ITALY AND HER INVADERS.

BOOK VII. THE LOMBARD KINGDOM, A.D. 600-744

 

CHAPTER VI.

GRIMWALD AND CONSTANS

 

The central figure of Lombard history in the seventh century is (as I have already said) King Grimwald. It is true that his reign (662-671) was not a long one, but it was filled with important events, and included the most serious encounter with the power of the Eastern Empire that had been witnessed since Alboin entered Italy. Moreover, the events of his early and middle life attached a kind of romantic interest to his career which powerfully affected the imaginations of his countrymen. No name, we may safely say, except those of Alboin and Authari, was dearer to the Lombard minstrel than that of Grimwald, and if he has therefore invested him with a robe of beautiful Saga, every fold of which may not accurately correspond to the truth of history, we can easily pardon the illusion for the sake of at last finding a man who is something more than a mere name in a pedigree. Telling the tale as it is told us by Paulus, I have already related how Grimwald, son of Gisulf, duke of Friuli, was carried captive by one of the terrible Avar horsemen,—how, though little more than a child, he slew his unsuspecting captor and rejoined his flying brethren; how, after his two elder brothers had been basely assassinated at Opitergium by a treacherous Exarch, Grimwald and his brother Eadwald, disdaining to be subject to their uncle, who succeeded to the duchy of Friuli, betook themselves to the court of the old friend of their family, Arichis, duke of Benevento. It has also been told how Aio, the hypochondriac son of Arichis, after a short reign (641-642) was slain by the Slavonian invaders, and how he was succeeded by his kinsman and friend, Radwald (642-647), and he in turn by Grimwald, who reigned for fifteen years (647-662) as duke of Benevento. We have now to trace the course of events which made the fugitive prince of Friuli and the guest friend of Benevento king in the palace at Pavia, and lord of all Lombard Italy.

Rothari, the legislator of the Lombards, died in the year 652 and was succeeded by his son RODWALD, whose short and inglorious reign (of five months and seven days) was ended by the sword or the dagger of a Lombard whose wife he had seduced. He was succeeded by ARIPERT, nephew of the great queen Theudelinda, whose family, as has been before said, was the stock from whence most of the Lombard kings were drawn throughout the seventh century. Of the reign of Aripert, which lasted nearly nine years (653-661), all that we learn is that he built, adorned, and richly endowed a church in honour of the Saviour outside the western gate of Pavia, which was called Marenca. On his death he was succeeded by his two sons, Perctarit and Godepert, who reigned, the one at Milan and the other at Pavia. It was the first time that the Lombards had tried the Frankish plan of a royal partnership; and that without the justification which might be supposed to exist in the case of the vast Frankish Empire, for the two royal cities of the Lombards were only twelve miles asunder. The experiment answered as ill with the sons of Aripert as with any of the fratricidal posterity of Clovis. Jalousies and suspicions soon arose between the two brother kings, and the discord, fanned by artful councillors on both sides, broke out into an open flame of war. Hereupon, Godepert sent Garipald, duke of Turin, to sue for the help of Grimwald, duke of Benevento, promising him the hand of his sister as a reward for his championship. But Garipald, dealing deceitfully with his master, suggested to Grimwald that he should himself strike a blow for the Lombard crown, pointing out, with some truth, that a strong, experienced and fore-seeing ruler like himself would be better for the nation of the Lombards than these weak youths who were wasting the strength of the realm by their unnatural contest. The temptation was listened to, and Grimwald, having nominated his son Romwald to the duchy of Benevento, set forth for Pavia with a chosen band of warriors. Everywhere on the road he gathered friends and helpers for his now scarcely veiled designs on the supreme power. Transamund, count of Capua, being sent through the regions of Spoleto and Tuscany, collected a band of zealous adherents in those two duchies, with whom he met Grimwald on the Aemilian Way. So the host, with ambiguous purpose, rolled on through the valley of the Po; and when Grimwald had reached Piacenza, he sent the traitorous Garipald to announce his coming to Godepert.

“And where shall I receive him?” asked the inexperienced and misdoubting king.

“You have promised him the hand of your sister”, answered Garipald, “and cannot do less than assign him quarters in the palace. Notwithstanding, when the solemn interview takes place between you, it might be prudent to put on a coat of mail under your royal robes, for I fear that he has designs on your life”.

With similar words did the cunning deceiver poison the mind of Grimwald : “Go to the interview well armed; be vigilant; I doubt the designs of Godepert. I hear that he wears a coat of mail under his mantle”.

Accordingly, Grimwald and his followers entered the palace of Pavia, and on the next day the duke of Benevento was ushered into the hall of audience. The two men met apparently in friendly embrace, but even in the act of embracing, Grimwald felt the coat of mail under the regal mantle of his host. The dark suggestions of Garipald seemed in that moment to be verified; and, slaying that he might not be slain, he drew his sword and killed the hapless Godepert. All disguise was then thrown off, and Grimwald reigned as king in Pavia. The infant son of Godepert, named Raginpert, was conveyed away to some safe hiding-place by the trusty servants of the late king, and Grimwald, despising his tender years, made no effort to arrest him.

When Perctarit, reigning at Milan, heard the tidings of his brother's murder, fearing that he would be the next victim, he left the country with all speed and sought refuge at the barbarous court of the Khan of the Avars. His wife Rodelinda and his little son Gunincpert fell into the hands of Grimwald, who sent them for safe-keeping to Benevento. Except for the one foul deed, the murder of Godepert, into which he was entrapped by the perfidious counsels of Garipald, the hands of Grimwald were unstained by innocent blood.

As for Garipald, the contriver of all this wickedness he did not long rejoice in the success of his schemes. He had indeed deceived his employers all round, for he had embezzled some part of the presents which he had been ordered to carry to Benevento. The discovery of this fraud would probably before long have alienated from him the new king's favor, but more speedy vengeance overtook him. A certain dwarfish retainer of Godepert, born at Turin, burned to avenge the murder of his master. Knowing that Duke Garipald was coming on Easter Day to pray in the basilica of St. John, he hid himself in the church, climbing up above the baptistery, and holding on by his left arm to the column which supported the canopy. When the duke entered the church the little Turinese drew his sword, but kept it concealed under his robes. As soon as Garipald came under the place of his hiding, up flew the robe, out flashed the sword, wielded with all the strength of which the dwarf was capable, and the head of Garipald rolled on the pavement of St. John's basilica. All the followers of the duke rushed upon the dwarf, and pierced him with many wounds. But the little champion died happy, for he had avenged his master.

Grimwald, now, without a rival, king of all the Lombards, took for his second wife the sister of the slain Godepert, who had been betrothed to him before he set out from Benevento. He was probably twice as old as his new queen, but he was a man who, if there had not been that stain of kindred blood upon his hands, might have won the love even of a young bride. Tall, with well-knit limbs, with bald head and full flowing beard, he was, by the admission of all, a man of absolutely dauntless courage, and as great in counsel as in war. Secure in the affections of the Northern Lombards, he sent back the mass of his Beneventan army to their homes, enriched by great gifts, but retained a few of the leaders at his court, endowing them with large possessions.

But though Grimwald was not by nature cruel or suspicious, the thought of the exile Perctarit could not but sometimes threaten the solidity of his throne. He sent an embassy to the Khan of the Avars, offering him a modius full of golden coins if he would surrender the fugitive into his hands. But the barbarian, who had sworn by his idol to Perctarit that he would never abandon him to his foes, replied, “Without doubt the gods would slay me if I sacrifice this man whom I have sworn in their presence to protect”.

