ITALY AND HER INVADERS.

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

CHAPTER II.

THE FOUR GREAT DUCHIES.

I.

The Duchy of Trent.

We are already confronted with that difficulty of treating the history of Italy from one central point of view, which recurs in a far more embarrassing form in the history of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages.

The Lombard Monarchy, as the reader must have already perceived, was a very loosely aggregated body; the great Duchies were always tending to fly off from the central mass, and to revolve in orbits of their own. Two of them, Spoleto and Benevento, did in the end succeed in establishing a virtual independence of the Kingdom which had its seat at Pavia. There were two others, Trent and Friuli, which never quite succeeded in accomplishing the same result, being nearer to the heart of the monarchy, and not being liable, as the southern duchies were, to have their communication with the Lombard capital intercepted by bodies of Imperial troops moving between Rome and Ravenna. But though these great northern dukes did not achieve their independence, there can be little doubt that they desired it, and there is, to say the least, sufficient evidence of a separate political life in their states to make it desirable to treat their histories separately, though this course will involve us in some unavoidable repetition.

DUKES OF TRIDENTUM.

EUIN or EVIN, 569-595 (?), married a daughter of Garibald, duke of the Bavarians.

GAIDWALD,

595 ALAHIS, circa 680-690.

TRIDENTUM, which I generally speak of under its modern name Trent, has made a great mark in the position ecclesiastical history of the last three centuries, owing to the choice that was made of this city as the seat of the Council that was summoned to define the faith, and so regulate the practice of the Churches still obedient to the see of Rome after the storms of the Reformation.

In Roman times, and in the centuries with which we are now dealing, its importance was derived from the fact that it was one of the chief border towns of Northern Italy, an outpost of Latin civilization far up under the shadow of the Alps, and the capital of the district watered by the upper Adige.

The modern province of Tyrol, as every traveller among the Eastern Alps knows, is composed of two main valleys, one running East and West, the valley of the Inn, and another running in the main North and South, the valley of the impetuous Adige. With the former, which constitutes Northern Tyrol, we have here no concern, and we have not to deal with quite the whole of the latter. The Adige descends from the narrow- watershed which separates it from the Inn, and flows through the long trough of the Vintschgau (called in old times

Venosta) to Meran, situated at the confluence of the stone-laden Passeyer, and proud of its memories of the Tyrolese patriot Hofer. Here in the days of the Emperors was the Roman station Castrum Magense (the modern Mais). About twenty miles further down the valley, the Adige, which here flows over dark slabs of porphyry rock, is joined by the Eisach, coming down from Brixen, and from the long Pusterthal. The next important stream that joins it is the Noce, which falls in from the West, after flowing round the base of the mighty mountain mass of the Adamello, and through the interesting valleys of Italian-speaking people known as the Val di Sole and the Val di Non. A little lower down, the Avisio, which has risen at the foot of the noble Dolomitic mountain, the Marmolata, after then flowing through the Val di Cembra, joins the Adige from the East. Soon afterwards we reach at last the battlemented walls of the city of Trent, the true centre, as has been before said, of the Adige valley, being about equally distant from Meran in the North, and from Verona in the South. An unimportant stream, the Fersina, is all that here brings its contribution to the central river; but the position of Tridentum is important for this reason, that only a few miles off, and across a low watershed, we enter the broad valley which is known as the Val Sugana, and through which flows the stream of the Brenta, a stream that takes its own independent course past Bassano and Padua to the Adriatic, and there, more than any other single river, has been ‘the maker of Venice’.

For the rest of its course the Adige flows through the narrow Val Lagarina, shut in by high hills on either side, and receiving no affluent of importance till it emerges upon the great Lombard plain, and darts under the embattled bridges of Verona, beyond which city we must not now follow its fortunes.

On the west, however, side by side with the Adige, during the last thirty miles of its course above Verona, but studiously concealed from it by the high barrier of Monte Baldo, stretches the long Lago di Garcia, largest if not loveliest of all the Italian lakes; the sheet of water whose sea-like billows and angry roar when lashed by the tempest were sung by the great bard of not far distant Mantua. Into this lake at its northern end pours the comparatively unimportant stream of the Sarco, which draws its waters from the melted snows of the southern sides of Monte Adamello, as the Noce draws its waters from the North and West of the same great mountain-chain.

Every one who has travelled in the Tyrol knows that it is emphatically a land of mountain ridges and intervening valleys. Lakes like those of Switzerland are hardly to be met with there, but we find instead a cluster of long sequestered valleys, each of which is a little world in itself, and which, but for the artificial necessities of the tourist, would have little communication one with another. In order, therefore, to describe the territory of the Duchy of Trent under the Lombards, we have only to enumerate the chief valleys of which it was composed.

According to Malfatti (whose guidance I am here following), when the Lombards first entered this region (probably in the year 569), and established themselves there under the rule of their duke Euin (or Evin), they took possession of the central valley of the Adige, about as far northward as the Mansio of Euna (represented by the modern town of Neumarkt), and southward to a point not far from the present Austro-Italian frontier, where the mountains are just beginning to slope down to the Lombard plain.

Of the lateral valleys, those watered by the Noce, the Avisio and the Sarco were probably included in the Duchy; and with the Sarco may have been also included the whole of the long and narrow valley of the Giudicarie, which touches that stream at its lower end. The short valley of the Fersina, of course, went with Tridentum, and probably also some portion, it is impossible to say how much, of the Val Sugana.

The boundary to the north is that which is most difficult to determine. As has been said, Malfatti fixes it in the earliest period at Euna. At that time we are to think of Bauzanum (Botzen), Castrum Magense (in the neighborhood of Meran), and the valley of Venosta (Vintschgau), as all in the possession of the Bavarians, who were subject to the overlordship of the kings of the Austrasian Franks. But as the tide of war ebbed and flowed, the Lombard dominion sometimes reached perhaps as far north as Meran in the valley of the Adige, and Brixen in the valley of the Eisach; and the Venostan region may have seen the squadrons of the Lombards, though it hardly can have owned them as its abiding lords.

The first duke of Tridentum, as has been said, was Duke Euin or Evin (569-595?), who seems to have been a brave and capable man, and a successful ruler. It was he who began that system of alliance with the Bavarian neighbours on the north which was afterwards carried further by Authari and Agilulf: for he, too, married a daughter of Duke Garibald, and a sister of Theudelinda.

It was probably a short time after Duke Euin's marriage (which we may date approximately at 575), that an army of the Franks, under a leader named Chramnichis, entered the Tridentine territory, apparently in order to avenge the Lombard invasion of Gaul by the three dukes Amo, Zaban, and Bodan, which had been valiantly repelled by Mummolus. The Franks captured the town of Anagnis (above Trent, on the confines of Italy), which seems to be reasonably identified with Nano in the Val di Non. The inhabitants, who had surrendered the town, seem to have been considered traitors to their Lombard lords, and a Lombard count named Ragilo, who (under Euin, doubtless) ruled the long Val Lagarina south of Trent, coming upon Anagnis in the absence of the Franks, retook the town and plundered its citizens. Retribution was not long in coming. In the Campus Rotalianus, the meadow plain at the confluence of the Noce and the Adige, Chramnichis met Ragilo returning with his booty, and slew him, with a great number of his followers. The Frankish general then, we are told, laid waste Tridentum, by which we are probably to understand the territory round the town rather than the town itself, as the capture of so important a place would have been more clearly indicated by the historian. For Chramnichis also the avenger was nigh at hand. Duke Euin met him and his allies, possibly some Roman inhabitants of the Tridentine who, like the citizens of Anagnis, had embraced the cause of the Catholic invader. The battlefield was Salurn on the Adige, a little north of the Campus Rotalianus. This time fortune favoured the Lombards. Chramnichis and his allies were slain, the booty was recaptured, and Euin recovered the whole Tridentine territory.

Not only did Euin resume possession of his Duchy after the Frankish inroad, but he seems to have extended its limits; for when the Franks next invade the country, all the valley of the Adige as far as Meran, and that of the Eisach nearly up to Brixen, appear to be in the keeping of the Lombards. It is a probable conjecture, but nothing more, that this extension of the territory of the Lombards may have been connected in some way with the domestic trouble of their Bavarian neighbours, when Garibald their duke was attacked, possibly deposed, by his Frankish overlords.

In the year 587, Duke Euin commanded the army sent by Authari into Istria. Conflagration and pillage marked his steps, and after concluding a peace with the Imperialists for one year, he returned to his king at Pavia, bearing vast spoils.

The next Frankish invasion of the Tridentine duchy was in 590, the year of Authari’s death, when, as we under have already seen, the Austrasian king and Roman Emperor joined forces for the destruction of the unspeakable Lombards. We need not here repeat what the generals of the western armies, Audovald and Olo, accomplished, or failed to accomplish, against Bellinzona and Milan. Chedin, the third Frankish general, with thirteen ‘dukes' under him, invaded the Lombard kingdom by way of the valley of the Adige, coming probably through the Engadine and down the Vintschgau to Meran. Thirteen strong places were taken by them : the sworn conditions upon which the garrisons or the inhabitants surrendered these

towns were disregarded with characteristic Frankish faithlessness, and the citizens were all led away into captivity. The names of these captured fortresses can for the most part be identified, and enable us to trace the southward progress of the invaders through the whole Tridentine territory. Tesana and Sermiana (Tiseno and Sirmian) are placed on the right bank of the Adige, some ten or twelve miles south of Meran. The position of Maletum is uncertain, but it was probably at Male, in the Val di Sole. Appianum is the castle of Hoch Eppan on the mountains opposite Botzen. Fagitana is probably Faedo on the hilly promontory between the Adige and the Avisio, overlooking the former battlefield of the Rotalian plain. Cimbra must be placed somewhere in the lower part of the valley of the Avisio, which is still known as the Val di Cembra. Vitianum is Vezzano, a few miles west of Trent. Bremtonicum is Brentonico between the Adige and the Lago di Garda, nearly on a level with the head of the latter. Volaenes is Volano, a little north of Boveredo. The site of Ennemase must remain doubtful. If it is intended for Euna Mansio it is mentioned out of its natural order, as that station, whether rightly placed at Neumarkt or not, was certainly not far south of Botzen. The names of the other three camps captured are not given us, but we are told that two werein Alsuca (the Val Sugana), and one in the territory of Verona.

But where during this inflowing of the Frankish tide was the warlike duke of Tridentum? We are not expressly told, but, remembering that the letter of the Exarch of Italy to Childebert mentions not only that Authari had shut himself up in Pavia, but that the other dukes and all his armies had enclosed themselves in their various castles, we may conjecture that Euin, in obedience to the plan of defence devised for the whole kingdom, was holding Trent with a strong force, ready to resist a siege, but renouncing the attempt to prevent the ravage of his territory.

