The Lombards (Latin Langobardi, whence the alternative name Longobards found in older English texts), were a Germanic people originally from Northern Europe that entered the late Roman Empire.

Map of the Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC-50 BC. The magenta-colored area south of Scandinavia represents the Jastorf culture.

The Lombards were a cultural group with cohesive linguistic and cultural allegiances and a common kernel of tradition, but made up of polyethnic components: "the Lombards in Italy, for instance, incorporated Gepids, Suevians and Alamans, Bulgarians, Saxons, Goths, Romans, and others," the Austrian historian Walter Pohl remarked in 1998. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Romantic nationalism assigned them a single cultural and genetic "ethnogenesis" as a Germanic people of the Jastorf culture during the Pre-Roman Germanic Iron Age.

Their own traditions, preserved in the Origo Gentis Langobardorum, describe how they were formerly called Winili, and how they left Scandinavia under the leaders Ybor and Agio, and settled in continental Europe. They were recorded along the lower course of the Elbe river by Tacitus as early as A.D. 98:

What, on the contrary, ennobles the Langobards is the smallness of their number, for they, who are surrounded with very many and very powerful nations, derive their security from no obsequiousness or plying, but by dint of battle and adventurous deeds. (Germania)

The Lombards were one of the tribes forming the Suebi, and during the first century AD they lived in north Germany, at the lower Elbe River. They occasionally clashed with the Romans, but it seems they were mainly shepherds and farmers until, in the 4th century, the great migrations of peoples coming from the East changed the situation. At the end of the 5th century the Lombards settled in what is now Austria, in the territory formerly occupied by the Rugians, and at the beginning of the 6th century they were settled in Pannonia (now Western Hungary) by the Emperor Justinian, as foederati. The Lombards at this time had already begun to change their tribal organisation to one led by a group of dukes and counts who commanded bands of warriors bound by kinship.

Below is a map showing the pre-Migration Age distribution of the Germanic tribes in proto-Germanic times, and stages of their expansion up to 50 BC, AD 100 and AD 300. The extent of the Roman Empire in 68 BC and AD 117 is also shown.

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The Lombards are an ancient Germanic people, who by the 1st cent. A.D., were settled along the lower Elbe. After obscure migrations they were allowed (547) by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I to settle in Pannonia and Noricum (modern Hungary and E Austria). In 568, under the leadership of Alboin, they invaded N Italy and established a kingdom with Pavia as its capital. They soon penetrated deep into central and S Italy, but Ravenna, the Pentapolis (Rimini, Ancona, Fano, Pesaro, and Senigallia), and much of the coast remained under Byzantine rule while Rome and the Patrimony of St. Peter (see Papal States) were kept by the papacy. After Alboin’s death (572?) and the brief reign of Cleph (d. 575), no king was elected and Lombard Italy fell under the disunited rule of 36 dukes. The Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento in central and S Italy were set up independently. In 584 the Lombard nobles united to elect Cleph’s son, Authari, as the new king in order to strengthen themselves against the enmity of the Franks, the Byzantines, and the popes.

The Lombard kingdom reached its height in the 7th and 8th cent. Paganism and Arianism, which were at first prevalent among the Lombards, gradually gave way to Catholicism. Roman culture and Latin speech were accepted, and the Catholic bishops emerged as chief magistrates in the cities. Lombard law combined Germanic and Roman traditions. King Liutprand (712–44) consolidated the kingdom through his legislation and reduced Spoleto and Benevento to vassalage. One of his successors, Aistulf, took Ravenna (751) and threatened Rome. Pope Stephen II appealed to the Frankish King Pepin the Short, who invaded Italy; the Lombards lost the territories comprised in the Donation of Pepin to the papacy. After Aistulf’s death King Desiderius renewed (772) the attack on Rome. Charlemagne, Pepin’s successor, intervened, defeated the Lombards, and was crowned (774) with the Lombard crown at Pavia. Of the Lombard kingdom only the duchy of Benevento remained, and it was conquered in the 11th cent. by the Normans. The iron crown of the Lombard kings (now kept at Monza, Italy) was also used for the coronation (951) of Otto I (the first Holy Roman emperor) as king of Italy and for the crowning of several succeeding emperors. The Lombards left their name to the Italian region of Lombardy. The chief historian of the Lombards was Paul the Deacon. 2
See T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. V and VI (1895, repr. 1967); P. Villari, Barbarian Invasions of Italy (2 vol., tr. 1902); J. T. Hallenbeck, Pavia and Rome: The Lombard Monarchy and the Papacy in the Eighth Century (1982).

Invasion and conquest of Italy

When they entered Italy, some Lombards were and remained pagan, while some were Arian Christians. Hence they did not enjoy good relations with the Catholic Church. Gradually, they adopted Roman titles, names, and traditions, and partially converted to orthodoxy (7th century), not without a long series of religious and ethnic conflicts.