Another embassy came, not this time offering gold, but warning the Khan that the peace which had now long time subsisted between the Avars and the Lombards would not endure unless Perctarit departed from his borders. Evidently the Avars were weaker or the Lombards stronger, than in the day when Grimwald's own home was ravaged, and himself all but carried into captivity by these terrible barbarians from the Danube. And now the Khan, while still faithful to the oath which he had sworn in the presence of his idol, and refusing to surrender Perctarit to his foes, appealed to the generosity of his guest to go whither he would, but not to involve him in war with the Lombards. Thus adjured, Perctarit determined to return to Italy, and throw himself on the clemency of the new king, for all men said that Grimwald was merciful. Having arrived at Lodi, he sent forward a faithful henchman named Unulf, who announced to Grimwald Perctarit’s approaching arrival, and received an assurance that since he thus trusted to the king’s honour, he should suffer no harm. When admitted to the royal presence Perctarit sought to throw himself at Grimwald's feet, but was gently restrained from that humiliation, and received the kiss of peace. Said Perctarit, “I am thy servant. Knowing thee to be most Christian and kind, I determined, instead of continuing to dwell amongst Pagans, to trust thy clemency, and come to throw myself at thy feet”. The king renewed his promise, and sealed it with his accustomed oath : “By Him who gave me life, since thou hast come into mine allegiance, no harm shall happen to thee, and I will arrange that thou shalt have the means of living in comfort”. He then invited the weary fugitive to rest in a spacious dwelling, ordering that all his needs should be sumptuously supplied from the public treasury. But when Perctarit reached the guest-house provided for him by the king, troops of the citizens of Pavia waited upon him to renew their old acquaintance. Whispering tongues reported these visits to Grimwald, assuring him that Perctarit was forming so large a party in the city that he would undoubtedly deprive the reigning king of his crown and life together. Again Grimwald listened to the fatal suggestion, “Slay or be slain”, and forgetful of his sworn promise, began to plan the death of the innocent and unsuspecting Perctarit. The deed was to be done on the morrow, and meanwhile Perctarit was to be intoxicated that he might not perceive his danger and escape. A great banquet was prepared in Preterit’s dwelling, and was shared by many guests. Costly meats and various kinds of wine were brought from the king's table to Perctarit, and he feasted right royally. But one of his father's old servants bringing to the guest a portion from the royal table, bowed so low in salutation that his head went below the board, and then whispered, “The king has a purpose to slay you”. At once Perctarit gave a sign to the butler who waited upon him to fill his silver goblet with water only. Messenger after messenger brought generous wines from the king, and Perctarit seemed to drink them eagerly, while really imbibing only water. The servants carried back to the king the tidings that Perctarit was drinking heavily, to which Grimwald coarsely replied, “Let that drunkard drink today : tomorrow he will disgorge the wine mingled with blood”. Meanwhile Perctarit found means to communicate with Unulf, and tell him of the impending danger. Then Unulf sent a servant to his own house with orders to bring his bedding from thence, and spread his couch beside that of Perctarit. The guards whom Grimwald had by this time stationed to watch the doors of Perctarit’s abode saw the slave enter with the bedding, and then after the supper was ended and all the other guests departed, they saw Unulf emerge, attended apparently by a young slave, whose head and neck were covered by the bed-clothes, the counterpane and the bearskin, under the weight of which he staggered. His brutal master urged him on with blows and curses, and more than once the overloaded youth fell to the ground while trying to escape from the blows. When they came to the place where the king's sentries were posted, these naturally enquired what was the matter. “My rascal of a slave”, said Unulf, “spread my couch in the chamber of that tipsy Perctarit, who has filled himself with wine, and now lies like a corpse on the floor. But I have followed his mad courses long enough. So long as my lord the king lives, I shall henceforward stay in my own house”. When the guards heard this they were glad, and let Unulf and the slave (who of course was Perctarit in disguise) pass without further question. Meanwhile Perctarit’s valet who was the only other person that had been left in the house, made fast the door, and all was settled for the night. But Unulf let Perctarit down by a rope from a corner of the city wall overlooking the river Ticinus, and he, meeting with some of his friends, galloped away with them on some horses which they found grazing in the meadows, and the same night reached the city of Asti which had not yet submitted to Grimwald, but still held out for the lost cause. Thence one rapid journey to Turin; and the fugitive disappeared over the ridges of the Alps into the friendly country of the Franks. “Thus”, says Paulus, “did Almighty God by His merciful providence deliver an innocent man from death, and at the same time preserve from blood guiltiness a king who really desired to do what was right”.

Morning came; the guards still paced up and down before the dwelling of Perctarit; at last the messengers of the king came and knocked at the door. The valet answered from within, “Have pity on him, and let him sleep a little longer, for he is weary with his journey and is wrapped in deep slumber”. The messengers returned and told their tale to the king, who at once attributed Perctarit's heavy sleep to the potations of the preceding evening. “But it is time to rouse him now, and bring him to the palace”, said the king. The messengers returned, knocked louder at the door, and were again entreated by the valet to let his master sleep a little longer. “The drunkard has slept long enough”, said they in a rage, kicked open the door of the chamber, and rushed to the bedside. Finding no Perctarit there, and having hunted for him all over the house, they asked the valet what had become of his master. “He has fled”, said the servant, who saw that further evasion was impossible. In their fury they seized him by the hair, and with many blows they dragged him into the presence of the king, clamouring loudly for his death as an accomplice in the flight of Perctarit. But the king ordered them to loosen their hold of the prisoner, and commanded him to tell the whole story of the escape. When the tale was ended, Grimwald said to the bystanders, “What think you ought to be done to the man who has wrought such a deed as this?”. They all with one voice exclaimed that killing was not enough for him, but he ought to be put to death with many torments. “By Him who gave me life”, said Grimwald, “the man is worthy of great honour who feared not to expose himself to death for the sake of his master. Let him be taken into my service as a valet”. And with that he promised him great gifts, exhorting him to render to himself the same faithful service that he had rendered to his late lord. Unulf, for whom the king then enquired, had taken refuge in the church of St. Michael, but, receiving the royal promise of his safety, came forth, entered the palace, and threw himself at the feet of the king. From him, too, Grimwald would fain learn the whole story of the escape, and when he heard it he greatly commended his prudence and fidelity, and issued an order that he should be left undisturbed in the possession of all his property. After some time had elapsed, the king asked Unulf whether he now ever regretted not being with Perctarit, to which he answered with a solemn oath that he would rather die with Perctarit than live anywhere else in uttermost delights. The valet gave the same answer when asked whether he would rather be with the king in his palace or with his late master in his wanderings. Their words met with a kindly reception from Grimwald, who praised their loyalty to their lord, and bade Unulf take from his palace what he would, slaves or horses or household furniture, and hasten to the master of his choice. The valet, too, received the same gracious dismissal, and with the help of the king's safe-conduct, and loaded with his generous presents, they entered France, and were again with their beloved Perctarit.

It may possibly have been the flight of Perctarit into Frankish territory that disturbed the peaceful relations of the two kingdoms; but, whatever was the cause, an army of the Franks, the first that had been seen in Italy in that century, crossed the Maritime Alps, and threatened the throne of Grimwald. They were defeated by an easy stratagem, which speaks ill for the discipline to which they had been subjected. Grimwald having pitched his camp near to theirs, feigned panic and flight, leaving his tents with all their treasures, and especially with good store of wine, open to the invaders. They came, they plundered, they drank, and at night, while they were stretched in the heavy slumber of drunkenness, Grimwald and his warriors came upon them and slew so great a multitude that few found their way back to their own land. The slaughter—battle it can hardly be called—took place at Frenchmen's River, a village not far from the walls of Asti. Thus the “walls of avenging Asta”, as Claudian called them, a second time witnessed the repulse of an invader.

But a more formidable foe than the weak Merovingian king or his Mayor of the Palace was to trouble the repose of Lombard Italy. Constans II, the son of Heraclius, and the heir of his grandfather's fitful energy and of some of his grandfather's genius, conceived the idea of becoming in fact as well as in name Emperor of Rome. It will be desirable here briefly to retrace the earlier stages of his career, and at the same time to take up some dropped stitches in the history of the Popes and Exarchs during the years preceding his invasion of Italy. Constans II (or, as he is more correctly called, Constantine IV) was born in the year 631, and in 642, when only a boy of eleven, found himself by the death of his father, the dethronement of his uncle and the exile of his grandfather's widow, the ambitious and unscrupulous Martina, sole Emperor of the Romans. A military pronunciamiento had prepared the way for his accession, but in the speech which he made to the Senate of Constantinople after the downfall of his rivals, he expressed his desire that he might have the Senators as his counsellors, and judges of that which should be for the welfare of his subjects. This probably means that during the early years of his sovereignty the government was practically in the hands of a council of regency composed of the leading members of the Senate. Constans, however, grew up into a strong, self-willed man, and we may presume that while yet in early manhood he brushed aside his senatorial counsellors, and governed as well as reigned. He could not wholly arrest—probably not the strongest of his Imperial predecessors could have arrested—the onrush of the children of Arabia, who wrested Armenia from the Empire, and made a temporary conquest of Cyprus and Rhodes. But he fought in person in the great naval engagement with the Saracens off the coast of Lycia, in which, though defeated and compelled to fly for his life, he seems to have inflicted enough damage on the enemy to prevent their fulfilling their intention of besieging Constantinople. Shortly afterwards came that great schism between the two rival claimants for the caliphate, Ali and Moawiyah, which still rends the Moslem world asunder, and which gave a welcome breathing-time to the hard-pressed champions of the Empire.