Over against the capital city of Trent on its western side stood the high hill-fortress of Verruca, as to the construction and repair of which, under Theodoric, we have some interesting information in the letters of Cassiodorus. This castle probably it was which the historian calls Ferruge castrum, and which underwent a rigorous siege by the invading army. The fortress would have been compelled to surrender, but two bishops, Agnellus of Tridentum and Ingenuinus of Savio, interceded for the garrison, who were permitted to ransom themselves at the rate of a solidus a head. The total ransom amounted to 600 solidi.

It will be remembered that the campaign of the allied powers in 590 ended in a treaty between the Franks and the Lombards, which the Imperialists viewed with deep disgust, but the conclusion of which they were powerless to prevent. Probably the ransom of the garrison of Verruca was arranged for in these negotiations. The Frankish historian mentions the unwonted heat of the Italian summer as having exercised an unfavourable influence on the health of the invaders, and describes them as returning to their homes, decimated by dysentery, worn by hunger, and compelled to part with their raiment, and even with their arms, in order to procure necessary food. We can well understand that the Tridentine duchy was not at this time a highly cultivated or wealthy district, and that after three months of ravage not even the license of a brutal soldiery could extract any more plunder from the exhausted peasantry.

This, however, was the last invasion—as far as we know—that the Tridentine territory had to undergo for more than a century. The peace concluded by Agilulf with the Frankish kings must have been an especial blessing to this district, which had no other foes to fear except those who might enter their country from the north; since high mountain ranges secured them from invasion on the east and west, and on the south was the friendly territory of Verona.

It was probably about five years after the Frankish invasion that Duke Euin died, and was succeeded by Gaidwald, perhaps not a member of Euin's family, but who is spoken of as “a good man and a Catholic”. With peace, and probably some measure of prosperity, the relations between the Lombards and the Romano-Rhaetian population in the valley of the Adige were growing more friendly, and now both ruler and people were no longer divided by the difference of creed.

The centrifugal tendency, as it has been well called, so often to be found in these Teutonic states, and so especially characteristic of the Lombards, carried both Gaidwald of Trent and his neighbour of Friuli into opposition, estrangement, perhaps, rather than open rebellion, against King Agilulf. How long this estrangement may have lasted, or in what overt acts it may have borne fruit, we cannot say. All that we know is that the joyful year 603, perhaps the very Eastertide which witnessed the baptism of Theudelinda's son in the basilica of Monza, saw also the reconciliation of Gaidwald and his brother duke with Agilulf.

From this point we hear very little more of the separate history of the Adige valley. We know neither the date of Gaidwald's death, nor the names of any of his successors save one. That one is a certain Alahis, who about the year 680 fought with the Count (Gravio) of the Bavarians, and won great victories over him, obtaining possession of Botzen (which had evidently therefore passed out of Lombard hands), and of many other strong places. These successes so inflated his pride that he rebelled against the then reigning king Cunincpert (688­700), with results which will have to be recorded when we come to that king's reign in the course of general Lombard history.

For the earliest period of the Lombard monarchy our information as to the duchy of Trent, doubtless derived from its citizen, ‘the servant of Christ', Secundus, is fairly full and satisfactory; but after his death (612) this source dries up, and none other is opened to us in its stead.

II.

Duchy of Friuli.

From the Armenian convent, or from any island on situate the north of Venice, the traveller on a clear afternoon in spring sees the beautiful outline of a long chain of mountains encircling the northeastern horizon. He enquires their names, and is told that they are the mountains of Friuli. Possibly the lovely lines of Byron's Childe Harold recur to his memory :

The moon is up, and yet it is not night;

Sunset divides the sky with her; a sea

Of glory streams along the Alpine height

Of blue Friuli's mountains;

and the very name Friuli bears to his ears a sound of idyllic beauty and peace. Yet the name really speaks of war and of prosaic trade; of the march of legions and the passage of long caravans over dusty Alpine roads to the busy and enterprising Aquileia. Friuli, once Forum Julii, derived its name, perhaps its origin, from the greatest of the Caesars, who probably established here a market for the exchange of the productions of Italy with those of the neighbouring Noricum, with which it communicated by means of the Pass of the Predil. Reading as we do in Caesar's Commentaries so much about his operations in Trans-Alpine Gaul and in Britain, we are in danger of forgetting the vast amount of quiet work of an organizing kind which he achieved while tarrying in winter quarters in his other two provinces, Cisalpine Gaul (that is, Northern Italy), and Illyricum, This northeastern corner of Italy is eloquent of the memory of that work. The mountains which part it off from the tributaries of the Danube are called the Julian Alps; the sequestered valley of the Gail is said to have been named Vallis Julia, and two towns, Julium Carnicum, north of Tolmezzo, and this Forum Julii, in the valley of the Natisone, also tell of the presence of the great dictator.

This place, Forum Julii, now known not as Friuli but as Cividale (as having been the chief Civitas of the district), was chosen as the capital of the great frontier duchy. Aquileia had been the chief city of the province, and the high roads which still converged towards that Venice of the Empire, the Pontebba and Predil Passes, the Pass of the Pear Tree, the road which skirted the Istrian coast—all these gave its distinctive character to the region. But Aquileia, though, as we have seen, it still retained its ecclesiastical importance, was not the place chosen for the seat of the Lombard duke. It was probably too near the sea to be altogether safe from the galleys of Byzantium; it was perhaps already beginning to be tainted with malaria; it was possibly considered not the best place for watching the passes over the mountains. Whatever the cause, the place chosen by the Lombards was, as has been said, Forum Julii, a town which held a respectable position under the Empire, but which attained its highest pitch of prosperity and importance under its Lombard rulers. Though now shorn of its old glory, Cividale is still one of the most interesting and picturesque cities of the Venetian mainland. It is situated on the north­eastern margin of that great alluvial plain, and clings, as it were, to the skirts of the mountains which are climbed by the highway of the Predil Pass. The city is divided from one of its suburbs by a deep gorge, through which, blue as a turquoise, flow the waters of the river Natisone on their way to the ruins of desolate Aquileia. The gorge is spanned by a noble bridge (Il ponte del Diavolo), and its steep cliffs are crowned by the tower of the church of St. Francesco, and—more interesting to an archaeologist—by the quaint little building called Il Tempietto. This was once a Roman temple, dedicated, it is said, to Juno, but afterwards converted into a Christian basilica. The low marble screen which separates the choir from the nave, and the six statues at the west end, stiff and Byzantine in the faces, but with some remembrance of classical grace in the fall of their draperies, give a decidedly archaic character to the little edifice, and may perhaps date from the days of the Lombards.

The museum of Cividale is rich in objects of interest; a Roman inscription of the end of the second century making mention of Colonia Forojuliensis; a very early codex of the Four Gospels, with autographs of Theudelinda and other illustrious personages of the Middle Ages; the Pax of St. Ursus, and ivory slab about six inches by three, representing the Crucifixion and set in a silver-gilt frame, which used to be handed to strangers to kiss, in token of peace; and many other valuable relics of antiquity. But the relic which is most important for our present purpose is the so-called Tomb of Gisulf. This is an enormous sarcophagus, which, when opened, was found to contain a skeleton, a gold breast-plate, the golden boss of a shield, a sword, a dagger, the end of a lance, and a pair of silver spurs. There was also an Arian cross of gold with eight effigies of Christ, and a gold ring with a coin of Tiberius I attached to it, which perhaps served as a seal. Undoubtedly this is the tomb of some great barbarian chief; but, moreover, there are rudely carved upon the lid the letters GISULG, which are thought by some to indicate that we have here the tomb of Alboin's nephew, Gisulf I, or his great-nephew, Gisulf II. This opinion is, however, by no means universally accepted, and it has been even asked by a German critic whether local& patriotism may not have so far misled some enthusiastic antiquary as to induce him in clever fashion to forge the name of the city's hero, Gisulf.

Such then is the present aspect of the little city which now bears the proud name of Cividale, and which once bore the even greater name of Forum Julii. No doubt the chief reason for making this a stronghold of Lombard dominion was to prevent that dominion from being in its turn overthrown by a fresh horde of barbarians descending from the mountains of Noricum. Alboin remembered but too well that entrancing view of Italy which he had obtained from the summit of the royal mountain, and desired not that any Avar Khan or Slovene chieftain should undergo the same temptation, and stretch out his hand for the same glittering prize.

It was then with this view that (as has been already related) Alboin selected his nephew and master of the horse, Gisulf, a capable man, probably of middle age, and made him duke of Forum Julii, assigning to him at his request some of the noblest and most warlike faras, or clans, of the Lombards for his comrades and his subjects. Horses also were needed, that their riders might scour the Venetian plain and bring swift tidings of the advance of a foe; and accordingly Gisulf received from his sovereign a large troop of brood mares of high courage and endurance.

The boundaries of the duchy of Forum Julii cannot be ascertained with even the same approximation to accuracy which may be reached in the case of the duchy of Tridentum. Northwards it probably reached to the Carnic, and eastwards to the Julian Alps, including, therefore, the two deep gorges from which issue the Tagliamento and the Isonzo. Southwards it drew as near to the coast-line as it dared, but was limited by the hostile operations of the Byzantine galleys. The desolate Aquileia, however, as we have already seen, was entirely under Lombard, that is, under Forojulian domination, and Concordia was won from the Empire about 615. Opitergium (Oderzo) was a stronghold of the Empire in these parts till about the year 642. The Lombard king (Rothari), who then captured the city, beat down its fortifications, and a later king, Grimwald, about 667, having personal reasons of his own for holding Opitergium in abhorrence, razed it to the ground, and divided its inhabitants among the three duchies of Friuli, Treviso and Ceneda. The fact of this threefold division gives us some idea how far westward the duchy of Forojulii extended. In this direction it was bounded neither by the Alps nor by the unfriendly sea, but by other Lombard territory, and especially by the duchy of Ceneta (Ceneda). The frontier line between them is drawn by some down the broad and stony valley of the Tagliamento, by others at the smaller stream of the Livenza.

On the latter hypothesis Gisulf and his successors ruled a block of territory something like fifty miles from west to east and forty miles from north to south. Broadly speaking, while Aquileia and the roads leading to it gave the distinctive character to this duchy, the necessity of guarding the passes against barbarous neighbours on the north gave its dukes their chief employment. It was emphatically a border principality, and markgraf was the title of its chief in a later century. The neighbours in question were perhaps the Bavarians at the northwest corner of the duchy; but far more emphatically all round its northeastern and eastern frontiers, the Slavonians, from whom are descended the Slovenic inhabitants of the modern duchy of Carniola. Behind these men, in the recesses of Pannonia, roamed their yet more barbarous lords, the Asiatic Avars, the fear of whose terrible raids lay for centuries as a nightmare upon Europe.