The Lombard state was truly barbarian in custom compared with the earlier Germanic states of Western Europe. It was highly decentralized at first, with the territorial dukes having practical sovereignty in their duchies, especially in the southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. For a decade following the death of Cleph in 575, the Lombards did not elect a king and the period is called the Rule of the Dukes. The first written legal code was composed in poor Latin in 643: the Edictum Rothari. It was primarily the codification of the oral legal tradition of the people.

In 560 a new, energetic king emerged: Alboin, who defeated the neighboring Gepidae, made them his subjects, and, in 566, married the daughter of their king Cunimond, Rosamund. In the spring of 568, Alboin led the Lombards, together with other Germanic tribes; (Bavarians, Gepidae, Saxons) and Bulgars, across the Julian Alps with a population of around 400,000 to 500,000, to invade northern Italy. The first important city to fall was Forum Iulii (Cividale del Friuli), in northeastern Italy, in 569. There, Alboin created the first Lombard duchy, which he entrusted to his nephew Gisulf. Soon Vicenza, Verona, and Brescia fell into Germanic hands.

In the summer of 569, the Lombards conquered the main Roman centre of northern Italy, Milan. The area was then recovering from the terrible Gothic Wars, and the small Byzantine army left for its defence could do almost nothing. The Exarch sent to Italy by Emperor Justinian II, Longinus, could defend only coastal cities that could be supplied by the powerful Byzantine fleet. Pavia fell after a siege of three years, in 572, becoming the first capital city of the new Lombard kingdom of Italy. In the following years, the Lombards penetrated further south, conquering Tuscany and establishing two duchies, Spoleto and Benevento under Zotto, which soon became semi-independent and even outlasted the northern kingdom, surviving well into the 12th century. The Byzantines managed to retain control of the area of Ravenna and Rome, linked by a thin corridor running through Perugia.

The Lombard state was well-organized and stabilized by the end of the long reign of Liutprand (717–744), but its collapse was sudden. Unsupported by the dukes, King Desiderius was defeated and forced to surrender his kingdom to Charlemagne in 774. The Lombard kingdom came to an end and a period of Frankish rule was initiated. The Frankish king Pepin the Short had, by the Donation of Pepin, given the pope the "Papal States" and the territory north of that swath of papally-governed land was ruled primarily by Lombard and Frankish vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor until the rise of the city-states in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Alboin's successors

Alboin was murdered in 572 in Verona by a plot led by his wife, who later fled to Ravenna. His successor, Cleph, was also assassinated, after a ruthless reign of 18 months. His death began an interregnum of years, the "Rule of the Dukes", during which the dukes did not elect any king, and which is regarded as a period of violence and disorder. In 584, threatened by a Frankish invasion, the dukes elected Cleph's son, Authari, king. In 589, he married Theodelinda, daughter of the duke of the Bavarians, Garibald I of Bavaria. The Catholic Theodelinda was a friend of Pope Gregory I and pushed for Christianization. In the mean time, Authari embarked on a policy of internal reconciliation and tried to reorganize royal administration. The dukes yielded half their estates for the maintenance of the king and his court in Pavia. On the foreign affairs side, Authari managed to thwart the dangerous alliance between the Byzantines and the Franks.

Authari died in Pavia in 590. His successor was Agilulf, duke of Turin, who in 591, also married Theodelinda. He successfully fought the rebel dukes of Northern Italy, conquering Padua (601), Cremona, and Mantua (603), and forcing the Exarch of Ravenna to pay a conspicuous tribute. Theodolinda reigned alone until 651, and was succeeded by Adaloald. Arioald, who had married Theodolinda's daughter Gundeberga, and head of the Arian opposition, later deposed Adaloald.

His successor was Rothari, regarded by many authorities as the most energetic of all Lombard kings. He extended his dominions, conquering Liguria in 643 and the remaining part of the Byzantine territories of thevinner Veneto, including the Roman city of Opitergium (Oderzo). Rothari also made the famous Edict bearing his name, which established the laws and the customs of his people in Latin: the edict did not apply to the tributaries of the Lombards, who could retain their own laws. Rothari's son Rodoald succeeded him in 652, still very young, and was killed by the Catholic party.

At the death of king Aripert in 661, the kingdom was split between his children Perctarit, who set his capital in Milan, and Godepert, who reigned from Pavia. Perctarit was overthrown by Grimoald, son of Gisulf, duke of Friuli and Benevento since 647. Perctarit fled to the Avars and then to the Franks. Grimoald managed to regain control over the duchies and deflected the late attempt of the Byzantine emperor Constans II to conquer southern Italy. He also defeated the Franks. At Grimoald's death in 671 Perctarit returned and promoted tolerance between Arians and Catholics, but he could not defeat the Arian party, led by Arachi, duke of Trento, who submitted only to his son, the filo-Catholic Cunipert.