In ecclesiastical matters Constans II showed himself a hard-headed, unsympathetic, indifferent man of the world, determined that his Empire should not be harassed, if he could help it, by the speculative controversy which his grandfather had unwisely raised about the divine and human wills of Jesus Christ. The Ecthesis of his grandfather Heraclius had asserted the Monothelete doctrine, or as it is now decided to be, the Monothelete heresy, that there was but one will in the heart of the Saviour, and this doctrine had been eagerly upheld by successive Patriarchs of Constantinople, and as eagerly denounced by successive Popes of Rome. Popes and Patriarchs were excommunicating each other—in one case, to give greater solemnity to the transaction, the Pope descended to the crypt which contained the body of St. Peter, and dipped his pen in the consecrated chalice, that he might thus write the damnation of his enemy in the blood of Christ—and all the miserable wrangle of the Monophysite controversy seemed about to be renewed with greater bitterness than ever, at a time when the very existence of Christianity and of the Empire was threatened by the swords of the followers of Mohammed. Utterly weary of the whole dispute, and sympathizing apparently neither with his Monothelete grandfather nor with his Dyothelete father, the young Emperor Constans (he was then but seventeen years of age) ordered the removal of the Ecthesis from the doors of the great church at Constantinople, and put forth the famous document called the Type, in which he attempted the impossible task of imposing silence on warring theologians. “Inspired by Almighty God”, said Constans, “we have determined to extinguish the flame of this controversy, and will not allow it any longer to prey upon the souls of men. The Sacred Scriptures, the works of the Fathers, the decrees of the Five General Councils are enough for us. Why should men seek to define beyond these? Therefore no one shall be allowed to speak of one will and one operation, or of two wills and two operations in the person of Christ. Any one transgressing this command shall, if a bishop, be deposed from his see; if a clergyman, from his clerical office; if a monk, he shall be confined, and banished from his monastery. If he holds any dignity or office, civil or military, he shall be deprived of it. If he is a nobleman, all his property shall be confiscated; if not noble, he shall not only be beaten with stripes, but further punished by perpetual banishment; that all men being restrained by the fear of God, and dreading the condign punishments with which we thus threaten them, may keep unmoved and untroubled the peace of the holy Churches of God”.

Vain hope, by decrees and banishments and chastisements to silence the subtle ecclesiastical intellect when once engaged in a war of words like that aroused by the Ecthesis! Bad as that Imperial document had been accounted by the See of Rome, the impiissimus Typus was soon discovered to be even worse. Pope Martin, who had just succeeded Theodore 653 (the excommunicator of Pyrrhus), convened a council of one hundred and five Italian bishops, who met in the Lateran palace, anathematized the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople, “the most impious Ecthesis, the wicked Type lately put forth by the most serene Emperor Constans”, and all receivers and defenders of the same.

The Pope had the Italian bishops and the general allies sentiment of the West on his side, but otherwise he stood alone against the Emperor and all the great Eastern Patriarchates. There are indications of his turning to the Frankish kings Clovis II and Sigibert II for aid, for moral at least, if not for physical support. Did he also invoke the assistance of the Arian king of the Lombards, Rothari, against the author of the Type, and the close confederate of the heretical Patriarch of Constantinople? This was charged against him, and in the difficult circumstances of his position it could not be imputed to him as a crime; but the meagre annals of the period do not allow us to pronounce on the justice of the accusation. However, whether on religious or on political grounds a high-spirited young sovereign such as Constans II was not disposed to tolerate the insubordination of the Pope, who was still in theory only a subject of the most Serene Emperor. He sent his chamberlain Olympius as Exarch to Italy with orders to protect and cherish all bishops who accepted the Type, to sound the disposition of the army, and if he found it favourable, to bring Pope Martin a prisoner to Constantinople, after which display of power it was hoped that all the other bishops of Italy would readily subscribe the Imperial decree. If, however, he found the army hostile, he was to say as little as possible about the Type, and simply to strengthen his military hold on Ravenna and Rome. Arriving in the City with these somewhat ambiguous instructions, the new Exarch found all the bishops and clergy of Rome enthusiastic in their defence of the Pope and their condemnation of the Monothelete doctrine. Probably also the army shared the general enthusiasm, for the Exarch renounced the perilous attempt to seize the Pope in the midst of his flock. An after generation, however, believed the improbable story that Olympius ordered the assassination of the Pope in the very act of celebrating Mass at the church of S. Maria Maggiore but that the soldier who was commissioned to do the unholy deed was struck by a supernatural blindness which prevented him from seeing Pope Martin when he was in the very act of handing the chalice to the Exarch, and thus the murder was prevented.

Whatever the truth may be as to this alleged attempt on the Pope's life, there is no doubt that Olympius completely renounced the attempt to force the Imperial Type on the Roman Church. A reconciliation took place between Exarch and Pope, so complete as to give some colour to the charge that Olympius aimed at making himself Emperor, and that Martin countenanced him in his treason. But the next step taken by the Exarch showed no disloyalty to the Empire. He crossed over with his army into Sicily in order to combat the Saracens, whose invasions of that island (which were to be continued with more or less intermission for more than four centuries) had already begun. “For their sins”, however, as we are told, the greater part of his army perished, apparently by sickness, not by the sword; and Olympius himself died also, probably a victim to the same pestilence which had ravaged his camp.

The death of Olympius enabled Constans to resume his plans for the arrest of the Pope and the forcible promulgation of the Type. Theodore Calliopas, who arrives in was sent a second time to Ravenna as Exarch, appeared in Rome with an army on June 15, 653. The position of affairs was not unlike that which had been seen more than a century before, when Belisarius received orders for the deportation of Pope Silverius. Now, as then, the ecclesiastical motive for the coup d'etat and the unslumbering jealousy between the sees of Rome and Constantinople were veiled by the imputation of political crimes. Martin was accused of having corresponded with the Saracens (doubtless the Saracen invaders of Sicily), as well as of being irregularly elected, of changing the faith delivered to the saints, and of showing insufficient reverence to the Virgin Mary.

At first the Exarch temporized; professed that he desired to come and adore his Holiness, but he was wearied with his journey, and he was afraid that Pope Martin had filled the Lateran with armed men; an insinuation to which the Pope replied by inviting the Exarch’s soldiers to make a visit of inspection, and see if they could find a weapon or a stone therein. The Pope, who with better reason feared violence, and who had been for eight months in weak health, had his bed placed before the altar in the Lateran Church. Thither came the soldiers of the Exarch in full armour, with swords and lances, and bows with the arrow on the string. “They there did unutterable things”, says the horrified Pope; but though their conduct was doubtless indecorous, its atrocity seems somewhat diminished when we find that the only recorded detail relates to the overthrow of the candles, which fell all over the church like leaves in autumn, and the crash of the stricken candelabra, which filled the church with a noise like thunder. Desiring to prevent the effusion of Christian blood, the Pope came from his sanctuary, the people shouting as he emerged from the church, “Anathema to all who say that Martin has changed a jot or a tittle of the faith. Anathema to all who do not remain in his orthodox faith even to the death”. So the Pope wended his way through the City up to the palace of the Exarch, which apparently still stood where the palace of the Caesars had stood, on the Palatine Hill. Multitudes of the clergy and laity, who declared that they would live and die with the Pontiff, on the invitation of the Exarch swarmed after him into the palace. They had hoped if he were banished that they would be allowed to share his exile, but soon after midnight on the morning of Wednesday, the 19th of June, Pope Martin, while all his adherents were kept under close ward in the palace, was hurried on board a little ship which was lying at Portus, his only companions being six acolytes and one household servant.

On the 1st of July, the ship, slowly sailing, arrived at Misenum, but neither at Misenum nor any of the other cities of beautiful Campania (already called by the equivalent of its modern name, Terra di Lavoro), nor at any of the islands at which they touched was the exile from the Lateran palace allowed to leave the bark, which he felt to be indeed his prison. At last they reached the island of Naxos, where he was detained for more than a year, and there as a great favour he was permitted to reside in an inn in the city, and was twice or thrice indulged with the luxury of a bath. Possibly the Imperial Court hoped that if his courage were not broken as that of Vigilius had been by arrogance and insult, his sickly frame, known to be enfeebled by gout, would sink beneath the hardships which he endured. But the spirit and the bodily frame of the heroic Pope alike disappointed their expectations, and at length, on the 17th of September (654), he was brought into the harbour of Constantinople. There for ten hours on his pallet-bed on the deck of the vessel lay the venerable Pope, racked with gout, wasted by constant diarrhea, and feeling the nausea consequent on his long voyage. His adoring companions saw him thus “made a spectacle unto angels and to men”; but the populace of Constantinople, “men with wolfish faces and evil tongues”, crowded round him, crying out that he was not fit to live. At sunset a squad of guards came, who placed him in a litter, and carried him off to a prison called Prandiaria. For ninety-three days he languished in this dungeon, deprived of all the comforts which were now necessaries to a high-bred Roman ecclesiastic. On the 19th of December (654) he was brought into the presence of the Sacellarius or Lord High Treasurer, who had summoned a meeting of the Senate for his trial. He was ordered to stand in the presence of his judges, and when the attendants pointed out that he was unable to stand, the Sacellarius thundered forth, “Then let two of you support him, one on each side, for he shall not be allowed to sit”.