For a reason which will shortly be stated, the information vouchsafed to us by Paulus as to the earliest history of the duchy of Friuli is less complete than that which he gives us as to the neighbouring duchy of Trent; an inferiority which is all the more noticeable since the Lombard historian saw in Friuli the cradle of his own race. From the year 568 till about 610, we have only two or three meager notices of the history of Forum Julii in the pages of Paulus; but some hints let fall in the correspondence of the Exarch of Ravenna with the Frankish king enable us partly to supply the deficiency. Gisulf, the nephew of Alboin, was, as we are expressly informed, still living at the time of the commencement of the interregnum (575). His reign, however, was apparently not a very long one, for in the year 589 we find another person playing a prominent part in the politics of northeastern Italy, by name Grasulf; and this man, who was in all probability a brother of Gisulf I, was almost certainly duke of Forum Julii. To this Grasulf, who was evidently an influential personage as he was addressed by the title Your Highness', a strange but important letter was addressed in the name of the Frankish king Childebert by a secretary or other official named Gogo. In this letter the Frankish secretary acts as a sort of ‘honest broker' between the Emperor and the Lombard chief. He says in brief:

“Your Highness has made known to us by your relation Biliulf a certain proposition very desirable for all parties, which ought to be put into shape at once, that we may break the obstinacy of our foes. The most pious Emperor has signified that he is going to send a special embassy, and we may expect its arrival any day; but as time presses we will lay before you two courses and leave it to you to decide between them.

I. If you can give the Republic sufficient security for the fulfilment of your promises, we are prepared to hand over to you the whole sum of money in hard cash. Thus the injuries done to God will cease; the blood of our poor Roman relations will be avenged and a perpetual peace will be established between you and the Empire.

II. But if you are not satisfied with the authority of the document which conveys to you the Emperor's offer, and therefore cannot yet come to terms, the most pious Emperor will send plenipotentiaries, and you also should send men to meet them somewhere in our territory. Only we beg that there may be no more delay than such as is necessarily caused by a sea voyage in this winter season; and that you will send persons who have full power finally to settle everything with the representatives of the Emperor.

Do this promptly, and we are prepared to join our forces with yours for the purpose of revenge [on the common foe], and to show by our actions that we are worthy to be received by the most pious Emperor into the number of his sons”.

Obscure as is the wording of this letter, there can be no doubt as to its general purport. Grasulf, evidently a man of high rank and great power, is a traitor to the national Lombard cause, and is preparing to enter into some sort of federate relation with the Empire, if he can receive a sufficiently large sum of money; and for some reason with which we are not acquainted, the Frankish king, or rather his secretary, is employed as the go-between to settle the price of Grasulf's fidelity, and the terms of payment.

If the intending traitor was, as I believe him to have been, a nephew of Alboin, and the duke of the great frontier-province of the new kingdom, it is evident that we have here a negotiation which might have been of the utmost importance to the destinies of Italy. And the suggestion that one motive for Grasulf's meditated treason may have been resentment at his own exclusion from the throne when, at the end of the interregnum, he, Alboin's nephew, was passed over, and the young Authari was invested with the robes of the restored kingship, seems to me one which has much to recommend it on the score of probability, though we can produce no authority in its Favor.

However, the negotiations for some reason or other fell through, and Grasulf did not surrender the duchy of Forum Julii to the Empire. For in the year 590, the Exarch Romanus, writing to King Childebert, and describing the course of the war, says: “Returning [from Mantua] to Ravenna, we decided to march into the province of Istria against the enemy Grasulf. When we arrived in this province Duke Gisulf, vir magnificus, son of Grasulf, desiring to show himself in his youthful manhood better than his father, came to meet us that he might submit himself, his chiefs, and his entire army with all devotion to the holy Republic”.

Here again, though we have no express identification of the actors in the drama with the ducal family of Friuli, everything agrees with the theory that they are the persons concerned. Duke Grasulf, as we may reasonably conjecture, was only half-hearted in his treachery to the Lombard cause. When it came to the point of actually surrendering fortresses, or giving any other sufficient security for the fulfilment of his compact with the Roman Republic, the negotiation broke down. His son Gisulf, who had perhaps succeeded his father Grasulf in the course of this campaign of the Exarch's, took an opposite line of policy to his father, and professed that he would do that which Grasulf had failed to do. He would show himself more loyal to the Empire than his father, and would bring over all the heads of the Lombard faras, who were serving under him, and all their men, to the holy Republic.

However, as far as we can discern the misty movements of these Sub-Alpine princes, Gisulf did not in the end prove himself any more capable friend to the Empire than Grasulf had done. If there had been any wholesale surrender of Forojulian fortresses to the Exarch we should probably have heard of it from Paulus. As it is, all that the Lombard historian tells us is that Gisulf of Friuli, as well as his brother-duke Gaidwald of Trent, having previously stood aloof from the alliance of King Agilulf, was received by him in peace after the birth of his son, and that Gisulf concurred with the king in promoting the election of Abbot John as the schismatic Patriarch of Aquileia after the death of Severus in 606.

But terrible disaster from an unexpected quarter, was impending over the house of Gisulf and the duchy of Friuli. We have seen that hitherto, from the tie of the Lombards' departure from Pannonia, their relations with the Avar lords of Hungary had been of the most friendly character. There had been treaties of alliance; menacing cautions to the Frankish kings that if they would have peace with the Avars they must be at peace with the Lombards also; joint invasions of Istria; help given by Agilulf to the Great Khan by furnishing shipwrights to fit out his vessels for a naval expedition against the Empire. Now, for some reason or other, possibly because the Lombards were growing too civilized and too wealthy for the taste of their barbarous neighbours, the relations between the two peoples underwent a disastrous change. Somewhere about the year 610, the Khan of the Avars mustered his squalid host, and with ‘an innumerable multitude' of followers appeared on the frontier of Friuli. Duke Gisulf set his army in array, and went boldly forth against the enemy, but all his Lombard faras were few in number in comparison with that multitudinous Tartar horde : they were surrounded and cut to pieces; few fugitives escaped from that terrible combat, and Gisulf himself was not among the number. There was nothing left for the remnant of the Lombards but to shut themselves up in their stronghold, and to wait for the help which doubtless they implored from King Agilulf. Seven strong fortresses, partly in the valley of the Tagliamento and partly under the shadow of the Julian Alps, are expressly mentioned as having been thus occupied by the Lombards, besides the capital and several smaller castles.

But the kernel of the national defence was, of siege of course, Forum Julii itself, where the few survivors of Gisulf's host, with the women and the lads who had been too young for the battle, manned the walls, whence they looked forth with angry, but trembling hearts on the Avar hordes wandering wide over the fair land, burning, robbing and murdering. Hardly more than a generation had passed since the Lombards had been even thus laying waste the dwellings of the Romans, and now they were themselves suffering the same treatment at the hands of a yet more savage foe. The family of the dead warrior Gisulf, as they stood on the battlements of Forum Julii, consisted of his widow Romilda and his four sons, of whom two, Taso and Cacco, were grown up, while Radwald and Grimwald were still boys. There were also four daughters, two of whom were named Appa and Gaila, but the names of the other two have perished.

The Avar host of course besieged Forum Julii, and bent all their energies to its capture. While the Grand Khan was riding round the walls of the city, seeking to espy the weakest point in its fortifications, Romilda looked forth from the battlements, and seeing him in his youthful beauty, felt her heart burn with a shameful passion for the enemy of her people, and sent him a secret message, that if he would promise to take her for his wife she would surrender to him the city with all that it contained. The Khan, with guile in his heart, accepted the treacherous proposal; Romilda caused the gates to be opened; and the Avars were within the city. Every house was, of course, plundered, and the citizens were collected outside the walls that they might be carried off into captivity. The city itself was then given to the flames. As for Romilda, whose lustful heart had been the cause of all this misery, the Khan, in fulfilment of his plighted oath, took her to his tent, and for one night treated her as his wife; but afterwards handed her over to the indiscriminate embraces of his followers, and finally impaled her on a stake in the middle of the plain, saying that this was the only husband of whom Romilda was worthy. The daughters of the traitress, who did not inherit her vile nature, succeeded by strange devices in preserving their maiden honour; and though sold as slaves and forced to wander through strange lands, eventually obtained husbands worthy of their birth, one of them being married to the king of the Alamanni, and another to the duke of the Bavarians.

As for the unhappy citizens of Forum Julii, their the captors at first somewhat soothed their fears by telling them that they were only going to lead them back to their own former home in Pannonia. But when in the eastward journey they had arrived as far as the Sacred Plain, the Avars either changed their minds, or revealed the murderous purpose which they had always cherished, and slaughtered in cold blood the Lombard males who were of full age, dividing the women and children among them as their slaves. The sons of duke Gisulf, seeing the wicked work begun, sprang on their horses, and were about to take flight. But it was only Taso, Cacco, and Radwald who were yet practiced horsemen, and the question arose what should be done with the little Grimwald, who was thought to be yet too young to keep his seat on a galloping horse. It seemed a kinder deed to take his life than to leave him to the squalid misery of captivity amongst the Avars; and accordingly one of his older brothers lifted his lance to slay him. But the boy cried out with tears, “Do not pierce me with thy lance; I, too, can sit on horseback”. Thereupon the elder brother stooped down, and catching Grimwald by the arm, swung him up on to the bare back of a horse, and told him to stick on if he could. The lad caught hold of the bridle, and for some distance followed his brothers in their flight. But soon the Avars, who had discovered the escape of the princes, were seen in pursuit. The three elder brothers, thanks to the swiftness of their steeds, escaped, but the little Grimwald fell into the hands of the foremost of the band. The captor deemed it unworthy of him to smite with the sword so young an enemy, and determined rather to keep him, and use him as a slave. He therefore caught hold of his bridle, and moved slowly back to the camp, delighting in the thought of his noble prize : for the slender figure of the princely boy, his gleaming eyes, and thick clustering locks of flaxen hair were fair to behold, especially to one accustomed to nought but the mean Kalmuck visages of the swarthy Avars. But while the captor's heart was swelling with pride, grief at his captivity burned in the soul of Grimwald.

                                      ‘And mighty thoughts stirred in that tiny breast’.

He quietly drew from its sheath the little sword which he carried as the child of a Lombard chief, and watching his opportunity dealt with all his might a blow on the crown of the head of his Avar captor. Wonderful to tell, the stripling's stroke was fatal. The Avar fell dead from his horse, and Grimwald, turning the head of his steed rode fast after his brothers, whom he overtook, and who hailed him with shouts of delight both at his escape, and at his first slaughter of a foe.

So runs the story of Grimwald's escape as told in the pages of Paulus. It is Saga of course; and in order to magnify the deeds of one who became in after years the foremost man of the Lombard nation, it is very possible that the bards have somewhat diminished the age of the youthful warrior. But it is not worthwhile to attempt the now hopeless task of disentangling poetry from prose. A historian who is so often compelled to lay before his readers mere names of kings and dukes without one touch of portraiture to make them live in the memory, may be excused for wishing that many more such Sagas had been preserved by the Lombard chronicler.

