and Italians.

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25 I.e. abbacinato:

: for which see p. 16.

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26 At Ravenna the rebellion was led by a certain George, son of the distinguished and learned Ravennate 'Little John,' who had been crucified by the Byzantines. George reconstituted the army and inspired the people by his eloquence, like Rienzi at Rome in later days.

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27 A curious fact is that during the whole of the period 727‑74 the received dates are apparently one year in advance of what they should be See Bury's Later Roman Empire, ii, 425. In this connexion I might note here that until the middle of the sixth century dates were often reckoned by the Roman consulships, and that from 312 onward there was a cumbrous and perplexing system of reckoning by Interdictions — periods of fifteen years during which the census of property and the assessment of taxes remained unaltered.

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28 As a native of Isauria or perhaps of some region of Armenia, Leo had been doubtless influenced by the Iranian (Persian, Zoroastrian) religion, which rejected statues and temples. He was accused by the Romans of being 'Saracenized.' The contempt of the Moslems for the miracle-working idols of the Christians was very bitter.

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29 The Vatican St. Peter, possibly once a statue of Jupiter (see p. 104), was the object of special denunciation by Leo and veneration by the Romans, as we see from Gregory's letters to the Emperor.

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30 Accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. Irene, says Gibbon, has on this account 'received the honour of Saint [!] in the Greek Calendar.' But another woman, Theodora (c. 840), has the credit of achieving the final victory of iconolatry in the Eastern Church.

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31 On this occasion he captured Sutri, in the duchy of Rome and only thirty miles distant from the capital. This town he, however, restored, and, being a zealous Catholic, he restored it, not to the Romans, but to 'St. Peter' — a fact that may be regarded as the first germ of the temporal power of the Popes (the Donation of Constantine being legendary).

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32 A collection of ninety-nine papal letter, etc., made by order of Charles the Great.

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33 So Villari. Rivoira, however, in his Origini della arch. lomb. mentions S. Lorenzo (the vanished original of the present duomo) as the only known ancient church of Viterbo, and that was probably built, as were the still existing Lombard ramparts, some twenty years later, by Desiderius.

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34 In letters of Pope Stephen II to Astulf he talks of restitution 'to Rome' and 'to the Republic,' but he soon slides into such expressions as 'to St. Peter' and 'to the Holy Church.' For explanation of the confusion made by writers between Stephen II and Stephen III, see List of Popes, p. 249.

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35 The cities included Ravenna, Ancona, Bologna, Faenza, Ferrara, etc. Pipin's Donation was made 'to Saint Peter, to the Holy roman Republic, and to all succeeding Pontiffs.' In answer to envoys from Constantinople he asserted that he had come to Italy solely 'for the love of St. Peter and for the pardon of his sins.' The document of Pipin's Donation was kept in the 'Confession' (see Index) of St. Peter's at Rome, and still existed when the writer of Pope Stephen's Life in the Liber Pontificalis was alive (c. 850‑900?).

36. In its first phase we have the Papacy supported against the Roman nobility by barbarian monarchs and revived Emperors, who encourage by Donations its ravening greed for temporal power. Dante uses bitter words about this she-wolf: 'Laden in her leanness with all ravenings. . .she never sates her craving hunger. . .' 'Many are the animals with which she weds.' (Inf. i.) And still stronger is his Biblical puttaneggiar co' regi (Inf. xix). One of these regi was, of course, Charles of Anjou.