The examination, which was conducted through the medium of an interpreter, for the Pope was as ignorant of Greek as his persecutors were of Latin, turned entirely on political matters. The absurd accusation of complicity with the Saracens, which only derived colour from the fact that the Pope had sent money to be distributed as alms among the Sicilian poor, seems now to have been tacitly abandoned, and the only charge which was vehemently pressed against him was one of complicity with the treasonable designs of Olympius. Rough and illiterate soldiers from the Exarch's army were brought to prove this charge; and the Pope asked in vain that they might be allowed to give their evidence unsworn, that they might not imperil their souls by perjury. The Pope began his answer to the charge against him thus :— “When the Type was prepared and sent to Rome by the Emperor...”— but the Prefect Troilus at once stopped him—“Do not bring in any questions about the faith. We are Romans and Christians and Orthodox. It is about the rebellion that we are examining you”. The Pope's constant answer was that he had no power to resist the Exarch, who had the whole army of Italy at his disposal. “Was it I who made him Exarch, or you at Constantinople? But work your will upon me, and do it speedily”. After this he seems to have tried to give a long harangue, which was faithfully interpreted by an African nobleman named Innocent; but the Sacellarius roughly interrupted, “Why do you interpret what he is saying? We do not want to hear it”. With that he rose up, and all they that were with him, and going into the Emperor's chamber announced that they were ready to pass sentence upon the Bishop of Rome.

That sentence appears to have been a capital one, for the Pope was dragged through the streets of the city with a drawn sword carried before him; but if such a sentence was pronounced it was commuted into imprisonment and exile. He was forced to stand for some time in the Hippodrome, as a spectacle to the people, the guards as before supporting him on either side, and the young Emperor looking on through the lattice-work of his banqueting-hall at the humiliation of his great spiritual rival. Little could either persecutor or victim foresee how cruelly, more than five centuries later the indignities offered to the Roman Pope would be avenged on the Eastern Emperor by the sack of his own city of Constantinople.

The Sacellarius then came forth from the banqueting-hall and said, “See how the Lord has delivered thee into our hands. What hadst thou to hope for that thou shouldest strive against the Emperor? Thou hast abandoned the Lord, and He has abandoned thee”. He ordered one of the guards to cut the strap which bound round his neck the satchel in which the Pontiff was accustomed to carry the sacred books, and then he handed him over to the Prefect, saying, “Take him, my lord Prefect, and cut him limb from limb”.

Loaded with irons, with torn robes, but surrounded by a crowd not now shouting execrations, but saddened and awestruck at what was being done, the successor of St. Peter was dragged through the streets of Constantinople to the prison of Dioniede, in the Praetorian Prefect's palace. As he climbed up the steps of the prison, which were rough and steep, his swollen feet left upon them the stain of blood. He was then thrust into a cold and dreary cell, where the irons clanked upon his shivering limbs. One young ecclesiastic who had followed him, as Peter followed his Lord was permitted to share his dungeon, but the keeper of the prison was also always present, bound to the Pope by a chain, as was the custom in the case of culprits under sentence of death. There were, however, two kind-hearted women, mother and daughter, related apparently to the keepers of the prison, who succeeded in removing the chilled and exhausted Pontiff from the dungeon cell and from the continual presence of the gaoler. They carried him to their own bedroom, and laid him in a comfortable bed, where however he lay speechless till the evening. When evening came, Gregory, a eunuch and Grand Chamberlain, sent his majordomo with some scanty refreshment, who whispered words of intended comfort, “In all our tribulations we put our trust in God. Thou shalt not die”. The Pope, however, who was worn out and longed for speedy martyrdom, only groaned. The heavy iron chains however were taken off from him and not again imposed.

One cause which led to some alleviation of the Pope's physical sufferings was the troubled conscience of Paul, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had been fiercely anathematized by successive Popes, but who, being now upon his death-bed, could not endure the thought of the indignities which the remorseless Emperor was heaping on their common enemy. When Constans visited him the day after the trial, and told him what had been done, Paulus turned his face to the wall, and said with a groan, “Ah me! this too will be added to the number of my sins”. At his earnest request, the capital sentence passed on the Pope was remitted by Constans, and the rigor of his confine was somewhat lessened.

Pyrrhus, Patriarch of Constantinople

To the patriarch Paul (who died December 26, 654) succeeded Pyrrhus, who, as we have seen, had once himself been a fugitive at Rome, had there renounced the Monothelete heresy, and had then returned, as the orthodox said, “like a dog to his vomit” when he found himself in the atmosphere of Monothelete Ravenna. This temporary departure from the ruling creed was however objected against him now, when he sought to recover the Patriarchal throne on which he had once before been seated. He declared that he had subscribed to the Pope’s libellus (1) because he was his guest, and (2) under duresse. On these two somewhat inconsistent pleas the imprisoned Pope was now examined by an Assistant-Treasurer who bore the great name of Further Demosthenes. The Court minion, when he entered the prison, said with an unworthy sneer, “Our lord the excellent Emperor has sent us to thee, saying. See in what height of glory thou once wast placed, and to what a depth thou now hast fallen. For all this thou hast only thyself to thank”. To which the Pope only replied, “Glory and thanksgiving in all things to the only King, Immortal and Invisible”. Demosthenes then proceeded to cross-question him about his reception of the fugitive Patriarch Pyrrhus. “Whence did he draw his subsistence when he was in Rome?” “From the Roman Patriarchate” [the Lateran Palace]. “What was your object in thus supplying him with provisions?” “My good lord, you do not understand the ways of the Roman Church. For I tell you plainly, St. Peter does not repel any one, however poor and miserable, who comes to claim his hospitality, but gives them the whitest bread and divers kinds of wine. If then this is done even to miserable outcasts, in what guise ought we to have received one who came as the honoured bishop of the great see of Constantinople?” Then came the question as to duresse, the heavy wooden chains which were said to have been fastened on the Patriarch's limbs, and the many grievous things that had been done to him. To which answered the Pontift, “All this is utterly untrue, and there are men in Constantinople who were then in Rome, and who know how false is the accusation. There is Plato, once Exarch, who sent his messengers to Pyrrhus at Rome. Ask him, and if fear does not prevent him from speaking the truth, he will tell you. But I am in your hands. Tear me if you will, limb from limb, as the Treasurer said to the Prefect that he ought to do unto me. Work your own will upon me : but I will not communicate with the Church of Constantinople”.

After eighty-four days’s confinement in the prison of Diomede, the unfortunate Pope was again put on ship-board and delivered to the mercies of the stormy Euxine. What object the guards can have had in keeping their unhappy prisoner so long exposed to the miseries of sea­sickness we know not: but it was not till May 15, two months after his embarkation, that he was permitted to land at Cherson, a place which was not the same as the modern city of Cherson, but was situated in the Crimea, then called the Tauric Chersonese. Here he languished for four months, and then died worn out by disease and hardship. From two letters which he wrote to his friends at Rome, we receive a most melancholy impression of his state during these last four months of his life. He complains bitterly of the lukewarmness and forgetfulness of his Roman friends, who wrote him no letters, and sent him no alleviations of his distress. Almost the only news which he did receive from Rome was the unwelcome intelligence that, yielding to Imperial pressure, the Roman clergy had acquiesced in his deposition, and elected another Pope, Eugenius I, as his successor. The inhabitants of the country to which Martin was exiled were, according to his accounts, barbarians and heathens, and he suffered from want not only of the comforts, but almost of the necessaries of life. His only chance of buying corn was in small quantities from vessels which came thither laden with salt from the southern shores of the Black Sea, and then he had to pay for it at the high price of one solidus for a bushel.

Pope Martin died on September 17, 655. He was buried in that wild Crimean land, and miracles, of which there had been some mention during his life, were believed to be wrought at his tomb. On the whole, he must be pronounced one of the noblest figures in the long line of Roman Pontiffs. The querulous tone of the letters of his exile contrasts somewhat unfavourably with the utterances of that other victim of Imperial persecution, St. Chrysostom. And, as I have before suggested, it is possible that there may have been some foundation for the political charges on which ostensibly his condemnation was based. But on the other hand there can be no doubt that if he had been willing to strike his flag to the Monotheletes, or to accept that arbitrary 'End of Controversy', the Type of the worldly-minded Emperor Constans, he might at once have ended his weary exile and had returned to the comforts and the splendours of the Lateran Palace. This he refused to do for conscience' sake, and he is therefore entitled to rank as one of the few martyrs who have sat in the chair of St. Peter.

Chronological notes

I must remind the reader, in returning to the course of Lombard history, that all the events with which we have been recently dealing occurred before the accession of Grimwald. Heraclius published his Ecthesis in 638, two years after the accession of Rothari. The Ecthesis was taken down, and the Type was substituted for it by Constans II in 648, four years before the end of Rothari’s reign. When Rothari died (in 652), Martin had been for three years Pope. Exarch Olympius died in that year, and his successor's capture of the Pope occurred in the following year, the date of Aripert's accession to the Lombard throne. Aripert during his reign must have heard of the death of Martin in exile at Cherson, of the death of his successor Eugenius (June, 657), and of the elevation of his successor Vitalian, whose long pontificate (657-672) covers the whole of the reign of Grimwald. Under the rule of this Pope the Monothelete dispute seems to have slumbered. Fairly amicable relations existed between the patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople: Vitalian, though not going as far as Honorius in acceptance of Monothelete doctrine, was apparently willing to leave the question undiscussed, and as this was the very result most desired by Constans, a politician but no theologian, there was peace and the exchange of outward courtesies between Emperor and Pontiff.