Story of the ancestors of Paulus Diaconus

Happily at this point Paulus interrupts the course of the general history, in order to give us some information as to the fortunes of his own forefathers; and this little chapter of family history helps us to understand the immense and terrible importance of the Avar raid into Friuli, a raid which in many ways reminds us of the Danish invasions of Anglo-Saxon England in the ninth and tenth centuries; like them blighting a young and tender civilization, and like them probably destroying many of the records of the past.

The first of his ancestors mentioned by Paulus is Leupchis, who came into Italy in the year 568 at the same time with the great body of his countrymen. After living many years in Italy he died, leaving behind him five young sons, who having apparently escaped death by reason of their tender age, were all swept by the tempest of the invasion from Friuli into Avar- land. Here they groaned under the yoke of their captivity for some years; but when they had reached man’s estate, the youngest, named Lopichis, by an inspiration from above, conceived the thought of returning to Italy, and regaining his freedom. Having resolved on flight he started, taking with him only his quiver and his bow, and as much food as he could carry. He was utterly ignorant of the road, but, strange to say, a wolf was his guide through the mountain solitudes. When he halted the wolf halted too: when he lagged behind, the creature looked around to see if he were following, and thus he at length perceived that the wild beast was his divinely appointed guide. But after some days' wandering amid the desolate mountains (probably in the district of the Kavawanken Alps) his provisions came to an end, and his death seemed nigh at hand. Faint with hunger, he fitted an arrow to the string and aimed at his heaven sent guide, thinking that even its flesh might save him from starvation. The wolf, however, seeing what he meditated, vanished from his sight. Then Lopichis, despairing of life, fell to the ground and slept; but in his slumber he saw a man who seemed to say to him, “Arise! why sleepest thou? Resume thy journey in the opposite direction to that in which thy feet are now pointing, for there lies the Italy of thy desire”. He arose at once, journeyed in the direction indicated, and soon came among the dwellings of men. It was a little Slavonic village that he entered; and there he found a kindly woman who, perceiving that he was a fugitive, received him into her cottage, and hid him there, and perceiving moreover that he was nearly dead with hunger, gave him food gradually and in small quantities as he was able to bear it. At length, when he had sufficiently recovered his strength, she gave him provisions for the journey, and pointed out to him the road to Italy, which country he entered after certain days. He at once sought his old home, but found no trace of the ancestral dwelling left, only a vast tangle of thorns and briers. Having cleared these away, he came upon a large elm growing within the old enclosure of his home, and in this tree he hung up his quiver. Some of his relatives and friends gave him presents which enabled him to rebuild his house and to marry a wife; but the property which had once been his father's he could not recover, as the men who had occupied it pleaded successfully the rights of long possession. Lopichis was the father of Arichis, Arichis of Warnefrit, and Warnefrit, by his wife Theudelinda (named no doubt in honour of the great Lombard queen) had two sons, one of whom was the historian, and the other (named after his grandfather) was his brother Arichis.

We return to the history of the duchy of Friuli, of which, after the death of Gisulf, and the withdrawal of the Avars, Taso and Cacco, the two eldest sons of Gisulf, became joint lords. They seem to have been valiant in fight, for they pushed the boundaries of their territory northward as far as Windisch-Matrei, adding the whole long valley of the Gail to their dominions, and compelling the Slovene inhabitants of that region to pay tribute, which they continued to do for more than a century.

It seems probable that Paulus has omitted some links in the family genealogy. Three generations are very few to cover the period between the Avar invasion and Charles the Great, between Leupchis, who came (presumably as a full-grown man) into Italy in 568, and Paulus himself, who was born about 720. Besides, it is strange that Leupchis, a grown man in 568, should leave five little children (‘pueruli’) at the time of the Avar invasion in 610. Most likely, then, owing to the destruction of records during that invasion, a generation has been omitted from the historian's own pedigree, as well as from that of duke Gisulf. Even after Lopichis’ return the number of generations (say three to 120 years if Lopichis was born in 600) is somewhat scanty, though not impossibly so.

But the two sons of Gisulf, who had escaped from the swords of the Avars, fell before the vile treachery of a Byzantine official. The Exarch Gregory invited young duke Taso to come and meet him at the Venetian town Opitergium (Oderzo), which was still subject to the Empire, promising to adopt him as his “filius per arma”, the symbol of which new relationship was the cutting off of the first downy beard of the young warrior by his adoptive father. Fearing no evil, Taso went accordingly to Opitergium with Cacco, and a band of chosen youthful warriors. As soon as they had entered the city, the treacherous governor caused the gates to be shut, and sent a band of armed men to attack the young Forojulian chiefs. Seeing that death was inevitable, they resolved to sell their lives dearly, and having given one another a last farewell, the two dukes and their comrades rushed through the streets and squares of the city slaying all whom they met. The slaughter of Roman citizens was terrible, but in the end all the Lombards were left dead upon the pavement of Opitergium. The Exarch ordered the head of Taso to be brought to him, and with traitorous fidelity cut off the beard of the young chieftain, so fulfilling his promise.

Fredegarius (so-called) tells a story which seems to be derived from this, as to the murder of Taso, duke of Tuscany, by the Patrician Isaac. According to him Charoald (Ariwald), king of the Lombards, offers Isaac that he will remit one of the three hundredweights of gold which the Empire pays yearly to the Lombards if he will put Taso out of the way. Isaac accordingly invites Taso to Ravenna, offering to help him against Charoald, whom Taso knows that he has displeased. Taso repairs to Ravenna with a troop of warriors, who, through fear of the Emperor's displeasure, are prevailed upon to leave their arms outside the walls. They enter the city, and the prepared assassins at once rush upon and kill them. Thenceforward the yearly beneficia from the Empire to the Lombards are reduced from three hundredweights of gold to two. Soon after Charoald dies. As Ariwald's reign lasted from 626 to 636, and as Isaac did not become Exarch till 620, it seems to me absolutely impossible in any way to reconcile this wild story with the events described by Paulus, which must have happened many years earlier. Either Fredegarius, who is a most unsafe guide, has got hold of an utterly inaccurate version of the death of Taso, son of Gisulf II, or the coincidence of name is accidental, and the story of Fredegarius relates to some completely different series of events to which we have lost the clue.

Such is the story of the massacre of Opitergium as related to us by the Lombard historian. It is possible that there is another side to the story, and that some excesses of Taso's henchmen may have provoked a tumult, in which he and his brother perished; but as it is told to us the affair reminds us of the meditated massacre of Marcianople; and like that massacre it was bitterly avenged.

The two young dukes of Friuli being thus cut off in their prime, their uncle Grasulf, brother of Gisulf, succeeded to the vacant duchy. Badwald and Grimwald, sore at heart at being thus passed over, took ship, and sailed for Benevento, where, as we shall see, they had an old friend in the person of the reigning duke. We, too, will follow their example and leave Friuli for Benevento, for there is nothing further recorded of the history of the former duchy for half a century after the invasion of the Avars.

III.

Duchy of Benevento.

Benevento stands in an amphitheatre of hills overlooking the two rivers Calove and Sabato, which meet near its western extremity, and flowing on together for about thirty miles, pour their waters into the channel which bears the name of the Voltorno, and so pass out by Capua to the sea.

The city of Beneventum, as we have already seen, laid claim to a high antiquity, professing to have been founded by Diomed, and to show the tusks of the monstrous boar, which in the days of his grandfather ravaged the territory of Calydon. Leaving these mythical glories on one side, we remark only that it was a city of the Samnites possibly at one time inhabited by the Etruscans of Campania, and that about the time of the Third Samnite War (BC 298-290 it passed under the dominion of Rome. In its neighbourhood (BC 275) Manius Curius won that decisive victory over Pyrrhus, which settled the question whether the Roman or the Greek was to be master in the Italian peninsula. Seven years after this (BC 268) the Romans, true to their constant policy of pinning down newly conquered territories by the establishment of miniature Roman republics among them, sent a colony to the city by the Calore; and on this occasion that city, which had previously been called Maleventum, had that name of evil omen, which it had accidentally received, changed into the more auspicious Beneventum, by which it has thence forth been known in history. The chief importance of Beneventum arose from its being situated on the great Via Appia, which led front Rome through Capua to Tarentum and Brundisium. Many a schoolboy has read the passage in the Iter Brundusinum in which Horace describes the officious zeal of the innkeeper at Beneventum, who, while blowing up his fire to roast a few lean thrushes for his illustrious guests, narrowly escaped burning down his own house. Some portion of the bridge by which the Appian Way crossed the river Sabato is still standing, and is known by the somewhat mysterious name of Il Ponte Lebbroso (The Leprous Bridge).

But a century after Horace's Brundisian journey the greatest of the Roman Emperors stamped his name on Beneventum by a noble work of public utility, and by a stately monument. The old road to Brundisium, over which Horace travelled, had apparently been a mere mule-track where it crossed the Apennines, the road which was passable by wheeled carriages making a bend to the south, and circling round by Tarentum. In order to avoid this deviation, and to save a day in the through journey from Rome to the east, the Emperor made the new and splendid road across the mountains which thenceforward bore the name of Via Trajana.

To commemorate this great engineering work there was erected on the north side of the city in the year 114, a triumphal arch dedicated to ‘Nerva Trajanus Optimus Augustus, Germanicus et Dacicus’ by the Senate and people of Rome. This noble work, which has hardly yet received from archaeologists the attention which it deserves, though it has suffered much at the hands of sportive barbarians, still casts a light upon the reign of the best of Roman Emperors, only less bright than that thrown by the celebrated column at Rome. It is like the same Emperor's Arch at Ancona, but not despoiled of its bas-reliefs; like the Arch of Constantine, but with its best works of art restored to their rightful owner; like the Arch of Titus save for the incidental interest which the latter derives from the fact that it records the calamity of the chosen people. Here, notwithstanding the irritating amputations effected by the mischievous hands of boys of many generations, we can still discover the representation of the chief scenes in the life of Trajan, his adoption by Nerva, his triumphal entry into Rome, his victory over the Dacian chief Decebalus. Here we can see him achieving some of his great peaceful triumphs, giving the ‘congiarium’ to the citizens of Rome, founding an asylum for

orphans, and hailed by the Senate's enthusiastic acclamations as Optimus Princeps. And lastly, here we see the Roman sculptor's conception of an Imperial apotheosis : Trajan's sister Marciana welcomed into the assembly of the Immortals by Capitolian Jupiter, while Minerva and Ceres, Bacchus and Mercury, look on approvingly.