The end of the Lombard kingdom of Italy

Religious strife remained a source of struggle in the following years. The Lombard reign began to recover only with Liutprand the Lombard (king from 712), son of Ansprand and successor of the brutal Aripert II. He managed to regain a certain control over Spoleto and Benevento, and, taking advantage of the disagreements between the Pope and Byzantium concerning the reverence of icons, he annexed the Exarchate of Ravenna and the duchy of Rome. He also helped the Frankish marshall Charles Martel to drive back the Arabs. His successor Aistulf conquered Ravenna for the Lombards for the first time, but was subsequently defeated by the king of the Franks Pippin III, called by the Pope, and had to leave it. After the death of Aistulf, Ratchis tried once again to be king of the Lombardy but he was deposed in the same year.

After his defeat of Ratchis, the last Lombard to rule as king was Desiderius, duke of Tuscany, who managed to take Ravenna definitively, ending the Byzantine presence in Central Italy. He decided to reopen struggles against the Pope, who was supporting the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento against him, and entered Rome in 772, the first Lombard king to do so. But when Pope Hadrian I called for help from the powerful king Charlemagne, he was defeated at Susa and besieged in Pavia, while his son Adelchi had also to open the gates of Verona to Frankish troops. Desiderius surrendered in 774 and Charlemagne, in an utterly novel decision, took the title "King of the Lombards" as well. Before then the Germanic kingdoms had frequently conquered each other, but none had adopted the title of King of another people. Charlemagne took part of the Lombard territory to create the Papal States.

The Lombardy region in Italy, which includes the cities of Brescia, Bergamo ,Milan, and the old capital Pavia, is a reminder of the presence of the Lombards.

Lombard states after the kingdom

Though the kingdom, centred on Pavia in the north, fell to Charlemagne, the Lombard-controlled territory to the south of the Papal States was never subjugated by Charlemagne or his descendants. In 774, Duke Arechis II of Benevento, whose duchy had only nominally been under royal authority, though certain kings had been effective at making their power known in the south, declared himself princeps, or prince, effectually independent. He tried to claim the kingship, but with no support and no chance of a coronation in Pavia. Charlemagne came down with an army, and his son Louis the Pious sent many, to force the Beneventan dukes to submit, but their submission and promises were never kept and they were de facto independent. In 839, Duke Sicard was murdered by Radelchis, who seized the dukeship. Sicard's brother Siconulf was declared prince in Salerno and a ten year civil war erupted, settled only by Emperor Louis II's permanent division of the principality. There were then two Lombard states in the Mezzogiorno.

The independent state at Salerno inspired the gastalds of Capua, under Landulf the Old, to move towards independence and, by the end of the century, they were styling themselves "prince" and there was a third Lombard state. The Capuan and Beneventan states were united by conquest in 910 and only separated in 982, on the death of Pandulf Ironhead. The diminished Beneventan principality soon lost its independence to the papacy and declined in importance until it was gobbled up by the Normans, who, first called in by the Lombards to fight the Byzantines for control of Apulia and Calabria (under the likes of Melus of Bari and Arduin, among others), had become rivals for hegemony in the south. The Salernitan principality experienced a golden age under Guaimar III and Guaimar IV, but under Gisulf II, the principality shrunk to insignificance and fell in 1078 to the Robert Guiscard, who had married Gisulf's sister Sichelgaita. The Capua principality was hotly contested during the reign of the hated Pandulf IV, the Wolf of the Abruzzi, and, under his son, it fell, almost without contest, to the Norman Richard Drengot (1058). The Capuans revolted against Norman rule in 1091, expelling Richard's grandson Richard II and setting up one Lando IV. Capua was again put under Norman rule by the Siege of Capua of 1098 and the city quickly declined in importance under a series of ineffectual Norman rulers.

The independent status of these Lombard states is generally attested by the ability of their rulers to switch suzerains at will. Often the legal vassal of pope or emperor (either Byzantine or Holy Roman), they were the real power-brokers in the south until their erstwhile allies, the Normans, rose to preeminence. Certainly the Lombards regarded the Normans as barbarians and the Byzantines as oppressors, regarding their own civilisation as superior, they did indeed provide the environment for the illustrious Schola Medica Salernitana.

In the south, a period of anarchy began. The duchy of Benevento maintained its sovereignty in the face of the pretensions of both the Western and Eastern Empires. In the ninth century, the Saracens conquered Sicily and began settling in the peninsula. The coastal cities on the Tyrrhenian Sea departed from Byzantine allegiance. Various states owing various nominal allegiances fought constantly over territory until events came to a head in the early eleventh century with the coming of the Normans, who conquered the whole of the south by the end of the century.

Lombard Kingdom

see Lombard Kingsline

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