Thus we come down to 662, the year of Grimwald's accession. Towards the close of this year Constans II formed the resolution to quit for ever his capital by the Bosphorus, and to try his fortune as a re-establisher of the Empire in the Western lands. To his contemporaries, accustomed to think of the Roman Augustus as immovably settled in the East, the resolution seemed like a madman's dream. Even the virtues of this Emperor (for he had some virtues), his rough energy, his broad view of the needs of the Empire, his abhorrence of theological disputation, as well as his undoubted vices, made him unpopular with the enervated, wordy inhabitants of New Rome. Two years previously he had put to death his brother Theodosius, whom he had before forced into holy orders, and now it was said that Theodosius continually appeared to him in the visions of the night, arrayed in the dress of a deacon, and offering him the sacramental cup, saying, “Drink, my brother!” The Imperial dreamer would take the cup, see that it was filled with blood, and awake with a cry of anguish. This story, however, comes from a very late and doubtful source and perhaps attests only the animosity of Church historians against a Monothelete heretic and the persecutor of Popes. The cruel tortures inflicted on the Abbot Maximus, the great champion of orthodoxy, and two of his disciples, who were flogged, had their tongues and right hands cut off, and were banished to the inhospitable neighbourhood of Poti, doubtless kindled the resentment of many of the Emperor's subjects against him. But after all it was perhaps statesmanship quite as much as passion which determined Constans to quit his native city and seek his fortune in the West. His grandfather Heraclius had come from Carthage to found his dynasty. He was himself called Emperor of Rome, yet Rome and Italy, were daily slipping from his grasp, the city to the Pope, the country to the Lombards. Constans would revive the great projects of Justinian, and be in fact as well as in name Emperor of Rome. We need not therefore believe the late and legendary story that when Constans was standing on the deck of his cutter, he turned round to look at the receding towers and domes of Constantinople, and spat at the Imperial City. Better vouched for, however, is the fact that he was obliged to take his departure alone, and that when he sent from Sicily for his wife and his three sons, the citizens (perhaps represented by the Senate) refused to allow them to depart.

Constans went first to Athens, where he apparently sojourned for some time, and then, probably in early part of 663, crossed over into Italy, landing at Tarentum. Both by his landing­ place and in various other ways his expedition reminds us of that other attempt which Greece made 944 years before, under Pyrrhus king of Epirus, to conquer Italy. Like that Aeacid prince, Constans sought to ascertain by supernatural means the event of his enterprise. He asked, not the priestess at Delphi, but a certain recluse who was believed to have the spirit of prophecy. “Shall I vanquish and hold down the nation of the Lombards which now dwells in Italy?” The holy man's answer, vouchsafed after a night of prayer, was less ambiguous than the response of the oracle to Pyrrhus. “The nation of the Lombards cannot be overcome, forasmuch as a pious queen, coming from another land, has built a basilica in their territory to the blessed John the Baptist, who therefore pleads without ceasing for that people. But the time will come when that sanctuary shall be held in contempt, and then the nation itself shall perish”. The historian who records this prediction considered that he saw its fulfilment when the fall of the Lombard monarchy followed the simoniacal ordination of unworthy and adulterous ecclesiastics in the great basilica of Monza.

Undismayed by this unfavourable answer—if he ever received it—the Emperor pressed on from the region round Tarentum, where he still found subjects loyal to the Empire, and invaded the duchy of Benevento where Romwald the son of King Grimwald ruled. “The high nest of Acherontia”, as Horace called it, a frontier fortress on one of the outlying buttresses of Monte Vulture, resisted all his attacks, but Luceria, “a wealthy city of Apulia”, was captured, sacked and levelled with the ground. Certainly the Emperor of Rome practiced a strange method of delivering Italy. He then marched to Benevento, which he surrounded and tried hard to carry by storm. Young Romwald, sore pressed, sent his tutor Seswald to entreat his father's aid. On receipt of this message King Grimwald at once set out with a large army to the help of his son. Many of the Northern Lombards, however, deserted on the march. The jealousy or suspicion between Pavia and Benevento was too strong to be overcome even by the presence of the Roman Emperor on the soil of Italy: and the men of the northern provinces said to one another, with self-gratulations on their own superior wisdom, “The southern duke has helped himself to all that was best worth having in the palace at Pavia, and now he is going to Benevento to help his son. You will see that he will never return”.

Meanwhile the Imperial army was pressing the siege of the city with all those engines of war the use of which the dexterous Greek understood so much better than the barbarian. By frequent sallies the gallant defenders inflicted grievous losses on the enemy, but the straitness of the siege was great, and day by day they looked for tidings of the approach of the Lombard king. At length they saw the messenger Seswald drawing near to the walls, but, alas! as a prisoner led by the Imperial generals. For while he was hovering near to the city seeking how he might enter, he had been captured by the enemy's scouts, who had brought him into the Emperor's presence. From him Constans learned of the near advent of Grimwald with a large army, and these tidings decided him to end the siege by all means as speedily as possible. Seswald was therefore allowed to approach the walls, having promised that he would assure the garrison that Grimwald could not help them. If he failed in this he was told that death awaited him. When the captive tutor was close to the walls, he asked to see his pupil, and as soon as Romwald came to the battlements he cried with a loud voice, “Stand firm, lord Romwald : thy father is at hand and will soon bring thee help. He is already at the river Sangro (about fifty miles from Benevento), and pitches his camp there tonight with a strong army. Have pity, I pray thee, on my wife and children, for I know that this perfidious race will not suffer me to live”. As soon as he had finished his speech, the Emperor bade that they should cut off his head, and hurl it into the city from a catapult: an ungenerous revenge, and one in which a Teutonic warrior would have hardly permitted himself to indulge. The well-known features were kissed by the grateful lips of Romwald, and the head was deposited in a worthy shrine.

After all, no battle was fought under the walls of Benevento. Constans was now anxious to depart, and Romwald, whose troops were probably already suffering severely from famine, made “a bridge of gold for a retreating foe”, handed over his sister Gisa to him as a hostage, and made peace on some terms, the nature of which is not recorded. Constans then started for Naples, where he was secure of a friendly reception, as that city belonged to the Empire; but on his way he was attacked by Mitola, count of Capua, at a place by the banks of the Galore (which a hundred years after was still called Pugna), and was defeated there with much slaughter. This skirmish (for it was probably nothing more) apparently broke the truce concluded under the walls of Benevento. One of the Byzantine nobles, named Saburrus, asked the Emperor to entrust him with the command of 20,000 men with whom he made no doubt that he should vanquish the young duke of Benevento. He set forth, and pitched his camp at Forino, about twenty-five miles east of Naples, which city was now the Emperor's headquarters. When Grimwald, who had by this time joined his son, heard the tidings of the Imperial general’s approach he thought to go forth also and fight with him, but with something of the spirit of a young knight of later days, Romwald begged that he, with only a portion of his father's army, might have the glory of this day's encounter. Accordingly Romwald and Saburrus with their small selected armies met on the field of battle. From four different sides sounded the trumpets of Saburrus, as the Imperial forces rushed to the fray.

But in the thick of the battle, a stalwart Lombard named Amalong, who bore “the king's wand” (probably a spear from which fluttered the royal banner), struck one of the little Greek soldiers through the body with his weapon, which he held stoutly with both hands, and lifting him from his saddle, held the spear high in air, with his victim writhing upon it. The sight of this deed so disheartened the Greeks that they turned to flight, and in that flight the army was cut to pieces. Romwald returned to his father with the glory of victory, and the boaster Saburrus brought back few of his 20,000 men to his master.