It was not only the Via Appia and the Via Trajana that entered the gates of Beneventum. A branch of the other great southern road, the Via Latina, led off to it from the neighbourhood of Teanum, and another road skirting the northern side of Mons Tifernus connected it with Aesernia and the northeast end of Latium. The more we study the Roman itineraries the more are we impressed with the importance of Beneventum as a military position for the Lombards commanding the southern portion of Italy, watching as from a hostile outpost the movements of the duke of Neapolis, blocking the great highroad between Rome and Constantinople, and cutting off the Romans on the Adriatic from the Romans on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Yet though doubtless strategic considerations weighed heaviest in the scale when the Lombard chiefs were choosing their southern capital, the character of the climate had also probably something to do with their selection. Children of the north, and denizens of the forest and the moorland, the Lombards (or at any rate some of the Lombards) shrank at first from fixing their homes in the sultry alluvial plains. The cooler air of the uplands, the near neighbourhood of the great Apennine chain, even the boisterous wind which blustered round the walls of Beneventum were all additional recommendations in the eyes of the first generation of invaders who had crossed the Alps with Alboin.

The duchy of Benevento is often spoken of by Paulus as the duchy of the Samnites. At first the use of so archaic a term of geography strikes us as a piece of mere pedantry, and only provokes a smile; but when we look a little more closely into the matter our objection to it almost disappears. The attitude of the old Samnite mountaineers to the lowlanders of Campania, Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, or Roman, seems reproduced in the attitude of the Lombards of Benevento to the Imperialist duke of Neapolis, and the citizens of Salernum and Paestum. The pass of the Caudine Forks, the scene of Rome's greatest humiliation (whether it be placed at S. Agata dei Goti or at Arpaia), was within fifteen miles of Benevento. Though wars, proscriptions and the horrors of the Roman latifundia may have well-nigh exterminated all the population in whose veins ran a drop of the old Samnite blood, the faithful memory of the mountaineer may have retained some trace of those great wars, which once made each pass of the Apennines memorable; and even as the Vandals of Carthage avenged the wrongs of their long vanished Punic predecessors, so possibly some faint tradition of the ungenerous treatment of that noble Samnite general C. Pontius of Telesia by his Roman conquerors may have reached the ears of Arichis or Grimwald, and nerved them to more bitter battle against the Roman dwellers in the plain below.

I have briefly touched on the history of Beneventum before it became the seat of a Lombard duchy. The chief architectural monuments of Lombard domination belong to the reign of Arichis II, and are therefore outside the limits of this volume. But having followed the fortunes of the city so far, I may here record the fact that the Lombard duchy of Benevento lasted as an independent state till the latter part of the eleventh century, when the Norman conquest of Southern Italy, contemporaneous with the Norman conquest of England, extinguished its existence along with that of its old Greek or Imperial foes. The city of Benevento itself, in the troubles connected with the Norman invasion, became a part of the Papal territory (1053), though entirely surrounded by the dominions of the Neapolitan kings, and seventy miles distant from the frontier of the States of the Church. In the plain below the city walls, on the banks of the river Galore, was fought in 1266 that fatal battle in which Manfred, the last the Hohenstaufen princes, was defeated by Charles of Anjou, the first, but by no means the last, of the French lords of Southern Italy. From various causes Benevento lost much of the importance which had belonged to it at the beginning of the Middle Ages. During the Saracen invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries the old Roman roads fell into decay, and the great Via Appia and Via Trajana no longer brought traders to its gates. When Naples ceased to be under a Byzantine ruler, it naturally took the place of Benevento as capital of Southern Italy. Later on the position of the city as a mere enclave of the Popes, surrounded by the territory of sometimes unfriendly princes, was doubtless unfavourable to its commercial growth. Thus it has come to pass that Benevento now possesses only a little over 20,000 inhabitants, and has played no important part in the later history of Italy. In fact the historian of the nineteenth century will perhaps find his chief reason for remembering it in the fact that in the short-lived Empire of Napoleon it gave the title of Prince to that strange and shifty intriguer, the Sisyphus of modern politics, Bishop or Citizen Talleyrand. It now, however, of course, forms part of the kingdom of Italy, and is capital of a province. With good roads, and becoming again by the construction of two or three converging railroads, somewhat of a focus of communication for Southern Italy, it is likely to be an important agricultural centre, and may perhaps regain by trade some of the importance which it lost by politics and war.

But we have wandered thirteen centuries away from our proper subject. We must return to the middle of the sixth century. The still existing city walls, to a large extent of Roman workmanship, the eight gates by which they are pierced, the arch immediately outside them, the remains of the baths and amphitheatre, the ruins of a vast warehouse outside the city, all help us to imagine its appearance as it lay in desolate grandeur for some twenty years or more after Totila had thrown down its walls, and before the “unspeakable Lombard” came marching along the Appian Way to ravage and to rule.

It was probably about the year 571, three years after Alboin's first entrance into Italy, that a Lombard chief named Zotto entered the city—an easy prey by reason of its ruined walls— and established himself there as its duke. From this centre, in the course of his twenty years' reign, he extended his dominions far and wide over Southern Italy. Naples, which was no doubt the chief object of his desire, he never succeeded in capturing, though he besieged it in 581. But Aquinum, more than sixty miles north-west of Benevento (that little Volscian town which was one day to become famous as the birthplace of a great theologian and philosopher), was laid waste about the year 577 by the swords of barbarians, who were probably the soldiers of Zotto. And towards the end of Zotto's reign, about the year 590, the little town of Atina, somewhat north of Aquinum, and not far from Arpinum (the birthplace of Marius and Cicero), was entered by the ruthless Lombards, and its bishop, Felix, after an episcopate of thirty years, died as a martyr under the hands of the Beneventan duke, the city and the great church being also destroyed at the same time.

It was apparently about the same time, or perhaps a year earlier (589), that the great convent, which the saintly Benedict had reared sixty years before on Monte Cassino, was stormed in the night by Zotto's savage followers. They laid hands on everything valuable that they could find in that abode of willing poverty, probably not much besides the vessels of divine service., and perhaps some ornaments of the founder's tomb. Not one of the monks, however, was taken, and thus was fulfilled the prophecy of their father Benedict, who long before, predicting the coming calamity, had said, “With difficulty have I obtained of the Lord that from this place the persons alone should be granted me”. The fugitive monks escaped to Rome, carrying with them the original manuscript of the Benedictine Rule, and some other writings; the regulation weight for the bread, and measure for the wine, and such scanty bed furniture as they could save from the general ruin.

It was under the fourth successor of St. Benedict that this ruin of the great convent took place, and notwithstanding all the softened conditions of life in Italy during the generations that were to follow, it was 130 years before the Coenobium of Monte Cassino rose again from its ruins.

In the year 591 Duke Zotto died, having pushed the terror of his ravages, as we can see from the early letters of Pope Gregory, far into Apulia, Lucania and Calabria. In all this career of conquest he had been apparently acting on his own responsibility, with very little regard to the central power, such as it was, in Northern Italy; and indeed, during half of his reign there ‘had been no king over Israel', only that loose confederacy of dukes of which he must have been nearly, if not quite, the most powerful member. But either Zotto left none of his own family to succeed him, or the obvious danger to the Lombard state, involved in the independence of Benevento, stirred up the new king, Agilulf, to a vigorous assertion of the right which was undoubtedly his in theory, to nominate Zotto's successor. His choice fell on Arichis, who was a kinsman of Gisulf, duke of Friuli, and who had, according to Paulus, acted for some time as instructor of his younger sons in all manly exercises.

The reign of Arichis I lasted fifty years, from 591 to 641, and was an important period in the history of the new duchy. I have called it a reign advisedly, for whatever may have been the theory of his relation to Arichis, the Lombard king ruling at Pavia, it is clear that in practice Arichis acted as an independent sovereign. We have seen him, in a previous chapter, making war on his own account with Naples and Rome : nay more, we have seen that King Agilulf himself could not conclude a peace with the Empire till Arichis was graciously pleased to come in and give his assent to the treaty. It is suggested that if Agilulf, on Zotto's death, had taken proper measures for ensuring the dependence of the duchy of Benevento on the central monarchy, he might still have accomplished that result; but whether this be so or no, it is clear that the long and successful reign of a great warrior like Arichis, a reign, too, which coincided with many weak and short reigns of his nominal superiors at Pavia, established the virtual independence of the southern duchy. There was apparently no royal domain reserved in all that long reach of territory; there were no officers acting in the king's name, or appointed by him; and when at last the reign of Arichis came to an end his successor was chosen without even a pretence of consulting the Lombard sovereign.

It was during this reign that the duchy of Benevento received that geographical extension which, in the main, it kept for centuries. Roughly speaking, it included the old Italian provinces of Samnium, Apulia, Campania, Lucania, and Bruttii, except such parts of the coast—and they were considerable, and included all the best harbours—as were still held by the Empire. The capital and heart of the duchy were in the province of Samnium, and ‘the people of the Samnites' is, as we have seen, the phrase generally used by Paulus when he is speaking of the Lombards of Benevento. It is certainly with a strange feeling of the return of some great historic cycle that we find Rome engaged in a breathless struggle for her very existence with Carthage in the fifth century after Christ, and with ‘the Samnites' in the sixth.

The limits of the Samnite duchy cannot now be very exactly defined. On the northwest the frontier must have run for some distance side by side with that of the Ducatus Romae along the river Liris, and under the Volscian hills. In the Sabine territory and Picenum, the Fucine lake and the river Pescara probably formed the boundary with the other great Lombard duchy of Central Italy, that of Spoleto. The easternmost peninsula (sometimes called the heel of Italy), which lies between the gulf of Taranto and the Adriatic, and which includes Taranto itself, Otranto and Brindisi, was still held by the Empire at the death of Arichis. So did the extreme south, the toe of Italy, forming large part of the ancient province of Bruttii. Consentiae (Cosenza) seems here to have been close to the border line between the Imperial and the Lombard dominions. Rossano was still Imperial, and a line drawn across the peninsula from that city to Amantia formed the frontier between ‘Romania and Varbaricum'. The patient monks of Cassiodorus therefore, in their convent at Squillace, could study theology and grammar, and transcribe the treatises of their founder, undisturbed under the aegis of the Empire. Further north all the lovely bay of Naples, with its fine harbours and flourishing cities, owned the sway of the Roman Augustus. It was not till towards the end of the reign of Arichis (probably about 640) that the city of Salerno passed, apparently by peaceful means, into the keeping of the Lombards.

The few facts which illustrate the internal history of the duchy, and especially those which throw any light on the condition of the conquered Roman inhabitants, will come under our notice in later chapters. It will be enough to say here that all the symptoms would seem to show that the oppression was harder, the robbery of cities and churches more ruthless, the general relation of the two nations more unnatural, in the duchy of Benevento (and probably in that of Spoleto also) than in the northern kingdom. No Theudelinda was at work here to help forward the blessed work of amalgamation between the races. It is true that in the spring of 599 we find Pope Gregory writing to Arichis, and asking for help in the felling of timber in the forests of Bruttii for the repairs of the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. As before said, we must not conclude that because the Pope in this letter addresses ‘Arogis' as his son, he had joined the Catholic Church. It is true that Gregory would hardly have used this mode of address to a notorious idolater, perhaps hardly to a bitter Arian persecutor; but these Lombard conquerors were not as a rule sufficiently interested in theology to be persecutors. They were simply rough, sensual, boorish children of the forest, men who, if there were any object to be gained, would address the great bishop of Home as ‘Father', and would be glad to be addressed by him as ‘Glorious Son', but would not surrender an ounce of church plate, nor recall a single bishop from the exile into which their suspicions had driven him, for all the loving exhortations of the Holy Father.

Thus it came to pass that all through the long reign of Arichis, the Catholics of his duchy were in a lamentable state of spiritual destitution. The unusually large number of episcopal cities which were once to be found in Southern Italy seem to have remained widowed of their bishops, and the convents, like Monte Cassino itself, lay, probably for the greater part of the seventh century, in ruins. Even Benevento, the capital of the duchy, had perhaps no resident bishop till shortly before St. Barbatus came to it (in 663) to restore the ruins of many generations. The life of this saint (from which some quotations will be made in a note to a later chapter) draws a lamentable picture of the foolish and degrading superstitions by which the people of Benevento, though calling themselves baptized Christians, were still held in bondage. Salerno seems to be the only city in this region (except those that remained in the possession of the Empire) which can show an absolutely unbroken line of bishops during all this troubled time; and this exceptional prosperity is probably accounted for by the fact of its peaceful surrender to the conquerors.

Arichis had probably been reigning some twenty or five-and-twenty years when (as was told in the last section) his young kinsmen, Radwald and Grimwald, having left Friuli in disdain, landed from their little bark, and made their way to the court of Benevento. They were received by Arichis with the utmost cordiality, and brought up as his own sons. He had indeed one son of his own named Aio, but over him there hung a mystery which clouded the last years of the life of Arichis. When the great King Rothari took his seat on the Lombard throne, Arichis ordered his son to repair to Pavia, probably with a message of dutiful submission from one who, though in fact king of all Southern Italy, yet owned the king of the Lombards as his lord. On his way, the young prince tarried at Ravenna. Whether he ever completed his journey to Pavia we are not informed, but when he returned to Benevento all men noted a strange alteration in his behaviour. Dark rumours were spread abroad that by the malice of the Romans some maddening potion had been brewed for him at Ravenna. Perhaps we may conjecture that the maddening potion was only that Circean cup of enchantment which the dissolute cities of the Romans have so often held out to the easily-tempted sons of the Teutons; but, whatever the cause, Aio from that time forth was never again in full mental health.

Seeing this fatal change, Arichis, when he felt his last hour approaching, commended Radwald and Grimwald to the Lombards as his own sons, and advised that one of them rather than Aio should be his successor. The advice, however, was disregarded, and on the death of Arichis, the brain-sick Aio became ‘leader of the Samnites'. Neither chief nor people seem to have taken any heed of the right which the king of the Lombards must have in theory possessed to name the new duke of Benevento. We are told that Radwald and Grimwald, not murmuring at their exclusion from the throne, to which the will of Arichis had seemed to open the way, obeyed Aio in all things as their elder brother and lord. His reign, however, was not to be of long duration. A year and five months after his accession, a cloud of Slavonic invaders descended on Apulia. They came by way of the sea, with a multitude of ships, and landed at Sipontum; a city which has now disappeared from the face of the earth, but which stood under the peninsular mount of Garganus, near to the spot where, six centuries later, the last of the Hohenstaufens built out of its ruins his capital of Manfredonia. Here the Slavonians pitched their camp, which they fortified with pits dug all round it, and covered probably with brushwood. Thither came Aio with an army, but unaccompanied by his two friends. Riding rashly forward, he fell into one of the hidden pits, and was killed, with many of his followers, by the on-rushing Slavonians. The news was brought to Radwald, who, in order to avenge his patron's death, dealt wilily. He had not forgotten the Slavonic speech which he had learned long ago in the mountains of Friuli, and, approaching the camp of the invaders, he spoke to them friendly words in their own tongue. Having thus lulled their suspicions to sleep, and made them less eager for the battle, he fell upon them at unawares, and wrought great slaughter in their ranks. Thus was Aio's death avenged, and the remnant of the Slavonians returned in haste to their own land. Radwald, who now became without dispute duke of Benevento, reigned for five years only, and at his death was succeeded by his brother Grimwald. The only event which is recorded of the latter's reign as mere duke of Benevento is that ‘the Greeks' (as the Romans of the East are now beginning to be called) came to plunder the sanctuary of the Archangel Michael on Mount Garganus; a deed which recalls the ignoble raid upon Apulia made by the ships of Anastasius in the days of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Grimwald, however, fell upon the sacrilegious invaders with his army, and destroyed them with a great destruction.

At this point we rejoin for a time the main stream of Lombard history : for Grimwald, who is certainly its greatest name in the seventh century, became, as we shall see, in the latter years of his life, king of all the Lombards. Thus the history of the lad who so marvellously escaped from his Avar captors binds together the two duchies of Friuli and Benevento, and the kingdom of Pavia. The eventful story of that last stage of the life of Grimwald must be reserved for a future chapter.

IV.

The Duchy of Spoleto.

The geographical importance of the duchy of Spoleto has been already brought before the reader's notice. We have seen that it represented that struggle for the possession of the Flaminian Way which, since Rome and Ravenna were the two great foci of Imperial dominion in Italy, must have been always going on with more or less vigour for nearly two centuries.

It is true that the great Via Flaminia itself went from Narnia to Mevania, and so passed about twenty miles west of Spoletium; but the road which branched off from Narnia to the east, and led through Interamna, Spoletium and Fulginium northward, and so on through Petra Pertusa to Ariminum, was also a great highway, and we have seen reason in the course of the previous history to believe that it was looked upon, at any rate so long as the tunnel of the Petra Pertusa was open, as the great highway between Rome and Ravenna. Evidently the object of the Lombard dukes who placed their capital at Spoleto was to keep their hands on the throttle­ valve of the Empire, and they probably always nourished the hope of being able to close all the three roads across the Apennines which lay in their immediate neighbourhood, and so to conquer Rome.

Spoleto itself, a city rich in historical associations of widely-parted centuries, and standing in the midst of one of the loveliest landscapes of Italy, was well worthy of the high place which it held in the early Middle Ages, and deserves far more careful study than it has yet received either from the artist or the historian. It stands upon a high hill, half encircled by the little stream of the Tessino. Faintly seen on the northern horizon are the long terraces of Assisi and the high rock-citadel of Perugia. Round it on all sides rise the beautiful hills of Umbria, with all that charm of outline and of colour which assuredly helped to train the eyes of Raffaele and Perugino to discern the Beautiful. The traveller winds his way under the city walls, whose Cyclopean masonry tells of races that fought and built in the peninsula while the hills of Rome were still a sheep-walk. He climbs under many an intersecting archway up the steep lanes which lead him to the heart of the city. Bright-eyed little children and gaily-kerchiefed women come out to look at the forestiere : a little tired, he reaches the top, and suddenly, between two picturesque street-lines, he sees a bit of the beautiful amphitheatre of plain, a bit of the deep purple of the mountains of Umbria.

Yet, as so often in Italy, the visitor to Spoleto finds the historic interest even more powerful to attract him than the beauty of landscape with which Nature woos his regards. Here, near the bottom of the city wall, stands an arch bearing the name of the Porta Fuga, and commemorating the memorable repulse of Hannibal on that day when, flushed with his victory by Lake Trasymene, he marched up to its walls, expecting an immediate surrender; but, beaten back with heavy loss, began to understand, from the resistance of that one brave colony, how great a task he had taken in hand when he set himself to war down Rome.

We mount higher to the crest of the hill, and find ourselves under an arch erected probably twenty-one years after the birth of Christ, bearing an inscription on its front, which states that it is dedicated to Germanicus and Drusus, the adopted and the real sons of Tiberius. The palace of the Municipality, which stands on the highest ground of the city, is erected over the remains of a spacious Roman house which is believed, apparently on sufficient evidence, to have belonged to the mother of Vespasian.

We leave the city by one of its eastern gateways and we find ourselves under the splendid mass of the citadel (fitly called by the townspeople La Rocca), which, standing on its great promontory of cliff, towers above us on our left. Round the base of the cliff far below us circles the tiny torrent of the Tessino. But another, an artificial river, calls away our attention from the natural streamlet. For before us rise the ten lofty and narrow arches of a noble aqueduct, which, at a height of nearly 300 feet, spans the valley and bridges the stream, carrying the pure water from the mountains into the heart of the city. It is called the Ponte delle Torri, and it carries a roadway at a little lower level than the channel of the aqueduct. Both these two splendid structures speak to us of the Teutonic invaders of Italy. The citadel is undoubtedly on the site of the fortress raised by Theodoric, though there may be none of the actual work of the great Ostrogoth in the present building, which was reared in the fourteenth century by Cardinal Albornoz. A very strong local tradition connects the aqueduct with Theudelap, who, as we shall see, was the Lombard duke of Spoleto during the greater part of the seventh century. The pointed character of the arches makes it scarcely possible that they, at least, are of so early a period, and probably much of the grand structure which we now behold dates from the thirteenth century or even later; but cautious and accurate enquirers are inclined to admit that there is some value in the tradition which I have mentioned, and that at least in the great stone piers which support the brick arches, we may see the actual work of the subjects of Duke Theudelap.

This is not the place for anything like a complete enumeration of the monuments of medieval antiquity at Spoleto; and I must leave undescribed the Doric columns of some Pagan temple which now form part of the church of the Crucified One, the joyously grotesque bas- reliefs on the exterior of S. Pietro, and the gigantic stones—surely of pre-Roman workman- ship—which form the base of the tower of S. Gregorio. But as illustrating what was said above as to the wealth of various memories that is stored up in these Italian cities, I may observe that the cathedral—not in itself extremely interesting, having suffered much transformation at the hands of Renaissance architects—is connected with the tragic story of Fra Filippo Lippi. His half-faded frescoes telling the story of the Virgin, line the choir of the church. His sepulchral monument, erected by Lorenzo dei Medici with an inscription in Politian's finest Latinity, is to be seen in a chapel on the north side of the choir. In this city it was that the artist monk won the love of a nobly-born lady, Lucrezia Buti, and here it was—so men said—that her indignant relatives mixed for him the fatal cup which ended his stormy life.

If we descend to our own times we learn that in 1860 the fortress of Theodoric and Albornoz was one of the last positions that held out for the Pope-King when all Italy was rallying round the standard of Victor Emmanuel. The garrison, chiefly composed of Irishmen, bravely resisted the besiegers, but was at last forced to capitulate by a cannonade from the surrounding heights.