“Constans”, says the Lombard historian, “seeing Rome that he could avail nothing against the Lombards, turned all his threats and all his harshness upon his own partisans, that is, the Romans”. This may have been the secret reflection of the trembling clergy and citizens when the stern Monothelete Emperor came among them, but the outward signs of mutual amity were observed on the visit which Constans now paid to Rome. It was certainly a memorable event. Three hundred and seven years had elapsed since the awe-stricken Constantius gazed on the glories of yet unruined Rome : nearly two centuries since any person calling himself Emperor had stood upon the Palatine Hill : one hundred and thirty-seven years were yet to elapse ere a barbarian king was to be acclaimed with shouts of Carolus Imperator in the streets of Rome. Meanwhile here is this successor of Augustus, who bears by full right the title of Emperor of the Romans, but who is Greek by language, Greek by education, and who, it is to be feared, “does not hold the Catholic verity in his heart, since by that arrogant Type of his he forbids us even to make mention of the Two Wills in Christ. He has accomplished but little against the terrible Saracens : he has done nothing to deliver Italy from the unspeakable Lombards: we must receive him as our rightful lord, but our hearts fail us when we ask ourselves what he will do in Rome”. Such were probably the feelings of Pope Vitalian and his clergy as they went forth along the Appian Way six miles from the gates of the City to meet the Emperor Constans. But his first devout behaviour probably somewhat allayed their terrors. It was Wednesday, the 5th of July (663), when he entered the Eternal City, and he at once proceeded to worship at the great basilica of St. Peter, leaving there a gift upon the altar. On Saturday he went to the church of S. Maria Maggiore, and there, too, he offered his gift. On Sunday the church of St. Peter's was filled with the Greek soldiers. All the clergy went forth with due pomp of lighted tapers to meet the master of that glittering host who was present at the celebration of Mass—doubtless receiving the consecrated elements from St. Peter's successor—and again offered his gift upon the altar; this time a pallium stiff with gold. On the next Saturday he visited in equal state the Lateran Church, the home of the great Western patriarchate; he bathed in the porphyry font, which legend, then or at a later day, declared to have been used for the baptism of Constantine the Great, and he dined in the spacious banqueting-hall which was known as the Basilica of Vigilius. Lastly, on the second Sunday of his visit, he again attended High Mass at St. Peter's, and took a solemn farewell of Pope Vitalian on this the last day of his sojourn in Rome.

Twelve days was the length of the Emperor's visit, but his time was not wholly occupied in hearing Mass and offering gifts on the altars of the churches. Gold and silver had apparently long vanished from all places but the sacristies of the churches, but there was still much copper on the buildings and in the statues of the City. Between his visits to the basilicas the Emperor usefully employed his leisure in stripping the City of all these copper adornments, even proceeding so far as to strip off the copper tiles which covered the dome of the Pantheon, now the church of St. Mary of the Martyrs. These spoils, and much else, probably some works of art, possibly some of the treasures of the libraries, were put on shipboard and consigned to Constantinople, at which city however, as we shall shortly discover, they never arrived. It was certainly an unworthy mode of celebrating the Roman Emperor's visit to the City which gave him his title; and the abstraction of the roof of the Pantheon must have reminded Romans who knew anything of the history of their City of the similar procedure of Gaiseric and his Vandals upon the gilt roof of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. But the necessities of the Empire were great : some of its richest provinces were in the hands of the Saracens; and the robberies of Constans were probably not for himself but for the State. Had there been any blood spilled or any sacred vessels abstracted during the Imperial visit to Rome, we should assuredly have heard of such atrocities. Upon the whole, we may presume that when, on the 17th of July, Constans finally turned his back on the Imperial City, Pontiff and people alike congratulated themselves that they had not suffered greater evils at the hands of their stern sovereign.

From Rome he went to Naples, and from Naples by land to Reggio. He must have remained some weeks in Southern Italy, for it was in September (if not later) that he crossed over from Reggio into Sicily. He remained in that island for five years, 663-668, making Syracuse his headquarters. The object of this long sojourn in Sicily evidently was that he might use it as his base of operations against the Saracens, who were overrunning the provinces of Northern Africa. He did indeed temporarily recover Carthage, but this success was counterbalanced by a severe defeat which his troops sustained at Tripoli. In Sicily as elsewhere he showed himself grasping and impecunious. The cultivators of Sicily and Sardinia, of Calabria and of the province of Africa, long remembered the oppressive procedure of the tax­ gatherers of Constans. So inexorable were their demands that, to satisfy them, husbands were sold into slavery away from their wives, and children from their parents, and, under this intolerable tyranny, life seemed not worth the living. Now too, if we may believe the papal biographer, who writes in great bitterness of spirit against the Monothelete Emperor, Constans exceeded even his Roman exploits by his sacrilegious spoliation of the churches. All over the two islands, and the two provinces which have been named, sacred vessels and other precious ornaments dedicated to the worship of the sanctuary were carried off by the command of the Emperor and by the avarice of the Greeks

At length the hard and oppressive reign came to an end, but that end seems to have come rather from the sudden rage of an insulted menial, than from any deep-laid popular conspiracy. One day when Constans entered the bath which was called Daphne, at Syracuse, the valet who attended him, a certain Andreas, son of Troilus, while the Emperor was scrubbing himself with Gallic soap, lifted high the box in which the soap was kept, smote his master on the head with it, and ran away. As the doors of the bath-house remained long unopened, the attendants who stood without at length burst them open, and found their master lying dead upon the floor. If there had been, as seems probable, no conspiracy, it was nevertheless easy to foresee that the existence of a conspiracy against so harsh and unpopular a monarch would be easily suspected. It was probably in order to guard themselves against the certain vengeance of the Heraclian house that the courtiers determined to raise a new Emperor to the throne. Their choice fell on a certain Armenian named Mizizius, who much against his will accepted the dangerous diadem. He had calculated the chances of success more truly than those who forced the honour upon him. From all parts of Italy, from Istria and Campania, from Africa (the old home of the Heraclians), even from the island of Sardinia, soldiers flocked to Syracuse to suppress this ridiculous rebellion. When the young Constantine, the son of Constans, arrived in Sicily with a great fleet, he found the work already done, and the rival Emperor Mizizius slain. The pretender's head was taken to Constantinople, and with it many of the civil servants of the Empire who had taken part in the rebellion, and who, according to the cruel fashion of Byzantium, were mutilated before they were placed on board the ships which were to convey them to the place of execution.

Events such as these naturally weakened the resisting power of the Empire. We hear without surprise that the Saracens suddenly appeared with a large fleet in the Sicilian waters, entered Syracuse, made great slaughter among the people (a remnant of whom fled to fortified camps and the tops of the mountains), and then returned to Alexandria, bearing with them immense booty, including the brazen ornaments, and all the other precious things which Constans Augustus had carried off from Rome.

As for King Grimwald's daughter Gisa, whom the Emperor had borne off from Benevento as a hostage, she too was taken by him to Sicily, and died there. The way in which Paulus mentions her fate inclines us to suppose that it was in some way connected with the troubles of the Saracen invasion.

The remaining events of the reign of Grimwald may be briefly told, and all relate to three out of the four great duchies, whose history in an earlier chapter was brought down to this point. The duchy of Trent is not noticed here.

In SPOLETO, on the death of Duke Atto (663), Grimwald conferred the duchy on his old ally Transamund, count of Capua, to whom he was largely indebted for his success in winning the Lombard crown. Transamund, who married a daughter of Grimwald, appears to have governed the Umbrian duchy for about forty years, and his descendants, to the third generation, sat on his throne.

At BENEVENTO, young Romwald seems to have remained ever in cordial love and loyalty to his the duchy father, and we may conjecture that the kingdom and the duchy were more closely confederate together during the reign of Grimwald than at any other period of their joint existence. The chief event of the young duke's reign seems to have been the arrival of a colony of Bulgarians in Italy under their duke Alzeco, who, “with all the army of his duchy”, came to King Grimwald, and promised faithful service on condition of being allowed to reside in his land. Him Grimwald passed on to his son, desiring the latter to provide suitable habitations for him and his people. They were heartily welcomed by the young duke, who assigned to them for their residence a spacious region to the north of his capital, which had lain desert until that time, and which included the cities of Bovianum, Sepinum, and Aesernia. The fact that this broad reach of territory (situated, it is true, among the highlands of Samnium) should have remained desert till these Bulgarians from the Danube country came to occupy it, tells its own sad story of the desolation of Italy. The Bulgarian Alzeco coming thus into the territory of Duke Romwald, in a relation which in a later century would have been described as that of vassalage, had to forego the title of duke which he had hitherto borne, and be content with that of gastald, a title which, as we shall hereafter see, expressed more of personal dependence on the sovereign than the title of duke. Even down to the days of Paulus, that is, for a full century after the settlement, though the descendants of these settlers had learned the Latin tongue, the rude Bulgarian speech was still heard in these cities and villages round the skirts of Monte Matese.

Meanwhile in the duchy of FRIULI, the old home of Grimwald, disastrous events were occurring. Grasulf, Grimwald's uncle, after apparently a long reign, had been succeeded by Ago, of whom Paulus has only to tell us that a certain house called Domus Agonis was still visible at Forum Julii.

Duke Ago was followed by Lupus, an ambitious Duke and untrustworthy man. Instigated possibly by the patriarch of Aquileia, he led a band of horsemen by a highway cast up in old time across the sands to Grado, plundered that island city, and carried off the treasures of its church. Whether he deposited any of these treasures in the mother and rival church of Aquileia we are not informed. After this came the invasion of Italy by Constans, Romwald’s cry for help to his father, Griniwald’s rapid march to succour him. Before setting out the king committed his palace and all its treasures to Lupus of Friuli, perhaps an old Companion of his boyhood. But Lupus shared the general opinion of the northern Italians, that the Beneventan interloper, having once set his face towards the south, would never return to Pavia. He carried himself insolently in his delegated office; and perhaps—though this is not expressly told us—aimed at winning the kingdom for himself. When he learned that Grimwald was returning, Lupus, conscious of his misdeeds, retreated to his duchy of Friuli, and there openly raised the standard of rebellion.