At present Spoleto, which contains about 11,000 inhabitants, has suffered some diminution of its importance, owing to having lost its position as capo luogo of the province, and this has led to a decay of interest in its antiquities. But, as I before said, there are probably few cities in Italy which would better reward the spade of the excavator or the brush of the artist.

Isaac the Hermit.

At the time when the savage hordes of the Lombards swarmed through the gateways of Spoleto, the minds of the citizens were still tilled with the memory of a certain holy hermit named Isaac, who many years before came from Syria, and suddenly appearing in Spoleto, craved from the guardians of the great church permission to remain there as long as he might desire, in order to oiler up his prayers. So small a request was readily granted; but when the holy man had remained standing for three days and nights in the attitude of prayer, one of the attendants, deeming him an impostor, slapped him on the cheek, and ordered him out of the church. At once a foul spirit seized the too hasty custodian, and caused him to fall prostrate at the feet of the unknown hermit, crying out, “Isaac is casting me forth”. The holy man—whose name the unclean spirit alone knew—delivered his assailant from the evil one, and at once the news of his spiritual victory spread through the city. Men and women, noble and ignoble, flocked into the church to behold him, besought him to take up his abode with them, offered him houses and lands for the erection of a monastery. But Isaac, who feared peril to his poverty as the miser fears peril to his wealth, refused all their offers, saying continually, “The monk who seeks for possessions in this world is no monk”, and built himself a humble cell in a desert place not far from the city. Here he abode many years, performing many wonderful works, the recital of which may be read in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, from which the preceding narrative is taken. As we are told that he continued almost to the very end of the Gothic domination, the fame of his sanctity must still have been fresh when Spoletium was severed from the Empire, and when her churches were profaned by the tread of the ‘unspeakable Lombard'.

Such then was the city which became the capital of the Lombard domination in Central Italy. Its dukes ruled over a territory bounded by the Adriatic on the east, and by the Tiber valley (or the hills which enclosed it) on the west. On the south, a line drawn across from Subiaco by the Fucine Lake, and along the river Pescara, may roughly represent the boundary between Spoleto and Benevento. On the north the little river Musone was perhaps the boundary which separated the Spoletine dukes from hostile Ancona, while the Imperial garrisons along the Flaminian Way probably disputed with varying success the possession of all the territory northward of Tadino. Thus, stated in terms of classical geography, the dukes of Spoleto ruled the southern wedge of Umbria, the greater part of Picenum, and almost the whole of the territory which upon the maps is usually allotted to the Sabines.

Duke Farwald, 571-591

The first duke of Spoleto was Farwald, who, if it be true that Zotto was ruling in Beneventum in 571, had probably established himself at least as early in his more northern capital.

The chief exploit of Farwald’s reign was the capture of Classis, which occurred probably about 579 or 580 while the inefficient Longinus was still the Imperial governor of Italy. A great achievement truly this must have been, and one which, had the Lombards possessed the same fertility of resource which was shown by their Vandal kinsfolk, might have turned Classis into a second Carthage, and given them the empire of the Mediterranean. As it was, it seems difficult to suppose that they ever seriously interrupted the communications even of Ravenna, and Constantinople; for Exarchs came and went, and letters seem to have been freely interchanged between the Emperor and his representatives. It was therefore probably only the town, not the whole even of the harbour of Classis, of which the Lombards kept possession; but even so, it must have been a galling thing for the ‘Romans' of Ravenna to feel that the invaders had established themselves in that place, which with Caesarea was joined by one continuous line of houses to their own city, that the domes and towers from which in its pictured semblance on the walls of S. Apollinare, the procession of Virgin martyrs set forth to adore the Holy Child were now in the hands of heretics and idolaters.

Classis seems to have been held by the Lombards of Spoleto for eight or nine years, and was finally reconquered for the Empire (perhaps in the year 588), by that Romanized Teuton Droctulf, on whose tomb, as we have seen, this military operation was recorded as one of the proudest of his triumphs.

Against the older and more venerable capital by the Tiber, it is possible that Farwald also urged his savage soldiery. When we hear that before the consecration of Pope Benedict I, there was an interval of more than ten months and three days, during which the Papal throne remained unoccupied; we may reasonably conjecture that Lombard pressure, either from the side of Tuscany, or from that of Spoleto, was the cause of this long delay. At the next vacancy, when, after an interval of nearly four months, Pelagius II was chosen without the leave of the Emperor, we are expressly told that this was done because Rome was being besieged by the Lombards, and they were making great ravages in Italy. And this besieger of Rome is more likely to have been Farwald than any other of the Lombard dukes.

Duke Ariulf. 591-601

Farwald died about the year 591, possibly of the pestilence which was then ravaging Italy. He was succeeded by Ariulf, apparently not a relation; certainly not a son. Possibly in this case the theoretical right of the king to nominate all the dukes was successfully claimed by the new sovereign Agilulf. Thanks to the letters of Pope Gregory, this duke of Spoleto is to us something more than a mere name. We saw him, in the summer of 592, addressing that boastful letter to Gregory about the promised surrender of Suana which caused the Pope such strange searchings of heart, whether he should advise the Suanese citizens to keep or to break their promise. Soon after, negotiations for peace followed with Gregory himself; but Ariulf still kept up his somewhat swaggering tone, and insisted that the gratuities for his allies (or subordinates), Auctarit and Nordulf, should be handed over to him before he would say one word about peace. While Ariulf appears to make war and peace with sublime independence of his nominal overlord at Pavia, he throughout cooperates loyally with his brother duke Arichis of Benevento, and whenever the latter attacks Naples he helps him to the utmost of his power by a demonstration against Rome, or against one of the outposts on the Flaminian Way.

But Ariulf's campaign of 592, including, as it probably did, a virtual siege of Rome, ended in a partial peace concluded by Gregory with the Lombard duke; and this concession on Ariulf's part seems to have been due to the feelings of veneration aroused in his heart by a personal interview with the pontiff. And though the peace itself was disavowed at Ravenna, and exposed the Pope to bitter reproaches at Constantinople for his ‘fatuity' in listening to the promises of such an one as Ariulf, the good understanding thus established between Pope and Duke seems never to have been entirely destroyed; and in a dangerous sickness the Lombard chief asked for and obtained the prayers of Gregory for his recovery. In the final negotiations, however, which at last resulted in the great peace of 599, the Pope complained with some bitterness of the hindrances which came from the side of Ariulf. To Gregory the duke of Spoleto's stipulations that there should be no act of violence committed against himself, and no movement against the army of Arichis, seemed altogether unfair and deceitful and the fact that a certain Warnilfrida, by whose counsel Ariulf was ruled in all things, refused to swear to the peace, confirmed his suspicions. It is, of course, impossible for us to apportion the precise share of praise and blame due to each of the parties to these obscure negotiations; and, as I before remarked, the change of Gregory's tone with regard to Ariulf between 592 and 599 is an important feature in the case. But, on the other hand, it may fairly be urged on Ariulf's behalf, (1) that his previous dealings with the Imperial court had taught him caution, since he had seen, a treaty which had been concluded by him with Rome torn up at Ravenna, and followed by an aggressive movement on the part of the Exarch; and (2) that his stipulations on behalf of Arichis showed his steadfast truth to the duke of Benevento, and his determination not to make himself safe by the sacrifice of that faithful ally.

The only other incident in the life of Ariulf that has been recorded is that curious story which has been already extracted from the pages of Paulus, and which seems like a barbaric version of the share taken by the Great Twin Brethren in the battle of the Lake Regillus. It was when he was warring against Caraerinum that Ariulf saw a champion, unseen by others, fighting bravely by his side, and it was soon after the battle that he identified his ghostly defender with St. Sabinus, whose figure he saw depicted on the walls of his basilica. Paulus assigns no date to this story, which is connected with his obituary notice of Ariulf. Seeing how near Camerinum is to Spoletium, we should feel inclined to put the campaign against the former city early in the victorious reign of Ariulf : indeed, it is difficult to understand why his predecessor should have penetrated as far north as Chassis, leaving such a stronghold as Camerinum in his immediate neighbourhood untaken.

Ariulf's reign, though a memorable, was not a long one. He died in 601, about ten years after his accession; and on his death a contest arose between the two sons of his predecessor Farwald, which should succeed to the vacant dignity. The dispute was decided by the sword— we have again to note how little voice King Agilulf seems to have had in regulating the succession to these great duchies—and Theudelap, the victor in the fight, was crowned duke on the field of battle. We know neither the name nor the fate of his unsuccessful rival.

Theudelap. 601-653

Theudelap wore for more than half a century the ducal crown of Spoleto. This long reign, which during the greater part of its course coincided with that of Arichis at Benevento (591­641), had doubtless an important influence in rendering both of the southern duchies more independent of the northern kingdom. At Pavia during this half century four kings bore sway; two of whom were able and successful rulers, but the other two were an infant and an usurper. It cannot be doubted that, during this long period, that part of Lombard Italy which lay south and east of the Flaminian Way would be growing less and less disposed to respond to any effectual control on the part of the kings who dwelt north of the Apennines.

Of the events of the long reign of Theudelap we are absolutely ignorant. It is generally supposed to have been peaceful; but this may be only because record fails us of the wars in which he may have been engaged. Some of the early mediaeval buildings of Spoleto are traditionally attributed to his reign; but of this also there appears to be no clear proof; though (as I have already said) there is some reason to think that popular tradition is not altogether wrong in assigning to Theudelap some share at least in the construction of that noble aqueduct which is the great glory of the city of Spoleto. There has been, to use a geological term, a complete denudation of all this part of the history of Lombard Italy; and if we know little of Theudelap himself, we know still less of his successor Atto, who is to us a mere name in the pages of Paulus Diaconus. The story of the later dukes will be told chiefly in connection with that of the Lombard kings, against whom they were frequently found in rebellion.

 

NOTE. ECCLESIASTICAL NOTICES OF THE LOMBARDS OF SPOLETO.

We have some hints as to the proceedings of the Lombards in Central Italy, furnished to us by the church writers of the period, which from their character we cannot accept as sober history, and yet which supply us with too vivid a picture of the times to be altogether omitted.

I. Chief among these are the marvellous stories told by Pope Gregory in his strange wonder-book the Dialogues. This book was composed in 593, in the early years of his pontificate, before he had tamed Ariulf, or corresponded with Theudelinda, or hurled meek defiance at the Emperor Maurice. Possibly in the later years of his life, after peace with the invaders had been brought about by his means, he might have spoken with rather less bitterness concerning them. The geographical indications furnished by the Dialogues all point, as we might have expected, to the Lombards of the duchy of Spoleto as the ravagers with whom Gregory's friends were chiefly brought in contact. In one place we hear (and it is an almost solitary instance of religious persecution) of their putting four hundred captives to death because they refused to worship a goat's head, round which the Lombards themselves circled in rapid dance, singing an unholy hymn. Of course, these barbarians must have been mere idolaters, who did not pretend to the name even of Arian Christianity. We may perhaps be allowed to conjecture that they belonged rather to that colluries gentium, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, Gepidae, who came with the Lombards into Italy, than to the Lombards properly so called.

At Spoleto itself, the Arian bishop of the Lombards demanded of the bishop of the city a church which he might dedicate to his error. On the firm refusal of the Catholic prelate he announced that he should come next day and forcibly enter the church of St. Paul. The guardian of that church hastened to it, closed and bolted the doors, extinguished all the lights at eventide, hid himself in the recesses of the church, and awaited the result. In the early morning twilight the Arian bishop came with a multitude of men prepared to break open the doors of the church. Suddenly, by an unseen hand, all the bolts of the doors were loosed, the doors opened with a crash, the extinguished lamps burst into flame, and the intruding bishop, seeking to pass the threshold of the church, was struck with sudden blindness and had to be led back by a guide to his home. The miracle of light at the same instant given to the church, and taken away from the heretical bishop struck all the Lombards in that region with awe, and there was no further attempt to deprive the Catholics of their churches.

Some of Gregory's most characteristic stories are told us concerning a certain presbyter of the province of Nursia, named Sanctulus, who had recently died and appeared to him in vision at the hour of his departure. This Sanctulus passing by saw some Lombards toiling in vain at an olive-press, from which no oil would run forth. He brought a skin and told them to fill it for him. The barbarians, already chafed by their wasted labour, answered him with angry and threatening words; but the holy man called for water, which he blessed and cast into the press, and now there gushed forth such a stream of oil that the laboring Lombards filled not their own vessels only, but his bladder also.

In a similar way he fed the workmen employed in rebuilding the church of St. Lawrence destroyed by the Lombards, with a large and beautiful white loaf miraculously hidden in that which was supposed to be an empty oven. All these miracles seem to have procured for him a certain amount of Favor from the barbarians, and when a deacon was brought into the city, whom some Lombards had taken prisoner, and were about to put to death, they consented to hand him over to the custody of Sanctulus, but only on condition that he should answer for his safe keeping with his own life. At midnight, when the Lombards were all wrapt in slumber, the saint aroused the deacon and commanded him to fly, saying that he was in the hands of God and feared not the consequences for himself. Next morning, when the Lombards came and found their bird flown, they were of course vehemently enraged.

‘You know,’ said they, ‘what was agreed upon between us.’

‘I know it,’ he answered.

‘But you are a good man : we would not willingly torture you. Choose by what death you will die.’

‘I am in God's hands: slay me in any manner that He shall permit.’

Then they consulted together and decided that his head should be cut off by the stroke of a strong Lombard swordsman. At the news that so great a saint and one whom they so highly reverenced was to be put to death, the Lombards gathered from far and near to witness the famous sight. The saint asked leave to pray, which was granted him; but as he remained a long time on the ground prostrate in prayer, the executioner gave him a kick and said, “Rise, kneel down, and stretch out your neck”. He obeyed; he stretched out his neck; he saw the flashing sword drawn to slay him, and uttered only the prayer : “Saint John, receive my soul”. The executioner swung his sword high in air, but there it remained, for his stiffened arm was unable to bring it down again. Then all the Lombards crowded round the holy man and begged him to arise. He arose. They begged him to release the executioner's arrested arm, but he replied, “I will in no wise pray for him, unless he will swear never to slay a Christian man with that hand”. The penitent executioner swore the oath, and at the saint's word of command brought down his arm, and plunged the sword back into its sheath. The miracle struck a deep awe into the hearts of all the barbarians, who crowded round the saint and sought to buy his favour by presents of horses and cattle which they had plundered from the country-folk; but he refused all these and only claimed, and this successfully, that all the captives whom they had taken should be restored to freedom.

Less fortunate, or less strong in faith, was a certain abbot named Soranus, who, having at the news of the approach of the Lombards given away all the stores laid up in the monastery and therefore having nothing to give when the barbarians came round him, clamouring for gold, was carried off by them to a forest among the mountains. He succeeded in escaping, but one of the Lombards finding him, drew his sword and slew him. When his body fell to the ground the mountain and the forest were shaken together as though the trembling earth confessed herself unable to bear the weight of his holiness.

A deacon in the land of the Marsi being beheaded by a Lombard, the foul fiend at once entered into the murderer, who fell prostrate at the feet of his victim. Two monks in the province of Valeria being taken by the raging Lombards were hung on the branches of a tree and died the same clay. At evening the two dead monks began to sing with clear and sweet voices, to the joy of their fellow-captives who yet remained alive, but to the terror and confusion of the barbarians who had murdered them.

Such are the chief stories told by the great Pope concerning the evil deeds of the Lombards of Central Italy.

Life of St. Cetheus.

Another source of information of a similar kind is opened to us by the Life of St. Cetheus (or Peregrinus), bishop of Amiternum, a city now destroyed, which once stood about forty miles southeast of Spoleto, at the foot of the Gran Sasso d'Italia.

In the time of Pope Gregory, Emperor Phocas, and Farwald duke of Spolelo, the Lombards entered Italy and overflowed the boundaries of the Romans, Samnites and Spoletines. Of this nation, two most evil and ignoble men, sons of concubines, named Alais and Umbolus, came to the city of Amiternum, which they ravaged and plundered in their usual barbaric fashion. Unable to bear their cruelty, Cetheus bishop of the city fled to Rome and besought the protection of Pope Gregory, who assured him that in no long time the Lombards would repent and seek the Papal blessing. For this Cetheus prayed, and before long his prayer was granted, the Lombards from Amiternum coming to implore the Pope's benediction, which he would only grant them on condition of their receiving back their bishop. All the priests and other clergy poured forth from the gate of the city to meet him on his return and welcomed him in the name of the Lord.

Now dissensions arose between the two Lombard dukes, of whom Alais held the eastern and Umbolus the western gate. Each sought to kill the other, and there was great sadness among the Christians in that city. Alais, plotting with his friends the ruin of the city, sent messengers to Vesilianus [the Roman] count of Orta, praying him to make a midnight attack on the city of Amiternum, and utterly destroy it. Of this design the blessed bishop Cetheus, abiding in his cell, was utterly ignorant. Now there were in that city a Godfearing couple named Fredo and Bona, who went at eventide into the church and prayed, and then having received the bishop's blessing returned to their home. When bed-time came, Fredo did not take off his clothes, but lay down as he was. On his wife asking him the reason he answered, “I am shaken with an immense trembling and I greatly fear that tonight this city will perish”. “God will forbid it”, said she; but he said, “Bring me my weapons of war and place them by my head, and then we shall sleep secure”. This he said, being warned by the Holy Ghost, for he knew naught of the counsels of Alais.

At midnight a cry was heard, “Arise, arise, an enemy attacks the city!”. The most Christian Fredo rose from his wife's side, and donning his arms, ran through the streets crying, “Rise most holy father Cetheus, rise and pray for us! The city perisheth, we shall lose all our goods and shall ere daybreak be slain with the sword”. Bishop Cetheus arose, and rushed into the street, calling aloud on Christ who delivered Daniel from the lions and the Three Children from the fiery furnace, to save the people of Amiternum from their foes. The prayer was heard, the invaders were struck with panic and retired having lost many of their number.

Next day all the citizens came together to sec by what means the enemy could have entered the city. They found ladders raised near the church of St. Thomas, and discovered that all this had been done by the counsel of Alais. He was brought bound into the midst of the people, who thundered forth the words, “Death to the traitor!” and began to consider how best to torture him. But Cetheus besought them not to lay hands on him but to cast him into prison and call a meeting of all in that city, both small and great, who should lay upon him a penance lasting many days, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

At once uprose the impious Umbolus in wrath and fury, and said, “Thou too, O Cetheus, was certainly privy to this treacherous scheme, for the ladder set against the church of St. Thomas was placed there by thy magic arts. Thou art unworthy to be bishop any longer”. The blessed Cetheus swore by the crucified Son of God, by the undivided Trinity, and by the holy Gospels, that he was innocent of any such design; but Umbolus, stopping his ears, ordered him and Alais to be led bound into the midst of the city and there beheaded in the sight of all the people. On the road to execution Cetheus sang Psalms with such a loud and triumphant voice that the awe-stricken guardsman, though he gladly struck off the head of Alais, refused to strike a blow at the holy man. Full of fury, Umbolus ordered Cetheus to be brought before him and began to taunt him with his bonds. The bishop declared that the curse of Cain the fratricide should rest upon him, and that he should dwell for ever with the Evil One. Turning then to his guards he said, “Why, oh sons of iniquity and servants of darkness, do ye keep me thus in chains? Is it because ye recognize in me a servant of the true God? In His name I will gladly bear not chains only, but death itself: but you, Arians and infidels that ye are, shall have your mansions with Judas Iscariot in the unquenchable Tartarus, and among the wandering spirits shall be your portion : yea, and cursed for ever shall ye be, because ye have scorned my preaching and have refused to listen to the corrections of Truth. But to thee Umbolus, most unutterable of men, none shall ever give the kiss of peace. He who blesses thee shall be accursed, for the curser of Satan curses thee”. Filled with rage, Umbolus ordered him to be bound and led away to the river Pescara and thrown into it from the marble bridge. So was he thrown in, but by the blessing of God he came to shore safe and sound. Again and again was he thrown in at the tyrant's command by the raging people, but always came safely to the shore. Then the most impious Umbolus ordered them to bring the holy man into his presence, and to fasten under his feet a millstone weighing live hundredweight, and drown him in the deepest part of the river. Then after another prayer he was thrown into the stream, and at once yielded up his breath, but his body was carried [down the river and across the Adriatic] to the city of Jaterna [Zara in Dalmatia], where a fisherman found it with the millstone still attached to it and surrounded by a holy light. News of the discovery was brought to the bishop and clergy of Zara, who at once perceived that it was the body of a holy man, and buried it near the shore in the odour of sanctity. Often at night was a light like that of a lamp seen to hover round the corpse's head; and a blind man received sight by visiting the tomb. But as none knew the martyr's name, the men of Zara called him only by this name, Peregrinus.

With all the marks of the handiwork of the conventional martyrologist, there are some touches in this narrative which indicate a real knowledge of the circumstances of the time, and point to a nearly contemporary origin. The Lombards are still ‘unspeakable': the split between the two Lombard dukes and the intrigue of one of the rivals with the Imperial general are events of only too frequent occurrence in Lombard history: and lastly the martyrdom as it is called, is not due to religious intolerance on the part of the Lombards, but to merely political causes. Bishop Cetheus is drowned, not because he upholds the creed of Nicaea, but because he is suspected of complicity in the betrayal of the city to the Greeks, and various circumstances suggest even to us the thought that the suspicion was not altogether without foundation.

 

 

CHAPTER III.

SAINT COLUMBANUS