On receipt of these evil tidings, Grimwald, unwilling to stir up a civil war between Lombards and Lombards, resorted to the strange and desperate expedient of inviting the Avars, the savages who, fifty years before, had slain his father and ravaged his home, to come and attack the rebel duke. The Chagan came with a great army, and was met by Lupus apparently on the old battle-ground of Theodosius by the Cold River below the pass of the Pear-tree.

For three days Lupus kept the savage horde at bay, at first with brilliant success, winning decided victories, and carrying great spoil out of their camp. But each day the number of his killed and wounded soldiers rose higher and higher, and still the apparently undiminished Avar horde rolled on towards him. On the fourth day Lupus was slain, and the remnant of his array scarcely succeeded in saving themselves by flight.

The surviving Lombards shut themselves up in the fortified cities, while the Avars as aforetime roamed over the duchy, carrying fire and sword through the wasted land. To Grimwald's ambassadors who came with a gentle suggestion that it was now time to cease from ravage, they replied that they had won Forum Julii by their arms, and did not mean to quit it. Hereupon Grimwald saw himself compelled to assemble an army for the expulsion of the Avars from Italian soil. But according to the saga, he effected his purpose not by force but by guile. The Chagan's ambassadors came and feasted at his board ere all his army was yet collected, but he dressed up the same squadrons in different attire on each succeeding day, and made them defile before the eyes of the ambassadors, leading them to suppose that each day fresh reinforcements were coming to his standard. “With all these multitudes”, said he, “shall I burst upon the Avars and their Chagan, unless they speedily vanish from the territory of Forum Julii”. The message carried back by the deluded ambassadors struck such terror into the heart of the Chagan that he made all haste to return to his own land.

The daughter of Lupus, Theuderada, was given in marriage to Romwald of Benevento, and in her new home, as we learn from the life of St. Barbatus, she played a part like that of Theudelinda in winning over the still half heathen, and wholly irreligious, Lombards of Benevento to the Christian faith.

His son Arnefrit sought to win his father's duchy, but fled at the approach of Grimwald, and took refuge with the Slovenes of Carinthia. Afterwards seeking by the help of these barbarians to recover possession of his duchy, he was slain by a sudden onset of the men of Friuli at a place called Nemae (now Nimis), about fifteen miles northwest of Cividale.

As the new duke of Friuli, Grimwald appointed Wechtari, a native of Vicenza, a man who had evidently already reached middle life, and who was, we are told, “a kind man, gently ruling the people”. Though Arnefrit was dead, his Slavonic allies still troubled the duchy, and hearing that Duke Wechtari, of whom they stood in great awe, had gone to Pavia—doubtless in order to concert measures of defence with King Grimwald—they came with a strong body of men, and pitched their camp at a place called Broxae, not far from the capital. It happened providentially that Wechtari had on the previous evening returned from Pavia, and hearing of this insolent advance of the Slovenes, he went forth with twenty of his followers to attack them. Seeing so small a troop issue from the city, the Slovenes said with jeers, “Lo, here come the patriarch and his clergy”. But when they came to the bridge over the Natiso, on the other side of whose deep gorge the invaders had pitched their camp, Wechtari took off his helmet and showed his bald head and his well-known countenance to the foe. A despairing cry of “Wechtari! Wechtari!” ran through their ranks, and they all began to think of flight rather than of battle. Then Wechtari, perceiving their panic, charged upon them with his scanty band, and inflicted such slaughter, that out of 5000 Slovenes, few returned to tell the tale in Carinthia. So runs the Saga of Wechtari.

Death of Grimwald, 671.

Throughout the long life of Grimwald he seems never to have forgotten the treachery practiced by the Patrician Gregory against his brothers Taso and Cacco. The Avars, as we have seen, he could forgive, he could even welcome as allies, but the Romans never. Especially did his anger burn against the city of Opitergium, in which the foul murder was committed. Not satisfied with the partial demolition of that city which had been accomplished some twenty or thirty years before by order of Rothari, he now utterly destroyed it, and parcelled out the citizens who were left in it among the three neighbouring cities of Forum Julii, Ceneta, and Tarvisium (Cividale, Ceneda, and Treviso). To this day the low estate of the little town, scarcely more than a village, of Oderzo, testifies to the vengeance of the Lombard king.

Equally hard was the fate of the city on the Emilian Way, twenty miles south of Ravenna, which still, in a slightly altered form preserves its classical name of Forum Populi. Many times had its inhabitants harassed his messengers going and coming in time of peace between Pavia and Benevento. Watching his opportunity, he burst, in the days of Lent, through the unguarded passages of the Apennines, came upon the city on Easter Sunday itself, when the children were being baptized, and slew the citizens with wide and indiscriminate slaughter, not sparing even the deacons who were officiating in the baptistery, and whose blood was mingled with the water of ablution. Then he beat down the chief buildings of the city, and left therein but a very few of its former inhabitants. Certainly the Lombard, even after a century’s sojourn in Italy, fell far below the Visigoth in capacity for civilization. Alaric at Pollentia well-nigh ruined his cause by his unwillingness to fight on Easter-Day, the same day which Grimwald chose for a treacherous revenge and a cruel massacre.

At length the strong, hard, self-reliant man came to a characteristic end. He had been bled, probably for some trifling ailment, by the royal surgeons, and was resting in his palace on the ninth day after the operation. A dove flew past; he longed to reach it with his arrow; he took the bow and shot, but in doing so opened again the imperfectly closed vein, and died of the ensuing haemorrhage. The suggestion that his doctors had mingled poison in their drugs seems unnecessary to explain the death of so self-willed and impetuous a convalescent. He was buried in the basilica of St. Ambrose which he himself (evidently an orthodox Catholic by profession) had reared in the royal city of Ticinum.

It should be mentioned that in July 668, in the sixth year of his reign, Grimwald made a short addition to the code of Rothari. It will not be necessary here to examine this additional code minutely. It may be sufficient to say that it shows a general disposition to uphold the prescription of thirty years, whether against a slave claiming pardon, or against a free man resisting the attempt to reduce him to slavery; that wager of battle is discouraged, and trial by sacramentum as much as possible substituted for it; and that there are some stringent provisions against the offence, then evidently increasing, of bigamy. The law of Grimwald also imports from the Roman law the principle of representation of a father by his children in the event of his having died before the ancestor whose property is being divided. From the stress laid on this principle by Grimwald we must suppose that it had been imperfectly recognized by the tribunals of Rothari.

 

THE STORY OF ST. BARBATUS.

 

THE life of St. Barbatus, the most eminent apostle of Catholic Christianity in Southern Italy, has an important bearing on the history of the duchy of Benevento in the seventh century, and especially on the invasion of Constans; but hagiology has a character of its own, and refuses to be wrought in harmoniously with secular history, even in that picturesque and saga­like form which that history assumes in the pages of Paulus. I have decided therefore to relegate to a note the condensed narrative of the saint's life and works.

This narrative is derived from two documents published in the great Bollandist collection of the Acta Sanctorum under the date 19th of February. One of these lives, we are told, is extracted from an ancient codex written in Lombard characters belonging to the Benedictine monastery of St. John at Capua. The other, an expanded and paraphrastic copy of the first, comes from the archives of the church at Benevento. Waitz, who has edited the life of the saint in Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum (M. G. H.), mentions eleven MSS., most of which he has consulted, and three of which are “litteris Beneventanis exarati”. He considers that even the earlier form of the history cannot have been written before the ninth century, and follows Bethmann in rejecting as valueless the later and paraphrastic form which he attributes to the tenth or eleventh century. From some slight indications (chiefly the description of the invading Emperor as “Constantinus qui et Constans appellatur”), I should be disposed to believe that there is a foundation of contemporary tradition for the earlier document. The following is a greatly condensed translation of the Life :

Barbatus (who was born in the year 602) became famous when Grimwald held the reins of the Lombard kingdom, and his son Romwald ruled the Samnites.

The Lombards, though baptized, worshipped the image of a viper; and moreover, they devoutly paid homage in most absurd fashion to a certain “sacrilegious” tree not far from the walls of their city. From the branches of this tree was hung a piece of leather; and all those who were to take part in the ceremony, turning their backs to the tree, rode away from it at a gallop, urging on their horses with bloody spurs. Then suddenly turning round, they hurled their lances at the leather, which quivered under their strokes; and each one cut out a little piece thereof, and ate it in a superstitious manner for the good of his soul. And as they paid their vows at this place, they gave it the name Votum, which [says the scribe] it still bears.

All these superstitious practices greatly distressed the soul of Barbatus, who told the people that it was vain for them thus to try to serve two masters. But they, in their blind and beastlike madness, refused to abandon this equestrian form of worship, saying that it was an excellent custom, and had been handed down to them by their ancestors, whom they mentioned by name, and declared to have been the bravest warriors upon earth.

However, by his miracles, Barbatus began to soften the hearts of the rude people, who even by drinking the water in which he had washed his hands after celebration of the Mass, found themselves healed of their diseases.

Then “Constantius, who is also called Constans”, desiring to restore the kingdom of Italy to his obedience, collected an innumerable multitude of ships, arrived at Tarentum, and ravaged nearly all the cities of Apulia. He took the very wealthy city of Luceria after severe fighting, and by the labour of his robber-bands levelled it to the earth. Then he went on to Beneventum, where Romwald abode, having a few very brave Lombards with him, and the holy father Barbatus remained there with them. Terrible was the attack of Constans, who harassed the defenders with ever-fresh bands of assailants. This lasted long, but Romwald, magnanimous and unterrified, made a brave resistance, now fighting from the walls, now making a sudden sally and hasty return into the city, for he was not strong enough to fight in the open plain. Still, though he had slain many of the assailants, his own ranks were thinned, and the inhabitants began to weep and wail, thinking that they would soon be destroyed by the robber-bands of Constans. As for Romwald, he, growing weary of fighting, gave a counsel of despair to his soldiers :—“It is better for us to die in battle than to fall alive into the hands of the Greeks, and so perish ignominiously. Let us open the gates of the city, and give them the hardest battle that we can”. Perceiving this discussion, St. Barbatus said, “Never let so many brave young men be given over to destruction, lest they perish everlastingly. Good were the boldness of your hearts, if your minds were not so empty, and your souls so weak”. Said Romwald, “What dost thou mean by emptiness of mind, and weakness of soul? Prithee, tell us”. Thereupon Barbatus, promising them the palm of victory, if they would follow his counsels, preached a long sermon against idolatry, and exhorted his hearers to the steady and serious worship of Christ.

Hereupon Romwald said, “Only let us be delivered from our foes, and we will do all that thou biddest us, will make thee bishop of this place, and in all the cities under our rule will enrich thee with farms and colonies”.

Barbatus answered, “Know for certain that Christ, to whom ye have now turned in penitence, will set you free, and the assaults of Caesar and his people shall not penetrate the streets of Beneventum, but with changed purpose they shall return to their own borders. And that thou mayest know that I am telling thee the very truth, which shall shortly come to pass, let us come together under the wall. There will I show thee the Virgin Mary, the most pious Mother of God, who has offered up her health-giving prayers to God for you, and now, having been heard, comes to your deliverance”.

After public prayers and solemn litanies, and after earnest private prayer offered up by Barbatus in the Church of the Virgin, the people, with Romwald at their head, assembled at the gate which is still called Summa. Then Barbatus desired them all to bow down to the dust, for God loveth a contrite heart, and went, in conversation with Romwald, close under the wall. Then suddenly appeared the Mother of God, at sight of whom the Prince fell to the earth and lay like one dead, till the holy man lifted him from the ground and spoke words of comfort to him who had been permitted to see so great a mystery.

On the following day the besieger, who had refused to be turned from his hostile purpose by an immense weight of silver and gold and a countless quantity of pearls and precious stones, now, receiving only the sister of Romwald, turned his back on Beneventum and entered the city of Neapolis. The blessed Barbatus at once took a hatchet, and going forth to Votum, with his own hands hewed down that unutterable tree in which for so long the Lombards had wrought their deadly sacrilege: he tore up its roots and piled earth over it, so that no one thereafter should be able to say where it had stood.

And now was Barbatus solemnly chosen bishop of Beneventum. Of all the farms and coloniae wherewith Prince and people offered to endow him, he would receive nothing, but he consented to have the house of the Archangel Michael on Mount Garganus, and all the district that had been under the rule of the bishop of Sipontum transferred to the See of the Mother of God over which he presided.

Still Romwald and his henchmen, though in public they appeared to worship God in accordance with the teaching of Barbatus, in the secret recesses of the palace adored the image of the Viper to their souls' destruction; wherefore the man of God, with prayers and tears, besought that they might be turned from the error of their way.

Meanwhile Romwald’s wife, Theuderada, had forsaken the way of error, and was worshipping Christ according to the holy canons. Often when Romwald went forth to hunt, Barbatus would come to visit her, and discourse with her concerning her husband's wickedness. In one of these interviews she, heaving a deep sigh, said, “Oh! that thou wouldest pray for him to Almighty God. I know that it is only by thine intercession that he can he brought to walk in the path of virtue”.

Barbatus.—“If thou hast, as I believe, true faith in the Lord, hand over to me the Viper's image, that thy husband may be saved”.

Theuderada.—“If I should do this, I know of a surety that I should die”.

Barbatus.—“Remember the rewards of eternal life. Such death would not be death, but a great gain. For the faith of Christ thou shalt be withdrawn from this unstable world, and shalt attain unto that world where Christ reigneth with His saints, where shall be neither frost nor parching heat, nor poverty nor sadness, nor weariness nor envy, but all shall be joy and glory without end”.

Moved by such promises she speedily brought him the image of the Viper. Having received it, the bishop at once melted it in the fire, and by the help of many goldsmiths made of it during the prince's absence a paten and chalice of great size and beauty, for the offering up of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

When all was prepared, on the sacred day of the Resurrection, Romwald, returning from hunting, was about to enter Beneventum, but Barbatus met him, and persuaded him first to come and assist in celebration of the Mass in the church of the Mother of God. This he did, receiving the communion in the golden vessels made, though he knew it not, from the image of the Viper. When all was done, the man of God approached the prince, and rebuked him sharply for tempting God by keeping the Viper's image in his palace. Should the terrible day of the Divine vengeance come, in vain would he flee to that idol for protection. Hearing these words, Romwald humbly confessed his sin, and promised to give up the image into the bishop's hands. “That thou needest not do”, said the saint, “since it has already been changed into the vessels from which thou hast received the body and blood of the Lord. Thus what the Devil had prepared for thy destruction is now the instrument through which God works thy salvation”.

Romwald.—“Prithee tell me, dearest father, by whose orders the idol was brought to thee”.

Barbatus.—“I confess that I, speaking in much sorrow to thy wife concerning thy spiritual death, asked her for the image, and received it at her hands”.

Thereat one of the bystanders burst in, saying, “If my wife had done such a thing as that, I would without a moment's delay cut off her head”. But Barbatus turned to him and said : “Since thou longest to help the Devil, thou shalt be the Devil's slave”. Thereupon the man was at once seized by the Devil and began to be grievously tormented by him. And that this might be a token and a warning to the Lombard nation in after times, the saint predicted that for so many generations [the biographer is not certain of the exact number] there should always be one of his descendants possessed by the Devil, a prophecy which, down to the date of the composition of the biography, had been exactly fulfilled.

Struck with terror, all the other Beneventans abandoned their superstitions practices, and were fully instructed by the man of God in the Catholic faith, which they still keep by God’s favour.

Barbatus spent eighteen years and eleven mouths in his bishopric, and died on the eleventh day before the Kalends of March (19th of February, 682), in the eightieth year of his age.

This curious narrative, however little worthy of credence as a statement of facts, is a valuable piece of evidence as to the spiritual condition of the Lombards of South Italy in the seventh century. We may safely infer from it that conversion to Christianity was a much more gradual process in the south than in the north of Italy. Lupus of Friuli is neither saint nor hero in the pages of Paulus, but his daughter Theuderada is like another Clotilda or Theudelinda to the barbarous, half-heathen rulers of Benevento.

In another Life, contained in the Acta Sanctorum, that of St. Sabinus, we have a slight notice of Theuderada as a widow. After the death of her husband she ruled the Samnites in the name of her young son [Grimwald II], and during her regency a certain Spaniard named Gregory came to Spoleto in order to find the tomb of St. Sabinus, who had died more than a century before (in 566). Not finding the sepulcher there, he persuaded the Princess Theuderada to go and seek for it at Canusium. She found the tomb, and on opening it perceived that pleasant odor which often pervaded the sepulchers of the saints. She also found in it a considerable weight of gold, which the biographer thinks had been stored there in anticipation of that invasion of the barbarians which St. Sabinus had foretold. Unmindful of the commission which Gregory had given her to build a church over the saint’s tomb, she carried off the gold and returned in haste to Benevento. But when she arrived at Trajan's Bridge over the Anfidus, by the judgment of God her horse slipped and fell. She was raised from the ground by her attendants, but recognized in the accident the vengeance of the saint for her forgetfulness. She hastened back to the holy man’s sepulcher, built a church with all speed, roared over his body a beautiful marble altar, and made chalice and paten out of the gold found in the tomb. To the end of his life Gregory the Spaniard ministered in the church of St. Sabinus.

 

CHAPTER VII.

THE BAVARIAN LINE RESTORED